A thread with science and engineering? Don't mind if I do, I'll start here:
I'm not an electrochemist so I'm going to have to ask for a reference on that claim. Not that I don't believe you, I just don't know for certain. According to Wikipedia the max voltage output of an electrochemical cell is up to 6V so that right there is 2X higher than the max you suggest.
Voltage is not power.
Precisely.
EV's are a dead end. Hydrogen or anhydrous ammonia make far more sense.
Hydrogen doesn't. Not only is it difficult as a fuel when in a compressed gas state but solid-state storage as in a metal hydride is pretty low. The only versions of a H2 fuel cell car is one in which the H2 is generated from things like methanol. And that's a HORRIBLE fuel. Super dangerous to fuel your car with.
The pressures involved in storing a relevant amount of H₂ are prohibitive. H₂ is simpler to generate than propane, but propane is possible to synthesize and in a hypothetical future with abundant energy in the grid it would be a small cost in energy for the benefits in safety, reliability, and performance to use propane for vehicles.
I would also argue that propane is ideal in a more conventional environmental sense (not global climate change) in that it cleans itself at normal temperatures and pressures and doesn't leave an oil residue. That remove many of the build up problems ICEs experienced and it makes the inevitable logistical accidents much less disastrous.
Solar and wind are also less environmentally friendly.
Have to disagree on this. When a windmill catches fire and burns to the ground you don't have to abandon the state. Also, mining for uranium is not necessarily an environmentally friendly thing.
You don't have to abandon the state even after a melt-down. That is the kind of baseless hysteria that is inhibiting nuclear energy. That's the equivalent of saying the Caribbean ecosystem is lost when one tanker leaks. At worst you lose 20 square kilometers for 20 years. Well worth avoiding but a far cry from a whole state (unless it's Rhode Island).
Gardner says as much.
Yes, but the other and bigger issue with hydrogen is manufacturing it.
No that's pretty straight forward. Electrolysis.
-------------------------- On swapable batteries and charging ---------------
The problem with fast charging is the ampacity of the system. For that to work you need a station capable of 100 to 300 amps at 240 or 480 volts to pour all that power into the vehicle quickly. That raises the cost of the station exponentially along with making the draw on the grid far greater. So, those are going to remain the exception and be expensive to use. That isn't going to change.
The copper for charging is an insignificant cost compared to the cost of underground gasoline tanks. The fair comparison would be between all electric stations vs all gasoline stations. Stations can also buffer energy in large simple capacitors (don't really exist because there is no use case now, but layers of steel and glass that can be as big and heavy as you want so long as they're cheap and steel and glass can be very cheap if energy is cheap).
Of course a station does both will be more expensive than either.
The charging speed is dictated by the cell chemistry and construction as I'm sure you know. Fast charging is parallel charging of many small cells. The only way to make it faster is to subdivide the batteries into even more shallow charging depth cells and that makes them more expensive and has other problems.
I don't see any practical battery (under conventional definitions of battery) being fully rechargeable in under five minutes. Five minutes is what it would take for people to stop complaining.
It has been suggested that car batteries can be entirely swapped at a station, and I don't see a real problem with that. It's really just a software problem. How do you value the battery? You need a reliable estimate of its remaining charge life not only so you can cycle the dying ones out but because you need to pay the owner if you leave them with a battery that is closer to death.
Robotics is already good enough to handle swapping, you'd just drive over the right slot and it would do it below the car where you won't be in the way while you go get a coffee.
Daylight mentioned this and I agree with him. The lack of standardization is not a physical constant. We're obviously talking about what ought to be rather than what already is. If we need some variation in battery capacity we just use smaller packs and integer math. Compact takes 2, SUV takes 3, fully loaded pickup takes 4; that kind of thing.
And, that's all they'll ever be is concepts. The cost to do this [swapable batteries] on a nationwide scale is staggering.
The amount people pay for transportation annually is staggering. They'll switch they will pay for it, if you make it worth it. It will be worth it if electricity is made dirt cheap compared to gasoline... which is realistic in only one scenario: mass nuclear power, fission or fusion.
It takes longer than that to exchange a battery in an EV! Remember, the coolant lines?
That's just an engineering hurdle, one with clear solutions. Standard layout ports, self-cleaning with compressed air/vacuum, tapered guidance, quick connect style mating. Foolproof for the life of the battery and automatic mechanisms can't screw it up.
A bigger issue would be a system in the car and station to assure both parties that the coolant isn't contaminated, but that would go along with the rest of the contract enforcement about energy and exchange costs. Again, just engineering.
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Norway is about 80% the size of California and roughly the same shape. About half of Norway is all but uninhabited due to geography too. Their push for EV's won't work in the US.
Norway has an enormous availability of hydroelectric power as well as an incredible level of infrastructure and "one highway" syndrome (lots of passes and tunnels focus traffic allowing them to get excellent charging station coverage with relatively few stations). In those ways adopting EVs is far less burdensome than it is for most nations.
