There is plenty of lithium on earth- more than sufficient to transition the entire existing vehicle count to battery EVs. As EVs are built out, dead batteries from the last wave of EVs will start to be recycled (more for their Ni, Co, Cu and Al content than for the Li), and the Li will be recycled- because if you go after the others efficiently, you get the Li back easily enough.

The transition won't happen suddenly. It'll ramp up gradually.

In reality, nobody really needs 60 kWh worth of EV battery. It's just what people are used to from driving IC engine cars. As people become more comfortable with EVs and charging infrastructure gets built out more, you'll see more "commuter cars" - super cheap, built with smaller packs.

Kudos to getting the lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) per kWh roughly correct. Most screw that up, confusing LCE with actual lithium mass, which is only about 160 g per kWh. There's a lot of garbage data out there.

We agree that the lithium ion battery, which is optimized for energy density per unit weight and volume- neither of which matter much to grid storage- is likely not the optimal solution FOR grid storage- beyond some very high value, very short term grid stability applications. And so far, that's all Li ion batteries are being used for on the grid- that and people going totally off-grid.

No problemo. Like Moltenmetal states , there is absolutely no shortage of Lithium across the world. As a miner, Ill guarantee that the mining industry can scale up to any desired level of annual production , with one proviso. The costs might be more than society is willing to bear. How badly does society want this material??.

Society doesn't want the lithium, society wants clean air. If the price gets too high, society will find an alternative.

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Actually, lithium batteries are not being recycled. Even Elon's big battery factories and Tesla just dump the batteries. I work at a company that uses significant numbers of lithium batteries, and returned batteries are sorted into cells and everything else (circuit boards, busbars, etc). the cells are discharged and go in the dumpster. The other metals go a recycling direction. The reason the cells are even separated is to discharge them less they cause a fire on the trucks or at the landfill.

Quote:

When we get to a first year for all-electric car production, how much lithium will be needed?

Depends on how fast change is foisted upon us. If we're still using lithium, a LOT more than anyone figures due to the ~10 year lifespan. Hopefully we're not legislated down that road until we have a reasonable solution based on a better technology.

Comcokid: somebody is doing a big, big no-no then.

Lithium ion batteries are NOT safe to landfill. They contain water soluble solvents which are also combustible, as well as leachate toxic materials.

Lithium ion batteries are being recycled in large masses already in China.

Post consumer collection and recycling here in North America is in its infancy.

However, they are better ores for all the metals they contain- for the Li, Co, Ni, Al and Cu- than any such ores mined on earth.

One of the big problems with mined ores for battery use is the need for purification. The Li in Li ion batteries contains no Na, K, Ca or Mg, so that means a lot less purification effort. Similarly the Ni and Co contain no Fe, and the Al and Cu are present as reduced metals, so quite easy to separate.

miningman: bigger question is how much investment in new lithium production can be expected despite falling prices...

Direct lithium extraction from brines is going to potentially be a big source going forward. Some brines being harvested already for other things, like the Smackover brine in Arkansas extracted for bromine production, can easily have its Li removed- Standard Lithium is doing this in a demo plant at considerable scale right now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XeZ2B9Hi6M&t=...

Here in Irvine, CA, we're not allowed to dispose of any sort of batteries in either the recycle bin or the trash bin. They have a special hazardous waste drop-off site where you can take things like engine oil, paint cans, empty aerosol cans, electronic waste and batteries, everything except medical waste. In fact, they'll give you a free battery disposal containers to collect them in. I go about once or twice a year, mostly with aerosol cans and batteries, as well as the occasional old can of paint or garden chemical.

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Landfill sites are the mines of the 22nd century, as has been alluded to above.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

GregLocock - The 2015 book "Junkyard Planet" by Adam Minter is a fascinating read on worldwide scrap recycling. In the 70's- 80's large electrical motors were difficult to tear down and separate the copper and steel, so they were put into industrial landfills. After 2000 with China's need for steel and copper, and the emergence of the large metal shredding machines, these landfills were reopened and mined.

Battery technology is only one of the factors making electrical vehicles (cars and transport vehicles in general, including boats, ship, airplane and airships) possibly commercial competitive in the future.

Another main factor is how cheap (and clean) electrical power can be produced and made accessible, and also how strong the worlds will is to progress in this way.

In this context everything depends on everything else, as usual.

To the original question. Others have pointed out the large quantities of lithium on earth, without even mentioning what lies below sea level... (Oh yes, seriously discussed with deep sea technology!)

And battery development seems already to have surpassed the obstacle of lithium batteries..(search for: new developments in electric storage batteries)

As engineers we tend to make a pointed questions, and will get pointed answers.

As often stated: a helicopter view or thinking 'outside the box' will give a multitude of answers and a multitude of new questions...

Another adage (albeit slightly modified): if your only solution looks like a hammer, all your problems will look like a nail.

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Lithium is not an issue - Cobalt+Nickel and the cathode/anode active material pose bigger problems. The $60/kWh battery cost in 2030 looks unrealistic assuming increasing costs involved in mining these metals in an environmentally friendly way.

Nickel abundance is absolutely, positively NOT an issue. There are whole islands of laterite ores containing up to 1% nickel and 0.1% cobalt.

Cobalt's problem isn't a lack of abundance either- rather, its problem is that it is abundant in a desperately poor, corrupt and dysfunctional country where ethical mining corporations fear to tread. So poor people- and their kids- mine cobalt ore to pay for tomorrow's dinner, and sell it to unscrupulous Chinese middlemen who take 2/3 of the profit. Of course nobody who complains about cobalt in EV batteries actually cares much about poor people- otherwise they'd be lobbying for MORE cobalt mining and doing something about DRC's many dysfunctions so those people can profit from the minerals that are their collective birthright, just as the Saudis, Texans and Albertans etc. profited from the oil found under their patches of dirt. The industry is thrifting cobalt out of its cathode formulations to avoid the whole issue. Tesla already has a high Ni cathode with no Co, and of course lithium iron phosphate contains no Co or Ni- it is very safe and long lasting, but has a lower energy density than the Ni containing cathode materials.

Mining and refining Ni and Co in an environmentally friendly way has to be compared against the thousands of kg of fossil fuel mining, refining and burning that will no longer be needed as a consequence of using the batteries and recharging them with ever-greener, ever-cheaper renewable electricty.

The batteries at end of life are a better ore for the metals they contain than any such ore found in nature. They are being recycled right now in China, and the recycling methods will improve- and will become more economical- as the volume of dead batteries to feed them rises to levels permitting the construction of large-scale plants to do the recycling.

All energy production, storage and use technologies have negative environmental impacts- all real ones at least. So the only meaningful comparison is between them. Comparing impacts in isolation is pointless and in fact is a big part of the nirvana fallacy.

As someone largely ignorant of battery technology, and if a lot of the material can be recycled, what in one of these new type batteries is used up? Or in other words, what makes them 'dead'?

Typically the chemical processing, which is the where the energy comes from in the first place. There are a number of reasons for the battery to lose its energy capacity over time, including loss or corrosion of electrode materials, poisoning of the electrolyte, or other damage to the electrolyte.
https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/bu_307...

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Quote:

Another main factor is how cheap (and clean) electrical power can be produced and made accessible, and also how strong the worlds will is to progress in this way.

