Lithium News

A French startup is trying to streamline electric conversion with Tesla batteries in order to offer a relatively cheap way to convert older fossil fuel-powered cars.

There’s nothing new about electric conversions, but they are often really complicated, which also makes them really expensive.

It most often cost tens of thousands of dollars, and that’s why most electric conversions today are done on classic cars or to create drag-strip monsters.

Transition-One claims to have developed a streamlined way to convert cars to an all-electric powertrain.

Last month, they unveiled their prototype, a 2009 Renault Twingo, with a range of 180 km (112 miles).

They purchased Tesla battery modules from a salvaged part reseller and installed three battery modules — one in the front of the car and two in what used to be the gas tank. The entire system weighs about 120 kilograms (265 pounds).

They worked on making the installation process as simple as possible, and they say that they can now do it in just a day.

Transition-One founder Aymeric Libeau told Bloomberg:

I’m selling to people who can’t afford a brand new €20,000 electric car. We’re turning the best-selling models across Europe into electric cars.

The startup says that it is currently supporting the following car models:

• Renault Twingo II
• Fiat 500
• Citroën C1
• Peugeot 107
• Toyota Aygo
• VW Polo

They plan for the entire installed electric retrofitting kit to cost just €8,500 (~$9,400), but there are incentives specific to retrofitting older cars in France, where the startup is based, and it could bring down the price to just €5,000 ($5,500).

On their website, Transition-One wrote:

Your car becomes electric with a range of 100 km and a maximum speed of 110 km/h.

Transition-One is now looking to raise €6 million in order to set up volume production of the conversion kit. Libeau hopes to be able to convert 4,000 vehicles in 2020 alone.

There has been a ton of speculation about why Tesla bought Maxwell Technologies. The obvious but vague answer is that its battery technology will improve Tesla’s automotive and energy storage products, but we now know the more detailed answer. It’s a long story, but it’s well worth the read. Please read this post to the end, as it’s very easy to misunderstand this if you don’t get the whole story.

The History

The important technology in question has been in development since at least June 1914. At that time, electric vehicles dominated the emerging automotive industry. Eventually, gasoline cars gained the upper hand, mostly because the battery technology of the day couldn’t compete with the range of fossil-fueled vehicles. That doesn’t mean that the people of the day didn’t try, though!

A group of Peruvian scientists came up with an important part of the puzzle: the “pearl well” (at least, that’s what it’s called according to my translations). Unfortunately, the technology of the day wasn’t up to the task of integrating this with other automotive drive components. The patents were sold to General Electric, which couldn’t make any further progress. Rockwell Technologies eventually bought the technology and attempted to develop it for heavy-duty transmissions. Eventually, the company partnered with Chrysler, which was working on an early hybrid drive unit in 1977.

Chrysler was confident enough that it could produce a working hybrid unit for the California market that it produced this training video, but its plans were ultimately thwarted by an unsolvable bug in the hybrid system that made a “hiccuping or burping sound” in the turbo encabulator unit that bothered drivers in focus groups. For this reason, the project was abandoned.

Rockwell continued attempting to develop the encabulator technology for the next 20 years, eventually creating the “retro encabulator.” Realizing that it was simply too expensive for automotive use, the company started working on military and government applications. Yet another training and sales video was produced, but outside of possible sales for highly classified projects, it doesn’t appear that it was used for anything until it was sold to Maxwell for an undisclosed amount in 1999.

More Recent Developments

According to our sources, Maxwell further developed the technology, but could only get it working when certain engineers were observing. When other engineers were watching, it wouldn’t work. This led to further testing that determined that some sort of quantum effect was likely involved. By 2015, they had effectively hit a dead end in the production of energy from the device, but had determined that it could greatly increase the possible energy that could be derived from capacitors and batteries — much more than Chrysler had envisioned.

The final piece of the puzzle came from SpaceX. In a special project with NASA’s Eagleworks Laboratories, technicians discovered that the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer (NASA.gov) could be used as a quantum discriminator when modified with some custom-pounded copper strips provided by a confused military officer who had been called in to help.

Their luck paid off. By combining SpaceX quantum discriminator technology with that of Maxwell Technologies, early testing showed that the energy density of Tesla’s battery packs could be increased tenfold, perhaps more.

