You seem to forget that the nitrogen envelope weighs less than the equivalent volume filled with air.
I'm not talking about the mass of the nitrogen. I'm talking about the mass (and cost) of having an entire extra envelope.
The economic case for hydrogen is much better.
So's the economic case for shutting down your city's fire department.
Until a fire happens. Which it invariably will, when you're dealing with a gas that burns in almost any fuel-air mixture, needs only a tiny ignition energy, and is the "easy route" for electrical discharges through the air or between the ground and the air.
if we are thinking of using it in compressed form in road vehicles operated by the average Joe
1) That's stupid also (for lots of reasons, not just safety) 2) FCV hydrogen is contained within extremely strong carbon fiber tanks and is the difficult route for electricity to flow, as well as being difficult to permeate through; airships are just the opposite. 3) A FCV contains about 4 kg of hydrogen (when full). A large airship contains at least 1000 times as much. The Hindenburg carried nearly 17 tonnes.
I could also present some of the further arguments in favor of FCV safety by their proponents, but I personally don't agree with them, so I'll let someone else be their defender.
Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention with your N2 idea. It's the same problem that hydrogen airship ballonets suffered: hydrogen will permeate through its cells and accumulate in the "N2" space. And again, remember that it only takes a couple percent H2 to burn with air (it's surprisingly tolerant of oxygen depletion, too.... hydrogen just loves to burn, and burn aggressively:)
Making all matters worse is that airships tend to be somewhat like lightning rods. Even a tiny, imperceptible discharge can ignite hydrogen (its ignition energy is only a tenth that of gasoline vapour). The problem is that both hydrogen and helium have lower electric breakdown voltages than air (helium more than hydrogen, but the problem affects them both). Hence, electricity flowing through the airship is an easier path to ground than through air. Today's helium blimps are generally only allowed to be flown in clear-weather conditions, where the risk of lightning is thought to be effectively zero. Yet it's still very common for them to develop lightning pinholes on their surface from minor strikes, where the lightning burned away the fabric. Hindenburg's metal frame helped with electrical discharges, but clearly not enough.
It's not exactly a cube/square scaling. Because the larger you make it, the larger the tensile loads per square meter, meaning the stronger the envelope needs to be. Without upgrading to a higher tensile envelope, this means increasing thickness.
If you want to view it from a cross-section perspective, tensile strength is measured in pascals - aka newtons per meter squared (cross section). If we're taking a 1-meter slice, it's newtons per ~meter thickness. Pressure is likewise pascals - newtons per meter squared (area). From the same a 2d slice perspective, that's newtons per ~meter (perimeter). The higher the perimter, the higher the number of newtons force. But the number of newtons the envelope can withstand doesn't have perimeter in its divisor, it has thickness in its divisor. So thickness and perimter cross section must increase in accordance.
An envelope filled with N2 around each hydrogen cell would make a Hindenburg-style explosion pretty much impossible.
It doesn't work that way. Ignoring the tremendous amount of extra mass you're proposing and the increased cross section, hydrogen does not instantly dilute; by and large it will just rise through the nitrogen to the outside. Furthermore, hydrogen has an incredibly broad flammability range; you only need a couple percent H2 for it to burn.
Also, because the H2 molecule, being composed of two atoms, is twice as large as the He atom (helium doesn't pair with itself to form molecules), which only has one atom, it will take MUCH longer for the hydrogen to escape through the pores of the gas bag/lifting cell.
Permeability does not work that way. Permeability is a complex process involving not just porosity but also affinities and solubilities. As a general rule, hydrogen and helium permeabilities are quite similar.
a volume of hydrogen molecules is still halt the weight of the same volume of helium atoms.
It's actually not that much of a difference because both are vastly lighter than air (2 vs 4 vs. 29).
LZ-126/U.S.S. Los Angeles gives a real world example of the difference between operating the same ship with helium versus hydrogen.
It's not that simple. They didn't just switch lifting gases, they also added an exhaust water recovery system (aka added weight and a bit of extra drag and a bit of parasitic energy consumption). Range of an airship is relative to its drag, its energy efficiency and the amount of fuel it can carry.
if the Hindenburg had used helium instead of hydrogen,. it would have never got ff the ground.
They wanted to use helium as the lifting gas, and lobbied the US for permission to import it. They actually designed the airship around the premise that they'd be able to convince the US, and had to redesign it when the US refused. Zeppelin, the world's biggest producer of hydrogen airships, still preferred helium. Hydrogen was out of necessity, not desirability.
Helium is a rare element on Earth, despite being common in space. We need to be conserving our helium supplies. Why are we wasting helium on stuff like this?
Sigh, this stuff again....
1) All lifting uses combined (party balloons, blimps, etc) make up a fraction of the 13% "other" category.. The big wasters are industry, where they buy either gaseous (e.g. welding) or liquid (e.g. cryogenics) and just dump it to the outside air. No recovery effort whatsoever. To the people who run cryogenic / industrial equipment: Yes, I know, recovery systems are a cost and it's always iffy whether it pays for itself. But you, "cryogenic people", and you, "we're running out of helium people", fight amongst yourselves and leave lifting purposes - which use little helium - out of it.
