GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

Prabakhar Patil is the CEO of Compact Power Inc.  CPI is a subsidiary for LG Chem, the Korean company that was awarded with the Chevy Volt cell supplier contract.  CPI helped GM to develop the packs for the Volt.  I had a chance to interview Dr. Patil on the current status of the relationship and operations.

Where are things with respect to pack development and considering GM’s announcement about in house pack and your relationship with them?
The relationship is good and unchanged because the decision for GM to manufacture the pack in-house after they got into volume production had been made some time ago. We agreed to it in the spirit of partnership because for strategic reasons it was important for GM to do this in house, even though we were prepared to support them in high volume production.

Right now nothing has really changed. As you know we shipped around 50 packs last year, this year we are shipping around 400 packs and that continues to happen. We are validating the pack design, the manufacturing process etc, and these are the prototype packs that are going into GM vehicles. That part is exactly the same as it would have been were we to make the high volume production packs.

So the prototype packs are currently being produced at your facility?
Yes, and they will continue to be made here until GM’s facility is up and running.

Are you helping GM to prepare their facility?
We work together. It’s a joint team that is actually at work.

As a subdivision of LG Chem, will you continue to work in GM’s facility?
No, once the production moves to their facility our role will be more supportive.

LG Chem got a $150 million DOE grant for setting up a cell manufacturing facility that will be locating in Michigan?
As you know, up to now the cells are made in Korea and we assemble, engineer, design and manufacture the pack here. The DOE grant is targeted at making the cells here. That has always been our plans and our footprint but this helps expedite the process.

So you are going to build a US battery factory from the ground up with that money?
Yes.

When will you start construction?
We probably will complete the site selection process by the end of this year and then we’ll be breaking ground sometime next year. We have to go through all the permits and site preparation and all that stuff. More importantly in terms of production, the first of the cell lines in that new facility we expect to come on in production rates by second quarter of 2012. It will be fully done with all of the cell lines and electrode lines and all that stuff a year later. At that point, it will be capable of producing enough cells to support anywhere from 50,000 to 250,000 vehicle packs depending on how many cells the packs contain.

Is that factory going to solely be used for the Volt pack or might it be used for other automakers?
It is not tied to a single application or customer, that’s part of the flexibility that we will have that it can support different applications. Because as you know the cells for the Volt will initially come from Korea. In fact, that cell line is already up. It has to be in order for us to have certified cells that have to be ready well ahead of the vehicle launch so GM can go ahead with the pack validation and so forth.

That cell line is already up. That will be used to supply cells for the Volt until the cell line here comes on line, so we have a lot of flexibility.
As far as GM or any other customer is concerned they won’t be able to tell the difference as to whether the cell is made here or in Korea.

The cells for the Volt, are they pretty much going to be a standard LG automotive cell for all applications or are you developing differently nuanced cells for different applications?
There have to be different nuances. For example, if you go from a non plugin hybrid to a BEV there are three discrete types of cells that you need. On plugin HEV like hybrids, the power to energy ratio is high, because those hybrid configurations don’t need large pure electric range.

On the other end of the spectrum the battery electric vehicle where the energy density requirements are very significant when you get to 50 or 100 miles of range. The P to E ratio in that case is relatively low then. Plug in HEV cells like the Volt are in between in order for the cells to be optimized we have to tweak the chemistry or the recipe.

IBM has a long history of putting its brainpower behind projects of significant societal importance.

Apparently they have chosen to focus a new endeavor on the electric car.

The so-called “Battery 500″ project is staffed by a consortium of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers, and the inaugural meeting kicked off last week in California.

IBM believes that the current target range of electric cars from 40 to 100 miles is too limiting and the focus of the group is to develop a 500 mile range practical electric car battery.

“Batteries technology has improved, but is still far inferior to gasoline in terms of how much energy they hold,” said Spike Narayan, an IBM scientist. “The energy density—which is the amount of energy a lithium-ion battery stores per unit weight—is really not enough to produce a family-sized sedan with a 300- to 500-mile range.”

The group has particularly focused on the lithium-air battery as the best option. The lithium-air battery isn’t sealed and uses atmospheric oxygen as the cathode, which flows into the cell as needed. By coupling this chemistry with IBM’s nanoscale manufacturing technologies it is projected that batteries with 10 times the energy density of today’s lithium-ion cells could be produced.

