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We May Not Have Enough Minerals To Even Meet Electric Car Demand (jalopnik.com)
Citing two reports from Reuters and Bloomberg, Jalopnik reports on the scarcity of metals necessary for electric cars. From the report: [W]hile demand for nickel keeps increasing, half the world's nickel supply is too low in quality to use for car batteries. All of which is going to have seismic effect on the world's suppliers. In short: There will be winners and losers, and the winners will be the ones with the highest-grade stuff -- not unlike, I suppose, the illicit drugs market. "Some of the biggest producers of the higher-grade ores, including BHP Norilsk Nickel, Vale and Sumitomo Corp, are moving quickly to take advantage and seal long-term supply deals with battery producers," reports Reuters. "Among those losing out would be lower-grade nickel mines like Cerro Matoso in Columbia, owned by South32 Ltd and Glencore's Koniambo in New Caledonia, as well as Anglo American's mines in Brazil producing ferronickel."
What of cobalt? Bloomberg sent a writer and photographer to Cobalt, Ontario, about 300 miles north of Toronto, to find out. The town, which began life as a silver town, also is believed to have some cobalt, though no one's really found much yet. The search for a new source of cobalt isn't taking place in just Cobalt, Ontario, of course, as mining companies worldwide try to capitalize on the our electric car future. But the search is ramping up as the world's biggest source of cobalt -- the Democratic Republic of Congo, where about half of all cobalt comes from -- is increasingly unstable, making car manufacturers nervous and cobalt all the more valuable.
What of cobalt? Bloomberg sent a writer and photographer to Cobalt, Ontario, about 300 miles north of Toronto, to find out. The town, which began life as a silver town, also is believed to have some cobalt, though no one's really found much yet. The search for a new source of cobalt isn't taking place in just Cobalt, Ontario, of course, as mining companies worldwide try to capitalize on the our electric car future. But the search is ramping up as the world's biggest source of cobalt -- the Democratic Republic of Congo, where about half of all cobalt comes from -- is increasingly unstable, making car manufacturers nervous and cobalt all the more valuable.
These aren't minerals, but elements.
The ore which they elements may be extracted from are minerals - several different kinds, none of which are mentioned in TFS.
The elements themselves are not rare. It''s just a matter of paying for the extraction. It won't make batteries hard to find, just expensive.
We simply developed improved technology to recover and refine the oil that was left between the mantle and the surface, and future generations of humans may discover recoverable quantities of petroleum products in the mantle.
All we know for sure, is that the earth's most intelligent species is ever more clever in a crisis.
Short supplies of nickel and rare earth metals? Increased profit margins for successful innovation? We'll be roping asteroids at some future price point.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I guess they expect that the groups mining the high-quality nickel will serve the battery industry *and* all other nickel-using industries? Because that seems dumb, like even a middle-schooler could probably figure out that the high-end nickel will go to expensive high-end uses, and the prices of low-end nickel will rise because the high-end nickel is no longer available for low-end uses.
But that's just me, I'm some weirdo who doesn't even feel the need to tie nickel prices to illicit drugs for a headline.
I have a hard time believing we are out of accessible nickel in the crust - maybe it's not economically competitive at this time, like tar sands weren't 40 years ago, but I think it's still there.
However, as the cost of extracting high quality nickel from the crust increases, at some point it will be cost effective to source it from space rocks. Like solar power in the 1970s, we're not there... yet.
Stop wasting this stuff (it might be useful for something more important in the future) on consumable car batteries and go straight for hydrogen. There's a massive supply of it in the wet stuff.
Car batteries are hardly "consumables", you know. The recycling costs of these elements is certainly lower than the cost to dig them out of the ground and refine them. If their price increases enough to make a hydrogen system financially viable, the batteries already being used will be fairly "mined" for the valuable materials.
Maybe a better thing to do is to have a diesel or gasoline engine in the vehicle to generate electricity for the motors that provide propulsion, like a train engine or cruise ship.
US nickels have an (illegal) melt value of $0.041...so store some. if nickel goes up, great. if not, still worth $0.05.
Would you really miss it? Can you point to it on a map?
Just strip mine the whole thing, problem solved!
Cerro Matoso is in Colombia.
half the world’s nickel supply is too low in quality to use for car batteries.
1. There is plenty of nickel in the planet's crust.
2. Since nickel is an element, it can be refined into pure nickel with the application of chemistry.
3. All the elements in batteries can be extracted and reused, it's just a matter of chemistry.
Consider aluminum for a moment: despite being extremely abundant, it's rarely found in it's elemental state (which is why it used to be valued more than gold). Then we figured out how to extract it and now it's dirt cheap.
This is just click-bait alarmist bullshit.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
My bet is on Aluminum batteries for the long run. Nearly perfect charge storage. Plenty of it. Totally recyclable. Lightweight. Won't corrode the container. Doesn't lose charge over time (much).
If you think it's bad for batteries, how about the platinum they need for the PEM membranes in fuel cells? While the required amount has been reduced it has not been eliminated and as far as I can tell no suitable substitute has been found that reacts with both hydrogen and oxygen to catalyze the reaction. Also, over time the PEM membranes break down and lose platinum into the water. Hydrogen fuel cells are dead, except in Japan where the government is pushing it heavily. The materials used in batteries are not consumed and are readily recycled.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Robert Murray-Smith has an interesting Youtube channel where he's doing all sorts of amazing things with graphene and other forms of carbon, including building an all carbon battery.
