New Battery Breakthrough

Toyota is on the brink of revolutionizing the electric vehicle (EV) industry with its latest battery breakthrough. The company’s new solid-state battery has the potential to double the range of most EVs, boasting an impressive 745-mile range. What sets this battery apart from its competitors is its remarkable charging time—it can be fully charged in just 10 minutes. This breakthrough in battery technology could be the driving force behind the widespread adoption of EVs in the coming years.    READ MORE...

Battery Has 700 Mile Range - 10 Minute Charging Time

Last month, Toyota announced it has a new electric car strategy. Around the CleanTechnica latte bar, the general consensus is that it’s about damn time.

“The next-generation battery EVs will adopt new batteries, through which we are determined to become a world leader in battery EV energy consumption. With the resources we earn, we will improve our product appeal to exceed customer expectations and secure earnings. We will roll out next-generation BEVs globally and as a full lineup to be launched in 2026. By 2030, 1.7 million units out of 3.5 million overall will be provided by BEV Factory. Please look forward to a carmaker-produced battery EV that inspires the hearts of all customers.”


Now just a few weeks later, Toyota is telling the world it has made a technological breakthrough that will allow it to cut the weight, size, and cost of batteries in half. Think for a minute. If true, what might the implications be for the EV revolution? And no, you are not allowed to include the words “game changer” in your response.

On July 3, the company said it had simplified the production of the material used to make solid-state batteries and hailed the discovery as a significant leap forward that could dramatically cut charging times and increase driving range. 

“For both our liquid and our solid-state batteries, we are aiming to drastically change the situation where current batteries are too big, heavy and expensive. In terms of potential, we will aim to halve all of these factors.”said Keiji Kaita, president of the Toyota research and development center for carbon neutrality.

He added that his company has developed ways to make batteries more durable, and believed it could now make a solid-state battery with a range of 1,200 km (745 miles) that could charge in 10 minutes or less and would be simpler to manufacture than a conventional lithium-ion battery.  READ MORE...

Frustrated EV Owners

A recent study by JD Power found that EV owners have become increasingly frustrated with their home charging experience for several reasons, including higher electricity rates and charging speeds.
Declining home charging satisfaction among EV owners

Inflation (via the Consumer Price Index) rose at the fastest rate in roughly 40 years following the pandemic, with the prices of everything from lumber to eggs soaring.

Electricity rates were no safe haven. The latest Energy Information Administration data shows average residential rates rose in the US by nearly 10% in 2022 to 14.96 cents per kilowatt-hour from 13.72 in December 2021.

According to JD Power’s recently released US Electric Vehicle Experience Home Charging Study, rising electricity rates are a significant reason for dissatisfaction with home EV charging.

Perhaps, more importantly, the study also shows only 51% of EV owners had knowledge of their utility companies’ programs to assist with home charging. Adrian Chung, director of utility intelligence at JD Power, explains:

By increasing awareness of available rebates or incentives, EV owners will benefit. This can snowball into helping potential EV owners make a more informed purchase decision, as well as minimizing home charging concerns and supporting greater EV adoption.

Several utility companies offer incentives and rebates for purchasing and installing home EV charging infrastructure. For incentives in your area, you can check with your utility company, or ChargePoint has compiled a list by state.

Another reason for the falling satisfaction is charging speed. Satisfaction improved significantly when moving from a Level 1 to a Level 2 charger.

Although over two-thirds of EV owners use a Level 2 charger, this year’s study found that 2022 and 2023 EV owners are less satisfied than 2021 and 2020 owners.  READ MORE...

Future Shock

From an anonymous Wisconsin State Trooper

Electric vehicles have too many variables affecting battery consumption. Definitely not suited for cold climates. The following experience just cements my distaste for EV’s, especially Teslas.

I get sent to a motorist assist the other day, at the start of our snowstorm. Tesla on the side of the interstate, dead battery. So, I arrive on scene and the occupants have the right-front door open. They tell me that they can’t open any other doors, because the battery is dead. 

Sure enough. Can’t open the doors from inside or outside. The driver also can’t get her license out of the glove box where she put it during their trip. Because the glovebox opens electronically… and the battery is dead. 

You actually have to use the computer in the center of the dash to open the glovebox.

They said they had 10% battery left, should’ve been plenty to get from that location to the charging station nearby. Then all of a sudden, the whole car shut off and they coasted to the shoulder.

