I’d like to see continued monies poured into green battery technology like there’s no tomorrow. Just get government out of it and let all the investors be billionaire liberals.
If they waste their fortunes on green boondoggles we can spend ours on regaining our liberties. No?
Here’s the thing that I fear most people don’t understand about “new battery technology:”
It’s HARD, fundamental science research we’re talking about here. This is on par with fundamental chemistry/physics research into high-temp superconductors. We’re talking about very, very fundamental stuff here that has to be researched. The required leap of technology isn’t in the realm of engineering. It is literally like asking engineers to make a modern CPU when the physicists haven’t worked out how we get charge carriers to flow through semiconductor materials yet. Imagine this conversation taking place in 1946:
Marketing guy to engineer: “I want you to develop ‘green’ CPU technology based on low-power semiconductor technology and smart use of shutting down areas of the CPU when they’re not being used to maximize battery life.”
Engineer: “OK, I understand battery. What’s this ‘CPU’ you’re talking of, much less ‘semiconductor technology’? What the heck is a ‘semi’-conductor? Is that like a resistor?”
Marketing guy: “You know! Semiconductors! Integrated circuits! Chips! And ‘CPU’ is “central processing unit’ - you know, the brains of a computer!”
Engineer: “OK, listen. I have this selection of vacuum tubes. I have octal-based tubes, I have mini-tubes, I even have Nuvistor tubes to make stuff really small. I’ve got maybe ‘solid state’ diodes and rectifiers - like a selenium stack rectifier. That’s it. Computers made with these things fill whole rooms and have heat output like a forest fire. Now, what do you want me to make with these?”
Marketing guy: “You engineers! You never understand us visionaries!”
Engineer: “You dreamers and creamers never understand that my job is to turn proven science into products, and without science to start with, there will be no products. You need to talk to some scientists and quit bothering us engineers.”
Marketing guy: “Scientists, engineers... you’re all the same.”
Engineer: “Shove it where the sun don’t shine. Better yet, I’ll shove this slide rule where the sun don’t shine on you...”
The point I’m getting at is that there is no “green battery technology.” There’s just “current battery technology” and then there’s a whole lot of very damp dreams by electric car advocates.... who know far less about science and engineering than they think they do. NONE of our existing known battery chemistries will store the required amount of energy in the space and weight of the application. NONE of them. I don’t care how well engineered the batteries are, the fundamental known science of energy storage in chemical reactions just isn’t going to produce a battery to fit the requirements of an electric car.