EV with heat pump, CCS, LFP battery, not Tesla?

[gomipile]

I've spent about two hours looking around, and haven't found a solid answer on this yet.

Are there any non-Tesla electric cars that have a heat pump, CCS charging, and an LFP or better battery pack that aren't Teslas?

I'm only considering regular cars and small SUVs. So, yes to sedans, hatchbacks, station wagons, and small SUVs. No to coupes, trucks, medium/large SUVs, and utility vans. Probably also no to minivans, but those are borderline.

The results I've been getting have been very poisoned by SEO. Also, the manufacturer websites seem to be going to great lengths to bury the specs I'm looking for in their sites so they're hard to find and hard to get to and read once on the page.

[monomer]

Pretty much any EV (not counting small electric runabouts) sold in North America and Europe besides the Nissan Leaf and Tesla will come with a CCS charger.

Regarding Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries, I'm not sure what you mean by "or better", but I don't believe any companies outside of China are shipping with LFPs except for Tesla. The rest of the EV market uses Lithium Ion batteries with a Nickle/Manganese/Cobalt (NMC) cathode, which are better than LFP batteries in some ways (higher energy density), but worse in others (more expensive, slightly worse degradation). The only cars that don't use LFP or NMC lithium ion batteries would be those tiny city-electric cars that are basically enclosed golf-carts that have NiMH or even Lead Acid batteries.

That pretty much leaves the heat pump as the main differentiator. The ones I know of in North America are the Polestar 2 and 3, and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and 6, though for all these you have to go up a trim to get the heat pump.

[gomipile]

I was under the impression that LFP batteries are less likely to cause fires, and should last longer with typical EV usage. Also, that fully charging LFP batteries often doesn't cause problems.

By "or better," I was leaving open the possibility of anything else that might also have those advantages over currently available cobalt based battery chemistries.

[Gnoman]

Degradation isn't the Big Deal people claim it to be, even with standard L-ion chemistry. You'll lose some range over time, but most evidence suggests that the battery will almost always last until the destruction of the car - the car will physically wear out before the battery life degrades to the point it needs replacing. Making battery chemistry a part of your decision making is probably unnecessary.

[gomipile]

Degradation isn't the Big Deal people claim it to be, even with standard L-ion chemistry. You'll lose some range over time, but most evidence suggests that the battery will almost always last until the destruction of the car - the car will physically wear out before the battery life degrades to the point it needs replacing. Making battery chemistry a part of your decision making is probably unnecessary.

I'm more concerned with the difference in fire risk. If reduced risk of fire also means that I'll have some more battery capacity after ten years of daily use than with the other option, that's gravy.

[Gnoman]

Fires from either kind of battery are ludicrously rare. Switching from a gasoline-based vehicle to an electric one already reduces your fire risk far more than any difference in chemistry between the two. On a per-100,000 vehicle basis, the fire rate for ICE vehicles is something like several hundred percent higher than for EVs.

More importantly, the battery fires you hear about are either caused by the battery being significantly damaged (where chemistry can't do much - you're storing massive amounts of energy that have to go somewhere) or a manufacturing defect in the charging circuit (where chemistry can't do anything - any high capacity battery needs that circuit to charge safely).


LFP batteries are technically safer in this regard, but that difference only matters in very narrow circumstances that you are very unlikely to encounter. Meanwhile sticking with an ICE vehicle to avoid the "more dangerous" battery has a much higher risk of causing the very problem you're worried about.

[Fat Rooster]

Fires from either kind of battery are ludicrously rare. Switching from a gasoline-based vehicle to an electric one already reduces your fire risk far more than any difference in chemistry between the two. On a per-100,000 vehicle basis, the fire rate for ICE vehicles is something like several hundred percent higher than for EVs.

More importantly, the battery fires you hear about are either caused by the battery being significantly damaged (where chemistry can't do much - you're storing massive amounts of energy that have to go somewhere) or a manufacturing defect in the charging circuit (where chemistry can't do anything - any high capacity battery needs that circuit to charge safely).


LFP batteries are technically safer in this regard, but that difference only matters in very narrow circumstances that you are very unlikely to encounter. Meanwhile sticking with an ICE vehicle to avoid the "more dangerous" battery has a much higher risk of causing the very problem you're worried about.

The problem with battery fires isn't actually the energy stored in the battery, though that usually starts them. It is due to the fact that you also have about a fuel tank worth of electrolyte solvents that are just as volatile as ICE fuels, in a system that has a failure mode that makes it overheat. Chemistry can significantly improve that side of things, either by having the solvents less volatile or less flammable. Reduced volatility in particular also makes them able to take higher temperatures before the pressure starts to rise, so mean that fires are much less likely to start in the first place as well as being less violent.

We have gotten good enough at them that fires are rare anyway (spontaneous almost non existent), but chemistry can definitely do a lot to help even when things do go wrong.

[Bohandas]

The results I've been getting have been very poisoned by SEO.

I had to look up what that means. I didn't know that googlebombing went by a different name when it's done by corporate suits

[gbaji]

Fires from either kind of battery are ludicrously rare. Switching from a gasoline-based vehicle to an electric one already reduces your fire risk far more than any difference in chemistry between the two. On a per-100,000 vehicle basis, the fire rate for ICE vehicles is something like several hundred percent higher than for EVs.

