This could be old FUD that just never stopped circulating, but it could be new FUD. Auto makers may be moving to EVs, but I’m not sure the FF industries have stopped fighting it. And even within the car manufacturers, I’m sure there are still lots of people working for them who don’t want to give up making ICEVs.
This is where grid batteries would be an asset. They could be taking up the excess wind power and then release it as needed for demand spikes.
I am not sure that engineering is the issue with adapting the grid to EV charging and renewable generation. These things can be fixed with established solutions that have already been explained.
However, it is up to utilities to run these grid projects. These poorly regulated private monopolies have little incentive to change anything unless they are forced to by some high profile failure. The problems are political.
True in principle; false in practice. The rate at which batteries degrade slows over time as long as they’re taken care of. The battery in a Tesla still has ~90% capacity left after 200,000 miles. The rest of the car may not be in so great condition at that point, but the battery is still plenty good enough for fixed installations, and can get many thousands more cycles before it’s useless. It takes more time to go from 90% to 80% than it did from 100% to 90%. And for a fixed battery, you may be perfectly happy even if it’s >50%.
Tesla batteries don’t need to be recycled currently because the demand for used packs is still high (same for Leafs, etc.). Some are damaged beyond repair (accidents, etc.), and it will be good to recycle those, but it’s not currently a priority. It’ll be important in 10 years, and by then we’ll have decent recycling capacity.
Lithium batteries have been used in electronics since the early 90’s. 1994 was the year Motorola introduced Lithium batteries in cell phones. Tesla’s roadster came out around 2006.
Care to explain what has happened to all Lithium batteries manufactured since the 90s ? I hope you are not claiming that 100% of these batteries are still being used !
I got the same thing, and I responded with this same cite:
38% Natural gas, 22% coal (and going away), renewable 20% and Nuke 19%.
So, by no means is “most” of the electricity coming from coal.
Also, a lot of homes with electric cats have solar, and so do many charging sites. That doesn’t even come into the numbers above. So, figuring that in by a WAG, more electricity for EVs comes from renewable than coal.
Good point.
Broadly speaking, we can distinguish between personal electronics vs. use in vehicles and commercial applications.
Personal electronics are extremely sensitive to mass, are inclined toward planned obsolescence, and have no real environmental control. Hence, the batteries used in phones are made as small as possible, and charged to the point where they typically get just a few years of use. Maybe 1000 cycles to the point where they’re useless.
In a Tesla, though, even a 100% charge is not nearly to the same point as what a phone gets charged to. And more typically, they get charged to 80-90% of capacity, which gets you many more cycles (Tesla is somewhat unusual in allowing you to charge to a 100% capacity, but recommends you only do that on occasion). Furthermore, the car has heating and cooling systems that keep the battery within a reasonable range–especially while charging. Modern EVs also have their batteries sized for reasonably long trips, around 300 miles–but that only represents about 50 full charges per year for a typical driver. In contrast, phones usually get close to a full charge daily.
A 300-mile car with 200,000 miles has still gone through less than 700 full-cycle equivalents, and even at that the cycles are more gentle than in a phone due to the partial discharge and temperature management. So while a phone might be seriously degraded at that point, a car still has plenty of life left–if not as a car, then something else.
It’s true that the lithium batteries in phones are not well recycled, but that’s just a tiny fraction of what will be used for vehicles (probably a tiny fraction already, but I can’t find the figures). My car has 80 kWh of cells; my phone has less than 20 Wh. Personal electronics will be in the noise with even a small fraction of people driving EVs.
Car manufacturers place the 100% and 0% points where they feel comfortable. Neither are ever the true full to the brim and utterly drained points. Indeed Tesla were known to “improve” the capacity of batteries with a software update. Indicated full and empty still have margin.
Yeah, I suppose I should have phrased that more accurately. The 100% point of any battery is arbitrary, and depends on the desired cycle life and other factors. The difference with Tesla is that their 100% is roughly at the 90% mark of other makes, and gives the user the option of charging all the way while recommending to charge to less on a daily basis. This strikes me as a good compromise: it reduces battery costs by ~10% without really affecting the lifetime, since the cases where the user needs maximum range are a relatively small portion of total driving. The downside is that some users won’t understand or won’t abide by the recommendations and so degrade their battery faster than average.
