But maybe I'm wrong. If that's the case, please quote the exact sentence or paragraph from the article that contradicts the above statement. I'm done with the "EV batteries are just different" sleight of hands from people that couldn't point out where lithium is on the periodic table if their life depended on it.
Hi, masters in Pchem, and minor in materials here. Did I mention time as a nuclear reactor chemist? Anyway, the bottom line here is that I know where Lithium is on the periodic table.
The reactants are the same, the reaction is (more or less) the same when under load and being charged. What is not, because of cell volume and differences in power demands as a percentage of maximum power draw and charging power is the stoichiometry of the equilibrium reaction, and the physics of damage to the cell. Oxidized tendrils pop up in battery cells all the time, and they have less effect in the larger cell versus the much smaller one, given that the tendrils that pop up in both are about the same size.
There are other factors such as peak-power, mid-life power, and critical power based on what the device housing the battery demands, but those have less effect on this discussion than stoichiometry and physics of damage do because of that physically larger cell size in EVs.
Could there be an eight-year on the average iPhone cell given existing power demands and time-to-off limitations? Sure, technically, but the iPhone would be about two inches thick.
I respect your want to have newer hardware, and that's fine. Your finances and the like are your own. Like I said, that's a personal choice. This is still not planned obsolescence, unless you count Apple not wanting to have a two-inch iPhone that.
EV battery packs are over provisioned by about 5% to 10% depending on OEM. Ie, a 100 kWHr pack is advertised as a 90 kWHr pack. Then, most EVs today have active thermal management for their packs. Those two things definitely play into the 8 yr government mandated, whatever it is in distance, warranty for battery packs, though I don't think the EVs are old enough just yet to see if it really is going to pan out. A lot of early EVs are just going to have batteries that can only hold something like 60% charge in year 5, 6, 8, or worse. Not that much different from ICE cars and their problems that limit good performance to 4 to 5 years.
Older Nissan Leaf models do no have active thermal management on their batteries, and they definitely have very poor lifetime performance and poor cold weather performance. Their capacity is also very small, so who knows if Nissan over-provisioned them. Just an example of a range of cars that probably won't hold the warranty or last 8 years.
For cell phones, it's surely something like "100%" give or take 3% to qualify as good off the assembly line. Some customers will get the -3% part of the deal. That -3% combined with a lot of cycles and bad thermal management could drive a battery down below 80% capacity within a couple of years. Some will get the +3% and take care of the phone well. Those batteries could last 4, 5, 6 years.
In EVs, their packs have thousands of them, and it all averages out to "100%", and they won't suffer the assembly line lottery like single cell battery devices will.
These battery discussions are making mountains out of molehills. Just pay $80 to change out the battery in year 3 or 4 and move on. Count yourself lucky you didn't break any glass during that time.
EV advocates may argue that a smartphone battery cannot be compared to an EV battery; these products are totally different. That is true, but ironically both use lithium-ion systems.
So OK, we start by establishing that we’re talking about the same chemistry. Quite obvious, but perhaps it needs to be said do some.
A mobile phone gets charged at the end of a day and the stored energy can be fully utilized until the battery goes empty. In other words, the user has full access to the stored energy. When the battery is new, the phone provides good runtimes but this decreases with use. In this full cycle mode, Li-ion delivers about 500 cycles. The user adjusts to the decreasing runtime, and being a consumer product, the end of battery life often corresponds with a broken screen or the introduction of a new model. Built-in obsolescence serves well for device manufacturers and retailers.
Ooh, did he say “built-in obsolescence”? Probably just another troll like myself. After all, we all know for a fact that there is no such thing, and anyone saying otherwise is self-evidently a troll. Never mind if you’re a scientist, or someone who built a successful company around battery management and ran it for decades.
Back to the facts though. “A mobile phone gets charged at the end of a day and the stored energy can be fully utilized until the battery goes empty. In other words, the user has full access to the stored energy.” Funny, that’s exactly what I’m claiming breaks the battery. Guy must really be a troll. Anyway, so if we could work around that standard usage pattern and, I don’t know, limit charging to 60 or 70% SoC all the time, like I’ve been suggesting, and keeping it plugged in all the time, I wonder what would happen? Maybe we would get closer to the EV charge/discharge model and thus to the EV battery lifespan? Nah, impossible.
The EV battery also ages and the capacity fades, but the EV manufacturer must guarantee the battery for eight years. This is done by oversizing the battery. When the battery is new, only about half of the available energy is utilized. This is done by charging the pack to only 80% instead of a full charge, and discharging to 30% when the available driving range is spent.
