Lithium is not scarce at all. Lithium is about as common worldwide as some common steel alloying agents, such as vanadium, chromium, and nickel. Lithium carbonate, the "raw" form most commonly purchased commercially, costs about $6/kg. To produce it from seawater, which is a virtually boundless supply, is estimated at $22-$32/kg. 1kWh of li-ion batteries takes about 1kg of lithium carbonate -- thus, a 30kWh pack, with the lithium produced from seawater, with pessimistic assumptions, takes under $1,000 worth of lithium. Yet there's far more lithium on land than you'd ever need for li-ion batteries.
There's a common misconception that most people have about natural resources when they see a "reserves" figure. Reserves figures are for *current technology* with sales at *current prices*. When either the price rises or the technology advances, reserves increase. Not just a little, but with scaling exponential to the advance in technology or prices. The best deposits of any resource are incredibly rare. The next best are an order of magnitude more common, the next best yet another order of magnitude, and so on. Hence, on use of a resource where you have a significant margin on price (such as lithium ion batteries, where the lithium cost isn't even close to the battery cost), you don't need *any* tech advancements to remain profitable for the indefinite future. To give you an example of this occurring present-day, most reserves figures for lithium that you see don't include the Kings Valley in Nevada. The lithium there is just a little more expensive to produce than Chilean lithium, so the grand total of its value added to the "reserves" figure is a big Zero. Yet, because prices have recently gone up a bit, Western Lithium Corporation has been preparing to start mining it. In short order, a price increase of just a dollar per kilogram conservatively added *11 million tons* of lithium carbonate to world reserves from this *one deposit alone* (to put that in perspective, the largest mine in the world, run by SQM in Chile, produces ~28,000 tons a year). And, I might add, betting that mining/processing/exploration technology will cease to advance is a really, really stupid bet as well. Oh, and I didn't even cover displacement of current lithium consumption; lithium is so cheap that most of it currently goes to "low value" uses, such as greases, glazes, etc.
As for cycles, I *just discussed* how it behaves under different conditions. Pack temperature is easily controlled by a cooling system. In fact, it's actually pretty trivial with li-ion because they're so efficient; there's not much heating during charge/discharge. It is essentially impossible to discharge a BEV pack in any rate that would be seen as abusive at all. Go on -- try driving a car that has 150 miles worth of gasoline in its tank fast enough that you can drain the tank in 5-10 minutes -- I dare you;) It's no different with a battery pack. Even if you can drain it in an hour, that's not even *close* to a serious draw on the cells. The only type of relevant abuse you can do to them is during charging, if you fast charge; however, almost nobody's going to fast charge at home, since there's no point to it; people would only fast charge on the road. So, what you're left with is:
* Discharge rates at 0.4C to 1.25C or so (gentle for LiP or the like) * 90% of charges at ~0.25C to 0.5C or so (gentle for LiP), 10% at 3 or 4C (rough)
As independent abusive testing on RCGroups demonstrates (so that you don't have to trust company numbers), A123 cells with no climate control charged at 3-4C and discharged at 6-8C, sometimes even all the way down to 0V, lost 20% capacity in 1000 cycles. In gentle usage, that takes about 7,000 cycles. So, feel free to interpolate, but either way, you're going to get hundreds of thousands of miles on a BEV out of it. Now, *PHEV* usage is more abusive to packs**; expect PHEVs to not charge/discharge to as high rates to counter that (for example, the Volt only uses 50% of its
1) Comparing to PbA batteries is a ridiculous comparison, since they're one of the worst performing batteries on the market in almost every respect.
2) All of these numbers are way overoptimistic for flywheels. For example, steel flywheels can't get higher than 50Wh/kg, so this would have to be something like a carbon fiber one operating at ~50,000 RPM. Small flywheels have a lot worse energy density than big ones, so if you're talking about something for a car, it's even less achievable. A conventional magnetic bearing will consume a couple watts per kilogram of weight it supports, so even if you have 100Wh/kg, you'll drain it a *lot* faster than "weeks/months"; you'd have to use superconducting magnetic bearings that are kept cryogenically chilled at all times to achieve those results. Flywheels don't like to be jostled -- again, another factor making it unreasonable for vehicles. A flywheel that becomes unbalanced or is damaged fails catastrophically.
Or until we invent a trully good electrical battery, one that stores a lot of energy, has high power density, does not wear out, does not use environmentally harmfull components and is cheap (something like these graphene supercapacitors will be under mass production)...for oil
Well, let's compare the modern automotive li-ions to see how well they meet your requirements:
* "A lot of energy" -- The automotive li-ions on the market are generally 90-110Wh/kg (not as good as the ~160Wh/kg for conventional li-ion). There are about a dozen different chemistries in the lab right now that offer 2x, 3x, or more energy density than this; I could go down the list if there was interest. Now, while this is notably less than gasoline, there's a couple factors that have to be considered, such as the fact that most of the energy in a battery goes into providing torque to the wheels, while only a tiny fraction of the energy in gasoline does (most gets wasted as heat). Secondly, batteries are heavy while electric motors are light; internal combustion engines are heavy while gasoline is light. It's an opposite paradigm; in a typical electric car equivalent, batteries are competing for the space and weight freed up by the lack of need for an internal combustion engine, transmission, and all of the supporting hardware, while the motor is about the same size and weight as a full fuel tank. As a result, to match a typical car in range for a given amount of weight, you need about 300Wh/kg. So, they're not a match for gasoline cars yet, but they very well could be in a few years. Even as it stands, it's not hard to get enough batteries to take you for two hours at highway speeds (general highway safety advice is that you're supposed to take a break every two hours or so).
