Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wild bet: Musk is planning on spatial extraction to provide itself lithium.
In case you missed this a few years back (not musk, but his peers): http://www.planetaryresources.com/
I did not.
Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries
161–170 of 175 posts
Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was living in Montreal for a couple of years I signed up to a community car share scheme. No insurance, no maintenance, no road taxes so it worked out cheaper to "rent a car" just when I needed it: https://www.communauto.com/index_en.html With a good, cheap, reliable public transport system with this as backup I could easily get rid of my car if I lived in an urban area but still needed to get around at the we…
That's what I don't get about 'car sharing'. Everybody wants the car on the weekend. If the service has to have enough cars for everybody, what's the difference between that and leasing/owning? It doesn't save on cars that's for sure.
Hah yes. In the early days of Zipcar in NYC (not sure if this is still allowed as I moved to the country and now drive a gas guzzling truck), I reserved every weekend for 48 hours for a full year in advance. Then on the Friday before the reservation started I would decide what I really needed, as there was no cancellation penalty. I probably only used it every second or third weekend, but noticed it really improved my "get out there and do something" motivation, as I set the default for "I have a car."
Probably wasn't good for Zipcar though.
Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really agree I'm sorry to say. It kinda makes assumptions about charge rates, charge locations (home, work, car parks) or even the means by which cars are "refilled". https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY
To avoid making assumptions, I'm thinking of the cars that you can get right now. I live in northern Europe where the "charging stations" are actually abundant (in the form of electric feeds to parking places, currently needed for the convenience and benefits of engine block and cabin heaters in the winter) but charging an electric vehicle still takes quite some time. But if we allow for technical development, then b…
I'm getting down voted for giving my point of view and trying to be cordial at the same time but cest la vie.
I agree there is progress to be made on fossil power cars but it's still unsustainable in any analysis. We're also not seeing anything like the kind of gains that are needed medium to long term. Progress through one technique yields a regression in other areas (emissions vs efficiency)
I too live in Northern Europe (Ireland) and we're really badly setup for electric car adoption as it stands now though the situation is slowly improving. Policy and infrastructure here (as I imagine in other countries) always lags demand.
Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
To avoid making assumptions, I'm thinking of the cars that you can get right now. I live in northern Europe where the "charging stations" are actually abundant (in the form of electric feeds to parking places, currently needed for the convenience and benefits of engine block and cabin heaters in the winter) but charging an electric vehicle still takes quite some time. But if we allow for technical development, then b…
I'm getting down voted for giving my point of view and trying to be cordial at the same time but cest la vie. I agree there is progress to be made on fossil power cars but it's still unsustainable in any analysis. We're also not seeing anything like the kind of gains that are needed medium to long term. Progress through one technique yields a regression in other areas (emissions vs efficiency) I too live in Northern…
Fwiw, I didn't downvote you. It could even be just someone's mis-click. It happens.
Over here (Finland), you can also buy almost completely renewable fuel for flexifuel cars (85 % alcohol made of food waste, not sure how the 15 % of gasoline is produced.)
BTW, one thing I didn't know until just googling around now: Ford model T was also a flexifuel car (i.e. it could run on ethanol).
Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How common will electric charging stations be if it turns out that EVs can't rise above 10% of the total car market? One of the beauties of EVs is you don't need charging stations. I leased a Nissan LEAF 2 years ago, and it almost only gets charged at home. You can't really know whether EVs are going to take over or not, it depends on too many factors. If our government gets bamboozled with Hydrogen the way they di…
But what proportion of houses have off road parking in your own garage. Also think what does this do to the Electricity Grid if a non trivial amount of EV's are put on charge every night.
Street parking solutions are being proposed. Many streets already have power to the street (street lamps and similar street furniture) and chargers become the new parking meter. Also, there's experiments in street-installed inductive chargers (like the wireless chargers you can buy for many phones these days) and even companies exploring the logical extreme of street-level inductive chargers the "power road" (where the car can draw an inductive charge even while driving), which seems unlikely to be pragmatic but still interesting to experiment with.
Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Overnight demand is substantially less than daytime - last night's demand in the UK was about 20% lower: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php The grid would prefer a another demand curve, so overnight charging is helpful.
