Questions To Ask Before You Invest In Lithium-Ion Batteries

DETROIT (ResourceInvestor.com) -- Lithium-ion batteries’ basic electrochemistry is the same no matter what types of clever technological variations of the component chemical materials are used to manufacture the batteries. Lithium-ion batteries function by enabling and promoting atoms or ions of the lightest metallic element, lithium, to undergo oxidation. That is defined as a loss of electrons in a controlled way. When such devices are connected, for example by an on-off switch, to a closed electric,i.e. electricity conducting, circuit the lithium atoms or lithium-transition metal ions oxidize. This releases electrons from which work can be extracted, e.g. causing the electrons to move through the windings of an electric motor. Such an electric motor transforms the energy of the electrons into circular motion which can be used to turn an axle and wheel. If the battery can deliver sufficient energy to the axle to overcome the weight of the mass to which it is attached and to overcome the forces of friction and any other forces impeding such motion then the axle will turn and the wheel will rotate moving the mass to which it is attached.

If the lithium electrochemical cell’s construction allows reversal of the process of oxidation it is rechargeable. It allows fully oxidized lithium or lithium-transition metal collected on an electrode called the cathode to be reduced and drawn to and redeposited on its original source electrode, called the anode. If lithium or lithium-transition metal ions are the chemical species oxidized and reduced then we are speaking of a lithium or “lithium ion” battery. What all the materials and all of the continuing research in this area have in common is that they are trying to fix the fatal flaws in lithium-ion battery technology that make it impractical for ordinary use:

* Under the extremes of temperature in which passenger carrying vehicles must operate;
* Limit the number of discharge-recharge-discharge cycles it must undergo, or
* The mass production of the batteries is too expensive to be economical.

This if it is to avoid the fatal flaw of being too expensive to be practical at all.

Personally, I do not see any value in the near term in investing in any one of the current crop of lithium battery technology development companies to:

1. The small investor,
2. Most large developed economies,
3. The world, or
4. The climate.

This is especially true if they are dedicated mainly or, worse, solely to providing power storage devices for the OEM, mass-production-based passenger car market. I believe that there so many undecided questions of economics and politics and so many unknowns of technology that the risk of failure is almost certain for the small investor who will never be told the truth by the marketing flacks of said companies. They are betting their survival on falling across the right technology and the right economics and the right politics all at the same time. The probability of such simultaneity of the right things is zero.

Look at the following chart, which I obtained from Inanovation, Inc., a developer and manufacturer of the lithium-ion battery technology shown in the last column on the right. First, to clear the air, Inanovation does not offer its battery technology to the privately owned passenger car manufacturing industry. The company’s president stated to me in an interview that Inanovation’s technology results in a battery that is too large and currently too expensive initially for small passenger car applications. I do not own any interest in Inanovation, Inc., nor do I now or have I ever worked for the company or received compensation of any kind from it for any reason.

This chart reflects the performance of the typical, or average, battery that is commercially available within each battery chemistry family. There are better and worse batteries within each chemistry family.

The above chart shows everything an investor needs to know about the current (ca 2008) state of the best known—and probably the best developed so far—rechargeable battery technologies. In fact the chart allows you to ask the key questions that you need to have answered by any and all lithium-ion battery technology developers or end users or both before you risk any of your money in such a venture.

It would take a very long essay to illuminate each row in the above chart as a risk factor for the economic success of the various technologies shown in the columns in chronological order of the beginning of their large scale development, not of their discovery. I am not going to do that in this forum but I am instead going to comment on just one or two key topic rows which illuminate the most important flaws or at least impediments in the mass production and use of the various technologies.

Look first at the cycle life, the ninth row down, and the battery life, the tenth row down, at one cycle of charge-discharge-recharge per day. These seem to be two different ways of saying the same thing, but they aren’t. There’s a not so subtle difference. Rechargeable batteries are well known to degrade from the buildup of byproducts, such as irreversibly transformed electrode materials that become set and thus reduce the batteries energy storage capacity. In the case of lithium-ion batteries they are ‘worn in’ by the manufacturer to create a solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) that protects the electrode surface from side reactions. Unfortunately excessive cycling of the battery or its exposure to extremes of vibration and temperature may cause this SEI to slough off and need to be reformed. This process irreversibly ties up electrode and electrolyte material in non-useful sludge that, at best, reduces the battery’s capacity and life slowly. At worst it causes internal short circuits that can lead to thermal runaway and catastrophic failure. Thus when you are told that a lithium-ion battery technology has undergone accelerated cycle testing you can be certain that this type of testing proves only that the individual battery being tested performed in a certain way. Accelerated testing does not reproduce typical operation and is not determinative of battery life except under laboratory conditions. Take particular note of statements of 10 year battery lives and power to run for 150,000 miles. They are transparent uses of non representative statistics and are equivalent to fortune telling. Such lifetimes are not known and have never been measured in real time consistently and reproducibly for any currently known technologies.

