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Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

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Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#181

Post by Schroedingersat »

sokoloff wrote: post #168
Schroedingersat wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is to regulate battery standards and internal input jacks. The overwhelming majority of people don't need more than 50 miles range the overwhelming majority of the time. The problem would be solved if you could just put your house battery or a rented one in the boot for that rare long trip. Additionally make all vehicles on the road slower, smaller, and lighter so you can safely drive something that more c…

Speaking as someone with 7.5 years daily driving a Nissan LEAF, it is rare that I drive more than 50 miles in a day, but driving 50 miles requires a car with more than 50 miles of range. Right now, I’d take a 50 mile drive in my car (without swapping to my spouse’s ICE car), but I’m not sure I’d do the same for a 60 and definitely not a 70 mile drive. Fully charged, my car guesses it has around 75 miles of range, but…

But if you knew every service station had a charger that could give you 20 miles of range in 15 minutes, and a supply of charged 30kg batteries you could rent and swap into your boot for the day (returning to any other service station) that gave you another 50 miles plus you knew that every car park had a charger that would give you 30 miles an hour, how would that change?

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#182

Post by sokoloff »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #181
sokoloff wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone with 7.5 years daily driving a Nissan LEAF, it is rare that I drive more than 50 miles in a day, but driving 50 miles requires a car with more than 50 miles of range. Right now, I’d take a 50 mile drive in my car (without swapping to my spouse’s ICE car), but I’m not sure I’d do the same for a 60 and definitely not a 70 mile drive. Fully charged, my car guesses it has around 75 miles of range, but…

But if you knew every service station had a charger that could give you 20 miles of range in 15 minutes, and a supply of charged 30kg batteries you could rent and swap into your boot for the day (returning to any other service station) that gave you another 50 miles plus you knew that every car park had a charger that would give you 30 miles an hour, how would that change?

I still wouldn’t buy a 50-mile electric, especially when 100+ mile electrics are readily available.

I don’t want to be stopping all the time and even less want to be unpacking and repacking my trunk regularly to move a 75 pound battery in and out.

Nissan figured that out and put a 40kWh battery into their base model. Mine is 24kWh. A 50 mile range would be something like a 16kWh battery. Unless that’s a hybrid, I think it would flop in the market.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#183

Post by analog31 »

Tagbert wrote: post #164
analog31 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, and pouring an arbitrary amount of water into a fully laden ship already has another technical name: Sinking.

Bilge pumps

That's certainly true, but I'm not sure that a car transport ship is designed to quickly submerge a burning car somewhere in the cargo hold until it exhausts its energy source, while staying afloat.

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#184

Post by manicdee »

Animats wrote: post #58

I'm not too happy about very large lithium ion batteries as a mass market product in low-end vehicles. Lithium iron phosphate, which doesn't have the thermal runaway problem but stores less energy per kilogram, may be more appropriate there. Both BYD and Tesla are going that route at the low end. Light electric vehicles (bikes, scooters, skateboards) are now causing a sizable number of fires in NYC.[1] It's mostly a…

How many fires did it take to learn lessons about dispensing, storing and carrying petrol?

We’re quite happy with ships have huge reserves of flammable liquids (“fuel”) so why are batteries such a concern? Gas (methane, LPG, etc) doesn’t get this level of attention so why do batteries?

Re: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?

#185

Post by mlindner »

MertsA wrote: post #177
mlindner wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted, but after it's pre-heated it burns quite well.

It still doesn't burn well unless it's in a fine mist. Even just a puddle of diesel is actually quite difficult to get burning on its own without some other material as a wick of sorts. https://youtu.be/7nL10C7FSbE Great practical demonstration of the different flammability characteristics of some common fuels. For the tar that a container ship burns, it's not going to be very volatile. Coal also burns quite well, bu…

I said pre-heated. No fuel burns in it's liquid form, it needs to be turned into a gas first. If you heat up diesel it'll light extremely easily as the vapor concentration is high.
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