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Nanostructured Li-ion Batteries for Electric Cars
schliz writes "Researchers at the Delft University of Technology are developing nanostructured batteries that are expected to deliver more usage between charges, and shorter charge/discharge times, to mobile consumers within the next five years. The batteries will improve electric and hybrid vehicles, researchers say."
Battery technology will experience a sort of Moore's Law with the demand for hybrid and all-electric vehicles. This is just one of the first stories.
I'm always a bit skeptical of such items till I understand how likely it is to cause a fire in my garage while I'm sleeping or when accelerating away from a stop light. New tech is great, but means not a lot till tested in the real world.
With battery technology, the higher the density, the higher the chances of uncontrolled energy release. When it's safe and fairly cheap, then I'll be really interested.
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Just be careful you don't accidentally swallow it! Or get it stuck in your eye...
Will this patent monopoly on the new tech be used to kill it, just like NiMH batteries were prevented from powering cars by the car and oil corporations?
--
make install -not war
Doesn't that mean the battery life has gone down? I thought that was a bad thing. Can someone please explain?
batteries that are expected to deliver more usage between charges, and shorter charge/discharge times
I believe Sony has perfected the battery with the absolute fastest discharge time. I don't see how this can compete.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Lead Acid batteries?
They have good energy density and can deliver considerable voltage for their size, and we've been using them for a very long time. It seems to me that perhaps someone should try researching different formulas for the acid and the chemistry of the plates.
Sure, they're heavy and there's always the danger of a rupture but they are good at doing what batteries are supposed to do, storing and releasing electricity.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
the link just goes the the computerworld homepage...
and doing a search on their site for the word "battery" yeilds no results...
and upon trying to click it again the site appears to have gone down...
and here I actually wanted to RTFA
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
i hope that these nice batteries could be available to buy retail or something like that. I have been wanting to build an electric roadster but access to good batteries is the problem.
Balderdash!
Lead Acid Batteries must always be stored in a charged state. If the battery is left in a discharged state, a condition known as Sulfation occurs which makes charging the battery again difficult.
"Never try to tell everything you know. It may take too short a time."
Yep. I'll believe there are advances in hybrids happening when you can actually go to a dealer in the US and buy a plugin hybrid without having to mod it yourself.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Effectively it is about a 35AH battery with a total energy delivery of 12V * 35AH = 420WH. The equivalent LiIon batteries would weigh, I guess, around 4kg with packaging. As a result, lead acid batteries are unsuited to any automotive use except those where they can substitute for ballast, such as boats and powered wheelchairs where the batteries help lower the centre of gravity.
Quite a lot of research has gone into the lead/peroxide cycle, especially given the constant desire to make them smaller and more reliable. It hasn't been hugely successful. You can have high discharge rates and long life at the expense of much more weight and much higher cost, but the nature of the cycle itself (the production and destruction of large amounts of lead peroxide) makes it hard to design a system that can handle many charge/discharge cycles without very large and heavy storage arrays.
Pining for the fjords
It's a not too well known fact that, in the beginning, a lot of things *were* actually powered by electricity, *before* something else took it over. That something else wasn't necessarily better then the batteries they'd replace, but, sadly, history is full of examples where a less good alternative wins over the market (betamax vs VHS, anyone?). Somtimes electricity did win (it replaced gas for lightening homes/streets) but sometimes, alas, it didn't.
The same was true for cars. Many would think cars were always powered by diesel/petrol, but nothing is further from the truth. In fact, there were many fuels used to drive cars when they were first developped, and electricity-driven cars were actually a rather considerable percentage of cars. But then petrol came and took it over for reasons that are unclear (it has been speculated that it might had something to do with the sound, strangely enough; it made for a more impressing 'look at me, here I am!' - not unimportant to the late-victorian elite of that time. Heck, even today half of the gadgets are bought to show off (blu-ray, HD-DVD, anyone?). In that time, battery- or oildriven cars were in fact ahead of the petrol ones, but that rapidly changed the more popular the petrol-using cars became. In a few decades, the rest was all but gone.