2) Of that fraction of a 13% dedicated to lifting purposes, blimps use only a small fraction of it.
3) Modern fabric for blimps such as vectran or aluminized BoPET leak literally several orders of magnitude less than old fabrics like polyurethane-coated nylon.
4) Old style blimps need regular venting to adjust lift. Part of the purpose of this new generation of hybrid blimps is that they don't have to do that. And it's not the only type that can do this; variable-superpressure blimps can as well, as can phase-change blimps (see project ALICE).
In short, you're looking at a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a small fraction of a fraction of 13% of helium usage. No, this is not a problem. Furthermore, concerning helium itself:
1) It's not clear that we're anywhere near "running out of helium". Helium hasn't been studied nearly as much as more economically important resources like oil and gas. We really don't even understand why most deposits that are rich in helium are like that. Entire new categories of helium deposits, such as volcanic helium, are looking increasingly likely to be economical (it had previously been thought uneconomical because it would all be diluted with CO2; we're now finding that this isn't always the case). We're finding out that groundwater plays a role in where helium migrates to. And on and on. As helium prices rise, more work is finally getting put until understanding helium resources and finding new ones. It used to be just way too cheap for that.
2) The absolute worst case for helium is refrigerating it from the atmosphere, as the end stage of what we currently do to separate other noble gases. By volume, neon is about 3,5 times more common than helium, while helium is about 60 times more abundant than xenon; so the volumetric price for helium should be between that of neon and xenon, but closer to neon. Expensive, but still available. Except for one thing...
3)... we'll never get to that point. Because any gases from the ground will always be significantly more helium rich than the atmosphere, so we'll always use them as our source. Even if today's helium resources do get depleted (not likely anytime soon, see #1), it just means a steady progression to less helium rich gases (including virtually limitless volcanic ones) as the source. It will never approach the price of gases like neon, even in the worst case.
Also, from the summary:
The Airlander, made by British company Hybrid Air Vehicles, has four engines and no internal structure. It maintains its shape thanks to the pressure of the 38,000 cubic meters of helium inside its hull,
Um, no, it's not. Blimps don't work that way. Loads are distributed at the very least by catenary curtains and cables.
If you want a small scale example, take a garbage bag, blow air into it, and tie it off (blimps only have a couple hundred pascals overpressure, they're not like party ballons). Now hang a weight from it. Notice how horribly it deforms. You need catenary curtains to distribute the weight of your load across the fabric, to maintain your desired (aerodynamic) shape. You also need ballonets, so that the blimp doesn't explode when you change altitude.
The network already exists. It's going to get more dense, but it already exists. The longest distance between two chargers between NY and LA is about 60% of the range of the shortest-range Model S model, and about 45% of the charge of the longest-range Model S model. Most chargers are much closer than that. That is currently, not "expected". What's expected is even more chargers.
And it's worth noting that EV and gas station needs are precisely opposite. Gas stations are mostly needed in urban areas, where people have to fill up regularly during their everyday lives. Superchargers are most needed (and are generally built) in remote locations along major roads. There's no point to flooding cities with superchargers when most people aren't going to use them, as they can charge at home or on slow chargers at public places.
You can't have an opposite without it's own opposite.
The closest known thing to being an opposite of inflation is gravity. If you want a force that can shorten the distance between two objects, that's the one.
And the impact on adjacent spacetime regions would be to....
Inflate (dilate) them. Inflation doesn't push things into adjacent areas of existing space; it creates new space.** It's important to ask: why did inflation exist - and then just stop? It's a much more satisfying response that inflation is just "something that happens (regardless of its nature) in areas of extreme mass density", rather than "something that happens only at a certain moment of time, for no particular reason". Well, then what's being described is a dilatory force similar (but with an opposite sign) to gravity. Obviously it cannot be a perfect symmetric inverse of gravity, or the two forces would cancel each other out. There has to be an asymmetry - inflation has to dominate in extreme conditions, while gravity dominates in what is "normal" conditions from our perspective. And since we're describing a force, there should be a force carrier, an unknown gauge boson. And that's what I hope to see discovered.
** One has to be cautious with their wording when discussing spacetime distortion because your choice of geometry can exchange parameters such as position, time, etc and everything is relative to your choice of reference frame.
I know reading comprehension is hard, but please try to follow along
I know that not lacing your replies to people you disagree with insults and in general acting like an adult is hard, but please try.
The previous poster made the assumption that everyone has a garage to put a charger into
That changes not a single word that I wrote. You asked a question in your post. That's what the question mark does. Don't act shocked when you get a response.
Indeed, even 120V@15A overnight (say, 8h?) (let alone from when one arrives home from work to when they leave in the morning) is 14,4kWh. A typical Tesla vehicle might consume 250Wh/mi, meaning nearly 60 miles of range added every day.
The Tesla home chargers are for if you want to charge your nearly-emptied vehicle to full in just a couple hours. You don't need something like that to make up for a typical daily commute.
