Your selection of links suggests an assumption that such a fuel source needs to be fertilized and irrigated. I think most people recognize at this point that such feedstocks won't be economically attractive, and are looking towards things like algal biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol.
What sort of surplus of fertile farmland with ample rain do you think we have sitting around waiting to be farmed? And even algae biodiesel is dwarfed in terms of vehicle miles per acre by solar + EVs (plus, it's basically hydroponics on a massive scale -- i.e., expensive).
People (generally) don't plug their car into the wall (although that will certainly become more common)
Growing plants for fuel is far, far more destructive and less efficient than just turning the solar energy directly to electricity and operating off of that.
I don't know about the Veyron, but the Tesla Roadster does. I have one of the logs right here. 2.6.11.8-1.3.0, BusyBox 1.00, 32 megs ram, Philips-LPC2294 CPU, etc.
In all likelyhood, that 100 mile range is very conservative. They recently nearly doubled its pack capacity without listing an increase in range. They're guaranteeing 100 miles range highway with two passengers and climate control on. That means at slower speeds or other such conditions, it'll be significantly more.
To give an idea, the Mitsubishi MiEV is rated for 100 miles range. It has a 16kWh pack and perhaps about 70% more drag and weight compared to the 2e. Yet the 2e has a 17-23kWh pack.
They're also being extremely conservative with its performance, saying only that it does 0-60 in "under 10 seconds". The version they showed at TED actually did 0-60 in under 8 seconds, and they recently nearly doubled its stated torque figures without stating an increase in 0-60 time.
All of this happened after their new CEO, Paul Wilbur, took over. I think the 2e is going to blow away most people's expectations of it, and I think that's their goal. I think they want to be an overperformer in a field of underperformers.
Exactly! Earlier this year, I needed a cargo van to move a furnace up from Missouri. So I rented one. I need a cargo van about once every year. Does that mean I should buy a cargo van, make it my daily commuter? Nobody would ever suggest that. But then they apply that exact same logic to EVs.
Personally, in terms of range extension, I'm fond of towable generators. Range-extended when you need it, and not when you don't. And it'd be so trivial to set up a genset rental shop once such vehicles are on the market in any relevant numbers. Compared to what they have versus what a rental car has, I imagine it'd cost about $15-$20 a day.
It's important to note where the cash burn came from. Initially Tesla was looking at a car that'd only cost $60k to build; they discovered, through an audit partway through development, that it actually cost over $120k to build. They jacked up the price to $109k and have been optimizing it for a while, and finally have it down to where they make about $10k per Roadster -- not a lot for a car that expensive, but not pocket change either. At the same time, as a company, they're still losing money, as they're pumping a lot into Model S development. But they got the loan because they met the DOE's requirement to have a profitable core business (in this case, the Roadster).
I think they are rated for 70% capacity after 5 years, so you probably want to replace at least every 6-8 years
The initial for the Roadster was 80% after 5 years. They've updated it based on their latest testing to 80% after 7 years for the average user. They're talking even higher for the Model S.
Of course, that's nothing compared to, say, GM *warrantying* their pack for *10* years.
That's not how it works at all. It works that way with PbA due to Peukert's Law, but not with li-ion. Physics itself doesn't care how fast you accelerate; what matters is the efficiency of your powertrain under those conditions. And electric motors have no particularly inefficient conditions except at very low RPM.
You actually believe that those two tiny rear-facing seats are actually going to make it to production? Or that the per-vehicle average occupancy will be all that much higher for the Model S than for the 2e? I'd wager that the average occupancy of a 2e will be about 1.4 passengers while the average occupancy of a Model S will be about 1.8 passengers.
The top speed is the issue, not the acceleration. A high top speed requires a certain engine power and electric motors of that caliber provide quick acceleration.
That's not how it works. Your typical electric vehicle has no transmission. This means you have to strike a balance between torque and max RPM. Max RPM is limited by wear on the motor increasing significantly at very high RPMs. There's a simple solution to this tradeoff: a multi-gear transmission.
The range of electric vehicles pretty much limits them to city and commute driving
That's based on an absurdly low price of electricity, though. My current PG&E top tier rate (and every kWh I add is billed at this rate) is $0.33/kWh
No, what's absurd is how much PG&E charges for electricity. The US national average is about $0.10/kWh.
If the new Honda Fit hybrid really comes out to 45 MPG highway
1) It won't. They've stated that they're targeting the mileage of the (disappointing) Insight. 2) The Fit is not a luxury car, so it's a dumb comparison.
Lithium scarcity is one of those myths that just won't die. It's based on a few misguided notions: 1) that lithium makes up most of a lithium-ion battery (it doesn't); 2) it's its most expensive element in a lithium-ion battery (it isn't); and 3) a gross misunderstanding of how reserve figures work.
