Reality check on electric cars

[ADreamOfLiberty]

Yes. Nitro contains it's own oxygen so the engine needs less air for combustion.
Model airplanes, cars, etc run Nitro. I had a couple when I was a kid. The COX .049 engine was my first in a dune buggy.

I had a cox engine and a balsa spitfire but I never put them together as I intended

Thanks for reminding me of my dead dreams

 

[RB 60]

I had a cox engine and a balsa spitfire but I never put them together as I intended

Thanks for reminding me of my dead dreams

Some of the larger engines are nasty powerful for their size.
One of my friends owns a RC shop down in WV. He has this hydroplane boat that is wicked fast he runs on his pond. I don't know what size motor is on it but it throws a rooster tail just like the real ones. Last time I was down, we burnt a quart of fuel through it. What a blast!

 

[Into the Night]

They're trying to use 10,000 psi.


The assumption is the grid has very cheap energy and we're just trying to keep cars as useful as they are now.

It isn't. Cars are already useful. EVs use almost twice the energy of simply burning the gasoline in a similar sized car to go the same distance.

I'd like to see your reasoning for that though.

See the 1st law of thermodynamics.

Is there a fundamental thermodynamic reason you think electrolysis is less efficient than chemical battery reactions?

Yes. Water has a strong bond. It takes a lot of energy to break it. Batteries, on the other hand, are simply moving electrons and ions around, using materials that readily give up their electrons. Any two dissimilar metals sets up a voltage.

In a very real sense electrolysis is the precise inverse of the hydrogen fuel cell.

No, it isn't. Fuel cells require materials that are rare and harder to get than lithium and cobalt. Further, it takes time for them to 'spin up' to power. Fuel cell vehicles have a large battery (usually Li-ion again!) to ballast the electrical load.

Stations don't generate gasoline.

Never said they did. Gasoline is one product in a simple fractioning process of oil. Various additives (such as moderators, detergents, etc) are added at distribution centers (where gasoline trucks pick up their loads for distribution to local stations).

But copper does conduct electricity and stations do store gasoline.

Copper does not store electricity.

The capacity to do either costs money, I'm saying the copper isn't more expensive than the tank (or at least they are in the same ballpark).

Nowhere near it. The current price of copper is $9302/metric ton.
The current price of steel if $3230/metric ton.
The current price of aluminum is $2620/metric ton.

Well we'll have to get more power if we want to run cars off the grid won't we.

It also has to be transported to the chargers. That means a vast expansion of the electrical grid.

Well let's just gloss over every detail: sticking a wire in the ground is pretty easy. All you need is a digger (and the wire, of course!).

You don't bury high tension lines, and it's going to take much more equipment to build those power plants and install the power lines. Then there's the right of way problems and continuous maintenance of the areas around the power lines.

The car they want is often the one with the greatest features, speed, and range at the lowest price.

And EVs' are often 3 times more expensive than gasoline cars.

The fuel costs are part of the price.

The fuel costs are NOT the price of the car.

 

[Into the Night]

Wikipedia disagrees

Energy density - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Propane: 49.6 MJ/kg
Gasoline: 46.4 MJ/kg
Kerosene: 43 MJ/kg

False authority fallacy. You are forgetting energy density of storage again. You cannot use Wikipedia as a source.

 

[Into the Night]

If we had enough energy we could build out of glass bricks rather than cement CMU. There is no shortage of silicon dioxide lying around.

That's right. We use it for making concrete and mortar. Concrete and mortar are much better building materials than glass.

The number and properties of the cells are determined at design time. They can't be changed. All you can do is wire them up in series or parallel banks.

Makes no difference.

I'm saying that within a temperature range there is no such thing as "fast charging" a single cell, there is an ideal voltage range and that will charge at certain current and thus power. All you can do is make each cell shallow so that current charges the cell quickly. A fast charging battery is a battery with a bunch of fast charging cells. Fast charging cells have shallow charge capacities. Thus you need more cells to hold the same energy.

