Brazilian buses to help drive down cost of lithium-sulfur batteries
British manufacturer Oxis Energy has announced plans to help Brazil to an all-electric bus fleet by 2045.
Huw Hampson-Jones, CEO of the Oxford-based company, told pv magazine in February the company was planning to ramp up production of its Li-S battery cells in planned factories in Brazil and Wales as it continued to chase a goal, announced in 2015, of a $250/kWh price ceiling by this year.
An Oxis press release stated the factory would produce the company’s e-mobility cells and battery packs for use in aircraft, marine applications and electric trucks – and with a particular focus on e-buses.
“Our aim is to aid the Brazilian government to eliminate all ICE (internal combustion engine) buses over a period of 25 years, equating to the production of over 4 billion cells,” said Hampson Jones in the press statement. “Brazil has the third largest bus market in the world, with 700,000 ICE buses currently in circulation.”
The Buses
BYD: Chinese electric vehicle giant expands in Brazil
Chinese company opens battery plant, boosts bus fleet and aspires to lead solar panel production.
BYD currently has 50 buses in Brazil. They are spread across 8 cities: São Paulo, Bauru, Santos, Campinas (all SP state); Brasília; Volta Redonda (RJ); and Curitiba and Maringá (Paraná) Each electric bus saves 9 tonnes of CO2 per month from going into the atmosphere.Mar 12, 2020
An Increasingly Urbanized Latin America Turns to Electric Buses — Yale
Sep 9, 2019 — From Colombia to Argentina, major cities in Latin America are starting to adopt electric bus fleets. In a region with the highest use of buses per person globally, officials believe the transition will help meet climate targets, cut fuel costs, and improve air quality.
Brazil’s electric bus market to grow faster than expected
Jul 5, 2019 — Chinese manufacturer BYD believes electric units could gain 1% of market share in 2020, which could double every year. The firm expects to sell 100 units in 2019, and eyes 300 in 2020.This positive outlook rests on the efforts of large cities such as São Paulo to combat pollution and climate change through carbon emission reductions.
BYD installed an electric bus factory in 2015 in Brazil to capitalize on this market. So far, it has closed a deal over 15 buses for an operator in São Paulo city, which will start operating next month. Other cities with electric bus fleets are Santos, Campinas, Volta Redonda, Bauru and Maringá.
So far, it has closed a deal over 15 buses for an operator in São Paulo city, which will start operating next month. Other cities with electric bus fleets are Santos, Campinas, Volta Redonda, Bauru and Maringá.
Electric buses on the horizon | Revista Pesquisa Fapesp
Políticas de restrição à emissão de poluentes nas cidades impulsionam desenvolvimento de ônibus movidos a bateria
Vehicle emissions policies in major cities stimulate development of battery-powered buses
São Paulo, the largest metropolis in South America, has a complex urban public transport network that includes 14,076 diesel-powered buses and 201 trolleybuses—electric vehicles powered by overhead wires. Next month, a new vehicle could be seen on the streets of the city—a new fleet of fifteen 100% battery-powered electric buses is to begin operating on an experimental basis, the first of their kind in the capital. The vehicles will follow a 29.7-kilometer (km) route back and forth in the south of the city, managed by transportation company Transwolff. “This is a great opportunity for us to monitor the daily performance of the vehicles under rigorous operating conditions,” says Simão Saura Neto, superintendent of automobile engineering and special mobility at SPTrans, which is responsible for São Paulo’s public transport system.
BYD delivers the first pure electric buses to the Brazil’s largest city — BYD
Dec 13, 2018 — BYD is proud to announce the Brazil’s largest city of São Paulo has received its first delivery of pure electric BYD buses as part of a pilot project that involves clean energy generated by solar farm with BYD locally produced solar panels.
BYD Leads Sales of Electric Buses in Latin America with More than 1,000 Units — BYD
Dec 17, 2019 — Chile leads the ranking with 285 electric buses, the largest fleet on the continent. The operation of the first 100 BYD electric buses began on December 15, 2018, by Enel and Metbus. After one year, the fleet has traveled a total of 4.5 million kilometers since its deployment, serving more than 13 million users and made 160 thousand trips, saving 21 tons of CO2 emissions.
This experience has sought to be replicated in other parts of Latin America. Only in 2019, in the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, rolled out its first fleet of 20 BYD electric buses; in Mendoza, Argentina, a fleet of 16 BYD buses was launched, while BYD also delivered 15 buses in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In Colombia, the company’s 64 electric buses began operations, with BYD also winning the tender for 379 electric buses, which will start operations in Bogotá’s public transit system next year.
Electric buses on the horizon for the streets of São Paulo — Brazilian Report
Oct 11, 2019 – Brazil’s biggest city set to undergo trial of 15 fully electric buses, with responsibilities to reduce emissions in coming decades.
Brazil New Home of BYD’s Electric Bus and Battery Plant … — Industry Week
In the first year of operation (starting in 2015), the plant will have a maximum production capacity of 1000 electric buses as well as all of their batteries.