* High power density: Already got this one licked. 100 kilograms of lithium phosphate batteries will give you up to ~250kw or so (335 electric horsepower, which due to the wider max power operating range, is more like a gasoline car with 500hp or so). 100 kilograms of titanate cells will give you 2-3 times as much. Even despite having far less research put into them, EVs are already challenging gasoline cars for speed records (esp. accel, but even top speed, such as with the Eliica). The motors and inverters are actually the limiting factor, not the power source.
* Lifespan: LiP and stabilized spinels will lose 20% capacity in ~7000 "gentle" cycles or so, while the titanates take tens of thousands to lose that much capacity. They also show little to no loss of capacity with age, as they resist lithium plating. By "gentle", this means a cooled pack, charge times of at least a couple hours, and discharge times of at least a couple hours. Under abusive conditions -- overheating, 5-20 minute charges, 5-10 minute (impossibly fast) discharges, etc, you'll get ~1000 cycles out of LiPs and spinels, more out of the titanates. Under a normal mix of fast and slow charging, with reasonable discharge times, you can expect a couple thousand cycles. For a car with 150 miles range, 1000 cycles = 150,000 miles, so a couple thousand cycles means around half a million miles. Adjust appropriately to your situation.
* Does not use environmentally harmful components: Two common types of batteries -- PbA and NiCd -- are highly toxic, and must be recycled to avoid serious environmental consequences. NiMH aren't great for the environment, and should be recycled, too, but they're not as bad as PbA and NiCd. Li-ion with a LiCoO2 cathode, like conventional li-ion and AltairNano's titanates, are minorly toxic; it's not as bad as NiMH, but it'd be best to recycle, and proper disposal is required in most places. LiP and spinel li-ion are nontoxic; the worst thing you can say about them is that their electrolyte is corrosive.
* Cheap: Current prices for LiPs in bulk straight from the manufacturers is about $0.50-$0.60Wh/kg, which most kinds of cars, is already low enough that the purchase price premium can be amortized into the car's operation
Where in Europe? For example, in Belgium, gas is about $8.00/gal while diesel is about $6.70/gal. Looks like the UK is the only European country covered that has cheaper gas than diesel. Note that these prices have little to do with the cost of the fuel itself; they're mostly taxes.
Either way, if you compare the same model of car with the same horsepower as a diesel versus gasoline, the mpg increase is generally around 40%. And of that, 15% is due to the greater density of the fuel. So, it's an improvement to be sure, but not as huge as an improvement as a quick glance at the numbers would make it appear.
First, that 65 MPG number is not in imperial gallons, it's in US gallons (although it's rounded to the nearest 5.)
Boy, I wish I had realized that! If I had, I would have written something along the lines of, oh, let's say: "In this case, the 65mpg is per US gallon, not imperial, so the equivalent US, gasoline mileage is 65 / 1.15 / 1.15 = 49mpg"
And the EPA drivecycle is grossly inaccurate
That'd be irrelevant even if accurate. It's still lower than the NEDC (compare "across the pond" numbers for the same car), so even if it was off by 5000%, so long as the NEDC mileage is about 1.15 times the EPA mileage, you need to divide by 1.15 before comparing to a car whose mileage number comes from the EPA. Furthermore, this is an advisory from December 2006, reporting on the revisions to the testing for calculating mileage. You know, what I was referring to when I wrote, "more lax than the revised EPA drivecycle". If you go to fueleconomy.gov and compare the revised numbers versus what people in the real-world are reporting for a given set of vehicles, you'll find that overall, they match pretty well (the old numbers were way too high). But again, how well they match real-world conditions is irrelevant; what's relevant is the difference between the testing cycles, and the NEDC is slower and less aggressive.
A 50mpg diesel is not equivalent to a 30mpg gas car. If you take a 30mpg gas car and convert it to a diesel with the same power output, you'll get 40 to 45mpg on the same drivecycle. Diesels are more efficient, but they're not *that* much more efficient. Your typical diesel car gets about 40% better mileage than its same-power gasoline equivalent, with about 25% of that coming from efficiency improvements and 15% from the higher energy density of diesel fuel.
Fair enough, but there still is way too much hype over European diesels.
1) The NEDC (New European Drive Cycle) is more lax than the revised EPA drivecycle -- lower speeds, less aggressive accel, etc. It more fits typical European driving. A rough conversion from the NEDC MPG to the revised EPA drivecycle is to divide by about 1.15
2) Diesel is simply a denser fuel. A gallon of diesel represents about 15% more petroleum and emits about 15% more CO2 when burned. To compare apples to apples, divide all diesel mileages by 1.15 before comparing to gasoline mpgs.
3) Sometimes when people list European car mpgs, they use miles per imperial gallons. An imperial gallon contains 1.2 times as much as a standard gallon, so divide by 1.2
In this case, the 65mpg is per US gallon, not imperial, so the equivalent US, gasoline mileage is 65 / 1.15 / 1.15 = 49mpg. You can cross-check comparisons between vehicles by comparing CO2 g/km. Since it's mainly cars sold in Europe from where we get these figures, they're almost always from the NEDC, so no need to convert. In this case, the Ford Fiesta Econetic gets just a touch under 100 g/km, while the 46mpg Prius gets just a touch over 100 g/km. So, that matches up. Lastly, an additional thing to keep in mind is that not all vehicles are the same. In this comparison, for example, the Prius is a larger, more powerful car than the Ford Fiesta Econetic. Without any changes to the body or the technology of the drivetrain, you could always downsize an engine and get better fuel economy. But of course, that's not an equivalent comparison.
