This is a lot more credible than most of the battery stories, because CATL is already producing a ton of batteries, lending them some credibility.
This is a little under 2x the density of current batteries.
The exciting part of this announcement is that if anyone can scale manufacturing, it is them.
Reminds me of the "revolutionary battery checklist": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28025930
edit: removed the paste of the checklist because of spam.
- Engadget, circa 2010
That's actually incremental improvement if you think about it in annual improvement terms.
Silicon anodes will be the same.
Sodium ion still has shills screeching about how it'll never come despite being last year's news.
Lithium Manganese batteries are another one of these exotic chemistries that arrived without fanfare.
But AA and AAA are increasingly rare not only because of price but also because of the ubiquity of USB charging, and because of the way the powerbanks that USB charging enabled weakened the "carrying spares" argument for AA a lot.
In essence: yes, the vast majority of consumer devices using standardized battery sizes continue to be AA or AAA (if we can agree in ignoring the ubiquitous CR2032). But costumer devices that use interchangeable standard size batteries have become super niche, at least outside a few fields where you expect years on a set of batteries. To go lithium means going fixed battery (unless you identify with the performance flashlight subculture, again something I very much agree with)
I hope we eventually get a consumer friendly standard for lithium though. It could be so much better than cylindrical cells, we could have all our cheap gadgets using micro versions of the power tool slide on shoe concept or something. Kinda unbelievable the ISO isn't trying to standardize prismatic type cells.
Edit: well, I'm a dummy and OP said mass-produced. Sorry.
FWIW, to provide the 225 amps (for a V8 starter motor) a Tesla car battery would only need a discharge capability of 3C (1C being around 80 amps), which is within its rated capabilities. This is also for batteries which provide higher voltages, so I'm vastly overestimating the C rate required.
C is the unit for charge/discharge rates, and is based off the capacity of the battery.
Conversely, a BEV traction battery has to support a wider range of loads at any charge state between its minimum and maximum charge levels, in order to have decent driving range. Like a starter motor, the BEV is not going to sustain high power output for very long, since a car only takes seconds to accelerate to legal road speeds. After that, it requires continuous output at lower power levels to maintain a cruising speed.
Even with lead-acid batteries, there are regular starter batteries and then there are deep-cycle batteries which have far less cold cranking amps but more durability when depleted to low charge states before being recharged.
The low density of lead-acid batteries is what makes them unsuitable for mobile applications. They might have 30-50 Wh/kg while various lithium ions might be 100-300 Wh/kg. And now this announcement is talking about 500 Wh/kg so 10x the best lead-acid batteries...
The 18650 Panasonic cells used in an older Tesla model S for instance are rated at only 10A draw per cell as their nominal 1S voltage (4.20V when full).
At say 30C you'd only need 7Ah lithium batery
CATL pushing this sort of capacity, though, is great news. It certainly will accelerate availability.
Compare to the discharge rate vs. energy density tradeoffs of plug-in hybrid EVs versus battery-only EVs: A Chevy Volt PHeV has a 16 kWh pack and 87 kW motor, a Chevy Bolt has a 65 kWh pack and not a 65/16x87=350 kW motor but 149 kW.
[0] https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/9682...
Battery pack energy density, battery, single cell, cathode, and their rated, nominal, and absolute capacity are all different things.
A single cell will always have > absolute capacity than the capacity at which the safety limiter will cut-off charging, and that will be > than the capacity to which BMS will charge/discharge the cell in daily use.
It may well be possible for a cathode material to excel in a small pouch cell, but have terrible thermals preventing its use in larger cells.
UAVs have high C rates and high durability.
EVs or even aircraft don't need anywhere near 40C.
A small quadcopter that uses a gensace/Tattu 1200 mAh lipo pack is not an expensive uav. I think everyone who uses hobby size lipo knows their specs around 135-160Wh/kg.
If yes, I hope they open-source it so that the fight against global warming can gain some momentum across the globe.
> What makes CATL’s announcement this week truly groundbreaking is that the condensed battery will go into mass production this year.