Hardly near the limits of charge current at all. Have you seen the disconnectable shore power connectors for cruise ships? We're talking over a dozen megawatts. Connectors look like this, though, you have to plug in each phase individually;) If something like that was ever needed (super-rapid charging of long-range road trains?), I imagine it'd be set up to connect automatically if you pulled in.
Also it's worth noting that copper isn't the be-all end-all of conductors. There are now companies making carbon cables that slightly beat copper in terms of resistance per cross section and significantly beat it in resistance per unit mass. I only expect to see that grow in the future.
. I generally take a 10 minute break every 150 miles or so (you need a coffee after 100 miles???), meaning my break time will at least double.
And? So you (a self-described unusually-frequent long-distance driver) lose an extra dozen or so minutes once a month, and meanwhile never have to take the time to go out of your way to a gas station during your everyday life for the rest of the year. You consider this a net loss somehow?
Concerning EV charging times on long trips: If you want to see how little of a difference current supercharger vs. gasoline times actually make, I posted the results of a spreadsheet here. The short of it is that on very long trips, Tesla style vehicles (which, btw, use batteries with rather slow recharge limits compared to many other types) will take you to your destination at a rate in the ballpark of 87-95% of that of gasoline vehicles. The shorter the trip, the better the EVs do, and for any trip shorter than the vehicle's range (the vast majority), they best gasoline vehicles.
Another nice change is locations. Gas stations tend to be located most in populated areas, since people have to fill up in their everyday lives. That's where EV chargers are needed least; they're most needed along long country roads and highways used to travel between major populated areas. The ideal location for a charger is really something like a countryside rest stop. Aka, a much nicer place to take a break than your typical gas station.
Also, where are the millions that live in apartments supposed to charge their EVs? Are they magically going to get charging stations in the parking lots from their property management companies?
Are you under the impression that millions of EVs are just going to appear on the road and gasoline vehicles disappear tomorrow? If you're going to invoke a sudden magical arrival of vast numbers of EVs, why aren't you likewise invoking the same magic for charging stations? Because chargers absolutely are being built and installed, and the rate of network deployment is exponential. Supercharger stations are expected to double yet again by the end of 2017. Destination chargers are expected to quadruple by that time.
You seriously think that an Altima is a performance and luxury equivalent to a Model 3? Seriously? If you want a nicer car, you pay more. Electric or not.
Secondly, your whole "average commute...." line is so mixed up it's not even wrong. Electric car ranges are generally rated in distances. The longer it takes you to drive it (the slower you go), the range goes up. Unlike gasoline cars, the optimal steady-state speed for an EV is generally around 15-20mph. The highway-speed range can be drastically multiplied at steady low speeds - and they deal with stop and go better than gasoline cars. So if you half the speed, you don't just double the "time" it can drive for - you more than double it.
Model 3 has a range of 215 highway miles. In town, it's probably around 300 miles. Which at an average speed of, say, 30 mph, is about 10 hours of driving. Now I don't know what your daily schedule is like, but if you're spending 10 hours between commuting, picking up kids, groceries, and the dog (WTF? does your dog have a desk job or something?), then I think you need to rethink your life.
Lastly, the superchargers form a complete network along major interstates and urban areas all across the US, Europe, and other parts of the world.
I get it that you have negative feelings about electric vehicles, and that's okay. But please do learn about a topic before you start ranting about it. It doesn't help your cause any to base your argument on things that even a person with a most basic understanding of the topic knows are inaccurate. It's like posting a sign on the bus, "Because you are riding in a space ship, smoking is prohibited". The sheer ridiculousness of the first statement invites ridicule on the whole argument.
Electric cars do nothing to change the cost of building a power plant, fueling it, etc. It's worth noting that the electricity used for a full fleet conversion would still be much less than is used for industry, commercial, and residential needs.
However, electric cars do change one thing. Most of their recharging is slow overnight charging - really the ideal type of load. This means that power companies can get better utilization out of their hardware, selling power at times when plants would have otherwise been sitting idle. Electric companies have long been some of the biggest cheerleaders for EVs for this very reason. They can operate even more efficiently with smart charging, having EV charging rates vary (within the constraints of the owners's charging schedule) in accordance with the needs of the grid, thus letting them get by with fewer peaking plants.
Indeed, the fastest pumps legally allowable are 10gpm, but many if not most are slower.
However, "time to pump gas" is not the key issue. The key issue is "how much time does the stop cost you, from the moment you decide to take the exit to the moment you're back on the road at full speed"? And not just the optimal case, but the average case, taking into account randomness like traffic lights, traffic, defective pumps, pay-indoors, whoops-station-closed-for-the-night, where-did-I-put-my-keys, etc.
Most of these things affect electric as well and form a rough baseline. In an ideal case I'd say that baseline (not counting filling) might be as little as 3 minutes, but on the average case for long distance driving maybe more like 8.
Also, don't forget the rest stops you're supposed to take at regular intervals to stretch, walk around, use the bathroom, eat, etc. DOT recommends 15 minutes per 2 hours driving. Commercial drivers legally have to take even more.
Well... not exactly. More to the point, exactly the opposite. An inflationary force would make distances between regions of spacetime greater, not reduce them.