If that hadn't happend, it is obvious we would be FAR ahead of our current state of developement where batteries and electricity-storage is concerned (just like petrol-injection has come a long way since the 19thy century). Just imagine the state of technology now on the same scale as petrol has improved, and all what we invent now (including the nano-tubes) would probably have been developed ages ago. It would have led to efficiencies and yields we can only dream of today. And also imagine the impact it would have had on other areas; a lot less - or none at all - CO2 from cars (and maybe the petrol-industry as a whole would not have reached the peak it has today) and all the problems associated with that would not exist (maybe even les wars)! (Arguably, one would - maybe - have had a environmental problems with acids and such, from the batteries; in that respect, vegetable oil would have been best, perhaps.)
It's funny (well...) to think how one little thing in our history can lead to such huge (and possibly devastating) consequences for humanity more then a century later.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
You are making the assumption that all energy is produced from combustion...!! In the short term nuclear is probably the only energy source that is capable of ramping up quickly.. Solar is a good technology, but I am not sure if there is sufficient energy production from a long ROI. The question then becomes is what price will drop cells drop to if they are produced in mass quantities. It will be hard to get consumers to adopt solar cells on a large scale when there is still a 20-30 year payback. So the government would have to step in and subsidize them until they dropped significantly in price. Another factor to consider is that a lot of home owners have borrowed to the hilt so they are unlikely to take out big loans. Another factor to consider is that interest rates are likely to rise. The more likely scenario is that corporations will adopt green energy. Personally I don't understand why natural lighting has not caught on more. The Timkin museum in San Diegohas used a skylight for years and the natural light is simply beautiful.
Personally, I am betting that the UltraCacpacitors will kill the batteries. Two that I am intrigued with are EEStor and MIT. EEStor is horribly sketchy, but backed by KliensPerkins (a major silicon valley VC). They have a long history of backing some major players. In addition, MIT's work appears headed in the right direction. The advantage of all this, is that this would allow home owners to recharge their cars at night and then use these cars either for driving OR for powering the home. This would give us the electrical storage capacity that we need for handling alternative power.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In about 5 years we will have easy cyborgization sets, holographic tv, batteries that run your laptop for week between charges, fuel cells, 80 core processors, actually good hybrid/electric vehicles, good speech recognition engines, solar cells with 90% efficiency, solar cells with $5/square meter, and flying cars. Oh I forgot, also vista will be after sp2, and running stable and smooth on then normal computers. But It will be always currentYear()+5 :/
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
As for [electric] (Read energy producing/distilling) powerplants/refinaries that produce energy and store it in liquid form (i.e. NOT electricity which IMO is not suitable for moving vehicles as per reasons stated in my previous post) for portable use/consumption in moving vehicles then yes, i am making THAT asumption.
...[electricity] produced by environmentally friendly means (IE not oil, not dams which destroy vast eco systems, not wind farms which kill birds) ...nor, say, solar cells, because most are sealed and won't allow poor spiders to nest in them?!?Watch out, your computer screen is surrounded by something called reality. Common-sense may come in handy should you chose to visit it sometime.
The Impact on the environment is in processing/refining materials to get to the desired end product.
Recycle all of the silicon you want. You're still making a heck of an impact turning raw materials into a purified silicon wafer. Same goes with any highly processed item. Energy into fabrication of materials = harm to the environment in general... I think this is what he meant by impact from the specialized metals in these caps.
I agree partly, i give you that extracting the raw materials can be very harmful, but the energy required shouldn't be harmful. Still, we've thrown so much material away now, should we still be short on materials ? I think much money is to be made by 'harvesting' landfills.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Nanoscale Lithium battery technology leads me to think A123 cells. The cell from this startup are already on the market, powering handheld screwdrivers and model airplanes. They use a patented LiFePo4 reaction(or was there some sulfur in it too, dunno) and their process is much more ideal for automotive transport than NiMH(not enough energy density) or LiPo(Lithium polymer, it's what's making laptops go up in flames the last few years). LiPo has the highest energy density, but is very unsafe when punctured in a crash(or when overcharged): all energy in them will release in a short time, possibly causing fire as the decomposing polymer inside escapes as a flammable gas. The other drawback is that they have a very short lifespan: Max 500 charge-cycles (better count on 100-200) or 3 years (cells degenerate even when not in use). Thus far LiPo cells are prohibitively expensive, and no hybrid owner would like to fork over a few K every year for new batteries.
the A123 process is much more resilient wrt to abuse: you can run them down completely unlike LiPo or lead-acid, the stand overcharging much better, and if punctured they don't go up in flames. The company rates their cells as being able to deliver 2000 cycles, which is much more than lipo, NiMH, NiCad or Lead-acid.
