I agree, from your numbers, 600 kWh for a 100kg battery is way too high. It appears even 200kWh would be pretty good for a battery that size. But that would mean they assume the car gets close to 9 mi/kwh, which is also very optimistic, as I believe the Tesla gets more like 3 mi/kwh.
It is $240 ish dollars to buy 100kg of billet aluminium so less then $240 dollars worth of electricity to make that (and lots of that will come from ore not recycled aluminium)
If you assume 33% is energy cost, that would be $80.00, or at $.01/Kwh it would be about 800 Kwh of energy.
Of course, my 33% assumption has no basis, just a point of reference. $.01/Kwh is reasonable, but too many assumptions for this to be useful for anything other than a starting point.
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A lot of people don't travel with their phones to foreign countries because it's too damn expensive.
If the default is to allow charges when your cell-phone location is not known, then it should not be a problem. In other words, it only blocks a card charge if the charge is in one location and the active phone in another. The risk still remains they could smash your phone and charge something real quick, but that's not the kind of theft/fraud this is meant to stop.
OK, well I retract my previous comment. This certainly is a battery. Its a non-rechargeable battery, of which there are many types. It is self contained, anode / cathode cell that produces a current via reaction thru the electrolyte. The fact that it destroys itself is irrelevant.
Does anyone think that it is interesting that the Kinect requires 10% GPU resources and not 10% CPU resources? Was MS using the GPU to handle processing because it would drain the CPU more?
That was my thought. Why not an architecture to handle Kinect processing independently? Not being a hardware guy, it might be a stupid question.
No doubt renting is fine for some, even many, I did not feel the need to point out such an obvious thing. I rent myself, as I said. But if you lived in suburbia, with few rental places within 10 miles, you may have a different outlook.
As a business traveller, I would rather pay, or have some sort of exclusive service.
Once it's "free", every man and his dog connects and stays connected for hours, and the service is inevitably completely unusable.
Me too, as long as its reasonable. Charging $7 for me to access the internet for the 20 minutes I'm waiting on the plane is too much, even if its a covered expense. If they charged $1 - $2 for a good connection, I would not hesitate. I always wondered if they'd make more money that way.
That may all be true, but it doesn't mean this technology is the right answer. If there are other approaches that cost less and are appropriately functional, then they will be adapted for the purpose. A simple gas generator or other batteries on a trailer, for instance. Without a proper comparison, we just don't know.
Cost and efficiency matter when evaluating solutions to given problems, even if it is marginal to the overall cost, and, yes, they are often a trade off with functionality.
BTW, excellent point regarding the need to fully discharge the battery before 'recycling' to get full benefit. I hadn't thought of that, and it may be the single biggest weakness in this approach.
Quick and dirty math tells me one of these batteries has on the order of 600KWh of energy to deliver to the car (to drive the distance claimed).
So, the question is, how many KWh of energy does it take to smelt, reclaim, and re-form the battery (or whatever the process order is)? That's simplified and ignores other inputs like added material, but it is a starting point. For starters, does anybody have an idea what melting 100Kg of aluminum requires? It would be interesting to see.
Regarding renting for long trips. I see this suggestion quite often, but in the big picture, its not really as good a solution as it might sound.
I have rented a van occasionally for family trips. It is a real pain in the ass. Not just going through the motions of finding a decent deal that is not too far from home, but there is the extra trip to pick up the vehicle, or schedule them to pick up/drop off well in advance. Drop off can also be an inconvenience that requires another person to transport you or the vehicle.
Those may be minor inconveniences in certain terms, but the real problem is finding the vehicle I need when its a holiday or other 'peak' travel time. At many rental agencies, you can't even get a car if you try last minute and it is a peak period And at these times the rental price can be a lot higher than normal. If more and more people need cars for long trips, then it is going to become even more expensive and more difficult to get the car you need when you need it.
Add the simple fact that people generally feel more comfortable in their own car and the "just rent one' suggestion just doesn't seem like a good solution for the mass market.
Well, how inefficient does the process have to be before it doesn't make sense? Transportation generally is a high value use of energy and this battery pack would fill an important niche, enabling electric cars to travel more than a few hundred miles a day.
