Automotive Engineering - August 2023 - 24

Reducing the
BATTERY MATERIALS FEATURE
battery materials
supply risk
Reducing the battery size and the amount
of required battery materials will reduce
the automakers' vulnerability to availability
and price spikes.
to release car-parking space, reduce pollution, noise and accidents and
to make it more " livable " by encouraging active modes of transport
(walking, cycling) and public transport.
When most vehicles are banned from city centers, innovation can
EV charging
can assume
many forms.
- recently produced a sodium-ion battery for evaluation.
These batteries are less energy-dense, but as with
LTO batteries, this need not be a barrier to usage, particularly
for urban EV fleets.
For electric buses that operate on fixed routes and
have a charging opportunity at the same location at the
end of the route, wireless EV charging (WEVC) could
allow buses to have a smaller battery but still meet daily
driving needs for performing the route multiple times.
The business case for this depends on ensuring a sufficient
number of buses can exploit the same WEVC
charging pad at different times to maximize its utilization.
In this way, the aggregate fleet battery cost-savings
and higher efficiency (due to smaller, lighter batteries)
can justify the cost of WEVC infrastructure.
In the Class 8 heavy-duty truck segment, a competing
electrification solution is the hydrogen fuel cell
(HFC). For applications with high payload and range
requirements plus minimal downtime, HFCs may be a
superior solution to battery-only energy storage, although
emerging fleet deployment of battery electric
trucks with charging infrastructure installation could
make adding HFC vehicle servicing and infrastructure
complexity unappealing to existing battery electric
fleets. In either case, it might reduce supply-chain risk
if heavy duty truck OEMs do not compete for materials
with automakers that have attractive economies of
scale and may secure priority sourcing.
How cities can drive BEV innovation
Some metro areas are considering banning private vehicles
(not only ICEVs) from their city centers in order
24 August 2023
skyrocket. Vehicles will still be needed for moving people and goods
(for last-mile, assisting the disabled, during bad weather, etc.) but they
won't need to meet FMVSS requirements and will have far more modest
range and speed requirements consistent with geo-fencing in pedestrian-rich
environments. This could enable a much wider choice of
vehicle structural materials - such as recycled plastics - that promotes
a circular economy, as well as necessitating a drastically smaller
battery that can obtain much of its daily energy needs from a solarpanel
roof, for example.
The combination of low vehicle mass, speed and range means
that a 5 kWh battery could deliver more than 50 miles (80 km) of
driving range, and with fast charging once or twice during the day, it
should be possible to meet daily driving needs for city-center operation.
This is a far more affordable and environmentally friendly solution
than using conventional automobiles; it's a duty cycle that could
be met with a wide variety of battery chemistries, helping battery
materials supply chains become more resilient.
It is politically challenging to ban vehicles from city centers, but it
would stimulate development of ultra-small vehicles that can be
manufactured from locally available materials and even from plastic
to reduce landfill. It would also generate local employment with highvalue
vehicle design, development and manufacturing jobs.
To diminish risk, diminish demand
The smart approach to reducing battery materials supply-chain risk is
to lessen demand for those materials. This is true on environmental,
human-rights and national-security grounds. Procurement and supply
organizations can treat this risk like an insurance agency and incentivize
decision-makers inside their companies to find creative
ways to tackle it as part of reinventing mobility. This could be
achieved by educating consumers on range requirements, putting a
dollar-per-pound-saved premium on risk reduction, pursuing more
efficient vehicle designs, developing and applying different batteries
for different use cases and locations, and viewing charging infrastructure
and mobility subscriptions as competitive differentiators.
Dr. Chris Borroni-Bird is co-author of Reinventing the Automobile: Personal
Urban Mobility for the 21st Century, with Dr. Larry Burns and the late Prof. Bill
Mitchell (MIT Press, 2010). He has led advanced automotive-related activities
at Chrysler, GM, Qualcomm and Waymo including the development of several
IWM concepts at GM, including 2002 Autonomy (the first " skateboard "
concept), and the 2010 EN-V. He holds 50 patents, many related to the GM
Autonomy 'skateboard' platform concept. He is currently an advisor to EVage
and McKinsey & Co. and is the founder of Afreecar LLC, where he consults on
future mobility and creating a novel e-kit solution for the developing world.
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Automotive Engineering - August 2023

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