There is no such thing as a 'fast charging cell'. ALL battery cells have the same limitation of current they will accept without damaging them.

If you were to try to make a lead acid battery fast charging instead of 6 cells you would maybe do 24 cells where each cell had a quarter of the plates. You'd have groups of four of these shallow cells wired in parallel and then those six groups would be in series to give you 12V with the same charge. When you go to charge it the groups of four can be charged 2.2 + whatever V, but the current would be four times greater than a 6 cell battery. Thus it would charge four times faster.

It would not charge 4 times faster. Configuration makes no difference.

I'm saying that kind of subdivision (at design time) has its limits. You need more and more cell walls which take up more volume and weight, meanwhile they add thermal insulation and require more fine wire connections.

Can't use fine wire. You MUST use the wire required for the current. If you fail to cool the battery, it will ignite.

Well there goes that idea. The species that build the pyramids without access to bronze has never been able to handle heavy objects before.

You don't bronze to handle a heavy object. You don't need metal of any kind. You should research the art of rigging.

Why in the world would you need to drain the coolant to swap?

You are separating the battery from the radiator system.

No, we don't need new coolant

Yes you do. You cannot use the old coolant.

and we can handle bubbles using standard air seperator.

Not good enough. You MUST use vacuum injection, and that is time consuming.

You talk like liquid cooling loops haven't been used since the 1930s.

Liquid cooling has improved a LOT since the 1930s! Today's engines (and today's battery systems in EVs) require much more sophisticated cooling than those that were available in the 1930s!

Even in the worst case scenario that the cooling loop must be absolutely sealed you can just make a heat exchanger part of the interface plate. i.e. the battery dumps the heat to the plate and the car cools the plate.

Not good enough. The battery will overheat.

Looks at AA battery, looks back to screen, looks back to battery.

A double A battery does not have the current output of an EV battery. False equivalence fallacy. AA batteries can easily be air cooled, since their power output is so low.

I'm getting a strong "man will never fly" vibe.

I fly, design, build, break, and repair aircraft. I know what flies.

https://www.harborfreight.com/4-ton-hydraulic-bottle-jack-56684.html

What do you expect to do with that thing? It won't lift a car off the ground sufficient to exchange the battery.

Everything is horrifically expensive when you're building only one. It would be a simple machine compared to a car,

Not a simple machine.

EVs are HEAVY and require special lifting equipment just to service them. That lifting equipment also incorporates latching equipment so one can safely work under the car. Your Harbor Freight jack is NOT so equipped and cannot safely lift such a car sufficient to exchange the battery. Supporting the car by such jacks is unsafe.

and every gas station requires a fuel delivery truck to keep it stocked.

So? Delivery trucks are most commonplace. They are used to keep grocery stores stocked too.

"A fuel delivery truck would be horrifically expensive" didn't seem to stop that system from working.

They aren't horrifically expensive. They run on diesel oil.

Of course you could, people just value the specialization enough to warrant tire places carrying fifty different sizes.

...and they STILL have to special order tires!

If you had to change a tire every hundred miles I can promise you they would start to converge on two or three main tire sizes just like they converged to two or three fuel mixtures.

During the summer, there are over 45 different types of gasoline for cars alone. Add to that the special fuels used for aircraft and marine.

You think its being produced faster than we can use it?

Oil is plentiful. All you have to do is drill for it.

In that case I really do have to agree with the carbon-o-phobes. We can't just keep digging up carbon forever.

Apparently you are unaware of the carbon cycle.

Maybe five hundred years, but then it really will start to get stale.

Carbon doesn't get stale.

You haven't a clue what you're talking about on this one. If there is a rock in the ocean they will build a soccer field on it and then build a bridge and a tunnel to get there. Then they'll run fiberoptic internet so the players can have public wifi at half-time.

Why bother?

