CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg • Hacker News Board

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

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Post by fnordpiglet » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 5:20 PM UTC

hoofhearted wrote: post #633

fnordpiglet wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the age of Rube Goldberg dinosaur fumes fire machines is over and the age of Maxwells Equations is upon us. It’s sort of like college physics progression I just realized.

I’d like to submit into evidence the new Mercedes AMG One.. The most advanced hybrid hypercar to hit the streets. Complete with the same MGU-MGK electric hybrid assist and energy recovery systems used in F1. https://youtu.be/Tm4rkRpoapw

As a dad driving my kids to gymnastics why would I buy a hyper car?

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

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Post by tshaddox » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #645

lelanthran wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m afraid these bans get systematically sabotaged by well funded ice lobby groups. Nonsense; it's just harsh reality landing on green wet-dreams. They effectively propose a ban on cheap cars, and you expected ... what, exactly? The only way they're replacing ICE vehicles is by making the EVs cheaper, and there is a limit to how high they can tax sales of ICE vehicles or fuels without a population revolt.

"The only way they're replacing ICE vehicles is by making the EVs cheaper" Even if electric cars would be cheaper, faster and longer running - some people would rather die, than give up their ICE cars and motorcycles. The strong lobby in germany against banning aren't the poor, but the rich who want to drive their roaring Porsche till eternity. They literally say that. I can somewhat understand the appeal of an loud…

If it’s really only about the rich, then just tax the heck out of the cars, or better yet the gasoline. If the price of gas includes the full cost of carbon sequestration then sure, why not? It’s still not a great look from the perspective of income inequality, of course.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

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Post by nicoburns » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #451

matsemann wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In much of the world, owning a car at all puts you above "poor people". While owning a car is sadly needed in some parts of the world to get to work or even the stores (US..), it's a massive financial burden for most people. If you care for poor people, thinking about how people can go about their daily lives without spending thousands of dollars each year on owning a car would be the way to go.

If you can afford a car you are not poor. In the US (and Europe) there are almost no poor people. What we call poor are still middle class by world standards.

> If you can afford a car you are not poor

I'm not sure I agree with this. In many parts of the US or Europe, you could easily be in a position where you can afford a car (and need one for work), but cannot afford housing. It's true that you might well still be well off by world standards (a car roof is still a roof), but I think I'd require "food, clean water, clothing and reliable shelter" to be a bare minimum for "not poor".

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

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Post by the_third_wave » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #508

the_third_wave wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate cycles are natural [1]. Please refrain from using terms like denialist , it does nothing to help the discourse. Also, that 'bunch of articles' I sent does support what I said, this being a break in the rising temperature trend. You seem to want to hear much more in what was said, why is that? As to the 'conspiracy with language choices' I think you realise that this is no conspiracy but a simple fact - what u…

> denialist, it does nothing to help the discourse When one party wins by default, they benefit from stalemate-seeking tactics. "Just Asking Questions" unfortunately works very well for this purpose. Dogma poisons the discourse, yes, but so does accidentally extending good faith to a bottomless well of bad faith questions, which has been the conservative playbook on climate change since forever. The counter-strategy…

> In order to have a scientific discussion rather than a political discussion, we need to know your intentions

The truth, freed from ideology. This will be hard to achieve given the enormous amounts of money involved on all sides - from "green new deals" via trillions of € in subsidies to even larger amounts of money on the fossil-fuel-status-quo side. With politicians who have made their careers on either portraying themselves as apostles of Gaia or ensuring the continuous flow of oil, gas and coal - and thus the continuation of an industry which more or less defined whole US states and several countries.

Just because it is hard - and probably impossible - to get the actual truth does not mean I want or need to cave and just follow one of the narratives. Given enough people looking for the actual truth it may become possible to reach it and act upon it but it better be sooner rather than later.

What is your purpose in asking such leading questions by the way? Do you agree that an actual scientific discussion - as opposed to one directed by The Science™ - is the better course? Also, who are the we who would like to know? I speak for myself, not for others. Who do you speak for?

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

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Post by andrewaylett » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

foepys wrote: post #98

mmikeff wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not banning per se, just stopping sales of new. So there will still be plenty of used ICE cars knocking around for a good few years.

Will there be gas stations, though?

