Will Electric Vehicles Be Viable? When?

[Andres125sx]

There are two things I think are quite overlooked in this question usually. Scaling of electricity needs and lithium needs.

1) Once I made the estimate that if my country (has 5million vehicles +/-) would change all its vehicles to EV and they would use around 5 batteries per week the energy demand would increase around 4 to 5 times. How would we produce all this energy without a huge increase in CO2 production. Also how would the grid cope with a new age that so much energy demand would come probably all at once (during the night).

Exactly, during the night, when electricity demand is low. I read somewhere that´s exactly the reason it shouldn´t be a problem. Anycase the switch to EV will be slow so there will be time to react if the grid must be enlarged

2) How would we extract the millions of tons of lithium, right now we use reserves with easy accessibility that are sufficient to the demand, what will happen with scaling and how will we mine so much of it? Perhaps more importantly after the life cycle of these millions of tons of lithium are done how can we dispose/recycle them? Will we have a kind of plastic 2.0 problem in our hands then?

Will depend on the batteries used in the future. I know there are some wich allow 100% lithium recover (lithium air I think ). That would solve the problem as it could be used in a closed loop minimizing mining demands

[Big Mangalhit]

There are two things I think are quite overlooked in this question usually. Scaling of electricity needs and lithium needs.

1) Once I made the estimate that if my country (has 5million vehicles +/-) would change all its vehicles to EV and they would use around 5 batteries per week the energy demand would increase around 4 to 5 times. How would we produce all this energy without a huge increase in CO2 production. Also how would the grid cope with a new age that so much energy demand would come probably all at once (during the night).

Exactly, during the night, when electricity demand is low. I read somewhere that´s exactly the reason it shouldn´t be a problem. Anycase the switch to EV will be slow so there will be time to react if the grid must be enlarged

2) How would we extract the millions of tons of lithium, right now we use reserves with easy accessibility that are sufficient to the demand, what will happen with scaling and how will we mine so much of it? Perhaps more importantly after the life cycle of these millions of tons of lithium are done how can we dispose/recycle them? Will we have a kind of plastic 2.0 problem in our hands then?

Will depend on the batteries used in the future. I know there are some wich allow 100% lithium recover (lithium air I think ). That would solve the problem as it could be used in a closed loop minimizing mining demands

Yeah at night right now the demand is lower but as I said the energy demand if everybody had EV would be 5 times higher. It means that its demand by itself it's waaaay waaaay more than the day demand which will make the night time the prime time for energy. Also I wonder how costly electricity will be if the demand is so high. Already in Belgium they have shortages during the winter in small towns, how could the whole world cope with such an increase in eletricity needs. I guess probably fossil fuel power plants which kinda defeat the purpose.

As for lithium I never heard of 100% recovery I suppose that solves the recycling problem (how cheap is it tho?) but still remains the problem with mining around 1 billion tons of lithium

[Big Mangalhit]

Just to clarify a bit more the lithium problem, my concern is that right now we are using either the lithium rich mineral or more commonly brine water (very very salty water) reserves that are very accessible so far.

From this sources the world available resources (meaning lithium that is availably in an economically feasible state) are about 16 million tons. There is an estimate total of 53 million tons of lithium in concentrated form in the world (probably way more after more studies to find it are done). After that there is an almost unlimited quantity of lithium in earth crust and oceans but at such low concentrations that it's not viable to extract.

Now the world estimate for cars is above one billion. If we change then all to EV that's above 500 million tons of lithium (10 times more than the total available on earth's estimates). I have no idea where we will get. Do we have to mine to profound depths to find more? Will we resort to use highly expensive concentration methods?

Dunno the gap just seems waaaaay too scary and I've never seen anyone address this. Thought??

[Big Tea]

I was mulling on this over a beer after lunch, while the wife trawled the local shops.
My main concern with an electric car would be 'getting stuck' with no charge and no recharge available.

I got to thinking/remembering the days of old motorcycles before most had a fuel gauge.
They had a 'reserve' on the fuel tank that was activated by moving a lever beyond the normal 'fuel on' position and was not usually considered part of normal riding.

If my electric car had a position other than normal 'on', say another turn of the key, which allowed for 30 miles of running to get home or to a charging station, it would relieve most of this concern.

Either a slice not included in the normal % of battery use or a few % outside the used limit, even if limited to the amount of times it can be used without loading the battery grantee would still be peace of mind from getting stranded?

[Big Tea]

Just to clarify a bit more the lithium problem, my concern is that right now we are using either the lithium rich mineral or more commonly brine water (very very salty water) reserves that are very accessible so far.