Unfortunately stateside the greenies have had us regressing for half a century, removing cheap hydro power to "reclaim" nature while simultaneously demanding we rid ourselves of fossil fuels and nuclear capacity. We are supposed to idolize our superiors on the socialized west coast while ignoring brownouts and ridiculous energy costs.

All those green windmills to generate power. But wind power is not steady and generating capacity can vary quickly. So you have to back up wind power with alternate power generation that can be quickly brought on line to keep power steady. And that means natural gas power generation. That's why Oil and Gas tycoon T. Boone Pickins was such an advocate for renewable energy. Ever hear of the "Pickins Plan"?

Green energy makes a lot of money for the fossil fuel folks and dumps the carbon in someone else's backyard.

There are some other 'green' energy sources which have only attracted a limited amount of interest, but that could soon change:

Are Tides And Waves The Missing Piece Of The Green Energy Puzzle?

Solar and wind are energy powerhouses until the sky is dark or the air is still. An ancient source of energy — the tides — could soon offer a predictable alternative.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tidal-power_n_5fbe9...

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
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"Can lithium batteries power all cars in America?" Possibly, but it's going to be a worldwide problem, as governments the world over are banning sale of new IC vehicles by 2030 or 2035.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

Banning sale of IC vehicles? They may say that now, but governments change. They may find those target dates to be unachievable. It may work in small, heavily populated countries, but in large countries with lot of wide open spaces, e.g. Australia, Canada, I doubt it.

hokie I don't disagree with you, I don't think the Movers and Shakers have thought about the whole situation for more than a few minutes at a time. Nobody really knows how it's going to play out.

What I am pretty sure about is that M & S are going to be well insulated from any negative effects. As usual.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

"Banning the sale of combustion-engine vehicles by X date" is something they're saying for political points (and, in part, to drive change). As the date approaches, the infrastructure limitations that would require the government to spend money in order to solve (generating capacity, distribution to remote locations, distribution system capacity, etc) plus sales figures for EVs versus combustion-engine vehicles (which may hit a wall if the infrastucture issues aren't resolved) will probably make it quite apparent that a complete ban isn't feasible and it will end up getting postponed (or cancelled).

I have little doubt that the charging infrastructure for EVs is going to improve. I have little doubt that for daily-driver commuter vehicles, EVs are likely to become the most favored choice. (My next daily-driver commuter vehicle is likely to be an EV.) Governments in various places are likely to push this along by either banning combustion-engine vehicles from city centres or applying heavy taxes/tolls to them. (Already happening) I can see the 2030 timeframe for being roughly when EV sales figures become comparable to ICE sales figures instead of being the current small fraction of them. In Norway, as of right now, EVs are about 60% of total vehicle sales. That's boosted by heavy taxes on combustion-engine vehicles, but still ... that's the direction this is heading. If they can do it ... https://cleantechnica.com/2020/10/01/september-in-...

Enough green renewable energy to power all these new EV's is a pipe dream right now, and I'm not seeing any new solution that changes this yet. The parallel hope is to also power the existing electrical grid from green energy and right now there is no green energy that can come close to achieving this goal.

As an amusing case to me, the City of Toronto TTC is switching to electric buses. What they never mention in all the media hyping for this green incentive is that the buses are being charged with NG generators. Toronto Hydro doesn't have the grid infrastructure to supply the necessary charging power to the bus garages. 6 x 1.2MW generators were installed at the bus garage being used as the initial test site and similar installations are being planned at other bus garages. Shortly after the generators and switchgear was placed, they planted a row of closely spaced evergreen trees/bushes to hide the equipment from the public view when driving past the garage. The switchgear did have utility tie breakers, but there is no current plan to use them. More likely, they will connect to co-generate back onto the grid.

Here's a picture shortly after the generators were put on site before the trees were planted. I didn't fine one showing the trees, but I didn't look too hard.



Still, even though an electric bus is currently about $250k more than a diesel I do believe they will payback in operating costs and they will be more green than a diesel bus despite their dubiously marketed green-ness.

LionelHutz, we shall not go around looking behind the curtains :)

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

I'm not going to suggest it doesn't have trade-offs and downsides, as everything does, but there are potential benefits to stationary power generation compared to mobile for emission controls. I'm a little more versed in how that relates to diesel generators vs. vehicles, but that also has more to with NOx than carbon emissions, so NG generators might not have the same benefits. Assuming carbon capture is an option at some point though, it would be easier on stationary plants than vehicles, no?

That all being said, the compounding energy losses while converting from chemical, to electric, to motive make me wonder how efficient it really is compared to directly from chemical to motive.

Andrew H.
www.MotoTribology.com

Samsung revealed a new silver-carbon solid state EV battery that eliminates the need for lithium.Their claim is a 500 mile range per charge and no battery fires from growth of dendrites.

If all US vehicles were EV's, then in order for that paradign to work with an all renewable electrical supply system, most EV's would need to be parked and plugged in to the grid during the peak daytime solar generation time period 10 am -4 pm . Also , the home rechargers and load centers would need to be 2-way, to allow small household loads ( lighting, internet) to be powered by the car battery if there was an electrical outage.

I understand there is anew EV on the market, called Kandi K27, with a sale price below $10K USD. Maybe a better alternative is buy a used Leaf and replace the battery with an upgraded battery.

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick

In Brisbane, there is a mixed bag. The Council was in the process of going to all gas powered, then a couple of 'explosions' occurred. So now, they are transitioning back to diesel. Knee jerk reaction?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-03/brisbane-ci...

EVs are more efficient than combustion-engine vehicles even if the grid power is all coal. The central generating plant can run at a high-efficiency operating point almost all the time. 40% thermal efficiency is not uncommon. A petrol engine in a car is maaaybe capable of being 30-ish% efficient at an operating point that is hardly seen in real driving, and it spends an awful lot of time at operating conditions that are well below that, if not zero.

Yes, the EV has charge-discharge losses in the battery; these are pretty low for a good lithium battery. Offsetting that ... the combustion engine has a very complicated mechanical transmission that is order-of-magnitude same efficiency as the charge-discharge efficiency in a battery (85% - 90%); the single-speed reduction gear in an EV has insignificant losses. (No torque converter, no oil pump, no clutch plates sliding against each other, much lower oil-churning losses)

The grid distribution that we have is in no way capable of supporting a fully EV fleet right now. Even setting aside fast-charging ... imagine if your entire neighborhood had one (or two) EVs charging at 7 kW demand simultaneously. I highly doubt if the distribution network is designed to have every household at max demand all the time.

BUT ... Even if the alleged 2030 - 2035 timeframe for changing to substantially-all new vehicles being EV, that's 10 - 15 years off, and then it's going to take another 10 - 15 years for those vehicles to substantially replace the existing fleet. An overnight flip-the-switch transition to a substantially-all-EV fleet not only isn't going to happen, but it cannot happen. But a gradual shift over 25 years ... there's time to react.

The time that it takes to build (let's say) a nuclear plant ... needs to be kept in mind.

And 25 years from now, how many of those EV's will be garaged in a house with a solar roof/home battery infrastructure?

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There appears to be rather large disparity in efficiencies

EVs are on the order of 25 kWh/100 mi, while ICE cars are on the order of 125 kWh/100 mi

https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/what-is-mpge#:....