The manufacturer are pushing subscription-base model. Used electric car won't become cheap
It will take time for this to work out in the market. BMW is small enough to trick people, but the large car makers are not.
None of that implies less risk of a populist backlash, though; not for any class of 'mericans, rich or poor.
That said, in the interest of honest debate, it will shift the used car market prices significantly initially until supply of used EVs spins up. Although this is very secondary.
I think it's going to happen is essentially you're going to get like a $10,000 new EV you can buy that's going to be cheaper to use energywise/ fuel-wise than a clunker ice.
I think the driver this will be the Chinese / India markets where you have basically two to three billion people that will want cars at that price point and that stuff will eventually make its way into the US
In '35 it's doubtful ICE will be cheaper than EV anyway (look at price development over last decade...) Banning ICE will speed up this development.
Climate change will disproportionately affect people who are already vulnerable.
Tax carbon emissions and use the money to provide good affordable alternatives (public transportation) for people who don't afford an EV today.
You also mention climate change, but I don't see how an extra average degree of weather (if that materializes) will be worse than stripping poor people of transportation and condemning them to never having a job (since most lower rung jobs require a car).
Certainly, these poor people will absolutely eviscerate you at the polls if you level them with this massive poor tax.
As for public transportation, the US is incapable of building new rail infrastructure. California's $150,000,000,000 LA-to-SF train is an unmitigated disaster, Chicago's rolling stock is extremely old and falling apart and New York City takes 12 years to build 4 miles of new lines, at a cost that is quadruple what France would spend for identical infrastructure.
You're in a dream world. The same people who claim that a poor people tax helps them also support cash pits known as modern rail infrastructure in the US (it's more like grift and fraud, though).
The US is fundamentally incapable of building public transportation? Ludicrous. What's required is political will.
ICE prices will not drop faster than EV. It's much more mature technology.
If forbidding new ICE cars (in 7+ years) "strips people of transportation" we clearly need som kind of subsidies to alleviate that.
Climate change is a threat. It's not just something people talk about because it's fun. The current estimates predict 3 degrees of warming until the end of the century. That's assuming we stop burning fossile fuels some time this century. The disruption this would cause to agriculture and living conditions around the world are just staggering. If nothing else, consider the costs of 2 meeters sea level rise until 2100...
Preventing climate change is a cost saving measure.
Well, no, but
> society have built itself to be almost fully dependent on cars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...
I'm not sure I agree with this. In many parts of the US or Europe, you could easily be in a position where you can afford a car (and need one for work), but cannot afford housing. It's true that you might well still be well off by world standards (a car roof is still a roof), but I think I'd require "food, clean water, clothing and reliable shelter" to be a bare minimum for "not poor".
Don't blame EV and or the environment for this. Car culture in the US created unsustainable cities and destroyed public transportation.
Car ownership itself has always been a regressive tax.
It’s sadly also true that the technocrats actually taking those decisions are a lot less directly accountable, but nothing that a second “yellow vests” movement won’t be able to fix.
(Edit: I see that you are being down voted. Perhaps elaborating on your desire to continue to be able to buy gasoline cars might help clarify your position better)
Your freedom to intoxicate other people goes against their freedom to remain unharmed.
(Not to mention noise, environmental damage, geopolitical risks surrounding oil... all well proven stuff)
But I know how harmful heavy handed-mandates can be. I have seen the damage such mandates have already made in other instances with voters being then easily recruited and radicalized by populist politicians.
This is a delicate issue, already highly politicized and deeply hypocritical for both sides. Completely curtailing people’s freedoms is not the way to approach it, if you want to change anything.
Some people like to have the freedom to choose between things, it isn't about trying to be some kind of villain.
What some people don't want to hear is that their freedom must be limited where it impacts other people. Nobody is alone in the world.
Some people value the qualities that the current (pun happened) alternatives do not offer: they are inadequate for some use cases. This includes long travel and refuelling in minutes.
Furthermore, since societies are now suffering an epidemic of lunacy, electric cars can be extreme noise pollutants, because insane manufacturers and users have turned them into a loud cacophonic concert - I have seen them. They can be unbearable.
