Posted on 10/14/2023 3:35:27 AM PDT by cba123
Tesla’s base Model 3 and Model Y now have both cheaper starting prices than the average new car in the US.
This could open the eyes of more buyers who didn’t consider going electric before.
(Please link for full article)
(Excerpt) Read more at electrek.co ...
Met a lady here.
Seems to have changed things, a tiny bit.
SHe like round eye.
Hey!
Enough. Just explaining. Once.
🛺
I see you have found the secret to life, marry a Vietamese girl, live in a communist country and espouse the EV scam on FR. You got it ALL figured out don’t you!
Maybe.
I have lived several places, first a long time in America. Then even China and elsewhere. Then I was in America again for quite some time.
Then I came to Vietnam. Vietnam surprised me.
I think in seven years here, I have met three people, who bothered me. Total. North, South, East. West.
You either love Vietnam or you hate it. But I think it is quite interesting.
Now I was not here in the war, I was a bit too young, but is a special place.
I like it.
"The Communist Party of Vietnam rules Vietnam as a one-party state and as such is the only party that can contest the elections. In the 2016 elections the party won 475 of the 496 seats, with the rest going to independent members of the government-aligned Vietnamese Fatherland Front."
Nope.
“China is going absolutely crazy, buying and building EVs right now.”
They’re also going absolutely crazy building the power plants to charge them - nuclear, coal, gas, solar...
They go for “all of the above”, unlike us morons.
The most acceleration I’ve experienced in a car was in my friend’s Tesla.
Yes.
I follow this subject pretty closely and I am very suspect that solid state batteries will be ready for primetime by 2028. They have been researching the tech for a long time and while solid state increases the energy density it does NOT solve some of the safety issues and it will be more expensive to manufacture. The claims of longevity are also highly suspect to me.
We will find out in the next few years, but many “green energy” things fail to match the glossy brochures put out years prior to any roll-out (see hydrogen fuel) to encourage investors.
FWIW - in the near term, the sodium ion battery appears to be best positioned to grab the market share now dominated by LFP or lithium iron phosphate in larger applications. Based on market fluctuations and prices of nickel, lithium, and cobalt for cathodes, much of the market is looking for cheaper materials that will give the same performance.
There are simply not enough minerals (or electrical grid capacity/production) to meet the ridiculous “goals” (really mandates) we are seeing in the West. Economics are now the main driver for the tech and insurance companies are telling us that the risks/benefit analysis for current EV’s is different than what the media is selling. Rates are going way up - far beyond traditional transportation.
IMO, the government and elites don’t really want We the People in privately-owned EVs, either. They want us in their “smart, 15-minute” cities and either riding public transport (which may be EVs), biking, or walking.
I agree 100%
Sodium is the next big step, because it is CHEAP.
I believe my next car will be Sodium.
Mind you, we are still choosing from a very limited set of choices, but sodium seems to be next for me.
Cheap, and readily available. And relatively SAFE
Not great range yet, but I think that is a good next step for me
Probably in the next two years
Much of the market is being driven by the highly irrational war on fossil fuels and many so-called smart people believe “net-zero” means no more oil.
It is insane. Oil is a key component of everything around you and even the roads we drive on are dependent upon oil. Electrical transmission requires oil. Wind turbines require oil. You cannot make PV panels or mine the minerals needed without oil. Plastics, medicine, foam, synthetics, electronics, wire insulation, etc etc.
We would be back to the 12th century without oil.
The simple fact is that “oil” remains the most essential factor in transportation. There are places where electrification might make some sense, but people talking about electric planes, battery powered trains or military vehicles, long-haul trucking, or boats are living in a fantasy under the current tech and even the next generation.
Good for getting investors and selling stock, but pie in the sky. Sadly, many of our politicians seem to understand very little about the current technologies and the limitations and this is driving us into very bad policy decisions with large costs for low net benefit and other problems such as environmental contamination and fires.
Here is where I am at after much study and direct participation in testing.
The “average” EV user is generally using his/her vehicle as a daily commuter to and from work with the odd errand or two here or there. Average trips for most of them are 30 minutes or less.
The performance of EV’s is quite impressive - they are fun to drive.
However, this obsession with “range” is causing an enormous amount of problems because we are pushing the limits of the technology to squeeze every kWh out of the batteries and this leads to high heat, internal damage that can cause thermal runaway, stresses other components such as the high voltage wiring, and it has a much higher failure rate than a larger but less energy dense battery that might provide half the range.
My daily commute is 30 minutes to office and 30 minutes home so I don’t need a 300-400 mile range or anything even remotely close. If I were in the market for an EV I would prefer the safer battery tech with less range that I could trickle charge overnight without a more expensive charging system required. This would meet 90% plus of the use of EV’s by their owners.
