Lithium-ion Battery Technology That Delivers The Best Performance For A Vehicular Application Is Economically Unfeasible

Implications: The lihtium-ion batteries that have the best performance characteristics for vehicular application are not safe or cheap enough for use in mass produced vehicles. Advances in nickel metal hydride and other technologies, including those based on silver-zinc and those based on magnesium in combination with various other metals, are overtaking lithium-ion systems.

Analysis: Lithium is both cheap and can be dangerous if not properly handled, so that recycling it from lithium ion batteries produces lithium with a higher cost than can be achieved by simply buying new lithium from a producer/refiner.   There is thus no point to recycling a lithium-ion battery unless its lithium is in the form of a combination with a rare or very expensive metal, such as cobalt, which itself is expensive enough to justify the careful handling required to disassemble and chemically remove and separate and purify the constituents of a lithium-cobalt-ion battery.

The best lithium battery chemistry known from the point of view of having the performance necessary to give a hybrid car better 'performance' as a car  is unfortunately the lithium-cobalt-ion system.

Unfortunately, that is, because lithium-cobalt-ion batteries used in laptop computers and devices such as iphones have been known to overheat and have been reported to catch fire.

Car makers have zero-tolerance for such devices, so there has been a rush to attempt to reduce this danger by searching for metals other than cobalt, which, in combination with lithium, will give the same performance as cobalt but have no risk of overheating. 

So far many systems have been discovered that appear safer in the laboratory but none of them has the power or capacity of the cobalt system. Many have been rushed into limited, essentially hand built, 'mass production' to maintain the face of corporate executives who have prematurely ejaculated their confidence in something they call 'lithium,' although what they mean by this term varies among companies.

Every vehicle on the road today and those which will be put on the road over the next two years with 'lithium' batteries is a test of one idea or another, and the world's car makers know that a single fire will destroy all of their investments in all of the prematurely delivered systems even if any one or all but one has merit.

In the meantime major developments in the power and capacity of nickel metal hydride batteries have been announced. If some of them are true then not only will nickel metal hydride batteries remain in universal use, as they are today, in hybrids, but it may also be possible to build hybrids using tried and true nickel metal hydride batteries which give better performance as to range and duration of high speed so that lithium batteries really won't be necessary.

Besides nickel metal hydride battery improvements there has also been lately work on other battery systems such as those based on silver-zinc chemistry and on magnesium chemistries. Such systems , along with nickel metal hydride, all have the advantage of being safer and cheaper because they can be recycled economically.

Today's car makers have vested interests in making a go of lithium ion batteries so as not to face irate shareholders who ask why so much money has been invested in their development.

But high gasoline prices and the demand for lower, even zero, emissions will soon drive the world's mass producers of personal cars to simply eliminate large heavy cars from their product line in favor of lighter cars mainly for commuting and 'city' driving. Nickel metal hydride batteries such as those now used in the Toyota Prius give that car a range of more than 250 miles on just 6 gallons of fuel and that is attained while driving at 80 miles per hour.

Next year Honda will begin selling a Prius fighter in the form of a small hybrid passenger car utilizing nickel metal hydride batteries, which will sell for less than the current Prius, which uses nickel metal hydride batteries also. What will Toyota do if and when it introduces a 'next generation' lithium battery equipped Prius, as it says it will, that sells for more than either its current Prius or the Honda hybrid.

I think that if the Honda hybrid is successful it may well spell the end of the lithium ion battery's mass use and reduce that battery system's uses to only a very few hand built performance cars.

In the meantime watch for other safer more reliable and recyclable battery technologies to eclipse lithium systems for future mid-size and larger mass produced cars.