Sunday, August 28, 2011

Re: [Electric Boats] re New Ideas?

Actually, the EV industry is THE NR 1 driver for the battery manufacturers.

This encompasses industrial (trucks, forlifts, dollies, cranes)
automotive and other (scooter, motorbike) applications.
At a very conservative level, today, the industrial market is about
10-50 million batteries / year (of under 50 kg/100 lbs and about 200$ or
less each).
Industrial market is about stable, at maybe 10-20% growth year/year.
The EV, or scooter, car, motorbike market is about 20-50 million
batteries / year.

The EV industry is increasing about 100-150% year/year, and will
definitely grow to twice the current market size (within 12 months), and
almost certainly to about 50x current market size.

Electric scooter and motorbike retailers are making good to excellent money.
Every year, their cost/performance is 20-40% better.
In that, every year the same size/mass/cost battery has 20% more charge,
and every year, for 20% more money, the customer get 40% more battery in
kWh, ie capacity and performance.
Batteries get about 20% lighter and 20% more powerful, year/year.

Every increase of 40% in performance, roughly every two years today,
doubles the nr of customer who can now get a better solution than their
current one, and thus switch over to battery-driven solutions.
Thus, every year, the number of people for whom an electric car makes
commercial and practical sense, increases about 40%.

The cycle is exactly the same as that driven by Moores law, in
microprocessors, and hard disk drives, and solar cell performance, etc.
The gradient is different in batteries, in that it takes about 5 years
to double the performance at the same cost and lighter weight.

The market value in battery technology is well over 1 trillion $ per
year, with storage density/cost being the only critical factor.
Well over 1 million scientists, very well paid and competitive, are
studying the problem, today.
Every company (A123 is an example, as are the chinese bulk-litium
battery manufacturers), EVERY company able to make a decent contribution
makes money hand over fist.

When an electric bike (scooter, motorbike, whatever) gets 80 km range
(today) it is useful to some.
When it gets 140 km range, it is useful to 90% of people. This will
happen in 2013 or so.
When this performance is cheap, a large nr of people switch to electric
to save money, get better performance (noise, vibration, reliability,
maintenance, much better acceleration etc) and so on.
Similar metrics apply to cars.

A large nr of companies are gearing up to produce the battery solutions
for tomorrows electric cars.
These will be cheaper (much cheaper) than todays cars, will have
slightly shorter range (say 200 km vs 500-700 km for ICE, today), and
about 1/3 the cost of use.
It costs about 3000$ to make an ICE and transmission for a car.
It costs about 1000$ to make the same for electrics, including the
electronic drive (essentially a brushless servo).
However, as the mass of an electric car re: powertrain is only 1/4 that
of an ICE solution, the total car costs substantially less and is
substantially cheaper.
An electric motor of 50-100 kW for industrial use is about 25 kg. No
transmission needed (The tesla sportscars engine is 28 kg).
A cars, ICE 100 kW, engine and transmission etc. mass is about 200 kg.
The lower engine mass, lowers mounts, stiffening, suspension, rigidity,
impact requirements, leading to total mass savings of about twice the
engine mass, or about 400 kg, or 1/3 - 1/4 the total cars mass.
A cars production cost is very closely related to mass. Fabricated
components cost about 3$ / kg, today.
Thus an electric car costs about 30% less to produce, overall, than an
equivalent ICE car.
A cars cost is about 2-3x production cost at factory.

Thus, as a car can, today, be sold for about 3-5000$ retail (see Tata
motors, India), an electric car can be sold for about 3-4000$, profitably.
We are thus certain to see a range of electric cars, in the 700-1200 kg
total mass range, roughly corresponding to todays subcompact Smartcar -
BMW300, at about 6000-11.000 $ retail.
This is likely to take about 5-8 years, at most.
A 700 kg electric car, with a 250 kg battery, would have a range of 200
km, today.
Today, that battery pack would cost (and does cost, Mega-vehicles.com,
saw them 8 months ago, in a retail shop, in Barcelona) 4000 €.
In 2013 that battery will cost 2000-2500$ and will no longer be
significant overall.

The longevity of the electric solution is about 5x longer, with 1/5 the
maintenance cost.

The nr of electric boat solutions, in the low thousands worldwide, is
less than 0.01% of the market, today.

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