They also seem to be internet connected in a staggering amount of cases, and many refuse to drive "a smartphone with wheels", or more explicitly a madness with uselessly installed security holes and privacy compromisers. This is especially relevant for The Car, the device that was built for deliverance - "our way to escape", as Karl Kraus said.
Well, isn't it then peoples choice to do that? Or do you instead argue for a ban of EVs? I don't get this point.
I've never heard an electric car making more noise than the road noise. Which of course is annoying in itself going at high speeds, but still less than an ICE. What you're describing is absolutely not something of the ordinary. ICEs revving their engine in residential streets, however...
No, you cannot have any freedom to be uselessly bothersome. That is basic in social rules. If you are missing that evidence, it is because societies have become extremely lax (especially in practical and mental effort. It's called a downfall).
> making more noise than the road noise
The topical noise is that which comes from the additional, artificial noises that are placed to warn the surrounding beings of the traffic, as a consequence of the fact that the vehicle would be less noisy because of the absence of the engine.
In a normal car you have the "natural" mechanical noises (hopefully muffled), whereas the lunatics have placed in a number of models a broadcast background sound that you could - if you never heard it - be assimilated to the starting sounds of operating systems in the nineties. Only, permanent during the running of the vehicle. The new noise is not "grey" as it was, but textured, like a chord of synthetic strings.
So, the prospect is of having streets full of running loudspeakers shouting their own unnatural chords. Which also means that even if you decided to live in an isolated spot of land you should not remain less then a few miles away from any street, if legislation and good un-common sense will not intervene.
> I've never heard
I have heard the scream from least two models from stellantis (probably from the same project); I am informed that the Bayern and others have researched sound textures of their own to promote the brand. I also have information that producers have contacted agencies to produce ringtones for their brand. Moreover, I have seen some implement beeps during parking operations - so your city will sound like a giant construction site.
--
Update: some passed by and left a silent note. Confirming the root point! The downfall is restricting people's freedom practically and creates a problem with freedom deontically.
walk, bike and horse are better solutions for noise, not ICE cars. Ban all cars?
Solutions are chosen for the balance in cost, risks and benefits. Noisy but useful, within boundaries, ok. (Note: some of us are bothered already by motorways miles away when in otherwise isolated woodlands - but we are aware that traffic somehow must flow, and know that we have to select more distant places.)
Electric cars are becoming a massive threat in terms of noise pollution because people have become dumb and passive - cannot perceive and cannot react. The issue is not intrinsic in the technology, but it is part of reality: opportunity for madness + latent madness → disaster.
> not ICE cars
You do not seem to understand: the noise some fools put into electric vehicles is completely different. As in, "not a hum but brass" - where "hum" can be annoying and "brass" will surely be. See my other post nearby.
ICE cars are such a nuisance in cities by polluting the air. I look forward to a time when my children will be able to enjoy clean air in the cities.
I much prefer the older ways with polluting factory in the city, at least everyone could see what it takes to provide each good, and share its cost. The current way of doing things is to ban everything, which force manufacturers to produce elsewhere in the world and import it. Plus we are loosing knowledge in the process.
I can't agree, because forceful bans are not the best way to accomplish change.
Simply keep improving battery technology to bring prices down and range up and it'll take a natural course once buying an EV becomes cheaper than an ICE car. Implementing bans makes it political and builds resentment which is counterproductive. Building a better product and letting the market decide works so much better.
https://www.google.com/maps/@48.147145,16.5005479,3a,75y,168...
People live on the other side of that highway, so I guess it's possible, but I used to drive through that area on a regular basis and the smell hard to forget.
Apart from that such facilities need to be large to be cost-effective.
Then, there's the more insane stuff:
https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1024086_ethanol-powered-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire "largest peacetime explosion in Europe"
I live in Edinburgh, and there's regular complaints about flaring from the Mossmorran refinery, which lights up the night sky, produces smoke, and is incredibly loud.