Odometer (with a whopping fine if tampering is detected) times vehicle weight seems the most logical way to deal with it. Then you're actually charging relative to actual road damage.
On the other hand, when it comes to public health, EVs have a far better score, since even on dirty power their emissions are emitted at altitude in less densely populated areas rather than at ground level right where everyone is breathing. So some benefit to EV drivers (and drivers of less polluting gas/diesel cars) would be only reasonable.
And on those rare occasions when they do drive further, even Tesla's supercharging (which is, BTW, very far from the limits of what's possible... alternative li-ion techs can take a charge several times faster) doesn't cost you that much in terms of range per distance traveled.
I have a spreadsheet here comparing different scenarios. For all of them:
* Non-filling overhead for both types of vehicles is assumed at an average of 8 minutes. A quick in-and-out may only be a few minutes, but stations that turn out to be well off the highway, traffic, stop lights, broken pumps, "pay inside only", gas station closed for the day, etc can significantly increase it.
* Gas pumps are assumed to be a fast 10gpm (some pumps are slower)
* Car is assumed to have a 13 gallon tank and go 400 miles.
* "Break times" are allowed to be accumulated and dont have to be at specific intervals, just the ratio of driving to resting.
Category A: drive until 40 miles range remaining 240-mile-range Model S: Optimal charge level is to 64%. Goes about 79% as far as the gasoline car in an all-out cross-country sprint (no breaks); 87% as far as a gasoline car following the DOT-recommended 15 minutes break per 2 hours driving; and 90% as far as a gasoline car following the EU rules for commercial drivers' breaks (45 minutes every 4,5 hours). 310 mile range Model S: Optimal charge level is to 60%. Relative to the same criteria, distance travelled is 84%, 91%, and 95%, respectively.
Category B: drive until 80 miles range remaining 240-mile Model S: Optimal charge to 80%. Relative distances 80%, 87%, and 90%, respectively. 310-mile Model S: Optimal charge to 72%. Relative distances 84%, 91%, and 95%, respectively.
Category C: drive until 120 miles range remaining 240-mile Model S: Optimal charge to 100%. Relative distances 80%, 87%, and 89%, respectively. 310-mile Model S: Optimal charge to 85%. Relative distances 84%, 90%, and 94%, respectively.
Note: this is for an "endless driving" scenario. But in practice, with an EV you'll generally start the drive full and end mostly empty. So the shorter the trip, the better the EV does over these figures, up to the point where trips require no recharge and the EVs best the gasoline vehicles.
And? Have you compared how far you can go on a dollar of electricity versus a dollar of gasoline? Big deal if superchargers start, pardon the pun, charging. Even if they charge a big premium making the prices even close to that of gasoline: the vast majority of your charging will still be at home.
Re your "blockages" analogy: gas stations need to be as big as they are because everyone fills up at stations, not at home. Only a small percentage of fillups will be (and are) at superchargers.
We fully get that you don't have a garage. What you don't get: then don't get an electric car until you have proper charging infrastructure where you are. Just because you are in a poor position to get an electric car at this point in time doesn't mean that others shouldn't. Production is still scaling up - as fast as it can, but it's going to take many years. Chargers are rolling out - superchargers will double in the next year in a half and destination chargers quadruple (let alone home chargers) - but it will take years to reach gas station ubiquity. So, do understand: we get it that your current situation is not ideal at this point in time. Try to understand: that's not the case for other people.
As for this study: it was based on the premise of some instantaneous magical switch of all vehicles over to electric. If you're going to invoke that, you can at least magic up some chargers for people like you as well.
One can drive from NYC to LA along the most direct route with the longest distance between superchargers on the entire trip being about 140 miles (not counting destination chargers), with shorter distance options available with less direct routes. Aka without even the shortest range Model S ever having to hit 2/5ths of a "tank" on the most direct route, under normal highway driving conditions (the longest range never even needs to get down to half a "tank"). Oh, and the number of superchargers is expected to double by the end of 2017. And destination chargers will quadruple.
Apparently you've missed the arrival of the future. Welcome to it;)
See my other post in this thread. In more densely populated regions of the US it's difficult to specifically try to find an area more than 100 miles from a supercharger. And Model S's go a lot further than 100 miles. They're particularly common along major interstates, designed to make it easy to go cross country. And note that even as close as superchargers are, there's "slower" chargers much more frequent than even them.
At least for now, superchargers are completely free. And even when they do eventually start charging, electricity is a much cheaper energy source than gasoline per unit range.
Note that a Model S goes a *lot* further than 100 miles; I just used that number because the GP did.