As far as I know, the only time Tesla has changed battery life with a software update is with cars that were shipped with an artificially limited capacity (like a 75 kWh pack limited to 60 kWh). They’ve unlocked the full amount permanently by paying the difference in price (or when reselling a used car), and temporarily under emergency conditions (like a hurricane).
They have increased range a few times with software updates by tweaking the motor firmware and a few other things.
I think you have that backwards. Tesla’s 90% is roughly at 100% of other makes.
Aha, so that’s why they’re always lying in sunbeams; they’re recharging!
But balloons are faster.
Another point nobody has mentioned, from a purely thermodynamic point of view -
Coal is 100% carbon - so you are essentially producing carbon dioxide to get heat. However for various reasons, coal is dirty and difficult to handle, from mining (strip or underground) to handling. This is why coal usage is declining, regardless of which party is in power and pushing which agenda.
Natural gas is 4 hydrogen atoms to 1 carbon atom - so you are producing 2 more water molecules (H2O) to 1 CO2 molecule when you burn natural gas - hence “cleaner” in the environmental sense of carbon into the atmosphere vs heat produced, not to mention handling - it is neatly pumped from ground to power plant without messiness (except for occasionally spectacular leaks).
Gasoline (or diesel) falls somewhere in between, being chains of about 7 iterations of 2 hydrogens to 1 carbon (plus an extra hydrogen at each end) so burning it is producing 1:1 water to CO2. Plus petroleum takes a lot more processing to produce usable product than does natural gas - messy refineries and all.
Then consider that when you run a regular car, you are producing a massive amount of heat. You are essentially burning petroleum and sending a significant portion of that energy produced out the tailpipe or through the radiator as waste heat - whereas the whole purpose of a power plant is to efficiently capture and use as much of that heat that it can. It also (being not mobile) can have the extra weight and bulk to improve that capture.
(Not to mention - but I will - a vehicle that does not regularly heat up to combustion temperatures and down again is stressing the overall structure of the device a lot less; plus, you are also not producing a couple of quarts of waste oil every few thousand miles, or worse yet incompletely burning it through the tailpipe)
My house has a 100kW service. This is the other item a lot of discussions of home charging overlook. The problem is not the grid, it’s the last mile. I deliberately tell my Tesla to start charging at 1AM. At that point, the dryer, oven, etc. are off. Most lights are off (less relevant with CFL and LED). Only once, about 2 years after I got the car, did I pop the main breaker in the middle of the night - presumably between the A/C and the hot water tank cycle going on, charging overloaded the breaker. Since then, I set the max current to 26A instead of 40A (240V). This adds 38km/hr instead of 59km/hr. Even so, 7hr x 38km =266km or 165 miles. That means the car is fully charged by 8AM almost every day. (Standard household circuit - 120V, 15A - will only add about 3mph or 5km/hr - barely usable except in an emergency, or with short commutes)
It’s hard to track exactly the impact on my electrical bill, but with a moderate commute I estimate it was about $40 to $60 (more in winter) for about 9¢/kwh. meanwhile, my wife’s BMW needs 2 fills a month for her commute and the last fill was over $100. (Although technically, the Tesla is hers and the BMW is mine - she is just worried about door dings and just doesn’t trust the busy parking lot at work)
I charge to 80% unless I am planning a long trip. There’s more to it than just total charge time - the amount I need to charge is the same - how many miles/km driven. The point is, charging batteries to the very top or letting them drain to zero, too often, will cause the imperfections that ruin the batteries to develop faster. 80% (or 90%) to 20% is the recommended operating range, to be exceeded only when necessary. Slow charge overnight is preferred to fast charging. There’s an article describing a taxi service between LA and Vegas, where the batteries were regularly fast-charged while hot several times a day - one pack lasted 180,000 miles because a cell failed, the replacement was still going when the car hit 400,000 miles.
So it would not be a good idea to start charging immediately when I get home; If I wanted to avoid this hassle, I would have to upgrade my service - which many have said is impossible in their area, but in my area would probably cost $10,000 at least (possibly double that) including new thicker wiring from the street, a bigger panel, and plenty of electrician hourly wages.