In reference to the latter case, everyone needs to get in their heads that reserve figures are based on A) what's been found, at B) the current price, and C) current technology. In reference to lithium, A) people haven't really been looking for it because it's so cheap; B) it's dirt cheap; and C) the tech to produce it cheaper hasn't really been needed so it hasn't been worked on.
Even with current tech, a figure of li-ion EVs could easily be sustained through seawater extraction indefinitely. Isn't that the beginning and end of the issue right there?
More accurately, it's 5+2 seating -- two mini rear-facing seats in the back. Not many believe those will actually make it to the production version, but it's another in a long line of pretty shrewd marketing efforts by Tesla to break all of the EV stereotypes one by one (they're slow, they can't go very far, they're small, etc). They're also shrewdly pushing its after-tax-credit price rather than its before-tax-credit price like many others are doing.
Whoa! I'm "Flamebait" for reporting the problems I've had with OpenOffice compatibility with MS Office, on an article about OpenOffice compatibility with MS Office?
I've been dealing with a rash of OpenOffice compatibility problems with MS Office that I hope don't cause my business plan to bomb in a local business plan competition. I've been discovering that the way it saves.doc files doesn't quite match with how MS Office reads them, so things end up misaligned - tables broken up, images out of place, etc. And don't even get me started on docx... I'm going to try to get a revised (MS Office-saved) version in, but I hope it's not too late.
Actually I am not for hydrogen. Hydrogen isn't corrosive but yes some metals can suffer from hydrogen embrittelment.
1) Hydrogen embrittlement is a form of corrosion. 2) Not just some -- "most". Almost all, actually. On the other hand, most materials are compatible with gasoline.
As to battery safety if you hang around the RC forums you must know about the fire proof bags they sell for recharging
You're confusing LiPo and other cobalt/graphite cells with LFP and other "automotive" li-ions.
Or you may have seen the notebook fires.
Again, you're mixing up cobalt/graphite cells with other forms of li-ion. Tesla (and by extension Daimler) are the only ones using that battery tech (and each of the cells are inside sealed "cans" designed to isolate thermal incidents from other cells and from the driver). All of the others are using LFP, manganese spinels, and titanates. All of which are less of a fire risk than gasoline.
Methanol can be made from any plant matter, coal, natural gas or air and water with enough energy.
It's all about efficiency. And when it comes to plant matter, the land-use efficiency as well. And the numbers are awful. A solar thermal plant operating on a patch of desert will power 20-50 times as many EVs per acre as an optimal field of plants grown to produce methanol will power ICEs (I can show you the math if you're interested). And it won't drain our rivers or aquifers for irrigation and lead to massive fertilizer dead zones, either. And why you're so instant on having such a neurotoxic fuel in your tank (and correspondingly, the vapors of it everywhere it's dealt with) is beyond me. It only takes 10ml of methanol in your body to permanently destroy your optic nerves.
Batteries loose capacity with every recharge cycle. A thousand cycles will not be 200,000 miles for most users. It will be three years since they will recharge every night.
*sigh*. That's not how it works, and this is really, really basic. Li-ion cells don't degrade based on how many times you plug them in. They degrade based on how many times their material is cycled through (and in the case of cobalt/graphite cells, by age/temperature as well). A complete cycling through of the material is known as a "full cycle". A half cycling through is known as a "half cycle". Now, it's not fair to say that if you get 1000 full cycles, you'll get 2,000 half cycles. Actually, it's more like *3,000* half cycles, because there's more degradation as you near the exhaustion of a cell than there is early on. I.e., just the opposite of what you describe. A person who drives 40 miles a day (more than average) on a 200 mile EV is only going through a fifth of a cycle per day.
What you're describing is called a "memory effect". None of the li-ion variants have a memory effect. The memory effect is primarily a NiCd phenomenon.
Hey I could be wrong but until I can buy a economical ev that fits my needs
It depends on what you call "economical". But first, answer this: are you one of those idiots who assumes that only payback periods of a couple years are relevant, or do you (like an investor) look at the long-term picture, including the expected life of the vehicle, maintenance, and value retention (if resale is planned), and then consider the premium on such a vehicle as a loan? If you're the former, you'll be waiting a while. If you're the latter, there's already one EV like that on the market in China, and there will be quite a few in the US in the next couple of years.
or even see one on the market it is vapor.
You do realize that *almost every single marque* is building them, right? Dozens and dozens of different models? You know what sort of massive worldwide conspiracy it'd take to keep them off the market?
The price per watt on fuel cells has come down 10-fold in the last several years.
On what planet?
If they can bring them down another 10-fold they most certainly will be practical
No, and park it next to my unicorn.