We might not need any metal (not even for the plates) in a few years time.
I thought we moved from NiMH batteries to Lithium ion in cars. Only the lowly no EV range hybrids use nickel. Correct me if I am wrong.
Now if only battery manufacturers would think of this now and start building rockets and planning longer ranged space missions...
While it doesn't make sense to mine landfills for just this stuff, it might make sense to mine landfills for this and other materials. Pity we really kinda suck at recycling.
I'm surprised that the Sudbury region of Ontario isn't mentioned - the town was built on nickel (there's even a giant Canadian nickel coin monument).
Does this mean that the Ontario nickel isn't high enough quality? Couldn't it be refined to meet the needs of the battery manufacturers?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Better build more probes.
Ah, got it. So 1/2 to 1/3rd the wall-to-wheels efficiency of an EV isn't bad enough for you; you want 1/5th the wall-to-wheels efficiency with a hydrogen ICE.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Except that they don't take an evening to charge. The Model 3, for example, charges at about 420 mph in the bottom half of its SoC on Tesla superchargers. And according to EPA docs it's capable of taking up to 525A, which is more like 700-800mph peak.
Yes, they take an evening to charge at home, but what does that matter? You take ten seconds to plug in, and then you don't think any more about it; your car is full the next morning.
As for weight: the Model 3 SR is slightly lighter than average for its class. The LR is heavier than average but far from the heaviest. Either way, there's nothing excessively heavy about them.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
We require more minerals.
> all warming is a result of data manipulation by IPCC
Are you suggesting the IPCC controls the climate via spreadsheets?
In other news, the author of the article is full of it and really, really clueless of how things actually work. He seems to be completely unaware that technologies get refined over time and that this happens particularly when there is high demand for a good produced by a technology.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Nickel is not required for many Li-Ion formulations. It makes batteries that have the highest power density however it's not the most durable formulation.
Lithium Iron Phosphate ("LFP", LiFePO4) is the formulation used in the Segway. Note the complete absence of Nickel.
Lithium Manganese Oxide ("LMO", LiMn2O4) is another used for electric vehicles that has no Nickel.
I have seen sponsored posts on FB for companies trying to sell investments in Nickel with this same threat that it's needed for electric vehicle market. It's not. Scam.
Batteries have problems that cannot be solved, the primary are weight and time to recharge.
You statement is about as dumb as those of the article. If you take theoretical battery energy densities (theoretical maximum recharge rates are basically unlimited), you will find that are massively better than what is needed. If you look at batteries that can actually be manufactured at this time, they are below what is needed for many applications, but there is no sane reason to believe there will be no improvements. Your "cannot" only shows you have no clue what you are talking about. Now, if we had theoretical maximum energy densities and recharge times that were too low, you would have a point, but that is most definitely not the case.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The elements in used batteries won't evaporate to nothing. Of course, as more and more batteries are needed as the number of electric cars increase, some of the supply of the necessary elements can be obtained from recycled batteries. Recycled batteries may never meet demand, but after a long time the supply may meet much of the demand. Look at the recycling of lead acid batteries to provide the necessary lead to make new batteries.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
But for the electric motors. https://www.greencarreports.co...
A little offtopic, but: Columbia? WTF? The name of my fucking country is Colombia! with an O
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
That's exactly what Elon Musk is doing.............
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They don't know how to read these articles and understand the words that aren't directly-related to the vehicle itself. They are essentially board-level grease monkeys, not component-level grease monkeys. And this type of reporting demonstrates it very clearly.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Miles per range per hour of charging?
no suitable substitute has been found
This is the big "gotcha" in technological advancement. Some of the things we do work solely because of some unique property of a particular element for which there is no substitute. This is where the laws of supply and demand break down. Normally increasing price causes additional supply to be produced, but what happens when there simply is no additional supply to be had no matter the price?
Exactly. I'm not driving a full electric yet, but I used no gasoline today, and I'm charging at home from a 20A 120V socket. My car is already fully charged after today's driving.
And it doesn't take 10 seconds to plug in, it's maybe three if I'm being slow about it..
I suspect at some point we will have hydrogen fuel cells.
What? We already have them. Oh, you mean in cars. That's not happening. Hydrogen is very difficult to store and transport, unless bound chemically to something else. I'll get back to that.
The storage of the hydrogen is likely to be the killer app for carbon nanotech, as we don't want to substitute one waste of metals for another.
The best way we have to store hydrogen now is when bound to something else. Water works well to "store" hydrogen, as in being bound to an oxygen, but that's not much for a fuel. Binding hydrogen to a nitrogen or carbon works well as a fuel though. There's a reason why there is so much research into fuel cells that can run on methane and methanol, it's easier to solve the problem of extracting the hydrogen from these chemicals than to store pure hydrogen. The great thing about storing hydrogen by binding it to a carbon, we've been using hydrogen bound to carbon as fuel for a very long time. If we can make hydrogen cheap enough to use as a fuel then we can bind it to carbon and use it immediately as a fuel, no fuel cells needed.