The most serious flaw in lithium-ion battery technology is located in rows 15 and 16 of the above chart. This is the performance of the battery technology in cold temperature charge and discharge situations, and it is this lack of acceptable performance that makes current lithium-ion battery technologies unacceptable for mass produced passenger cars meant for sale in all climates.

Note that internal combustion engines are fueled, unbeknownst to the general, public, with seasonally adjusted fuels (per U.S. EPA requirements, e.g. there are reportedly 14 ‘blends’ between Chicago and Milwaukee—now you know part of why costs are high). For winter operations oil companies produce liquid fuels with high contents of low boiling hydrocarbons, such as butane. This assures that even at subzero temperatures there will be enough fuel vapor to allow ignition to occur. We all know intuitively and it is true that liquids do not burn. Only the vapors from flammable liquids when mixed with sufficient oxidizer-such as the oxygen in ordinary air-can be made to ignite. Thus winter gasoline is laced with hydrocarbons such as butane that vaporize at low temperatures. In the summer the oil companies raise the boiling points of the fuel mixtures as low boiling components, which are more easily lost to the atmosphere at ordinary temperatures and thus would be wasted, are not needed.

In the Canadian Northwest Territories and farther north it is so cold in the winter that internal combustion engines are run around the clock to avoid being unable to start them without expensive super-low boiling gases or additives.

At this point you know why every car maker tries its lithium-ion battery powered passenger cars and trucks out in California and offers them mostly to celebrities who do not operate any machine other than a hair blower in extreme conditions. It is simply because most California celebrities drive on level roads in moderate temperatures. I would like to see how a Tesla performs in Aspen if it is left out in the open for a week, during which it is driven to its maximum range daily. I know a man who has a Toyota Prius in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He told me that he does not garage it in the winter and has had no problems. But the Prius is a hybrid that uses a nickel metal hydride battery and has a parallel internal combustion engine started by a lead acid battery. So that the owner would not know immediately if there were a cold charge or discharge problem because the car starts as an internal combustion motivated machine and the battery is probably warmed by the cars heating system before it is charged or discharged. Toyota, I sincerely believe, has thought this out and it is one of the reasons that they are sold on the true hybrid nickel metal hydride battery using system. If the very serious problem of cold weather operation has been thought through by the makers of battery-only powered extended range vehicle such as the Chevrolet Volt I would be very surprised. This is because any diversion of battery power to keep the battery comfortably above 0⁰ F in a cold climate will have a serious range and performance reducing impact. A failure of such a battery heating system could easily destroy the battery.

I need to say finally that I admire Inanovation, because its engineers instead of trying to work out a way to sidestep or overcome the flaws that make the lithium-ion battery impractical for economically powering passenger cars with performance and range characteristics mimicking those of internal combustion engines have instead focused on applications where their size, weight, and extreme temperature extreme performance in conjunction with their high cycle life can make a difference due to the total cost of operations (TCO) of their very long lived batteries. While almost everyone else is battling to have their companies value fall to zero after just one gloriously publicized failure-such as the two out of three Teslas that would not start or failed shortly after starting in Europe a couple of weeks ago Inanovation is offering their lithium technology batteries to the:

1. Telecoms,
2. UPS Systems,
3. Aerospace,
4. Military,
5. Solar, and
6. Other markets.

This where long life, long cycle life at full voltage, and ability to operate in extremes of temperature make them economical and more practical than the lead-acid batteries that they will replace. It is these applications that are of the most value to lithium-ion batteries of the type made by Inanovation, which does not pretend to be more than it can be—as all of the high performance lithium-ion batteries now under development pretend to be.

I don’t remember where I read it or who wrote it, but I do remember the conclusion of a military historian’s work which I read long ago that the ‘best’ army that the human race could field would consist of American officers, Nazi German non-commissioned officers (non-comms), and Imperial Japanese foot soldiers. The American officers would likely have served at every level and done everything that the two groups below them had done, and neither the non-coms nor the foot soldiers would have any ambitions of rising beyond their status. The officers would plan and execute strategy, the non-coms would turn the strategies into field operations, at the basic level, and the foot soldiers would do as they were told courageously.

What’s this got to do with lithium-ion battery technologies, you will now ask? The answer is in the use of the word ‘best.’ The best army of the ancient world was the Roman; it’s goal was to subjugate everyone who might be a threat or was or could be a good trading partner to Roman domination. What we call the Roman Empire is a creation of Hollywood. Roman Imperium (the power of authority based on military domination) was born half a millennium before the birth of the man that Hollywood calls the first “Emperor,” Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, known to us as Augustus. He should really be known to us as “The August One,” but Latin does not have definite articles.