My efficiency statements are not inaccurate, you are comparing different numbers. I'm talking about the overall efficiency of the whole power-delivery system, you are looking at only the efficiency of the battery.
Irrelevant. Generator efficiency effects electrolysis, too. So does AC/DC conversion. Both FCVs and BEVs use electric motors, so that cancels out, too.
Fuel cells are not disaster upon disaster, as you say, their only downfall is their price.
Right. Only price. And fill time. And storage density. And moving parts. And longevity. And ozone depletion. And incredibly low ignition energy. And platinum consumption (scarcity, unbelievably massive environmental destruction per unit mass). And metal embrittlement. And wide combustible and explosive fuel/air mixture ranges. And very high fuel costs. And extreme bulk storage/transport costs. And way lower efficiency than BEVs. And really expensive fueling stations at even low pressure. And several times more expensive than that at high pressure. And virtually no way to fill an H2 vehicle in most parts of the world *at all* (unlike BEVs). And greater temperature sensitivity than batteries. And on and on, but apart from all of that, they only have one downfall, sure.
Charging batteries takes a long time
Mitsubishi MiEV: 30 minutes (on sale now in Japan) Subaru Stella EV: 15 minutes (on sale now in Japan) BYD F3DM: 15 minutes (on sale now in Japan) Lightning GT: 10 minutes (upcoming) Shelby Ultimate Aero EV: 10 minutes (upcoming) Phoenix SUT: 10 minutes (upcoming)
You were saying? Go enjoy your 25 minute fill at an H2 station. H2 filling times have been going *up* while EV times have gone down, as the more hydrogen you want to store and the higher pressure you want to store it at increase fill time. And the only way around it is the ridiculously dangerous, ridiculously expensive approach of storing it pre-pressurized up to 5 tons per square inch at the station.
adding capacity means adding more batteries
And adding more power to a FCV means adding more fuel cells. Your point? EVs already do 4-5 *hours* of highway driving on a single charge, and battery capacity has increased 4.5x in the past 20 years. It's simply not an issue.
batteries are heavy.
And fuel cell stacks are not? You need the fuel cells (no slouch themselves in terms of either bulk or weight), the tank (not too heavy but very bulky), *and* a several kilowatt hour, high-power battery pack (bulkier/heavier than high energy batteries) to buffer the fuel cell stack. The FCX clarity weighs 3,600 lbs. The 240-mile Tesla Roadster weighs 2,723 lbs.
Like I said I am not a big fan of Hydrogen but just how would it reduce engine power and life?
Life: Hydrogen is a much more corrosive fuel than gasoline. Power: Hydrogen's low density and tendency for knock means less power per stroke. A H2 engine has to be about 50% larger than a gasoline engine for the same power output.
Rapid charging does have a negative effect on battery life
Not as much as you'd think. Even amateurs rapid charge batteries. Over on rcgroups.com, one person did an experiment where they repeatedly charged an A123 cell in 15-20 minutes and then discharged it in 8-10 minutes (like anyone could ever discharge a car's battery pack that fast). It took 1,000 cycles for the cell to get down to 80% capacity. For a 200 mile range car, that's 200,000 miles of *only fast charges* (never mind that fast charges will be rare; overnight charging is more common -- and also never mind that this included extremely rapid discharges). And these were in poorly controlled conditions, not a professional charge management system. And some chemistries are even more durable than the phosphates. For example, AltairNano's titanates are used in grid load balancing applications where they repeatedly charge and discharge, charge and discharge, over 10-15 minutes, over and over for years on end.
and is also dangerous
Oh, that's rich coming from someone advocating for hydrogen. It's far easier to control the risk of rapid charging than it is for hydrogen. Rapid charging risks only exist for the 10-20 minutes that the charging is underway. Hydrogen risks remain 24/7. Rapid charging risks are managed in exactly the same way moderate speed charging is managed by SAE J1772.
Read up on battery safety some time.
I know all about battery safety. Do *you* know how few people die from electrocution in the US each year? About 400 a year (there are ~300 million people in the US). Most of them electrical workers. Even a 120V/15A outlet can kill you. A 240V outlet, like used on dryers, stoves, and RVs (which get repeatedly plugged in and unplugged) can kill you quite easily. But these deaths are rare. Why? Because of appropriate design in terms of safety. Electricity can be a powerful force, but we've gotten quite good at taming it -- and that's through measures far less extreme than SAE J1772. And J1772 isn't as far as you can take it either -- if you really wanted to be extreme, you could have a conductive outer sheath on your cable that, if damaged or even bent too far, kills power.
The problem is that there's really no way to make hydrogen safe. You can't put a fuse or breaker on hydrogen. You can't realistically eliminate all sources of static from areas where H2 vehicles are stored or fueled. It's always going to be in an environment subject to catastrophic failure. Etc. It's never a good thing.