And as far as I know, they have no ties to Delft University, but I have not read TFA yet...
They are here.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Toshiba announced research on a technology for fast charging li-ions over two years ago. This was using nanotech materials for an improved anode (maybe cathode too), enabling fast charging (80% charge in one minute) and long life (99% capacity after 1,000 charges). A similar approach was also annouced, about the same time, by Altair Technologys in Reno. It's all about increasing the effective surface area of the anode, and perhaps making it from stronger stuff.
In traditional Li-ion cells, a big wear factor is that the anode can form a parasitic battery with the electrical contact, causing the terminal to eventually wear out, faster as you approach full cycling the battery. Heat is also a factor, in both terminals and the full cell... the higher internal resistance of the Li-ion vs. NiMH (or better still, NiCAD) limits peak power, and also increases the risk of damage or, particularly in quesitonably made cells, explosions.
Dramatic improvements in both of these are necessary to enable practical (in a commerical sense) pure electric vehicles (BEV). There's no conspiracy necessary... traditional NiMH cells are a problem for full electrics.. which the actual reason none of these cars have been successful. Not to mention the expense... the Toyota EV-RAV4, for example, cost $42,000 and gave you about 100 miles on a charge.. and that with Toyota still selling them at a loss (as they did in the early days of the Prius, too).
In a hybrid, the batteries are only partially cycled (my 2003 Prius runs the NiMH cells over 40% of their capacity range; Toyota extended this to about 60% on the models starting in 2004), and that keeps them very long lived. Natrually, better batteries make a better hybrid, but the fact my Toyota can only go about 2-3 miles on a full charge doesn't impact its general use; the issues around battery technology today make the BEV a small niche product.
But the energy density is just too low even full cycling NiMH to make a BEV with mass appeal... most people would demand at least 200-300 miles of range, charging times on-the-road similar to that of petrol fueling (not the minimum of 15-30 minutes you'll have with today's cells), and long life (full cycling NiMH, they're good for about 500-1000 charges).
Once you have a higher density cell that doesn't wear out and can be charged in under 5 minutes, full EVs will be practical enough for a mainstream automaker to POSSIBLY launch a full production car, not just an experiment. This is critical technology for improving hybrids as well, and keep in mind that all practical FCEVs will also be hybrids (fuel cells suck at peak power demands, they like to be slow and steady, so you need a battery or supercapacitor to enable the peaks).
-Dave Haynie
If the car is fully electric it requires A LOT of new infrastructure (which is especially problematic in big open spaces where caves are more common than your "modern world")
If the car is a hybrid it's simply less efficient than diesel at the moment. Advances in battery power will improve efficiency, but it will not remove the need for petrol.
I see nothing wrong with electric cars, but with the current state of technology +5 years is not going to bring about a revolution, hence my irritation of this [false] advertisement. It's just a lot of hype about nothing of consequence and everyone joins in the "Hi Ho, it's off to greener earth we go".
As for the "tailpipe" argument, I fully acknowledge your point of view and the proof behind it. I do not, however, believe that building the necessary infrastructure for this is feasible in the foreseeable future (read my life time). Not all of us live in big cities and/or "modern world" countries. It takes 5 years to design a power plant, let alone build it and the supporting infrastructure and agree with all the relevant parties who/what the said plant will be supporting. A car manufacturer is simply not going to make something for less than 10% of it's customer base unless it's a PR stunt or it has money to burn.
Take a reasonably developed country like Russia. It has huge CO2 production, there's no way in hell you'd get anyone there to use an electric car. In USA where people drive to their neighbours, you still have vast distances to cover. A car that has 300 mile range and takes 2 hours to charge is not feasible. Who will buy this car? City dwellers? Where is the need? Most of the people I know in cities don't own a car... How will the charge time reduce? Make a hybrid, charge it with petrol and we've gone full circle.
In closing I'd like to state that in a perfect world I would love it if we would start building the said infrastructure for electric powered [everything] using the most up to date and efficient technology available at the time. Be it nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal or gravity as long as it's renewable. But we don't live in a perfect world and it takes a long time to take theory and put it into practice.