So now I have to find them a tow. No one wants to tow EV’s. Finally found one company to do it. 8-mile trip to the charging station in Tomah. $1,000! Normal vehicle on the flatbed would’ve been $150.

So now we’re at the Tesla superchargers. Guess what. Can’t open the f’n charging port because the battery is dead!!! The ports open, you guessed it, electronically!!! . And we also can’t open the doors now (had to close the one open door when it was loaded onto the wrecker). The owner's manual is in the on-board computer, but the battery is dead.

I got the occupants to a store where they’d be warm while calling the rental company to figure out how to charge this POS, so I’m not sure of the outcome. I had to leave for a crash report.

EV’s may be the way, someday, but certainly not today!! I’ll stick with my dinosaur burner.

Electric Vehicles are Still Too Expensive

Robyn Everist bought her second-hand electric car when the prices got "a bit more reasonable".(ABC News: Maren Preuss)




When Robyn Everist saw the petrol prices skyrocketing she knew it was time to put a long-laid plan to purchase an electrical vehicle into action.

A few months later, she and her husband couldn't be happier.

"We've been waiting for the prices to get a bit more reasonable," Ms Everist said, with her selection of a second-hand Nissan Leaf setting her back about $30,000 when all the costs are tallied up.

"We had an initial look and said 'yes we'll do that', but didn't seriously go car hunting until the petrol price went up.


"We drive to town every day for work and there was no way I was going to pay petrol money if I could just as easily get an electric car that's more efficient."


Ms Everist and her husband live at Clifton Beach, about 30 minutes from Hobart's CBD in Tasmania, but work in the city — making for a round trip of around 70 kilometres every day.  READ MORE...

600 Miles on One Charge

MERCEDES-BENZ announced the EQXX, a new electric car that drives 600 miles on a single charge, twice the typical range.

Driving reported that this vehicle made it from Sindelfingen, Germany, to the Côte d’Azur with about 15 percent energy remaining.

The incredible range of this EV is just the beginning.

The efficiency of this vehicle is superb, as it accomplished the incredible journey with 100 kilowatt-hours of battery onboard.

Many newly-released EV pickups and SUVs have 200 kilowatt-hours, and GMC's Hummer EV has even more.

Driving concluded, "if you do the math — dividing those 1,008 km by the 86 kWh used — the EQXX’s on-the-road efficiency works out to just 8.7 kWh/100 km, a claim that, were there not photographic proof of the voyage, would seriously strain credibility."

The conditions that the EQXX drove in are also noteworthy.

The vehicle cruised through the German autobahn during its European tour where it allegedly was held at a steady 140km per hour.

This is highly impressive as speed heavily affects EV's power usage, according to Driving.

The vehicle also face steep inclines and cold temperatures as they drove a significant distance through the Swiss Alps.  READ MORE...

Tutorial on Batteries

An educational read that will enable you to understand where our existing battery technology really is and the folly of this insane rush to cancel fossil fuels.

Do not let the long read deter you. This is really an eye-openeer.

When I saw the title of this lecture, especially with the picture of the scantily clad model, I couldn’t resist attending. The packed auditorium was abuzz with questions about the address; nobody seemed to know what to expect. The only hint was a large aluminum block sitting on a sturdy table on the stage.

When the crowd settled down, a scholarly-looking man walked out and put his hand on the shiny block, “Good evening,” he said, “I am here to introduce NMC532-X,” and he patted the block, “we call him NM for short,” and the man smiled proudly. “NM is a typical electric vehicle (EV) car battery in every way except one; we programmed him to send signals of the internal movements of his electrons when charging, discharging, and in several other conditions. We wanted to know what it feels like to be a battery. We don’t know how it happened, but NM began to talk after we downloaded the program.

Despite this ability, we put him in a car for a year and then asked him if he’d like to do presentations about batteries. He readily agreed on the condition he could say whatever he wanted. We thought that was fine, and so, without further ado, I’ll turn the floor over to NM,” the man turned and walked off the stage.

“Good evening,” NM said. He had a slightly affected accent, and when he spoke, he lit up in different colors. “That cheeky woman on the marquee was my idea,” he said. “Were she not there, along with ‘naked’ in the title, I’d likely be speaking to an empty auditorium! I also had them add ‘shocking’ because it’s a favorite word amongst us batteries.” He flashed a light blue color as he laughed.