I live in Iceland. But since you live in New York, here's the map. The biggest gap on the road from Boston to Philadelphia is 92 miles (aka, the midpoint is 46 miles from a supercharger). I can't find a single location within 100 miles of New York City that's more than about 60 miles from a supercharger (and I'm trying to find the most out-in-the boonies, no-direct-route place I can). If we go much further away, the middle of the triangle between Albany, Binghamton and Newburg is about 90 miles. North-central PA can be upwards of 150 miles. Just west of Charleston, WV is about 160. Little Rock, AR is about 210. But to beat that you have to go all the way out to far southwest Texas. Remember that the ranges on the Model S are 240, 265, and 310 miles, depending on the version. And also remember that: 1) these locations being picked to be in the "middle of nowhere", there's charges in all directions from them; 2) unlike European range estimates, US range estimates generally match real-world driving; and 3) I'm only listing superchargers; there's far more slower "top it up" chargers in-between the superchargers. Superchargers tend to be primarily located along interstates, which is generally the only place that you actually need them.
As for "having seen them": unlike gas stations which are big hulking affairs, superchargers are rather small and not very standoutish (although some stations have multiple, awnings, etc... depends on the site).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not talking about the mass of the nitrogen. I'm talking about the mass (and cost) of having an entire extra envelope.
So's the economic case for shutting down your city's fire department.
Until a fire happens. Which it invariably will, when you're dealing with a gas that burns in almost any fuel-air mixture, needs only a tiny ignition energy, and is the "easy route" for electrical discharges through the air or between the ground and the air.
1) That's stupid also (for lots of reasons, not just safety)
2) FCV hydrogen is contained within extremely strong carbon fiber tanks and is the difficult route for electricity to flow, as well as being difficult to permeate through; airships are just the opposite.
3) A FCV contains about 4 kg of hydrogen (when full). A large airship contains at least 1000 times as much. The Hindenburg carried nearly 17 tonnes.
I could also present some of the further arguments in favor of FCV safety by their proponents, but I personally don't agree with them, so I'll let someone else be their defender.
Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention with your N2 idea. It's the same problem that hydrogen airship ballonets suffered: hydrogen will permeate through its cells and accumulate in the "N2" space. And again, remember that it only takes a couple percent H2 to burn with air (it's surprisingly tolerant of oxygen depletion, too.... hydrogen just loves to burn, and burn aggressively :)
Making all matters worse is that airships tend to be somewhat like lightning rods. Even a tiny, imperceptible discharge can ignite hydrogen (its ignition energy is only a tenth that of gasoline vapour). The problem is that both hydrogen and helium have lower electric breakdown voltages than air (helium more than hydrogen, but the problem affects them both). Hence, electricity flowing through the airship is an easier path to ground than through air. Today's helium blimps are generally only allowed to be flown in clear-weather conditions, where the risk of lightning is thought to be effectively zero. Yet it's still very common for them to develop lightning pinholes on their surface from minor strikes, where the lightning burned away the fabric. Hindenburg's metal frame helped with electrical discharges, but clearly not enough.
It's not exactly a cube/square scaling. Because the larger you make it, the larger the tensile loads per square meter, meaning the stronger the envelope needs to be. Without upgrading to a higher tensile envelope, this means increasing thickness.
If you want to view it from a cross-section perspective, tensile strength is measured in pascals - aka newtons per meter squared (cross section). If we're taking a 1-meter slice, it's newtons per ~meter thickness. Pressure is likewise pascals - newtons per meter squared (area). From the same a 2d slice perspective, that's newtons per ~meter (perimeter). The higher the perimter, the higher the number of newtons force. But the number of newtons the envelope can withstand doesn't have perimeter in its divisor, it has thickness in its divisor. So thickness and perimter cross section must increase in accordance.
It doesn't work that way. Ignoring the tremendous amount of extra mass you're proposing and the increased cross section, hydrogen does not instantly dilute; by and large it will just rise through the nitrogen to the outside. Furthermore, hydrogen has an incredibly broad flammability range; you only need a couple percent H2 for it to burn.
Permeability does not work that way. Permeability is a complex process involving not just porosity but also affinities and solubilities. As a general rule, hydrogen and helium permeabilities are quite similar.
It's actually not that much of a difference because both are vastly lighter than air (2 vs 4 vs. 29).
It's not that simple. They didn't just switch lifting gases, they also added an exhaust water recovery system (aka added weight and a bit of extra drag and a bit of parasitic energy consumption). Range of an airship is relative to its drag, its energy efficiency and the amount of fuel it can carry.
They wanted to use helium as the lifting gas, and lobbied the US for permission to import it. They actually designed the airship around the premise that they'd be able to convince the US, and had to redesign it when the US refused. Zeppelin, the world's biggest producer of hydrogen airships, still preferred helium. Hydrogen was out of necessity, not desirability.
Sigh, this stuff again....
1) All lifting uses combined (party balloons, blimps, etc) make up a fraction of the 13% "other" category.. The big wasters are industry, where they buy either gaseous (e.g. welding) or liquid (e.g. cryogenics) and just dump it to the outside air. No recovery effort whatsoever. To the people who run cryogenic / industrial equipment: Yes, I know, recovery systems are a cost and it's always iffy whether it pays for itself. But you, "cryogenic people", and you, "we're running out of helium people", fight amongst yourselves and leave lifting purposes - which use little helium - out of it.
2) Of that fraction of a 13% dedicated to lifting purposes, blimps use only a small fraction of it.