This not just a niche, range is a key element to electric car mass adoption. Efficiency is proportional to cost. Cost matters.
Until they tell us the expected cost, which is conveniently omitted, I'm gonna assume its not "great" for anything.
If vehicles can be charged every night, it is less likely they would this technology to start with. For public transportation, its easy to plan around range.
I could see some military applications, where they want a long range electric vehicle for certain types of missions, ready to go without a gas supply. Cost is usually less of a factor that functionality for these applications.
Its hard to see how the energy cycle makes sense. Melting down the aluminum to reform a "charged" battery does not seem intuitively efficient. Even if the process is powered from beautiful clean hydro.
Battery trailers make more sense than swapping, IMO.
I still don't see the explanation on how a 3D printed plastic gun is worse than a plastic gun developed by other means. If you want to outlaw a type of gun, just do it. It is monumentally stupid to try to outlaw every manufacturing method that comes along, as it will always be a chase.
For instance. When does a 3d model of a gun become an illegal one? A basic outline? A general but unproven design? Or does it have to be a complete design proven to actually work, with all the detailed instructions for post print processing included? What if it comes in two separate models that someone has to match? What if the model just a part of a gun? What if a feature is included that makes the gun inoperable? What if its a 3D model for a video game?
"I-phone" is simply a term for a lot of less educated consumers. If she didn't know the difference to start with, maybe the salesman was taking the right approach to explain the other options. Did your comment help or just confuse?
I think, what you actually meant, is that a 5% increase in wages could easily result in a 20% reduction in profits. That is possible, although I am not sure it would, but it would still only be a 5% cost increase (may a bit more if you include tax considerations).
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Interesting.
I agree, from your numbers, 600 kWh for a 100kg battery is way too high. It appears even 200kWh would be pretty good for a battery that size. But that would mean they assume the car gets close to 9 mi/kwh, which is also very optimistic, as I believe the Tesla gets more like 3 mi/kwh.
It is $240 ish dollars to buy 100kg of billet aluminium so less then $240 dollars worth of electricity to make that (and lots of that will come from ore not recycled aluminium)
If you assume 33% is energy cost, that would be $80.00, or at $.01/Kwh it would be about 800 Kwh of energy.
Of course, my 33% assumption has no basis, just a point of reference. $.01/Kwh is reasonable, but too many assumptions for this to be useful for anything other than a starting point.
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Thanks, that makes total sense.
A lot of people don't travel with their phones to foreign countries because it's too damn expensive.
If the default is to allow charges when your cell-phone location is not known, then it should not be a problem. In other words, it only blocks a card charge if the charge is in one location and the active phone in another. The risk still remains they could smash your phone and charge something real quick, but that's not the kind of theft/fraud this is meant to stop.
I wouldn't mind this if it were opt-in.
OK, well I retract my previous comment. This certainly is a battery. Its a non-rechargeable battery, of which there are many types. It is self contained, anode / cathode cell that produces a current via reaction thru the electrolyte. The fact that it destroys itself is irrelevant.
Its basically a fuel cell, if we want an even more appropriate description, as engines have moving parts.
Does anyone think that it is interesting that the Kinect requires 10% GPU resources and not 10% CPU resources? Was MS using the GPU to handle processing because it would drain the CPU more?
That was my thought. Why not an architecture to handle Kinect processing independently? Not being a hardware guy, it might be a stupid question.
No doubt renting is fine for some, even many, I did not feel the need to point out such an obvious thing. I rent myself, as I said. But if you lived in suburbia, with few rental places within 10 miles, you may have a different outlook.
You mean you have to PAY for public WiFi access in your country??
Yeah, just so we can get some money from visiting arrogant foreigners who think everything should be a free entitlement.
Actually, in the end, the customers pay them unless the taxpayers do.
As a business traveller, I would rather pay, or have some sort of exclusive service.
Once it's "free", every man and his dog connects and stays connected for hours, and the service is inevitably completely unusable.
Me too, as long as its reasonable. Charging $7 for me to access the internet for the 20 minutes I'm waiting on the plane is too much, even if its a covered expense. If they charged $1 - $2 for a good connection, I would not hesitate. I always wondered if they'd make more money that way.
