Apparently some AGW skeptics also have mod points today. The current score stands at "+1 Insightful."
As for the substance of the issue, I've found this YouTube playlist to be one of the more balanced and informative. It may not be your cup of tea, but it's worth a look.
Not just futile, most "useful" measures would require legislative action, which is practically impossible these days.
That said, if I could choose one single bill to have signed into law, it would be the "Open Fuel Standards Act" which was brought up a few years ago, but didn't get a vote. This would require all new cars sold in the USA to be fully flex-fuel capable. (There are already a lot of "flex-fuel" cars on the market, but many are only able to use ethanol. The OFSA would mandate compatibility with methanol and butanol as well.) This would add about $100 to the price of each car, which is much less than an after-market retrofit would cost.
The point of all this is to break the effective monopoly on transportation fuel held by petroleum and bring true competition to the market. Methanol may be only 80% as energy dense as gasoline, but last I checked it was only about $1.50/gal. And unlike ethanol, methanol can easily be made from any kind of biomass, so this would also decouple the alternative fuel supply from food crops like corn. Best of all, it would stem the tide of cash that currently flows out from the USA's collective pocket, which is around $400 billion annually. That kind of economic "stimulus" would be a nice bonus too.
I agree, it's all relative. I don't know the answer, but I reckon this question has been "solved" in various ways for various purposes over the years. The real question is what application you want to address. Your project parameters will be the determining factor in whether or not this new tech is useful.
Duh! If you have a battery-swap station, it will have a lot of STORAGE capacity sitting around. You charge the batteries during daylight (when most people are driving anyway) and swap them whenever needed.
IOW, it WILL be solar. Elon has already promised this. And since he is also CEO of the #1 solar installation company in the USA, I reckon he knows what he's talking about. In any case, I'm quite happy to take his word over yours...;-)
You're missing the point. Battery swap is only expected to be used on rare occasions when you're in a hurry and can't afford to take a half-hour break every few hours. Most people only travel long distance a few times a year anyway, so this is hardly a great inconvenience.
The average commute time in the USA is 25 minutes, well within the range of even the cheaper (small battery) version of the Model S. You put it in the garage at night, and it recharges in an hour or two (scheduled for the cheapest KWh rates in your grid) and you're ready to go again in the morning.
Actually, this battery swap system adds functionality to that small-battery Model S. If you can't afford the $90k for the 200mi range, just get the $50k model. Then, if you want to go on a long trip, just drive till your battery runs low, then swap it out for the long-range version, and swap it back on the way home.
OTOH, as EV's gain market share, charging options will expand as well. If your company adds a few stations in the parking lot, you can charge up during the day, or top off the battery at the shopping mall or the movie theater. For that matter, I believe the Model S is available with PV cells integrated into the roof. If you have a short commute, that alone might be sufficient on a sunny day.
Then there's the other elephant in the room... If you can afford a $50k~$90k luxury car, you can probably afford to set up some sort of charging facility at home. At any rate, this "problem" doesn't seem to have put much of a dent in sales. There's a long waiting list to buy a Model S, and has been since day one.
This. Also, Musk has repeatedly said his charging stations will be powered by solar PV arrays. (Thus, his catchy slogan: "Drive anywhere, for free, on pure sunlight.") Plus, it will be quite a while before we get to the massive scale described by the GP. Even at 20k units per year, they'll have plenty of time to build-out the charge/swap network and increase its capacity as needed.
Yes, that's why I said "the idea was..." and linked to an article that says "Better Place was..." But their bankruptcy doesn't necessarily mean the idea was bad. There are lots of things that can bring down a company, such as an over-flashy CEO with poor management skills. Also, the Renault Fluence ZE was nowhere near as cool as the Model S. I really don't know what led to Better Place going under, but I don't reckon the battery swapping scheme was the main reason.
Another idea: At such high density, who needs a 5.25" disc anyway? A postage stamp would be plenty, and could enable some interesting mobile applications, for just one example.
