Electric Vehicles
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Nick, because you seem to be the go to guy and I'm too lazy to research, how are things going with battery pollutants?
The are obviously quite intricate pieces of machinery made from some rather unpleasant materials. One of the biggest things about the Prius which was often mentioned (and therefore I assume true) was that it used more pollutants to make, than a basic petrol/diesel car would produce in a lifetime.
How has that moved forwards do you know? What is going to happen in 10 years time when we, as a planet, have 100 million used car batteries lying around?
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@antipodean said in Electric Vehicles:
@nta said in Electric Vehicles:
Energy density remains a critical factor - always improving of course, but there is a reason a lot of the big boys (Daimler, Volvo, Scania) are looking at this in addition to Tesla; they see a future.
Hybrid long haul trucks make perfect sense. Large torque to enable them to easily accelerate from rest, diesel for economy, range and charging while in transit.
Might be the ideal transition. Especially if you're putting in the regeneration to the right degree - less engine braking through towns, less wear on the anchors, free energy.
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@majorrage said in Electric Vehicles:
Nick, because you seem to be the go to guy and I'm too lazy to research, how are things going with battery pollutants?
The are obviously quite intricate pieces of machinery made from some rather unpleasant materials. One of the biggest things about the Prius which was often mentioned (and therefore I assume true) was that it used more pollutants to make, than a basic petrol/diesel car would produce in a lifetime.
Fucking Prius. Yeah it was a good idea 20 years ago but Toyota really should have moved on by now... They're laggards in this whole EV thing and Clarkson was right about Toyota's hybrid progam: building the battery in this country then shipping it to that country then taking the car over there is a big issue from a carbon pov.
Companies in Korea and Chinas are addressing this in the first instance through vertical integration: the raw materials are sourced as close as possible to the place of manufacture, to minimise fiscal and carbon costs in production. Refining the materials for batteries, putting them in the cells, wrapping those cells in the case, then installing them right next to where the car is assembled, painted, and rolled off the production line is smart.
How has that moved forwards do you know? What is going to happen in 10 years time when we, as a planet, have 100 million used car batteries lying around?
It is a good question; I am reminded about all the e-waste made by phones, laptops, and circuitry in general, and how places in China that process it are polluting rivers and lakes etc.
A lot of the battery manufacturers are putting warranties on the battery of 7+ years for cars and 10 for "static" storage, so they're fairly confident the risk analysis on chemistry testing is good. Of course, the battery will probably go longer than the warranty in a high percentage of cases.
Battery component recycling as a first step is going to be a big business. Manufacturers are producing batteries they know have a high percentage of reclaimable elements. I'm not sure on the exact toxicities that the cleaning processes will make, and how they're stored if deemed unusable. But it is better quality than the laptop batteries we throw away every day as a society.
Re-purposing is another element. While the chemistries between car and static storage are different, once a car battery drops below a certain level it can be transferred to domestic or industrial use as cheap storage before going to recycling. I've even seen a few companies that buy intact battery modules from written-off Teslas to do up old Land Rovers or other classic vehicles.
It is important to note that the chemistry of a car battery versus domestic battery is different, because they have different goals:
Car battery is designed to deliver power as a priority, with total number of cycles (full-to-empty) over 10 years to be around 1200 or every ~3 days.
Static storage is targeting energy availability with a high number of cycles over a 10-year warranty, at a daily cycle we're talking 3650 in total for that warranty period.Looking at it from another angle: will the "toxic footprint" of a battery's life cycle be any better or worse than emitting carbon over the life of a petrol vehicle? I guess that would be worth some research
The supply side is an issue: a lot of cobalt comes from places like the DRC where labour practices are shoddy at best (child labour) so they're working on taking out as they move forward. There are also efforts to reduce the ethical issues by establishing local companies rather than exploitative foreign interests to get everyone the money they deserve.
On a related topic: our warehouses use electric forklifts for pallet work, and what I found interesting is a lot of MHE (Materials Handling Equipment) runs on lead-acid. While the depth of discharge isn't as good and the battery life isn't as long as a result, Lead-acid physical elements used in those units is 100% recyclable. Also big business - keeps the cost of replacement low, and the market is large.
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@MajorRage before I forget: there are a range of other initiatives to make better, cleaner batteries. The issue is making them cost-effective or being able to produce them at scale.
Lithium ion has a huge headstart because of Sony, basically. They needed a reliable battery to run portable devices that were getting lighter all the time, and nickel metal hydride (NiMH) and nickel cadmium (NiCd) wasn't cutting it any more on weight.
Interestingly, NiMH are still used in some of Toyota's hybrids. I find this mind-blowing.
EDIT: And to answer another question related to this - the carbon footprint of manufacture for an EV generally gets to net zero around the 40,000km mark in the average European grid mix. Here in Australia, depending what state you're in, it might be higher, but estimates are somewhere around 70,000km at the top end of Victoria's dirty brown coal stations. With renewables now generating around 20% across the biggest network in the southeast states, it'll only get better.