Final Thoughts

If you haven’t figured it out by now, the above story is fictional.

The “turbo encabulator” and “retro encabulator” are old engineering jokes from more than 50 years ago, but a number of companies have made mock training videos (linked above). The Warp Field Interferometer is real, but to my knowledge, SpaceX has not ever worked with one. It certainly couldn’t be used as a “quantum discriminator” — which is a fictional device from Star Trek: Enterprise.

Some of you probably figured it out fairly quickly. Others may have got to the end still believing it. Either way, it shows just how easy it can be to fool people. Yes, we are widely regarded as a reputable source for information, but keep in mind that everybody gets fooled sometimes. These days, even information from reputable sources needs critical analysis.

The reason I spun this ridiculous tale is to illustrate one important point: battery technology is an industry that’s full of hype right now. There are plenty of startups these days selling good improvements to energy storage technology, but even more who are selling snake oil or technology that can’t be readily put to use at reasonable costs.

I’d love as much as anybody to be able to tell you why Tesla bought Maxwell, what technology they’re producing, and what Tesla is going to release (and when), but Tesla is smart to keep quiet right now. It may have something promising, or it might still be trying to determine what it’s working with. Even if Tesla know exactly what it will do with Maxwell’s technology, it probably doesn’t know when it will be part of any products for sale to customers.

There have been many times in the past that Tesla announced a product and a timetable, only to encounter difficulties with development, production, and manufacturing. At best, people assume Elon Musk bit off more than he could chew, but at worst, people assume he was trying to pump stock prices with hype he knew he couldn’t achieve. Either way, it appears that they’ve learned to be a little more discreet about future products to avoid the whole problem. That will probably be good for Tesla in the long run.

One other thing: be sure to watch out for scams, especially when it comes to new cleantech. While the industry as a whole is on the up and up, there is no shortage of people who are outright swindling others with big promises. They take advantage of the natural human tendencies of optimism, altruism, and a desire for a better future for our children.

Be sure to stay on your toes. 

Move over, lithium-ion batteries; solid-state technology is on the way. It looks to spur massive growth in electric vehicle acceptance.

The heavy weight and limited energy density of lithium-ion batteries contribute to the range anxiety that hampers public acceptance of electric vehicles.

But solid-state batteries will increase energy storage without adding weight or bulk. That will extend the range of electric vehicles. They also eliminate the flammability issues that are inherent in lithium-ion batteries.

Researchers say a solid-state battery pack could give electric vehicles 500 to 1,000 miles of range on a single charge. Automakers today struggle to reach 300 miles.

100 MILLION ELECTRIC VEHICLES

The technology is advancing rapidly and could be ready for commercial use within a few years. That’s the assessment of a report from ABI Research, a New York-based advanced-technologies research firm.

Solid-state technology could grow the global number of electric vehicles from 8 million last year to 100 million by 2028, the report said.

The batteries provide many benefits, the researchers said. They include greater longevity, reliability and energy density. The batteries are lighter and have less bulk than lithium-ion batteries. And they eliminate the fire risk posed by lithium-ion batteries’ flammable liquid electrolyte by replacing it with a solid material.

TESLA NOT GOING SOLID STATE

One outlier is EV pioneer Tesla.

The Fremont, Calif., company has bet heavily on lithium-ion technology. It is working on new lithium-ion chemistry with Dalhousie University in Canada. Tesla said the new technology offers the energy density of solid-state batteries while maintaining the same format as today’s lithium-ion cells.

That allows the current manufacturing equipment to make the batteries, enabling them to reach the market sooner than solid-state batteries.

Tesla operates the world’s largest lithium-ion battery factory in Reno, Nev.

BIG INVESTMENTS

Getting electron ions to flow freely through the solid electrolyte has been the major stumbling block solid-state battery developers have been working to eliminate.

Ford, Toyota, Daimler, Volkswagen, Renault, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Hyundai are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in solid-state battery research and development. All build commercial trucks as well as passenger cars and light trucks.

BMW and startup luxury EV maker Fisker Inc. also are working on solid-state, as are several Chinese EV companies.

Automakers are investing in several U.S.-based solid-state battery-development companies, including Kentucky-based Solid Power and Ionic Materials of Massachusetts. Earlier this year, Volkswagen invested $100 million in QuantumScape, a Massachusetts-based solid-state battery developer.