The hydrogen can be generated in situ at home or the filling station with wind or solar power, so no dangerous tanks like with gasoline.
If you think that handling hydrogen is easier and safer than handling gasoline then I'm staying very far away from you. The hydrogen tanks will not be eliminated, the car has one. The car will need one if the fuel cells are going to propel the car.
Also, if you think that wind and solar is going to work for filling up a car for a daily driver then I suggest you check your math. Someone did do the math and it's not an easy problem to solve.
http://withouthotair.com/
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
http://i.imgur.com/axJmn.gif
I also believe that we will not run out of oil any time soon. One reason to believe this is because we are seeing more efficient uses of it worldwide. One example is not burning it for electricity when there are other sources of energy far more suited for it, saving the oil for transportation. Saudi Arabia has learned this.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sau...
Saudi Arabia plans on building more than 17 GW of nuclear energy capacity by 2032. That's roughly 100 MW of nuclear power capacity built per month for a nation, from a nation with roughly 1/10th the population and economic output of the USA. For the USA to do this means 1 GW of nuclear power capacity built per month. If they can do that then we can do that.
The interesting thing about that 1 GW per month calculation is that this is also about the same electrical capacity we'd need to add to keep up with planned closures of current nuclear and coal power plants. That's not adding capacity, that's just (barely) keeping even.
Natural gas is cheap now, which is the primary source of added electrical capacity now in the USA. What happens when natural gas isn't so cheap any more? Are we going to start building nuclear power plants like Saudi Arabia?
I know someone is ready to come back with a reply that we can go to wind and solar for our electricity, and that we can use batteries to make these unreliable energy sources reliable. Then we just get back to the problem pointed out in the article, a shortage of materials for making batteries. What happens when batteries start to get expensive? Are we going to go to nuclear power then?
What materials do we need to build a nuclear power plant? Just about the same materials for coal or natural gas, or about 1/10 the materials needed for the same capacity of wind or solar. If we have the material to build enough wind and solar to meet future energy needs then we have enough material to meet our future energy needs 10 times over with nuclear power.
America won't run out of coal, oil, or natural gas because we will have moved a large part of our energy production to nuclear long before we run out of them. If we don't move to nuclear power then we will be buying oil from a nuclear powered Saudi Arabia, which is just saying we'll be using Saudi Arabian nuclear power to power the American economy. Of all the places on Earth to build solar power I'd think Saudi Arabia would be very high on that list. I'm sure they have been and still will use solar power, but they are jumping in big on nuclear power now. That should be a clue for Americans that think we should avoid nuclear power here.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I suspect at some point we will have hydrogen fuel cells.
What? We already have them. Oh, you mean in cars. That's not happening.
Hydrogen is a dumb fuel, but it's already happening. You can lease the Honda Clarity FCV in California and last I heard, they were giving away up to $15k in free fuel every year. Honda and GM have a partnership which is supposed to make hydrogen fuel cells affordable in the next generation. While Honda is putting vehicles on the road and getting acquainted with the issues involved in putting hydrogen fuel cell cars in the hands of customers, GM is putting their efforts into a military program involving modular vehicles with multiples of the same cells that will go into road vehicles. The military wants it because the vehicles are very quiet, and because our soldiers tend to spend most of their time in the desert and the fuel cell produces drinkable water, and GM's system is set up to capture that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's no "Mr. Fusion", but a brit by the name of Robert Murray-Smith has a series of processes to turn everyday trash into carbon, graphetize it and turn it into cheap batteries that rival lithium ion.
Here is his latest update https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
They'll probably also use some potato extract in there.
"However, since 1993 on a rolling decade basis if the same wager had been repeated for subsequent decades, Ehrlich would have won the bet"
There are physical (energetic) and chemical limits to human ingenuity. Between "it runs out" and "it will be there forever" there are multiple shade of grey, e.g. one of them being "the cost of extracting more become unbearable, and thus extracting that resource is a limiting factor to all economies" as an example.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Whooooooooooosh!
A rocket just flew by over your head!
Looks like the Democratic Republic of Congo is going to need to be liberated through aerial bombing and troops on the ground real soon.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
They said that too in the 70s. You're just repeating the cycle fool.
You know what fools also say often?
"Oh, don't worry. That will never happen."
Ironically, this will also be the epitaph of humanity.
Just like Stalin said, it isn't your vote that matters, it's the people who count the votes that matter.
how people could ever lived without cars and build all this (cities, cathedrals, castles ....). In Munich were I live the living areas till the 1970s where all green. This place has been converted into parking space since then and is filled with tin now. Wide Avenues have been converted into 4 lane roads sacrificed on the Altar of individual car traffic.
People are becoming fatter and fatter. Diseases cause of the lack of movement and air polution... this list is endless. tldr;
we paid much more for the false "freedom" of individual traffic than we gained from it. Just my 2 cents
I, for one, am not that thrilled with the notion that the Saudi Kingdom is building reactors in the middle east and we are politically hamstrung against advancing the technology here in the U.S. Saudi Arabia may have the outward appearance of stability, but they're not as far removed from constant conflict as it seems.
Great point that the conservation of petroleum resources due to efficiency improvements is a large factor in stretching reserves.