Of course no one really cares about reality and just wants to get on the environmentally high horse and pipe on about electric cars. Show me some news about something actually practical, like someone developing a way for people to stop commuting to work.
Let's assume an average cruising consumption of about 15kw for a small car. At 60mph with a 300 mile range, that's 75kwh. To charge those cells in 5 minutes, assuming an 80% efficiency, will need 75 * 12 * 1.25 =~ 1.1 Megawatts. At 440V, even with a 3-phase charger, that's over 1000 amps. At 11KV it's a more reasonable 100A, but the weight of the inverter gear and the shielded connector in the car is considerable and you are going to spend rather more than 5 minutes padlocking the interlocks and cross checking before and after charge. At 440V the main issue will be the weight of the cables. Three cores of around 400mm cross section each are rather heavy.
It's possible to imagine a world in which fuel stations supply exchange cells, but given the natural nervousness of most drivers when close to empty, it's unlikely to be practical or cost effective.
The model is wrong. You have to imagine a world in which car parks have charging stations that charge at reasonable rates, as do hotels and houses. You will need a general beefing up of the electricity distribution network, and you will need plenty of nuclear, solar and wind energy sources. And people will have to plan maybe a little further ahead than they do at present. Long trips will mandate an overnight stop. Probably a good thing as the only accidents I have ever had were after driving too long in a day.
On that model with a more reasonable 10-hour charge, the necessary charging rate is about 9KW - still a heavy cable, but with a socket about the size and complexity of the sort used for portable machines in factories and for boat shorepower.
Just don't try to use your wind turbine. In our location, to run my small car on its current, fairly low usage cycle, I would need a 6M diameter turbine on a 40M pylon, and I suspect the neighbours would object.
Pining for the fjords
I would if you could get a nuclear reactor small enough.
Lithium doesn't really pack *much* more energy density (in terms of volume), but does do it with less weight. That's terrific.
But while lithiums handle deep discharge much better than lead-acid batteries, they're still not as good as NiCad or NiMh. They're also a lot more expensive. And, probably the best argument against them... look at the fires that happen when laptop (or even CELL PHONE) lithium cells are damaged or shorted. Now, imagine a car packing a thousand times more getting in an accident... Sure, you'll say, they can put over-current protection on them. But the batteries in laptops have the same protection, you have to think of *damaged* batteries.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
I agree with your point of view, but I made my first post to illustrate that a new battery technology that is theoretically marginally better than current technology, a technology that may or may not be available in 5 years time should not be advertised as the solution for EVs (as the original article and all of its kind seem to [always] suggest). I am NOT against EVs, I am simply against the hype associated with battery tech.
Every time I read about improvements in traction batteries I get angry at the way they missed their opportunity. If they had just kept manufacturing the EV-1 and selling it to the long waiting list of buyers, they could be riding the wave of improving battery technology.
Probably 80% of the cars I see on the road during that drive are commuting less than a hundred miles round trip.
To date, I've seen exactly one EV-1 on the road.
It was about five years ago that I saw my first Prius on the road. It was two years ago that I bought mine. I used to honk and wave to the other Priuses I saw. Now I can't even count the number I see on my commute.
If GM had developed the Prius in 2001, they probably would have cancelled them and crushed them in 2002 for "lack of demand."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Then there's the issue of all the new infrastructure that needs to be put in for electric cars.
What on earth are you talking about? I know where to get electricity. And since hybrids still ultimately run on gasoline, I know where to get gasoline. Where is the hydrogen production and distribution system for my friendly local hydrogen station you are advocating?
I have to disagree with your leading statement. The energy density of lithium-ion batteries today is adequate for making practical electric cars. Of course more is always better, and I'm optimistic that it can be improved further -- but energy density is no longer the big sticking point that it was.
The little two-seat Tesla Roadster with a 250-mile range has been demonstrated, and multiple companies are now working on more practical four-door cars which can have a 200-mile driving range. This doesn't require any breakthroughs, and it will get you "to the next town" with very few exceptions.
The critical areas that need improvement are cost and service life. Tesla Motors are projecting a life span of five years or 100,000 miles for their carefully managed battery pack. That's much better than the two years you stated. I think with the research that is ongoing, service life will further improve over the next several years. (And GM are betting on this happening to make their Chevy Volt concept workable.)