From this sources the world available resources (meaning lithium that is availably in an economically feasible state) are about 16 million tons. There is an estimate total of 53 million tons of lithium in concentrated form in the world (probably way more after more studies to find it are done). After that there is an almost unlimited quantity of lithium in earth crust and oceans but at such low concentrations that it's not viable to extract.

Now the world estimate for cars is above one billion. If we change then all to EV that's above 500 million tons of lithium (10 times more than the total available on earth's estimates). I have no idea where we will get. Do we have to mine to profound depths to find more? Will we resort to use highly expensive concentration methods?

Dunno the gap just seems waaaaay too scary and I've never seen anyone address this. Thought??

Some here.
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/arti ... of_lithium
Also
http://earth-chronicles.com/space/where ... thium.html

[Andres125sx]

There are two things I think are quite overlooked in this question usually. Scaling of electricity needs and lithium needs.

1) Once I made the estimate that if my country (has 5million vehicles +/-) would change all its vehicles to EV and they would use around 5 batteries per week the energy demand would increase around 4 to 5 times. How would we produce all this energy without a huge increase in CO2 production. Also how would the grid cope with a new age that so much energy demand would come probably all at once (during the night).

Exactly, during the night, when electricity demand is low. I read somewhere that´s exactly the reason it shouldn´t be a problem. Anycase the switch to EV will be slow so there will be time to react if the grid must be enlarged

2) How would we extract the millions of tons of lithium, right now we use reserves with easy accessibility that are sufficient to the demand, what will happen with scaling and how will we mine so much of it? Perhaps more importantly after the life cycle of these millions of tons of lithium are done how can we dispose/recycle them? Will we have a kind of plastic 2.0 problem in our hands then?

Will depend on the batteries used in the future. I know there are some wich allow 100% lithium recover (lithium air I think ). That would solve the problem as it could be used in a closed loop minimizing mining demands

Yeah at night right now the demand is lower but as I said the energy demand if everybody had EV would be 5 times higher. It means that its demand by itself it's waaaay waaaay more than the day demand which will make the night time the prime time for energy. Also I wonder how costly electricity will be if the demand is so high. Already in Belgium they have shortages during the winter in small towns, how could the whole world cope with such an increase in eletricity needs. I guess probably fossil fuel power plants which kinda defeat the purpose.

As for lithium I never heard of 100% recovery I suppose that solves the recycling problem (how cheap is it tho?) but still remains the problem with mining around 1 billion tons of lithium

If aplying some simultaneity factor it doesn´t look that bad

[Andres125sx]

About recycling 100% of lithium, this is not what I was talking about (sorry can´t find it) but close enough to make the point
https://www.rdmag.com/article/2018/01/n ... -batteries

Just to clarify a bit more the lithium problem, my concern is that right now we are using either the lithium rich mineral or more commonly brine water (very very salty water) reserves that are very accessible so far.

From this sources the world available resources (meaning lithium that is availably in an economically feasible state) are about 16 million tons. There is an estimate total of 53 million tons of lithium in concentrated form in the world (probably way more after more studies to find it are done). After that there is an almost unlimited quantity of lithium in earth crust and oceans but at such low concentrations that it's not viable to extract.

Now the world estimate for cars is above one billion. If we change then all to EV that's above 500 million tons of lithium (10 times more than the total available on earth's estimates). I have no idea where we will get. Do we have to mine to profound depths to find more? Will we resort to use highly expensive concentration methods?

Dunno the gap just seems waaaaay too scary and I've never seen anyone address this. Thought??

I think we must wait, those demands will never happen before next generation of batteries are ready to be used in EVs. And we don´t know if it will need lithium or what

https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/a-battery ... -in-motion

[Andres125sx]

This is a VERY interesting article about LiIon batteries and how deepth of discharge, max voltage and some other factors does affect cycle life

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/arti ... _batteries


Looking at this, TommyCookers statement about EVs only using 35% of its real range looks now plausible

[Andres125sx]

I was mulling on this over a beer after lunch, while the wife trawled the local shops.
My main concern with an electric car would be 'getting stuck' with no charge and no recharge available.

I got to thinking/remembering the days of old motorcycles before most had a fuel gauge.
They had a 'reserve' on the fuel tank that was activated by moving a lever beyond the normal 'fuel on' position and was not usually considered part of normal riding.

If my electric car had a position other than normal 'on', say another turn of the key, which allowed for 30 miles of running to get home or to a charging station, it would relieve most of this concern.