Is that going to be the same when say 15%-20% of the nation plugs in a car every evening - its going to the surge when people go to make a cup of tea when the adverts are on during coronation street look tame.
Car charging is a steady, predictable usage of electricity. People don't all arrive home at the exact same time.
Additionally, being giant batteries, electric cars have the means to charge when most advantageous to the national grid. Most electric cars already have an option to wait to charge until off peak rates happen. (Off peak rates being cheaper because low overall demand.)
But electric cars may be useful to the grid as giant surge protectors for things just like that cup of tea electric kettle break. Under some of the "smart grid" proposals, the electric companies would be able to not feed electricity to a vehicle in those brief moments of high demand on the grid, prioritizing immediate needs like people's kettles. Furthermore, "smart grid" ideas could even use electric cars as battery backup options, "leasing" already stored energy back from the car and paying it back later, as changes in demand happen.
Even if some of those "smart grid" ideas don't get nationalized, you could still theoretically take advantage of some of those kinds of things in your own home.
So if anything, electric cars may be surge stabilizers rather than surge causers.
Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries
#167Now they'll just be held back by lack of a widespread charging infrastructure.
This is going to sound flippant, but I mean it seriously: The advantage to fungible electricity seems to me that we've already solved the hard parts of charging infrastructure. We have electric grids that reach just about every building, and with modern lighting standards most parking lots and parking facilities too.
Certainly there are "last mile questions" like number of charging devices and type of charging plug(s) and adding plugs to circuits/stringing new circuits near building exteriors and in parking lots and figuring out who to charge for that, but none of them have particularly "hard" problems left to solve at this point.
Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries
#168I'm all for electric vehicles, but there are a few things that have bothered me about its mass adoption. Right now, electrics comprise a tiny part of the automobile market share. Yet Tesla is already running into supply issues, particularly with lithium as there are only 3 companies in the world that do industrial-scale lithium mining, that too in a handful of mines around the world. Secondly, I suppose we're current…
> Is it feasible to recycle all those batteries?
Why recycle when you can give them a second life?
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/538541/nissan-gm-give-ev-...
No recycling involved. Just use the batteries as they are as cheap power storage.
Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How common will electric charging stations be if it turns out that EVs can't rise above 10% of the total car market? One of the beauties of EVs is you don't need charging stations. I leased a Nissan LEAF 2 years ago, and it almost only gets charged at home. You can't really know whether EVs are going to take over or not, it depends on too many factors. If our government gets bamboozled with Hydrogen the way they di…
>One of the beauties of EVs is you don't need charging stations >Your car refuels while it's parked in your garage. So not only do you need to own a charging station you also need a house and a garage, got it.
And then the 240V charger in the garage, in case you want to actually charge your car faster than eight hours. (IIRC, its 72-hours to charge a Tesla on 110V)
Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries
#170The reality here in second-tier Chinese cities is that most people already get around, if not always then at least often, by electric vehicle. They've either never had cars, have bought cars but have problems parking them or getting anywhere due to traffic (many cities were not designed for cars, and now have millions of them clogging every available space on and off the road network), or just jump on the back of bla…
True statement. Having been visiting China annually for the past 10 years and seeing the transportation transition from mopeds to E-bikes first hand, I can attest to that. And the price has really been going down significantly because of the mass production and economy of scale (exports are a major contribution). Typically e-bikes with traditional car batteries are starting at around 2000 RMB. Some newer ones with Li…
However, e-bikes are seeing a decline and/or full ban in top-tier Chinese cities due to new traffic regulations and new road design.
I'm not sure what you identify is a trend as you suggest, rather I think it's just some exceptions. IMHO such regulations are generally for a small area, the equivalent of a pedestrian only mall zone or a few central downtown blocks. Often the motivation is to show off how "modern" the city is (as upwardly mobile Chinese city mayor / party member assumes modern exists in foreign perception, after publicly funded junket to Europe/Singapore/etc.).
I wouldn't be surprised if, in the future, we see such exceptions reversed. After all, old people have to get around and there is tremendous acceptance here of e-vehicles to cater for that market. (Theirs are often covered with a passenger area at rear, and lockable.) This factor alone adds reasonable weight to allowing smaller e-vehicles in the heart of all cities. What has been banned in the heart of many cities is motorbikes, and for good reason.