The fire problem is very concerning and its growing despite what people say in large part because we are making bigger batteries and pushing the envelope of electric density. IF I make a bus that has the equivalent of 7 100kWh batteries (a Tesla Y for example) it is logical that I increase the chance of a battery failure many times over.
The batteries are highly vulnerable to abuse such as potholes, running over debris, or otherwise doing mechanical damage to the battery cells or the wiring connected to the cells. They are vulnerable to moisture intrusion and manufacturing defects and when you have 8000 18650 cells in a single battery pack it only takes 1/8000 to start thermal runaway.
The insurance rates are going to go up because even minor damage in a minor wreck might cause internal damage and insurance does not want to assume the risk of a fire days, weeks, or months later. They are expensive to work on and there are not a lot of places that do the work. The environmental clean-up costs and chances of impact upon neighboring vehicles or structures is off the charts - trust me, if there is a catastrophic incident it is a mega-hazmat scene. The toxicity of these things is shocking as is the environmental poisoning they can create (especially aquatic).
The tech is still in its infancy in many ways and the number of recalls for fires as well as bankruptcies among manufacturers continues unabated. The larger EV’s such as buses or semi-trucks are having problems. The bigger the BESS or energy storage systems become the more they are having problems.
We are pushing the tech beyond its realistic capacity in my opinion to SAFELY do what we are asking of it but the beat goes on because people who don’t understand the technology are pushing it for a political goal.
EV acceptance in its current forms has just about hit its peak in my opinion and politicians are killing the future of the current generation of EV’s by mandates. Wait until an electric school bus explodes..... and it will. There are problems with charging stations and realistically if 4 out of 5 homes on a cul-de-sac were to get full sized EV’s the electric company would have to redesign and beef up the electrical service and transmission.
It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming years but for the moment I don’t see anything changing and public opinion is probably not going to improve for electric transportation any time soon.
I live in in a modest size midwest metro area. Here is what the local bus system has to say about all electric buses,
https://mtd.org/inside/projects/zero-emission-technology/
From the article:
“We want to plan our service to serve our community. We don’t want to plan our service to serve our equipment. The beauty of the fuel cell bus is that, operationally, there are no alterations to our system that we need to make. The battery-electric buses do not have the range that allow you to just put a bus out and have it run for 18 hours. A hydrogen bus has a range that is equivalent to a diesel bus, so it’s a one-for-one replacement.” — Karl Gnadt, Managing Director
So do you think a Sodium-based battery is safe enough, at present?
It is hard to say if sodium will be safer - it will likely just be cheaper to make. The primary fire problem is the stored energy (heat) is inside a pool of XXX carbonate which is an ignitable liquid.
I think the same (insert your trade secret brand of carbonate solvent here) will be used for the sodium ions vs lithium ions.
The chemistry is not stable for either in my opinion, but we don’t yet know because its so new we have not had a chance to test them for thermal risks.
The current flavor of the month chemistry is LFP or lithium iron phosphate. They are touted as having lower fire risks and that might be true because they withstand heat a bit better but the downside is that they can put off more ignitable vapor prior to ignition (500-6000L per kWh) so they pose a much higher risk of violent vapor cloud explosion (citing Professor Paul Christensen from the UK).
Generally once thermal runaway starts it is extremely difficult to “stop” and stopping it actually means you just break the chain reaction in the battery cells so they don’t all burn.
The sodium ion batteries will be just as toxic in my opinion as lithium ion. The upside is cost to manufacture as lithium (aka white gold) is getting more expensive. The downside for sodium from what I have heard/read is that they are lower energy density and don’t last as long but CATL in China claims they have solved this.
We will see.
Jay Leno as a 1912 or 13 Baker I believe that still runs.
Electric buses of any kind are insane imo and something very bad is going to happen.
Watch this video of Dr. Christensen - he starts at the 1 minute mark and there is a brief commercial for the fire conference in the middle but its only about 30 minutes. You will learn a lot.
I have tremendous respect for him but I disagree with some of his opinions like “we have to park these in underground garages”. Regardless of what just started the Luton parking garage fire (Hybrid or Diesel, who cares because fires happen) it is a question of fuel loading and what happens to concrete and steel at such temperatures. He talks about that a little bit in this video but for fire protection engineering and design nobody is taking into account 4 EV’s (or more) burning in one area of an older underground car park at a bank of charging stations.
They DO burn hotter and longer and they weigh more. Concrete does not react well to really high temperatures.
Another thing to consider about “school buses” is that they will be the equivalent of 5-7 90kWh Tesla batteries in one vehicle. Most packs are underneath the bus but they often put one or two on top. When you watch the video he shows of the white Tesla in the parking garage it is 6 seconds from venting to deflagration (subsonic explosion or rapid burning) and that is ONE battery. Imagine this event on a school bus OR if the school bus is t-boned as he shows the video of the Tesla exploding after a collision.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIXTP-TgPEw
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