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Quote (JohnRBaker)

And 25 years from now, how many of those EV's will be garaged in a house with a solar roof/home battery infrastructure?

And how many will be parked at apartments with...who knows what?

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

One style of fast charger stores energy kinetically ( via a high speed flywheel) during non charging periods, and can recharge a large EV battery in minutes. It may have an 8 hr cycle time, so the impact on the grid is minimal. In any case, most commuter cars are left in a daytime parked condition for 9 hrs , so they do not need fast chargers.

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick

Quote:

In any case, most commuter cars are left in a daytime parked condition for 9 hrs

Keeping banker's hours, are we?

Nevertheless, the question is who's going to pay for all the infrastructure in the parking lot, although, if we can't adequately deal with COVID, only a few chargers will be needed.

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How people who live in city areas where they have no parking area on their property and have to park on the street are the ones I'm curious about as far as getting their electric cars charged.

Reality will set in. It always does.

When governments clue in to how much infrastructure spending is required to bring countless megawatts of charging-station capability to dense urban areas with no private parking ... something will give. Imagine the cost of replacing every street-parking meter with a 6.6 kW Level 2 charger. Think about what to do about all the areas with on-street parking without marking meters that would still need that.

Apartment buildings? All well and good to have three or four EV parking spots with charging stations. What happens when every parking spot needs to have a charging station? That's what it would come to in the dream world of all vehicles being EVs.

I suppose private ownership of vehicles is unfavourably regarded, especially in areas like that. Maybe someone dreams of it being all public transit, or all ride-sharing.

And it's true, in many such areas, you CAN get away without owning a car. Lots of people do. I can't. The nature of my job means not relying on public transit. My car has all sorts of stuff in it that I need from time to time. That doesn't work in someone's ride-sharing and public-transit utopia.

And that's why I don't live in an area like that!

Does something need to "give"? Absolutely.

Quote:

What happens when every parking spot needs to have a charging station? That's what it would come to in the dream world of all vehicles being EVs.

My son's condo just upgraded to having charging cables for all parking spots, EXCEPT HIS, because it's not near a wall

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Quote (IRstuff)

My son's condo just upgraded to having charging cables for all parking spots, EXCEPT HIS, because it's not near a wall

Well duh, how would it stand up? Is is just supposed to float there?

For that to work, they'd have to invent some sort of "pole" or something and I just don't think we're quite there yet....

Andrew H.
www.MotoTribology.com

Tesla recharging stations are free-standing:


June 2016 (Sony a6000)

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
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John, surely you know sarcasm when you encounter it?

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

Quote:

Are Tides And Waves The Missing Piece Of The Green Energy Puzzle?

Given the decades of greenies' protesting traditional hydro generation NOT in their backyard, I dont see them smiling upon another form of hydro generation at their beloved local shores.

Quote:

That all being said, the compounding energy losses while converting from chemical, to electric, to motive make me wonder how efficient it really is compared to directly from chemical to motive.

The parameter you're looking for is brake-specific emissions. g/kw*hr. Obviously there are a plethora of power sources for the EV but the bottom line is that EVs powered by fossil fuels are major polluters vs an ICE vehicle due to the compounding inefficiencies of generation, transmission, and charging.

Quote:

Obviously there are a plethora of power sources for the EV but the bottom line is that EVs powered by fossil fuels are major polluters vs an ICE vehicle due to the compounding inefficiencies of generation, transmission, and charging.

Got any data to back this claim. Generally speaking, EVs powered by fossil fuse should still be considered polluters, but will be better than an ICE vehicle in most cases. In my example, the generation right beside the charging stations eliminates most of the transmission losses.

circa 2001 , Frank Kreith ( author of heat transfer books) published a 10 page "proof" that if we replaced IC cars with EV cars, pollution would increase significantly, as well as costs. At that time, California was considering such a mandate, and most electric power to California was imported fossil fuel power , but also they claimed priority use of the northwest hydro power from other states. I think his conclusions would be altered if the modern increase in wind and PV renewable power was factored in.

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick

That brings up another point. A combustion-engine vehicle is stuck with running on gasoline or diesel fuel. An EV in effect runs on whatever mixture of electricity sources that your local grid uses. In my case, it's about half nuclear, a quarter hydroelectric, the rest a mixture of natural gas and wind/solar. Clean up the grid and you in effect clean up the vehicles powered by it.

There are many studies, the results of which may reflect the prejudices of the scientists involved, and of course, they are affected by changes in generation methods. For instance EVs never made much sense from a CO2 perspective in Germany, and as they are getting rid of nukes, and have built a new coal powered power station, they make even less now.

UCS, scarcely a neutral source, says EVs have more emissions than sensible ICEs for 25% of the USA population. https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/new-data-sh...

Cheers

Greg Locock


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I tried to find the Kreith article ( published as an addendum to the monthly ASME magazine" Mechanical Engineering"circa 2001), and instead found a large number of other articles by that prolific author . Espescially relevant to the discussion of energy alernatives is that article titled "Bang for the Buck", published May 2012 in Mechanical Engineering magazine, by Kreith. Irrespective of the inaccuracies of the "climate change" modeling results promoted by the IPCC , it should be obvious that society will need to develop alternatives to fossil fuels as they inevitably become uneconomical due to depletion. His articles comparing energy alternatives based on EROI energy return on investment is very telling.

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick

GregLocock: The Union of Concerned Scientists wrote a report whose title says it all:

"Cleaner Cars- From Cradle to Grave"

EVs are cleaner on a lifecycle basis than the fleet average car that they replace, basically everywhere in the USA already right now, much less going into the future.

EVs are cleaner than a PRIUS, which is the cleanest car without a plug you can buy in the USA, still, in all but a handful of states.

And in Canada, where I live, 80% of us have access to a grid which is 40 g CO2/kWh or less. Here, EVs are a total environmental no brainer. The extra embodied emissions from making the battery are paid off in a year here, for a battery with a reasonable capacity- a couple years for the giant pack in a Tesla Model 3 LR version.

If GHG and toxic emission reductions actually matter, EVs are the solution, assuming that walking, biking, e-bikes, scooters or public transit aren't an option. Those are of course all better- except for diesel buses of course. My home-made EV did better in GHG emissions from source per person-mile than a diesel transit bus with 60 passengers.

The UCS says 25% of the USA population lives in areas where EVs are 'worse' than a Prius for CO2 emissions. It's in the report I linked.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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Which EV, though?

The Prius isn't representative of the average vehicle bought by a US consumer. The most popular EV in the US market (Tesla) also isn't representative of the average vehicle bought by a US consumer while simultaneously not being comparable to a Prius, either.

It shouldn't be surprising that a hypothetical F150/Hummer/Cybertruck EV (an EV, but still a heavy and inefficient one) is going to be worse overall than a hypothetical Prius (close to, if not the, most efficient petrol-engine vehicle you can get).

The Prius argument doesn't count for much either way. Sure, there are a handful of gasoline hybrids that get over 45mph (probably about 15-20 models maybe). 25% of the USA might live in an area where one of these vehicle models could do better than a pure EV. But, all of that population in those areas certainly doesn't own one of these vehicles, and you'd have a hard time convincing many in those populations that they should own a vehicle in that class. The "better" isn't much either, for a lot of that area it's within a couple of mpg.