Here in the UK, we call them petrol stations. But "gas" is still appropriate, because 15 years ago LPG conversions were all the rage, and every petrol station had gas too.

Nowadays I can only think offhand of a single local retail fuel establishment that will sell you both US and UK "gas".

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

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Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

iSnow wrote: post #261

cultureswitch wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timelines for ICE bans within a decade are ridiculous from a technology and market standpoint and terrible for the environment. The best car technology is the one you don't use much. And we already have decades of cars in good enough condition to be driven weekly rather than daily. EVs will barely scratch the surface of environmental issues with transportation. And they will create a new range of supply problems…

I haven't heard of any country that wants to ban existing ICE cars.

[deleted]

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

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Post by xienze » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #644

xienze wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m afraid these bans get systematically sabotaged by well funded ice lobby groups. They'll be sabotaged by reality. Thinking ICE cars and gas stations will become a fading memory by 2035 is wishful thinking. Politicians get big headlines and praise for proposing ICE bans and such, but as the date draws closer the reality of "OK, maybe we're not quite there yet" sets in and the date will be pushed back again and ag…

They're banning new ICE car sales in 2035: existing ones can continue to run. So the aim would be to mostly phase out ICE cars by something more like 2050-2060 (bearing in the mind the last generation of ICE cars will probably get a slightly extended lifetime to smooth the transition). That seems pretty realistic to me, perhaps with some exceptions for certain niche uses (which would probably be <5% of vehicles).

Sure, I’m mostly addressing the folks in this thread who are musing on whether there will be more than a few gas stations total in the country by 2035…

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

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Post by jeffbee » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

wuming2 wrote: post #476

I do wonder sometimes if scraping the million plus of components, produced and assembled with great care into a ICE car and still relatively new, makes any sense. Re-powering seems no brainer to keep millions of new cars out of the scrapyard. And avoid the environmentally unsustainable production of slightly newer cars. Reusing them whole, engine included, is ideal. If battery re-powering, synthetic gasoline and hydr…

Mass-producing IC engines, even complicated state-of-the-art ones, is exceedingly simple and cheap. Assembling an EV battery is actually pretty damned hard and energy-intensive. This is all reflected in the price. If it were easy to make an EV battery, they would cost less. If it was hard to make an IC engine, there would be no $4500 motorcycles.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

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Post by flavius29663 » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

hoofhearted wrote: post #623

flavius29663 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that seems very unlikely to be honest. Commercial cars are sold first on reliability and operating costs, which is why Americans are shying away from buying cars that have a basic turbo and prefer larger gas engines instead.

This is completely false lol.. Which Americans are shying away from turbo cars exactly? Pretty sure Ford and GM have an entire lineup of fuel efficient turbo cars out right now. Ford has the ecoboost engine line, so I’m confused on what data you are looking at?

Buyers are shying away from them. I was on the market for a truck, and I saw the discussions.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

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Post by derethanhausen » Fri, Apr 21, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

leoedin wrote: post #189

msravi wrote: post #133

I just realized how much energy efficiency is being squeezed out of a Tesla. It's incredible. A normal diesel fueled sedan such as the Chevy Cruze diesel runs at about 31mpg, which is 13.2 km/l or 15.3 km/kg. Diesel has a mind-boggling 12700 Wh/kg energy density[1], which translates to an efficiency of ~827 Wh/km for the Chevy. By contrast, the Tesla Model S, has a ~540 kg battery[2]. At 272 Wh/kg (from the posted ar…

The big reason for this is thermodynamics. A conventional internal combustion engine car has to convert chemical energy to kinetic energy - the absolute best theoretical efficiency of this might be 70%, but in practice it's more like 30%. Electric cars have to pay the same thermodynamic penalty, but they pay it at the power station (In practice, thanks to renewables, not all the electricity used to charge a car will…

The Prius' efficiency comes from much much more than regenerative braking. Part is a focus on good aero and low weight, like many electric cars. But most is from leveraging the electric motors to allow the engine to run at max thermal efficiency (probably a touch above your 30% figure) at nearly all times.

ICEs are most efficient under medium-low RPMs and high load. The electric motors can sustain low speed cruising, letting the engine shut off entirely if it wouldn't be well utilized, and also fill in for high torque demand to keep engine power output lower.