Nonsense from John Petersen

[Nicu.Mihalache]

LiFePO4 and Li titanate can put out as much or more power than PbC, with a flatter discharge curve.

I know, I have even looked at some 40C discharge / 12C charge LFP recently as I plan to build an electric go kart at some point in the future. But it costs $2 / Wh (retail) and its cycle life is about 1000. Compare that to $0.5 / Wh or so and more than 2500 cycle life for PbC. There may also be other differences in robustness, but I do not know specific details.

The price of PbC may decrease even further as Axion does not use any expensive material and early this spring they have managed to automate the last bottleneck in manufacturing (the carbon sheeting process). Once they have the electrodes (their assembly was already automated two years ago), they are plug-in elements in standard AGM batteries.

 

[Dan5]

$2 per wh seems very high. There was something on green car reports for NCA which puts the assembled price at around $400 assembled with the circuit boards included.

Did you consider common form factor batteries?

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

When will we see more FUD from JP, this time about the alleged diesel generators at Supercharger sites?

(I know, I'm just trying to bait him; he's surely egomaniacal enough to be avidly following this thread)

 

[marvinat0rz]

He's at it again!!!

Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA): Putting Tesla Motor's Gargantuan Battery Supply Problem Into Perspective - Seeking Alpha

The key takeaway for me was this: "To put it bluntly, the battery industry's answer to the floppy disk is rapidly becoming obsolete for upscale users.".

Well, obviously not.

 

[Zythryn]

When will we see more FUD from JP, this time about the alleged diesel generators at Supercharger sites?

(I know, I'm just trying to bait him; he's surely egomaniacal enough to be avidly following this thread)

I didn't think he would be so easily baited, looks like he was though.

We will see if my comment gets posted. But claiming a supplier is going to stop making 18650 cells, or not build more manufacturing plants, while at the same time can't supply enough product is rather backwards.

 

[JRP3]

As Julian Cox said that frees up a lot of 18650 capacity for Tesla, actually helping to solve the supply issue for them.

 

[InTheShadows]

He's at it again!!!

Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA): Putting Tesla Motor's Gargantuan Battery Supply Problem Into Perspective - Seeking Alpha

The key takeaway for me was this: "To put it bluntly, the battery industry's answer to the floppy disk is rapidly becoming obsolete for upscale users.".

Well, obviously not.

Does anyone have the article? It appears it is no longer available.

 

[Dan5]

According to good old JP it costs $1.50 in raw materials to make a 18650 battery. I am calling complete and utter baloney on this. Cant see them selling to the public below cost.

Again JP shows he knows nothing about batteries attempting to completely twist logic

Lets take apart a NCA 18650 battery

Its about 45 grams per battery

1 gram is steel
Few grams of plastic
Few grams of carbon
1 gram lithium

So now, we have 40 grams left, absolute worst case, but keep in mind its really a coated aluminum foil with the active material. The active battery material is roughly 1/3 of remaining weight.

Half if Nickel; 13 grams- thats going for $8/lb/ 454 grams

So 23 cents in Nickel

Lets assume the rest is all Cobalt since its expensive, thats going for $16/lb

47 cents worth of cobalt

So when all is said and done, roughly 70 cents, NOT 150 cents, and i may add that 70 cents in the worst case.

As we all know, the battery also has aluminum and oxygen, both cheaper than cobalt.

 

[JRP3]

Dan, one thing I don't know how to price, is the separator material, which is a highly specialized plastic membrane, and could be the most expensive item by weight, though I don't expect it's a high percentage of actual cell weight. You also left out the electrolyte.

 

[ppl]

When will we see more FUD from JP, this time about the alleged diesel generators at Supercharger sites?

(I know, I'm just trying to bait him; he's surely egomaniacal enough to be avidly following this thread)

He has posted so many articles of which all are out there and in error. Why does sa still let him publish under their banner. It's gotten to the point I don't read sa anymore. It reflects on their name. When will they cut him off or does it go on forever.

 

[Dan5]

JRP3
Quite right about the membrane and electrolyte.

