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>[Musk] hailed Tesla’s structural battery as a “revolution” in engineering—but for some battery researchers, Musk’s future looked a lot like the past.
>“He’s essentially doing something that we did 10 years ago,” says Emile Greenhalgh, a materials scientist at Imperial College London
Doing something under research conditions and doing it in a mass-produced commercial product are separate accomplishments. Both are important and impressive and should be celebrated.
Having worked with a lot of researchers, in general, my experience has been that if something isn't the latest research meme/trend/buzzword, they don't give a fuck. "Something that we did 10 years ago" means they already got a publication about this idea, and that was that, they've long since moved on. Actually deploying something into the real world, effecting real change, is the hard part, but most researchers are focused on getting the next publications accepted, and only that.
Not every researcher is like that, but it's a problem. The researchers I worked with, also, unfortunately, had this idea that engineering is somehow beneath science. That's just worrying about the details. They think that the idea itself is the real advancement. They think of themselves as smarter and more important than engineers, and they don't like when engineers press them on how they would actually implement their ideas into something real.
Sorry if I sound cynical, it's because I am.
Every part of the innovation chain has understanding of the difficulty of their own link. Without every link, it doesn't work.
Consider the SR-71: Is it the pilots, the crews, the administrators who secure funding, the voters, the integrating engineers, the test pilots, the supply chain, the metallurgists, the engine designers, the manufacturers of test equipment, the standards bureau, the aircraft architect, the people who specified the initial requirements, the tire manufacturers, the refueling crews, the avionics manufacturers, the chemical suppliers for the bespoke starting fuel, the aerospace engineers who did the fundamental research, Chuck Yeager, the Wright Brothers, Bernoulli, the thousands of spouses who sacrificed to support their partners, or the fundamental researchers who ascertained the physics necessary to make the aircraft fly and evade detection?
Every one of them, and more, can lay claim to the statement: If we hadn't done what we did, the SR-71 wouldn't have flown.
I'm a fundamental physicist who has spent the entirety of this century trying to get at the bottom of things because it is the foundation upon which our understanding rests. When we make a measurement, however, even those experiments rest upon work and resources provided by a vast array of engineers, suppliers, manufacturers, administrators, support staff, physical plant, custodial support, funding agencies, and taxpayers.
I think your take on it seems fine. The researchers did the poc, later it goes mainstream. The researcher should not care or be interested in the mainstream practical application anymore, they should be on to the next thing.
I'm not sure which field you're in, but at least in electrical engineering, the situation is very different from your description. EE academics are deeply enmeshed in real-world problems, and justifying real-world impact in publications is considered more or less essential. This is also enforced by the bottomline: a lot of research is sponsored by industrial consortia or even individual companies (Intel, Microsoft, etc). Furthermore, many though not all academics at some point spin off some part of their research into commercial ventures, and for some that even becomes their primary concern.
The rule in academia is "publish or perish". So the publication focused scientists are only doing what they have to.
That's kind of the whole point of specialization - a good framework to look at this is the Technology Readiness Level principles; and different institutions are specialized to work with different maturity levels of a tech and that's ok.
The requirements to work on core principles that might have an application (and fund&organize that work) are fundamentally different from finding product/market fit for something that's known to be possible and are fundamentally different from optimizing a process for making that thing 1% cheaper than last year, so those are generally done by different institutions and different people.
So yes, from the point of someone doing fundamental research, once a proof of concept exists, their part of the work is done - there's a lot of further steps to get that to a commercially viable product, but those steps should be done by someone else who's better at it and whose organization is structured completely differently to facilitate this completely different process. And meanwhile they'll working on some other tech that's ready for that engineering stage yet. Theoretical physics isn't applied physics isn't prototype engineering isn't process optimization engineering.
You need people and organizations working on every TRL step, and they aren't interchangeable, you need the preceding step well-funded to make your work possible and you need to move the results to the following steps since those will harvest the actual end-user value in the end.
They probably are smarter than Engineers, on average, but that does not make them more valuable to society at large, though it might in their academic habitat.
> mass-produced commercial product
To add to that, in a domain with life or death consequences.
Remember how Tesla had to add a titanium skid plate to prevent battery fires caused by punctures from running over road debris? Batteries in body parts likely to be damaged in collisions would be a problem.
Also, having the heavy battery down below axle height makes for a nice low center of gravity, making the vehicle much more stable.
It took ~10 years for flexible screens using OLEDs to be mass producible. 10 years seems to be the norm as of now for things produced under research conditions to enter mass production/usage, are there counter examples?
"are there counter examples?"