Too many of the studies are based on a EV don't consider an air conditioner or heater. An EVs is fine if you live in San Jose CA. EVs have A/C and heaters that are marginal at best and also significantly impact the efficiency.

In a Florida summer a vehicle is an environmental lifeboat that moves you from one airlock to another airlock. A high-performance vehicle is one that will run the A/C at full blast while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I lived there and had to equip my 4-cyl car with a welded-aluminum racing radiator to ensure I would survive. In the northern great planes states in a winter blizzard you can die in a vehicle in a few hours without a heater, and an EV has to heat the battery first so it will even function.

You can check the Tesla forums. Many find running the A/C at any level cuts range by 20% or more. You find people on the Tesla forums talking about running diesel/kerosene fueled heaters in cold winters because of how much otherwise heating impacts the range. So much for the low carbon footprint!

Accepting the fact that nearly all the published papers on EVs and hybrids are a bit biased ( generally written or financed by manufacturers or suppliers) and accepting that Toyota has a well earned reputation for reliabilty etc etc, How come theres so little written extolling the virtues of the Hyundai product line???

There is some truth to it. The EV buses Toronto is buying use fuel oil or diesel fuel fired heaters below 5*C.

Comcokid, how are they heating their cars with the fired heaters? Heating their garages while parked? Surely not fired heaters in the car...

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

"Talking about" doesn't imply "doing" ...

Teslas up to the Model Y have used an electric resistance heater, which is of course an energy hog in cold weather. The Y uses a heat pump with the interestingly-named "octovalve" that allows it to send heat and cooling in various directions to extract the most possible use out of what heat is available in the vehicle (e.g. powertrain). The latest revision to the 3 includes that system as well. Independent testing has been finding that this system uses about a third as much power to keep the interior at 21 C when the outside temperature is near freezing. A coefficient-of-performance of 3 for a heat pump would not be surprising, so this makes sense.

They're not the only ones to be using a heat pump.

Certainly cold weather will still be a hit to the range, but not so badly as before.

I routinely see Teslas out on the road in winter. It doesn't render them useless, as what some people write would imply.

All cars drop in range (energy economy) in winter weather. That drop common to all cars is at least 10%- more for fossil fuelled hybrids which over-cool when the engine is stopped when it's not required (to avoid idling).

On top of it, an EV uses energy in the battery to either make heat (through a resistance heater) or to pump heat (using a heat pump). That will drop range a lot if you're driving very slowly in very cold weather, and barely at all if you're driving FAST in cold weather- because it's energy use in proportion to how much the drivetrain is using. 3 kW for heat when you're using 1 kW average crawling along in stop and go traffic is a big range drop- 3 kW out of 20 kW blasting along full speed on the highway isn't a big range drop at all.

None of that of course is any justification to waste 2/3 or more of the energy in your "tank" as heat, just to have some waste heat to warm your cabin!

Dress warmly, prewarm the cabin using grid power before you leave, take advantage of the heated seats and steering wheel, and keep the focus on keeping the windscreen clear. That'll drop your range loss quite a lot.

Just to underline the point made, here is a meticulous account of the measured fuel consumption of a 4-cylinder sedan (mine) driven for 6 years.



The fuel consumption in the summer is in the mid-8 L/100km. In the winter it's in the mid-9 L/100km. Seasonal variation therefore about +/-5%.
So in context, some range and efficiency loss to an EV is nothing new or special compared to a gasoline car.
The real change is just that nobody has been paying attention all this time.

Note: These values are not the imaginary numbers on the digital screen that all cars with fuel computers including mine display to their drivers. These values are measured at the pump using calibrated and temperature corrected volumes, and on the odometer that is also calibrated frequently using highway test signs.

Note: I have checked several models of cars and the fuel consumption displays all underestimate by 10%, including mine.

Note: There is a substantial gap in my driving through most of 2020.

Note: There is a trend in the yearly average from about 9.0 in 2012 to 9.4 in 2019 that represents the aging of the car.

www.sparweb.ca

Is that driven from new? I typically see a 10% fall in the first 1000-3000 km which I attribute to the diff (in particular) running in. However cynics may suggest that in the first few weeks I mess about a lot more than I do later.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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It's a 2008 car. I bought in 2012 when it had 140,000 km (87k miles) and I've got it up to 380,000km (237k miles).

I "mess about" lots in the summer because of the better traction. I also "mess about" lots in the winter... because of low traction... :\ it's a fun car with a 6-speed manual gearbox. Lotsa choices.

www.sparweb.ca

Coldness kills LI-ion batteries, so where I live they are only good for part of the year. When those batteries are not being used that need to be kept in a heated garage.

Jerry J.
UGV5-NX1884

Coldness doesn't "kill" lithium ion batteries. Trying to charge or discharge them when too cold can kill them though.

Hi Jerry
On the surface, what you say is true enough (except for the exaggeration) but the auto makers have not thrown up their hands and quit in disgrace. They simply introduced temperature management systems into the battery packs. While plugged in, the cell temps are regulated to prevent cold charge/discharge damage. This takes care of the worst of the problem for the majority of US drivers.

www.sparweb.ca

An interesting bit of news:

Tesla's dirty little secret: Its net profit doesn't come from selling cars

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/tesla-pro...

This sort of reminds me of where I worked when I first graduated fro engineering school. We had developed this machine which used a significant number of a particular item which was expendable, that is, they would wear out. It was what was called a 'depanner', for taking bread and rolls out of baking pans in large commercial bakeries:



Now we were one of three or four companies who made these machines and they all used basically the same type of silicon rubber 'vacuum cup':



Now the issue was that the company I worked for held the patent for using 'vacuum cups to lift food products'. And since this was, as I said, an expendable item which had to be replaced often (over the course of year, a typical high-production facility would go through four or five sets of cups per machine). Now they weren't that expensive and they became basically a commodity, that is no matter who you brought them from, they were identical. Now we didn't manufacture the cups themselves, that wasn't what we did. And since these cups could actually be used for applications that did not involve picking up a 'food product', we actually had no claim to the cups themselves, just how they were used. Of course, when we sold one of our depanners, no big deal because it was our patent, but if one of our competitors sold one of their depanners, we collected a royalty of $200 (note that this was back in the 60's and 70's). And it wasn't just depanners, as there were a couple of companies, for example, that made machines that picked-up eggs and placed them in those paper mache cartons, at least they were paper mache back then. But since eggs were 'food products', we collected royalties from them as well. Whenever there was a trade show where machinery was on display for use in any sort of food production or processing industry, we would always send one of our people with a copy of our patent and some blank contracts. Every once in awhile, a new 'customer' would show-up.

And then there was the spares business, and since, as I said, all the cups were the same, we also made money selling replacement cups to these large bakeries whether they had one of our depanners or one from one of our competitors. Anyway, it was a sweet business, but of course, that was over 40 years ago, so I assume that the patents have expired by now.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

Big difference. Government wasn't forcing 'customers' to pay you, but those eleven State governments are forcing the other companies to pay Tesla.