Who would have thought it? Adding a charge/discharge limit extends the lifespan of the batteries? Too bad that’s not exactly what I was suggesting, right? Oh, it was? Sorry about that.
Now someone might argue: “I don’t like the tradeoff of my phone battery lasting half as long daily, so that it lasts for many years.” Well OK, I respect your point of view — only wish someone respected mine as well and lobbied for having the sort of API call that’s required for this to work. But anyway. If, like me, you work at a desk all day, then the whole point is moot. Just plug the phone when you sit at your desk, unplug when you leave. Except if you do that today it charges to 100% and remains there, which destroys the battery even faster. If you had the option to limit charging to 60 or 70%, it wouldn’t be an issue because each day you won’t be away from a charger for more than one hour a day. Even 10% would be enough for that (which is just as bad as 100%, but it’s just to make the point that 70% SoC is an absurd amount with a huge safety margin).
Sure most people don’t want to babysit their batteries to that extent. Again, I respect you. I just wonder why it’s so hard to respect my point of view, well supported by the facts I’ve mentioned here at length. It won’t hurt you, I promise — if you want to charge your battery to 100%, I’m not calling for a ban on that. Feel free to do what works best for you. Wish I only had the same choice.
To be continued later…
If I can elbow my way through all these straw men...
I didn't see anyone, and I certainly didn't, argue that the chemistry of phone v EVs was different, it's just a limiting factor, as with physics (i.e. the size of the phone v EV).
Planned obsolescence is primarily an economics concept defined as "a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so that it becomes obsolete after a certain pre-determined period of time upon which it decrementally functions or suddenly ceases to function". That an engineer (also) misapplies this concept is not too surprising. (As an aside, a scientist is not the same thing as an engineer - those who are either, know this. There are probably as many people who confuse the two titles as there are people who misapply the term "planned obsolescence").
Again, the comparison of a phone to an EV battery is a laughable absurdity that exposes a degree of ignorance of the technologies involved.
The entire iPhone is LESS than 5 cubic inches in volume. The battery itself, a good bit less.
A Prius EV battery by itself is roughly a thousand times larger than that the iPhone battery at just over 4,000 cubic inches. Add to this, the larger "device" carrying it to allow for active cooling systems, switching between the multiple cells for charging and recharging, etc., and the absurdity of such a comparison becomes even more profound.
This is not too far off the mark from whining that your bottle rocket supplier has conspired to keep your rockets from flying as high as NASA's solid rocket boosters. It's an absurd argument. Too.
A serious argument would compare similarly sized and purposed batteries. But then the preconceived premise would fall apart. It's not a conspiracy of planned obsolesce by Apple, because similar (even worse) battery performance is found on competing phones.
As for my personal anecdotal experience, my family and I have owned dozens of iPhones over the years. They typically have lasted us between 3-4 years (under standard to heavy use), at which point, I typically replace the batteries myself. I've worked with electromechanical manufacturers, including battery suppliers, starting 40 years ago. I don't do anything special to "baby" the batteries, I just know from experience and knowledge of the technology that most consumer batteries are going to last about 3 years, at which point the degradation of capacity grows to be more problematic. This, again, is due to physics and chemistry, not a planned obsolescence conspiracy by Apple.
EV advocates may argue that a smartphone battery cannot be compared to an EV battery; these products are totally different. That is true, but ironically both use lithium-ion systems.
So OK, we start by establishing that we’re talking about the same chemistry. Quite obvious, but perhaps it needs to be said do some.
A mobile phone gets charged at the end of a day and the stored energy can be fully utilized until the battery goes empty. In other words, the user has full access to the stored energy. When the battery is new, the phone provides good runtimes but this decreases with use. In this full cycle mode, Li-ion delivers about 500 cycles. The user adjusts to the decreasing runtime, and being a consumer product, the end of battery life often corresponds with a broken screen or the introduction of a new model. Built-in obsolescence serves well for device manufacturers and retailers.
Ooh, did he say “built-in obsolescence”? Probably just another troll like myself. After all, we all know for a fact that there is no such thing, and anyone saying otherwise is self-evidently a troll. Never mind if you’re a scientist, or someone who built a successful company around battery management and ran it for decades.
[Emphasis added]
The author of that piece switches in the second quoted paragraph from discussing facts to expressing an opinion. In the first quoted paragraph he or she acknowledges that the two types of batteries are actually different.
