Thanks for your recommendation. I'm going to do just that and see where it leads.
Posted by: John Westlund

Micropower.com quotes 30% self discharge per month, photosig.com 40% per month. Maybe Ovonics are more like 1% per month.
Posted by: John Westlund

It seems that a non exclusive licence agreement is the way to go. This way you have two companies competing against each other. And this will drive down the price, and raise the quality.
Posted by: Jeff Anderson

The batteries themselves offer about 60 Wh/kg of specific capacity and 300 W/kg of specific power. They charge at roughly 85% efficiency.

In the mid to late 1990s, Solectria's Force sedan with NiMH achieved about 200 miles per charge at highway speeds in a Tour De Sol rally and the Solectria Sunrise over 350 miles per charge in the same conditions. The GM EV1 with NiMH regularly achieved real world ranges of about 150 miles, and one example did 225 miles range pussyfooting it in a Tour De Sol Rally. The Toyota RAV4 EV, about 100 miles real world range, on a 26 kWh pack.

Nickel based batteries tend to have a shelf life in decades, as evidenced by members of the EV list with 30+ year old sets of functioning NiCds, Edison's NiFe batteries that are still operational in Jay Leno's antique EV, and even 10 year old sets of Panasonic NiMH in some of the oldest operational RAV4 EVs.

The most senior vehicles in the RAV4 EV fleet are over 150,000 miles with little to no range loss so far. Southern California Edison had something like 6 module failures in over 3 million miles of fleet use.

To put this all in perspective, a small SUV with 100 miles range, should have a pack of roughly unlimited shelf life and at least 175,000 miles of usable life before it only has about 80% of its nominal cruising range in the optimistic scenario using UC Davis' figures. Using Cobasy's figures, this same SUV would have 96,000 miles pack life before it only had 80% of its nominal range. Real world data, with RAV4s lasting over 150k with little to no loss yet, seems to lean towards UC Davis' claims. However, there is a flaw in this since these RAV4s certainly aren't being cycled to 100% discharge all the time, and the shallower the typical discharge, the longer the pack will last. Extrapolate that to an aerodynamic Solectria Sunrise with 350 miles range, and in theory, you have between 336,000 miles pack life and 612,500 miles pack life.

A study by Cuenca and Gaines found that in mass production, a NiMH EV would achieve cost parity with comparable gasoline powered cars at about $1.30/gallon gas, factoring in battery replacement. This assumed I think 100,000 miles pack life. Gas hasn't been $1.30/gallon for years, and probably never will be again.

In contrast, today's 18650 size Li Ion lose about 20% capacity per year if abused and if it doesn't have a proper charging algorithm, doesn't have a good battery management system, and doesn't have good thermal manageemnt to keep temperature down and slow grid corrosion. If you do everything right with Li Ion, it should only degrade about 2-4% per year. Today's 18650s last about 500 cycles to 100% discharge. Tesla accordingly gives the battery pack for its 250 mile range roadster a 100,000 mile, 5 year warantee. My personal suspciaion is that the Tesla packs will last 125,000-150,000 miles and 10 years or so, before 80% of capacity remains.

In automotive volume, Argonne National Laboratories claims $250/kWh for Li Ion is possible. AC Propulsion claimed a similar figure in 2003 when comparing EV technology of the time with thefuel cell technology of the time.

Li Ion is generally about 150 Wh/kg specific capacity and 500 W/kg specific power. So per unit of weight, Li Ion has greater range and power than NiMH by far.

But compared to NiMH, as Doug mentioned, its cycle life costs and longevity leave much to be desired. As mentioned earlier, NiMH has cost parity at about $1.30/gallon gas, if it were produced in automotive volume. Li Ion, if produced in automotive volume at $250/kWh, and if life is say, 125,000 miles, would achieve cost parity with gas cars around $2.50-3.00/gallon. Not as good as NiMH, but looks to be competitive if mass produced. But that's if.

In the real world today, without automotive volume and with major automakers refusing to mass produce EVs, Li Ion is about $750/kWh and large format NiMH about $600/kWh(only the large format NiMH are mostly inaccessable). Under these conditions, only NiMH or lead acid appears to have any hope of matching or beating gas cars in operating cost due to the longevity of NiMH and cheap cost of lead acid.