3) Modern fabric for blimps such as vectran or aluminized BoPET leak literally several orders of magnitude less than old fabrics like polyurethane-coated nylon.
4) Old style blimps need regular venting to adjust lift. Part of the purpose of this new generation of hybrid blimps is that they don't have to do that. And it's not the only type that can do this; variable-superpressure blimps can as well, as can phase-change blimps (see project ALICE).
In short, you're looking at a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a small fraction of a fraction of 13% of helium usage. No, this is not a problem. Furthermore, concerning helium itself:
1) It's not clear that we're anywhere near "running out of helium". Helium hasn't been studied nearly as much as more economically important resources like oil and gas. We really don't even understand why most deposits that are rich in helium are like that. Entire new categories of helium deposits, such as volcanic helium, are looking increasingly likely to be economical (it had previously been thought uneconomical because it would all be diluted with CO2; we're now finding that this isn't always the case). We're finding out that groundwater plays a role in where helium migrates to. And on and on. As helium prices rise, more work is finally getting put until understanding helium resources and finding new ones. It used to be just way too cheap for that.
2) The absolute worst case for helium is refrigerating it from the atmosphere, as the end stage of what we currently do to separate other noble gases. By volume, neon is about 3,5 times more common than helium, while helium is about 60 times more abundant than xenon; so the volumetric price for helium should be between that of neon and xenon, but closer to neon. Expensive, but still available. Except for one thing...
3) ... we'll never get to that point. Because any gases from the ground will always be significantly more helium rich than the atmosphere, so we'll always use them as our source. Even if today's helium resources do get depleted (not likely anytime soon, see #1), it just means a steady progression to less helium rich gases (including virtually limitless volcanic ones) as the source. It will never approach the price of gases like neon, even in the worst case.
Also, from the summary:
Um, no, it's not. Blimps don't work that way. Loads are distributed at the very least by catenary curtains and cables.
If you want a small scale example, take a garbage bag, blow air into it, and tie it off (blimps only have a couple hundred pascals overpressure, they're not like party ballons). Now hang a weight from it. Notice how horribly it deforms. You need catenary curtains to distribute the weight of your load across the fabric, to maintain your desired (aerodynamic) shape. You also need ballonets, so that the blimp doesn't explode when you change altitude.
The network already exists. It's going to get more dense, but it already exists. The longest distance between two chargers between NY and LA is about 60% of the range of the shortest-range Model S model, and about 45% of the charge of the longest-range Model S model. Most chargers are much closer than that. That is currently, not "expected". What's expected is even more chargers.
And it's worth noting that EV and gas station needs are precisely opposite. Gas stations are mostly needed in urban areas, where people have to fill up regularly during their everyday lives. Superchargers are most needed (and are generally built) in remote locations along major roads. There's no point to flooding cities with superchargers when most people aren't going to use them, as they can charge at home or on slow chargers at public places.
The closest known thing to being an opposite of inflation is gravity. If you want a force that can shorten the distance between two objects, that's the one.
Inflate (dilate) them. Inflation doesn't push things into adjacent areas of existing space; it creates new space.** It's important to ask: why did inflation exist - and then just stop? It's a much more satisfying response that inflation is just "something that happens (regardless of its nature) in areas of extreme mass density", rather than "something that happens only at a certain moment of time, for no particular reason". Well, then what's being described is a dilatory force similar (but with an opposite sign) to gravity. Obviously it cannot be a perfect symmetric inverse of gravity, or the two forces would cancel each other out. There has to be an asymmetry - inflation has to dominate in extreme conditions, while gravity dominates in what is "normal" conditions from our perspective. And since we're describing a force, there should be a force carrier, an unknown gauge boson. And that's what I hope to see discovered.
** One has to be cautious with their wording when discussing spacetime distortion because your choice of geometry can exchange parameters such as position, time, etc and everything is relative to your choice of reference frame.
I know that not lacing your replies to people you disagree with insults and in general acting like an adult is hard, but please try.
That changes not a single word that I wrote. You asked a question in your post. That's what the question mark does. Don't act shocked when you get a response.
Indeed, even 120V@15A overnight (say, 8h?) (let alone from when one arrives home from work to when they leave in the morning) is 14,4kWh. A typical Tesla vehicle might consume 250Wh/mi, meaning nearly 60 miles of range added every day.
The Tesla home chargers are for if you want to charge your nearly-emptied vehicle to full in just a couple hours. You don't need something like that to make up for a typical daily commute.
Hardly near the limits of charge current at all. Have you seen the disconnectable shore power connectors for cruise ships? We're talking over a dozen megawatts. Connectors look like this, though, you have to plug in each phase individually ;) If something like that was ever needed (super-rapid charging of long-range road trains?), I imagine it'd be set up to connect automatically if you pulled in.
Also it's worth noting that copper isn't the be-all end-all of conductors. There are now companies making carbon cables that slightly beat copper in terms of resistance per cross section and significantly beat it in resistance per unit mass. I only expect to see that grow in the future.
And? So you (a self-described unusually-frequent long-distance driver) lose an extra dozen or so minutes once a month, and meanwhile never have to take the time to go out of your way to a gas station during your everyday life for the rest of the year. You consider this a net loss somehow?