I agree, if everyone bought an EV in the neighbourhood, and they all expected to charge at anytime regardless of peak usage, the grid would be severely strained and probably need a lot of upgrading. But as pointed out previously, most charging can happen during the off-peak hours - meaning those power plants built to service peak times can now run longer at higher capacity, resulting in more revenue for the utility company without a lot of extra infrastructure.
When demand goes up, the utility can add more coal or natural gas, run the plant a little hotter (up to its design capacity, of course) and sell more electricity. Most AC goes on-off, on-off - but averaged over 1,000,000 households, the demand is pretty steady. Same for everything else. Or, pull the rods a bit further out of the reactor core so the water heats up faster, or open the gates in the dam, so more water flows through the turbines. When the wind is blowing harder, they can do the opposite while maintaining the same level of power. So not all EV charging means more carbon into the atmosphere, and since mostly it is coming from natural gas, it’s less carbon than with gasoline.
As for recycling - Tesla has only been producing Model 3’s in bulk for about 3 years; a lot of earlier S and X models are still on the road - so the demand to recycle auto batteries is still in its infancy.
The Tesla Model S, at least from several years back, defaulted to a less-than-maximum charge limit for routine daily driving, purportedly to maximize battery life. If you really wanted to charge the battery well and truly full for a long interstate journey, you had to get into the dashboard menu and tell the car that, yes, you really did want to charge it to the absolute maximum this time.
Yet, BEVs produce a non-small amount of waste heat in the battery pack, to the extent that cooling systems are needed.
Earlier this month Jim Farley, Ford CEO, recently made a statement that included this:
Ford’s chief executive says he expects the cost of building electric vehicles to fall to the point that in coming years automakers will be battling each other for sales of EVs priced around $25,000.
CEO Jim Farley told the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference on Wednesday that the $25,000 price tag will democratize EVs. Materials to build that vehicle will cost around $18,000, he said.
But big cost reductions are coming with new battery chemistries that use fewer expensive and scarce precious metals such as nickel and cobalt, he said. Plus, EVs will take less time and labor to build, saving more money,
Anyone with further information on the “new battery chemistries”.
Depends on what you’re comparing to. Compared to gasoline engines, it’s a small amount of heat.
One of them already in use is the LFP (lithium iron phosphate) battery. It does not have either nickel or cobalt. I believe Tesla is now putting these in Model 3s and Ys.
I’ve also heard that someone has made a sodium-ion battery, which does not have lithium. And don’t worry about that sodium reacting with water demo you saw in high school chemistry. It won’t be pure sodium in the cells, so that reaction won’t be happening.
That is kind of the opposite of “new”, though. What is being worked on is Lithium-air batteries, which use atmospheric oxygen as a reactant and promise really, really high energy densities. I suspect one downside might be that the mass of the vehicle would increase over a discharge cycle, which is the opposite of what happens when you burn fuel – but the increase would be small.
That’s an awfully convoluted way to calculate driving costs. A European compact (think VW Golf-size, i.e. Nissan Leaf or VW ID.3) BEV uses approximately 1.5 kWh/km or 2.4 kWh/mile. A European family car (think VW Passat-size, i.e. Tesla S or Škoda Enyaq) BEV uses approximately 2 kWh/km or 3.2 kWh/mile. Manufacturer’s figures, of course, so add the appropriate pinch of salt.
I pay approximately 0.1 USD/kWh for my electricity and approximately 2.5 USD/L (10 USD/gal) for fossil fuel. That’s 20 cents/km for a BEV and 1-2 USD/km for a modern ICEV (again usin manufacturer’s figures for mileage, so again add the appropriate amount of salt).
If your government really wanted to increase the amount of BEVs sold, they could do like our government has done: give tax breaks on BEVs. To the extent that the sticker price on otherwise comparable models is more or less the same for BEVs and ICEVs. Then, the driving cost becomes a very strong argument for buying a BEV the next time.
I’ve also heard of research into “solid-state” batteries, though it’s not clear to me what the chemistry would be.