Lithium-air cells have already been demonstrated at the laboratory level, and IBM believes it will take about two years to determine if they can in fact mass produce a 500 mile battery of reasonable size and weight.

Cost may remain an issue as well as fast charging availability; it would take days to recharge a 500 mile battery at household current. Furthermore, if most people drive less than 40 miles per day, carrying around all that range may prove unnecessary.

All of this demonstrates the incredibly exciting flux of ideas and opportunities that the transformation of transportation technology is bringing with it.

Source (Smarter Technology)

Prabakhar Patil is the CEO of Compact Power Inc, the subsidiary of LG Chem that has been working with GM to produce the Volt’s battery packs.

I recently had the chance to ask him about the cost of lithium-ion batteries.  As some sources suggest cost could be as high as $1000 kwh, I asked him what the actual cost is in today’s market.  My question with his explanation follows:

What is the cost of lithium ion automotive batteries?
Is its risky or dangerous to quote direct numbers.

At the cell level, in consumer applications, 100% of the nominal capacity at the beginning of life is somewhere on the order of $350 per kwh.

First, we have to keep adding factors for in a vehicle application, when you look at it as a 10 year life and you have this 25% degradation, then your denominator goes down by 25%.

Secondly, if you’re not using all of the capacity, just the combination of those two factors will effectively cut the denominator in half in terms of usable capacity at the end of life as opposed to nominal capacity at the beginning of life. And that will raise the price in dollars per kwh, if you do it in terms of usable capacity at the end of life, by a factor of two

Third, if you add all of the other stuff you have to put in the pack, and it depends on what you consider inside the pack as opposed to outside, because that depends on vehicle architecture. So that’s why it gets very fuzzy and inconclusive to talk about gross level numbers unless you know specifically on how they are being defined.

The other perspective is that lithium ion in the 17 years since it was first introduced has come down by a factor of 14 in terms of dollars per kwh and it’s not done. It will continue to come down not at the same rate, but I fully expect over the next 5 to 10 years for the cost to get better by anywhere from a factor of 2 to 4 in terms of dollars per kwh as compared to where we are now.

One of the things that has nothing to do with the cell or any technology itself, is at the end of life if the battery still has 70 to 75% of its power and energy left.  Why throw it away when you can recapture it? If you could capture that residual value by effectively leasing the battery and putting it to work again in a utility application, at 50% of its initial value, it will cut the effective cost by a factor of two.

GM has been developing a plugin 2-mode hybrid since 2006. It was at first to be deployed in the Saturn VUE.  The host vehicle was later changed to a compact Buick SUV when the Saturn division was sold. That decision too was scrapped, however, GM still intends to sell the drivetrain in some vehicle in 2011.

Although GM has decided to do pack assembly in-house for the Chevy Volt, apparently they have decided to let LG Chem subsidiary Compact Power assemble the packs for the plugin hybrid themselves.

“We will be supplying the production packs,” Compact Power CEO Prabahkar Patil told GM-Volt.com.  “Those production packs will not be made by GM. We will actually be making them but in volume production.”

He explains that LG Chem and GM’s “relationship of course goes well beyond the Volt.”

The 2-mode plugin pack will be half the size of the Volt’s, consisting of 8 kwh of lithium ion cells.

“It’s a different form factor because its tailored to fit in the vehicle its intended for,” says Patil. “It is a different configuration, but there is quite a bit that is shared with Volt in terms of technology. The cell for example will be the same.”

He says that the thermal management system will also be “very similar” to the one used in the Volt.

“We try to commonize as much as we can,” he says. “That will always be our approach, to bring the cost down because of the volumes being higher and secondly because when you are reusing something it doesn’t require as much additional validation and testing and that also helps being the cost down and actually make the quality more robust.”

Patil says the packs will be made in a facility in Michigan that LG Chem just acquired in the past few months and refurbished.  He says that right now the facility is “still in the prototype phase as that’s where we are also making the Volt prototype packs.”

GM has not announced what production volume they expect for the 2-mode plugin hybrid.

Patil gives some guidance be explaining that when the current LG facility “gets some automation by the end of next year, it will have the capacity of 2500 of the large Volt type packs or as much as 10,000 of smaller packs.”

“The capacity depends on the nature and size of the pack,” he says.