“Sorry,” NM giggled then continued, “three days ago, at the start of my last lecture, three people walked out. I suppose they were disappointed there would be no dancing girls. But here is what I noticed about them. One was wearing a battery-powered hearing aid, one tapped on his battery-powered cell phone as he left, and a third got into his car, which would not start without a battery. So I’d like you to think about your day for a moment; how many batteries do you rely on?”

He paused for a full minute which gave us time to count our batteries. Then he went on, “Now, it is not elementary to ask, ‘what is a battery?’ I think Tesla said it best when they called us Energy Storage Systems. That’s important. We do not make electricity – we store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid. Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, n’est-ce pas?”

He flashed blue again. “Einstein’s formula, E=MC2, tells us it takes the same amount of energy to move a five thousand pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one. The only question again is what produces the power? To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.”

He lit up red when he said that, and I sensed he was smiling. Then he continued in blue and orange. “Mr. Elkay introduced me as NMC532. If I were the battery from your computer mouse, Elkay would introduce me as double-A, if from your cell phone as CR2032, and so on. We batteries all have the same name depending on our design. By the way, the ‘X’ in my name stands for ‘experimental.’

There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single-use. The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D. 9V, and lantern types. Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc and carbon to store electricity chemically. Please note they all contain toxic, heavy metals.

Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium.

The United States uses three billion of these two battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills. California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled. If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash, here is what happens to them.

All batteries are self-discharging. That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy. You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old ruptured battery. When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not. It continues to leak small amounts of electricity. As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery’s metal casing, and eventually, it cracks. The metals left inside then ooze out. The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill.

In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to recycle batteries like me or care to dispose of single-use ones properly.

But that is not half of it. For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive embedded costs.”

NM got redder as he spoke. “Everything manufactured has two costs associated with it, embedded costs and operating costs. I will explain embedded costs using a can of baked beans as my subject.

In this scenario, baked beans are on sale, so you jump in your car and head for the grocery store. Sure enough, there they are on the shelf for $1.75 a can. As you head to the checkout, you begin to think about the embedded costs in the can of beans.

The first cost is the diesel fuel the farmer used to plow the field, till the ground, harvest the beans, and transport them to the food processor. Not only is his diesel fuel an embedded cost, so are the costs to build the tractors, combines, and trucks. In addition, the farmer might use a nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas.

Next is the energy costs of cooking the beans, heating the building, transporting the workers, and paying for the vast amounts of electricity used to run the plant. The steel can holding the beans is also an embedded cost. Making the steel can requires mining taconite, shipping it by boat, extracting the iron, placing it in a coal-fired blast furnace, and adding carbon. Then it’s back on another truck to take the beans to the grocery store. Finally, add in the cost of the gasoline for your car.

But wait - can you guess one of the highest but rarely acknowledged embedded costs?” NM said, then gave us about thirty seconds to make our guesses. Then he flashed his lights and said, “It’s the depreciation on the 5000 pound car you used to transport one pound of canned beans!”

NM took on a golden glow, and I thought he might have winked. He said, “But that can of beans is nothing compared to me! I am hundreds of times more complicated. My embedded costs not only come in the form of energy use; they come as environmental destruction, pollution, disease, child labor, and the inability to be recycled.”

He paused, “I weigh one thousand pounds, and as you see, I am about the size of a travel trunk.” NM’s lights showed he was serious. “I contain twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside me are 6,831 individual lithium-ion cells.

It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each auto battery like me, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just - one - battery.”

He let that one sink in, then added, “I mentioned disease and child labor a moment ago. Here’s why. Sixty-eight percent of the world’s cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?”

NM’s red and orange light made it look like he was on fire. “Finally,” he said, “I’d like to leave you with these thoughts. California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being ‘green,’ but it is not! This construction project is creating an environmental disaster. Let me tell you why.

The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.

Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades. Sadly, both solar arrays and windmills kill birds, bats, sea life, and migratory insects.

NM lights dimmed, and he quietly said, “There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions. I predict EVs and windmills will be abandoned once the embedded environmental costs of making and replacing them become apparent. I’m trying to do my part with these lectures.

Thank you for your attention, good night, and good luck.” NM’s lights went out, and he was quiet, like a regular battery.