Hence plenty of customers for gas stations
I think at some point, the cost of operating gas stations will fall below a threshold that it doesn't justify keeping them open, even if there is still _some_ demand.
E.g. imagine if demand were cut in half -- I think more than half of the gas stations would shut down.
Nowadays I can only think offhand of a single local retail fuel establishment that will sell you both US and UK "gas".
I assume the 11-ish litre butane capacity wouldn't be enough to be practical.
Finding a gas station may be problematic ( although i doubt truck will move to electricity that soon)
Most of the ICE cars sold now will be on the roads in 15 years.
There will of course be much less refineries. The other uses of oil are small niches, and so the world needs one-two small refinery to supply their needs. So there will be price shocks as the large refineries close.
Well then, good thing the world's largest battery maker is starting to mass-produce batteries with twice the energy density.
Sure the infrastructure has a bit to catch up, but even without infrastructure, we're completely fine to use our EV for 90% of our commute (and our ICE car the other 10%).
But if density -- thus range -- were to double, infrastructure becomes even less of a dependency.
So how many people is that? Don't estimate house ownership or house rents on your circle of friends. What about cities, apartments with no means to install chargers? World is not urban sprawl where houses have garage and power available for charging cars.
https://www.builderonline.com/money/economics/80-percent-of-...
Also, the way North Americans are developing their dwellings and neighborhoods/suburbia is absolutely horrible
"In 2008, it was estimated that six out of ten Japanese lived in single-family houses." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_Japan
I'm not going to keep googling this for everywhere but in developed countries at least, it doesn't appear that "home charging isn't a thing for vast majority of car owners."
Just look at what happened to the EU’s ice ban for personal vehicles.
Spoiler: while new gasoline burning cars are technically banned after 2035 it will be completely legal to sell new gasoline burning cars by labelling them e-fuel only…
(Except for "luxury" brands that just want to be special to distinguish themselves from the rabble.)
It will depend on their needs and if the device covers them. For example (as said already even here): long distance travel, practicality of refuelling (no, the need of some will not be fulfilled by leaving the car in charge nightly), decent technology (e.g. some will refuse to own an internet connected vehicle).
Would you drive them? Would you own an internet connected door, vehicle, pacemaker? Some would rather find the keys out of the asylum.
You say «little to do», but the point was that we are informed of «gas cars» without wireless connection, whereas word is that for some reason all electric vehicles seem to be. We know that some «gas cars» are spared, but they say all electric ones will be bound to the wave of improper engineering, so this defines some hope or way out for the traditional making and rules out the new one.
This is my first long trip in an EV vehicle but my wife drove about a 1000 miles through eastern Washington State a few weekends ago ( also mountains - even more remote ). She had to plan but there was certainly no risk of getting stranded. At least one of the hotels had overnight charging for free.
All this is today. These are going to be non-issues 5 years from now.
They are only LABELED as e-fuel cars. You can run them just fine with classical fuels.
EDIT: emphasis
In the e-fuel vs trad-fuel story you do not have that incentive.
What you DO have, is an incentive to actually do the switch. Projections put e-fuel production costs at a 1500% premium over fossil fuels and wide spread availability is actually a hard scientific problem as even the announced global production capacity* of e-fuels is only enough for a few thousand vehicles.
* Apparently, to date, the biggest portion of announced e-fuel production misses either an energy provider or financial backing or both.
A good German summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnrudYCzh2E
The best car technology is the one you don't use much. And we already have decades of cars in good enough condition to be driven weekly rather than daily.
EVs will barely scratch the surface of environmental issues with transportation. And they will create a new range of supply problems while also not solving traffic congestion issues that plague our cities.
It would be far more preferable to encourage people to use the same car for longer and especially to leave it in the garage when they can use other modes of transportation. Or, use car sharing rather than a personal car.
Heck, Mazda makes new parts for the original Miata.[1] While the first generation Miata is a recognizable car, it's not very popular. A total of 433,000 were produced. Maybe half are still on the road today. That may sound like a lot, but twice as many Ford F-150s are sold every year. If it's profitable to keep making parts for 200,000 vehicles, it's going to be a long time before most ICE cars run into shortages.