EVs are just not practical.
Yeah, how is it practical to never have to go out of your way to fill up in your everyday life and to only pay a penny or two per mile to fuel in the most energy-efficient means physically possible...
I still think Methanol is a better solution for energy storage than hydrogen.
Even less efficient. And toxic. And expensive. And eats up land.
Probably the ultimate solution for transportation would be a completely synthetic hydrocarbon made from water and atmospheric CO2.
Which requires a tremendous amount of energy to make. And tremendously expensive.
You can't ignore the issue of efficiency. Power plants are expensive to make. Clean power plants, all the more expensive. And even with clean power, there are environmental consequences. Want five times the coastline covered in wind turbines? Five times the desert plastered with solar panels? Five times the dammed rivers? And on and on and on.
If you don't have a background in the field -- and this is no easy field by any stretch -- you're likely to make major mistakes. And this is a guy who cites an astrologer as a source, for crying out loud.
Of course you could park said fuel cell car next to a battery car that is is all the same things that you can drive across country without out stopping for a lengthy recharge every 300 miles. Oh and is available today without some revolutionary charging/battery tech that you can not buy yet.
Just the opposite. You *can't* drive an FCV across country without a hydrogen caravan. You can drive an EV across the country today, albeit with about as much downtime as uptime.
If you want to talk about a hypothetical future where there's H2 stations across the US, then compare it to an equivalent future where there's EV rapid chargers across the US. EV rapid chargers *do* exist today. AeroVironment makes them as powerful as 250kW. Norvik, 300kW. That's about 25 miles of range per minute of charging. And they're cheaper to build/install than even the low pressure hydrogen stations that take ~25 minutes to fill (~8 miles range per minute of filling), let alone the high pressure (ultra-dangerous) stations that give 3-5 minute fills but cost several times as much.
It's not a "revolutionary charging/battery tech that you can not buy yet". The Mitsubishi MiEV, on sale in Japan, charges in 30 minutes. The Subaru R1e, on sale in Japan, 15 minutes. The BYD F3DM, on sale in China, 15 minutes. The Lightning GT, Phoenix SUT, and Shelby Ultimate Aero EV, will all be under 10 minutes. There's been a network of 40kW stations (sort of the boundary between rapid and non-rapid charge) installed in Hawaii for over a decade.
Of course what everybody seems to be forgetting is that you can burn Hydrogen in any number of engines instead of using a Fuel Cell including gas turbines, Stirling, or a good old fashioned Otto cycle engine.
Which makes the efficiency *even worse*. By a big margin. Well worse than gasoline. And cuts the engine power and reduces engine life. So what's the point?
The notion of a "hydrogen economy" is what happens when PR runs wild.
Those cells can be large or small, depending on the intended application/output, just like with hydrogen cells I'm sure.
Actually, it's different. With fuel cells, the big price is per watt. With batteries, the big price is per watt hour. The problem is that the price per watt on fuel cells is so ridiculously out of the ballpark it's not even funny. Well, that's *one* of the many problems with them. Fuel cells are a disaster upon a disaster upon a disaster, in terms of plausibility as a transportation system.
The US cut off fuel cell vehicle research funds for a reason. And no amount of complaining by CARB and the multi-billion dollar fuel cell industry can change the physics. Fuel cells work great for NASA space missions. Not so great for cars.
On the efficiency stuff... that's informative; thanks:)
Their efficiency statements are inaccurate. See my reply to them.
Li-ion batteries are 96-99% efficient. Commercial fuel cells stacks are 40-50% efficient, with individual cells as high as 70%, but only when run at low power (i.e., you need to be even more expensive upfront if you want those numbers) and fed pre-compressed pure oxygen. Electrolysis is 50-85% efficient (there's a tradeoff of capital costs versus efficiency). Electricity transport is 92.8% efficient in the US. Hydrogen has at least some of those electricity transport losses *plus* transportation losses (10-15%) and compressor losses (~10-15%).
It's a disaster in terms of system efficiency.
The problem with batteries is that you have to add more batteries to increase capacity, while with fuel cells you only need to store more hydrogen.
As was pointed out to you, that's irrelevant because even a 1-mile range hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is way too expensive because of the ridiculous price of fuel cells. Even the Tesla Roadster's pack costs under $20k. The only unsubsidized full-sized fuel cell vehicle on the market has a $7,700 monthly lease. You'd pay for the cost of the Roadster's pack in just three months of that lease.
Slashdot Mirror
Your selection of links suggests an assumption that such a fuel source needs to be fertilized and irrigated. I think most people recognize at this point that such feedstocks won't be economically attractive, and are looking towards things like algal biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol.