Combining the likelihood of improved techniques for recovery with inevitable leaps in the efficiency of the relatively nascent battery technology seems to suggest that current mineral scarcities will be overcome.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I try to be fair. For example, I don't say "it takes 1 minute to fill a gasoline car" because you have to factor in the time detouring to the station, decelerating, pulling into the pump, getting out, paying, waiting for confirmation, taking the gas cap off, getting the pump, then filling, then doing most of those steps in reverse to get back en route and up to speed toward your actual destination. Which makes gasoline filling times more like 5+ minutes. But if you're going to be realistic about all gasoline times, you also need to be realistic about all charging times, not just the actual time to connect the charge cable.
(That said, 10 seconds is probably still too pessimistic on the EV side ;) )
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
That's precisely the point - the larger engine models. Most entry-level luxury vehicles - your BMW 3-series, Audi A4, Mercedes 350, etc - come in many variants. The lowest power gasoline versions? Yeah, they're usually around 1600kg. But when you start getting into the high power engine options, the TDIs, the hybrids, and on and on, you start adding a couple hundred kilograms.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a boondoggle. You just need to read about it to know why it makes no fucking sense at all. Last I heard they weren't selling the Honda Clarity FCV to anyone, it's fricking expensive, they only rent it for experimental purposes to collect the user data.
The technology the Honda Clarity FCT uses IIRC is basically compressed hydrogen gas storage in a composite wrapped tank, and a PEM fuel cell (which is made with platinum). The platinum content alone makes the car outrageously expensive to manufacture.
You might say: "But cheesy, there are other fuel cell technologies." Sure. there are SOFC fuel cells, great for stationary applications, on a car they run too hot and are too brittle. Or Molten Carbonate fuel cells. Also terrific for stationary applications, but require minutes to heat up before they even generate power. It's a boondoggle. I won't even mention the hydrogen gas storage and transportation issues because, well, I don't feel like it. You can read about it in the web.
PS: Ok, I didn't know there was a 2016 model. So I guess it's available for sale now. But it basically still costs $60k.
Yes, versus a couple seconds. Why you want to have to spend 5+ minutes detouring to a gas station, in whatever weather, paying high prices and breathing in carcinogenic evaporating gas drip fumes, rather than spending a couple seconds plugging in in the comfort of your own home, is beyond me.
You clearly seem to only want to talk about long trips rather than your everyday life. Which is silly. But let's do that.
* Trips shorter than the vehicle's range take.... a couple seconds to charge. Just a plug-in at the other end.
* Trips a bit shorter than double the vehicle's range only take a single stop en route. We're now getting to the point of a half day's driving.
* Only in "whole day driving" trips does the charge speed have a relevant effect on trip time.
Except that, not really - unless you're driving like you're not supposed to. There's a reason why, for example, that European commercial drivers are legally required to have at least 45 minutes of breaks for every 4 1/2 hours of driving (split up as they choose) and can lose their license if they don't: it's not safe to drive all day with no or minimal stops. You're supposed to stop to get out and stretch / walk around a bit, to eat, to use the restroom, etc. At 420mph, a half hour meal break is 210 miles (three hours driving). At 700-800mph? Much less.
But top reiterate: long trips are the exception for the vast majority of people, not the rule. In their everyday lives, EVs take vastly less of your time.
Welcome to late 2017, where global fast charging networks are a thing.
It's not. Power plants burn natural gas over twice as efficiently as a NG car (transmission / distribution / battery / motor losses are each minimal), emit much less per unit power, and buy the gas for a lot cheaper than you do at home. Natural gas also is a minority of your power generation (a large minority, but still a minority).
It depends entirely on what type of charging station you're talking about. Even if you drive through a typical suburban neighborhood during the day and you'll see lots of cars out, and that's ignoring those in garages. But beyond that, there's also workplace charging, charging at stores / malls, charging at fast chargers (with battery buffers), and so on, all of which are generally done during the day.
Are you under the mistaken impression that most people with solar installs are off-grid?
Grid demand is highest during the day, lower at night. If you're providing excess power during the day and consuming more than usual at night, you're helping the grid.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Then again at least in the UK it also seems to be lease only. Even for the 2016 model. So... What gives?
https://slashdot.org/~pdavisge...
Hover over the UID. I thought this was a tech site?
Then again at least in the UK it also seems to be lease only. Even for the 2016 model. So... What gives?
They are not sure that maintenance will not become a boondoggle, so they are only offering a lease. But they are offering it under excellent terms, so that there are takers. Maybe it will all come to nothing. I don't think so though, I have a higher view of Honda's competence if not GM's.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"EV's" have a larger environmental footprint, than gas powered vehicles.
You are going to need to provide an accurate citation for that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Actually, it's the 800lb gorilla of OPEC that's keeping prices down right now. Our ability to engage in fracking has nothing to do with that. It's actually that 800lb gorilla in the ME that's tanked our own domestic fracking industry because of the afforementioned manipulation of global oil prices.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> I'd think that anything that predates WWII is far enough in the past that it has little relevance on today's political climate.
"Ancient history" is relevant to both our region and theirs. The state of politics in both reflect political traditions with very deep roots. That entire region suffers from the fact that it's the remnant of the Ottoman Empire. It suffers from wars, ethnic strife, and a tendency towards tyranny due to the democratic traditions it DID NOT develop since the time of Mohammed.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
People like to gloss over the fact that building "clean energy tech" is dirty nasty business. We don't get any of this stuff for "free". It all has a pollution overhead you really can't get away from.