Either a slice not included in the normal % of battery use or a few % outside the used limit, even if limited to the amount of times it can be used without loading the battery grantee would still be peace of mind from getting stranded?

I´ve read that about some EV. Not sure if it is normal on all or not, but at least some have the option

[tveleckovik]

…So if the ZOE will be amortized between 6th and 7th year. From that point you´ll be saving 8367 SEK/year, or around 30,000 SEK if you own it for 10 years wich is what batteries last more or less

Not extremely tempting, but I´m glad you did the numbers because it´s better than I was assuming. Your daily trips are much longer than mine tough

My calculation is based on me leasing the vehicle, not buying it. If I were to buy it, I’d have two options. Buy the car and lease the battery or buy both the car and the battery. If I were to lease the battery, I would start saving money by year 5 and if I were to buy it I would start saving money by year 9. This is with today’s fuel prices i.e. not very realistic so let’s assume the fuel prices rise by 25% in the coming years. Then I’d start saving money by year 4 if I lease the battery and by year 7 if I buy it.

As you can see, leasing the battery is much cheaper compared to buying it with the car and if I’m leasing the battery I’ll just go ahead and lease the whole car. Then it becomes a fixed monthly expense I don’t need to worry about. Also, I’d prefer not to be stuck with the same car for too long because my needs may and most likely will, change.

Another interesting fact when thinking about buying the ZOE vs buying the Clio is that the less you drive, the less the ZOE makes sense. If you drive 10000 km/year the fuel prices will need to be 2x as high as today for you to save any money on it!

So yes, basically I agree price is still the problem to solve, specially when you think about how much easier to manufacture are EVs. But I don´t think it´s a matter of governments helping out, I think manufacturers prices must go down drastically. I´m sure their net benefit for each EV is huge compared to any car with an ICE, but that´s normal since the sales are also a small fraction compared to the same ICE, so basically it´s a matter of time.

Then, at some point, there will be much cheaper batteries

The point I was making when I mentioned the government was that the prices of the EVs are so high, they don’t make much sense EVEN with the government handing out free money to people who buy them. I think one of the bigger reasons EVs are expensive is that because they only constitute a very tiny portion of the market, the economies of scale don’t really apply. So in order for them to get cheaper, more people would need to buy them. But if more people are to buy them, then they have to be cheaper. Chicken and egg situation.

Given the uncertainty of fuel, depreciation etc is SEK 2000 a year really a deal breaker? (For other’s reference that’s £166, $220)

I’m not trying to sway you, just interested. As I said in an earlier post having a warm car ready on the drive every morning in the winter would be something I would be willing to pay for.

So, the only major variable in my calculation is the price of the fuel. Everything else (insurance, road tax, servicing, depreciation etc.) is part of the lease itself and therefore fixed. 2000 SEK/year is not a lot, and it will fall even further with rising fuel prices but note that 2000 SEK/year applies to the 90 horsepower Clio. For the 75 horsepower one it is close to 9600 SEK/year which is not an insignificant amount.

[henry]

On the subject of electricity generating capacity.

Here in the U.K. we use cars and vans to do around 700 billion kilometres/year. That’s 437 billion miles per year or 109 billion/quarter. At 300 Wh per mile that’s 33 terrawatt hours. U.K. generation 2018Q1 was 98 terrawatt hours, that’s if every journey was done by EV. So a 30% increase in capacity is the maximum needed. Given that there is probably spare capacity at night when a lot of charging would be done the extra capacity doesn’t look that daunting.

Also if the vehicles were hooked up at all times when they’re not doing journeys there would be a large reservoir to smooth out renewables. Renewables were 30% of the supply noted above. There are around 36 million cars and vans, (32 and 4). If they averaged 100 kWh batteries that’s 3.6 TWh potential storage.

[Zynerji]

Anti-matter batteries?

[henry]

Anti-matter batteries?

Well obviously if they were around now they’d be lithium ion. Around 700k tonnes of lithium would do it. Admittedly that’s 20 years production at current rates but who knows what the next 20 years will bring.

[Big Tea]

Anti-matter batteries?

Well obviously if they were around now they’d be lithium ion. Around 700k tonnes of lithium would do it. Admittedly that’s 20 years production at current rates but who knows what the next 20 years will bring.

I think a long mains lead would be better

[henry]

Anti-matter batteries?

Well obviously if they were around now they’d be lithium ion. Around 700k tonnes of lithium would do it. Admittedly that’s 20 years production at current rates but who knows what the next 20 years will bring.

I think a long mains lead would be better

For storage?