Concerning EV charging times on long trips: If you want to see how little of a difference current supercharger vs. gasoline times actually make, I posted the results of a spreadsheet here. The short of it is that on very long trips, Tesla style vehicles (which, btw, use batteries with rather slow recharge limits compared to many other types) will take you to your destination at a rate in the ballpark of 87-95% of that of gasoline vehicles. The shorter the trip, the better the EVs do, and for any trip shorter than the vehicle's range (the vast majority), they best gasoline vehicles.
Another nice change is locations. Gas stations tend to be located most in populated areas, since people have to fill up in their everyday lives. That's where EV chargers are needed least; they're most needed along long country roads and highways used to travel between major populated areas. The ideal location for a charger is really something like a countryside rest stop. Aka, a much nicer place to take a break than your typical gas station.
Are you under the impression that millions of EVs are just going to appear on the road and gasoline vehicles disappear tomorrow? If you're going to invoke a sudden magical arrival of vast numbers of EVs, why aren't you likewise invoking the same magic for charging stations? Because chargers absolutely are being built and installed, and the rate of network deployment is exponential. Supercharger stations are expected to double yet again by the end of 2017. Destination chargers are expected to quadruple by that time.
You seriously think that an Altima is a performance and luxury equivalent to a Model 3? Seriously? If you want a nicer car, you pay more. Electric or not.
Secondly, your whole "average commute...." line is so mixed up it's not even wrong. Electric car ranges are generally rated in distances. The longer it takes you to drive it (the slower you go), the range goes up. Unlike gasoline cars, the optimal steady-state speed for an EV is generally around 15-20mph. The highway-speed range can be drastically multiplied at steady low speeds - and they deal with stop and go better than gasoline cars. So if you half the speed, you don't just double the "time" it can drive for - you more than double it.
Model 3 has a range of 215 highway miles. In town, it's probably around 300 miles. Which at an average speed of, say, 30 mph, is about 10 hours of driving. Now I don't know what your daily schedule is like, but if you're spending 10 hours between commuting, picking up kids, groceries, and the dog (WTF? does your dog have a desk job or something?), then I think you need to rethink your life.
Lastly, the superchargers form a complete network along major interstates and urban areas all across the US, Europe, and other parts of the world.
I get it that you have negative feelings about electric vehicles, and that's okay. But please do learn about a topic before you start ranting about it. It doesn't help your cause any to base your argument on things that even a person with a most basic understanding of the topic knows are inaccurate. It's like posting a sign on the bus, "Because you are riding in a space ship, smoking is prohibited". The sheer ridiculousness of the first statement invites ridicule on the whole argument.
Mitch... please take the time to google the Supercharger map before commenting more on this thread. You're just making yourself look silly.
No. It'll get even cheaper.
Electric cars do nothing to change the cost of building a power plant, fueling it, etc. It's worth noting that the electricity used for a full fleet conversion would still be much less than is used for industry, commercial, and residential needs.
However, electric cars do change one thing. Most of their recharging is slow overnight charging - really the ideal type of load. This means that power companies can get better utilization out of their hardware, selling power at times when plants would have otherwise been sitting idle. Electric companies have long been some of the biggest cheerleaders for EVs for this very reason. They can operate even more efficiently with smart charging, having EV charging rates vary (within the constraints of the owners's charging schedule) in accordance with the needs of the grid, thus letting them get by with fewer peaking plants.
Indeed, the fastest pumps legally allowable are 10gpm, but many if not most are slower.
However, "time to pump gas" is not the key issue. The key issue is "how much time does the stop cost you, from the moment you decide to take the exit to the moment you're back on the road at full speed"? And not just the optimal case, but the average case, taking into account randomness like traffic lights, traffic, defective pumps, pay-indoors, whoops-station-closed-for-the-night, where-did-I-put-my-keys, etc.
Most of these things affect electric as well and form a rough baseline. In an ideal case I'd say that baseline (not counting filling) might be as little as 3 minutes, but on the average case for long distance driving maybe more like 8.
Also, don't forget the rest stops you're supposed to take at regular intervals to stretch, walk around, use the bathroom, eat, etc. DOT recommends 15 minutes per 2 hours driving. Commercial drivers legally have to take even more.
Well... not exactly. More to the point, exactly the opposite. An inflationary force would make distances between regions of spacetime greater, not reduce them.
Odometer (with a whopping fine if tampering is detected) times vehicle weight seems the most logical way to deal with it. Then you're actually charging relative to actual road damage.
On the other hand, when it comes to public health, EVs have a far better score, since even on dirty power their emissions are emitted at altitude in less densely populated areas rather than at ground level right where everyone is breathing. So some benefit to EV drivers (and drivers of less polluting gas/diesel cars) would be only reasonable.
And on those rare occasions when they do drive further, even Tesla's supercharging (which is, BTW, very far from the limits of what's possible... alternative li-ion techs can take a charge several times faster) doesn't cost you that much in terms of range per distance traveled.