It's just that some people are happy to kid themselves as long as they aren't seeing the diesel fumes and breathing them in.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Exiting and re-entering the freeway takes a while, especially during commute traffic. Most Americans have long freeway-based commutes.
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The Democratic Republic of Congo, where about half of all cobalt comes from -- is increasingly unstable, making car manufacturers nervous and cobalt all the more valuable.
Sounds like someone needs a dose of "Freedom"
You clearly seem to only want to talk about long trips rather than your everyday life.
No, I was talking about getting the advantage of filling up at home overnight for a daily commute AND still getting the ability to get a quick fill up on long trips. I can do that with natural gas and not have to bother with the complexity and cost of an electric hybrid. If for some reason a person is unable to get natural gas at home, such as people that live outside city limits, they can get an electric hybrid which has the electric range for the daily commute and still have the ability for fast refill on long trips.
There's a reason why, for example, that European commercial drivers are legally required to have at least 45 minutes of breaks for every 4 1/2 hours of driving (split up as they choose) and can lose their license if they don't: it's not safe to drive all day with no or minimal stops.
I'm not a commercial driver. Even then when I go on long trips I tend to not do so alone. We'll switch out drivers so no one is driving tired.
Are you under the mistaken impression that most people with solar installs are off-grid?
No, I was under the assumption that solar energy was supposed to be a major contributor to the electrical grid, as so many people keep telling me is "inevitable". If we assume that 1/3rd of our electricity is from solar, and electric cars are the norm, then we are going to see grid scale batteries being used to charge electric car batteries every night. That's a lot of batteries.
Grid demand is highest during the day, lower at night. If you're providing excess power during the day and consuming more than usual at night, you're helping the grid.
That helps until the wind doesn't blow, since we're having 1/3rd of our electricity from wind power now. This might help the grid but it's not helping the environment. Solar and wind need batteries, adding batteries means adding to the carbon footprint. If we want "green" electric vehicles then we need nuclear power. If you think nuclear power is going to be used to charge up these electric cars at night then perhaps we can agree on more things than we disagree. Lacking nuclear power we see that battery electric vehicles are not any more "green" than using fossil fuels.
It's not. Power plants burn natural gas over twice as efficiently as a NG car (transmission / distribution / battery / motor losses are each minimal), emit much less per unit power, and buy the gas for a lot cheaper than you do at home. Natural gas also is a minority of your power generation (a large minority, but still a minority).
That's assuming that the natural gas is being burned in combined cycle plants. If natural gas is the back up for wind and solar then it will be burned in turbines, which get 1/2 to 1/3 the efficiency of the combined cycle plants. In other words, in the ballpark of how much natural gas would be burned in the NG car compared to having to charge up a BEV car from those backup natural gas plants.
The resources needed to build all these batteries means a HUGE carbon footprint. This is often overlooked on claims of solar power being green. When the claims of solar energy being unreliable is brought up the solution is always batteries but the carbon footprint those batteries have is not added in. Battery backed solar has a carbon footprint no better than natural gas. With natural gas cars we can have slow over night "chargers" at home, and quick fill "chargers" on long trips. The carbon footprint of these natural gas cars is half that of a gasoline burner (some claim as low as 20%), or about the same as a solar powered BEV.
Welcome to late 2017, where global fast charging networks are a thing.
They will never be as fast as fueling from natural gas, gasoline, or diesel fuel. You can make your claims on how this is irrelevant all you like but reality tells me that this is important to people.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
We live in a scarcity-controlled society. The truth of the matter is that we have much better sources of energy than petroleum and much better ways of harvesting petroleum and virtually limitless petroleum at our current rate of consumption, but that the imposed scarcity ensures only people with lots of wealth can get at and control it. That scarcity cascades in turn into every industry/product and allows for control of the population because suddenly money is a useful concept and with that comes the means to control labor. Now you have every idiot under the sun chasing fiat currencies for the sake of increasing the labor they themselves can control because it prevents them from looking for alternative ways to control labor, which would itself detract from the labor which is already controlled by others. It's all about control, in truth there are resources for everyone but then you'd just have several billion people all doing their own thing, which is no good for sociopaths who gauge their standing on how many people they control.
Well, if you're correct, then it seems the fear associated with losing our jobs to robots is quite overblown.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The lowest power gasoline versions? Yeah, they're usually around 1600kg.
Shave about 300kg off and you'd be right.
Audi A4: 1295kg
BMW 318i: 1300kg
Mercedes: Well that one you quoted is 1600kg but at more than 100bhp more than the other cars you listed. The actual Mercedes with a low power gasoline engine is a C 180 which is 1350kg.
All three of those cars or the lowest power ones from their respective manufacturers too. You don't define luxury by "difficult to reverse parallel park"
Science marches on. It doesn't stop with nickel or anything else. Do you actually think that we are going to stop at Lithium?? Expand your minds, please!
We May Not Have Enough Minerals To Even Meet Electric Car Demand
Putting extraction costs aside, this is physically impossible. I mean, sweet Jesus, we are sitting on a planet with a fuckton of elements and ores. We already recycle a number of materials, countries are already exploring mineral extraction from sea beds, etc.