To sum up:
1) All "gallons" are not created equal (if all you cared about was how many miles you got per "whatever gallon" of "whatever fuel", you might as well run a car on Zarnathian Supergallons of beryllium slurry). One shouldn't compare different-sized gallons or gallons of different fuels without a conversion factor. 2) All drivecycles are not created equal (and this includes peoples' individual driving styles), and one shouldn't compare non-equivalent drivecycles without a conversion factor. 3) All vehicles are not created equal, and one should keep this in mind when comparing vehicles (although it's still fair to compare non-equivalent vehicles so long as the difference is noted).
FYI, a hair dryer runs on a normal 120V/15A wall socket. That's *nothing* compared to the power delivered to your AC. Heck, even washer/dryer outlets are 240V/30A, and a range outlet is 240V/50A.
This is way, way, way too little power to do anything toward the electrification of the third world. You could turn a hand crank generator for one minute and produce more power as one of these things would produce in an entire windy day. 40 milliwats is comparable to the amount of power you can get from a hamster running on its wheel on and off throughout the day.
I'm not only talking about construction energy for the battery. There's the entire processing cycle for the nickel, which puts a hybrid at a profound disadvantage compared to a diesel from day one.
No, it does not. Just stop and think about this for a second. A new hybrid battery costs about $3k these days. Just assuming that everything else was *free*, and that the *only* cost in making it was was dirt-cheap electricity (i.e., maximizing the amount of energy possibly spent manufacturing it), and that there was *no* profit margin, *no* shipping costs, *no* labor, etc. That'd be about 30,000kWh, or 108 GJ, or about 800 gallons of diesel, or about the energy you can turn to torque from 200 gallons of diesel after losses, which, assuming 38mpg and the average 12,000 miles a year, works out to just over 1 1/2 years of fuel. This is assuming that the *only* costs are electricity, the cheapest form of bulk energy, and ignores that the nickel gets *recovered* by recycling. I mean, the concept doesn't even withstand the laugh test.
I'm also not assuming what you call "reasonable" battery life. I doubt they last more than five years without significant loss of capacity.
Then you doubt reality. NiMH RAV4EVs have been on the road since the late 90s, and they're still working great. Hybrids stress their packs a lot more than EVs (more charge/discharge cycles at a higher rate), and the packs for most hybrids have an 8 or so year warranty. In testing, the automotive variants of li-ions are even more durable than NiMHs. There's this widespread myth that you seem to have fallen for that somehow batteries must inherently die in short order. This is simply false; it's all dependant on the stability of the battery chemistry. Jay Leno owns an early 1900s Baker Electric that still runs on its original nickel-iron batteries.
I'm getting 50-60mpg depending on conditions.
Yeay, a data-free unsupported anecdote!
A) Fuel type is irrelevant for engines that only accept one type of fuel. mpg = miles / gallons. It's how far you can go per gallon of fuel.
If you're an idiot. Who only cares about the *number* of gallons that they burn? Most people care about how much oil they're consuming (15% more in a gallon of diesel), how much CO2 they're emitting (15% more per gallon of diesel burned), how much they're paying (diesel is more expensive per gallon), and so on. Heck, by your argument, we should all buy cars that run on a beryllium slurry, if all you care about is how many miles you go per gallon burned.
B) I also have a lower emissions class than a hybrid.
And you'll be more specific when...?
C) All the mpg figures are in imperial gallons. I'm European, you insensitive clod. km/l would be easier to compare.
Then comparing your numbers to US figures is, as you know, pure BS, as 1 imperial gallon is 1.2 US gallons.
You need to deal with the fact that the revised EPA drivecycle is a tougher drivecycle than the European (NEDC) drivecycle. Our standardized testing actually involves things like air conditioning, aggressive acceleration, higher speeds, etc. Yours does not. Deal with the fact that whatever your subjective experience, your rated vehicle numbers are laxer than our rated vehicle numbers. Whenever a European car makes it to the US, its mileage figures decrease. Example:
----- 2009 Ford Fiesta ECOnetic -- Estimated at 54 + mpgUS combined on the 08 EPA test cycles.
Cologne - Ford of Europe?s new Fiesta ECOnetic leads the Fiesta models at this year?s Paris Auto Show.
Re:buy an old S10 and convert it to electric
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I'm not disagreeing that they'll be lower maintenance. I'm disagreeing that there will be a huge difference, as many people describing them make the situation out to be. I agree that your typical ruggedized 3-phase brushless AC motor, a cooling fan, an inverter, and optionally a charger are simpler than an entire ICE drivetrain (esp. if the ICE drivetrain has a transmission). However, that's only a fraction of what can break.
You don't seem to be making a "huge difference" argument, so I think we're in agreement:)
One *myth* about electric cars is that all EV batteries inherently use some nasty materials. Only two common types of batteries are particularly toxic -- lead-acid and nickel-cadmium. These should always be recycled. NiMH is somewhat toxic, and should also be recycled. Conventional li-ion are minorly toxic (the LiCoO2 cathode); it's best to recycle them, but it's not a huge deal if you don't. The automotive li-ions with non-cobalt cathodes are essentially nontoxic, as are zebras.
Their power to weight ratio is quite poor in comparison to the stable li-ion forms. They're only "cheap" if you completely ignore maintenance.
