I noted when I was in Beijing in 2010 that a significant number of the scooters were electric plugins. the battery pack was about the size of two 2-litre pop bottles, and detached easily to carry in to the apartment or office to charge. The cars tended to be VW Jettas or similar, probably diesel. Surprisingly almost no Tut-tuts or micro-cars.
Of course, I also passed stacks of formed charcoal briquettes for use as cooking fuel, so no wonder the air pollution is still bad. (not to mention a lot of the smog is industrial).
In the US as a whole, coal is still the single largest source of electrical power, and all fossil fuels combined amount for about two thirds of it.
However, even if all of your power comes from coal (the most greenhouse-emitting of fossil fuels), it’s still better than a gasoline-powered car. There are inefficiencies at every step of the process (fuel extraction, transportation of the fuel to where it’s burned, refining for gasoline, electrical transmission and batteries for electric, etc.), but by far the largest inefficiencies, which dwarf all the rest, come at the step where you burn the fuel to run a heat engine. This step is a lot more efficient in a coal power plant than in a car’s internal combustion engine (mostly due to higher operating temperatures), enough so that even an electric car getting all of its energy from coal is greener than the equivalent gasoline car.
I read a lot of science and tech news, and breakthroughs like that are reported very frequently, but very rarely make it to consumer products. I imagine some down side is frequently found during further development.
And I don’t mean just battery tech, I mean in pretty much every area of technology. If half the stuff reported in tech news ended up being as good as it looked and also feasible to manufacture, we’d be living in a Star-Trek like utopia.
My understanding had been that everything was stalled out previous to the production phase. I’ve seen lots of news articles about exciting technology, in the laboratory, but this was the first that I’ve seen which displayed an interest in going into production.
You’re saying that you’ve seen plenty of those as well?
To the op: the field is littered with vaporware so many hold their enthusiasm some. The problem with solid state is briefly alluded to in that blogpost … they need to be warmed up first … Bosch is also working on one (which they claim they will have ready for the auto market by 2020) but its current version “operates at a temperature of 178 degrees Fahrenheit. It may not need a cooling system but it definitely needs a heating system.” Is that fixable? Maybe. Maybe they will end up running two packs, a smaller hybrid sized traditional pack to start off the trip with the higher energy solid state one kicking in as that battery’s excess heat gets the larger solid state one to operating temperature? I dunno. But getting excited now is premature. Production phase being discussed now is pointedly not for cars but for military applications.
As to the broader EV issues… simple reality is competing total price of ownership against gas this cheap is very difficult unless one presumes at least 5 years of ownership. But no a comparable EV or plug-in hybrid (that allows one to do most daily commutes on the charge that occurred overnight while also allowing the road trip same any other car) does not cost “an extra $15 000 for an electric vehicle compared to a petrol with even vaguely comparable features and performance.”
Resale will suck though, mainly because the technology is not stagnant. Why would I spend much on a used Volt when the 2016 is freakishly better? Able to carry 5 passengers in a pinch now, all electric mileage up from 38 to 53, 10% less heavy, zero to 30 in 2.6 s (was 3.2), zero to 60 a second less. (The Cruze is not comparable.) And many of those who want to ride on electric are not buying ones because they already have them. My sense is that the used plug-in market is mostly cars that were leased; owners are keeping them. The ease of ownership is awesome. Owner satisfaction is tops of the charts. Most who own an EV will keep it for many years before eventually getting another EV; they won’t go back to pure ICE.
I have a C-Max Energi … much more all electric range than the Prius plug-in and nothing compared to the new Volt. Most days I am gas-free but not all. Mostly get home, plug it in and that’s it. 5 seconds for me and it is fully charged when I next use it. Often some gas on very cold days with heat and defrost going. Still I love my lack of having to stop off and get gas all that often (except on the long road trip from Chicago to NJ to Maine and back and such, then once every oh 550 miles or so), my rare oil changes, the instant acceleration, how quiet it is … I suspect I will own it for a long long time.
It’s bigger than that. Batteries are a dangerous good and come under the ICAO rules on DGs. As you say, batteries in carry on are often acceptable when batteries in checked luggage isn’t. That’s because a fire in the cabin can be fought with portable fire extinguishers early while a battery fire in the cargo hold might be too big by the time the fixed fire extinguishers can get to it.
The latest developments in Lithium Sulfur batteries look impressive. 12 minute charge time and 25K charges. This video covers the history/problems with LI-S and how the problems have been mitigated. Undecided with Matt Ferrell (12 min)
That channel is the poster boy for “Here’s a revolutionary new battery technology, but don’t get excited about it. In fact, it’s likely you’ll never hear about it again.”
Ferrell now uses a lot of qualifiers in his videos on this topic.
He got burned by saying solid-state batteries were available to buy (which raised a lot of skeptical response) and he doubled down on it by reviewing a powerbank that claimed to contain solid state batteries. Other channels reviewed it including opening it up, to find that nope, it’s just completely standard soft pack lithium cells inside - even still bearing their manufacturer part numbers, so there could be no argument that they were solid state cells that just happened to look similar.