Toyota has pursued solid-state battery development for years. It has a technology-sharing agreement with Suzuki, Subaru and Mazda. The automaker also has a joint-development pact with Nissan, Honda, battery maker Panasonic and the Japanese government.

SHRINKING TIMELINE

Just a few years ago, the auto industry considered solid-state EV battery development a distant goal. Now commercial application is rapidly approaching.

Toyota “would like to make sure that a solid-state battery can be unveiled to the public” in time for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, research director Shigeki Terashi said during a June briefing about the company’s EV plans.

ABI researchers see full-scale commercialization a bit further down the road, but still well within the next decade.

Meantime, they predict that an interim technology will emerge – lithium-ion batteries with liquid electrolytes and silicon, which increases energy density.

The report suggests that silicon-added batteries will dominate until 2026, at which point solid-state technology will be ready for widespread commercialization.

Sound is a huge part of a vehicle’s personality, especially when it comes to motorcycles. As electric bikes and cars become bigger parts of the transportation ecosystem, figuring out what they’ll sound like is a big deal. Not only do electric vehicles have to be distinctive, there are safety and regulatory factors surrounding noise, too.

Both the European Union and the NHTSA in the U.S. have regulations shortly coming into effect which will require hybrid and electric vehicles—cars and motorcycles—to generate noise while traveling at low speeds. While this may just sound like another hoop auto and motorcycle makers will have to jump through to put products on pavement, some companies are seeing the situation as an opportunity to further brand and differentiate their respective battery-powered wares.

As of July 1, 2019, all new (four-wheeled) hybrid and electric vehicles sold in the European Union have to feature an “Acoustic Vehicle Alert System” (or AVAS), while all existing models must comply by July of 2021. The systems are required to generate noise when traveling at under 19 kph (12 mph) or when reversing. First passed by the European Parliament in 2014, the measure included a half-decade transitional phase that’s now come to an end.

In the U.S., a similar law will soon come into play. The only difference is that in the States, the NHTSA will require hybrid and electric vehicles to generate sounds when going less than 18.6 mph (30 kph). The regulation here extends to lightweight vehicles, including motorcycles. The measure was first cooked up back in 2013, and according to documentation provided to me by the NHTSA (and a spokesperson I talked to about the law), this rule was originally slated to kick in on September 1, 2019, though that date has been pushed back a year to September of 2020.

Ultimately these new rules are motivated by safety concerns, with the basic idea being that the artificial sounds will alert cyclists and pedestrians (particularly those who are visually-impaired) of an electric vehicle’s presence. Legislators have also asked that these sounds be communicative; changing in pitch based on a vehicle’s speed like a traditional internal combustion engine.

A Battery-Powered Future

Of course, these new regulations will only affect a small number of the world’s vehicles, as hybrids and EVs still comprise a minority of cars and bikes on the road at the moment. However, this is poised to change.

Currently more than a dozen major markets (and counting) are all aiming to ban the sale of new gas (and diesel) vehicles by 2040, or sooner in some cases, so if that comes to pass, these sound regulations will apply to pretty much every new vehicle on the road in the next few decades. Many of these plans don’t specify whether or not motorcycles are included in these bans, but India—the world’s largest motorcycle market—has revealed its plans to ban the sale of all new sub-150cc two-wheelers by 2025, and all three-wheelers by 2023.

Audio UX: What It Is And Why It Matters

To get a better sense of what’s in store for the future of electric vehicle sound, I talked to audio UX (User eXperience) designer, Connor Moore, the force behind the San Francisco-based, CMoore Sound. Moore’s clients include Google, Amazon, Uber, and Twitter, and he’s currently doing audio UX work for Tesla, so he knows a thing or two about designing sound for a vehicle.

Connor said good audio UX has to “first and foremost be communicative to its user,” intuitively guiding them through an experience. He also stressed the importance of uniformity, with the auditory alerts and tones sounding like they’re coming from the same family, relating in timbre and composition. Everything from the sounds coming from an infotainment system, to the acoustics of a door opening and closing; it’s all extremely calculated.