That may all be true, but it doesn't mean this technology is the right answer. If there are other approaches that cost less and are appropriately functional, then they will be adapted for the purpose. A simple gas generator or other batteries on a trailer, for instance. Without a proper comparison, we just don't know.
Cost and efficiency matter when evaluating solutions to given problems, even if it is marginal to the overall cost, and, yes, they are often a trade off with functionality.
BTW, excellent point regarding the need to fully discharge the battery before 'recycling' to get full benefit. I hadn't thought of that, and it may be the single biggest weakness in this approach.
Quick and dirty math tells me one of these batteries has on the order of 600KWh of energy to deliver to the car (to drive the distance claimed).
So, the question is, how many KWh of energy does it take to smelt, reclaim, and re-form the battery (or whatever the process order is)? That's simplified and ignores other inputs like added material, but it is a starting point. For starters, does anybody have an idea what melting 100Kg of aluminum requires? It would be interesting to see.
Regarding renting for long trips. I see this suggestion quite often, but in the big picture, its not really as good a solution as it might sound.
I have rented a van occasionally for family trips. It is a real pain in the ass. Not just going through the motions of finding a decent deal that is not too far from home, but there is the extra trip to pick up the vehicle, or schedule them to pick up/drop off well in advance. Drop off can also be an inconvenience that requires another person to transport you or the vehicle.
Those may be minor inconveniences in certain terms, but the real problem is finding the vehicle I need when its a holiday or other 'peak' travel time. At many rental agencies, you can't even get a car if you try last minute and it is a peak period And at these times the rental price can be a lot higher than normal. If more and more people need cars for long trips, then it is going to become even more expensive and more difficult to get the car you need when you need it.
Add the simple fact that people generally feel more comfortable in their own car and the "just rent one' suggestion just doesn't seem like a good solution for the mass market.
The electric tractor thing is pretty cool, particularly considering the failure of the "Raven" recently sold a Lowe's but later pulled.
Excellent points about battery care. Thanks for sharing.
Well, how inefficient does the process have to be before it doesn't make sense? Transportation generally is a high value use of energy and this battery pack would fill an important niche, enabling electric cars to travel more than a few hundred miles a day.
This not just a niche, range is a key element to electric car mass adoption. Efficiency is proportional to cost. Cost matters.
I've no idea how efficient the process is, that would really be the key question.
Which was basically the question I implied. Then you rambled on about peripheral stuff, and re-asked.
Until they tell us the expected cost, which is conveniently omitted, I'm gonna assume its not "great" for anything.
If vehicles can be charged every night, it is less likely they would this technology to start with. For public transportation, its easy to plan around range.
I could see some military applications, where they want a long range electric vehicle for certain types of missions, ready to go without a gas supply. Cost is usually less of a factor that functionality for these applications.
They are both correct, since the assumption is that you do not remove the existing battery, you just temporarily add the AI battery.
Unsigh!
Its hard to see how the energy cycle makes sense. Melting down the aluminum to reform a "charged" battery does not seem intuitively efficient. Even if the process is powered from beautiful clean hydro.
Battery trailers make more sense than swapping, IMO.
I still don't see the explanation on how a 3D printed plastic gun is worse than a plastic gun developed by other means. If you want to outlaw a type of gun, just do it. It is monumentally stupid to try to outlaw every manufacturing method that comes along, as it will always be a chase.
For instance. When does a 3d model of a gun become an illegal one? A basic outline? A general but unproven design? Or does it have to be a complete design proven to actually work, with all the detailed instructions for post print processing included? What if it comes in two separate models that someone has to match? What if the model just a part of a gun? What if a feature is included that makes the gun inoperable? What if its a 3D model for a video game?
Lets not be so stupid.
"I-phone" is simply a term for a lot of less educated consumers. If she didn't know the difference to start with, maybe the salesman was taking the right approach to explain the other options. Did your comment help or just confuse?
The story was later corrected... the math is off and is incredibly misleading.
That won't stop anyone from using it.
I think, what you actually meant, is that a 5% increase in wages could easily result in a 20% reduction in profits. That is possible, although I am not sure it would, but it would still only be a 5% cost increase (may a bit more if you include tax considerations).