 

[ADreamOfLiberty]

The problem with electrolysis is that it will require much MORE energy to generate the hydrogen then simply charging an EV to go the same distance. Nuthin' comes for free, you know. It requires energy to conduct electrolysis.

I'd like to see your reasoning for that though. Is there a fundamental thermodynamic reason you think electrolysis is less efficient than chemical battery reactions? In a very real sense electrolysis is the precise inverse of the hydrogen fuel cell.

Yes. Water has a strong bond. It takes a lot of energy to break it. Batteries, on the other hand, are simply moving electrons and ions around, using materials that readily give up their electrons. Any two dissimilar metals sets up a voltage.

Electric fields are conservative. Just because there are stronger fields in one case does not mean it is less thermodynamically efficient. In other words that which requires much energy to crack will produce much energy upon recombination.

No, it isn't. Fuel cells require materials that are rare and harder to get than lithium and cobalt.

That has nothing to do with my observation.

Never said they did.

and I never said copper generates energy.

Copper does not store electricity.

Never said it did.

Nowhere near it. The current price of copper is $9302/metric ton.
The current price of steel if $3230/metric ton.
The current price of aluminum is $2620/metric ton.

Which means nothing if the volume needed is different. Also pure aluminum is a great conductor.

It also has to be transported to the chargers. That means a vast expansion of the electrical grid.

Yes I think we've established that.

You don't bury high tension lines, and it's going to take much more equipment to build those power plants and install the power lines. Then there's the right of way problems and continuous maintenance of the areas around the power lines.

Use high voltage DC, now you can bury it, and you can bury it in the right of ways that already exist.

And EVs' are often 3 times more expensive than gasoline cars.

Cars used to be three times more expensive than horses. They might get cheaper if they weren't constantly using cutting edge battery technology which utilizes rare earth elements. Just growing pains.

The fuel costs are NOT the price of the car.

The fuel costs are a major component of the cost of use and ownership, especially these days.

False authority fallacy. You cannot use Wikipedia as a source.

Well I'm not just going to take your word for it.

You are forgetting energy density of storage again.

No, I was copy pasting energy mass density. Energy/mass.

 

[Into the Night]

Nitromethane: Density 1.1371 g/cm3 (20 °C)
Turns a 500 CI engine into a 11,000 HP beast.

Endurance suffers though! Of course that doesn't matter in a drag race! That's the red neck in ya! Drag races...yeehaw!
They can be fun to watch!

 

[Into the Night]

Electric fields are conservative. Just because there are stronger fields in one case does not mean it is less thermodynamically efficient. In other words that which requires much energy to crack will produce much energy upon recombination.

You obviously don't understand why transformers use oil cooling, or why only a limited number and size of wire is allowed in a conduit.

That has nothing to do with my observation.

Argument of ignorance fallacy.

and I never said copper generates energy.

Never said it did.

DON'T TRY TO DENY YOUR OWN POSTS!

Which means nothing if the volume needed is different. Also pure aluminum is a great conductor.

Pure aluminum is not used since it has lousy tensile strength. Aluminum alloy is used instead.

Yes I think we've established that.

Use high voltage DC, now you can bury it, and you can bury it in the right of ways that already exist.

No, you can't; and DC is not easily convertible between the different voltages required. See the writings of Tesla and the War of the Current between Tesla and Edison (Edison lost that war!).

Cars used to be three times more expensive than horses. They might get cheaper if they weren't constantly using cutting edge battery technology which utilizes rare earth elements. Just growing pains.

A gasoline car is not a horse. It has much greater power than a horse and doesn't leave shit everywhere and doesn't have to stop to rest.

The fuel costs are a major component of the cost of use and ownership, especially these days.

...and it's STILL cheaper, and far more convenient.

Well I'm not just going to take your word for it.

Argument of the Stone fallacy.

No, I was copy pasting energy mass density. Energy/mass.

False authority fallacy, and an attempt to justify your mistake by pivoting. Pivot fallacy.