“A high-quality audio user experience should elevate the driving experience,” explained Moore. “It should not dominate the experience, but support the user on their journey by adding functionality in communication while also adding moments of delight that the user will remember. It should be subtle yet engaging. These small details are things, whether consciously or subconsciously, that people really notice and it influences the way they spend their time and money.”

Connor also feels the new requirements present a unique opportunity for companies to be expressive in communicating “who” they are as a brand. The audio UX designer also recognizes this as a chance to establish signature sound traits for manufacturers, which he says will become more important for brands as their products become more connected.

“I think right now many automotive and motorcycle brands are seeing the new EV regulations as an opportunity to rethink the way engines sound entirely. Most companies aren’t trying to redesign the way an internal combustion engine sounds, but are rather taking bits and pieces of those concepts and incorporating them into entirely new ideas that tend to be a bit more tonal in design. Similar to a gas engine, when a car accelerates, the volume and pitch will increase (and vice versa) though the overall tone of these engines is going to be very different. With these regulations and more EVs entering the marketplace, it’s going to be paramount for brands to design these from a strategically branded point of view.”

A Taste Of The Future

With regulations looming, quite a few automakers have already introduced artificial noise devices on their respective EV offerings. Back in 2017, Nissan unveiled its Canto concept, that “sang” as it drove and Jaguar included an AVAS in its I-PACE model. Most recently, BMW tasked film score composer extraordinaire Hans Zimmer with designing certain sound elements of the Bavarian brand’s Vision M Next Concept—more specifically the noise it makes when accelerating in Boost Mode.

With these regulations extending to two-wheelers, car companies aren’t the only ones experimenting with faux EV engine noise. Last year at EICMA, Kymco pulled the cover off its fully electric SuperNEX Concept, which not only features a clutch and six-speed manual transmission but also boasts what the Taiwanese outfit calls a “Dial-In Active Acoustic Motor.” Powered by an acoustic generator, the system “reconstructs the dynamic sound of the motor with great authenticity,” and as the name suggests, users can dial-in specific parameters of the faux engine noise. This not only provides an obvious safety benefit but is also particularly useful for communicating RPM, (considering the SuperNEX is a six-speed). It’s a stellar real-world example of how good audio UX benefits the rider.

In June of 2019, India’s Revolt Motors introduced its new RV400 (production) e-bike, which comes with four synthesized engine sounds, allowing the bike to auditorily mimic gas-powered motorcycle engines (such as a two-stroker, or a high-performance inline-four). The different exhaust notes can be selected on the fly via a Smartphone app linked to the bike, or turned off entirely (at least for the time being).

A Tricky Transition

EV noise regulations will obviously jive better with some brands than others. For firms like Harley-Davidson, for which sound is a vital and iconic aspect of its bikes, it’s to the point where the company actually attempted to copyright the sound of its motors around the turn of the millennium. The legal requirement for artificial noise is seemingly less-than-welcome news.

To better understand how Harley’s handling the auditory aspects of its electric bikes, I spoke with Glen Koval, Chief Engineer for LiveWire, Harley’s first electric model. Koval says it mainly came down to answering: How do we develop the right and appropriate sound for a soundless motorcycle?

“It wasn’t necessarily ‘let’s go make some artificial sound in the motorcycle,’” explained Koval. “It was about giving it a premium sound. We didn’t want to hear things rattling, buzzing, or other annoying wind sounds, so we start by trying to bring that premium nature out and where we felt we could differentiate was where we laid out the architecture. We have a bevel gear drive system that basically delivers power to the belt-drive and that bevel gear set was optimized to give us our signature sound on Livewire. As we build out our EV portfolio, we will be paying attention to each vehicle having characteristic sound and making sure that it fits within our DNA.“

Despite the deadline for the sound requirement only a year-or-so-away, when I inquired as to whether or not Harley was working on artificial sounds for its future electric lineup, I was told the company didn’t currently have anything in the works… at least, that they were privy to (or were at liberty to speak on). However, with the law fast approaching, it’s only a matter of time before Harley is forced to implement artificial sound in its electric bikes (regardless as to whether it coincides with H-DNA). At the same time, H-D is currently in the midst of trying to reshape the perception of who (what?) it is as a brand, and as Connor Moore points out, the new noise requirement is a “golden opportunity to be expressive in communicating” that.