Re:There's a lot of small print with EVs too
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Yep -- that's lead-acid for ya:P
Re:buy an old S10 and convert it to electric
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Right. Present in *both*; they can break in *both*. Parts in the drivetrain are only a fraction of things that can break in a car. Hence, the difference in maintenance isn't as big as you might think.
Re:Not your fault, but vapor cars aren't useful.
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The Toyota RAV4EVs with the same type of batteries still work fine.
And they could likewise choose to go through minimal or no safety qualifications. The key word is *choice*. Not "how many wheels you have", but "what you *choose* to do".
Re:Not your fault, but vapor cars aren't useful.
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Right, only two are available today. But the rest are coming out in the next couple years. Even if some (or even a large chunk of them) were cancelled or delayed, that'd still be a huge number of vehicles. And while perhaps a third of them are luxury or performance machines well beyond an ordinary person's price range, most are not. More expensive than a gasoline car, sure, but nothing that you can't make up in reduced operations costs.
Re:None of the advantages you listed deal with saf
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Because you implied that because it was a three wheeler, that inherently means that it has no safety features. All that it means is that if it's a three wheeler, it *can* have less safety features. But there are plenty of reasons to build a three wheeler apart from that.
Well, I also forgot to mention that she didn't *actually* serve as governor for 20 months. According to the Anchorage Daily News, she spent most of her time as governor living in Wasilla, over 500 miles away from Juneau (kind of makes the whole "I fired the chef" thing (which she didn't actually do -- she just had them cook in the legislative cafeteria, basically buying the goodwill of legislators) kind of seem silly, doesn't it?), and outright disappeared for the entire summer to go fishing.
Why lead-acid? I don't understand why so many EV converters use it nowadays. Because of its lower upfront costs? You're just wasting your money further down the road because you'll have to keep replacing them. Why not just install something that lasts, like lithium phosphate or stabilized spinel cells? You'll end up with a better handling, lighter-weight, more powerful, lower maintenance, faster charging vehicle to boot.
Re:buy an old S10 and convert it to electric
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Don't get me wrong; I'm such an advocate of EVs that I'm on the waiting list for an Aptera;) I'm just "keeping it real" here. Yes, the drivetrain is simpler. However, the drivetrain isn't the only thing on a vehicle that can break. Tires, brake pads, brake rotors, drive belts and pulleys (my Aptera will have two of each; the belts alone will cost ~$100 and have to be replaced every couple years), air conditioning/heating, radio (in the Aptera, there's an in-car computer nav/entertainment system, four nav cameras, and several LCD displays), locks/windows, seats, seatbelts, airbags, cooling fans, windshield wipers and fluid, brake fluid, power steering fluid (if not rack & pinion), traction control (if present), ESC (if present), headlights, brake lights, running lights, internal lights, and so on. If you're lucky, you might cut your maintenance costs in half. It'll probably be more than that, however.
From all of the numbers I've seen, lead-acid EVs and those with traditional li-ion (instead of the long-life variants) simply don't make financial sense. You spend too much on the battery replacements to offset the fuel costs. With more long-life batteries (NiMH, stable li-ions, zebra, etc), however, the numbers do make a compelling economic argument to switch, even with the (currently) high price of batteries.
1) The amount of energy needed to produce a modern battery generally only measures a few charge cycles worth. Virtually every peer-reviewed study of cars shows exactly what you'd expect: that far more energy is consumed during their lifetimes than during their construction. Your average car will burn a couple times it's own weight in fuel over its lifespan, and none of that is "recycled" like most of the car's body.
2) Yes, EVs cost more to buy than diesel cars currently. They also consume electricity which averages $0.10/kWh in the US instead of diesel which averages, what, $4.30/gal? Your average 40mpg-diesel sedan would take about 250Wh/mi electric, which equates to 9.3 cents per mile diesel and 2.5 cents per mile electric. Assuming reasonable battery longevity (i.e., either NiMH, zebra, or automotive li-ions, not lead-acid or traditional li-ions), the total cost of ownership for EVs is very favorable to them over their lifespans. This allows all sorts of methods to work around sticker shock for those who are concerned, such as longer loans, leases, surcharges on electricity fillups or battery swaps, battery rental, or so forth -- all of which give you a normal up-front cost and monthly operations costs that are still lower than what the average driver would spend on gas or diesel. And this is just with current battery costs; they're falling fast. Ener1 (parent company of battery maker EnerDel), for example, expects their cell prices to be cut in half over the next few years. Most automotive li-ion aren't even close to being limited by raw material costs.
3) Most diesel numbers are quite distorted to boot. Yes, diesel engines are more efficient than gasoline engines. No, they're not *that* much more efficient. Most people will look at some european diesel and lament that they're getting 50mpg or so and we can't get it here.
A) Diesel is simply a more dense fuel -- about 15% denser. Gasoline mpg != diesel mpg. Just ethanol mpgs are going to be inherently lower than gasoline due to its lower density, diesel is inherently going to get an artificial 15% boost that isn't representative of, say, it's CO2 footprint or how much oil it represents. B) The european drive cycle is more lax than the revised EPA drivecycle, and is more similar to the old EPA drivecycle. Remember how much nicer the official numbers used to look in the US? Remember how they worked out in the real world? Same issue. C) Sometimes the "gallons" you see on mpg numbers for european cars are imperial gallons, not US gallons. Imperial gallons are larger.
In general, a diesel car will emit around 80% as much CO2 per mile and consume about 80% as much oil chemical energy. It's a difference, and even a relevant one, but not as big of a difference as it at first appears.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, in the case of this slashdot article, write a "review" that keeps saying the same things over and over?