I have a spreadsheet here comparing different scenarios. For all of them:
* Non-filling overhead for both types of vehicles is assumed at an average of 8 minutes. A quick in-and-out may only be a few minutes, but stations that turn out to be well off the highway, traffic, stop lights, broken pumps, "pay inside only", gas station closed for the day, etc can significantly increase it.
* Gas pumps are assumed to be a fast 10gpm (some pumps are slower)
* Car is assumed to have a 13 gallon tank and go 400 miles.
* "Break times" are allowed to be accumulated and dont have to be at specific intervals, just the ratio of driving to resting.
Category A: drive until 40 miles range remaining
240-mile-range Model S: Optimal charge level is to 64%. Goes about 79% as far as the gasoline car in an all-out cross-country sprint (no breaks); 87% as far as a gasoline car following the DOT-recommended 15 minutes break per 2 hours driving; and 90% as far as a gasoline car following the EU rules for commercial drivers' breaks (45 minutes every 4,5 hours).
310 mile range Model S: Optimal charge level is to 60%. Relative to the same criteria, distance travelled is 84%, 91%, and 95%, respectively.
Category B: drive until 80 miles range remaining
240-mile Model S: Optimal charge to 80%. Relative distances 80%, 87%, and 90%, respectively.
310-mile Model S: Optimal charge to 72%. Relative distances 84%, 91%, and 95%, respectively.
Category C: drive until 120 miles range remaining
240-mile Model S: Optimal charge to 100%. Relative distances 80%, 87%, and 89%, respectively.
310-mile Model S: Optimal charge to 85%. Relative distances 84%, 90%, and 94%, respectively.
Note: this is for an "endless driving" scenario. But in practice, with an EV you'll generally start the drive full and end mostly empty. So the shorter the trip, the better the EV does over these figures, up to the point where trips require no recharge and the EVs best the gasoline vehicles.
And? Have you compared how far you can go on a dollar of electricity versus a dollar of gasoline? Big deal if superchargers start, pardon the pun, charging. Even if they charge a big premium making the prices even close to that of gasoline: the vast majority of your charging will still be at home.
Re your "blockages" analogy: gas stations need to be as big as they are because everyone fills up at stations, not at home. Only a small percentage of fillups will be (and are) at superchargers.
We fully get that you don't have a garage. What you don't get: then don't get an electric car until you have proper charging infrastructure where you are. Just because you are in a poor position to get an electric car at this point in time doesn't mean that others shouldn't. Production is still scaling up - as fast as it can, but it's going to take many years. Chargers are rolling out - superchargers will double in the next year in a half and destination chargers quadruple (let alone home chargers) - but it will take years to reach gas station ubiquity. So, do understand: we get it that your current situation is not ideal at this point in time. Try to understand: that's not the case for other people.
As for this study: it was based on the premise of some instantaneous magical switch of all vehicles over to electric. If you're going to invoke that, you can at least magic up some chargers for people like you as well.
One can drive from NYC to LA along the most direct route with the longest distance between superchargers on the entire trip being about 140 miles (not counting destination chargers), with shorter distance options available with less direct routes. Aka without even the shortest range Model S ever having to hit 2/5ths of a "tank" on the most direct route, under normal highway driving conditions (the longest range never even needs to get down to half a "tank"). Oh, and the number of superchargers is expected to double by the end of 2017. And destination chargers will quadruple.
Apparently you've missed the arrival of the future. Welcome to it ;)
See my other post in this thread. In more densely populated regions of the US it's difficult to specifically try to find an area more than 100 miles from a supercharger. And Model S's go a lot further than 100 miles. They're particularly common along major interstates, designed to make it easy to go cross country. And note that even as close as superchargers are, there's "slower" chargers much more frequent than even them.
At least for now, superchargers are completely free. And even when they do eventually start charging, electricity is a much cheaper energy source than gasoline per unit range.
Note that a Model S goes a *lot* further than 100 miles; I just used that number because the GP did.
I live in Iceland. But since you live in New York, here's the map. The biggest gap on the road from Boston to Philadelphia is 92 miles (aka, the midpoint is 46 miles from a supercharger). I can't find a single location within 100 miles of New York City that's more than about 60 miles from a supercharger (and I'm trying to find the most out-in-the boonies, no-direct-route place I can). If we go much further away, the middle of the triangle between Albany, Binghamton and Newburg is about 90 miles. North-central PA can be upwards of 150 miles. Just west of Charleston, WV is about 160. Little Rock, AR is about 210. But to beat that you have to go all the way out to far southwest Texas. Remember that the ranges on the Model S are 240, 265, and 310 miles, depending on the version. And also remember that: 1) these locations being picked to be in the "middle of nowhere", there's charges in all directions from them; 2) unlike European range estimates, US range estimates generally match real-world driving; and 3) I'm only listing superchargers; there's far more slower "top it up" chargers in-between the superchargers. Superchargers tend to be primarily located along interstates, which is generally the only place that you actually need them.
As for "having seen them": unlike gas stations which are big hulking affairs, superchargers are rather small and not very standoutish (although some stations have multiple, awnings, etc... depends on the site).