Invest in the next mining boom while there is still time. Stake that claim early pardner!!!!
At highway/motorway speeds, every 150 miles you should take AT LEAST a 20 minute break. That means 450mph recharge is more than enough.
I agree. There's a problem with that though. If I'm on a trip with an EV then I'm stuck watching the car charge for 20 minutes. Unless the place I stop also has a place to eat, and food I'd actually want to eat, then I'm watching the car and then going further down the road to eat.
If I have a gasoline car then I'm filling up in a few minutes and gone to find somewhere to eat. If I have a hybrid then I'm filled up in no time and I still have something that will charge up overnight for my daily commute. If I have a natural gas car then I can fill up at home overnight, and I can still fill up in minutes while on long trips.
If I'm traveling with someone then I can stop every 100 to 200 miles to switch drivers, top off the tank, take a piss, and grab some food to eat on the way. That's just a few minutes, not 20, and no one is driving tired. Can't do that with an electric.
People tend to buy what they need for all occasions. They need something that can be a daily commuter and also be able to take the kids to go visit Grandma once a month or so. When there is a married couple with small children they are not going to want to stop for 20 minutes to recharge the car. They are going to stop, top off the tank, and switch drivers if one is tired. Can't do that with an electric. Maybe they'll have a hybrid so at least the commutes are electric only. Maybe they have two vehicles where during the week he drives the sedan and she drives the minivan, on long trips everyone piles in the one that burns hydrocarbons.
Electric cars have a LONG way to go before they can replace hydrocarbon burning vehicles.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
These diesel fumes are not what they used to be and there are ways to address the reminder to the point of not having a problem with it too. But diesel is evil which means that while we are waiting for affordable and feasible electric (or whatever - who said we HAVE TO use electric only - there are other ways we can explore) go to gasoline and gasoline hybrids. So we live with old diesel engines already around, remove the new cleaner ones from the picture and use ore of less efficient gasoline based ICE? Sounds like a reasonable thing to do.
And here's how they could do it. This electric mining truck generates MORE electricity driving down the mountain with a load of ore, than the truck uses going back up the mountain empty "free" electricity "free" refining...
https://electrek.co/2017/09/17...
Why limit it only to muslims, though? Why not apply the same logic to all the murders committed by right-wing nationalist groups - which far outnumber those committed by muslims in America? Or those by lonely young white men with lots of guns?
"Recoverable quantities of petroleum products in the mantle"
This gets modded up to 5? Really?
Actually, though the US producers have the capacity to knock prices down with oversupply, it is the US production that can't compete on price with most of the OPEC countries. Drawing oil out of the Saudi reserves is much cheaper than fracking. Over-production would put the US fields out of business, not the OPEC producers. As it is, the OPEC countries have been trying to limit output, but still the 'low' current prices make US oil production borderline profitable, and many fields have been idled. Although I have no doubt that Venezuela will probably go bankrupt anyway, even with high oil prices, and Russia isn't doing too well economically, either..
Except I'm not limiting to the US - and why are you?
London, Paris, Nice. wtf.
There are always idiots and nutcases. There are always the Timothy Mcveighs and the guy who went after the congressmen who have a beef with the govt.
But clearly there are a lot of people moving to Europe and the US who have nothing but contempt for us and hold on to really stupid ideas.
I'm a pastafarian so I have no warm fuzzies for the religous nutcases of any stripe.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
You're confusing fracking with oil tars/sands. BTW We've been fracking for 100 years, the greenies just recently started to demonize it.
It's production that's keeping prices down. Most large exporters, including russia, are largely one trick ponies economically. Saying 'OPEC' is sort of true, saying 'American production' is sort of true.
It's all of it, including Europe reducing its demand because 'fuck Putin'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You don't truck ore down the mountains. You pump it down a slurry pipe. If you don't have water you use a train.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Because I live in the US. I don't have some expectation that the US can have any control over what happens in the rest of the world. I DO expect that the US can have some control over what happens in the US. And in the US, muslims of any sort, and in particular radicals, have no political power at all. Right-wing nationalist groups, on the other hand, seem to feel very comfortable with the level of representation they currently have at the highest levels in this country.
The issue was compatibility with existing cultures. You see muslims entering wine shops in france and yelling at the store keeper for selling wine on ramadan. And you think this simply "over there?"
OK.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
No, he's right. The global temperature is going to continue to increase, we've already passed the point of no return on that.
Does that mean you and your ilk will shut up about it and take the L?
I don't see muslims entering wine shops in France because I'm an American. I do see American muslims doing the same things as the rest of us every single day, though. I don't see any reason to think Islam is any less compatible with my culture than any other religion. I will say that I find fundamentalism of any stripe to be incompatible with my culture, but where I live, far and away the biggest offender is Christian fundamentalism, not Islamic fundamentalism. As I said, they have control of much of government here, including at the highest levels. Meanwhile, not a single Islamic fundamentalist holds office anywhere in this country.
http://i.imgur.com/axJmn.gif
That was an epic woosh. I had to quote it and post just so I can be sure to find it again someday, in my own post history.
Unless you're extremely (un?) lucky there is a gas station between home and the freeway entrance (in one direction or the other). I'm a 2 minute drive from the interstate yet there is a gas station on each side of the road in that distance.