Lithium is not scarce at all. Lithium is about as common worldwide as some common steel alloying agents, such as vanadium, chromium, and nickel. Lithium carbonate, the "raw" form most commonly purchased commercially, costs about $6/kg. To produce it from seawater, which is a virtually boundless supply, is estimated at $22-$32/kg. 1kWh of li-ion batteries takes about 1kg of lithium carbonate -- thus, a 30kWh pack, with the lithium produced from seawater, with pessimistic assumptions, takes under $1,000 worth of lithium. Yet there's far more lithium on land than you'd ever need for li-ion batteries.
There's a common misconception that most people have about natural resources when they see a "reserves" figure. Reserves figures are for *current technology* with sales at *current prices*. When either the price rises or the technology advances, reserves increase. Not just a little, but with scaling exponential to the advance in technology or prices. The best deposits of any resource are incredibly rare. The next best are an order of magnitude more common, the next best yet another order of magnitude, and so on. Hence, on use of a resource where you have a significant margin on price (such as lithium ion batteries, where the lithium cost isn't even close to the battery cost), you don't need *any* tech advancements to remain profitable for the indefinite future. To give you an example of this occurring present-day, most reserves figures for lithium that you see don't include the Kings Valley in Nevada. The lithium there is just a little more expensive to produce than Chilean lithium, so the grand total of its value added to the "reserves" figure is a big Zero. Yet, because prices have recently gone up a bit, Western Lithium Corporation has been preparing to start mining it. In short order, a price increase of just a dollar per kilogram conservatively added *11 million tons* of lithium carbonate to world reserves from this *one deposit alone* (to put that in perspective, the largest mine in the world, run by SQM in Chile, produces ~28,000 tons a year). And, I might add, betting that mining/processing/exploration technology will cease to advance is a really, really stupid bet as well. Oh, and I didn't even cover displacement of current lithium consumption; lithium is so cheap that most of it currently goes to "low value" uses, such as greases, glazes, etc.
As for cycles, I *just discussed* how it behaves under different conditions. Pack temperature is easily controlled by a cooling system. In fact, it's actually pretty trivial with li-ion because they're so efficient; there's not much heating during charge/discharge. It is essentially impossible to discharge a BEV pack in any rate that would be seen as abusive at all. Go on -- try driving a car that has 150 miles worth of gasoline in its tank fast enough that you can drain the tank in 5-10 minutes -- I dare you ;) It's no different with a battery pack. Even if you can drain it in an hour, that's not even *close* to a serious draw on the cells. The only type of relevant abuse you can do to them is during charging, if you fast charge; however, almost nobody's going to fast charge at home, since there's no point to it; people would only fast charge on the road. So, what you're left with is:
* Discharge rates at 0.4C to 1.25C or so (gentle for LiP or the like)
* 90% of charges at ~0.25C to 0.5C or so (gentle for LiP), 10% at 3 or 4C (rough)
As independent abusive testing on RCGroups demonstrates (so that you don't have to trust company numbers), A123 cells with no climate control charged at 3-4C and discharged at 6-8C, sometimes even all the way down to 0V, lost 20% capacity in 1000 cycles. In gentle usage, that takes about 7,000 cycles. So, feel free to interpolate, but either way, you're going to get hundreds of thousands of miles on a BEV out of it. Now, *PHEV* usage is more abusive to packs**; expect PHEVs to not charge/discharge to as high rates to counter that (for example, the Volt only uses 50% of its
1) Comparing to PbA batteries is a ridiculous comparison, since they're one of the worst performing batteries on the market in almost every respect.
2) All of these numbers are way overoptimistic for flywheels. For example, steel flywheels can't get higher than 50Wh/kg, so this would have to be something like a carbon fiber one operating at ~50,000 RPM. Small flywheels have a lot worse energy density than big ones, so if you're talking about something for a car, it's even less achievable. A conventional magnetic bearing will consume a couple watts per kilogram of weight it supports, so even if you have 100Wh/kg, you'll drain it a *lot* faster than "weeks/months"; you'd have to use superconducting magnetic bearings that are kept cryogenically chilled at all times to achieve those results. Flywheels don't like to be jostled -- again, another factor making it unreasonable for vehicles. A flywheel that becomes unbalanced or is damaged fails catastrophically.
Or until we invent a trully good electrical battery, one that stores a lot of energy, has high power density, does not wear out, does not use environmentally harmfull components and is cheap (something like these graphene supercapacitors will be under mass production)...for oil
Well, let's compare the modern automotive li-ions to see how well they meet your requirements:
* "A lot of energy" -- The automotive li-ions on the market are generally 90-110Wh/kg (not as good as the ~160Wh/kg for conventional li-ion). There are about a dozen different chemistries in the lab right now that offer 2x, 3x, or more energy density than this; I could go down the list if there was interest. Now, while this is notably less than gasoline, there's a couple factors that have to be considered, such as the fact that most of the energy in a battery goes into providing torque to the wheels, while only a tiny fraction of the energy in gasoline does (most gets wasted as heat). Secondly, batteries are heavy while electric motors are light; internal combustion engines are heavy while gasoline is light. It's an opposite paradigm; in a typical electric car equivalent, batteries are competing for the space and weight freed up by the lack of need for an internal combustion engine, transmission, and all of the supporting hardware, while the motor is about the same size and weight as a full fuel tank. As a result, to match a typical car in range for a given amount of weight, you need about 300Wh/kg. So, they're not a match for gasoline cars yet, but they very well could be in a few years. Even as it stands, it's not hard to get enough batteries to take you for two hours at highway speeds (general highway safety advice is that you're supposed to take a break every two hours or so).