 

[Into the Night]

I had a cox engine and a balsa spitfire but I never put them together as I intended

Thanks for reminding me of my dead dreams

Ah...the irritating mosquito whine of a Cox engine!

 

[ADreamOfLiberty]

That's right. We use it for making concrete and mortar. Concrete and mortar are much better building materials than glass.

It really is not. There are many alloys of glass and many recipes for concrete and mortar.

A glass recipe that maximizes elasticity is far better than a CMU. The principal load bearing element in concrete is stone and sand, the stone is mostly quartz glass and so is the sand. In other words it's glass with glue. The glue gives some flexibility (but not much), at the cost of a huge host of problems in terms of porous chemical and physical decay.

Makes no difference.

There is no such thing as a 'fast charging cell'. ALL battery cells have the same limitation of current they will accept without damaging them.

Suppose you have a very large cell. A cell with plates that are 1km square. Will that charge at the same rate as a cell with plates 1cm square?

It would not charge 4 times faster. Configuration makes no difference.

It would charge 4 times faster. If you don't believe my explanation, why do you think some batteries can be charged faster than others?

You don't bronze to handle a heavy object. You don't need metal of any kind. You should research the art of rigging.

Ok, you're either a bot or autistic. No ability to comprehend metaphor. Well I guess this isn't going anywhere.

 

[Into the Night]

Some of the larger engines are nasty powerful for their size.
One of my friends owns a RC shop down in WV. He has this hydroplane boat that is wicked fast he runs on his pond. I don't know what size motor is on it but it throws a rooster tail just like the real ones. Last time I was down, we burnt a quart of fuel through it. What a blast!

Some of these guys put a lawnmower engine in those! They can really scream! Since this one is on a pond, it's probably more like a .60 RC engine.

Speaking of RC boats, I knew a guy that built himself an RC submarine (a missile boat). No, the missiles didn't shoot! (That would be cool!).

Anyway, he was tooling the thing around on the lake in front of his house, and even submerged and surface again, and things seemed to be going fine with it. It was electric powered, using lead-acid cells.

As he was running on the surface, suddenly an explosion and fire erupts from the main sail, and she goes down by the bow, with little bubbles afterwards. Classic failure!

When he fished it out, he found the pressure hull was severely compromised, all that was left of the radio was a few melted components, and one of the servos was missing.

Turned out using lead-acid batteries for power was the problem. Trapped in the pressure hull, he didn't realize that those batteries put out hydrogen gas as they discharge. All it took was a spark from the servo and it was all over!

It's now a static model in his office. Really a beautifully constructed model!

 

[Into the Night]

It really is not.

Yes it is.

There are many alloys of glass

Glass is not an alloy.

and many recipes for concrete and mortar.

There is one for concrete, and one for mortar. The only difference is the ratio of the mix.

A glass recipe that maximizes elasticity is far better than a CMU.

Nope. Reinforced concrete is much better.

The principal load bearing element in concrete is stone and sand, the stone is mostly quartz glass and so is the sand. In other words it's glass with glue. The glue gives some flexibility (but not much), at the cost of a huge host of problems in terms of porous chemical and physical decay.

Concrete is not glass. Quartz is not glass.

Concrete lasts for thousands of years, if done right. There are still concrete structures that the Empire of Rome built still standing. As for mortar, you can find THAT in the pyramids of Egypt.

Suppose you have a very large cell. A cell with plates that are 1km square. Will that charge at the same rate as a cell with plates 1cm square?

No.

It would charge 4 times faster.

No, it wouldn't.

If you don't believe my explanation, why do you think some batteries can be charged faster than others?

Different internal resistance of the cell. That is a function of the chemistry in the cell and the plate area.

Ok, you're either a bot or autistic.

Mantra 1a. Lame.

No ability to comprehend metaphor.

Random phrases is not a metaphor.

Well I guess this isn't going anywhere.