I agree. There's a problem with that though. If I'm on a trip with an EV then I'm stuck watching the car charge for 20 minutes. Unless the place I stop also has a place to eat, and food I'd actually want to eat, then I'm watching the car and then going further down the road to eat.
Not to mention, very few people want to eat a meal every 2 hours (150 miles / 75 mph).
Watching a sitcom on a streaming service during charging breaks would become a thing (Netflix & Charge?).
A better solution which only works if people could be trusted around high voltages - overhead lines over one roadway lane, and a pantograph to reach it, so you can drive and charge (sortof like trackless trolleys). Just remember to drop the pan before exiting the lane.
Lacking nuclear power we see that battery electric vehicles are not any more "green" than using fossil fuels.
Why are you writing nonsense like this?
the carbon footprint those batteries have is not added in. Battery backed solar has a carbon footprint no better than natural gas.
Care to explain which law of ohysics or chemistry causes that?
How can you be such an idiot? It is beyon me!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Hiw many kilograms of platinum are in suhc a car, and how much is that in dollars?
Are you sure it is more than in your combustion engines exhaust scrubber?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
If the store keeper is a muslim, they migt have a legit point.
On the other hand they likely get complimented out, regardless what origin the store keeper has.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Saudi is (their claim anyhow, books are not open) the world's 'low cost producer'.
But only if you IGNORE the obligatory government spending that is funded out of oil revenue. Once you include the price of welfare, princes and haj, they become a high cost producer.
The real shit end for Saudi. They can't cut those costs by shutting down production. They, more or less, have to pump or die.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How does someone fudge uptime for gigawatt power plants in AC land? Exercise bike and alternator?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Es una tradicion en los Estados Unidos escribir mal el nombre de su pais.
It really is. I probably see it misspelled more often that not.
How can you be such an idiot? It is beyon me!
Ah, I see my favorite forum stalker is back. Still using insults, bad typing/spelling, and no citations, in his posts.
Tell me something, what is the carbon footprint of solar with storage? I lost my references so I sadly cannot provide my citations until I find them again. If solar with storage does in fact have a lower carbon footprint than natural gas then you have something to refute my claim, no?
Care to explain which law of ohysics or chemistry causes that?
It's more than just "ohysics" and chemistry but we'll start there. Making solar collectors and batteries takes a lot of energy, not much way around that, and currently that means burning a lot of coal to get that energy. Perhaps in the future we will have an energy infrastructure in the future that does not release so much CO2 to make the solar collectors and batteries but until then this means solar with storage has the carbon footprint of natural gas. One way to lower CO2 for making batteries right now is to use natural gas, because if we only cut CO2 output in half then at least we can save on money. Another is to use nuclear power, even with the need for natural gas for peak loads it's better than solar with storage on CO2 output and cost. Lastly we can spend piles of money on building solar with storage in the hope prices come down and someday, perhaps decades later, we have enough solar and storage that we hit a tipping point where we are actually lowering our CO2 output.
This "law" that keeps solar with storage from saving on CO2 is economics. If we have batteries that are cheap enough to use on a grid scale then the utilities aren't going to use expensive solar to charge them up, they are going to use cheap and reliable coal, nuclear, and natural gas. If there is savings on CO2 from solar with storage then the savings comes from the storage, not the solar. Running natural gas boilers uses 1/3 to 1/2 of the fuel for the same energy output as turbines. We'd save on costs and CO2 by combining natural gas with storage. Using coal with storage means getting to use real cheap coal and still being able to load follow with the storage, no expensive turbines needed. Coal with storage might not save on CO2 output but electricity would get real cheap. Combining nuclear with storage means CO2 output lower than solar, costs lower than solar, and no reliance on expensive CO2 spewing natural gas turbines either. Add some cheap wind anywhere in this and prices stay low because wind is cheap so long as people choose their locations wisely, and CO2 will still be low.
The CO2 footprint of the storage is all based on the source of the energy to make it. It's a bit of a catch-22. We can't use solar to make batteries with a low CO2 output because without low CO2 batteries solar is just a proxy for cheap natural gas and coal, meaning it's not "carbon free" in the least. If we use nuclear to make those batteries then solar not only looks redundant, since there's no cost or CO2 savings on throttling nuclear down when the sun shines, but once the batteries are made, which are required to make solar reliable, then you have batteries to allow nuclear to load follow.
If we could just leap into solar with storage then it might, maybe, perhaps, make sense economically and in reducing CO2 but to get there means transitioning to nuclear or natural gas. Once that infrastructure of natural gas, nuclear, and batteries exist then solar power offers nothing.
Maybe if solar got real cheap, and I mean something like 1/3 the price of nuclear and natural gas, then solar with storage might make sense. But solar is not 1/3 the price of nuclear and natural gas. It's more like double or triple.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I literally don't have the time to look up all of the vehicle curb weights right now (I've done it on many other threads), but just as an example: Audi A4 is 3626 pounds base curb weight (1644kg), not 1295. 318i is a smaller vehicle than Model 3, and poorer performing. Even the Mercedes doesn't perform as well as the Model 3 in its base version.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
The amount of energy needed to make solar cells isn't that significant. It can't be. Energy costs money, and therefore energy used in manufacture all the way back along the line has to be accounted for in the sale price of the solar panel. If a solar panel will pay for itself fairly fast, that means it generates a lot more electricity than was used in its manufacture.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Audi A4 TFSI 1.4 Kerb weight 1295kg from Audi's own website. Look it up.
and poorer performing
Oh I thought you said "lowest power gasoline versions". Must be hard to play sports with those goalposts running around the field.
