Will Today's Electric Cars Soon Be OBSOLETE? 4K

[Music] i miss all of the bootleg badge bragging back in the 80s and 90s you knew exactly which of the latest engine technologies the car had just by looking at the letters on the back i for injection 16v for 16 valve ooh again t for turbo double u etc etc some car makers then went a bit bonkers and started adding badging to show what other technology the car had on board like the vauxhall cavalier had an abs badge in the early 90s to show it had anti-lock brakes regular stuff now but it was cutting edge stuff back then worth boasting about 90s volvos had a lambda sonde badge to brag about the catalytic converter or sips for side impact protection system and then there was the badge that spelled out turbo intercooler on the boot of the 740 which was that's cool in the future though when cars become predominantly electric here in europe what's going to happen to badging how will you brag about your car having the latest technology how do you show off as battery technology improves and while we're on the subject what is the point of buying an electric car now when it uses one type of battery technology if we know that in the future there's going to be something even better it's definitely worth talking about one of the things i hear a lot from people is that they're not going to buy an ev now because the battery technology will improve suddenly and then they'll be stuck with an outdated battery and an outdated car should we be waiting for the better tech with the better badges let's look at it there's been a lot of announcements in recent weeks and months from the big car companies showing that not all batteries and associated technologies are created equal yeah electrons will still be flowing and yes the sensation when you put your foot down will be on the face of it pretty much identical across most evs but there are clear signs that we could be geeking out over things like cathode compositions or voltage levels or wireless electric motors and two speed gearboxes in exactly the same way that people got excited about fuel injection 16 valves and turbos way back in the day and that's because there's never just going to be one electric drivetrain this is the car industry and brands will always be looking for an edge a lot of that will be around performance because let's face it everybody likes performance that's a big grabber but there are other areas to improve there's a whole lot of frantic work going on right now to reduce charge times increase range reduce weight again circling back to performance slashing the cost and cutting the exposure to any material that's either hard to get hold of or causes a whole load of environmental and ethical issues to extract looking at you cobalt on the subject of badge bragging if you boil all of that down to a load of symbols and acronyms you could fill an entire bootlet but what's maybe more interesting is that it gives us a lot of choice in the type of electric battery and type of electric car that we go for and it's not just a question of waiting for the best it's more a question of waiting for the one that suits you the best so what are we gonna see let's start with battery chemistries everybody right now is using lithium ion and mostly they're going to continue to do that for the foreseeable future but not all lithium ion batteries are created equally here's a bit of science for you batteries work when electrons flow from the anode to the cathode creating electricity the anode dictates the charging and the cathode dictates the range and the cost of the cell so it's the cathode that's the tricky bit that's what gives you your capacity which in turn gives you your range i'm not going to get too geeky in explaining that to you today but the cathode is so important that lithium-ion batteries are named for the materials the cathode is made of so there's nmc cathodes which is made of nickel manganese and cobalt that's what we mainly use today but most car makers want to reduce the cobalt because that's the stuff that's mined by children in the congo all right not all of it but it's tricky stuff to get hold of tesla want to move to a high nickel content and dump the cobalt as well vw group want to dump cobalt specifically for lower range and mid-range batteries for entry-level evs both vw and stellantis that's peugeot fiat alpha etc are moving to a chemistry called lfp lithium ion phosphate which dumps cobalt and manganese to make a cheaper battery that's more environmentally friendly and easier to charge it doesn't have quite as much range but having an lfp badge on your boot lid isn't necessarily a bad thing it might let you brag about having an environmentally friendlier ev there's going to be levels to smugness here nmc that's nickel manganese and cobalt remember will power the high-end battery cars partly because it offers longer range but the c in nmc isn't great so your fancy ti can might not let you feel quite as smug as a peugeot having said that porsche for example are working with a small-scale producer of performance high-energy cathode active nmc batteries for race cars and high performance road cars ethically sourced as well they say their cobalt comes from germany so maybe you'll have a badge for that nmc plus maybe for sportiness and smugness although it probably cost you and beyond that there's solid state arriving around 2025 probably for high-end low-volume cars initially and that does away with the anode material to improve density and reduce charge time vw reckon that for example charging to add 280 miles of range that's from london to newcastle if you want to visualize it takes 28 minutes now for an id4 on a rapid charge but that's going to drop to 12 minutes with solid state makes you think what a vw going to use as an acronym for solid state on the back of their cars s nah never mind what other badging can we cram on there how about two speed for the gearbox most evs are single speed because they've got enough torque low down and don't need additional gearing but if you want speeds of today's high performance internal combustion engine cars you probably need more gears the porsche tai can for example has a two speed gearbox to allow it to reach a maximum top speed in excess of 160 miles an hour sticking with the tai can for a moment this was the car that also introduced us to 800 volt electrical systems instead of 400 volt higher voltage is good for charging so it's quicker at cramming all those ions back into the anode you can kind of compare it to water flow so higher voltage gives you more pressure and other manufacturers have switched to 800 volt too hyundai for the ionic 5 and kia for the ev6 maybe we'll have 800 v on the backs of cars pretty soon and there's more how about e-motors that replace permanent magnets and their expensive rare earth materials in favor of a non-magnetized motor that conducts power wirelessly nope i don't understand it either but there is a german company called mala that's developed it and apparently it's on the way and we might get badges to show it off okay i don't know if you have all of this spelled out on a badge on your boot but who knows maybe you will i mean how else are you going to get consumers to acknowledge why one product is greener or more powerful or better value or smarter than another what it shows is that the race to be better to build it faster smarter and more energy efficient or better for the planet or just plain sexier isn't just going to fizzle out in the electric era no chance and it also shows us something else this is interesting anyone who's waiting for batteries to get better before they buy and are equating better with more range might have it all wrong better means a lot of things look at the taikan turbo it's not actually a turbo is it despite the badge that's porsche's way of showing why that version is superior to another so maybe we'll get to see all the different types of beta with some very interesting badges in the not too distant future alright guys that's all from me for now if you enjoyed this video then leave me a comment down below ask any questions or leave me any comments and as always if you liked then hit like if you want to subscribe hit subscribe and i'll see you on the next one [Music] you