1. https://news.mazdausa.com/2019-10-28-Mazda-Expands-U-S-MX-5-...
Its not going to be a cheap or painless conversion, but there is absolutely a path forward for most gas stations I think.
In denser areas charging will move to mall like areas where people will get out of the car for longer. Gas stations are not generally not setup for people to hang out for 30 minutes, they don't have enough space for people to park that long. They are setup for use the bathroom, grab a snack and get out. Most people charging will want to get groceries or other supplies they are getting anyway (which is to say since they can't charge at their apartment they are going to look for places to shop where they can recharge)
In rural areas (truck stops) are more setup for spending more time. They often have small restaurants already so you can eat inside. They are more general purpose stores and often serve the locals as the place to buy things between trips to dollar general or the city. They have more parking (land is cheap so they will buy more if needed), so there is place to put in all the needed EV chargers. Plus they get a lot more customers who are on trip so long they couldn't charge at home.
Even without the pump islands, there isn't much room for customer parking. These stations are often situated at corners with multiple driveways, small parking areas, and no adjacent street parking. Unless you can merge adjacent parcels for redevelopment, these small stations may only be able to support a convenience store, coffee shop, drive-through food stop, or some other quick turnaround. They don't have the right layout to support lots of simultaneous customers unless they are arriving on foot or by mass transit instead of personal vehicles.
That combined with bigger stores like 7-Eleven, CVS, Walmart, etc.. adding their own charging stations will kill most gas stations.
Hint: You can continue to use the ICE vehicle you bought in 2034 in the EU until infinity.
Sure, if you can find fuel. By 2034 EVs will be enough of the market that gas stations are already closing (remember today new cars are 10 year old used cars, and there is every reason to think EVs will be half of all cars). There is still one on every corner, so you might not see this trend, but it will be in the statistics. By 2038 you will noticed it because many corners won't have a gas station at all. And of course the stations will already see this on the bottom line and will be less interested in replacing their pumps when the get old, and if they break they might just close that one island instead of fixing it. By 2045 fuel will be special order in most places.
Note that construction, freight, and other high energy use niches will still use a lot of fuel, so diesel will be available for a while longer. However those vehicles tend to use larger nozzles that won't fit in your diesel car. Gasoline will be hard to find - you can still make road trips, but you will need to plan your fuel stops like people plan EV charging today (on some roads you don't need to plan your EV charging, but there are others you must).
I do expect ICEs will be just under 50% of total cars, you could argue they are more like 55% of all cars, but it won't be 75%.
I'm afraid the problem of generating/transporting enough electrons to all places where cars, buses, trucks, need charging will not be solved completely within 10 years.
Of course you'll find fuel; ICE trucks aren't being banned. You can use their fuel.
Might be slightly inconvenient to have to drive to a depot once a month, but people will do it if the economics are right.
See "red diesel" in the UK - its just plain ole diesel taxed differently for commercial use, but illegal for use in privately owned personal vehicles. It's dyed red to allow its use in private vehicles to be discovered from the discoloration of engine parts etc.
Personally I expect rules on what can be pumped into what will be different by 2045 in a lot of places, and while it might still be possible it may not be so simple.
> https://www.crownoil.co.uk/faq/red-diesel-questions-and-answ...
Maybe, but we're talking about the banning of ICE vehicles, not the banning of fuel.
I mean, "you won't find fuel because it will be illegal to possess it" is a substantially different argument from "you won't find fuel because no one will produce it anymore".
This is a bizarre point to make? Regulation of fuels and regulation or bans of ICE vehicles would obviously go hand in hand (it already does today!), if ICE vehicles were to be banned as discussed here. You can't have combustion without fuel... Controlling who can pump gas would be hugely important to the introduction of any hypothetical ICE ban.