What sort of surplus of fertile farmland with ample rain do you think we have sitting around waiting to be farmed? And even algae biodiesel is dwarfed in terms of vehicle miles per acre by solar + EVs (plus, it's basically hydroponics on a massive scale -- i.e., expensive).
People (generally) don't plug their car into the wall (although that will certainly become more common)
That option was the point of my post.
Not really, surprisingly.
Growing plants for fuel is far, far more destructive and less efficient than just turning the solar energy directly to electricity and operating off of that.
does it run linux?
I don't know about the Veyron, but the Tesla Roadster does. I have one of the logs right here. 2.6.11.8-1.3.0, BusyBox 1.00, 32 megs ram, Philips-LPC2294 CPU, etc.
In all likelyhood, that 100 mile range is very conservative. They recently nearly doubled its pack capacity without listing an increase in range. They're guaranteeing 100 miles range highway with two passengers and climate control on. That means at slower speeds or other such conditions, it'll be significantly more.
To give an idea, the Mitsubishi MiEV is rated for 100 miles range. It has a 16kWh pack and perhaps about 70% more drag and weight compared to the 2e. Yet the 2e has a 17-23kWh pack.
They're also being extremely conservative with its performance, saying only that it does 0-60 in "under 10 seconds". The version they showed at TED actually did 0-60 in under 8 seconds, and they recently nearly doubled its stated torque figures without stating an increase in 0-60 time.
All of this happened after their new CEO, Paul Wilbur, took over. I think the 2e is going to blow away most people's expectations of it, and I think that's their goal. I think they want to be an overperformer in a field of underperformers.
You commute two hours each way to and from work?
If so, you're in the top, what, 3% or so of commuters?
Exactly! Earlier this year, I needed a cargo van to move a furnace up from Missouri. So I rented one. I need a cargo van about once every year. Does that mean I should buy a cargo van, make it my daily commuter? Nobody would ever suggest that. But then they apply that exact same logic to EVs.
Personally, in terms of range extension, I'm fond of towable generators. Range-extended when you need it, and not when you don't. And it'd be so trivial to set up a genset rental shop once such vehicles are on the market in any relevant numbers. Compared to what they have versus what a rental car has, I imagine it'd cost about $15-$20 a day.
It's important to note where the cash burn came from. Initially Tesla was looking at a car that'd only cost $60k to build; they discovered, through an audit partway through development, that it actually cost over $120k to build. They jacked up the price to $109k and have been optimizing it for a while, and finally have it down to where they make about $10k per Roadster -- not a lot for a car that expensive, but not pocket change either. At the same time, as a company, they're still losing money, as they're pumping a lot into Model S development. But they got the loan because they met the DOE's requirement to have a profitable core business (in this case, the Roadster).
I think they are rated for 70% capacity after 5 years, so you probably want to replace at least every 6-8 years
The initial for the Roadster was 80% after 5 years. They've updated it based on their latest testing to 80% after 7 years for the average user. They're talking even higher for the Model S.
Of course, that's nothing compared to, say, GM *warrantying* their pack for *10* years.
That's not how it works at all. It works that way with PbA due to Peukert's Law, but not with li-ion. Physics itself doesn't care how fast you accelerate; what matters is the efficiency of your powertrain under those conditions. And electric motors have no particularly inefficient conditions except at very low RPM.
You actually believe that those two tiny rear-facing seats are actually going to make it to production? Or that the per-vehicle average occupancy will be all that much higher for the Model S than for the 2e? I'd wager that the average occupancy of a 2e will be about 1.4 passengers while the average occupancy of a Model S will be about 1.8 passengers.
The top speed is the issue, not the acceleration. A high top speed requires a certain engine power and electric motors of that caliber provide quick acceleration.
That's not how it works. Your typical electric vehicle has no transmission. This means you have to strike a balance between torque and max RPM. Max RPM is limited by wear on the motor increasing significantly at very high RPMs. There's a simple solution to this tradeoff: a multi-gear transmission.
The range of electric vehicles pretty much limits them to city and commute driving
You commute hundreds of miles?
That's based on an absurdly low price of electricity, though. My current PG&E top tier rate (and every kWh I add is billed at this rate) is $0.33/kWh
No, what's absurd is how much PG&E charges for electricity. The US national average is about $0.10/kWh.
If the new Honda Fit hybrid really comes out to 45 MPG highway
1) It won't. They've stated that they're targeting the mileage of the (disappointing) Insight.
2) The Fit is not a luxury car, so it's a dumb comparison.
Lithium scarcity is one of those myths that just won't die. It's based on a few misguided notions: 1) that lithium makes up most of a lithium-ion battery (it doesn't); 2) it's its most expensive element in a lithium-ion battery (it isn't); and 3) a gross misunderstanding of how reserve figures work.
