Likely better, if and when the remaining challenges are resolved. But we can't wait - coal-burning plants have to be gotten rid of unless we can capture all the particulates and sequester the CO2.
Not greedy business but a shortsighted military-focused bureaucracy. And don't be too quick to jump on the thorium bandwagon - it shows great promise but there are significant engineering challenges still to solve before it can reliably be used for Gigawatt scale power plants.
I expect another decade before the 1st plants are ready.
IIRC, every one of those coal plants are intended to replace one that is end-of-life or soon to be. And the new plants will be significantly cleaner and more efficient. I really wish that Germany hadn't decided to dump nukes and I'm guessing they may change their mind before all the remaining ones are shut.
One of the problems with phasing out coal is that there's been a subsidy on it since the 70s but that is slated to end by 2018. The major coal producers have stated that they'll shut their mines by then.
But Germany also has 5 or 6 power stations on the Dirty Thirty list - they should close or replace those before worrying about nukes.
I've heard that Renault may step in but to what extent is unclear. I still think battery swap is a great idea and that the BP execution was well thought out and executed on the technical implementation but their pursuit of primarily private customers was a terrible mistake, even in countries with very high gas prices.
Taxis and fleets should have been the initial targets. Renault has all the pieces in place, especially with the Kangoo. If they can make that into a QuickDrop model, then perhaps battery-switching can be revived.
There are other battery switch techniques - I've seen a couple different ones exhibited in Chinese but cannot find a translation. One is a manual process that can be done by a couple guys with a jack; the other uses a robot arm to remove and insert - that looks scary. If anything goes wrong with the arm, it's easy to imagine it punching right through the side of the car.
The Better Place plan included a rebate for customers who had to swap their batteries more than X times. An unexpected failure can happen to any car in any location - the AAA has an entire business model built around this and the Better Place plan includes 24x7 roadside assistance.
And in the internet age, it's very easy for disgruntled customers to make their feelings known far and wide.
Any savings from keeping heavily used or bad batteries in the system would quickly evaporate in the face of rebates for excessive swapping, payments for roadside assistance and towing and loss of customer goodwill ( which usually means loss of customers )
Looking at that list, it's unreasonable to conclude that making a swap-capable car imposes some unreasonable weight restriction since Renault has already done so for an apparent weight penalty of about 3%. Unless you plan to argue that they could have installed a similar sized battery & motor into the Fluence chassis with no penalty over the petrol version - in which case the Leaf and the Zoe's curb weights are perplexing.
The Tesla Model S poses an interesting question, especially given Musk's recent cryptic tweet. Internet sources say that he's been hinting at battery swap since 2009 but in order for it to be practical for Model S / Model X, it would have to be already in the design since the Model S battery is basically the entire floor. The other possibility is that he really means adding an Aluminum-air fuel cell but that's not rechargeable and the aluminum oxide would have to be disposed of or recycled by electrolysis - requiring LOTS of electricity.
About 25 years ago, there was a lot of liberating firepower from a number of Los Angeles freeway drivers and a new term for a somewhat less-than-euphoric state of mind that sometimes accompanies all that liberating, self-directed transport entered the lexicon.
"At the same level"?? I suppose it's fair to do by energy content.
A gallon is 36 kilowatt-hours, in CA, the combined fed and state taxes adds about $0.70 to the cost of a gallon of gas. Adding $0.01944... to the price of a kilowatt-hour won't dissuade many ( or any? ) from driving an EV.
Renault was able to do it with the Fluence ZE - the only physical differences from the ICE version are the greater curb weight and an extra 5 inches length.
I'm aware of that but I'm talking about cars. Personally, I don't care as I've never lived anywhere that you could legally drive that fast or would need to. I would love a Model S but it's well outside my budget but could do alright most of the time with a LEAF.
If the Volt gets the promised price cut of $7-10k and either a larger battery or an increase in DoD from 65% to 80-90%, it would definitely make my shortlist of cars to buy.
The efficiencies are too low and the cost is still too high. A rooftop solar panel was an (grossly overpriced) option on the Fisker Karma but would only generate enough power to keep the car cool on a hot day and power some electronics.
Even at 100% efficiency, the most that could be generated from a 1 meter square panel would be 1 kW.
It would be more credible to claim that the ONLY company that tried is bankrupt. You can almost always find a pioneering company that failed. Perhaps fuel cells are the future or maybe someone will invent the Shipstone or Mr Fusion, but battery swap, I believe, can be viable and profitable. Better Place was too far ahead of the curve or was focusing on the wrong niche.
In testing, there's not much range difference between a Nissan Leaf and a Renault Fluence ZE although the Leaf is much quicker from 0-60 mph. At 70 mph, both deplete a fully-charged battery in about an hour. My typical long ride to visit the family is ~350 miles door to door.