My point also is not that fuel may be banned - it's that the regulations governing the pumps may be different than today, and that there is international precedent for this. If combustion really is largely relegated to commercial trucking by 2045, I'd be honestly shocked if the rules governing the pumps didn't change too in a lot of places.
look at the vast difference in fuel laws pretty much everywhere between today and the 1970s if inspiration required - remember we used to be able to buy leaded fuels?
Infinity might be a long time, but we had fuel stations when there were 25% of the cars on the road that there are now.
There are around 25-50 petrol stations within 30 mins drive of me.
There is no reason to believe that it will be impossible to fuel your car until ICE cars become collectors' items.
In the very most remote areas, maybe.
I highly doubt gasoline will be hard to find in most places by 2045; I'd expect a lot fewer fueling stations, but I think even at 10% of the station count, gasoline will still be convenient and easy. And, if gasoline is less convenient, you can always use gas cans to extend your range. They're not too expensive, and not too inconvenient (epa 'anti-spill' nozzles that make it hard to fill without spilling not withstanding); long term storage is problematic, but if you're regularly using it, no big deal. Most gasoline powered vehicles have at least a 300 mile range, and it's not hard to find vehicles with a larger range.
I pass multiple stations when I leave town to get to work. Where I work looks like here ( home ) from a station density point of view.
For longer trips, you may be right that you may have to plan. But there could be very few ICE cars on the road before one station every 400 km ceases to be profitable. And, unlike electric, nothing is stopping me from filling up a gas can before hitting a leg I am really worried about.
I cannot see “lack of stations” being a problem for ICE for a long time.
The cost of fuel could be a thing I guess but, if demand drops faster than supply, the economics of that do not really make sense.
Also, if I am somebody that uses a vehicle “once a week”, is this really the car I am going to take on a 1500 km trip through unpopulated areas? I cannot rent or borrow an EV for that trip?
What you are suggesting seems to be that ICE vehicles are going to end up being errand vehicles for farmers, or the old truck hooked up to the boat to go fishing once a month. Or that people that live and work locally need them for the occasional errand. For the latter use case, where I live at least, just the insurance cost would incent me to replace such a vehicle with a ride share subscription even now.
I think it is going to stay viable to run an ICE vehicle for a long time yet. I also expect fewer people will want to.
This announcement has the potential to push things like Teslas to 1000 km of range. What happens when it hits 2000 ikm ( over 1300 miles ). What are you going to want to head out of town in?
10 years from now, people that can afford it will have all gone EV. People who cannot will drive their ICE until it needs a major repair. And then they are going to go EV.
Every ounce of oil coming out of the groud and getting burned ends up as CO2 in the atmosphere. Banning that has nothing to do with ICEs.
You can run an ICE on synthetic fuels. It's not as energy-efficient but only half the efficiency from a renewable source is still better than "full" efficiency from a fossil source. If you _really_ must use an ICE, there will be a way. It won't be cheap, but it's your choice. There is no human right for cheap ICE fuel.
Nobody is forcing you to do so, it just doesn’t make much sense to keep driving that ICE. When everybody is making that decision parts and maintenance will be more expensive and harder to come by too - accelerating the transition.
Imagine saving all of that for a much smaller battery (say, 100 miles range) which is enough for 45+ weeks of the year, and then for the rare case of driving further than that you bring gasoline with you, with its vastly superior energy density and thus range. Only for those few trips. It can well be super expensive, but who cares, it's only for that rare trip to the grandparents or the skiing resort. And then you don't need to care much about the bad end-to-end efficiency. After all, you don't care about that when taking a plane to Hawaii either, do you?
Currently, plug-in hybrids tend to just be used as gasoline cars because people are lazy and don't charge every night. There are gas stations everywhere, fuel is cheap, and you are used to filling up gas anyway. But once gasoline prices spike to 3x-5x because it's synthetic fuels, the dynamic will change, fewer gas stations around, the reduced economies of scale lead to further price hikes and boom, everybody will use their plug-ins mainly as EVs. Which is what I'm describing above. Which could outperform pure EVs because you don't need a 500 miles EV range anymore, you can make do with 100 miles.
Or build public transit for the commute and don't use a car at all.