A Cacophony Of Faux Sound

Those who oppose the legislation worry about where this is all leading. In the EU, officials have asked that the EV sounds be similar to traditional gas engines. Here in the States, the NHTSA is offering more flexibility. Not only did the Administration already loosen the sound requirements for the forthcoming law but, it’s also letting individual manufacturers come up with their own noises instead of using a uniform sound across the board. The NHTSA also hasn’t ruled out the possibility of allowing companies to give drivers the option of selecting from a number of different sounds.

This could easily result in major metropolitan areas turning into seas of vehicles, collectively generating a symphony of spaceship noises, beeps, chirps, and other push-notification trills. Despite the more stringent regulations in the EU, some of the noises proposed for electric buses in the UK consist of weird bubbling sounds and other annoying beeps and tones, so you can add that to the auditory mix as well. And if you think you can just turn off the AVAS on your car or bike, think again, as that won’t be an option after the law comes into effect.

On the flip side, experts like Moore worry that too much uniformity presents its own problem. “My concern is with how heavy these restrictions currently are, that many EVs will ultimately sound very similar to one another which takes the power away from the individual brands and softens differentiation in the marketplace which has been at the core of the automotive space since its inception.”

So, we might not know exactly what the coming years have in store for electric cars and motorcycles, but we can be damn sure the future of EVs won’t be a silent one.

A small community in the German state of Saxony may soon see the revival of its centuries-old mining tradition. But this time around, the focus is no longer on tin or tungsten but on lithium, as Hardy Graupner reports.

Hans-Andre Tooren is a longtime municipal administrator in the Saxon community of Zinnwald-Georgenfeld near the German-Czech border, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Dresden. His and his wife’s piece of land happens to be in an area that’s attracted the interest of geologists and a mining company.

Tooren lives in a place where lithium abounds, the new white gold of the automotive and other industries. The chemical element is needed for batteries in electric cars, but is also required in steadily rising quantities for glass ceramics, ceramic glass cooktops and a number of lubricants, to name but a few fields of application.

Sitting on a treasure like this, Tooren might have become rich overnight, had he lived in a different country. But here in Germany, mining laws stipulate that all ore deposits found belong to the state and not to the people owning the land above the deposits. Not that Tooren bears a grudge, though.

“Having been a municipal administrator, I’ve dealt with the country’s mining law and knew right from the start that I should not expect to strike it rich as a private person,” he told DW.

“But of course I hope that our community as a whole will profit via higher commercial tax revenues once mining gets underway. First investments by the mining company have already gone toward building a big Christmas season pyramid as a tourist attraction. It’s little steps like these that mean a lot for a village of just a little over 400 people.”

Entrepreneurs raring to go

The mining company Tooren mentioned is Deutsche Lithium Ltd., whose CEO Armin Müller is confident that now that a feasibility study is on the table, financing details for the lithium project can be sorted out in due course. When everything goes according to plan, Zinnwald could see the revival of a roughly 750-year-old mining tradition. For centuries on end, the region extracted tin and tungsten. Now all that will be replaced with lithium.

“At the moment, we plan to mine 522,000 tons of lithium-containing ore per year,” Müller told DW.

“We’ll use the material to get 125,000 tons of zinnwaldit concentrate per annum. This will then be processed to get 5,100 tons of lithium fluoride annually. There’s enough in the ground to let us do this for 30 years — that’s also the period we have a mining license for.”

Even though Zinnwald doesn’t boast the amount of lithium in the ground that the world’s largest exporters have at their disposal, growing demand worldwide in principle speaks in favor of a domestic initiative, says Michael Schmidt, a geologist and senior analyst from the Berlin-based German Mineral Resources Agency (DERA) at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources.

“Lithium demand has been rising exponentially lately, particularly in the past 3-4 years — that’s because of the global e-mobility drive and the mounting storage of renewable energy, like solar and wind,” Schmidt told DW.

“Back in 2015, global demand for lithium metal content exceeded 30,000 tons, or 150,000 tons of lithium carbonate, to use the more common compound. If you look at the current projections, the world will need between 600,000 tons to 1 million tons of lithium carbonate annually by 2025, depending on the development of e-mobility technology.”

Reducing imports

So far, Germany has been importing the raw material from remote places in Chile, Argentina and Australia. While imports will still be needed in the future — and are also expected to come from Bolivia soon — the Zinnwald project, as well as others across Europe, could help ease the pressure, Schmidt argues.