It is funny that the MSM has only just caught onto this. It's been in the financials for YEARS, ever since the first quarter they announced a profit.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

No one is forced to pay Tesla - they happen to be a leading manufacturer of electric vehicles, but any manufacturer is eligible. The manufacturers can build their own electric vehicles if they choose to, but most have failed to make suitable investments, waiting instead for some other company to work out the bugs. If it offsets the risks Tesla has taken, that seems fair.

I'm not saying they shouldn't sell them, they should. And yes, the credits were 'designed' as a way to promote EV development, so to that extent they've worked. It just puts all the silly headlines about Tesla profits into perspective. Their cars are sold at a loss, if you use the usual accounting procedures, so of course no OEM, with less tolerant shareholders, is going to try to compete seriously.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

At least ONE large OEM is talking about where it would like to go with respect to producing electric vehicles:

GM to go all-electric by 2035, phase out gas and diesel engines

GM launched its first long-range electric car, the Chevy Bolt, in 2016.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/gm-go-all-e...

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
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A widely misunderstood press release. I aspire to lose 10 kg this year, GM aspires (but does not promise) to have zero tailpipe emissions for new (ie not ongoing models) light duty vehicles (ie not work trucks)in 2035. "an aspiration to eliminate tailpipe emissions from new light-duty vehicles by 2035"

You can fool all of the people some of the time.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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Not just GM either, pretty much all the automakers making that noise...

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

I DID say that GM was "talking about where it would like to go with respect to producing electric vehicles."

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

The MSM headlines are the ones that don't understand it. Detroit News 'pledges', CNN "sell only", cnbc "exclusively offer" , cbs "eliminate", the independent (UK) "to stop", reuters "to end"

Cheers

Greg Locock


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I don't think that the bottleneck will be in Lithium, but rather on all those rare earth elements that are very difficult and polluting to extract and are...rare (pun intended).

These elements are, at the current level of scientific knowledge and from the little that I know of batteries, the drivers of battery efficiencies and lifespan...

And those rare earth elements are also used in those very efficient, both in terms of size and power, electric motors used in EV's.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

Technical issues aside, I keep wondering if ordinary people are going to spend their own money to buy the things if ICE cars are still available, or if they will have to coerced "persuaded".

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

Coercion will be required for ordinary people like me. My next car, like my current one, will have a diesel engine. But then, that may be my last one.

I see the Electric Vehicles Council of Australia wants government subsidies for rich people's new cars. I don't think they get the optics. The economics are such that it is a very expensive way of reducing CO2.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

hokie, that's what I'm thinking. I'm not against electric cars but I am against coercion :)

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

For what it's worth:

The Battery Is Ready to Power the World

After a decade of rapidly falling costs, the rechargeable lithium-ion battery is poised to disrupt industries

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-battery-is-ready-...

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

Couldn't read the whole story, paywall, but I expect I'd be underwhelmed. Grid-scale storage is a not-solved problem.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

MedicineEng: rare earth elements (lanthanides) are NOT USED IN LITHIUM ION BATTERIES.

They are used in EV motors, where they are a straight up features for cost deal. They make the motors lighter and more efficient, reducing how much battery you need for a given range- saving the metals that are actually used in Li ion batteries, i.e. Li, Co, Ni, Mn, Al, Cu etc.

...and by the way, rare earth elements aren't actually rare, either. Deposits of them, particularly deposits rich in the heavy elements, of mineable concentrations, are rare however. They often form via ion exchange. And the real problem with mining these guys isn't mining them, but rather separating one element from the next because they are very chemically similar- and from the radioactive thorium that they are usually found with.

The irony that people who hate or fear EVs often also seem to be in love for some reason with the possibility of thorium fission is rather delicious.

I love EV's and nuclear fission reactors. Do I get a prize?

Please remember: we're not all rednecks!
www.sparweb.ca

moltenmetal:
Thank you for your clarification on the rare earth elements and its use in EV ecosystem.

what will we do with batteries waste?

luia

Shhhhhh :)

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

What are we doing with nuclear waste? Or for that matter, the sludge from processing coal and the stuff that we're injecting into oil wells to increase net production or what we're forcing into the rock formations during fracking, for natural gas production?

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

Battery recycling will happen when there is sufficient demand for it, which will be when there are sufficient EVs not only out on the roads but also reaching the end of their service lives. Batteries are a richer ore of nickel, cobalt, etc than any natural ore is.

The "greening" of the power grid is connected/related but bear in mind that a new combustion-engine vehicle is locked into its fuel source for its life (and its related CO2 emissions, and the various environmental issues associated with extraction and processing of fossil fuel), whereas an EV will transition "green" in conjunction with the power grid. Or, if you wish, with the installation of photoelectric panels on your own roof and your own on-site battery storage. Can't do anything of the sort with a combustion-engine vehicle.

Quote:

BrianPetersen
Battery recycling will happen when there is sufficient demand for it, which will be when there are sufficient EVs not only out on the roads but also reaching the end of their service lives. Batteries are a richer ore of nickel, cobalt, etc than any natural ore is.

That just, sounds me to push with the belly forward and later we'll see, like has always happened with human activity, while the stick goes and comes back, your back rest a little.

luis

Quote:

JRB
What are we doing with nuclear waste? Or for that matter, the sludge from processing coal and the stuff that we're injecting into oil wells to increase net production or what we're forcing into the rock formations during fracking, for natural gas production?

About the above subject we are just pushing the belly forward, or the same as whistling to the side.

luis

0707: battery waste is already being recycled in China, and numerous companies (more than can possibly survive) are pursuing battery recycling tech development in North America and Europe. There will be a death march leading to consolidations and construction of a few plants of sufficient scale to make significant money and hence they will BUY dead batteries as a feedstock.

Li ion cathode is better ore for Ni and Co than any ore for those metals found on earth- better than most concentrates actually, because it contains no iron.

Li ion batteries similarly are a great source to recover Li from, because they contain no Na, K, Ca or Mg that are difficult to separate from the Li.

And even Li-FePO4 batteries, which contain no valuable cathode metals- are being accepted by recyclers like Li-Cycle. Why? Because the Li, and the Cu and Al current collector foils, ALREADY make them of value to recycle. Value to them, i.e. they make Li-Cycle money.

moltenmetal

"In South America, the biggest problem is water. The continent’s Lithium Triangle, which covers parts of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, holds more than half the world’s supply of the metal beneath its otherworldly salt flats. It’s also one of the driest places on earth. That’s a real issue, because to extract lithium, miners start by drilling a hole in the salt flats and pumping salty, mineral-rich brine to the surface.
Then they leave it to evaporate for months at a time, first creating a mixture of manganese, potassium, borax and lithium salts which is then filtered and placed into another evaporation pool, and so on. After between 12 and 18 months, the mixture has been filtered enough that lithium carbonate – white gold – can be extracted.

It’s a relatively cheap and effective process, but it uses a lot of water – approximately 500,000 gallons per tonne of lithium. In Chile’s Salar de Atacama, mining activities consumed 65 per cent of the region’s water. That is having a big impact on local farmers – who grow quinoa and herd llamas – in an area where some communities already have to get water driven in from elsewhere.

There’s also the potential – as occurred in Tibet – for toxic chemicals to leak from the evaporation pools into the water supply. These include chemicals, including hydrochloric acid, which are used in the processing of lithium into a form that can be sold, as well as those waste products that are filtered out of the brine at each stage."


luis

The "water" is actually brine much saltier than seawater. It's not being "used", it's being withdrawn and evaporated.