* High power density: Already got this one licked. 100 kilograms of lithium phosphate batteries will give you up to ~250kw or so (335 electric horsepower, which due to the wider max power operating range, is more like a gasoline car with 500hp or so). 100 kilograms of titanate cells will give you 2-3 times as much. Even despite having far less research put into them, EVs are already challenging gasoline cars for speed records (esp. accel, but even top speed, such as with the Eliica). The motors and inverters are actually the limiting factor, not the power source.
* Lifespan: LiP and stabilized spinels will lose 20% capacity in ~7000 "gentle" cycles or so, while the titanates take tens of thousands to lose that much capacity. They also show little to no loss of capacity with age, as they resist lithium plating. By "gentle", this means a cooled pack, charge times of at least a couple hours, and discharge times of at least a couple hours. Under abusive conditions -- overheating, 5-20 minute charges, 5-10 minute (impossibly fast) discharges, etc, you'll get ~1000 cycles out of LiPs and spinels, more out of the titanates. Under a normal mix of fast and slow charging, with reasonable discharge times, you can expect a couple thousand cycles. For a car with 150 miles range, 1000 cycles = 150,000 miles, so a couple thousand cycles means around half a million miles. Adjust appropriately to your situation.
* Does not use environmentally harmful components: Two common types of batteries -- PbA and NiCd -- are highly toxic, and must be recycled to avoid serious environmental consequences. NiMH aren't great for the environment, and should be recycled, too, but they're not as bad as PbA and NiCd. Li-ion with a LiCoO2 cathode, like conventional li-ion and AltairNano's titanates, are minorly toxic; it's not as bad as NiMH, but it'd be best to recycle, and proper disposal is required in most places. LiP and spinel li-ion are nontoxic; the worst thing you can say about them is that their electrolyte is corrosive.
* Cheap: Current prices for LiPs in bulk straight from the manufacturers is about $0.50-$0.60Wh/kg, which most kinds of cars, is already low enough that the purchase price premium can be amortized into the car's operation
Where in Europe? For example, in Belgium, gas is about $8.00/gal while diesel is about $6.70/gal. Looks like the UK is the only European country covered that has cheaper gas than diesel. Note that these prices have little to do with the cost of the fuel itself; they're mostly taxes.
Either way, if you compare the same model of car with the same horsepower as a diesel versus gasoline, the mpg increase is generally around 40%. And of that, 15% is due to the greater density of the fuel. So, it's an improvement to be sure, but not as huge as an improvement as a quick glance at the numbers would make it appear.
First, that 65 MPG number is not in imperial gallons, it's in US gallons (although it's rounded to the nearest 5.)
Boy, I wish I had realized that! If I had, I would have written something along the lines of, oh, let's say: "In this case, the 65mpg is per US gallon, not imperial, so the equivalent US, gasoline mileage is 65 / 1.15 / 1.15 = 49mpg"
And the EPA drivecycle is grossly inaccurate
That'd be irrelevant even if accurate. It's still lower than the NEDC (compare "across the pond" numbers for the same car), so even if it was off by 5000%, so long as the NEDC mileage is about 1.15 times the EPA mileage, you need to divide by 1.15 before comparing to a car whose mileage number comes from the EPA. Furthermore, this is an advisory from December 2006, reporting on the revisions to the testing for calculating mileage. You know, what I was referring to when I wrote, "more lax than the revised EPA drivecycle". If you go to fueleconomy.gov and compare the revised numbers versus what people in the real-world are reporting for a given set of vehicles, you'll find that overall, they match pretty well (the old numbers were way too high). But again, how well they match real-world conditions is irrelevant; what's relevant is the difference between the testing cycles, and the NEDC is slower and less aggressive.
No, the Volt is to use a 1.4L gas generator.
A 50mpg diesel is not equivalent to a 30mpg gas car. If you take a 30mpg gas car and convert it to a diesel with the same power output, you'll get 40 to 45mpg on the same drivecycle. Diesels are more efficient, but they're not *that* much more efficient. Your typical diesel car gets about 40% better mileage than its same-power gasoline equivalent, with about 25% of that coming from efficiency improvements and 15% from the higher energy density of diesel fuel.
Fair enough, but there still is way too much hype over European diesels.
1) The NEDC (New European Drive Cycle) is more lax than the revised EPA drivecycle -- lower speeds, less aggressive accel, etc. It more fits typical European driving. A rough conversion from the NEDC MPG to the revised EPA drivecycle is to divide by about 1.15
2) Diesel is simply a denser fuel. A gallon of diesel represents about 15% more petroleum and emits about 15% more CO2 when burned. To compare apples to apples, divide all diesel mileages by 1.15 before comparing to gasoline mpgs.
3) Sometimes when people list European car mpgs, they use miles per imperial gallons. An imperial gallon contains 1.2 times as much as a standard gallon, so divide by 1.2
In this case, the 65mpg is per US gallon, not imperial, so the equivalent US, gasoline mileage is 65 / 1.15 / 1.15 = 49mpg. You can cross-check comparisons between vehicles by comparing CO2 g/km. Since it's mainly cars sold in Europe from where we get these figures, they're almost always from the NEDC, so no need to convert. In this case, the Ford Fiesta Econetic gets just a touch under 100 g/km, while the 46mpg Prius gets just a touch over 100 g/km. So, that matches up. Lastly, an additional thing to keep in mind is that not all vehicles are the same. In this comparison, for example, the Prius is a larger, more powerful car than the Ford Fiesta Econetic. Without any changes to the body or the technology of the drivetrain, you could always downsize an engine and get better fuel economy. But of course, that's not an equivalent comparison.