If a solar panel will pay for itself fairly fast, that means it generates a lot more electricity than was used in its manufacture.
I don't dispute that. Now, go look at what it would take to get 24/7 power from an energy source that produces power for something like 6 to 8 hours per day. That means very large batteries. If one is lucky enough to have access to climate and geography suitable for pumped hydro storage then, congratulations, you just might be able to get your 24/7 electricity with low CO2 and low cost.
One problem I foresee is that the best places for a dam will also get a lot of rain. Rain clouds and solar panels don't go well together.
I emphasized "solar with storage" because without storage solar is next to worthless. A community cannot maintain a modern society with unreliable power. Of the few places where I saw an honest analysis of solar with storage the price was just sky high and the carbon footprint not much better than the far cheaper natural gas.
Again, the carbon footprint of the storage depends on the source of the energy to make the storage. If we have access to reliable low carbon energy, at a price cheap enough to make these batteries worth making, then what do we need solar energy for? At that point we solved the problem without solar collectors.
Unless solar power is considerably cheaper than anything else, and it's not, then there is no economic incentive to use it. In places like Hawaii, where solar is competing with electricity from expensive oil it makes sense, but that's an island without access to cheap coal. The part where solar meets storage is the large tanks of oil, they are "storing" solar energy by not burning the oil.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Your realize there are actual engineers involved in running a power plant and grid? You might be stupid, but they aren't.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
When your entire economy is dependant on funds extracted from oil revenue, that definition is very convenient.
The fact remains that the Saudis _have_ to pump or die. It's worse than if the costs were actual pump costs.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This bogus article doesn't mention the biggest source of nickel of them all: the huge asteroid buried under Sudbury, Canada, that crashed to Earth long ago. We've been mining it for decades. As for cobalt, we buy oil ffrom Saudi Arabia. They don't come much worse than that. We are well used to paying thugs fior things we want. We've been doing it for a century.
Only boring people are ever bored.
I call you an idiot because you are an idiot.
Again: which laws of physics or laws of chemistry force me to produce solar cells, batteries, transport them, interconnect them, with a CO2 producing energy source?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
What? We've already reached peak mineral? Excellent--let's get back to petrol.
Again: which laws of physics or laws of chemistry force me to produce solar cells, batteries, transport them, interconnect them, with a CO2 producing energy source?
I answered your question, nothing. Nothing prevents you from producing solar cells, batteries, etc., from a CO2 neutral energy source. That source of energy currently exists, nuclear fission.
With that out of the way, economics will make it pointless to actually go through the effort of making those solar cells and batteries. Solar cells are currently very expensive considering how much energy they can produce, then adding the storage needed to make that solar energy last through the night will make it even more expensive, meaning solar with storage will be much more expensive than any other power source available to us right now.
If you want to claim that solar cells will get cheaper and more efficient in the future then that's fine. As it is right now though solar with storage is expensive and has a carbon footprint no better than natural gas. If we wish to reduce our carbon footprint today, and not see our energy prices rise, then we need a mix of nuclear, natural gas, and where appropriate wind, hydro, geothermal. Solar being as expensive as it is, and being reliant on storage or fossil fuels to last through the night, there is no profit or CO2 savings from putting solar power on the grid.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I brought it up? The 3-series comparable to the Model 3 is the 330i, not the 318i. Which has a curb weight if 1618kg.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
I am looking it up and getting different numbers than you. So rather than insisting that the numbers I'm finding are wrong, how about you back up your claim?
As for performance, we're comparing to the lowest powered Model 3. If it can't even keep up with that (and it's way behind), it makes one wonder if it should even be considered in the same class.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
www.audi.nl Go your hardest
Seek help. You're unhinged.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So, you are taking back your claim, that solar panles (PV) are not CO2 neutral?
Your idea that nuclear power will be cheaper in future than solar is hillarious :)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Again, you failed to back up your claim. Try linking to actual numbers, as I have.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Yes, I foolishly assumed you'd compare to the right 3-series, aka a car of equivalent size. Stupid me. I should have known that of course you'd deliberately pick a smaller car to try to bias the comparison. Shock of all shock, if you make a car smaller, it gets lighter!
Try again.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Are you blind? I wrote, right above: "The 3-series comparable to the Model 3 is the 330i, not the 318i"
It's a feature-by-feature comparison. If you disagree, point out where it's wrong. Ad hominem is not a valid method of debate.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
What the hell is wrong with you that you can't provide an actual link to information that you're claiming contradicts what I wrote?
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
If you want to be spoon fed go ask your mother.
Who can average 75 mph for two hours?
Masspike or any interstate in Upstate NY. Speed limit 65 + standard 9 over, no traffic for hours. Average would come out as 73MPH. Hell I-88 is so dead the cops pull you over for going 1-2 over the speed limit (must be hiding something!) and ignore people flying by at 80MPH.