In reference to the latter case, everyone needs to get in their heads that reserve figures are based on A) what's been found, at B) the current price, and C) current technology. In reference to lithium, A) people haven't really been looking for it because it's so cheap; B) it's dirt cheap; and C) the tech to produce it cheaper hasn't really been needed so it hasn't been worked on.
Even with current tech, a figure of li-ion EVs could easily be sustained through seawater extraction indefinitely. Isn't that the beginning and end of the issue right there?
More accurately, it's 5+2 seating -- two mini rear-facing seats in the back. Not many believe those will actually make it to the production version, but it's another in a long line of pretty shrewd marketing efforts by Tesla to break all of the EV stereotypes one by one (they're slow, they can't go very far, they're small, etc). They're also shrewdly pushing its after-tax-credit price rather than its before-tax-credit price like many others are doing.
Multi-junction cells are over 40%.
They like them in .doc so that they can play with embedded spreadsheets for financial statements and balance sheets.
Whoa! I'm "Flamebait" for reporting the problems I've had with OpenOffice compatibility with MS Office, on an article about OpenOffice compatibility with MS Office?
Wow, tough crowd.
I've been dealing with a rash of OpenOffice compatibility problems with MS Office that I hope don't cause my business plan to bomb in a local business plan competition. I've been discovering that the way it saves .doc files doesn't quite match with how MS Office reads them, so things end up misaligned - tables broken up, images out of place, etc. And don't even get me started on docx... I'm going to try to get a revised (MS Office-saved) version in, but I hope it's not too late.
Actually I am not for hydrogen. Hydrogen isn't corrosive but yes some metals can suffer from hydrogen embrittelment.
1) Hydrogen embrittlement is a form of corrosion.
2) Not just some -- "most". Almost all, actually. On the other hand, most materials are compatible with gasoline.
As to battery safety if you hang around the RC forums you must know about the fire proof bags they sell for recharging
You're confusing LiPo and other cobalt/graphite cells with LFP and other "automotive" li-ions.
Or you may have seen the notebook fires.
Again, you're mixing up cobalt/graphite cells with other forms of li-ion. Tesla (and by extension Daimler) are the only ones using that battery tech (and each of the cells are inside sealed "cans" designed to isolate thermal incidents from other cells and from the driver). All of the others are using LFP, manganese spinels, and titanates. All of which are less of a fire risk than gasoline.
Methanol can be made from any plant matter, coal, natural gas or air and water with enough energy.
It's all about efficiency. And when it comes to plant matter, the land-use efficiency as well. And the numbers are awful. A solar thermal plant operating on a patch of desert will power 20-50 times as many EVs per acre as an optimal field of plants grown to produce methanol will power ICEs (I can show you the math if you're interested). And it won't drain our rivers or aquifers for irrigation and lead to massive fertilizer dead zones, either. And why you're so instant on having such a neurotoxic fuel in your tank (and correspondingly, the vapors of it everywhere it's dealt with) is beyond me. It only takes 10ml of methanol in your body to permanently destroy your optic nerves.
Batteries loose capacity with every recharge cycle. A thousand cycles will not be 200,000 miles for most users. It will be three years since they will recharge every night.
*sigh*. That's not how it works, and this is really, really basic. Li-ion cells don't degrade based on how many times you plug them in. They degrade based on how many times their material is cycled through (and in the case of cobalt/graphite cells, by age/temperature as well). A complete cycling through of the material is known as a "full cycle". A half cycling through is known as a "half cycle". Now, it's not fair to say that if you get 1000 full cycles, you'll get 2,000 half cycles. Actually, it's more like *3,000* half cycles, because there's more degradation as you near the exhaustion of a cell than there is early on. I.e., just the opposite of what you describe. A person who drives 40 miles a day (more than average) on a 200 mile EV is only going through a fifth of a cycle per day.
What you're describing is called a "memory effect". None of the li-ion variants have a memory effect. The memory effect is primarily a NiCd phenomenon.
Hey I could be wrong but until I can buy a economical ev that fits my needs
It depends on what you call "economical". But first, answer this: are you one of those idiots who assumes that only payback periods of a couple years are relevant, or do you (like an investor) look at the long-term picture, including the expected life of the vehicle, maintenance, and value retention (if resale is planned), and then consider the premium on such a vehicle as a loan? If you're the former, you'll be waiting a while. If you're the latter, there's already one EV like that on the market in China, and there will be quite a few in the US in the next couple of years.
or even see one on the market it is vapor.
You do realize that *almost every single marque* is building them, right? Dozens and dozens of different models? You know what sort of massive worldwide conspiracy it'd take to keep them off the market?
