All-electric Cars Will Arrive soon.

Battery disposal/recycling?

There are two primary problems that I don't hear much about when considering electric cars. One has been addressed in this thread, and that is the power source for charging the batteries. And, in the long run, the solution will be simple: use less-polluting energy sources.

But the other I hear virtually nothing about. It might have been mentioned in Who Killed the Electric Car, but it's been a while since I saw it in the theater, and, frankly, I'm not anxious to encounter that much Ed Bagley, Jr., in one sitting.

That said, though, the problem is this: What do you do with the dead batteries?

I know battery technology has made some progress in recent decades, but how long will the batteries run, how much can be recycled, and what will the environmental footprint of a billion car batteries be over the long run? Disposing of household cells requires special attention, so what will we do with something that much larger than your average D-cell?

Perhaps the question has been answered, and I simply missed the memo.

 

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Trains are not flexible (only got where their tracks are.) and much too expensive for inside urban commutes. (Why street cars are rare now.) Here is how urbanites should live and get around:

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2084856&postcount=24

But also see the clarification in post 59 (currently the last of the thread).

 

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I don't know that it's been specifically mentioned here, but take heart, Tiassa, the problem is practically solved.

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It's been all over the news for a few months now.

The solution is the latest (and which will still be improved) battery technology - lithium ion. They both long-lived and HIGHLY recycleable cells with a high energy-density.

 

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I heard of this idea that can potentially replace batteries and that does not pollute, it's basically a mechanical energy storage system that uses the flywheel effect to store energy. The device converts the input energy into rotationnal energy, you retreive the energy by decellerating the rotor. To counter air and bearing friction, the rotor is in a vacuum and utilises magnetic bearings (typically superconductors). The only real downside to the device is the bearings, the cost of refrigeration for the superconductors is too high.

 

I think the problem with that isn't trains or street cars, but with urban planning and design. Street cars used to be everywhere, and they were phased out due to cheap oil.

 

Studies have show that even if electric cars were charge with 100% Coal power plant electricity, their CO2 Emissions would be comparable to hybrid cars. Moving the emissions problem from the transporter to the power plant makes emissions control far easier, also change to new power plants (such as wind, solar, etc) is much easier then trying to change to a new transport fuel. In this way an electric car has the high comparability with any fuel source (indirectly though) be it coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind, what ever.

Liithium Ion batteries are non-toxic and recyclable, in fact with limited cheap lithium reserves world wide lithium will have the be recycle (it can't be consumed like oil).

Depending on the battery chemistry: Lithium ion batteries roughly warranted for 500-1000 full discard-recharge cycles, with partial discharge charge cycles not as damaging, (or about 100,000 miles in say a Tesla roadster), Some Lithium Phosphate cells (such as Altair's nanosafes cells going into the next generation hybrids) have warrantes 10,000+ cycles and thus useful operatability of decades. Next generation Lithium sulfar cells promist twice the energy density of exiting Lithium ion (4 times that of Lithium phosphate) but with life times of the lithium ion range assuming the polylithium sulfide buildup problem is defeated.

Lithium batteries are not the same as alkaline batteries, nickel cadmium or lead acid.

the biggest limitation with electric cars is the price of the batteries, though they could be mass produced cheaply limited demand and the high infrastructure establishment costs makes for a catch 22 cycle: without electric cars there is limited demand for batteries, without demand there are few batteries, few batteries means high price, high price means limited demand for electric cars, repeat.

 

I'd like to test this model:

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I wonder how far she would go and how much she costs?

 

maybe,..maybe not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBm8ogwnpG0

 

heres another working hydrogen car,and its from 30 years ago!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjfONpsFvyM

 

Thou shalt not break the laws of thermodynamics!

Now if their so called "generator" uses magnesium, aluminum or zinc to create hydrogen from water, then the processes if very inefficient, as the metal oxide have to be recycled, and their electrolysis is far less efficient then electrolysis of water, except for zinc, which is slightly better but the efficiency loss of transporting the electron from the zinc to water to make hydrogen is not worth it. It would only be worthwhile to build a direct metal air fuel cell and get over the inefficiency of oxidizing the metal with water to make hydrogen and then oxidize your hydrogen in a fuel cell.