I understand the drivetrain argument. What about a simple generator to recharge the battery on the go? Like the original BMW i3 had. That one didn't take off, but likely in part because it was ugly, too small to be practical, and the gas prices still being very low.
I am not sure if its a good idea, nothing seems to be a good idea in London, but the congestion charge and the newer diesel charges surely add up.
And predictably, some of the worst usual suspects are exempt.
They'll be sabotaged by reality. Thinking ICE cars and gas stations will become a fading memory by 2035 is wishful thinking. Politicians get big headlines and praise for proposing ICE bans and such, but as the date draws closer the reality of "OK, maybe we're not quite there yet" sets in and the date will be pushed back again and again. There is a very long tail with ICE, and it's going to take a very, very long time to replace them. Wholesale upheavals of established technology are difficult.
For a noteworthy example in another domain, IPv4 has been on its last legs for how long now?
It’s an analogous situation demonstrating how hard it is to unseat an incumbent, ubiquitous technology with another, and how long it takes, even if that alternative is superior.
Nonsense; it's just harsh reality landing on green wet-dreams.
They effectively propose a ban on cheap cars, and you expected ... what, exactly?
The only way they're replacing ICE vehicles is by making the EVs cheaper, and there is a limit to how high they can tax sales of ICE vehicles or fuels without a population revolt.
Even if electric cars would be cheaper, faster and longer running - some people would rather die, than give up their ICE cars and motorcycles.
The strong lobby in germany against banning aren't the poor, but the rich who want to drive their roaring Porsche till eternity. They literally say that.
I can somewhat understand the appeal of an loud engine, the feel of the road etc., but personally I will indeed celebrate the day, all those loud polluting machines are gone from the cities and one other bright day also from the mountains.
But I am not sure if I will see that day, as cars have allmost a religious meaning to quite some people, especially here in germany, but not only here. But yes, the bigger problem in the short run will be economics. Otherwise all the old cars just will get sold to africa and go on running there. But china is mass producing cheap electric cars for example, so things are scaling up.
So what you're proposing is basically "Let's make using cars (even more than it already is) something for the rich only!"
Well lets stop calling this the reason for unbanning until EVs get cheaper, faster and longer running.
I mean, sure, some people are like that, but we won't know how many there are until EVs are cheaper, faster and longer running. Painting the opposition to ICE bans as "they will argue the same even when EVs are cheaper, faster and longer running" is irrational.
It becomes increasingly certain that we won't need as much lithium as the fossil lobby would like us to believe.
> https://www.electrive.com/2023/04/21/catl-and-byd-to-use-sod...
The reality of these bans is that exception after exception is tacked on for a long time.
One of the cool things about this type of political maneuver is that it's a bit like the Fed Put. You can get the market to move in the direction you want without actually shooting your bazooka. Just by saying your thinking about banning ICE cars - you're going to get manufacturers and sellers preparing for that and shifting over as much sales as they can to non-ICE cars.
I don't need launch control, giant screens, self drive etc. just a basic EV under $30K with standard dash gauges.
Wow, that's amazing, creeping up towards the energy density of gasoline at around 1200 Wh/kg
Of course you don't have to lug around the spent gasoline after you've used it, but that's really the problem too innit?
it's not nitpicking, electricity production has a cost. It's just a different cycle of production / pollution.
It's still a problem, but batteries can already do a lot of heavy lifting (and pulling).
lead acid 123 Wh/kg
lithium ion 250 Wh/kg
zinc-oxygen 1,084 Wh/kg
sodium-oxygen 1,605 Wh/kg
lithium-sulfur 2,600 Wh/kg
magnesium-oxygen 6,800 Wh/kg
aluminium-oxygen 8,100 Wh/kg
lithium-air 11,140 Wh/kg
gasoline 12,700 Wh/kg
Bumping the energy density closer to something like lithium-sulfur would probably make 95% of ICE-based technology scrap heap tech.
[1] 2017, Yanguang Li, Jun Lu, Metal–Air Batteries: Will They Be the Future Electrochemical Energy Storage Device of Choice? https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenergylett.7b00119 Betteridge's law of headlines answers "no", but good overview.
