Better range on a lower capacity means much better range per hour charging time.
in other words “energy density wins the day".*
That was running through my head when I read they were switching to technology with lower energy density but, to your point and to the article's point, it’s really about systems level energy density and not cell level energy density.
* with Tesla we have now seen that there is another factor, convenience, that my professor did not account for. I own a Tesla and the primary selling point… OK it was acceleration… But the secondary selling point was never having to go to a gas station again when I am just barely going to make the meeting and forgot to fill my gas tank the night before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntin
Edit: Soyuz U2 (Syntin version) launched 72!! rockets. Then they reverted back.
Most of the energy you buy with a tank of gas goes to heat the air around and behind the car as you drive.
In other words: even when you take conversion into account, energy density (both by weight and volume) is better in gasoline than battery.
(I love BEV, and I see it will win over most of the market, but gas wins on energy density)
Curious example since that's one of the drawbacks of an EV. If you forgot to fill the gas tank and have to stop, you'll be 5 minutes late. But if you forgot to charge the EV, now you're looking at several hours late (or give up and call a cab).
i’ll address a couple of things though… First, since you plug-in every day at home it is very very rare for me to forget. Second, the total available range is still close to my old gas cars which means I need to have forgotten for many days in a row which in the last nine months has never happened.
BUT, I did say that I was low on energy on a day I needed to make a long drive…
Backstory was I was intentionally draining my battery over a period of about a week without charging (trying to recalibrate the gauges... very rare to do).
In the morning on a day I needed to make a three hour round-trip drive I realized I was at 20% power.
So I hightailed it to the nearest Tesla supercharger, plugged in, pulled out my laptop (I'm sitting on a giant battery... powering a MacBook is no issue) to get some work done, and 20 minutes later I was at 80% (enough for 200 miles - or my entire round trip).
So the power issue was caused semi-intentionally and entirely my fault but also it took very little time to solve it. It would be a bigger issue for somebody who isn’t near a supercharger (and no 220 line at home as they'll go 0->full overnight) but again it is very very easy to remember to plug-in at night and many/most people would generally need to forget to charge for at least three or four days before it becomes an issue.
If the range is so huge, I see it might not be an issue.
We have a Fiat 500e, so forgetting to charge overnight (or if the timer didn't go on as intended for whatever reason) means a guaranteed crisis in the morning as there's no way to get to work.
That's not what they're saying, this is about space required to get the same capacity.
The relevant quote is "meaning that energy density at the pack level should compensate". What's going on is that the chemistry energy density is lower, so you need bigger batteries to get the same capacity (i.e. range). Normally this means you would need more space in your vehicle to get the same range, however you need less cooling so you save some space there so the overall space usage of the battery system ends up about the same.
It doesn't work like that unfortunately. Unless you're using a low power charger charging time is limited by the C rating of the battery and that is independent of how big your battery is.