Posted on 01/31/2021 10:41:59 AM PST by DFG
If I were politically connected I would force all electric car manufacturers to use the same battery pack and all one would have to do is drive to the charging station and swap it out with a fresh pack. One would never “own” the pack. I do the same with my welding gas bottles. Call up the welding store and they swap out the bottles for filled bottles. But I am not politically connected.
I was stuck driving through the fire zone in NorCal during the big fires and power outages. There were ditched teslas and leafs all along the highway. I was a bit nervous because all the gas stations were without power too. But I have a big diesel tank and can go over 400 miles on a tank. I found an Indian Casino that had generators and filled up there.
I think California has a battery backup system for their “green grid”. Some billions of dollars for a whopping 15 seconds of backup power.
But I will get rich when I make AC batteries.......
Storing that much energy in such a small space is called a MOAB.
Yeah it’s been a question I’ve asked myself but have not researched, what is the environmental impact of mining all the minerals needed to manufacture batteries? And the processing, and manufacture and assembly? And of course, most of the electricity to charge batteries still comes from carbon based fuels. I don’t know if the laws of thermodynamics apply exactly to the question of emissions, but it would seem it takes a lot of mining and processing energy and digging deep into the earth creates plenty of pollution and particulate matter.
The next question of course, is where to store all the batteries that lose their charging capacity and need to be replaced?
It’s not like people can’t move.
January & February aren’t the problem. It’s March. It just becomes a long winter after January.
None the less, I hate the heat. My blood is thick enough now that if you see me with anything more than a Carhart hoodie, it’s cold!
Dermotologists everywhere drive high end cars.
I recently learned that fast charging any battery significantly shortens the overall life of the battery. So, even if there comes a day when there are more fast charging stations available, those car battery systems will need replacement more often.
One of my favorite ‘Tesla’ stories was from some time spent in La Quinta, near Palm Springs.
There are long, long streets, and you have to go aways to get anywhere. We witnessed a Tesla driving with ALL THE WINDOWS DOWN. It was 110 degrees outside, and this ‘wonderful’ electric car was driving very fast, with all the windows down. I finally realized what must have been happening. If they were ‘low’ on energy, they could not turn on the air conditioning. It would use up too much energy and the car would have stopped. With a gasoline powered car, one can literally ‘pour’ energy into the car by filling up with gasoline. Not so with electric cars. What I did not know is that fast charging shortens the lifetime of the battery.
Tesla tried to do this, and ran a demonstration a few years ago showing the time to swap batteries vs the time to fill up a gas tank. It was probably manipulated in various ways (larger gas tank, experts at battery installation etc) but the idea is a sound one.
My friend loves his Tesla (I'm not that big a fan, for the price it was not very luxurious inside when I looked at one a few years ago but maybe they are better now) but he had a problem driving big sky country a few days ago. He called me from the charging station since he had time to burn to tell me about it. The battery life is some 20% shorter in cold weather, charging stations are few and far between (but, you can stop in at a shopping mall or hotel that has them but it takes 30-40 minutes to get an 80% charge) and he was trying to drive up the slope of a mountain heading from NM to UT with only 2% charge left and said the car was crawling so slowly that at points it was actually slipping backwards - sounded dangerous.
I think the Fisker prototype has ability to charge 2x-3x faster than the Tesla, but the charging stations are not necessarily running that much juice. And I assume that the plugs are universal but don't know for sure. If you want to swap out your home electric panel maybe you can install a rapid charge at home, but what's the point of that? If you are at home you can drip charge it overnight.
~100 years ago, gas stations were not a thing.
If I dig thru archives, surely I’ll find a comment of “Wonderful stuff this gasoline. One plugs into a hose and “voila” filling. Must be free; I don’t hear anyone talking about how the juice gets there.”
Nio is doing that (battery swaps) in China.
But with battery technology being a very proprietary deal, it’s not likely it will go across brands.
And a lot of their interest in Africa derives from rare-earth mineral exploration.
The article isn’t about power generation. It helps to read before posting. Sheesh.
If you’re thinking of the Escalante Staircase National Monument, that one actually shut down a coal mine, as far as I know.
I’d love to get a load of that, but for all that to work and also have “renewable power”, you would need nuclear power plants and that great bane of environ-MENTAL-ists, hydropower, in addition to solar and wind.
If our nanny state governments would allow people to carry weapons onto public conveyances, taking the bus would be perfectly fine.
How do you fulfill the increased need for electricity to charge those batteries when the grid can’t supply the demand with solar and wind?
no, it was the largest producer of rare earths in the US. B. C. shut it down as a favor for a buddy in China or Indonesia. There was a hell of a stink about it, but, like all destructive Democrat actions, nothing came of it, and China took over the market.
Do it.
China is going full bore with coal power plants. Their goal is to substitute coal for oil in powering vehicles because they have a lot more coal than oil.
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