Don't blame me for your obstinate behavior, denial of engineering, and denial of physics.

 

[Poor Richard Saunders]

Math error: Invalid operator. Logic error: False dichotomy fallacy.

There was no math, and there was no dichotomy. Fallacy fallacies.

 

[Poor Richard Saunders]

The terminology is not the law, Poorboy. There is no God or government controlling the terminology.

False dichotomy fallacy. MSDS and SDS are synonyms.

OSHA does not have any authority to order terminology in chemistry.
False authority fallacy.

Poor Into the Night. He thinks that OSHA required paperwork is chemistry.

 

[Poor Richard Saunders]

Those chips generally come from Japan and South Korea. Some come from Taiwan, some come from Mexico or Canada.

People ARE there to do the work, Poorboy. Illegal aliens imported by Biden and Kamala and Mayorkas are not working in the fields. Further, illegal aliens that ARE working in the fields are criminals, and should be deported.

The funny thing is I don't recall when the Japan, South Korea, Mexico or Canada became part of the US. The chips are imported and a tariff would increase the cost for the chips made outside the US.

 

[Poor Richard Saunders]

It isn't. Cars are already useful. EVs use almost twice the energy of simply burning the gasoline in a similar sized car to go the same distance.

You are wrong yet once again.

See the 1st law of thermodynamics.

 

[Kafka]

You say it like the #1 rational reason to not want a tank of hypercompressed hydrogen in your car is not the fact that the hydrogen is under enormous pressure and if the tank rupturtes the expanding explosive ball of gas could rip half the car apart.

Any compressed gas tank will do that. Currently fuel cell buses use compressed H2 storage.

But this is why most people will not buy it for their cars.

Liquid hydrogen isn't the safest thing in the world either but the volume of the tank would be so much smaller

Are you going to have another bus follow the car with all the refrigeration equipment necessary?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360319906005866#:~:text=Hydrogen%20forms%20metal%20hydrides%20with,for%20on%2Dboard%20vehicle%20applications.

Sounds good, so long as it doesn't have the same kind of inevitable chemical decay that batteries have always had. It wouldn't work for planes, volume efficiency but not mass efficiency.

It's not a great solution. This is related to what I worked on about 25 years ago in my second postdoc. Solid storage for H2 via metal hydrides is limited and small for the weight of the metal hydride. We were looking at other solid storage solutions and they didn't work out.

Like I said: 25 years ago I was at a transportation fuels conference in Norway. The general feeling there was that if storage wasn't figured out fuel cell cars would continue to be a niche and never overtake the market. So far that has proven to be true.

If you're saying that someone who doesn't care about carbon would prefer coal over nuclear,

No I'm not. Nothing of the sort. I understand that nuclear is probably our best solution to decarbonizing our energy infrastructure.

That is not hysteria, that is history. Mining has always worked like this, it's why the world is littered with dead mining towns. I know uranium mining was touched on earlier, but the fact is uranium is a relatively rare element and it's best seen as a byproduct of metal mining.

Huh? A "byproduct of metal mining"? Not sure I agree with that but it's hard to say because it doesn't make much sense to me. I never ran across that concept in the economic geology, petrography, mineralogy classes I took

What do you mean a "byproduct"?

Also, very unlike coal, the refine form of the energy material is tiny compared to the material that had to be sifted through to find it. If we had a giant uranium mine in ant artica for example (where there was basically no ecosystem to disrupt), and that mine produced enough for the entire world at 50x current, we could still carry that energy on a single ship per year (we would't because of eggs and baskets but we could).

That sounds like the most expensive means of getting uranium imaginable. And as for "no ecosystem", well that's absurd on the face of it.

The vein shape for metal oxides is also (potentially) considerably different than coal, not absolutely sure on this but I get the impression that coal deposits are wide and thin, like layers of sediment; which is closish to what they were.

Yes, coal seams are usually large, flat continuous things. Uranium is scattered through various oxides in a hard rock formation.

