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Phoenix Installs and Tests First Production EV Lithium-Ion Battery Pack from Altairnano
30 November 2006
Phoenix Motorcars has installed the first Altairnano NanoSafe production battery pack system in a Phoenix Motorcars all-electric sports utility truck (SUT), and completed initial testing with satisfactory results.
The lithium-ion battery pack is a 35 kWh configuration that will enable Phoenix to equip a SUT that can be charged in 10 minutes and achieve up to 130 miles between charges (earlier post). This SUT will be used as a demonstration vehicle for initial sales, and already it is committed for multiple prospect demonstrations and a trade show in December.
The results are amazing, we are delighted with the quality of construction and the specification of this first production battery pack. Based on early feedback we are confident we will be able to sell at least 500 vehicles into the fleet market during 2007.
The SUT is an ideal vehicle for fleets because it combines a large payload capability with the ability to carry 5 adults at freeway speeds, and deliver a driving range of 100+ miles. With over 200,000 fleet vehicles in California alone, and no one else providing a viable zero emission, fleet-ready vehicle, we have an outstanding market opportunity. Now that we have seen the production quality of Altairnano’s NanoSafe batteries we know we have a winner.
—Phoenix Motorcar CEO Daniel J. Elliott
Altairnano is also working on a 70 kWh NanoSafe pack that can support a driving range of up to 250 miles for possible delivery to Phoenix Motorcars in the latter part of 2007.
November 30, 2006 in Batteries, Electric (Battery) | Permalink | Comments (41) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments
I'd love to know what the mass production price of this unit would be. (I would love to see a smaller unit for e-cycles .. 4-5 kwh)
Posted by: Neil | Nov 30, 2006 8:30:00 AM
Neil, I agree. There are lithium-ion polymer batteries being used now for e-bikes, up to 30 amp-hours, and the range is quite phenomenal for a bicycle. They are a thousand dollars for a battery though! It's still a good deal if you plan on actually using your bike to get around with as it gets some crazy gas mileage figure: like 2500 miles/gallon.
Posted by: John W. | Nov 30, 2006 9:01:41 AM
I hope Tesla is paying attention.
Posted by: Cervus | Nov 30, 2006 9:11:30 AM
Very good news.
Wouldn't this be an ideal battery pack(possibly downsized by up to 50%) for a compact PHEV, when coupled with a very small, light weight, highly efficient, on-board bio-fuel (10 +/- KW) genset.
PHEVs do not need 300 HP, V-8 or V-6 ICE gensets if the battery pack + electrical propulsion system are rugged enough. A 10 to 15 KW genset will keep a compact car rolling at 65 mph will the help of the battery pack for accellerating and passing.
Racers could always use the larger (70 KWh) battery pack to spin their wheels.
Posted by: Harvey D. | Nov 30, 2006 9:11:49 AM
Price?
Posted by: pizmo | Nov 30, 2006 10:35:41 AM
Price: 45000$
top speed: 95 mph
See yahoo videos
http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=electric+suv&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
Posted by: Henry | Nov 30, 2006 11:05:56 AM
The price of the Altairnano NanoSafe battery is not disclosed directly but at the Phoenix Motorcars website it is given indirectly (http://66.218.37.153/about.htm). Quoting this website "Our initial volume market entry strategy can be profitably supported in California due to the availability of California’s Zero Emission Vehicle Credits (see below). Our two source revenue strategy will result in revenue value per vehicle of $245,000 ($45,000 sales price, plus $200,000 ZEV credit)."
It will cost max $45000 to produce the vehicle without the battery so the implication is (as I see it) that the 35kvh batterypack cost about $200000! I hope that I got it wrong somehow since $200000 for a revolutionary battery is not going to change much in the mass market for vehicles. Military applications and cars for affluent people still makes sence though.
Posted by: Henrik Mathiesen | Nov 30, 2006 11:16:01 AM
With a production run of only 500 vehicles, the NRE costs and tooling costs could very well inflate the cost per vehicle (from Phoenix) quite substantially if Phoenix were asked to absorb much of those costs for the first run of vehicles.