[2] https://formenergy.com/west-virginia-governor-jim-justice-an...
They tend to get heavier as they discharge. They usually aren't rechargeable (or if they are, only a few times or with much lower energy densities). They tend to self-discharge within a few weeks of non-use.
EDIT: this is for nuclear fuel enriched to 3% in a normal (not breeder) reactor 35000 MJ per 10g pellet https://whatisnuclear.com/energy-density.html Only a tiny fraction of the total energy is actually used
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=100kwh%2F%282.5+gwh%2Fk...
That'll make the numbers ... a bit different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPHS-RTG
You'd need about 3 metric tons of them to power one Model 3 cruising at highway speed (assuming ~16 kilowatts continuous power draw).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery
[2] https://www.cei.washington.edu/education/science-of-solar/ba...
[3] https://thedriven.io/2023/04/03/scientists-hail-new-battery-...
IIRC, EV motors are 90% efficient with battery power --> road power conversion. A typical ICE engine is, what, 30% efficient and maybe a bit more with good turbo design. So practically gasoline is about 4000 Wh/kg?
Aren't you missing a 0 there? Gasonline should be at 12 kWh/kg instead of 1.2.
[1] https://chemistry.beloit.edu/edetc/SlideShow/slides/energy/d...
[brackets mine]
But the best batteries contain unacceptably high levels of cobalt. Practical EV batteries are made with nickel or iron, maybe vanadium someday, and have lower density than pure LiCoO2.
>CATL is already producing a ton of batteries, lending them some credibility.
A couple of years ago CATL claimed that they had figured out how to make durable sodium-ion batteries with a ferricyanide cathode, to be released in 2023. The press cheered about the end of lithium dependence.
Yesterday, not long before this announcement, it was revealed that CATL's "sodium-ion" battery contains lithium:
https://cnevpost.com/2023/04/20/catl-byd-sodium-ion-batterie...
"CATL and BYD's sodium-ion batteries to be put into mass production will both be a mix of sodium-ion and lithium-ion batteries, according to local media."
[sad trombone noises]
And nothing wrong with having some lithium in their battery. The important thing is how much cheaper is it.
> CATL and BYD's sodium-ion batteries will both be carried in mass-produced vehicles within the year, and they [the vehicle battery packs] will both be a mix of sodium-ion and lithium-ion batteries, according to a report by local media 36kr today.
By my reading of that, and the rest of the article, it's saying that the vehicle battery will be assembled from of a mix of sodium-ion and lithium-ion battery cells, not that the sodium-ion cells contain lithium.
> With its pioneering AB battery system integration technology, CATL has achieved a mix of sodium ion and lithium ion, allowing them to complement each other and thus increase the energy density of the battery system, Huang said at the time.
Basically, a "battery system" using only sodium-ion cells does not yet have enough energy density to support their range targets, so they are using a mix of cell types to improve the energy density and increase the vehicle range.
This has a lot of potential coming from CATL. However, there is no mention of price. I'm betting this is going to be very expensive.
At least these guys are announcing production.
News articles on breakthrough discoveries are mostly bullshit and even when they aren't, most of the time they don't affect my life in the slightest because the tech is impractical or expensive.
It may be interesting to read about science discoveries, but I don't want to take the time to sort out the bullshit from what's real just to find out that the breakthrough is irrelevant to me and society at large.
i like these sorts of stories because they have prepared me a bit for some of amazing technology changes i have seen over past decades. by the time i can by an iphone i was at least expecting it. when email hacking stories started appearing in politics, i already knew the details. the first time i bought an electric car was not the first time i had thought about the issues of range and charge speed and so on.
surely not everything that looks promising becomes popular, but that is also useful information, to me, a person whose job is building/helping to build novel systems.
(This is especially frustrating on the EV conversion front, since the best parts are usually unobtainable except from salvage vehicles. The products specifically made for EV conversion are usually rather underwhelming compared to what the OEMs can get.)