 

Expensive Lithium bateries and lack of re-charge stations are not the only problems of electric cars. Just these batteries for most attractive electric cars will cost more than the Nano!

Tata motors starts selling in volume on the 23d of this month in India and later this year in EU. (About a year late as stupid labor unions and the Communistic Party that dominates the government in a North East Indian state made Tata abandon the partially built factory with demands.)

Tata has some sort of deal(s?) with Fiat, in India at least, and Fiat makes lots of cars in Brazil (usually edged out for first place in domestic sales by VW, but not always.) Fiat and Tata are negotiating to see if they want to joint venture build the Nano in Brazil, possibly with flex fuel engine. If dollar were to say as stong as currently is the four door, good looking, Nano at about $2,200 will sell well here especailly if it can use the cheaper alochol fuel.

From Kmguru's post 773 in Thread "more great economic news" Tata Nano

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BTW originally that was a never paint, never rust, all plastic body but seems to have switched to steel (probably during time when oil was near $147/ barrel.)

 

My dads been pushing me to get one.

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What is the price in ruppies? Still 1 Lach? (thanks for correcting spelling of Lach)

Can you post the technical specs? At least the top speed and Km/L urban and highway claimed.

 

electric bike

how do you like this?
I wish they hurry up and sold it already
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUXhJZZRUIg&feature=channel_page

 

Tata Nano is going to add millions of more gas engines (despite small engines) and will add more demand to an oil industry that could not keep up back in 2006-2007 when the economy was OK.

 

Correct. That is why oil will be at least $200/ barrel current value dollars in a few years (less than a decade) and probably over $1000 / barrel for Americans with much weaker dollar.

 

I'd get one if they could be charged inside of a few minutes, so that when on a road trip, I can pull into a fuel/charge station, zap up, and drive out as quickly as if I had just filled the tank. I think they're working on batteries and/or supercapacitors that can do this sorta thing.

Problem is that charging from home this quickly isn't possible with today's wiring. Then again, when parked at home, you can spend a night charging, and if you needed a quick jolt during the day, you'd pull into a gas/charge station which would be equipped with higher-amperage systems and maybe an on-site battery to facilitate rapid charging of the car.

Are systems like this being looked at? Because for now, that closest thing to this kind of flexibility is gasoline, which is why I'm looking at possibly a hybrid as my next car. Honda just made a new Insight that looks a little less dumpy then the Prius (no offense to anyone!).

 

if the dollars goes that week I think we will have trouble buying cardboard boxes to sleep in and to rent space on the sidewalk.

 

Some already are. Most of the recently well off but now homeless in California, still have their tents. I saw whole field of the homeless tent people on CNN (intenational) or BBC a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps some one can post photo of them? CA's unemplyment rate is above 10% - I think that true for at least 15 states now. As I predicted years ago, riots are coming and armed hungry mobs looking for food in the suburbs - not everone thinks me crazy to say this now, but most still do; however Idid not foresee anything like Obama. He may (and I hope so) foil my predictions.

I just hear on TV (not watching it) that GM is to be bankrupted - broken into two parts. Perhaps Detroit will be first to have these food riots and /or burning city blocks (Since MKL was murdered and Watts, CA rioted).

 

The problem that you run into is that if you're going to charge a batter/capacitor/whatever bank in an electric car in about the same amount of time it takes to fill your car with gasoline, you'll be looking at HUGE voltages and currents, and will probably end up with a station that you wouldn't want to stand anywhere near while the charge is going on.

For example, the Tesla Roadster stores about 180 MJ in its batteries. If you charged that over a period of 5 minutes, you would be looking at a power transfer of around 600 kW. So would you like that at 10k volts and 60 amps? Or 100k volts and only 6 amps? However you do it, the power requirements (and voltages and currents) will be really monsterous.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's far, far outside the range of what people normally deal with in a "I stick the power cable into the socket" type situation.

I agree that hybrids that can run off both gasoline and electricity seem like the best way to go; that way you can use the electric system for your in-city driving (which is probably the vast majority of the driving that most people do) while still being able to use gasoline for longer trips.