It's not like they're taking freshwater out of wells and using it to purify the lithium. They simply pump the brine to the surface of the desert and then allow it to evaporate. As each salt crystallizes out, they pump the remaining brine to another evaporation "pan" to cryztallize out the next salt.

It's about as benign a mining process as can be imagined.

But when you draw brine out of the subsurface, there's a fear that this will cause freshwater to flow lateraly from great distances away to replenish the brine aquifer. That's what the local people are worried about. And maybe they're right. But there's no mining operation on earth that doesn't have environmental impacts of some sort.

The refining generally doesn't happen on site in the desert. Most of the purification happens in China, because that's where the batteries are made in the largest quantities.

And the quantities of brine used per tonne of lithium are large- because lithium isn't the largest mass product produced, by any stretch. There are quite a few other products from a salar evaporation "mine", including potash (potassium chloride) and quite a few others.

An interesting development, if true:

VW accidentally leaks new name for its U.S. operations: Voltswagen

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/29/vw-accidentally-le...

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

April Fool!

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

I did say "if true"...

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

Well, yeah, but this Editors Note was placed ahead of the article itself:

Editor’s Note: Volkswagen initially said it was going to rename its U.S. operations Voltswagen to signify its commitment to electrification of its fleet. The company confirmed Tuesday that the announcement was an elaborate April Fools’ joke. Our full story on the ‘joke’ is here. Below is the original story based on VW’s announcement of the name change.

Maybe added after you posted your link? Who knows...

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

This is the trend...

Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

In a few years electric vehicles may cost the same as their combustion-engine counterparts

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/03/3...

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-'Product Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

probably run out of materials soon

Quote (CWB1)

Unfortunately stateside the greenies have had us regressing for half a century, removing cheap hydro power to "reclaim" nature

Have you seen the water level in Lake Mead lately?
Did you know there was a 7-year drought in Northern Québec about a decade ago that cut HQ's capacity significantly?

Nature is doing its own regressing in response to our activities... incidentally, there are few if any sites remaining in the US and Canada for large-scale hydro development. The big one currently under construction in remote Labrador is a total boondoggle.

BTW, who are these Stateside 'greenies'?

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

With respect to potential supplies of Lithium for electric vehicle batteries, this might prove interesting:

Lithium production could save California's Salton Sea

The lithium brine reserves under the Salton Sea could support the entire US EV industry for years.

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/lithium-product...

Here a shot from the last time my wife and I were out at the Salton Sea. There's no much there, but we had spent the weekend in Palm Desert and this was one of our side trips:


April 2019 (Sony a6000)

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-'Product Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

The only question is "can I have my cake and eat it too?"

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

Anyone saying they have a good plan that will help with the Salton Sea is very likely wrong. The current situation of the Salton Sea is from people having a good plan that went horribly wrong.

So when another engineering exploitation is proposed I think, if the necessary cleanup isn't to be accomplished before any other goal that the necessary cleanup isn't going to get done as every economic excuse will get dragged out as to why they cannot start to reclaim the poison and fertilizer runoff that has made it a toxic nightmare.

Not exactly related to batteries, but this is a proposal for storing excessive electrical energy as potential energy and accessing it later when the demand is higher or renewables are off-line, like at night for solar and low wind days for turbines:

We Can Store Our Excess Renewable Energy In An Energy Vault

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2022/01/27...

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

Debating the potential of EVs to save the planet * as an alternative to IC vehicles is like debating which of sucrose or glucose-fructose in your soda pop is unhealthier.

* I loathe that expression.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

What about 'game-changer'? Like that one?

John - that is actually a device for extracting dollar bills from wallets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGGOjD_OtAM

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

Re Energy Vault, some discussion here: thread1618-488786: Gravity-based energy storage tower developer notches a customer order

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

Just to be an ass, why do we need for every car/truck to be electric? Does bio-diesel work? Are there other fuels/technologies that can work?
Why the obsession on electric?

To me this looks like someone's pipe dream/ selected solution. There are alternatives, so the answer should be No. Lithium batteries can not power all cars.

But I do like the debate on lithium batteries, as they do have problems that need to be solved.

Just to be a messenger (don't shoot me), few of you seem to truly grasp how serious the problem is. Replacing IC vehicles with EVs in the big picture is a halo exercise that just papers over the cracks. We get a warm fuzzy feeling but don't much move the needle.

There is a widespread lack of imagination and a mindset that insists we can technology our way to business as usual. Everyone from engineers to investors to politicians are locked in to that blinkered perspective and an obsolete worldview.

Which is why I don't waste time quibbling over the math of these 'solutions'; nature makes its own calculations.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

ironic_metallurgist: dunno. What I hear constantly are:

1) Nirvana fallacy arguments against EVs, intended to justify making NO CHANGE
2) People selling the notion that the only solution to decarbonization is some kind of new puritanism

We DO need to move information instead of people, move people by electrified public mass transport and active transport, and to densify cities around public transport to make that possible. That's a 70+ yr, multi-trillion dollar exercise, which can't happen any quicker without enormous amounts of waste and disruption.

IN the meantime, people living in cities designed AROUND CARS, are going to need cars. And those cars will need to no longer generate toxic tailpipe emissions pointed at people going about their business breathing. And they'll also need to be powered by energy sources which don't generate as much GHG emissions- and hopefully, ultimately, which generate orders of magnitude lower GHG emissions than the current fossil transport option.

We've already achieved that with EVs in Canada, where about 80% of us have access already to a grid to recharge them from which is under 40 g CO2/kWh.

The materials issues will sort themselves out. CATL has announced a sodium ion battery with excellent cycle life, a cathode containing no rare metals, and a hard carbon anode. Energy density is already a match with lithium iron phosphate. Plenty good enough for EVs. Assuming CATL aren't lying or over-selling what they have, we'll see those batteries in cars a few years from now.

(www.spitfireresearch.com)

The better is the enemy of the good, in other words.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

Epic point miss, both of you. Shocking since there's no agenda and no ambiguity in my post. However you did reinforce my point nicely.

Suggest you try reading it again and reflecting a little longer before attacking.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

I understand your point, but think that mm is right to say that just stopping 21st century life so you can be a caveman somewhere isn't a realistic proposal, or even aim.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

I don't think IM is suggesting stopping 21st century life, but more along the lines of, we need to realize what 22nd century life needs to look like if we intend to hold the same level of sway as a species that we currently do. Hint: It can't just be 21st century life but shinier.

- Andrew

Regardless of the progress on EV's, there are many other applications of lithium batteries that will continue to be a risk to transport and storage- I doubt any EV's were involved in the walmart fire.

Eventually there will be sufficient progress on EV technology that the consumer's choice between EV and ICE will become a rational decision between their actual life cycle cost to the consumer and not a forced conclusion based on political correctness or effete "lifestyle". At that time I think we will see EV's more integrated into the grid vis a vis charging the EV will be scheduled to match the daytime max PV generation and household load centers will be upgraded to enable powering of household low duty circuits with the EV during times of low grid power availability. In the meantime, "another one rides the bus".