Both NiMH and Li Ion can be fast charged. Aerovironment has developed fast chargers in the 90s that could charge a NiMH pack from 0-80% in 30 minutes. Mitsubishi's FTO EV had a Li Ion pack that could be fast charged in 20 minutes and travelled 1,250 miles in a 24 hour period, including time spent stopping to charge. Either way, fast charging would be something used rarely in mass adoption of EVs, if at all, as the power requirements for this are enormous. It would be something used exclusively for long trips, and would essentially require its own powerplant!

If Altair Nanobatteries claims are true, Li Ions that last 10,000 cycles and have a shelf life in decades like nickel based batteries do may be in fact reality today. Supposedly, these can be charged in 15-30 minutes. I recall them claiming $400/kWh in automotive volume. A pack of these in any mass produced EV would thus be expensive, but if their claims are true, the overall operating costs of the vehicle will be so low that this additional cost will be offset and then some. But that's a big if. Compared to Li Ion, NiMH is tried and true.

We also have to worry about available raw materials for each battery type. We cannot rely on one single chemistry, or the world will run short fast in a scenario where there is mass adoption of EVs. Diversify chemistries, and we have more than enough battery materials. The market would then dictate accordingly what battery is used for which application. Sports cars, exotics, and high priced luxury vehicles would obviously use lithium, while your family sedans, pickups, SUVs, and economy cars would be best suited to NiMH or even advanced lead acid(eg. Firefly).

The known commercial reserves of nickel are 62,000,000,000 kg(USGS). 5,000,000,000 kg is produced each year. You need about 7 kg of nickel for each kWh of battery. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that.

We have about 10,000,000,000 kg of commercial Lithium reserves(DNPM.gov). Each kWh of battery needs about 2 kg of lithium, IIRC.

An aerodynamic midsize car with a .18 Cd, 22 square foot frontal area, 2,800 pound curb weight, LRR tires would need about 180 Wh/mile from the batteries at 70 mph highway speeds. For 200 miles range, this is a 36 kWh pack. We'll use this as a baseline, with trucks and SUVs needing more capacity, economy cars and sports cars needing less. Such a NiMH EV would thus need 252 kg of nickel for each pack.

Taking half of the world's commercial Nickel Reserves allows a total of 246,000,000 electric cars to be built with NiMH packs. Half of current nickel production devoted to EVs would allow production of 10 million NiMH EVs made a year.

Taking that same car and applying it to lithium requires 72 kg per Li Ion pack. Taking half of the world's commercial lithium reserves allows a total of 139,000,000 electric cars to be built with Li Ion packs.

This established baseline of a car could potentially have 180 horsepower at the motor with the NiMH pack, having more than enough specific power, which at 2,800 pounds, would allow 0-60 in 7 seconds if it had the motor and control system to make use of what the pack could provide. With a 2-speed transmission with the second gear selected to optimize top speed and the first selected for efficiency and highway operation, such aerodynamics would allow a 160+ mph top speed.

A Li Ion pack would allow even more horsepower.

We also have advanced lead acid like the Firefly batteries, which are supposedly allowing specific capacity somewhere between NiMH and Li Ion. There is far more materials for lead acid batteries than both NiMH and LiIon combined.

But the situation for NiMH looks much better than LiIon, at least in regard to viability.

So what has happened? Why can't we use large NiMH in our cars? Why can't I order a set for my Triumph GT6 and get 200+ miles highway range?

For starters, Cobasys just won't sell them to anyone but OEMs. But OEMs are refusing to mass produce EVs at this time. This effectively shuts this battery out of the market to any of the small companies willing to produce EVs and any hobbyists wanting access to this chemistry.

Panasonic, who met market demand for this chemistry, was sued after Chevron gained their stake in Ovonics from GM. Panasonic had an entirely different battery, but the courts didn't see things this way. If you look at the patents Ovonics has, you can see that they lay claim to 'A sealed prismatic metal hydride battery greater than 10 Ah in size'.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=5558950.PN.&OS=PN/5558950&RS=PN/5558950

10 AH is the limit without infringing upon the patent. This is important, since if you charge NiMH in parallel, they will get horribly unbalanced and strings that reach the final charge voltage first will begin to draw more and more current until they go into thermal runaway. So the easy solution seems to just build a high voltage pack, right? You run into limitations on your pack voltage since the EV motors and control systems available are generally built to operate between as low as 48V and as high as 600V. 600V*10AH is only 6 kWh, hardly enough for even a decent PHEV.