The price per watt on fuel cells has come down 10-fold in the last several years.
On what planet?
If they can bring them down another 10-fold they most certainly will be practical
No, and park it next to my unicorn.
My efficiency statements are not inaccurate, you are comparing different numbers. I'm talking about the overall efficiency of the whole power-delivery system, you are looking at only the efficiency of the battery.
Irrelevant. Generator efficiency effects electrolysis, too. So does AC/DC conversion. Both FCVs and BEVs use electric motors, so that cancels out, too.
Fuel cells are not disaster upon disaster, as you say, their only downfall is their price.
Right. Only price. And fill time. And storage density. And moving parts. And longevity. And ozone depletion. And incredibly low ignition energy. And platinum consumption (scarcity, unbelievably massive environmental destruction per unit mass). And metal embrittlement. And wide combustible and explosive fuel/air mixture ranges. And very high fuel costs. And extreme bulk storage/transport costs. And way lower efficiency than BEVs. And really expensive fueling stations at even low pressure. And several times more expensive than that at high pressure. And virtually no way to fill an H2 vehicle in most parts of the world *at all* (unlike BEVs). And greater temperature sensitivity than batteries. And on and on, but apart from all of that, they only have one downfall, sure.
Charging batteries takes a long time
Mitsubishi MiEV: 30 minutes (on sale now in Japan)
Subaru Stella EV: 15 minutes (on sale now in Japan)
BYD F3DM: 15 minutes (on sale now in Japan)
Lightning GT: 10 minutes (upcoming)
Shelby Ultimate Aero EV: 10 minutes (upcoming)
Phoenix SUT: 10 minutes (upcoming)
You were saying? Go enjoy your 25 minute fill at an H2 station. H2 filling times have been going *up* while EV times have gone down, as the more hydrogen you want to store and the higher pressure you want to store it at increase fill time. And the only way around it is the ridiculously dangerous, ridiculously expensive approach of storing it pre-pressurized up to 5 tons per square inch at the station.
adding capacity means adding more batteries
And adding more power to a FCV means adding more fuel cells. Your point? EVs already do 4-5 *hours* of highway driving on a single charge, and battery capacity has increased 4.5x in the past 20 years. It's simply not an issue.
batteries are heavy.
And fuel cell stacks are not? You need the fuel cells (no slouch themselves in terms of either bulk or weight), the tank (not too heavy but very bulky), *and* a several kilowatt hour, high-power battery pack (bulkier/heavier than high energy batteries) to buffer the fuel cell stack. The FCX clarity weighs 3,600 lbs. The 240-mile Tesla Roadster weighs 2,723 lbs.
Fuel Cells: Dead Freaking End.
Like I said I am not a big fan of Hydrogen but just how would it reduce engine power and life?
Life: Hydrogen is a much more corrosive fuel than gasoline.
Power: Hydrogen's low density and tendency for knock means less power per stroke. A H2 engine has to be about 50% larger than a gasoline engine for the same power output.
Rapid charging does have a negative effect on battery life
Not as much as you'd think. Even amateurs rapid charge batteries. Over on rcgroups.com, one person did an experiment where they repeatedly charged an A123 cell in 15-20 minutes and then discharged it in 8-10 minutes (like anyone could ever discharge a car's battery pack that fast). It took 1,000 cycles for the cell to get down to 80% capacity. For a 200 mile range car, that's 200,000 miles of *only fast charges* (never mind that fast charges will be rare; overnight charging is more common -- and also never mind that this included extremely rapid discharges). And these were in poorly controlled conditions, not a professional charge management system. And some chemistries are even more durable than the phosphates. For example, AltairNano's titanates are used in grid load balancing applications where they repeatedly charge and discharge, charge and discharge, over 10-15 minutes, over and over for years on end.
and is also dangerous
Oh, that's rich coming from someone advocating for hydrogen. It's far easier to control the risk of rapid charging than it is for hydrogen. Rapid charging risks only exist for the 10-20 minutes that the charging is underway. Hydrogen risks remain 24/7. Rapid charging risks are managed in exactly the same way moderate speed charging is managed by SAE J1772.
Read up on battery safety some time.
I know all about battery safety. Do *you* know how few people die from electrocution in the US each year? About 400 a year (there are ~300 million people in the US). Most of them electrical workers. Even a 120V/15A outlet can kill you. A 240V outlet, like used on dryers, stoves, and RVs (which get repeatedly plugged in and unplugged) can kill you quite easily. But these deaths are rare. Why? Because of appropriate design in terms of safety. Electricity can be a powerful force, but we've gotten quite good at taming it -- and that's through measures far less extreme than SAE J1772. And J1772 isn't as far as you can take it either -- if you really wanted to be extreme, you could have a conductive outer sheath on your cable that, if damaged or even bent too far, kills power.
