111–120 of 275 posts
If battery growth is exponential, but mining of ore isn't, that's a pretty big red flag imo. Once raw material production hits a wall, prices go back up, profits droop, advancement declines. After a while there'll probably be a new OPEC for batteries. Batteries are here to stay, but the growth rate isn't.
Regarding price, leading manufacturers are already selling at a price below what was always understood as the point where EVs win in terms of economics: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/01/ev-lfp-battery-price-w... The recent price war in China is a testament to that.
> the point where EVs win in terms of economics If ubiquitous and cheap charging infrastructure is not being priced in, which is still a blocker for many. For example, I cannot reasonably run lengths of 110v extension cords down the block to charge a car overnight, and acquiring my own house with a garage is dramatically more expensive than any fuel savings. :p
I used to run extension cords out of windows and across the sidewalk to charge a Fiat 500e.
Chart #2: Top Tier Energy Battery Density vs. Battery Cost. That seems like an odd comparison to me. Is it normal to compare the Top Tier Anything to the Average of another thing? Top Tier Car 0-60 Times vs Average Car Costs? IDK, it doesn't seem to contain any REAL information. Shouldn't the comparison be the costs of the SAME cars and not include cars that aren't top tier? What am I not getting?
Chart 2 definitely seems strange as it appears that batteries are free in 2023
Are these 500 Wh/kg batteries somehow available in powerbank (sub-500g) size? So far the best I found are around 250 Wh/kg (for the whole powerbank).
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Currently used? Probably quite a bit. But usually still a net emissions win for using an EV vs a fossil fuel vehicle even with current grids. Required? None. There's nothing in EV battery production or charging or usage that requires burning fossil fuels. That fossil fuels are a major source of our current energy is part of the problem that we are also working to solve. And mass production of economical batteries is…
a quick check showed about 21 Billion Gallons annually to make 130k tons of lithium batteries are produced. so 273 billion kWh of hydrocarbon fuel burned to make batteries that can hold only 51.5 million kWh of energy. And then roughly a few billion or more to fill them up each year. What year will we make enough solar & wind power to compensate for the 21 billion gallons of fuel?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403212...
Plenty of other papers with similar results. Current total lifecycle emissions are already net negative for EV vs ICE including production of the battery and vehicle, and production of the electricity using the current grid. That margin improves as the grid gets cleaner.
I'm a little surprised by that energy density chart. Who's selling batteries that carry 500 Wh/kg? Those are research prototype numbers; I think that Amprius and the gamma-sulfur people have hit (or passed) that mark. But cars and cellphones have been using the Ni-Mn-Al-Co oxide family of cathodes for a decade. The recent large-scale development has been bringing on LiFePO4 which actually accepts a lower density in e…
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Flight will never be powered by electricity, so you can stop checking. Using synthetic liquid fuels for flight is the only currently-foreseeable path to carbon-neutral, long-haul passenger flight.
Long haul yes, but it's a little known story that regional airlines are on the edge of disaster because: (1) they can't find pilots, (2) manufacturers have stopped making the 50-seat jets that are the mainstay of that business. Airports like ITH are already at the top of the "regional development problems" in third-tier cities and it is not so clear they're going to be able to have service in 20 years the way things…
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> I'd like to see the the energy density of petrol for comparison. Petrol's higher energy density doesn't matter as much as people think. Electric vehicles are around four times as efficient as petrol. In a petrol car, only 20% of the energy is converted to motion. In electric cars, this is around 80% (with some variation dependent on regenerative braking). I wrote about this extensively in a previous article: https:…
That is not even comparing apples to oranges, that is comparing apples to steel. You are correct in that energy density does not matter very much for weight-insensitive generation such as grid-scale generation, but energy density matters for weight-constrained applications such as airplanes and rockets as the poster mentioned. However, assuming that the renewable generation cost curve continues to improve exponential…
This is all very encouraging and in particular batteries role in solar Two interesting data points to that end 1) The "duck curve" for CA is almost neutral - eg the timing imbalance between peak demand and solar power generation - battery utilization is the most straightforward solution here - https://twitter.com/baker_edmund/status/1750644294673748366 2) There has been a massive decline in rooftop solar applications…
Given the dramatically lower costs of utility-scale solar vs. residential rooftop solar, is it not better at a society level for state policy to incentivize utility over residential solar? Utility-scale battery installations likewise should be much cheaper.
- Distribution systems today can only handle some percentage of EV penetration in a given area, not 100%. Charging an EV from the roof skips the grid entirely
- The bulk of the cost is labor and permitting, not the modules themselves. Given that, California requires solar on newly constructed homes
- California updated their net metering program so that ratepayers aren’t subsidizing rooftop solar anymore (in NEM 3.0, homeowners get paid wholesale rates)