Solar, although to be fair I'm looking at "is financially worth producing" as I'm sure they technically could be mass-produced in the 1960s if they could somehow find a buyer.
Passenger cars all moved from a body-on-frame structure to a more integrated unibody construction where a lot of the rigidity is provided by other parts that happen to be located on the underside of the car. In an electric car that has a battery on the underside, delegating some of that structural integrity to the fairly rigid battery pack seems like an obvious extension of that trend. I'm pretty sure that's what Musk means when he talks about structural batteries. That will probably mean some changes to the battery packs to make them more fit for that purpose (that could mean changes to the cells, but doesn't have to)
Integrating battery packs anywhere else in the body of the car seems much less practical. These car batteries aren't like notebook batteries: they have dedicated heating and cooling systems in addition to high current connectors, fire proof casings, emergency shutoffs etc. You can't just pepper those around the car.
No they don't. Researchers propose they (the carmakers) do.
I can't even imagine the maintenance or repair considerations of a pack that's embedded inside of the frame or a monocoque chassis.
Lastly this isn't even an Ars article, it's from Wired. It really is a terrible click-bait headline. The article, imho isn't much better.
Stressed skin [0,1] is great for saving weight and enhancing rigidity.
It's terrible for repairability, and with regards to power sources... safety.
This is a bunch of researchers solving the wrong optimization problem. You'll likely see it in Formula E, but under no circumstances should it be in production, mass-produced cars.
Tesla is moving to this architecture.
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/10/10/teslas-new-structural-b... (Tesla’s New Structural Battery Pack — It’s Not Cell-to-Pack, It’s Cell-to-Body)
> No they don't. Researchers propose they (the carmakers) do.
Yes they do. The first paragraph of this article discusses Elon Musk talking about integrating this into Teslas.
It's also important for cells in a pack to have the same size. Making a bunch of arbitrary sized body parts would to the opposite.
> Lastly this isn't even an Ars article
Gizmodo stylee
Does this mean giving up on every being able to replace the battery pack if it's integrated into the frame? Tesla battery packs are only warrantied for 8 years, and after that you need to pay ~$7k to replace them. Are they developing new battery tech to make this time period longer?
"Tesla battery packs are only warrantied for 8 years, and after that you need to pay ~$7k to replace them."
You don't need to pay ~$7k. That's about the full price of a new battery. The battery isn't dead, it just has a lower rating (likely over 80%). Even if that's absolutely unacceptable, it can be used to A) replace batteries that have hit 60% or some other lower standard for people who don't care about range as much, or B) act as a stationary battery.
Considering that cars are currently driven an average of "13 500 miles per year" according to US stats, 8 years is a little over 100k miles. Tesla has already hit the "million kilometre battery" mark (so at least two thirds toward the "million mile battery"), so it's kind of absurd to say you'd have any serious need to replace it 1/6th through its spec lifetime.
And now for a BONUS: in 8 years the price of batteries will drop, due to economies of scale if nothing else. So the replacement will be cheaper than your current battery was (hah, implying we all have EV batteries).
Just throw away the car when the batteries age out.
I would like to understand what happens when you are in the accident? Does this increase the risk of fire/explosions no matter where you get hit? I still remember driving by the burnt-out Tesla on 101 & 95 intersection.
Out of curiosity, where does 101 cross 95? I thought these ran north-south.
Perhaps in New Hampshire?
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/NH-101A,+Milford,+NH,+USA/@...
What happens in an accident, or when someone drills a hole through the frame?
It's much like unibody car repair: You used to be able to bolt a hitch, bumper, roll cage, or winch to the ladder frame of your vehicle. The ladder frame was basically a pair of ~2x5" C-channel heavy steel bars running the length of the vehicle, with crossmembers linking them together. It's still present on a lot of trucks, and some SUVs, but more and more vehicles are moving towards lighter unibody construction. In particular, this helps with impact safety, because the unibody can form crumple zones. A ladder frame doesn't crumple.
Now, most vehicles don't have ladder frames. If you want to drill a hole for attaching a bolt, for example to add a tow hook, you probably need to first weld on a 1/4" plate. A body shop can't just un-bolt a rocker panel damaged in an accident and put on new ones, both rocker panels are one big piece that forms part of the structure of the vehicle and everything else is connected to them. You cut and weld to repair the damage, or bend it back into place. In race vehicles and motorcycles, this concept is extended to the engine itself: The block is a structural member of the vehicle.
Practice will adjust to progress. It won't always be as easy to repair as it once was. We can only hope that the safety and energy improvements are worth the complexity and functionality.
