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

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

#721

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You need to account for all the weight required to turn the radiation into electricity. That'll make the numbers ... a bit different.

Not necessarily: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...

The GPHS RTG contains 7.8 kilograms of plutonium 238 but masses 57 kg in total. It also generates only 300 watts from that 57 kg package:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPHS-RTG

You'd need about 3 metric tons of them to power one Model 3 cruising at highway speed (assuming ~16 kilowatts continuous power draw).

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

#722
post #399

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Not to mention, policing one large facility for compliance with emissions is much easier than trying to monitor every single one of millions of cars on the road.

It's much easier to regulate millions of nobodies with no power than it is to regulate a single wealthy donor.

Even with a car, you aren’t necessarily regulating millions of individuals - primarily just manufacturers. I suppose there is the odd case where “old joe” removed his catalytic converter and is polluting more than others but that is probably rare.

I don’t get your point on centralization however - more efficient but less robust (just like in software).

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

#723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can continue to use the ICE vehicle you bought in 2034 in the EU until infinity. Sure, if you can find fuel. By 2034 EVs will be enough of the market that gas stations are already closing (remember today new cars are 10 year old used cars, and there is every reason to think EVs will be half of all cars). There is still one on every corner, so you might not see this trend, but it will be in the statistics. By 20…

> Sure, if you can find fuel. Of course you'll find fuel; ICE trucks aren't being banned. You can use their fuel. Might be slightly inconvenient to have to drive to a depot once a month, but people will do it if the economics are right.

This assumes future regulations will allow you to do this. There are already examples of commercial fuels today that sell fuel only to commercial customers at a different rate.

See "red diesel" in the UK - its just plain ole diesel taxed differently for commercial use, but illegal for use in privately owned personal vehicles. It's dyed red to allow its use in private vehicles to be discovered from the discoloration of engine parts etc.

Personally I expect rules on what can be pumped into what will be different by 2045 in a lot of places, and while it might still be possible it may not be so simple.

> https://www.crownoil.co.uk/faq/red-diesel-questions-and-answ...

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

#724
post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they? Other than lithium based batteries getting cheaper per kilogram so that year by year, more battery use cases have switched over from inherently worse chemistries? Even just ten years ago, eneloop were still the hot thing for many applications outside of laptops, mobile phones and the odd Tesla (ten years ago was when Model S was still the fresh new successor to the converted Lotus)

Is eneloop not still very much a thing? Maybe not the brand, but the technology. The vast, vast majority of consumer devices using standardized battery sizes are AA or AAA, and that means NiMH. To go lithium means 18650, and I don't really see much of that happening outside flashlights and other niche products.

Sure, if a device uses the form factor, then eneloop or the same approach by a different brand are even more ahead of pre-eneloop NiMH than they used to be: all the high-current use cases that were the weak spot of eneloop have long migrated to lithium-based.

But AA and AAA are increasingly rare not only because of price but also because of the ubiquity of USB charging, and because of the way the powerbanks that USB charging enabled weakened the "carrying spares" argument for AA a lot.

In essence: yes, the vast majority of consumer devices using standardized battery sizes continue to be AA or AAA (if we can agree in ignoring the ubiquitous CR2032). But costumer devices that use interchangeable standard size batteries have become super niche, at least outside a few fields where you expect years on a set of batteries. To go lithium means going fixed battery (unless you identify with the performance flashlight subculture, again something I very much agree with)

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

#725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the Netherlands, we'd translate 31mpg to "1 per 11". One can drive 11km on 1L of fuel. 1 per 11 is a joke. It's associated with heavy petrol cars from the 80s and 90s, before anybody even attempted efficiency. Even my 15 year old diesel car had an efficiency of 1/22. Adjust you driving style and I'd get 1/25. Range: 1000km, with an ordinary sized tank. It seems Americans haven't even started with efficiency,…

That's why Tesla started in europe. Right?

What does that even mean?

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

#726

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> It is surprisingly difficult to get numbers on how much oil is used to extract, refine and transport oil. Damn, I've never thought about that before. In hindsight that feels like an obvious thing to consider but this is the first time I'm aware of that thought entering my brain. Thank you for provoking the thought. What would be the equivalent consideration on the other side? Would it be something like inquiring in…

This does come up a lot ... for ethanol production. How much fuel is used to produce ethanol is constantly discussed, with some people claiming it is barely break-even or even energy-negative. But yeah, no one then goes on to give equivalent numbers for petroleum.

Always have to note that ethanol production from corn has dubious energy payoff. Switchgrass is definitely energy positive, but lacks a strong lobbying group to provoke similar investment and development.

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

#727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... It's a much longer trend than 2012-2016. I remember 2011, the last time conservatives were playing the "global warming has paused" game, but then oops! It returned to trend. No Ls were acknowledged, of course. What do the radiative flux measurements say this time around? They measure the derivative directly and are upstream of the most chaotic mixing pro…

> It's a much longer trend than 2012-2016 2012-2016 is not the period of warming, it is the period from which the warming trend changed into a cooling trend. Seen over the last century the warming trend is far longer, the most recent one starting somewhere in the beginning of the 70's until the mentioned 2012-2016 frame. After that a slight cooling period followed, taking down the temperature by 0.06°C/yr until 2022.…

Rather than doing chart astrology, do you mind digging up those radiative flux measurements?

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

#728
post #179

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And Uranium-235 about 1GWh/kg EDIT: this is for nuclear fuel enriched to 3% in a normal (not breeder) reactor 35000 MJ per 10g pellet https://whatisnuclear.com/energy-density.html Only a tiny fraction of the total energy is actually used

You need to account for all the weight required to turn the radiation into electricity. That'll make the numbers ... a bit different.

Not to mention that you have to mine and refine a couple of tonnes of ore for every kilogram of refined uranium.

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

#729
post #281

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The urban greens in the previous Swedish government coalition wants to ban fossil-based petrol from being sold starting 2030 - which economically speaking is kind of the same thing.

not if existing ICE vehicles can be sold -- unless they can't, that'd be an incredible waste

Maybe the ban should have specifically stated that all ICE cars must be convertible to EV ten years before the expiry date. DIYers are doing it all the time but not with newer cars as they are too locked down and complicated.

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

#730

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> 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…

> The truth, freed from ideology.

The IPCC reports are one google away.

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