Electric cars are a pipe dream

I'm not talking about our present downturn, that's just a small precursor of what's to come as oil becomes progressively more expensive.

 

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If we can't adapt, you're right. If it turns out we can, everybody wins.

 

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If we started 30 years ago, we would have had a chance. Even now, subsidies for installing solar panels are drying up.

 

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Spidey, again, I appreciate you trying to hijack the thread, but kindly fuck off...

This thread is not about "cars are not necessery" and other bullshit, if you wish to discuss that, start your OWN thread.

Clear now???

 

You fuck off, it's about whether or not the widespread use of electric cars is a realistic proposition.

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Look dumbfuck, just start your thread and I promise I will visit it and poop on it every 3 days. Deal?

Nobody gives a shit about your whining about the past abd that trolleys or horseback riding are better than cars. Go live with the Amish....

 

I'm talking about the subject, OK? There are numerous sociological, cultural, and psychological implications about this effort.

 

Now in the maintime, I got evidence why EVs based on Li-ion battery are PIPEDREAM. There ir simply not enough Lithium to go around. So we either go back to the well tested NiMH battery of RAV4 or we have to invent something completely new.

http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1180&first=6240&end=6239

"They showed that you need 1.4 kg of lithium carbonate per kilowatt hour of battery. So, that's just the starting point for field calculations; and even if you double that, the energy density in the future, it is still not a pretty picture.

"If you took all the lithium carbonate that we are producing today and put it into small plug-in hybrid battery, an 8 kWh battery (HEV20), you could produce about six million cars, which is one-third of United States sales each year, and ten percent of annual global sales," Tahil said, noting that all current lithium production is currently allocated to other applications.

"So you've got to find new production. There's about 75,000 (metric) tons of lithium carbonate being produced in the world today, and there new deposits coming on stream right now, which by 2010 will raise production to 150,000 tons. So, we're going to have double the lithium carbonate in (three) years time, but that's being driven by demand for consumer electronics where you have at least 20 percent growth rates for laptop computers and mobile phones. Massive demand from the developing world. So, we're going to need more lithium carbonate production on top."

 

Here is what I don't get? If this ZEBRA battery is cheaper to produce and better performing that the Li-Ion, then why don't we have it instead of Li-ion??

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If Not Lithium, What Then?
Meridian International Research researched the various battery technologies for electric vehicles in 2005 and of all the chemistries it analyzed, sodium nickel chloride and zinc air stood out, Tahil said. The first option, sodium nickel chloride was developed in the 1980s and is known as the ZEBRA battery. He characterizes it as relatively cheap and proven technology with a potential cost in mass production of $150/kWh compared to $350/kWh for lithium ion.

"It has half to a third the nickel content of nickel metal hydride. It has high cycle life. It can be recycled for the stainless steel industry by simply melting it down... just through it into a smelter... use for making stainless steel."

The ZEBRA-class battery also doesn't require the same level of thermal-runaway protection that lithium does. "The sodium nickel chloride is fail-safe in overcharge and over-discharge. It tolerates cell failures, so that performance degrades, but there is no safety issue, which there still is with lithium ion.

"And the headline figure is, of course, with sodium nickel chloride is you have 120Wh/kg in a finished battery pack with its control electronics today, in a finished package, off-the-shelf. The ion phosphate and lithium manganate cathodes are still only at 80 to 90 watt hours per kilo just at cell level and less when you add on the [control] electronics."

Tahil observed that in 1998 Mercedes was about to launch an A-Class sedan powered by the ZEBRA battery (which still performs equal to and better than the fuel cell version) when the program was killed as Daimler merged with Chrysler. In place of the ZEBRA A-Class electric car, Chrysler built a couple hundred EPIC electric mini-van for the California MOU period in the late 90's and early 2000 period, then killed the program when the courts ruled again the state.

"If you took the A-Class today with the battery... improvements since then you'd have a car with a 180-mile all-electric range."

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OK, this could be the reason:

"the chief drawback of zinc-air is its short cycle life, comparable to a conventional lead-acid battery at upwards of 500 cycles." It might be necessery to replace the battery once a year in a car...

P.S.: This info is from the same article posted earlier:

http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1182&first=10865&end=10864

The comment section is also very informative...

 

Lithium is dissolved in the oceans of the world to a total of 230 billion tonnes. Research is under way in finding economic ways to extract it.
http://www.journalarchive.jst.go.jp...al=jnst1964&cdvol=17&noissue=12&startpage=922

Total land sources of Lithium run to only 13 million tonnes.
http://www.ioes.saga-u.ac.jp/ioes-study/li/lithium/occurence.html

So obviously we are about to run out.

Not!

 

So is gold. Do you see any goldextractor from the sea???

Again you are dreaming about the future, with no practical results to back it up.

I could post a similar "some people live up to 120, research is under way to find a way to copy them" dreamfest and I wouldn't even be wrong.

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Syzygys

Please try to keep up.
Lithium is present at 230 billion tonnes in the oceans. Gold is only 20 million tonnes. Quite different. Lithium is potentially extractable. Not so for such minute amounts of gold.

Mind you, gold is present on the ocean floor in potentially commercial quantities.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-02/nsae-tdo021706.php

 

Potentially, yes, economically, most likely no.

Right now we are trying to reach the 350$/kWh tipping point for battery Lithium. If the ocean extraction is possible but results in a 1500$/kWh battery, that isn't gonna help us much, is it?

In this thread I would prefer to avoid "there is research into it" and "this will happen in the future" kind of sentimens... Hard facts, now that I like....

 

Hard to say what the final cost will be, considering the ever growing need for desalination the price will drop alot, not to mention the existence of far more efficient and less materialistically demanding battery chemistry like metal air batteries.

 

syzygys said

"In this thread I would prefer to avoid "there is research into it" and "this will happen in the future" kind of sentimens... Hard facts, now that I like.... "

But this whole thread is about what will happen in the future. As such, you cannot deny predictive type information.

If you look at the history of humanity over the past couple hundred years, you will see as a repeated theme, research into something or other, followed by its introduction into society, with revolutionary effects. As such, we are entirely entitled to point out current research and its likely impact in the future.

 

Sure but the projection into the future should be based on reality.

For example if the Li-ion battery can not be made by the millions (after all that would be the eventual goal) or too expensive, I don't see the problem switching back to the NiMH battery. If the RAV4 was already able to do 100 miles 10 years ago, with slight improvement it could go up to 150, which isn't that bad...

Maybe there will be 2 type of cars, EVs for commuter city buzzing and hybrids for long distance travel.

 

Why don't we run electric lines above the roads, and equip all cars with metal contacts?

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Ve hav ze technology!

 

Currently, researchers are concentrating on the Lithium battery. I am not expert in that field, but the researchers are, so I am prepared to accept that they know what they are doing, and Lithium is a better bet than NiMH.

Lithium is not in short supply. Just that the traditional Lithium carbonate ore is limited. Lots of other options exist, and will be exploited. Extraction from the ocean is the option which, in theory, is least limited. I suspect it is only a matter of time before we have an efficient and cost effective means of tapping this source.

 

Let's also not forget the promise of H2 battery systems (fuel cells).

Lest we engage in any hand-wringing here over a future scarcity of platinum catalyst, I'll also mention pre-emptively that we shall overcome in this challenge too: There has been considerable progress in reducing and even eliminating the need for Pt in fuel cells.

On lithium: Simbol Lithium Mining

 

Just like curing the common cold. Oh wait...

There you go again, with your futuristic hopes, not based on anything realistic...

Now this is realistic: (from Hypewaders)

Simbol Lithium Mining