I took apart a regular lithium battery, the separator is polypropylene/polyethylene, scaled up looks to me to be about 3 cents worth. (3 grams)

Electrolyte is about 10 cents total- the one I took apart had LiB(C2O4)2 as the electrolyte. (2 grams)

In reality, the breakdown is
1 cent for steel
10 cents for electrolyte
3 cents for the separator
57 cents for the metals

71 cents, not bad from the nickel/cobalt estimate

Perhaps someone should ask good old JP to back up his statement with industrial numbers, and not have him go to Sigma Aldrich for inflated numbers for chemical costs

 

[ppl]

Funny but Jp does not write articles on axion anymore. Funny but sa editor favorite pick of Jp articles is the one about tesla delay of report. Remember that one and the dire predictions in that one. Clearly editors bias is against tesla

 

[Robert.Boston]

My guess is that Axion articles attract 1/1000 of the hits that Tesla articles attract. Go where the money is....

 

[Norbert]

I don't think JP is a good source for understanding actual risk. Although he often points at things that are actually problems, usually these problems are solved well. But he describes them all as if they are a disaster waiting to happen. Which means the information content in that regard is zero, even if some day he might be "right".

It's like someone pressing the fire alarm each time the temperature goes up a little bit. Yes, he might be right some day. And maybe sometimes it is good to check. But calling the fire truck each time would mean they won't come when you actually need them.

 

[rolosrevenge]

So I'd like to share my problem with JP's articles. I'm not an expert on the battery tech, but I am a Ph.D. in Power Systems Engineering and have spend the bulk of my research studying distribution grids and EV interactions with them. I am also a reviewer for the IEEE and review conference and journal articles to see if they are fit for publication. One of JP's articles attacked Tesla saying that there was a serious shortage on distribution system capacity and his source was an article from Power and Energy Magazine, a publication of the Power and Energy Society of which I am a member. Note that this magazine does not have the same level of technical content as the PES Journals. I was very familiar with the article in question, and the conclusion of the article was that EVs had the potential to cause problems if no new solutions are developed, but then it also listed the many different solutions that were currently under development to solve these issues. I myself have published numerous articles on the solutions to the potential problem of lots of EVs on the distribution grid.

JP's article went so far as to claim the IEEE was agreeing with him and his conclusions that EVs could not be adopted on the distribution grid. I took his assertions to task in the comments based on my background in full technical reviewer mode, I told him that he had misquoted the article, the article didn't mean the IEEE agreed with him, but rather they allowed it to be printed, his own analysis was woefully ignorant of the current state-of-the-art of distribution grids and research and lacked adequate citations to back up the conclusions.

His response was to delete and modify some of the comments that I took him to task on so my comment looked out of context, and then mock me in his reply to mine.

After that I stopped reading, for I realized that on some subjects he was completely ignorant of, he would rather attack the experts in the field to save face than actually get to the truth of the matter. Note I didn't attack him, but the particular article he wrote, since he was misrepresenting the society of which I am a member and reviewer. If he was so wrong about that, I imagine he could be equally wrong about everything else he says.

 

[sleepyhead]

His response was to delete and modify some of the comments that I took him to task on so my comment looked out of context, and then mock me in his reply to mine.

...and that is all you need to know about JP. He is a worthless human being.

 

[Dan5]

Yes, rolosrevenge,

I did my thesis on life cycle assessments, and found his use of the hawkins, i.e. norwegian study appalling to say the least.

While the paper had some merits, if you read the paper, even a layman would find huge shortcomings.

JP on the other hand, not only used the paper, but decided to extrapolate data based on the paper without any concept of environmental chemistry or implications related to it, then he went onto to say in his comments that it's not his job to check the veracity of the paper... Again, why use it.

I can even give him the fact of reprinting it verbatum, BUT it is your job to check the truthfulness of your own work, and to be knowledgable if you do decide to use an analysis. Either he fails to understand basic environmental science, and wrote an analysis which he has bo business writing OR he fully understands it and did it anyway. Make a choice.

 

[NigelM]

Mod Note: The weekly conversation with Nicu took on a life of it's own and moved here - Friend(s) of JP - Conversations with Nicu

The split may have been a teensy bit messy but this thread can continue to talk about JP's nonsense. Please use the other thread for conversations with Nicu.

 

[dsm363]

Thank you Nigel!

 

[JRP3]

Here is some ammo to use against Petersen and others if they try to claim the aluminum construction of the S makes it a "dirtier" vehicle:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/09/20130920-das.html

A lifecycle study of aluminum-intensive vehicles by Sujit Das at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) found that an aluminum-intensive vehicle can achieve up to a 32% reduction in total lifecycle energy consumption, and up to a 29% reduction in CO[SUB]2[/SUB] emissions, compared to a typical vehicle on the road today which uses traditional and high-strength steel in the body construction.