I think if this becomes a reality, the standard advice will be: "Do not drill holes through your car frame"
One should never drill into the battery, regardless if it is inside the body, or inside a box. It's dangerous, but so is drilling into a gasoline or LPG tank. Car mechanics are trained on this topic, they know.
Compared to current battery-in-a-box construction methods, I expect that for crash safety the embedded battery may actually give more structural rigidity, and more freedom to incorporate crumple zones on tactical places.
What happens when someone drills a hole in their gas tank? Probably similar.
The answer: Who knows, this is material scientists talking, not engineers.
What do they mean by Musk is incorporating the batteries into the frame? They just introduced a larger cylindrical cell. Cylindrical cells don’t get embedded, unless you mean as in a flashlight.
In some other generation of battery tech, there’s plenty of gray area here that still provides benefit. A stiffer battery requires less housing. A stiff enough battery only requires shielding against punctures. Stronger still, and you can bolt it between two frame elements and have it function like a cross brace, while still being able to remove it for servicing.
I watched their battery PR presentation and it seems like they're trying to integrate the structure of the battery (maybe not the individual cells but I'm unclear on this) as a "stressed member" so to speak, same way that the engine in a motorcycle is often a critical structural component. Makes sense, because the battery is super heavy and needs a ton of stucture itself, might as well integrate it more with the frame and reduce redundancy.
I know that some container ships are using sails once again to help with fuel costs.
It would be a neat triple play to have the sails be solar panels and the batteries, too.
A big issue with this would be safety. You don’t want your car to explode if someone runs opens their door into the side of your car. Also, repair costs would be crazy. You probably could not bang out dents, but would have to replace the entire (very expensive) structural battery quarter panel.
Unfortunately, having to replace a big part at a huge cost (instead of banging) is a great incentive for car makers to go this way.
You could just disable the battery in that panel for some minor capacity loss.
The metal encasing around the battery should protect against a battery explosion. I'm sure there are solutions, like encasing it in foam for example to prevent oxygen getting in.
Tesla batteries do not extend to the edge of the frame. There is a buffer for t-bones and side impacts. Thousands of crashes and 8 years in your odds of bursting into flames seem lower in an EV than an ICE car with a tank of gas.
Hm. Inevitably that would raise the center of mass, right? The Tesla battery is currently the floor of the vehicle I think. Now it'll be threaded through the body, which brings weight upward. It'll have to be done carefully, to keep it handling well.
Interesting concept but I guess there will be huge investments needed into material science - we can model how a metal or carbon composite frame will react when exposed to impacts or general mechanical stress, how much load a given part can bear under which circumstances after many decades of data gathering, but for a battery that is the structure we don't have experience.
> Its battery pack will be integrated into the chassis so that it provides mechanical support in addition to energy, a design that Musk claimed will reduce the car’s weight by 10 percent and improve its mileage by even more.
i wonder if it also reduces the possibility (or increases the cost) of recycling used battery packs by 80%.
Sustainability? Can these new carbodybatteries be recycled when they can't take a charge? Can I replaces some of the car for a complete charge? or do I have to ditch the whole thing when the first component fails?
The news to me is now arstechnica.com is syndicating content from wired.com ... And as far as I'm concerned, no good can come from that...
... starting with this article which gives credence to these Asp and Greenhalgh fellows, who have deemed the current situation with batteries as a "structural parasite" while at the same time proposing to incorporate them into the skin of the vehicle, which moves mass way upwards and way outwards-- both of the no-nos in regards to stability. The negative effects from just the shifting of mass will likely outweigh any of the gains using their method, which so far seem to be a bit nebulous. And that's ignoring many of the obvious safety, reparability, and complexity concerns...
Wired and ArsTechnica are both Conde Nast brands. Wired is definitely 98% breathless reporting, and ArsTechnica is aiming for that too, while still trying to catch a couple people that remember what it was like before they sold out.
reminds me of a scene in some TV show long ago where (Howard Hughes perhaps??) the character threw a hammer I tothe side of his steam car, where it gushed steam, and announced that he was no longer in the steam car business. I would not want to be inside a vehicle whose body panels were filled with something like lithium!! a sealed box underneath is acceptable if it passes crash tests, door panels, no way.
Explosive skin on a vehicle...
The military name for this is ‘reactive armor’. Imagine backing into a quarter panel in a parking lot - Boom!
Are you supposed to flag for misleading titles? This isn't "carmakers", it's random material scientists.
The only reason EVs don't handle like complete ass despite being relatively heavy is all the weight is concentrated in the floor with a skateboard battery pack design.
This is stupid on multiple levels.