Will Electric Vehicles Be Viable? When?

[Brake Horse Power]

I completely agree djos. We are on the same side, but I only disagree when i read things that hydrogen is only here because it's promoted by the oil companies.

Both technologies have room for improvement. The Lithium batteries are far from perfect, if you consider the whole cradle to grave cycle. Also they are just to heavy. The next breakthrough won't be here anytime soon. A lot of (mobile) vehicles such as construction excavators can not be powered by batteries since they operate at places without heavy electric infrastructure.

@just a fan, hydrogen piping is composite. 10x cheaper than a copper cable, also it is possible to play around with pressures in the pipes so there is some possibility for buffering. I disagree that buffering electricity on a large scale is cheap.. Not anywhere near cheap nor practical in my opinion.

I do agree that hydrogen is also not the holy grail. As said by yourself, there are risks, most can be covered but they are expensive. Transporting by pipeline is quite okay, but transporting mobile is not as practical as diesel. (but more practical than batteries).

Also a negative is that hydrogens mass energy density is great! If you don't take the weight of the tanks in account.. But the real trouble for a lot of machines/vehicles is the space it consumes.

Diesel or gasoline is an extremely easy and practical product, which in a lot of cases we don't have a 1:1 alternative for. So for now it is a bit of compromising until some smart people come with better ideas.

[djos]

I completely agree djos. We are on the same side, but I only disagree when i read things that hydrogen is only here because it's promoted by the oil companies.

Both technologies have room for improvement. The Lithium batteries are far from perfect, if you consider the whole cradle to grave cycle. Also they are just to heavy. The next breakthrough won't be here anytime soon. A lot of (mobile) vehicles such as construction excavators can not be powered by batteries since they operate at places without heavy electric infrastructure.

Well I was exaggerating a bit, but it is true the oil companies are the ones spending the most money on hydrogen R&D as from a purely business stand point, they have the most to gain from promoting a "liquid" replacement for petrol and diesel.

They also have the most to lose from BEV's winning the consumer acceptance war.

Recently I've been seeing shell plugging hydrogen and natural gas Tech on YouTube via ads and sponsorship.

[Brake Horse Power]

I guess its alright if they invest in it. There is a lot of money in those companies so any help to speed things up I see as a positive thing. Somebody is got to do it anyway.

If there are alternatives like a BEV which are better than hydrogen, eventually the customer will decide the best option. It is not that by developing hydrogen they can kill the BEV development.. So in some way you can say they see a potential market and application for the fuel/technology where the BEV is not superior to hydrogen at this moment

[Greg Locock]

Perhaps I should point out, I'm not anti-hydrogen. I think it has its place. But I am anti-hydrogen-hype, as indeed I am anti-battery-hype and anti-renewables-hype. And so far the hydrogen story has sounded like the nuclear fusion story.

I think if you follow the numbers you can come up with a coherent strategy to make use of renewable generation, hydrogen, and batteries. But you need the numbers first. One issue is that engineers often talk about efficiency. That isn't especially important if your 'fuel' input costs are zero. For example, if you are in the desert, it makes little odds whether you use 10% efficient solar cells or 20%. You need twice as much space and stuff for the former, but if the cells themselves are cheap enough then you still end up ahead. Same with wind.

[Brake Horse Power]

Exactly Greg.

The fun thing is that this way of thinking (cost wise) makes you learn that the business case changes per region. Each region has it's own properties regarding the use of the transport, long/short, urban/countryside. Also every region has a unique source of energy, solar, wind, water.. But the sun don't shine as much in UK as in France or like Africa. It also changes the way the whole energy chain works, Scandinavia has hydro energy. This is a continuous stream of power. But Solar energy isn't available at night, and the wind speed can be low for weeks. It might therefor also affect the configuration of the vehicle and choice of energy carrier.

I think it is really cool to look at it this challenge from this perspective, it also made me realize what a complex question the energy transition really is.

[vidya31]

Will electric vehicles be really useful for environment ?

[subcritical71]

Will electric vehicles be really useful for environment ?

As far as what?

[munudeges]

There needs to be quantum jump in battery technology to increase the energy they can carry and decrease their weight, otherwise all this excitement counts for nothing. Mandating ridiculous emissions targets to promote electric vehicles is just going to make vehicles more expensive and inferior.