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick

Quote (GregLocock)

I understand your point, but think that mm is right to say that just stopping 21st century life so you can be a caveman somewhere isn't a realistic proposal, or even aim.

Quote (ironic metallurgist)

...widespread lack of imagination

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

Quote (davefitz)

...consumer's choice ... rational decision

How much 'choice' do we actually have? Coke or Pepsi? Demopublicans or Republicrats? Drive or else stay home? This are not facetious questions, they are at the core of our self-delusion.

It is well understood that we do not generally make rational choices, and that advertisers only try to appeal to our emotions. (I am aware the eng-tips constituency is skewed away from the mean.) Over the last century+ the political propaganda has developed hand in hand with advertising technology, by the same people. It's a fascinating history that I recommend researching.

Since this strikes at the heart of American individualist dogma, I expect incoming; in fact I can already recite the responses.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

Objections without solutions are just teenage rants.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

I still think lithium batteries have problems that need to be fixed. Mining, production, disposal, and fire performance.
But I don't think they should power all things. That is just a pipe dream of a short sighted person.

It is also concerning that I see reports from time to time saying the cost of ownership of an electric car are more than the present de facto standard. Like maybe we as consumers are being herded into a cost squeeze, by the nanny state.

The other problem is not the technology, but we are being marketed the product that someone wants us to purchase.

And as of right now, many of us don't purchase new cars, and used electrics are no where to be seen, if they even are an option in the future (a warned out battery won't work very well).

Quote (cranky108)

the nanny state

Do you know you've pretty much discredited everything else you say?

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

If I was still employed, and IF the car market was functional today, I would own one EV and one Hybrid.
I live outside of a small town. Into town is about 10-15mi round trip.
I think that between the two of us we make that trip 15-20 times a week.
And 1-2 times a week we make drives that would be at or beyond the limit of an EV range (not counting seasonal issues).
The nearest public charging is over 15mi from where I live.

I believe that the issues of materials will sort themselves out.
That is what markets do.
But we need to combat the manipulation of these markets, I should just say China.
The price of RE metals is a case in point.
The reason that Mountain Pass is closed is that the Chinese undercut the price.
The once the only significant US mine closed, they raised the prices.
A few years back they said that there would be export limits.
Work was begun to reopen the mine, and within weeks of it restarting the export restrictions vanished.
This is as bad of an issue as the distortion of markets by Western governments with various subsidies and credits.
It is keeping the week and lame cogging the market for too long.

Eventually there will be used EV market. And the "certified" cars will have either new battery packs or a warrantee on them.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

Quote (GregLocock)

Objections without solutions are just teenage rants.

So what's the solution? I mean, to teenage rants?

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

My wife taught me a trick she used to use with clients with Alzheimers. Acknowledge their idea, and divert. Works well.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

'the nanny state' Incentives for a "governmental" preferred solution.
The president said "you can always buy an electric car", as a solution to high gas prices.

Not at all that I think gas cars should be the future, but I think a market based solution would be better.

Besides lithium batteries may not be a holistic solution. We may need alternatives.

So, treat my teenagers like they have Alzheimers? I know they go through a demented period around 14, but isn't that a bit harsh?

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

Quote (cranky108)

but I think a market based solution would be better.

So you prefer the mythical unseen hand of the 'market' to the 'nanny state'?
And how's that been working out for us so far?

Faith in an omniscient, beneficent 'market' ticks all the boxes for characteristics of bad religion. I guess my faith is insufficient to believe in that, for all the same reasons I'm not in Scientology.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

The "market" is based on self-interest; and fails repeatedly to address known issues until it's forced to by outside agencies. Seat belts are ubiquitous now, but had to forced on the manufacturers despite significant pushback. Once that roadblock was breached, the market "decided" to make safety a selling point. Until something drastic happens, like a gigantic negative class-action judgement occurs, car computer systems will remain vulnerable; ditto even baby monitors

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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Seat belts make an instructive case study in the enormous difficulty and time required to make a simple societal change that is made at extremely low cost but which brings enormous and obvious benefit.

In the 1960s the majority of folks firmly believed that a seat belt infringed on their freedom and that they would be safer being thrown out of a vehicle. Carmakers, who didn't want to spend maybe $5/belt, at first made it an optional extra, but fought regulation hard in Washington (government lobbying is basically just formalized and legalized corruption). So scientists gathered some data over a few years and showed that public perception and corporate propaganda were demonstrably very wrong. Finally, after many thousands more avoidable deaths, it was made mandatory equipment, although it took much longer (1980s) for enforcement to start.

GM is one vehicle I have never and will never own, because GM lobbied Congress for 15 years to prevent making airbags mandatory. Well since then my life was probably saved by an airbag (and belt, and crumple zone) in a compact car. If it had been the 1960s I would have gone through the windshield into a large pickup truck and would not be typing this.

What has been the benefit of these heavily resisted safety regulations brought in by the nanny state? Despite a doubling of population and miles driven, and at higher speeds, the number of annual highway fatalities has remained about constant.

Fast forward 60 years. Substitute 'mask' for 'belt' and 'in an ICU with Covid' for 'thrown out of the car', and we see that people haven't changed at all. Correction, they are now more manipulatable through (anti)social media and are far less trusting of leaders and experts.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

Quote:

...there are few if any sites remaining in the US and Canada for large-scale hydro development...BTW, who are these Stateside 'greenies'?

Thousands of older "small" hydro sites have been removed stateside over the past 50 years, particularly in the northeast where population density and need for power are the greatest. Rather than allow older sites to be sold and/or remain in service, "environmental" groups successfully protested and/or sued to force their removal under the guise of "reclaiming nature" on sites that had operated for a century or more. My folks live within a rural co-op that operates a shuttered mill's 10 MW powerhouse, which non-local "greenies" did their damnedest to shut down. They're surrounded by other old mill sites that aren't as fortunate and struggling communities with high utility costs, but at least the local parks and museums all have displays of scrapped turbines.

If the greenies weren't so destructive and environmentally unfriendly I'd actually enjoy their bad ideas purely for the entertainment value. My personal favorite with EVs is the consistently repeated claim that EVs will allow humanity to stop using petroleum products, bankrupting "big oil."

CWB1,
Maybe you are unaware of the environmental damage caused by hydro power over the entire range of size. It is not zero carbon when entire forests are submerged.

There is also a trend for entrepreneurs (saviors of the world, if linkedin and my alma mater's propaganda can be relied upon) to build micro-power stations on every little creek, which is also damaging and which benefits only themselves. They are collectively not enough to make a dent in current energy demand. It seems to me that among micro hydro, wind, and solar, that solar is easily the least bad option.

Full disclosure: I worked to build and install hydro power equipment for several years. I've since been better educated about the side effects.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

At this time, all options need to be used, from the 'least bad' to the most bad. If not, things are going to grind to a halt.

Quote (hokie66)

If not, things are going to grind to a halt.

You say it like it's a bad thing. Some things must grind to a halt if we are to have any chance at all.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

Quote (CWB1)

Thousands of older "small" hydro sites have been removed stateside over the past 50 years,

50 years? Thousands?
I'm not one to demand peer-reviewed documentation (except as deserved sarcasm), but that strikes me as seriously exagerrated, and I must challenge it.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

Yes, it is a bad thing.

Hot take: What if we re-designed cities to not be car centric?

