Lithium Dendrite Fires
Rivian, Geely, NIO, GM...all of them
Lithium has a problem where, at the anode, lithium spindly fingers called dendrites form, spidering out to breach the cellular barrier and the reaction generates heat, which causes a fire within the battery pack.
While i have a theory about how to solve this problem, which could provide a stop-gap, there are required steps that must be taken to ensure the aim of not having LLVs bursting into flames from electrical fires isn't supplanted by LLVs bursting into flames from battery fires.
There is at least one company approaching the battery issue in a way that improves the charging factor, using silicon anodes with carbon nanotubular structures. This is at least similar to my concept of graphenated layers over silicon, with tubular alignments through a particular manufacturing process. The company doing something similar is just getting out of prototyping.
Battery Charging Infrastructure Fires
Unprotected Chargers with Insufficient Cooling
The charging infrastructure companies are not taking into account even moderately extreme temperatures, beyond the failures at the consumer interface level.
Poor design, poor implementation, poor hardware, poor effort.
Lithium Mineral Supply
Claims about limited supply are overblown
There are ample foreign reserves, and there are new mines being found in the United States. In addition to that, and tying into part of the water infrastructure scheme, there are potentially economically-feasible methods of extracting lithium and magnesium from ocean water, coupled with hydrogen electrolysis.
Lithium is found in brines, typically saturated underground. However, in the process of performing Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination, saline brines are produced, where metallic compounds including lithium can be concentrated. In a multi-stage desalination system, metals can be harvested from those brines, reducing any concentrate pumped back out to the ocean.
Battery Solutions
Solid State
Solid State batteries reduces overall weight and reduces issues with dendrite formation. This is currently the ideal format for batteries, and a few companies have begun manufacturing them. As the process is not dissimilar from other kinds of battery solutions it seems more of a tweaking process than a wholesale reinvention.
That being said, ceramic scaling poses some issues in terms of the fragility of the battery pack itself, and the precision required to mass produce tiny ceramic structures adds a layer of complexity. Despite widespread interest in solid state batteries (including Apple-supplier TDK), and long-standing pronunciations by auto giants like Toyota, some industry engineers like those at Audi have determined that solid state may be feasible for high-end vehicles but the core tech of lithium-ion or the various iterations of battery chemistry are the more likely solutions in the near term.
I tend to agree, from a cost perspective. As far as how battery solutions come in contact with the LLV plan, the proposal is to integrate improved Lithium-ion batteries with additional safety features before swappin them out on a pre-arranged schedule (projected to be at 7 years from first deployment). There are some companies touting 50-year lifespan batteries, which would be the aim to implement, seven years out.