We're talking about EVs, but it is worth noting that hybrids are the worst case scenario for this, having both gasoline tanks that leak and ignite easily in a serious accident *and* battery packs that, once they've reached thermal runaway point, become incredibly dangerous and incredibly hard to put out.

More importantly, the battery fires you hear about are either caused by the battery being significantly damaged (where chemistry can't do much - you're storing massive amounts of energy that have to go somewhere) or a manufacturing defect in the charging circuit (where chemistry can't do anything - any high capacity battery needs that circuit to charge safely).

Yes, but ICE's don't tend to spontaneously combust (well, where they aren't supposed to) without either some form of significant damage or some form of defect (either manufacturing *or* from misuse or ill repair over time) either. We also don't actually have the near century of data and improvements for EV batteries like we do for ICE to know what happens when we have "old EV clunkers" on the road and how that affects things, nor how to design cars so as to minimize the risk when fires do occur.

I'm pretty confident that if we trimmed the ICE dataset to "cars no older than say 10-15 years or so" we would see some very different statistics. At least in the "spontandiously burst into fire" scenario. Remember that most ICE car fires aren't the result of accident, but some sort of electrical short, or some mechanical defect that causes extreme heat (like stuck breaks, or ironically old batteries) that lights some *other* part of the car on fire, and may eventually lead to the fuel igniting. And that's overwhelmingly the result of poorly maintained cars (and some defects too). Which is not a cause we can assume to be eliminated in EVs, especially as they become more a "norm" than a "novelty".

The "accident causes fire" scenario is much higher for ICE versus EV, so that's a huge factor in favor of EVs. There is still a negative though in that once an EV battery pack does light on fire, it's a lot harder to put out. The heat from a gasoline powered fire is generated by the reaction of the fire itself, so once put out, it tends to stay put out (hah. But not always!). The heat from a battery fire is generated by the chemicals themselves, and continues to ty to re-ignite. It literally lights on fire because it's self generating sufficient heat to cause combustion. That's going to continue to happen until the chemical reactions generating the heat conclude. So it's not as simple as "hit it with an extinghisher until the active flames go away" like you can do with most ICE car fires (again, some exceptions, but usually treating it very similar to a simple camp fire tends to work for ICE generated fires, while it doesn't at all for EV fires).

This will (hopefully) be mitigated over time as fire crews learn better techniques for fighting such fires, but at least for the reasonable near to mid term, this is going to continue to be a problem. Not sure how much of a factor this is for a potential car buyer though, cause "burned a bit" versus "burned a lot" is often meaningless in terms of "car is still destroyed". But if we're talking about overall safety, it does bear pointing out that not all car fires are equal.

LFP batteries are technically safer in this regard, but that difference only matters in very narrow circumstances that you are very unlikely to encounter. Meanwhile sticking with an ICE vehicle to avoid the "more dangerous" battery has a much higher risk of causing the very problem you're worried about.

Again though, higher event probability does not automatically equate to "higher risk per event". And, as I touched on earlier, it bears making a distinction between "car on fire for any reason" and "car's fuel source on fire". And important to note that any fire that starts somewhere other than the fuel source, can spread and light the fuel source on fire. So at least part of our consideration is "which is more dangerouus if it lights on fire" and not just "how likely is the power source itself to cause a fire". And I suppose from an infrastructure point of view "how much time/effort does it take to put out" is a factor. A fire that's put out in 5 minutes and then we move to removal and recovery is a lot less of a strain on fire departments (and thus "safety budgets") than one that takes several hours before you can safely start removing anything and clearing the roadway.

And there's also the issue of the chemicals in battery packs themselves, which produce fumes that are a lot more dangerous than mere gasoline fires do. So yeah. They're pretty equal in risk/danger for any fire in which the fuel source itself doesn't fully ignite (which is most of the time). ICE cars are much more prone to having their fuel source ignite (both primarily or secondarily from another fire) of course, but I'd rather deal with a gas tank burning than a EV battery pack. And no. They don't explode like in the movies. They just burn. Like a really big gas lamp or something. The tires, on the other hand... they explode nicely (and are usually the "explosion" that people report as being the "fuel tank going" or some nonsense). Of course, EVs have tires too...

[gomipile]

A lot of ICE fires happen while fueling at gas stations. A lot of EV fires start while charging.

I don't have a gas station that fuels my ICE in my attached garage while I sleep.

I actually don't keep an ICE in my garage at all. But, charger installation logistics and winter temperatures mean it would behoove me to keep and charge an EV in a heated(at least to above freezing) garage.

That's an action that multiplies risk on risk, so any commercially available technology options that reduce that risk are attractive.

It's the same reason that if I set up a home solar+/wind system with battery bank and inverter, I'll use LiFePO4 batteries or something safer if available at that time.

[Arutema]

To the best of my knowledge, only Tesla is shipping cars with LFP batteries. And real-world cold-weather performance from those batteries has been quite poor.

If you can do with a more typical lithium battery, the Kia Niro has an optional heat pump plus heated seats and steering wheel. I've been using one as my daily driver for the last 18 months with no complaints. Its CCS charging peaks at 77Kw, which is less of an issue when most chargers are still capped at 50Kw.

As for battery degradation, you can do a lot to prevent it with proper battery care. Don't leave a battery sitting at 100% charge for long periods. Basically every EV on the market now should have an option to limit charge to 80 or 90% to help with this.