 

[Kafka]

The funny thing is I don't recall when the Japan, South Korea, Mexico or Canada became part of the US. The chips are imported and a tariff would increase the cost for the chips made outside the US.

Yeah. The US still has a lot of active fabs so we already have some infrastructure and DURING THE HORRIBLE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION we got the CHIPS act which will encourage MORE domestic chip production.

But right now so much is made outside the US that this weird "tariffs on everything" approach will do NOTHING but increase prices for everything.

I can't wait to see the MAGA voters tell me how paying EVEN MORE THAN THEY ARE NOW is a "good" thing.

 

[ADreamOfLiberty]

Any compressed gas tank will do that.

Any gas at 10,000 PSI will do that. Add in the potential explosion and it's too much.

I don't think any 10,000 PSI pressures should be in everyday equipment, at least not until we have some of those super materials like carbon nanotube tensile reinforcement.

It's obviously a lot safer with a metal tank where the alloy doesn't do brittle failure, then failures manifest as holes instead of explosions. BUT metal is too heavy and does a poor job containing protons so last I checked they were using composite tanks for hyperpressure hydrogen storage on vehicles.

Currently fuel cell buses use compressed H2 storage.

I never said it wouldn't work, I'm saying that in the long term on the global scale solving the problem of mass producing propane is the cheaper and safer solution.

Are you going to have another bus follow the car with all the refrigeration equipment necessary?

Obviously if liquid hydrogen were to work it would require a self-contained refrigeration system combined with some very effective insulation techniques (double mirror vacuum layer and such).

Again, didn't say it was easy; but making 10,000 PSI safe isn't easy either. It's a question of what difficult effort ends in a safe scalable solution.

It's not a great solution. This is related to what I worked on about 25 years ago in my second postdoc. Solid storage for H2 via metal hydrides is limited and small for the weight of the metal hydride. We were looking at other solid storage solutions and they didn't work out.

Like I said: 25 years ago I was at a transportation fuels conference in Norway. The general feeling there was that if storage wasn't figured out fuel cell cars would continue to be a niche and never overtake the market. So far that has proven to be true.

Well that is unfortunate. I thought fuel cells are more efficient than practical combustion engine can be right?

i.e. when I said "propane" I meant burning propane in some kind of combustion engine be it pistons or a turbine.
However when we're talking about storing hydrogen it would be more efficient to use that in a fuel cell rather than burning it?

If so that would be a pro in the "store hydrogen" column, something to balance out the challanges.

Huh? A "byproduct of metal mining"? Not sure I agree with that but it's hard to say because it doesn't make much sense to me. I never ran across that concept in the economic geology, petrography, mineralogy classes I took

What do you mean a "byproduct"?

I mean when the concentration is low it sometimes makes sense not to try to find the maximum concentration of that mineral but to look for the intersection of several useful minerals in a formation.

So maybe you know uranium is valuable and maybe molybdenum and neodymium but you would have to go through millions of tons of ore to fill a pickup truck with the refined product. So if you can find bauxite with respectable concentrations of the rarer minerals/elements then you can mine that, make a significant portion of your revenue off aluminum ore and still get the income from the rarer elements.

The lower concentration output is "a byproduct". Or you could consider the higher concentration a byproduct but that sounds wrong. Point is you get both at the same time and that saves a lot effort and environmental damage.

That sounds like the most expensive means of getting uranium imaginable.

I did mention space

Once the ball starts rolling it wouldn't be that much different from mining anywhere else. In forty years the most menial human labor outside of service industries will be piloting a drone. The actual staff on site could be very small; like a hundred people for an operation that supplies the whole planet.

And as for "no ecosystem", well that's absurd on the face of it.

It isn't and it worrisome that you think it's absurd without thinking about it. You're not one of those Gaia worshiper types are you?

 

[Into the Night]

There was no math, and there was no dichotomy. Fallacy fallacies.

LIF. Grow up.