Using a Leaf's high current DC charging vs the Fluence's battery swap would add at least 2 hours to the trip, one way.
That's true and the Fluence ZE is a bit more than 20% heavier than the ICE version but most of that extra weight is the battery pack which will lighten over time although I don't expect it to drop significantly in the next decade.
But if you're not talking about race cars, where EVs do very well, except for drag racing, routes with very long steep climbs and endurance runs, then the performance difference isn't such a big issue.
For one thing, the low-end torque is quite impressive, shaming even some beefy diesels. And if you do a lot of city driving, you won't care very much that you can't get to 150 mph when you can leave most cars behind when the light changes, when you're not wasting energy / fuel when not moving and the fact that you can recapture some energy when braking rather than just making heat.
And that extra weight has some advantages, being so close to the ground it improves traction ( along with the torque ), stability and handling. It's one of the contributing factors to the driving experience of Tesla's Model S.
I recall Agassi saying that'd done a battery swap in as little at 58 seconds and were aiming for an average of 3 min. To me, that swap seemed very cautious and perhaps overly safety-conscious. And the process has room for improvement.
For example, why waste time taking the depleted battery back to the charging bay and THEN bringing the new one to the car? The car is there for only one reason and both car and station have computers that must communicate with each other before the battery can be released so bring the charged battery to the car right away and take away the used one only after the swap is complete. This would require another platform and a bit more space underneath and in front of the car to move the platforms back and forth to swap.
From what I've read, Better Place put a lot of effort into their software and communications network, which was supposed to include vehicle-to-grid for both the cars and the swap stations.
I suppose that while Elon is making midrange to highend cars, his customers may prefer to own the batteries but as he moves towards more everyman autos, battery leasing may be an increasingly attractive option barring radical breakthroughs in battery tech, charging and cost.
Slashdot Mirror
Likely better, if and when the remaining challenges are resolved. But we can't wait - coal-burning plants have to be gotten rid of unless we can capture all the particulates and sequester the CO2.
And clean up the mining sites.
Not greedy business but a shortsighted military-focused bureaucracy.
And don't be too quick to jump on the thorium bandwagon - it shows great promise but there are significant engineering challenges still to solve before it can reliably be used for Gigawatt scale power plants.
I expect another decade before the 1st plants are ready.
IIRC, every one of those coal plants are intended to replace one that is end-of-life or soon to be. And the new plants will be significantly cleaner and more efficient.
I really wish that Germany hadn't decided to dump nukes and I'm guessing they may change their mind before all the remaining ones are shut.
One of the problems with phasing out coal is that there's been a subsidy on it since the 70s but that is slated to end by 2018. The major coal producers have stated that they'll shut their mines by then.
But Germany also has 5 or 6 power stations on the Dirty Thirty list - they should close or replace those before worrying about nukes.
It's not often I find myself agreeing with an AC
What is the name of this farmer? Because if you're referring to Percy Schmeiser, you've got your facts and outcome wrong
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Schmeiser
I've heard that Renault may step in but to what extent is unclear. I still think battery swap is a great idea and that the BP execution was well thought out and executed on the technical implementation but their pursuit of primarily private customers was a terrible mistake, even in countries with very high gas prices.
Taxis and fleets should have been the initial targets. Renault has all the pieces in place, especially with the Kangoo.
If they can make that into a QuickDrop model, then perhaps battery-switching can be revived.
There are other battery switch techniques - I've seen a couple different ones exhibited in Chinese but cannot find a translation.
One is a manual process that can be done by a couple guys with a jack; the other uses a robot arm to remove and insert - that looks scary.
If anything goes wrong with the arm, it's easy to imagine it punching right through the side of the car.
The Better Place plan included a rebate for customers who had to swap their batteries more than X times.
An unexpected failure can happen to any car in any location - the AAA has an entire business model built around this and the Better Place plan includes 24x7 roadside assistance.
And in the internet age, it's very easy for disgruntled customers to make their feelings known far and wide.
Any savings from keeping heavily used or bad batteries in the system would quickly evaporate in the face of rebates for excessive swapping, payments for roadside assistance and towing and loss of customer goodwill ( which usually means loss of customers )
After doing a bit more research, I'd say your concerns about swappable batteries and extra weight are unfounded or overblown.
Here's some curb weight data - http://pastebin.com/GXJKTYYJ ( the Slashdot filter wouldn't accept this )
Looking at that list, it's unreasonable to conclude that making a swap-capable car imposes some unreasonable weight restriction since Renault has already done so for an apparent weight penalty of about 3%.
Unless you plan to argue that they could have installed a similar sized battery & motor into the Fluence chassis with no penalty over the petrol version - in which case the Leaf and the Zoe's curb weights are perplexing.