To sum up:
1) All "gallons" are not created equal (if all you cared about was how many miles you got per "whatever gallon" of "whatever fuel", you might as well run a car on Zarnathian Supergallons of beryllium slurry). One shouldn't compare different-sized gallons or gallons of different fuels without a conversion factor.
2) All drivecycles are not created equal (and this includes peoples' individual driving styles), and one shouldn't compare non-equivalent drivecycles without a conversion factor.
3) All vehicles are not created equal, and one should keep this in mind when comparing vehicles (although it's still fair to compare non-equivalent vehicles so long as the difference is noted).
FYI, a hair dryer runs on a normal 120V/15A wall socket. That's *nothing* compared to the power delivered to your AC. Heck, even washer/dryer outlets are 240V/30A, and a range outlet is 240V/50A.
This is way, way, way too little power to do anything toward the electrification of the third world. You could turn a hand crank generator for one minute and produce more power as one of these things would produce in an entire windy day. 40 milliwats is comparable to the amount of power you can get from a hamster running on its wheel on and off throughout the day.
To think that you'd only need 35,000 of these (before losses) to run your average hair dryer.
You did; I'll only respond to this one ;)
I'm not only talking about construction energy for the battery. There's the entire processing cycle for the nickel, which puts a hybrid at a profound disadvantage compared to a diesel from day one.
No, it does not. Just stop and think about this for a second. A new hybrid battery costs about $3k these days. Just assuming that everything else was *free*, and that the *only* cost in making it was was dirt-cheap electricity (i.e., maximizing the amount of energy possibly spent manufacturing it), and that there was *no* profit margin, *no* shipping costs, *no* labor, etc. That'd be about 30,000kWh, or 108 GJ, or about 800 gallons of diesel, or about the energy you can turn to torque from 200 gallons of diesel after losses, which, assuming 38mpg and the average 12,000 miles a year, works out to just over 1 1/2 years of fuel. This is assuming that the *only* costs are electricity, the cheapest form of bulk energy, and ignores that the nickel gets *recovered* by recycling. I mean, the concept doesn't even withstand the laugh test.
I'm also not assuming what you call "reasonable" battery life. I doubt they last more than five years without significant loss of capacity.
Then you doubt reality. NiMH RAV4EVs have been on the road since the late 90s, and they're still working great. Hybrids stress their packs a lot more than EVs (more charge/discharge cycles at a higher rate), and the packs for most hybrids have an 8 or so year warranty. In testing, the automotive variants of li-ions are even more durable than NiMHs. There's this widespread myth that you seem to have fallen for that somehow batteries must inherently die in short order. This is simply false; it's all dependant on the stability of the battery chemistry. Jay Leno owns an early 1900s Baker Electric that still runs on its original nickel-iron batteries.
I'm getting 50-60mpg depending on conditions.
Yeay, a data-free unsupported anecdote!
A) Fuel type is irrelevant for engines that only accept one type of fuel. mpg = miles / gallons. It's how far you can go per gallon of fuel.
If you're an idiot. Who only cares about the *number* of gallons that they burn? Most people care about how much oil they're consuming (15% more in a gallon of diesel), how much CO2 they're emitting (15% more per gallon of diesel burned), how much they're paying (diesel is more expensive per gallon), and so on. Heck, by your argument, we should all buy cars that run on a beryllium slurry, if all you care about is how many miles you go per gallon burned.
B) I also have a lower emissions class than a hybrid.
And you'll be more specific when...?
C) All the mpg figures are in imperial gallons. I'm European, you insensitive clod. km/l would be easier to compare.
Then comparing your numbers to US figures is, as you know, pure BS, as 1 imperial gallon is 1.2 US gallons.
You need to deal with the fact that the revised EPA drivecycle is a tougher drivecycle than the European (NEDC) drivecycle. Our standardized testing actually involves things like air conditioning, aggressive acceleration, higher speeds, etc. Yours does not. Deal with the fact that whatever your subjective experience, your rated vehicle numbers are laxer than our rated vehicle numbers. Whenever a European car makes it to the US, its mileage figures decrease. Example:
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2009 Ford Fiesta ECOnetic -- Estimated at 54 + mpgUS combined on the 08 EPA test cycles.
Cologne - Ford of Europe?s new Fiesta ECOnetic leads the Fiesta models at this year?s Paris Auto Show.
I'm not disagreeing that they'll be lower maintenance. I'm disagreeing that there will be a huge difference, as many people describing them make the situation out to be. I agree that your typical ruggedized 3-phase brushless AC motor, a cooling fan, an inverter, and optionally a charger are simpler than an entire ICE drivetrain (esp. if the ICE drivetrain has a transmission). However, that's only a fraction of what can break.
You don't seem to be making a "huge difference" argument, so I think we're in agreement :)
One *myth* about electric cars is that all EV batteries inherently use some nasty materials. Only two common types of batteries are particularly toxic -- lead-acid and nickel-cadmium. These should always be recycled. NiMH is somewhat toxic, and should also be recycled. Conventional li-ion are minorly toxic (the LiCoO2 cathode); it's best to recycle them, but it's not a huge deal if you don't. The automotive li-ions with non-cobalt cathodes are essentially nontoxic, as are zebras.