Nobody in the comments is arguing that "built-in obsolescence" does not exist; we are clarifying that the term has a definition that is not met by Apple's actions with the iPhone. You yourself have pointed out that there are multiple options for people who end up with degraded battery performance: they can upgrade to a new device, they can replace the battery, or they can recharge more often (using a "battery bank" or a wall socket). In only one of those situations does Apple directly benefit - how does that benefit compare to the harm from users perceiving that the iPhone battery doesn't last a long time?
What about a similar situation: the phone screen, casing and internals are prone to damage if one drops the device. If a prudent course of action is to spend money on a protective case, does that decision reflect some sort of planned malevolence on Apple's part? Or is it a recognition of the physics that apply, the trade-offs made by the engineering and design teams, and a judgement by the purchaser that the value is sufficient to justify the exchange?
Comments
Older Nissan Leaf models do no have active thermal management on their batteries, and they definitely have very poor lifetime performance and poor cold weather performance. Their capacity is also very small, so who knows if Nissan over-provisioned them. Just an example of a range of cars that probably won't hold the warranty or last 8 years.
For cell phones, it's surely something like "100%" give or take 3% to qualify as good off the assembly line. Some customers will get the -3% part of the deal. That -3% combined with a lot of cycles and bad thermal management could drive a battery down below 80% capacity within a couple of years. Some will get the +3% and take care of the phone well. Those batteries could last 4, 5, 6 years.
In EVs, their packs have thousands of them, and it all averages out to "100%", and they won't suffer the assembly line lottery like single cell battery devices will.
These battery discussions are making mountains out of molehills. Just pay $80 to change out the battery in year 3 or 4 and move on. Count yourself lucky you didn't break any glass during that time.
I didn't see anyone, and I certainly didn't, argue that the chemistry of phone v EVs was different, it's just a limiting factor, as with physics (i.e. the size of the phone v EV).
Planned obsolescence is primarily an economics concept defined as "a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so that it becomes obsolete after a certain pre-determined period of time upon which it decrementally functions or suddenly ceases to function". That an engineer (also) misapplies this concept is not too surprising. (As an aside, a scientist is not the same thing as an engineer - those who are either, know this. There are probably as many people who confuse the two titles as there are people who misapply the term "planned obsolescence").
Again, the comparison of a phone to an EV battery is a laughable absurdity that exposes a degree of ignorance of the technologies involved.
The entire iPhone is LESS than 5 cubic inches in volume. The battery itself, a good bit less.
A Prius EV battery by itself is roughly a thousand times larger than that the iPhone battery at just over 4,000 cubic inches. Add to this, the larger "device" carrying it to allow for active cooling systems, switching between the multiple cells for charging and recharging, etc., and the absurdity of such a comparison becomes even more profound.
This is not too far off the mark from whining that your bottle rocket supplier has conspired to keep your rockets from flying as high as NASA's solid rocket boosters. It's an absurd argument. Too.
A serious argument would compare similarly sized and purposed batteries. But then the preconceived premise would fall apart. It's not a conspiracy of planned obsolesce by Apple, because similar (even worse) battery performance is found on competing phones.
As for my personal anecdotal experience, my family and I have owned dozens of iPhones over the years. They typically have lasted us between 3-4 years (under standard to heavy use), at which point, I typically replace the batteries myself. I've worked with electromechanical manufacturers, including battery suppliers, starting 40 years ago. I don't do anything special to "baby" the batteries, I just know from experience and knowledge of the technology that most consumer batteries are going to last about 3 years, at which point the degradation of capacity grows to be more problematic. This, again, is due to physics and chemistry, not a planned obsolescence conspiracy by Apple.
https://www.gsmarena.com/counterclockwise_phone_batteries-news-28202.php
The author of that piece switches in the second quoted paragraph from discussing facts to expressing an opinion. In the first quoted paragraph he or she acknowledges that the two types of batteries are actually different.
Nobody in the comments is arguing that "built-in obsolescence" does not exist; we are clarifying that the term has a definition that is not met by Apple's actions with the iPhone. You yourself have pointed out that there are multiple options for people who end up with degraded battery performance: they can upgrade to a new device, they can replace the battery, or they can recharge more often (using a "battery bank" or a wall socket). In only one of those situations does Apple directly benefit - how does that benefit compare to the harm from users perceiving that the iPhone battery doesn't last a long time?
What about a similar situation: the phone screen, casing and internals are prone to damage if one drops the device. If a prudent course of action is to spend money on a protective case, does that decision reflect some sort of planned malevolence on Apple's part? Or is it a recognition of the physics that apply, the trade-offs made by the engineering and design teams, and a judgement by the purchaser that the value is sufficient to justify the exchange?