The problem is that there's really no way to make hydrogen safe. You can't put a fuse or breaker on hydrogen. You can't realistically eliminate all sources of static from areas where H2 vehicles are stored or fueled. It's always going to be in an environment subject to catastrophic failure. Etc. It's never a good thing.
EVs are just not practical.
Yeah, how is it practical to never have to go out of your way to fill up in your everyday life and to only pay a penny or two per mile to fuel in the most energy-efficient means physically possible...
I still think Methanol is a better solution for energy storage than hydrogen.
Even less efficient. And toxic. And expensive. And eats up land.
Probably the ultimate solution for transportation would be a completely synthetic hydrocarbon made from water and atmospheric CO2.
Which requires a tremendous amount of energy to make. And tremendously expensive.
You can't ignore the issue of efficiency. Power plants are expensive to make. Clean power plants, all the more expensive. And even with clean power, there are environmental consequences. Want five times the coastline covered in wind turbines? Five times the desert plastered with solar panels? Five times the dammed rivers? And on and on and on.
If you don't have a background in the field -- and this is no easy field by any stretch -- you're likely to make major mistakes. And this is a guy who cites an astrologer as a source, for crying out loud.
Of course you could park said fuel cell car next to a battery car that is is all the same things that you can drive across country without out stopping for a lengthy recharge every 300 miles. Oh and is available today without some revolutionary charging/battery tech that you can not buy yet.
Just the opposite. You *can't* drive an FCV across country without a hydrogen caravan. You can drive an EV across the country today, albeit with about as much downtime as uptime.
If you want to talk about a hypothetical future where there's H2 stations across the US, then compare it to an equivalent future where there's EV rapid chargers across the US. EV rapid chargers *do* exist today. AeroVironment makes them as powerful as 250kW. Norvik, 300kW. That's about 25 miles of range per minute of charging. And they're cheaper to build/install than even the low pressure hydrogen stations that take ~25 minutes to fill (~8 miles range per minute of filling), let alone the high pressure (ultra-dangerous) stations that give 3-5 minute fills but cost several times as much.
It's not a "revolutionary charging/battery tech that you can not buy yet". The Mitsubishi MiEV, on sale in Japan, charges in 30 minutes. The Subaru R1e, on sale in Japan, 15 minutes. The BYD F3DM, on sale in China, 15 minutes. The Lightning GT, Phoenix SUT, and Shelby Ultimate Aero EV, will all be under 10 minutes. There's been a network of 40kW stations (sort of the boundary between rapid and non-rapid charge) installed in Hawaii for over a decade.
Of course what everybody seems to be forgetting is that you can burn Hydrogen in any number of engines instead of using a Fuel Cell including gas turbines, Stirling, or a good old fashioned Otto cycle engine.
Which makes the efficiency *even worse*. By a big margin. Well worse than gasoline. And cuts the engine power and reduces engine life. So what's the point?
The notion of a "hydrogen economy" is what happens when PR runs wild.
Those cells can be large or small, depending on the intended application/output, just like with hydrogen cells I'm sure.
Actually, it's different. With fuel cells, the big price is per watt. With batteries, the big price is per watt hour. The problem is that the price per watt on fuel cells is so ridiculously out of the ballpark it's not even funny. Well, that's *one* of the many problems with them. Fuel cells are a disaster upon a disaster upon a disaster, in terms of plausibility as a transportation system.
The US cut off fuel cell vehicle research funds for a reason. And no amount of complaining by CARB and the multi-billion dollar fuel cell industry can change the physics. Fuel cells work great for NASA space missions. Not so great for cars.
On the efficiency stuff... that's informative; thanks :)
Their efficiency statements are inaccurate. See my reply to them.
Li-ion batteries are 96-99% efficient. Commercial fuel cells stacks are 40-50% efficient, with individual cells as high as 70%, but only when run at low power (i.e., you need to be even more expensive upfront if you want those numbers) and fed pre-compressed pure oxygen. Electrolysis is 50-85% efficient (there's a tradeoff of capital costs versus efficiency). Electricity transport is 92.8% efficient in the US. Hydrogen has at least some of those electricity transport losses *plus* transportation losses (10-15%) and compressor losses (~10-15%).
It's a disaster in terms of system efficiency.
The problem with batteries is that you have to add more batteries to increase capacity, while with fuel cells you only need to store more hydrogen.
As was pointed out to you, that's irrelevant because even a 1-mile range hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is way too expensive because of the ridiculous price of fuel cells. Even the Tesla Roadster's pack costs under $20k. The only unsubsidized full-sized fuel cell vehicle on the market has a $7,700 monthly lease. You'd pay for the cost of the Roadster's pack in just three months of that lease.