Zenn Motors is the Toronto-based electric car company that was founded by Ian Clifford.

To date the company has only produced low volumes of low speed neighborhood electric vehicles, but had been planning to introduce a highway capable electric car called the cityZENN.

Zenn has based its future and that car on a partnership with EEStor, which is known to be secretly working on mass producing a new type of battery that would surpass lithium ion in every way. Its far cheaper to produce, several times more energy dense, can be recharged in minutes and has a functionally unlimited lifetime.

Zenn has taken incrementally greater ownership stakes in EEStor based on milestones for producing that battery or EESU. At this point no batteries have ever been publicly demonstrated, but Zenn holds a 10.7% stake.

Clifford has just announced that his company would no longer be pursuing mass production of the cityZENN car.  I had the chance to discuss this with him.

“Our decisions regarding cityZENN continue to evolve in response to advancements in electric vehicle deployment across the industry since we announced cityZENN a couple of years ago,” said Clifford.

He notes the plethora of new EV manufacturers that have exploded on the scene including Tesla, Fisker, and Think, fresh with billions of dollars of government aid.

“Why people would want ZENN to become another OEM is beyond me,” he said.

Instead Zenn will focus on producing electric drivetrains called ZENNergy Drive systems that will be EEStor-powered and would be supplied to automakers.

“Integration of ZENNergy Drive in Tier 1 and OEM product has always been our long term objective,” says Clifford. “The cityZENN program was always designed as a proof of concept for ZENNergy Drive.”

“Now that virtually every OEM around the world has announced some form of battery EV or plug-in hybrid program it makes sense for the Company to focus entirely on ZENNergy Drive’s unique value proposition to maximize ZMC’s penetration throughout the industry, working in conjunction with Tier 1 and OEM’s around the world,” he said.

He is enthusiastic about the potential of that business model.

“Leveraging ZENNergy Drive, powered by EEStor, across the industry is such a massive opportunity,” he says. “Last year 48,000,000 new cars built fit within our 1400 kg exclusivity on EEStor’s technology.”

Clifford denies that there has been any material change in EEStor’s development and assembly of EESUs.

“With respect to the anticipated timeline of EEStor’s technology,” said Clifford.  “EEStor has publicly stated that they expect to complete initial component testing in September 2009 and deliver functional technology to ZMC by the end of the year.”

He clarifies that although EEStor will do component testing in September they may or may not reveal those results publicly.

“With respect to the initial Component testing, it is up to EEStor to announce the results,” he said.  “It should be noted that while EEStor publicly stated their intention to complete component testing, they did not indicate if they would publicly disclose those results. Component testing is not a milestone in our technology agreement with EEStor.”

When Nissan debuted its all electric Leaf on August 2nd, the indication was that they intended to sell the car and then lease the battery separately for most parts of the world.

At the time, Carlos Ghosn (Nissan’s CEO) told the media that the price of the car would be competitive with its peers, and that “the monthly cost to lease the battery and fill it with electrons will be less than an average month of fill-ups at the gas station,” but declined to ballpark that in actual dollars.

However, when speaking to Le Journal du Dimanche earlier in the week, Mr. Ghosn was again asked if Nissan’s electric cars would be more expensive than similar conventional cars? To which he answered:

“No. The electric car only makes sense if everyone can benefit. It must be for the customer at the same price as his gasoline equivalent in particular thanks to government aid. The battery will be leased for just under 100 euros ($150USD) per month. The cost of electricity consumption and the leasing of the battery will be lower than the cost of gasoline.” (translated from french)

In the United States the decision has not yet been made on whether the Leaf will be lease only on the battery, or if they will offer the car and battery as one package for outright purchase. When asked, a representative from Nissan USA said:

“We are considering the options to provide the best value to our customers. We will say more when we can. ” /big help

As for GM’s take on the subject, Andrew Farah (who is the Volt’s chief engineer) had this to say about the option of leasing the battery inside the Volt:

“We’re designing for the battery pack to have a 10-year life and there has been discussion of all sorts of battery business models, but we’re working from the perspective that it will be sold with the car.”

One thing is for sure, the merits of leasing over buying is a hotly contested debate in EV circles. Leasing of the battery itself puts the driver’s mind at ease when it comes to the long term reliability and performance of the battery, but does so at the cost of a never-ending monthly fee.