[Big Tea]

My concern, and the reason I can not see myself getting one in the near future is the double slap of short-ish range and charge availability and time.
If you can pull the car into the garage each night and fully charge it, thats fine, but I guess worldwide the % number of people with their own garage where an outlet can be set up is very low. If you could go once a week and put a 1000 miles of range in, no problem, but even if the range is say 200 miles and your weekly mileage is 180, would you be happy with the car sitting about with 20 miles of trips in it?

To me, the whole thing revolves around charging availability and time, far more so than limited range, even though they have a huge crossover.

We are so used to being able to drive a mile down the road and put a hundred more miles worth in in 5 min. I, and I believe most people can not turn themselves around in a short time. If there is a ice car in the household, then fine, it is good to go electric. If it will be the only car, a big improvement is needed, but many 'experts' claim its coming.

https://insideevs.com/audi-electric-car ... 2-minutes/

[subcritical71]

We are so used to being able to drive a mile down the road and put a hundred more miles worth in in 5 min. I, and I believe most people can not turn themselves around in a short time. If there is a ice car in the household, then fine, it is good to go electric. If it will be the only car, a big improvement is needed, but many 'experts' claim its coming.

I didn't read the linked article, but the Tesla Supercharger 3.0 is said to be able to charge 1000 miles/hr. Or as I read it, 250 mile charge in 15 minutes. With the taper of charging current as the battery goes above ~70% it will take slightly longer, but at least the charge times are starting to get realistic.

As far as environmental help. I'm not sure what that means, but I haven't seen conclusively any reports that show EV is better/worse for the environment than ICE. I do remember seeing articles about 10 years ago that the entire lifecycle of the battery powered car would have less of an environmental impact than an ICE, I don't know how relevant that is today... but I remember it was largely dependent on where countries were expected to get their power from.

Edit: Here's a newish summary from the Union of Concerned Scientists:

[Big Tea]

We are so used to being able to drive a mile down the road and put a hundred more miles worth in in 5 min. I, and I believe most people can not turn themselves around in a short time. If there is a ice car in the household, then fine, it is good to go electric. If it will be the only car, a big improvement is needed, but many 'experts' claim its coming.

I didn't read the linked article, but the Tesla Supercharger 3.0 is said to be able to charge 1000 miles/hr. Or as I read it, 250 mile charge in 15 minutes. With the taper of charging current as the battery goes above ~70% it will take slightly longer, but at least the charge times are starting to get realistic.

As far as environmental help. I'm not sure what that means, but I haven't seen conclusively any reports that show EV is better/worse for the environment than ICE. I do remember seeing articles about 10 years ago that the entire lifecycle of the battery powered car would have less of an environmental impact than an ICE, I don't know how relevant that is today... but I remember it was largely dependent on where countries were expected to get their power from.

Edit: Here's a newish summary from the Union of Concerned Scientists:
https://youtu.be/K9m9WDxmSN8

The article in the link says Audi will be releasing vehicles that can charge from zero (zero?) to 80% in 12 min.

To me, this sounds like a real battery killer though. 12 min? Hmmm. Combined charge stations and cafe bars?
Haircut while you wait? Gym? the mind boggles

[munudeges]

I didn't read the linked article, but the Tesla Supercharger 3.0 is said to be able to charge 1000 miles/hr. Or as I read it, 250 mile charge in 15 minutes. With the taper of charging current as the battery goes above ~70% it will take slightly longer, but at least the charge times are starting to get realistic.

Tesla's supercharging absolutely kills the life and longevity of the battery.

[subcritical71]

I didn't read the linked article, but the Tesla Supercharger 3.0 is said to be able to charge 1000 miles/hr. Or as I read it, 250 mile charge in 15 minutes. With the taper of charging current as the battery goes above ~70% it will take slightly longer, but at least the charge times are starting to get realistic.

Tesla's supercharging absolutely kills the life and longevity of the battery.

I haven’t seen that as a concern. Actually quite the opposite. 500,000 miles with 80% capacity remaining isn’t too bad. Too bad iPhones didn’t last as long.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/16/te ... 000-miles/

[Greg Locock]

Fake news. Superchargers damage batteries a bit. Not a huge amount if you don't bang off the stops.

https://inldigitallibrary.inl.gov/sites ... 618315.pdf

[strad]

Should change that from "Superchargers" to "Quick Chargers" or "Speed Chargers"