Posted by: Patrick | Nov 30, 2006 11:23:26 AM
Thanks, Henry. Though that video is a little confusing. He says the price will be $45K, but he also says it will take 6 hours to recharge.
I was more interested in whether they have a price on the truck with the fast-recharge batteries, or whether that's just going to be a demo for the time being.
Posted by: pizmo | Nov 30, 2006 11:25:56 AM
Less than half the $$ for a Tesla. And it's a truck (sortof)
Posted by: gr | Nov 30, 2006 11:29:30 AM
I'm mostly interested in the cost of these batteries if they were in high volume production. Maybe Altair are the people who may have an idea what that might be.
Posted by: Neil | Nov 30, 2006 11:58:41 AM
Maybe we can now dispense with all the talk about Altair batteries being stock-hyping vaporware?..
Posted by: Thomas Pedersen | Nov 30, 2006 12:04:37 PM
Maybe we can now dispense with all the talk about Altair batteries being stock-hyping vaporware?..
When they hit the road in a vehicle sold to an actual customer, yes. I don't necessarily buy into the notion of "stock-hyping", but it's definitely vaporware until it hits the streets.
Posted by: pizmo | Nov 30, 2006 12:11:05 PM
I have not looked into the company (Altairnano) but I'm surprised equipment manufacturers are not interested in their batteries for cell phones and laptops. The ability to recharge your phone or laptop battery in 10 minutes is very marketable. Are they refusing to sell the IP to battery manufacturers like Sony, Sanyo, Panasonic, etc?
Posted by: Patrick | Nov 30, 2006 12:47:51 PM
Tesla just posted a very informative article about their batteries.
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/index.php?p=39&js_enabled=1
Posted by: pizmo | Nov 30, 2006 1:03:45 PM
Pizmo,
I believe the truck is the same with the fast recharge. The difference in price comes from the recharger. This makes it a good choice for large fleets who can recharge on it at their company headquarters.
Posted by: Henry | Nov 30, 2006 2:53:47 PM
Once again:
Altair nano battery, being by far the best current roll-out, is not ideal. It has energy density lower than Co, Mn, or Phosphate batteries used currently in cell phones and laptops. That’s why it is not generally attractive to portable electronics market. It is not ideal for BEV too, but for PHEV it is probably the best we have hoped for.
Altair battery does not use precious materials. However, cathode material uses small quality on nano scale Titanate spinel, which is marginally more expensive then other electrodes in Li batteries. All in all, price for production battery should be comparable with current rechargeable Li batteries.
Posted by: Andrey | Nov 30, 2006 5:56:20 PM
This isnt even all that big a a car and its alreadsy dealing with charge rates that would requite a 480 volt 500 amp draw. Imagine a ev suv.. Now imagine the size of the cabel needed to charge it in 10 min. I have lugged such monster cableaa round and even a few feet weighs a ton and it is NOT all that bendy.
Posted by: wintermane | Nov 30, 2006 7:51:08 PM
I would think that for that kind of quick charge you would use multiple cables running in parallel.
Posted by: Neil | Nov 30, 2006 9:34:42 PM
"Now that we have seen the production quality of Altairnano’s NanoSafe batteries we know we have a winner."
—Phoenix Motorcar CEO Daniel J. Elliott
AFAIK, this is the first independent verification of Altair' s batt, assuming that Mr. Elliot is independent.
And, it is Altair's first sale of their batt, assuming that all is above board which I do not assume because of the their history of hype.
And there is still no mention of price, not even an estimate.
Posted by: Freedom_First | Nov 30, 2006 10:38:51 PM
A 50 kW charger, from many years ago (1998).
http://www.zefiro.com/ev/50kw1.jpg
It was designed to charge the EV1 or S10 to full in 12 minutes. I don't think the cable is too unwieldy, and inductive charging means good safety and no problems with the contacts. You could easily parallel 2 or 3 of these for faster charging if you wanted.
Posted by: clett | Dec 1, 2006 4:54:45 AM
Any when you have 1000s of cars that want to charge 50kwh in 10 minutes on the road during a summer day midweek when AC has tripled the peak load, you can just fire up another 10 peaker plants.