Will they eventually start using something like the Better Place model for selling the car alone and keeping the battery as a company-owned asset? I'm not describing it quite right, but basically the idea was to sell "miles" to car owner the same way a phone company sells "minutes" to cell-phone owners. The point is, since the battery alone makes up a significant portion of the vehicle cost, this would be a way to reduce the sticker price and make the car attractive to a broader market.
Not that they really need to broaden the market. From what I've read, they have a long waiting list for the Model S.
As "NewSpace" startups like SpaceX, Masten, Bigelow, etc. continue to bring down launch costs, the range of players in the space science game will continue to expand. We are rapidly approaching the tipping point where space-based enterprise is no longer the sole province of governments. With cube-sats, we're already getting to the place where even some university research budgets can afford the access. This trend is set to continue (and accelerate) over the next few years. This is a GoodThing[TM] no matter how you look at it.
Maybe I'm wrong, but as I understand it, electric motors have WAY more torque than any kind of ICE. The Tesla Roadster already has better performance than most high-end sports cars. Even the Model S is competitive in that range. With electric vehicles, acceleration is the least of your worries.
I'm sure Elon Musk is paying attention to this. He thinks an electric jet would be possible, and this would make that a whole lot easier to achieve. If they can commercialize it in the next couple of years, it would also be just in time to help Tesla develop its next-gen "affordable" EV. I wouldn't be surprised if he and/or Tesla invest in whatever company gets to bring this tech to market.
Yes, we can build safe reactors, just not water-cooled reactors. Fission reactions are "just getting warmed up" by the time water starts boiling. That is a bad combination. This is why water-cooled reactors have to operate at 100+ atmospheres of pressure. Just taking water out of the equation makes fission several orders of magnitude simpler and safer to use.
That's why we should be working on new designs based on molten salt cooling, such as LFTR. Of course we aren't doing that because too many corporations with deep pockets and long tentacles prevent Congress from funding the research. But not to worry... China has a multi-billion-dollar program underway with a thousand PhD's working on it. So eventually we'll be able to buy the reactors from them.
Still, it would be a shame to have to buy from them, when they're just commercializing technology that we (the USA) invented 50~60 years ago.
Yes. The only reason rare earth elements are not mined much in the USA is because they tend to be found with Thorium, which is slightly radioactive. Thus, when you extract the REE's, you're left with a bunch of Thorium which has to be disposed of as "nuclear" waste. If the miners were allowed to just put the Thorium back where they found it, we'd have plenty of rare earths domestically.
A better solution would be an earth-sheltered design. Still not perfect, but much better protection, plus huge energy savings to boot.
Actually, I remember reading about an earth-sheltered school in Oklahoma back in the 80s while doing a research project on energy efficient architecture. Not sure if it was ever built or if it was just a design. (And I couldn't find it in 30 seconds of googling.) As I recall, it had a large central atrium to maximize natural lighting, but had large, sloping berms on all sides, with a few cutouts/tunnels for access.
If I were a resident of OK, and had kids, I would want them in a school like that.
I'm quite familiar with the "AU" unit. But it's not a very useful measure to most folks when the value is 0.0392. Might as well measure it in rods or furlongs or cubits...
I agree, but I would have said "Around four million miles (roughly 15 times as far as the moon)".
I'm "geeky" enough to know that one "LD" is about a quarter-million miles, but most people don't know that. And even I don't want to get the info in those units. It's just awkward.
PS: BTW, I seem to be missing a "gi" in my subject line... I meant to say "intelligible", not intellible.;-)
15.2 LD (Lunar Distances = ~384,000 kilometers) or 0.0392 AU (1 AU = ~150 million kilometers)
Or maybe we could just say "around four million miles" and be done with it. Add in the metric conversion if you want, but really, do we need an explication of "AU" and "LD" for this story? Just convert it to human readable format. It's one of those things that "journalists" do...
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently some AGW skeptics also have mod points today. The current score stands at "+1 Insightful."
As for the substance of the issue, I've found this YouTube playlist to be one of the more balanced and informative. It may not be your cup of tea, but it's worth a look.
Not just futile, most "useful" measures would require legislative action, which is practically impossible these days.
