Posted on 06/10/2014 6:46:54 AM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
No, the aluminum battery is not rechargeable, it must be replaced after it is depleted.
It always amused me when I was a kid. We went fishing in Canada. The road signs and the liter gas pumps made me nuts.
Sound encouraging.
But why use a silver catalyst? That could be very expensive. There are cheaper CO2 scrubbers: zeolites and ethanolamine come to mind.
I see that it can run for 1800 km on one charge, but what’s that “3000 km” bit? That’s the lifetime of the battery? One month, maybe two, of regular driving?
Yeah, them arabs should have nicer to the Jews when they had the chance...
Heck, I could drive from Richmond to Washington D.C. just on the ones I made this morning. But why would I want to...drive to D.C.?
Here it says it would cost about $50, plus labour.
It might be comparable to gasoline.
How much is that in furlongs per fortnight?
Pretty interesting...
Another freaky thing about Canada, from my point of view, was the use of what Americans call the ‘breakdown lane’ as a passing lane for tractor-trailers. In heavy fog or rain, unwary Yanks would pull off the road and park, only to be creamed by a hurtling semi.
“How long before battery replacement?”
My interpretation is the battery gets used once - just like a disposable battery in a flashlight.
In the article, they have a strategy of using a smaller rechargeable battery for daily driving, and this large battery would be in reserve, ready for a long trip.
IOW, this battery is not a breakthrough.
Wow! These would be great for space exploration!
Oh, wait.
On one and the only charge. Metal-air batteries are one-shot devices. I, personally, wouldn't want to deal with a battery replacement - neither after 1,000 miles, nor after 2,000 miles. As the article says, people are reluctant to buy vehicles that require frequent and expensive service. There was another company in Israel, Better Place. It is dead now. However a bunch of people bought electric cars that depend on Better Place's battery swapping stations. Now they have to charge them themselves - and it is not trivial.
Still, this development may end up being useful for EVs. But, as I said on many occasions, EVs should first be used in high mileage, small range applications - local delivery, taxicabs, business. Only there the lower cost of each mile can be quickly converted to real savings. A car for a common man has to be universal, long range, and easy to refill - it is the hardest target, outside of heavy trucks. Common man does not drive all that much, and there are good chances that the car will be scrapped because of old age before it crosses the threshold of savings.
Furthermore, slow or delayed delivery of benefit makes the lump sum that is paid for the car even larger, as this money is tied up instead of being invested. As many people calculated, a Tesla for $60-80K may never become profitable; you could buy a $20K car, invest $40-60K on 5%/yr terms, and this would net you a fixed income of $2-3K per year. Today that will pay for 500-750 gallons of gasoline, or (at 40 mpg) for 20-30K miles per year, forever. You must drive more than that to have a hope of ever breaking even because an EV has its own costs per mile. A heavily used fleet car can easily exceed this mileage; however an office worker who drives 15K miles per year cannot do that.
>> At what cost?
Stop asking such pesky, irrelevant questions. It’s good for the children and it doesn’t burn the Oil of Satan. That’s all you need to know.
At least 5,000 hectares, I'm guessing.
You still need to burn coal to get the electricity.
Good point. Tesla is positioned to take advantage of any advancements in energy storage. However, there have been thousands of claims like this one. They never materialize.
The energy isn't the big CO2 source in aluminum refining. You heat up the aluminum oxide until it is molten, put in a carbon electrode and run current through it. This results in the chemical reaction 2Al2O3 + 3C -> 4Al + 3CO2. Well, what do you know, CO2 is released. Unless you can capture this or have a carbon neutral way of producing the carbon anode out of atmospheric carbon, this isn't a way of reducing the carbon footprint of driving.
They were working to establish a network of battery pack swap stations for specially equipped cars converted to electric with easily removed and replaced modular battery packs, Renault I think, several years ago in Israel. This was to overcome range and time to recharge issues present in existing technology at that time. Haven't heard much about it since, but this appears to feed into that same scheme with a much improved battery pack.
Here is what they claim:
At todays market rate, a kilo of aluminium costs $2, and one pack of 50 plates weighs 25kg so, ignoring labor costs, it would cost $50 to refill your Al-air battery.
A battery would cost $50 only if it is a roughly cast slab of Aluminum. If any human has to touch it - to machine it, or to add anything to it, or to put it into a box... the price starts climbing very fast. You cannot ignore labor costs. You also cannot ignore the replacement labor and the time wasted at the service center. Recycling of those batteries will be also an expensive and dirty process - guess who is going to pay for that? Customers, of course - as they do it already with other hazardous items.
There is yet another catch. Say, you have a 1,200 mile battery, and you used up 1,000 miles already. How comfortable will you be driving on the remaining capacity? Some charge of these batteries will be wasted, as people cannot afford to have a car that won't go where they need it, even *in case* if they need it. This doesn't happen with gas cars and rechargeable EVs. It's possible to make a hybrid EV, but it won't make it cheaper, and you'd be taking both batteries on sightseeing tours all over the area. Most individuals do not want this complexity.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.