“If a company here runs the mining business and controls production costs in a way that enables it to stand its ground on the global market, it has every right to exist,” he said.

“It wouldn’t be a bad thing, given the oligopolistic lithium market right now — three nations cover some 90% of lithium mining. This tells us that diversification would make perfect sense for industry and in terms of pricing.”

Schmidt’s view is echoed by Doris Schüler from the Freiburg-based nonprofit Institute for Applied Ecology.

“The exploitation of deposits within the European Union, particularly lithium, nickel and cobalt, should be supported,” she said.

“Considerable imports would nevertheless be required to meet primary demand in the bloc. But those imports could be reduced, and mining in the EU would go hand in hand with regulations to protect the environment.”

A profitable undertaking?

The zinnwaldit mineral only contains about 1.6% lithium. That compares poorly to spodumene in Australia, which contains about twice as much, meaning that twice as much ore will have to be mined in Zinnwald to get the same amount of lithium in the end. This makes operations here more expensive, but Deutsche Lithium CEO Armin Müller points to a decisive cost-saving factor that most others don’t have.

“More often than not, lithium deposits are located in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the middle of a desert or high up in remote mountainous regions,” Müller said.

“This means you have to spend a lot of resources on getting long transport routes to faraway chemical processing plants up and working. Such plants can mostly be found in Asia where lithium carbonate is processed,” he explained.

“Now, we don’t have to produce lithium carbonate at all, we don’t need this interim procedure as we can directly process our mineral concentrate and make products such as lithium fluoride or other industry-ready compounds. This is because we can use a chemical plant that will be just around the corner in a place called Freiberg, which is only 49 kilometers (30 miles) away from the deposit.”

Geologist Michael Schmidt says that analyzing the impact of the e-mobility drive on the environment is important.

“Short transport routes are essential,” he said while talking about lithium mining in general.

“After all, the initial idea behind e-mobility was to reduce the CO2 footprint, meaning it would of course make sense to decrease that footprint also during the production of electric cars. If battery cells are to be produced in Europe, it makes sense to get the required resources from places nearby.”

Zinnwald-Georgenfeld resident Hans-Andre Tooren is confident that a revival of mining activities will not scare off tourists.

“We don’t think tourism will be affected in the region,” he said.

“After all, we’re not talking about open-cast mining here. Yes, there will be a new building in nearby Altenberg where the stones from the mine will be pulverized. Trucks will then carry the material to places further away, but that’s the only way tourists will know that mining is going on here at all.”

Armin Müller sees it exactly the same way. He’s keeping his fingers crossed that outstanding financing issues can be resolved in due course.

“If everything goes according to schedule, we’ll have our financing plan sorted out by the second quarter of 2020,” Müller said.

“After that we’ll need another 18-20 months to prepare the mine and processing factories. In other words, I hope mining can kick off in the first or second quarter of 2022.”

It seems every automaker is ramping up their own Tesla fighter. The American automaker has impacted the auto industry like no other brand in decades. These new spy photos show the upcoming BMW i4 sedan, a car that appears to be roughly the same size as the Tesla Model 3. It’s a more traditional follow-up to the oddball i3, a vehicle that a lot of people loved but never really made a huge splash in the marketplace. It also shares more than a little with the shape of the BMW 4 Series four-door coupe.

That’s far from a bad thing. We dig the lines of the 4 Series, with the fastback roofline giving it a sleeker, sportier appearance than a more traditional model like the BMW 3 Series. It’s also what shoppers are looking for in a sedan these days. We don’t have many details on the i4, but expect a significant range increase over the increasingly lackluster i3. With BMW’s resources, we wouldn’t be surprised if the i4 managed to beat the range of some Tesla models, too. BMW is claiming at least 372 miles of range, but expect the needle to move forward as we get closer to launch.

Being a BMW, it’s likely going to be a far more traditional car inside. Expect an interior that’s very close to what you’ll find in the current 2020 BMW 3 Series. Tesla’s giant touchscreen may be flashy, but not everyone is in the market for something that far removed from what they’re used to. Check out these other spy photos for a brief glimpse inside.

We don’t know when the car will go on sale, but look for a full reveal sometime in the next year or so.