That said, if I could choose one single bill to have signed into law, it would be the "Open Fuel Standards Act" which was brought up a few years ago, but didn't get a vote. This would require all new cars sold in the USA to be fully flex-fuel capable. (There are already a lot of "flex-fuel" cars on the market, but many are only able to use ethanol. The OFSA would mandate compatibility with methanol and butanol as well.) This would add about $100 to the price of each car, which is much less than an after-market retrofit would cost.
The point of all this is to break the effective monopoly on transportation fuel held by petroleum and bring true competition to the market. Methanol may be only 80% as energy dense as gasoline, but last I checked it was only about $1.50/gal. And unlike ethanol, methanol can easily be made from any kind of biomass, so this would also decouple the alternative fuel supply from food crops like corn. Best of all, it would stem the tide of cash that currently flows out from the USA's collective pocket, which is around $400 billion annually. That kind of economic "stimulus" would be a nice bonus too.
Others speculate that he's only going to Moscow in transit to Iceland (which has offered him asylum) or some other place.
I agree, it's all relative. I don't know the answer, but I reckon this question has been "solved" in various ways for various purposes over the years. The real question is what application you want to address. Your project parameters will be the determining factor in whether or not this new tech is useful.
Duh! If you have a battery-swap station, it will have a lot of STORAGE capacity sitting around. You charge the batteries during daylight (when most people are driving anyway) and swap them whenever needed.
IOW, it WILL be solar. Elon has already promised this. And since he is also CEO of the #1 solar installation company in the USA, I reckon he knows what he's talking about. In any case, I'm quite happy to take his word over yours... ;-)
You're missing the point. Battery swap is only expected to be used on rare occasions when you're in a hurry and can't afford to take a half-hour break every few hours. Most people only travel long distance a few times a year anyway, so this is hardly a great inconvenience.
The average commute time in the USA is 25 minutes, well within the range of even the cheaper (small battery) version of the Model S. You put it in the garage at night, and it recharges in an hour or two (scheduled for the cheapest KWh rates in your grid) and you're ready to go again in the morning.
Actually, this battery swap system adds functionality to that small-battery Model S. If you can't afford the $90k for the 200mi range, just get the $50k model. Then, if you want to go on a long trip, just drive till your battery runs low, then swap it out for the long-range version, and swap it back on the way home.
OTOH, as EV's gain market share, charging options will expand as well. If your company adds a few stations in the parking lot, you can charge up during the day, or top off the battery at the shopping mall or the movie theater. For that matter, I believe the Model S is available with PV cells integrated into the roof. If you have a short commute, that alone might be sufficient on a sunny day.
Then there's the other elephant in the room... If you can afford a $50k~$90k luxury car, you can probably afford to set up some sort of charging facility at home. At any rate, this "problem" doesn't seem to have put much of a dent in sales. There's a long waiting list to buy a Model S, and has been since day one.
This. Also, Musk has repeatedly said his charging stations will be powered by solar PV arrays. (Thus, his catchy slogan: "Drive anywhere, for free, on pure sunlight.") Plus, it will be quite a while before we get to the massive scale described by the GP. Even at 20k units per year, they'll have plenty of time to build-out the charge/swap network and increase its capacity as needed.
Yes, that's why I said "the idea was..." and linked to an article that says "Better Place was..." But their bankruptcy doesn't necessarily mean the idea was bad. There are lots of things that can bring down a company, such as an over-flashy CEO with poor management skills. Also, the Renault Fluence ZE was nowhere near as cool as the Model S. I really don't know what led to Better Place going under, but I don't reckon the battery swapping scheme was the main reason.
Another idea: At such high density, who needs a 5.25" disc anyway? A postage stamp would be plenty, and could enable some interesting mobile applications, for just one example.
Will they eventually start using something like the Better Place model for selling the car alone and keeping the battery as a company-owned asset? I'm not describing it quite right, but basically the idea was to sell "miles" to car owner the same way a phone company sells "minutes" to cell-phone owners. The point is, since the battery alone makes up a significant portion of the vehicle cost, this would be a way to reduce the sticker price and make the car attractive to a broader market.