Posted by: SJC | Dec 1, 2006 7:58:42 AM
The delivery of one (1) battery is not a production quantity. Altair may be on their way, but I'm not impressed.
The forklift industry uses commercial battery chargers for lead-acid batteries that will charge 36 to 80 volt batteries at up to 700 amps, called rapid charge. Two brands are PosiCharge and Aker Wade. They are typically connected with (2) 4/0 cables connected in parallel. The cables are stranded copper and are fairly flexible. They are about 3/4" in diameter.
Posted by: Don | Dec 1, 2006 7:37:05 PM
The hardware is one thing, the energy is another. When 100 cars recharging can take the power of a city of 100,000 people, you have a situation.
Posted by: SJC | Dec 2, 2006 7:15:33 AM
"The delivery of one (1) battery is not a production quantity. Altair may be on their way, but I'm not impressed."
I'm not impressed that you're not impressed. I don't think Phonenix is waiting with baited breath for your
knowledgeless approval.
The fact is that those batteries were the first non-handbuilt examples. They were constructed in Asia on a commercial production line from titanate electrode material produced in Indiana. Anyone familiar with production realizes the significance of producing a defect-free product from an operational production
facility.
The SUTs and SUVs are not being built by Phoenix -
they are models already in production in Korea as gasoline engined vehicles. While there are some compromises when converting a gas vehicle, the cost advantages are enormous. Just ask Mitsubishi, a giant corporation that scotched the idea of redesigning the
motor architecture for their upcoming electric car
because of cost factors that the new architecture couldn't justify. A very good candidate vehicle would
be GM's former fuel cell , now serial electric car.
Posted by: kent beuchert | Dec 3, 2006 7:19:08 AM
The question has been raised concerning just
how much impact would a shift from gasoline to
electric cars have on the electrical grid. The
first thing that one has to realize is that all
those gasoline cars are not suddenly going to be
thrown on the junkheap and replaced by battery
powered vehicles. Another is that nowhere near
every driver will have the means to recharge at
home-apartment and most townhouse and condo
dwellers and those on trips will all depend upon
public charging stations, although it's safe to
predict that some multi-family units will build
their own charging stations for their resident's
use. In terms of added electrical demand, what are
we looking at, if we confine ourselves to the non-
commercial vehicles used by private citizens? We
know that the U.S. uses 120 billion gallons of
gasoline every year for such vehicles. Since
over half are pickups and SUVs, and assuming
that the majority of gasoline is consumed in
non-highway driving, I'll estimate that the miles
driven is approximately 2,000 billion. Assuming
that our typical vehicle, if electrified, would
require 1 kilowatt hour to drive 4.2 miles, that
means the U.S. fleet would consume 2,000 billion
divided by 4.2 , or 476 billion kilowatt hours of
energy per year, or 1.3 billion kWhrs per day, or
54 million kwhrs per hour. The U.S. electrical grid
capacity is around 975,000 megawatts, or 975 million
kilowatts, capable of producing 975 million kilowatt
hours per hour, meaning that non-commercial electric
transportation would need a bit more than 5% of
current capacity. But that level of all-electric
transportation wouldn't be reached for many years.
In the early stages, with 20% of the cars electrified,
the demand would be 1% of our electrical capacity.
From all this, we see that electrifying transportation
will not have a gigantic impact on the national electrical grid, especially when its realized that a very large part of the demand will be during the nighttime hours, when excess capacity exists on the grid. There is also the fact that by not refining all that gasoline, a great deal of energy, much of it electric, will be saved. There will also be savings because the number of recharging stations will nowhere near be the number of gasoline stations needed nowadays.
Of course, all of those 120 billion gallons of gasoline
isn't used only for transportation vehicles. Some is used for lawn mowers, boats, RV's and so on, so the demand estimates would be somewhat overstated.