What will be the impact of Uber or similar on number of cars needed when autonomous automobiles (and minibuses) exist?

Humans have got on simply fine for all our history without every single person needing their own automobile.

"Autonomous taxis" are a disaster for energy consumption, traffic management, etc. At least if someone has their own vehicle, it drives X km to go somewhere X km away. With an autonomous one, it still does X km, but also the distance to get from wherever it originally was to wherever it was called to before, and after.

For millennia, people lived in or near villages that had most everything they needed on a day-to-day basis, within walking distance, and people didn't work huge distances from where they lived. And those villages were in places where food could be grown or hunted relatively nearby. I don't think people of today are ready to make that sort of change (I fully admit that I'm not), and I'm not sure such a situation could support 7 billion people on this world, but perhaps at least heading towards that direction would not be a terrible thing to do.

We need walkable village or city centers, we need good and safe public transportation (bring back trolley buses!), we need neighborhoods that intimately mix shops and housing so that people can walk to get groceries or have a coffee or have their hair done or whatever (not huge residential neighborhoods where people have to drive to get anywhere).

There shouldn't be residential developments like the one I live in myself. If one side of a street is residential, the other side should have shops. If the bottom floor is commercial, the upper floors should be residential. A commercial plaza a few hundred metres away isn't close enough. They should be intimately mixed.

It is possible to live without a car in Toronto (and in most European cities). It is practically impossible in the suburbs of Toronto (where I am) ...

Quote:

Humans have got on simply fine for all our history without every single person needing their own automobile.

Is that even relevant? Should we go back to horse and buggy? Humans didn't have much in the way of mass transit for nearly all our history either.

Humans have got on simply fine fir nearly all our history without cell phones and computers. Should we get rid of them as well?

Quote:

There shouldn't be residential developments like the one I live in myself. If one side of a street is residential, the other side should have shops.

I think that if you try to actually plan something like that out, you'd find that it's not practical. You'd have way too many mom & pop shops and not enough Costcos, HD's etc. Assuming that Costco and Home Depot are plausibly distributed now, we're looking at roughly 40 square miles per Costco. Over a teensier, non-scientific sampling of Google Maps, I counted 13 supermarkets in a 20 square mile area. My company has people who live anywhere from Marina Del Rey to Riverside, roughly 67 miles, and roughly 40 miles north/south. Naturally our significant others don't work in the same place, so how would that actually plan out? Assuming that one could even juggle all of that to work, it would cost multi-trillions of dollars to replan and rebuild everything. And once you have that optimized, what happens if you have to change jobs because your company went bankrupt or was bought and moved to Tempe, or New York City?

While autonomous vehicles are inefficient for the model cited, there may be other models that make more sense, although that's unlikely. Clearly my car sits in the parking lot for 9 hrs a day doing nothing, while someone nearby could potentially use such a car for, say, 8 of those 9 hours; by such measures, we could ostensibly reduce the number of cars needed to sustain commute and local trips, thereby reducing the number of cars manufactured.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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Quote (geotechguy1)

Humans have got on simply fine for all our history without every single person needing their own automobile.

In the years before IC, large cities were dealing with massive quantities of horse poop in the streets.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

Quote:

In the years before IC, large cities were dealing with massive quantities of horse poop in the streets.

We're watching HBO's "Gilded Age" series and wondering how people, women in particular, tolerated long dress trains/hems dragging whatever's on the street/sidewalk around after them. Ick.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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Agree mostly with IRstuff. But I think most of us could get along just fine without cell phones, especially smartphones.

Before we have cell phones, there were pay phones in many more places. We also had phone books where we could look up a business, or another person.
And superman had phone booths to change in.

Actuall large amounts of horse poop would be a solution to the problem of importing fertilizer. But few of us have enough room to place a horse barn.

So far I have not heard of any suggestions that cover all the things that IC cars/trucks do.

Horses used for agriculture and transportation are where we started losing the game thermodynamically.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

So what if horse poop was a problem in the past; people poop on the sidewalk and street is our new issue

I should have known in advance that just writing 'poop' would trigger all kinds of diversions from the point.

Next post: cows f@rting out the GHG methane at both ends. Knock yourselves out.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

The information below is on the historical horse manure issue. In 1894 projections of the problem for London resulted in a crisis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_horse_manure_c...
If you read other sources you find that horses that died while pulling wagons were frequently left where they fell half buried in the muck, and their tackle moved to a replacement horse brought from the stable. Horses were the semi-truck and delivery van of the day. Below is a 1-minute video of the problem in NYC.
https://www.nyhistory.org/community/horse-manure
If you look at other historical sources for NYC you find the brownstone steps and porch of so many old NYC houses was a necessity so the porch would be above the muck and one could clean their boots before coming into the house. And notice those old photographs and paintings. Men always wore boots that came half-way up their calf. Women wore tall lace-up shoes. You may think wearing spats are only something done by marching bands. But in the late 1800's they served a very practical use of keeping the muck off the shoelaces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spats_(footwear)

I suggest the forum move to more technical issues on lithium batteries.

To go back to the original question, Biden thinks so. What else do we need?
Maybe a boot to the head?

To go back to the original question, 'all cars in America' is really the problem. That, and all of the infrastructure and urban design buit to support them.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

And my question, do all cars need to be the same?

Does all transportation need to look like cars?

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

No, all transportation does not need to look the same. Do all riders of public transportation need to smell so bad?
The social aspect of public transportation is it's own problem.
The non-social aspect of car ownership is a solution. That's why we own a car, and not just to go from here to there.

If the cost of owning a car was higher, then people would look more at public transportation. And maybe that is what some in government wants (not surprising). And this is why each of us don't own an airplane.
There are other aspects that could get people out of there cars, such as lower cost public transportation, but that would also attract smeller people. Or cleaner public transportation, but that would increase costs. Or better public transportation time tables.

But I doubt public transportation can be what everybody wants. So the car/truck is here to stay for a time.
So the question/debate of the best mix of car/truck type, and public transportation will continue as long as we all don't agree with me.

Try again, this time without being as hyper-literal. Because my question was not a technical one.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

If you have a new transportation type, then throw it out there.
Does all public transportation need to look like buses? No, but that is what is typically proposed.
Yes the BART is nice but it has a high cost per rider, and is not practical in so many places.

Actually, the best public transportation is the air travel system, but it depends on a traffic density that is hard to achieve for short distances. And better yet it is privately owned (corporations, not government).
The bus system in several other countries also works like this. But not in the US.

Maybe part of the problem in the US is the distance between homes, and businesses. But there is the density issue.
Most of the people in the US choose to have space between us the the people next door. Me I choose to own 35 acres.
What are my transportation options? Like most people who live where I do, I have a car/truck, or three.

???

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

Quote:

Try again, this time without being as hyper-literal. Because my question was not a technical one.

Already answered...

Quote:

No, all transportation does not need to look the same.

You post trolling flippant type questions and actually expect deep meaningful answers???

Quote (LionelHutz)

You post trolling flippant type questions and actually expect deep meaningful answers???

Trolling? You're entitled to your opinion.

deep meaningful answers??? I may have come to the wrong place.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

Deep and meaningful answers is a matter of what you interpret it to be. Maybe more like answers from people who are somewhat like minded is a better description.