Not that they really need to broaden the market. From what I've read, they have a long waiting list for the Model S.
As "NewSpace" startups like SpaceX, Masten, Bigelow, etc. continue to bring down launch costs, the range of players in the space science game will continue to expand. We are rapidly approaching the tipping point where space-based enterprise is no longer the sole province of governments. With cube-sats, we're already getting to the place where even some university research budgets can afford the access. This trend is set to continue (and accelerate) over the next few years. This is a GoodThing[TM] no matter how you look at it.
Citation needed.
Yeah, I reckon so. I have no "crystal ball" insight on Elon's mind, I'm just repeating what I've heard him say.
Maybe I'm wrong, but as I understand it, electric motors have WAY more torque than any kind of ICE. The Tesla Roadster already has better performance than most high-end sports cars. Even the Model S is competitive in that range. With electric vehicles, acceleration is the least of your worries.
A rapid stream of liquid or gas forced out of a small opening.
Yeah, and...? If I run a big fan through a small "Venturi" opening, I can get supersonic. What hair are you trying to split here?
I stand corrected, thanks. Perhaps I got an over-optimistic impression from the recent progress in liquid-metal batteries.
No, he actually means a jet. In fact, he thinks he can build a supersonic electric jet, and has said so many times.
I'm sure Elon Musk is paying attention to this. He thinks an electric jet would be possible, and this would make that a whole lot easier to achieve. If they can commercialize it in the next couple of years, it would also be just in time to help Tesla develop its next-gen "affordable" EV. I wouldn't be surprised if he and/or Tesla invest in whatever company gets to bring this tech to market.
We probably could build safe reactors
Yes, we can build safe reactors, just not water-cooled reactors. Fission reactions are "just getting warmed up" by the time water starts boiling. That is a bad combination. This is why water-cooled reactors have to operate at 100+ atmospheres of pressure. Just taking water out of the equation makes fission several orders of magnitude simpler and safer to use.
That's why we should be working on new designs based on molten salt cooling, such as LFTR. Of course we aren't doing that because too many corporations with deep pockets and long tentacles prevent Congress from funding the research. But not to worry... China has a multi-billion-dollar program underway with a thousand PhD's working on it. So eventually we'll be able to buy the reactors from them.
Still, it would be a shame to have to buy from them, when they're just commercializing technology that we (the USA) invented 50~60 years ago.
Yes. The only reason rare earth elements are not mined much in the USA is because they tend to be found with Thorium, which is slightly radioactive. Thus, when you extract the REE's, you're left with a bunch of Thorium which has to be disposed of as "nuclear" waste. If the miners were allowed to just put the Thorium back where they found it, we'd have plenty of rare earths domestically.
A better solution would be an earth-sheltered design. Still not perfect, but much better protection, plus huge energy savings to boot.
Actually, I remember reading about an earth-sheltered school in Oklahoma back in the 80s while doing a research project on energy efficient architecture. Not sure if it was ever built or if it was just a design. (And I couldn't find it in 30 seconds of googling.) As I recall, it had a large central atrium to maximize natural lighting, but had large, sloping berms on all sides, with a few cutouts/tunnels for access.
If I were a resident of OK, and had kids, I would want them in a school like that.
I'm quite familiar with the "AU" unit. But it's not a very useful measure to most folks when the value is 0.0392. Might as well measure it in rods or furlongs or cubits...
I agree, but I would have said "Around four million miles (roughly 15 times as far as the moon)".
I'm "geeky" enough to know that one "LD" is about a quarter-million miles, but most people don't know that. And even I don't want to get the info in those units. It's just awkward.
PS: BTW, I seem to be missing a "gi" in my subject line... I meant to say "intelligible", not intellible. ;-)
15.2 LD (Lunar Distances = ~384,000 kilometers) or 0.0392 AU (1 AU = ~150 million kilometers)
Or maybe we could just say "around four million miles" and be done with it. Add in the metric conversion if you want, but really, do we need an explication of "AU" and "LD" for this story? Just convert it to human readable format. It's one of those things that "journalists" do...