I think the requirement that cars be "refueled quickly" is overstated. The longer the range becomes, the less you need to refuel or recharge it quickly. With a dependable 200-mile driving range between charges, and the ability to recharge overnight at home, most people won't need to stop at a charging station mid-trip all that often. If you can get the range up to about 500 miles, then rapid charging would become moot for the great majority of people. (At least speaking for myself, I don't think I've ever driven more than 300 miles in a day's time, and I wouldn't want to drive more than 500 in a day if I could possibly avoid it.)
I have looked into flywheel storage technology. It looked promising several years ago, but battery technology advanced faster and has left flywheels behind. Notable problems you have with flywheels are: energy density, energy losses while the flywheel is spinning idle, and safety concerns about its failure modes.
Indeed.
Nothing... unless you live near a mine or a smelter.
http://www.semissourian.com/story/1195543.html
Enivornmentally freindly? I guess so if it's not in your backyard.
Quick and dirty rebuttal. . . .
1. fast recharge isn't needed if driving range becomes long enough (say 300 to 500 miles)
2. electric cars pollute much less than gasoline cars, due to their energy efficiency
3. tens of millions of electrics can be charged using off-peak power without building any new power plants
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5kkU23bfEc
1. Faster recharge will be your selling point, long recharge = no sale no matter how much it doesent matter.
2. Please look up "dust-to-dust" or "Cradle-to-Grave" energy consumption of electric or hybrid cars compared to, say, range rovers and I think you will find that no matter how "clean" the end procut is, the production method makes it a LOT less attractive. There was an article not too long ago about a toyota battery production factory being under investigation for producing too much polution. Here is an example after a quick search:http://www.motoring.co.za/index.php?fArticl eId=3528666&fSectionId=1645&fSetId=381. And here is the factory link:http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/arti cles/news/news.html?in_article_id=417227&in_page_i d=1770
3. Yes but tens of millions electrics dont use as much energy as a car.
At the end of the day electric batteries for use in car are not and will not be up to par for mainstream use for a very very long time. Hydrogen on the other hand may provide some more efficiency than petrol in the long run. More efficiency = more environmentaly friendly.
Most people I know in the United States have at least two vehicles (or sometimes, even three). They commute in one, and use another for trips. The car used to commute with can easily be electrified.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The actual stored energy in Lithium is currently 20 TIMES greater by your own link.
Don't confuse power density with energy density. Power density is how fast you can discharge and almost a non-issue with any technology.
Energy density is how much actual energy you have stored and is the key factor, that ultracaps are behind on by an order of magnitude (20 times currently).
If all the theoretical projections make it into practice ultracaps will only halfway catch up with lithiums garden variety lithiums that exist today.
Pipe dream until that happens.
Every time a discussion on batteries comes up, someone brings up ultracapacitors as the savior wonder technology. Then they use power and energy densities interchangeably.
Power densities (KW/Kg) for electric cars are all but irrelevant for current technologies. All power density reflects is how fast you can discharge. For any battery containing sufficient energy density, there will be adequate power density. Any time you see power density being highlighted it is a red herring attempt to distract from the fact that energy density is poor (batteries or ultracaps).
Energy densities (KWh/Kg) are critical, this is how much stored energy you have and will determine range, and this is where even the best ultra capacitor are an order of magnitude behind. Your 40lb hybrid battery becomes a 400lb ultracapacitor to store the same energy. Hardly practical. Or that 200lb battery for a pure electic car, becomes a 2000lb ultracap.
Now there have been long on talk theoretical claims (EEstor) of catching up on the energy density, but NOTHING has been shown. Until someone delivers something with an almost order of magnitude increase in energy density, ultracaps are simply not suitable for driving electric cars.
It would be great if this could be delivered, but so far, I will believe when I see it, seems to be the best response.
I think research in this area is valuable, but I wouldn't sink my money into investing in hype. Pay attention to the energy density and ignore the power density.
1. Okay. . . You think people simply won't buy the cars if they can't recharge quickly. I don't think most people will be hung up on that issue, particularly as the range-per-charge increases. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this point -- or wait and see what the marketplace decides.
:)
2. Electric cars have potentially a much longer service life than gasoline-powered cars, due to the simplicity of the electric motor. If the car lasts twice as long, then the "dust to dust" energy consumption (per mile driven) should improve considerably. Also, lithium-ion batteries use much less toxic materials than lead-acid batteries and will be recycled.