Posted by: kent beuchert | Dec 3, 2006 9:19:18 AM
Remember that the electic vehicle is not ideal for everybody- just ideal for a whole lot more people than you think. They serve the majority of car commuter needs. Remember that even if all the electricity needed to charge millions of new electric vehicles were geneterate by coal power, that would still be a vast improvemt of current car pollution output. The electric car is far more energy efficient that the ice car. electricty is generated in better controlled conditions.
Also there is no wasted energy looking for energy or delivering energy to gas stations. An economy driven by electric vehicles would not have millions of oil spots under the engine locations in parking spot and there would be no oil streak down the middle of highway lanes, either. No waste oil poured down drains and millions of spent filters to dispose of.
Posted by: marshall | Dec 25, 2006 2:24:53 AM
I just received an email today from ALTAIRNANO, it looks like the battery packs are going for around $75,000/car. This may seem expensive, however keep in mind that this is the price based on an order for 10 battery packs. I expect that as the production is increased (Phoenix is set to produce 500 SUT's in 2007, and 6000 in 2008) the price of the batteries will drop quite a bit. If you think about the cost of gasoline over a 10 year period ($15,000 - $20,000 for most drives) vs the cost electricity (approx 1/4 the cost of gasoline), the extra cost of the batteries could be offset over time (once the price is down to say $20,000 for the batteries). Also keep in mind that electric cars have very few moving parts... because of this repair costs could be greatly reduced over the lifetime of the vehicle. Also there is no need for an oil change! There is also the reduction in CO emissions.. what is that worth to you? If your smart and offset power consumption with renewable energy (eg. Solar pannels on your garage roof) you can drive a Sun Powered Car! How cool is that :)
Cheers, Andrew
Posted by: Andrew F | Dec 28, 2006 2:41:56 PM
OK - Here are some other things to consider...
An Electric motor drive + batteries replace your Engine, Radiator, Starter, Alternator, Belts, Transmission, Fuel Injection, Lead/Acid Battery, Exhaust System/Catalytic Converter, etc. Is the resulting car going to be lighter or heavier? How will the car's lifetime compare to today's cars? What will ultimate cost be - higher or lower than today's cars?
Grid Drain / Charger Accessibility - Most recharging will be done overnight using 220V trickle chargers (6hrs @ 30 Amps), very accessible to all households.
Noise pollution/air pollution - what is the current cost per gas vehicle (per 100,000 km or mi) to the public purse? This will be paid back to EV owners in grants I suspect. Plus EV driving lanes and public charging centers (in downtown areas to encourage EVs there -see London England for example).
Posted by: Joe | Jan 2, 2007 8:56:56 AM
One more thing... don't forget to offset battery weight by the weight of gasoline in today's cars (assume 60% full on average).
Posted by: Joe | Jan 2, 2007 9:04:41 AM
I am all for an all electric ride but in my neck of the woods[Homer Alaska] would I need a axuliary wood heat system? or can these batteris provide juice for heat and defrost. what did Fred Flinsone use in his ride?
Posted by: brian kelly | Jan 2, 2007 8:54:35 PM
I just drove the Phoenix SUT today, nice ride, low center of gravity, handles like a sports car! Sounds like the key is the new nanosafe battery technology. It will be interesting to see where Phoenix and the car industry in general go with this and the improving tecjnologies. I think we will soon be able to electrify any car and order our features like we do now for our computers. Make mine a red Mini with 400 hp! CHEERS!
Posted by: Jeff Finsand | Jan 10, 2007 1:48:22 PM
sure got a better picture on this car! Now that the price with the batteries is...$ 120,000 smackers for the first consumers... then the charger... one at home and one at the job... Hey what about in the cold winter and the hot summer stuck in traffic taking three or more hours to commute.... with the heater or ac on??? Have to have a back up system don't we??? Solar panels are out. still going to have to depend on gasoline??? Or you can not use the car for commuting! Just would be a high dollar toy!
Well I'm willing to take a chance in the stock market!
Posted by: Elmer Foster | Jan 10, 2007 2:51:02 PM
I have enjoyed many of the comments...however, questioning an electric vehicles ability to run heat or A/c in a 3 or 4 hour commute...causes me to question your sanity. If the electric vehicle is part of a better brighter world where ultimately life for everyone is improved...(which i believe it is ). Then you, and all those like you are squandering the greatest commodity of all...your time.