Their power to weight ratio is quite poor in comparison to the stable li-ion forms. They're only "cheap" if you completely ignore maintenance.
Yep -- that's lead-acid for ya :P
Right. Present in *both*; they can break in *both*. Parts in the drivetrain are only a fraction of things that can break in a car. Hence, the difference in maintenance isn't as big as you might think.
The Toyota RAV4EVs with the same type of batteries still work fine.
And they could likewise choose to go through minimal or no safety qualifications. The key word is *choice*. Not "how many wheels you have", but "what you *choose* to do".
Right, only two are available today. But the rest are coming out in the next couple years. Even if some (or even a large chunk of them) were cancelled or delayed, that'd still be a huge number of vehicles. And while perhaps a third of them are luxury or performance machines well beyond an ordinary person's price range, most are not. More expensive than a gasoline car, sure, but nothing that you can't make up in reduced operations costs.
Because you implied that because it was a three wheeler, that inherently means that it has no safety features. All that it means is that if it's a three wheeler, it *can* have less safety features. But there are plenty of reasons to build a three wheeler apart from that.
Well, I also forgot to mention that she didn't *actually* serve as governor for 20 months. According to the Anchorage Daily News, she spent most of her time as governor living in Wasilla, over 500 miles away from Juneau (kind of makes the whole "I fired the chef" thing (which she didn't actually do -- she just had them cook in the legislative cafeteria, basically buying the goodwill of legislators) kind of seem silly, doesn't it?), and outright disappeared for the entire summer to go fishing.
Why lead-acid? I don't understand why so many EV converters use it nowadays. Because of its lower upfront costs? You're just wasting your money further down the road because you'll have to keep replacing them. Why not just install something that lasts, like lithium phosphate or stabilized spinel cells? You'll end up with a better handling, lighter-weight, more powerful, lower maintenance, faster charging vehicle to boot.
Don't get me wrong; I'm such an advocate of EVs that I'm on the waiting list for an Aptera ;) I'm just "keeping it real" here. Yes, the drivetrain is simpler. However, the drivetrain isn't the only thing on a vehicle that can break. Tires, brake pads, brake rotors, drive belts and pulleys (my Aptera will have two of each; the belts alone will cost ~$100 and have to be replaced every couple years), air conditioning/heating, radio (in the Aptera, there's an in-car computer nav/entertainment system, four nav cameras, and several LCD displays), locks/windows, seats, seatbelts, airbags, cooling fans, windshield wipers and fluid, brake fluid, power steering fluid (if not rack & pinion), traction control (if present), ESC (if present), headlights, brake lights, running lights, internal lights, and so on. If you're lucky, you might cut your maintenance costs in half. It'll probably be more than that, however.
From all of the numbers I've seen, lead-acid EVs and those with traditional li-ion (instead of the long-life variants) simply don't make financial sense. You spend too much on the battery replacements to offset the fuel costs. With more long-life batteries (NiMH, stable li-ions, zebra, etc), however, the numbers do make a compelling economic argument to switch, even with the (currently) high price of batteries.
Several things wrong with this.
1) The amount of energy needed to produce a modern battery generally only measures a few charge cycles worth. Virtually every peer-reviewed study of cars shows exactly what you'd expect: that far more energy is consumed during their lifetimes than during their construction. Your average car will burn a couple times it's own weight in fuel over its lifespan, and none of that is "recycled" like most of the car's body.
2) Yes, EVs cost more to buy than diesel cars currently. They also consume electricity which averages $0.10/kWh in the US instead of diesel which averages, what, $4.30/gal? Your average 40mpg-diesel sedan would take about 250Wh/mi electric, which equates to 9.3 cents per mile diesel and 2.5 cents per mile electric. Assuming reasonable battery longevity (i.e., either NiMH, zebra, or automotive li-ions, not lead-acid or traditional li-ions), the total cost of ownership for EVs is very favorable to them over their lifespans. This allows all sorts of methods to work around sticker shock for those who are concerned, such as longer loans, leases, surcharges on electricity fillups or battery swaps, battery rental, or so forth -- all of which give you a normal up-front cost and monthly operations costs that are still lower than what the average driver would spend on gas or diesel. And this is just with current battery costs; they're falling fast. Ener1 (parent company of battery maker EnerDel), for example, expects their cell prices to be cut in half over the next few years. Most automotive li-ion aren't even close to being limited by raw material costs.
3) Most diesel numbers are quite distorted to boot. Yes, diesel engines are more efficient than gasoline engines. No, they're not *that* much more efficient. Most people will look at some european diesel and lament that they're getting 50mpg or so and we can't get it here.
A) Diesel is simply a more dense fuel -- about 15% denser. Gasoline mpg != diesel mpg. Just ethanol mpgs are going to be inherently lower than gasoline due to its lower density, diesel is inherently going to get an artificial 15% boost that isn't representative of, say, it's CO2 footprint or how much oil it represents.
B) The european drive cycle is more lax than the revised EPA drivecycle, and is more similar to the old EPA drivecycle. Remember how much nicer the official numbers used to look in the US? Remember how they worked out in the real world? Same issue.
C) Sometimes the "gallons" you see on mpg numbers for european cars are imperial gallons, not US gallons. Imperial gallons are larger.
In general, a diesel car will emit around 80% as much CO2 per mile and consume about 80% as much oil chemical energy. It's a difference, and even a relevant one, but not as big of a difference as it at first appears.