Channel: AutoTrader

Views: 528,502

Keywords: electric cars obsolete, electric car batteries, solid state batteries, cobalt, lithium, lithium-ion, battery recycling, Tesla batteries, vw batteries, LFP battery, cheap EV batteries, cheap batteries, electric car range, NMC, nmc battery, nickel manganese, taycan, porsche, cathode nmc, ethical batteries, germany cobalt

Id: nw1uErr0n3Q

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/PleaseBuyEV]

Obsolete? No way. Even a Nissan Leaf from 2014 with a pretty degraded battery has tremendous value to a lot of people and would for a very long time still.

Plugging in and home, anything with even ~40-50 miles of range would work for a lot of situations.

It’s not even close to say a VCR where you would struggle to even find access to media or you have a better cheaper alternative more easily accessible.

[u/keco185]

1) Most people don't need 500 mile range

2) Those 500 mile range cars are still really expensive

[u/ma-int]

No

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

[u/BoilerButtSlut]

Christ, can people stop talking about these like they're smartphones?

They are a method of transport. They get you from one place to another. Unless the car cannot function anymore or has some flaw that prevents that from occuring, it will still have value.

It's for the same reason why ICE cars will not suddenly be worthless and be scrapped even if they have a lot of miles left in them.

[u/American_Inlaws]

500 mile range is awesome. But for me personally, I want to see more advancements in charging speeds. I’m all in on getting an EV for my next car in 2022, but my partner is more skeptical. We road trip a decent amount, and she do not like the idea of having to stop for 30 minutes every 2-3 hours to charge. That’s why I’m so interested in the Ioniq 5 and EV6, because they can charge 10-80% in just 18 minutes. That’s awesome. I’d personally rather see fastest charging than longer ranges. But both would be nice of course.

[u/duke_of_alinor]

Nice video, informative.

Not what I expected from the splash screen, thought it would compare cars, not batteries.