The Tesla Model S poses an interesting question, especially given Musk's recent cryptic tweet. Internet sources say that he's been hinting at battery swap since 2009 but in order for it to be practical for Model S / Model X, it would have to be already in the design since the Model S battery is basically the entire floor.
The other possibility is that he really means adding an Aluminum-air fuel cell but that's not rechargeable and the aluminum oxide would have to be disposed of or recycled by electrolysis - requiring LOTS of electricity.
Read the US Rankings paragraph in the Wikipedia link to find about 10 other cities you should consider avoiding.
About 25 years ago, there was a lot of liberating firepower from a number of Los Angeles freeway drivers and a new term for a somewhat less-than-euphoric state of mind that sometimes accompanies all that liberating, self-directed transport entered the lexicon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_rage
Taxpayers have been enriching businessmen and investors for a very long time.
"At the same level"??
I suppose it's fair to do by energy content.
A gallon is 36 kilowatt-hours, in CA, the combined fed and state taxes adds about $0.70 to the cost of a gallon of gas.
Adding $0.01944... to the price of a kilowatt-hour won't dissuade many ( or any? ) from driving an EV.
Renault was able to do it with the Fluence ZE - the only physical differences from the ICE version are the greater curb weight and an extra 5 inches length.
I'm aware of that but I'm talking about cars. Personally, I don't care as I've never lived anywhere that you could legally drive that fast or would need to.
I would love a Model S but it's well outside my budget but could do alright most of the time with a LEAF.
If the Volt gets the promised price cut of $7-10k and either a larger battery or an increase in DoD from 65% to 80-90%, it would definitely make my shortlist of cars to buy.
The efficiencies are too low and the cost is still too high. A rooftop solar panel was an (grossly overpriced) option on the Fisker Karma but would only generate enough power to keep the car cool on a hot day and power some electronics.
Even at 100% efficiency, the most that could be generated from a 1 meter square panel would be 1 kW.
If you improve one inefficient plant, that automatically improves 10000 EVs.
CHP / cogeneration's efficiency is pretty good; hydroelectric's efficiency is very close to awesome.
It would be more credible to claim that the ONLY company that tried is bankrupt. You can almost always find a pioneering company that failed.
Perhaps fuel cells are the future or maybe someone will invent the Shipstone or Mr Fusion, but battery swap, I believe, can be viable and profitable.
Better Place was too far ahead of the curve or was focusing on the wrong niche.
At some point, you can count on someone commenting that electrics cars are stupid and slow because they can't do the 1/4 mile in 4 seconds.
In testing, there's not much range difference between a Nissan Leaf and a Renault Fluence ZE although the Leaf is much quicker from 0-60 mph.
At 70 mph, both deplete a fully-charged battery in about an hour. My typical long ride to visit the family is ~350 miles door to door.
Using a Leaf's high current DC charging vs the Fluence's battery swap would add at least 2 hours to the trip, one way.
That's true and the Fluence ZE is a bit more than 20% heavier than the ICE version but most of that extra weight is the battery pack which will lighten over time although I don't expect it to drop significantly in the next decade.
But if you're not talking about race cars, where EVs do very well, except for drag racing, routes with very long steep climbs and endurance runs, then the performance difference isn't such a big issue.
For one thing, the low-end torque is quite impressive, shaming even some beefy diesels. And if you do a lot of city driving, you won't care very much that you can't get to 150 mph when you can leave most cars behind when the light changes, when you're not wasting energy / fuel when not moving and the fact that you can recapture some energy when braking rather than just making heat.
And that extra weight has some advantages, being so close to the ground it improves traction ( along with the torque ), stability and handling. It's one of the contributing factors to the driving experience of Tesla's Model S.
There's a financial agency that's not a money-laundering operation? We live in interesting times.
I recall Agassi saying that'd done a battery swap in as little at 58 seconds and were aiming for an average of 3 min.
To me, that swap seemed very cautious and perhaps overly safety-conscious. And the process has room for improvement.
For example, why waste time taking the depleted battery back to the charging bay and THEN bringing the new one to the car?
The car is there for only one reason and both car and station have computers that must communicate with each other before the battery can be released so bring the charged battery to the car right away and take away the used one only after the swap is complete.
This would require another platform and a bit more space underneath and in front of the car to move the platforms back and forth to swap.
Poorer battery performance? How do you know that?
From what I've read, Better Place put a lot of effort into their software and communications network, which was supposed to include vehicle-to-grid for both the cars and the swap stations.
I suppose that while Elon is making midrange to highend cars, his customers may prefer to own the batteries but as he moves towards more everyman autos, battery leasing may be an increasingly attractive option barring radical breakthroughs in battery tech, charging and cost.