Time given to you by GOD to spend with your children, loved ones, volunteer in your community etc. etc.
High density living in areas that have become grossly congested is not environmental or socially wise. If an electric car facilitates stupidity in other aspects...what is the gain. Of course, this is written by a socially conservative, environmentally minded, god believing freak from Indiana. I think an electric car can add significantly to our quality of life...but don't forget all the aspects of quality in your life. Jeff
Posted by: jeff hersha | Jan 22, 2007 8:21:39 AM
Alternano is traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol ALTI and closed today at $2.78 or thereabouts. I have read volumes about the need for relief of global warming, lessening emisions from passenger cars and the inherant health hazards they represent. I have not heard of any solution that makes more sense and is easier to implement than that presented by Phoenix Motorcars and Alternano.
Posted by: Roger Warner | Feb 2, 2007 3:03:33 PM
Sounds like a good company to work for.
I'll let you know how it turns out
Posted by: Rick R. | Feb 3, 2007 7:52:33 AM
IF claims are true, this is game changing technology.
The first car of any given model that GM makes cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The price will come down with volume. Ask Henry Ford what a production line is. Original DVD players cost over $1000. Now you can get them for less than $75. In the mean time, I don't know about the rest of you, but I am tired of filling up my tank every week, knowing that the hard earned money I use to pay for the gas goes to people who want to use the money to make bombs to kill Americans. I'm all for alternatives.
What is size and weight of the 35KWHr pack?
Does the SUT and associated range numbers that are quoted include a regenerative braking system?
Posted by: John E | Feb 3, 2007 12:06:41 PM
I can't afford prices like many of you have quoted. However, I purchased a Ford Escape Hybrid not because I could afford it but because I wanted it. If Altair can produce this type of battery in volume and Phoenix or any other vehicle maufacturer can put a car on the road that I can approach, I will buy it. Even if Altair can produce batteries that can be used in a battery agressive Hybrid, I will be interested. If we can't go to all electrics, we can at least go to plugin hybrids that get much better mileage than the current hybrids.
Posted by: Frank H | Feb 5, 2007 11:45:44 AM
Perhaps a few charging lanes where a pig tail would touch an overhead conductor to charge the cars going down the interstate? Like an electric trolley car. That is an idea.
Posted by: James Newport | Feb 10, 2007 8:14:38 AM
Yes, conductors that unfold and touch overhead cables suspended over the major interstates. The condictors would automatically fold down when not in use or when necessary due to road conditions. Very similar to the electric trains on the New Haven line in New York and Conn.
Cars would be all-electric or hybrids. The cables would power the car and recharge the batteries. Lane changes and local driving would be on battery powered electric motor and/or gas engine (hybrid).
Meters in each car would measure power consumption and relay the info wirelessly and automatically to stations for billing purposes.
Infrastructure would be an expensive undertaking but I think relatively cheap given the return. Aesthetics of overhead cables and supports shouldn't be a big concern on interstates.
Federal givernment would partner with car manufacturers and subsidize the development.
Posted by: Nedrum | Apr 4, 2007 8:37:40 PM
The Altair battery currently costs about $2.50 per watt- hour (due to the low volume production) or about $75K for the current 34 kwh battery pack used in the Phoenix. Altair says this cost is targeted to drop to around $.50 per watt-hour within the next 3 years as volume ramps up.
I would love to see Ford or Toyota convert a hybrid car like the Prius, Hybrid Camry or the Ford Escape to run with a 7 kwh battery pack (battery cost would be $3,500 @ 50 cents per watt hour) and change out the engine to a diesel capable of supporting the new biodiesel fuels. As a plug-in the hybrid the car could run up to 25 miles just on the Altair batteries and with the diesel back-up you could still take the car on a long trip. I'm guessing but I think the milage on my dream vehicle would easily top 150 mpg with a daily round trip drive of less than 50 miles.
Posted by: Randy | Jun 3, 2007 7:14:33 PM