BYD delivers electric buses to Brazil & Hungary – electrive.com
Dec 13, 2018 — Brazil’s largest city, that is Sao Paulo, has received its first electric buses from BYD. The 15 buses are part of a pilot project involving solar power, before they will take up full service in March 2019.
The 15 electric buses of type D9W are taking part in a pilot project around sustainable energy. In this case the electricity is generated by solar panels, also made by BYD but in this case locally.
The buses in Sao Paulo can run for about 250 km each and carry up to 80 passengers. The first three that have arrived are run by Transwolff, a local transit company which operates in the south of the city.
BYD to supply fleet of articulated e-buses to Brazil – electrive
May 17, 2020 — BYD will supply 12 all-electric articulated buses to the new Green Line Project corridor, the main urban mobility project in the city of São José dos Campos, in Brazil’s São Paulo state. All the buses will be delivered in the next 18 months.The electric buses on order measure 22 metres and are made by BYD at their facility in Campinas in Brazil. The plant has an annual production capacity of 720 chassis and could be doubled the capacity according to the production plan, says BYD.
The new Green Line project runs in stages. The corridor’s first stage will have 14.5 kilometres, connecting the south and east of São José dos Campos as well as the central region.
It may have blown past you, but charging at 250 kilowatts is crazy fast, even when wired, and these new chargers from the folks over at Wireless Advanced Vehicle Electrification, aka WAVE, are mind-boggling quick. Consider for a moment that the massive CHAdeMO chargers we have sprinkled around Southern California that have a cable going to them that’s thicker than my son’s arm and a charging nozzle that he can barely lift run at 50 kW. These new wireless chargers are 5 times that speed and don’t need any wires to do it.
Now that you’re paying attention, let’s get back to the news.
The Batteries
How Far Away Are Lithium-Sulfur Batteries From Commercialization?
Nov 15, 2019 — With the increasing demand for green energy due to environmental issues, developing batteries with high energy density is of great importance. Li-S batteries, since their big breakthrough in 2009, have attracted much attention in both academia and industry. In academia, significant progress has been made in improving the specific capacity, rate capacity, and cycle performance using various novel strategies. However, the performance is hugely different when these strategies are extended to mass production, indicating a significant difference between academic research, and industrial production. In this brief review, we discussed the gap between the academic research and commercialization in detail based on literature reports and to our more than 10 years’ experience on Li-S pouch cells, which including cathodes, anodes, separators, interlayers, electrolytes, and additives. The problems, which existing in pouch cells by using the materials and technologies developed by academic research using coin cells, was analyzed. We expected that this review could be helpful to both academic research and industrial commercialization of Li-S batteries.
Lithium-Sulfur Batteries – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
The Li–S batteries are promising because of the high energy density, low cost, and natural abundance of sulfur material. However, these advantages can be achieved only when the Li–S battery uses elemental sulfur as the cathode active material and the sulfur approaches the theoretical capacity with low process cost. In recent years, great improvement in the cycling performances of Li–S batteries has been made; however, all these achievements are obtained in exchange for the energy density and process cost. Nanostructured sulfur composites based on various types of carbon materials and conducting polymers have driven the specific capacity of sulfur to a level approaching the theoretical value with acceptable cycling efficiency and cycle number. However, syntheses of these composites are very costly and, furthermore, the cathodes using these composites contain low sulfur content (< 60%) and low sulfur-loading (< 2 mg/cm2), which dramatically reduces the energy density of Li–S batteries. On the other hand, Li–S batteries are fundamentally a liquid electrochemical system, in which elemental sulfur must dissolve into the liquid electrolyte in the form of long-chain PS and serve as the liquid catholyte. Dissolution of PS in the liquid electrolyte on the one hand facilitates the electrochemical reactions of insulating sulfur species, and on the other hand causes severe redox shuttle and parasitic reactions with the Li anode.
Scientists develop high-performance lithium-sulfur batteries … — Eurekalert
Apr 16, 2020 — Lithium-sulfur batteries have a high theoretical energy density of 2600 Wh kg-1 and theoretical capacity of 1675 mAh g-1. They are promising as a high-energy battery.
However, the slow conversion reaction dynamics of sulfur in the process of charging and discharging lead to low utilization rate of sulfur and serious shuttle effect. This further causes low capacity and stability of lithium-sulfur batteries.
Therefore, a reasonably designed electrocatalytic system is desired, so that catalytic transformation of polysulfide can be realized efficiently and steadily under high sulfur loading, resulting in high cyclic stability of lithium-sulfur battery
Scholarly articles for lithium-sulfur batteries
Rechargeable lithium–sulfur batteries – Manthiram – Cited by 2324
Graphene–Pure Sulfur Sandwich structure for ultrafast, long-life lithium–sulfur batteries – Zhou – Cited by 836
Designing high-energy lithium–sulfur batteries – Seh – Cited by 890
Lithium–sulfur battery – Wikipedia
The lithium–sulfur battery (Li–S battery) is a type of rechargeable battery, notable for its high specific energy.
(Crossposted with DailyKos.)
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