3. I don't understand what you mean by that?? My point was that the electric grid we have today can support tens of millions of electric cars. There is no need to construct new power plants or lay out new power lines to support them.
And getting back to 4, the video you couldn't watch. . . It shows a Tesla Roadster blasting around a frozen lake in Sweden while the temperature is -30F. Check it when you get a chance! It's a thing of beauty.
As for hydrogen. . . I'm not optimistic about it. It's much less efficient than a battery-electric vehicle, and the whole hydrogen distribution infrastructure has to be built. I'm not against hydrogen research, and I'm not against research into flywheels or compressed air or any other idea. They should all get their chance. However, I think hydrogen has been over-promised; there has been too much hyperbole.
I think biofuels have a lot of potential if they can get away from food crops and move to algae-derived or cellulose-derived fuels.
No; you misread the article. It said that current commercial DLC's were at 6Wh/kg; then it went on to say that the technology in the paper offered 60Wh/kg, which is 1/2 LION, not 1/20th. Also 300,000 charge cycles. You just needed to read one paragraph further. I encourage you to do so.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I have heard theoretical claims like this before. EEstor who was supposed to supply complete ultra cap systems to power electric cars last year. They still haven't offered so much as a single cell for testing. Not even a small one off.
In theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice they aren't.
Realize they are talking about a theoretical order of magnitude improvement in energy density. I would love it if true, but often such things never see the light of day when rubber meets the road.
Nowhere has anyone yet to demonstrate a capacitor anywhere close in energy density to a garden variety lithium battery. I will certainly take notice if/when they do. As will the world. Capacitors with battery like energy density is a world changing event (once affordable).
There have been zero demonstration of the real world viability of these theoretical calculations. I suspect nothing will happen anytime soon, despite hype to the contrary, but I would be quite happy to be proved wrong.
In the next 5 years. It's always in the Next 5 Years. I should live so long.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I saw a post on ViewATron.com about this that looked like a protest. Gas guzzeler mercenaries are finding lots of jobs these days - I think the oil companies are scared.
Why not recharge them wirelessly while driving?
Firefly Energy is building foam-core lead-acid batteries that claims to have energy densities as high as current generation NiMH batteries at much less weight and at 1/10th the cost.
Dog is my co-pilot.
"If the car is a hybrid it's simply less efficient than diesel at the moment" Hello, why not hybrid diesels? The two technologies are not mutually exclusive. I believe GM is working on a vehicle which uses the engine to power the batteries only (no drive train), thus allowing the engine to run at peak efficiency (vs. running at various RPMs). I can't remember if the engine (generator) is diesel or gasoline - but it'd be a perfect candidate for diesel.
Has anyone noticed that Altairnano has already done this and their battery will last 20 years! http://www.altairnano.com/markets_amps.html
One thing that most people don't notice, these electric cars are 'greener' by neccessity, because A) you can't go nearly as far on a charge in the latest and greatest 92kUSD monstrosity that seats 2 and has no storage space to speak of as you can in a 20 year old truck on a tank of gas, and B) these things HAVE to be more efficient because they store about a gallon of gas worth of energy. Even if you're burning something twice as polluting, you're much better off. Of course, you're inconvenienced as hell, and you're driving a vehicle with no balls that can't make it to the next town(and before anyone says anything, for $92k, I'm buying a chinese boy to rickshaw me around), but you ARE greener.
It's been a long time.
I agree completely. The internal combustion engine and a liquid fuel is the only way we're going to actually be able to implement anything. It's a wonderful dream to think that someday you'll replace all those 40 year old cars and trucks that still use good old petrol, but the reality of the matter is that only the richest 1% of the richest populations could possibly afford what passes for a semi-usable EV these days(Wow! 92,000USD for a tesla roadster? Why not just spend 90,000 on carbon credits and drive a beat up old cavelier? You'll be carbon neutral for the rest of your life!). On the other hand, just about everyone owns a car, and that car can burn gaslike substances, so it makes sense to take all the infastructure that exists and turn it into something that can inexpensively put people into green territory.
I like my truck. It's an old beater, but you know what? In -40, it got me to work. Every time.
It's been a long time.