# What's on the horizon for batteries?



## Darth Lefty (Sep 29, 2014)

Someone in a post mentioned waiting a few years for batteries to get better.

Now, this is 2022 and we've had various kinds of lithium batteries for a while. To me these are pretty amazing. I raced R/C cars back when we had 1200 mAh nicads, and contemporary power tools had sealed lead acids, and the motors were all 3 pole brushed. We were just switching over from mechanical speed controls with a resistor to amazing new solid state with FET's. What's expected to get _better_? The elements in the chemistry are so much lighter. Brushless motors are near 100% efficiency. The driver for the lithium batteries was laptops, mostly. You might recall starting 20 years ago the big innovation from Tesla was to take a lead-acid concept (AC Propulsion tZero) and put a zillion laptop batteries on it. I only thought we were heading cheaper from here thanks to electric cars with that heritage in mass production.


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## MSU Alum (Aug 8, 2009)

I expect it'll just get better. I think Musk is trying to "responsibly source lithium" and remove cobalt from the designs. IDK about other manufacturers. But I expect supply and demand will begin to affect lithium (and other component) prices sooner or later.

Edit: it appears lithium prices are up about 1100% since October 2020.

Lithium - 2022 Data - 2017-2021 Historical - 2023 Forecast - Price - Quote - Chart (tradingeconomics.com)


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## Klurejr (Oct 13, 2006)

Next Gen Battery Tech


https://gizmodo.com/teslas-will-reportedly-get-a-major-battery-boost-next-y-1848413301 Panasonic will reportedly begin mass-producing new lithium-ion batteries as early as 2023 that could increase EV range by up to 20%, according to a Nikkei report. The 4680 cell (46mm x 80mm) is twice as...




www.mtbr.com


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## Darth Lefty (Sep 29, 2014)

Klurejr said:


> Next Gen Battery Tech
> 
> 
> https://gizmodo.com/teslas-will-reportedly-get-a-major-battery-boost-next-y-1848413301 Panasonic will reportedly begin mass-producing new lithium-ion batteries as early as 2023 that could increase EV range by up to 20%, according to a Nikkei report. The 4680 cell (46mm x 80mm) is twice as...
> ...


it looks like the news here is bigger cells which isn't exactly groundbreaking, just a step away from general-purpose to car-specific. For an e-bike pack you might not be able to cram in enough of these to get the voltage you want


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## alexbn921 (Mar 31, 2009)

Nothing new is going to break thru in the next 10 years. It will be a slow steady increase of about 3% a year.

Blah blah blah, but X Y Z is coming. No it's not.

Eventually solid state will be better, but getting it up to scale and more energy dense will be a slow process.


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## bingemtbr (Apr 1, 2004)

Once the supply chain settles down, I'd like to believe their will be considerable advancements. My top expectation: lighter, smaller batteries which charge completely in less than 15 minutes and hold their charge 4-5 times longer than existing batteries. 

There's a E-vehicle (Atlis Motors) start-up company near Mesa, AZ which has promising advancements for vehicles. This should trickle-down to e-bikes and other markets eventually.


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## AEyogi (Nov 19, 2021)

Flywheel! Get 50 lbs of cast iron spinning at 100K RPM. Added bonus of gyroscopic stabilization. 

Hydrogen fuel cell! Pump our bike frames full of liquid hydrogen. Combust it for propulsion.


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## Zguitar71 (Nov 8, 2020)

Lithium Iron Phosphate (LIFePO4) is the latest chemistry to be used by the auto industry. It gets rid of the Cobalt and Nickel. The upside is more charge/discharge cycles but the downside is less energy storage. This is rapidly getting better and some manufacturers are claiming that the storage capacity will be slightly better than current batteries and in production in a year. This chemistry is often used in home solar and with the slow charging and discharging typical of that application the batteries can be expected to last up to 30 years. In autos and bikes that have a faster rate the life will be shorter but still much longer than the current 10 or so years. Tesla just started using LIFePO4 in the model Y. They also don’t form dendrites which are the reason batteries catch on fire sometimes, they short circuit the cells and cause a massive heat buildup. The technology will be moving forward and gaining ground for a long time so there will always be a better thing on the horizon and you could wait for the next great thing forever. IMO, get what you want now and have a good time.


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## nilswalk (Nov 26, 2014)

Yeah, it seems like there isn't anything groundbreaking on the horizon. I was also into R/C (aircraft and helis) right when everything was going electric and LiPos were the ticket (and everyone was worried about burning their houses down), and for awhile the improvements in energy and power density seemed like they were coming every 6 months or so. But since LiFePO4 the rapid advancement seems to have slowed.


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## matt4x4 (Dec 21, 2013)

Yeah well rc uses different batteries then most ebikes though some ebikers do use lipo rc batteries. Just that the Hobbyking ones have a dud rate of 10-20% thats why you test them when you get them.

There does seem to be some new battery technologies coming out the oem ebike co's wont be dabbing into anytime soon.


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