When Cobasys is willing to license its large format NiMH, it is for non propulsion applications only.

www.ovonic.com/news_events/5_2_press_releases/20050601.htm(Go to archive.org and put the link in, as it's no longer up on Cobasys site)

The patent holder has a right to limit production if they are going to use the patent to sell the invention and gain from it. If they don't, they eventually have to let others access it. Engineers who design embedded systems know this all too well. Our patent system wasn't devised to suppress innovation, but to encourage it. What is being done with this patent is technically illegal, but no one is going to take Chevron or anyone else to task. In light of peak oil, resource wars, global warming, air pollution concerns, and others, you can thank the oil company for helping ensure we don't have EVs available.

There is another factor at play in why we don't have access to this battery. When Ovshinsky wanted to reveal to the public the capabilities of his invention, the auto industry and USABC was none too enthusiastic. The Big 3 in fact used the USABC to attempt to silence Ovshinsky. Michael Shnayerson writes in 'The Car that Could' Ovshinsky stated, 'They tried to stop us from going to California. They threatened us! I said to them, ‘Look, the Communist Party no longer runs the world. A party line cannot be imposed upon people who don’t believe in it. The consortium is set up to make sure the American public has an electric car. It was not set up to fight the mandate. We are a battery company, and we’re not going to lie to the public!' Battery companies were bound by GM not to reveal to the public the advances in battery electric vehicle technology they had made.

Ovshinsky also remarked about the viability of his NiMH battery, 'The people who are saying that battery technology isn’t ready are absolutely wrong. It’s part of the party line. It’s self-perpetuating. It’s very sad. You tell a lie big enough and long enough, and people start to believe it. The fact of the matter is volume. That’s the only reason batteries are the cost that they are.'

Former ECD chairman Robert Stemple and UC Davis seemed to have agreed. In volume for 20,000 EVs per year, Stemple quoted $150/kWh in the 90s and UC Davis recently quoted $220/kWh in a 2003 technical report on the Futuretruck.

Make of all this what you will.
Posted by: John Westlund

Sherry Boschert, author Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America www.sherryboschert.com
Posted by: Sherry Boschert

The NiMH in the GM 'mild' and 'weak' hybrids is just a 'fast-twitch' booster battery, and not in the same class as the EV-95 'slow-twitch' battery used in the Ranger-EV, Honda EV-plus, and still in service in the Toyota RAV4-EV. The EV-95, the only production EV battery proven to last longer than the life of the vehicle, is the only one so far proven economical in total, life-cycle cost (from manufacture to sunset in the scrap yard).

Tom Gage and the Tesla White Paper may be right that Lithium works better, and I hope so; but they are not always concerned with life-cycle cost. They like speed, like the rest of us, and the Tesla is not designed for hauling tools to a job site for 12 years, like the RAV4-EV or EV1.

If the Tesla and E-box Lithium batteries prove to have a shelf life of, say, 3 years, or prove to degrade severely after 50,000 miles, their comments here may be viewed as quaint.

Time will tell whether Li technologies here, now, and new ones yet to be discovered, can achieve the LOW life-cycle costs of NiMH.

Performance cars, like the Tesla, don't calculate the cost per mile. A $25K Lithium pack that lasts only 60,000 miles costs over $2 per mile to drive, while a $10K NiMH back that lasts 200,000 miles cost only 5 cents per mile.

And the Nickel metal is recyclable; over 57% of our Nickel comes from recycling, which means you recover some of the costs even after 200,000 miles. That's important for social cost, too.

Of course, I'm looking to buy a Tesla, too, because for that 50,000 miles, it's a lot of fun; but it might be a good idea to look past 2009, and 2014, when some of Chevron's NiMH battery patents expire, and retro-fit the Tesla. But we need solutions, now, instead, we are still moving in the wrong direction so far as glowarm is concerned.

To paraphrase one Ford VP, '...those NiMH, you just can't break the d*** things...', reported at the 2000 CARB BTA workshop which eliminated the argument that the cost of the battery was an unfair burden on the auto makers. It's not, because NiMH is feasible, and CARB estimated production costs of $250/kWh, or about $8K for a RAV4-EV pack and about $3 for a plug-in SERIAL hybrid like the Volt.
Posted by: Doug Korthof