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I still come back to there's a lot of hypocrisy based on EV's being the bright shiny thing.
NZ (any country) could massively reduce carbon emissions almost overnight with no need to create neew infrastructure or a new fleet.
All it would require is the govt to offset the increased fuel charge by a reduction in petrol taxes.
I'm not saying this is the ultimate answer but it's an easily adopted, short to medium term stop gap solution
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@dogmeat said in Electric Vehicles:
I still come back to there's a lot of hypocrisy based on EV's being the bright shiny thing.
NZ (any country) could massively reduce carbon emissions almost overnight with no need to create neew infrastructure or a new fleet.
All it would require is the govt to offset the increased fuel charge by a reduction in petrol taxes.
I'm not saying this is the ultimate answer but it's an easily adopted, short to medium term stop gap solution
We have looked at a stack of (and lent to some) ethanol and renewable diesel projects over the last 15yrs, and while I don't discount their value at some level, it's not that easy to scale country wide.
Production requires securing feedstock and a reasonably complex distillation/refining process , and getting the output spec right is as much an art as a science. Many car companies also only rate their vehicles for 10% blends still, which is probably super conservative, but whaddya gonna do?
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@voodoo different product. Neste is the only company producing this. All it requires is a tank at any petrol station you front up and fill your tank and away you go. It is a 100% like for like substitute for oil based fuels.
It's not your traditional ethanol based product. Not commonly known because it is usually sold in scale to large fleets but there are relatively big retail networks in Scandinavia and California.
Renewables is the sole reason Neste is now valued higher than BP (despite most people think they make chocolate)
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@dogmeat @dogmeat I know it's not ethanol, we've looked at renewable diesel from discarded fats also here in Oz. Still not super simple - the Neste website even says "developing our unique refinery platform" which are words you hate to hear as a financier! And still really hard to get to scale if you're talking about massive productio scale (collection alone takes heaps of effort). Maybe Neste have their own supply of fats which would make a huge different.
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The batteries in our vehicles are warranted to 10 years. This means they are guaranteed to reach a minimum level of charge for that time (i think it's 70% but it might actually be higher, that's for the tech guys). That level of charge is still far and away enough to have domestic use for a long time after that. The initial thoughts (and we are still a fair way off the first battery pack change-over) is that batteries will be repurposed for domestic storage.
This stuff is a big consideration, and while all the answers aren't available now, there is time to work out the details.
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@mariner4life said in Electric Vehicles:
This stuff is a big consideration, and while all the answers aren't available now, there is time to work out the details.
more importantly, batteries allow the focus to be on generating power, not so much on timing.
Separately, was chatting to someone about new construction sites. They had been working on a site where powered tools were banned - all the tools had to be battery. This eliminated the subcontractor power cord tangles ... seemed overkill to me, but the front end of this sort of change.
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@nzzp said in Electric Vehicles:
Separately, was chatting to someone about new construction sites. They had been working on a site where powered tools were banned - all the tools had to be battery. This eliminated the subcontractor power cord tangles ... seemed overkill to me, but the front end of this sort of change.
Will be interesting if they want to do core drilling etc.
There are a few electric vehicles coming out in construction e.g. https://www.bobcat.com/eu/company-info/news-media/e10-electric
Important for enclosed spaces, but also loaders that can work longer hours because they don't breach noise provisions.
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Thinking about one of these for the wife:
https://www.ford.com/suvs/mach-e/I think that I have mentioned that our roads are unsealed shit (several times, possibly hundreds) - so the AWD. Lose a few kms range but still would do us nicely.
Wife is very keen on that machine so I have a balance:
I still read "Jobby" when I see that so it may well be be a turd.
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@snowy like a few of these things, looks really interesting. The question will be whether it actually takes off or not (excuse the pun)
also, generation costs with renewables will often run a surplus (be almost free!) at times ... so operating costs on these bad boys could be really low.
Interested in your opinion as a pilot, too. Six electrical motors seems to have an awful lot more redundancy than 1-2 ICE. Would you feel comfortable in one of these things?
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@nzzp said in Electric Vehicles:
Interested in your opinion as a pilot, too. Six electrical motors seems to have an awful lot more redundancy than 1-2 ICE. Would you feel comfortable in one of these things?
Short answer - yes.
The motors will be far more reliable than reciprocating engines - fewer moving parts. It is something like 20 to 2000 ratio of bits moving around.
Great that there are lots of motors, always the more the merrier.I'm not sure about asymmetry issues if you had multiple motor failures but the odds are pretty low of that happening unless you run out of electricity at different times. That shouldn't be possible (not gone into the power feeds for each motor). Fuel has the same problem in aeroplanes, and is a failure that is really quite avoidable. Don't run out.
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@snowy said in Electric Vehicles:
Fuel has the same problem in aeroplanes, and is a failure that is really quite avoidable. Don't run out.
Only real difference being your takeoff and landing weights are the same.
For a small aircraft tho, that is negligible I suppose. On bigger units would need consideration.