A number of interesting things have occurred at the AAAS meeting in San Jose the last few days, here is one that caught my eye. As many readers know, I have an electric car (seen above), which runs on 12 volt Lead-acid batteries which are so heavy that most of the energy to the motor is used to move that heavy mass of lead around. Electric cars don’t make a lot of sense for an all-around car, but for in-city use, such as errands or delivery, they could be quite viable with better battery technology.
This newer Lithium-sulfur batteries show promise beyond the current favorite lithium-ion batteries due to their energy density and lighter weight:
The current energy density of lead-acid batteries (not depicted on the chart) is around 60-100 Watt-hours per liter, well below all the others.
The lithium–sulphur battery (Li–S battery) is a rechargeable battery, notable for its high energy density.[1] By virtue of the low atomic weight of lithium and moderate weight of sulfur, Li–S batteries are relatively light; about the density of water. They were demonstrated on the longest and highest-altitude solar-powered airplane flight in August, 2008.
Lithium–sulfur batteries may succeed lithium-ion cells because of their higher energy density and reduced cost from the use of sulfur. Currently the best Li-S batteries offer energy densities on the order of 500 W·h/kg, significantly better than most lithium-ion batteries which are in the 150 to 200 range. Li-S batteries with up to 1,500 charge and discharge cycles have been demonstrated, yet are not commercially available (as of early 2014). (Wikipedia)
Let’s hope that they come to the market soon, not just for electric cars, but for many other applications that need high energy density and low weight.
Leading scholar presents advances in research of electric car batteries at AAAS
Lithium-sulphur batteries promise to extend the range of electric cars at least three times over current lithium ion cells and at much lower cost, making electric cars practical and potentially more appealing to a mass market. Linda Nazar, professor of chemistry from the Faculty of Science at the University of Waterloo, will present a perspective on the promise and reality of lithium-sulphur batteries at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in San Jose, California. She will highlight recent innovations in nanomaterial strategies and new electrolytes that can help these future-generation energy storage systems realize their potential in emerging markets.
Professor Nazar and her research group are best known for reigniting interest in the lithium-sulphur battery by proving that such a battery, once considered impossible, could be a reality. Recently, her group resolved a major technical hurdle by developing the first high-performance sulphur cathode with the use of manganese dioxide nanosheets.
Nazar is Canada Research Chair in Solid State Energy Materials and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She is a member of BASF’s Research Network on Electrochemistry and Batteries, and serves as a lead scientist on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Center for Energy Storage Research.
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New Materials and Approaches for Advanced Batteries (part of the Next-Generation Batteries for Mobile Devices and the Grid symposium
So with ultra high mileage and ev vehicles when will a mileage tax be introduced to pay for the road infrastructure? If a transponder is used for tracking mileage all the “1984” people will start frothing at the mouth.
A mileage tax would put a dent in the perceived cheap transportation costs for the ev and hybrid.
Note that gasoline and diesel vehicle owners subsidize electric and other alternative fuel vehicles because there isn’t a road tax on the electricity or alternative fuels.
Yet.
Outdated. The next generation of batteries will be kevlar-based
http://www.gizbeat.com/6332/kevlar-to-make-li-ion-batteries-safer-and-more-compact/
1200 Wh/l capacity that is double of the current Li ion technology. The first mass product is scheduled for 2016.
There’s a fair bit of chatter here about how all-electric vehicles are suitable for short-distance urban commuting. How about something altogether better – a bicycle? My old commuter hack bike is 10 years old, and has done about 30,000 miles. I charge it up by eating my breakfast (super low-tech) and it’s light enough that I can push or carry it home if something breaks. No high current electric charging facility required, just tea and and toast. OK, so a scottish winter isn’t as severe as you get in Calgary, but we do get frost and snow, and it is possble to buy studded tyres, and most of the year isn’t winter anyway.
For other uses, my car is a family-sized diesel station-wagon, similarly 10 years old, and good for another 10. One 5-minute ‘charge’ will take it 600 miles. A friend has a Toyota Pious. The battery-pack intrudes to such an extent that there’s no useful luggage space left, well, not if all the seats are occupied.
Sorry, not tempted.
A motorcycle makes a good, supplemental commuter vehicle.
Another name for a motorcyclist is ‘organ donor’.
Why not have the windmill or solar panels replenish hydrogen fuel cells?
LOL ‘Cause windmills and solar panels do not pump hydrogen. Each conversion step multiplies the inefficiency.
Something in that field; http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2015/02/12/Researchers-turn-solar-energy-into-liquid-fuel/6931423757205/
In addition to the cost, weight, density, and other legitimate issues discussed in the thread there is also the question of resource availability. I haven’t researched specific details for several years, but previous research indicated to me that ramping up production/sales of Lithium battery based vehicles to the 50-100 million per annum range (87 million+ in 2013) may not even be possible. Lithium is not found as widely in mineable/extractable quantities as oil & gas, or iron, copper or aluminum or other common resources. If I’m not mistaken, the electric motors also require rare earth and/or strategic minerals that are problematic as well.
Its on thing to talk about a few hundred thousand or couple million vehicles over a coupe decades, but 100 million per year every year is a completely different ballgame.
Lithium production is by electrolysis. Yet another new technology load on electrical infrastructure.
Elon Musk says home batteries are coming. Don’t know how good this technology will be out of the gate, but when it gets up to speed it will destroy the business model of the utilities. RIght now if you have solar power at home you have to feed it into the grid and get your power the same way – imagine if you could store it on your own and be completely self-reliant. It would be even more revolutionary in developing countries, where a small solar array and a bank of batteries could power a village without the need to build out massive infrastructure.
http://rt.com/usa/231911-tesla-batteries-home-power/
“it will destroy the business model of the utilities.”
Not a chance. Capital costs will remain a barrier to personal energy production.
Totally agree! I did some reasearch in to off-grid generation back in 2000, simply was far too expensive to do it properly to provide a reliable system.
Gamecock,
Sir Harry has never seen a highrise apartment nor a city. Sort of makes me wonder how long he has been on Planet Earth. He also says “a small solar array and a bank of batteries could power a village.”
From numerous comments above, this doesn’t seem likely. One might get lights and a few other things. Heating? Cooking? Cooling? Makes me think that ‘small’ ought to be attached to the village and “large” to the solar array.
John F. Hultquist, correcting SHF
.
No.
A very, very small village. With no power at all right now. with a very large array in the dry wilds of a central Africa desert at high altitudes.
With no industry, no shops, not even a blacksmith forge or cartwright shop, or mill or sewer’s home. No sewage treatment, no water pumps, water treatment facility, no doctor’s office, hospital, clinic or mid-wife’s clinic. No heating, no HVAC, no fans, no lights. No cookstoves, house lights, fans, or even refrigerators or freezers.
Yes. If SHF gets his way and the SHF, then you too, can live like your ancestor’s did on solar power and without transportation, living off of the land…. and dying in squalid misery and parasitic-ridden disease, starving in the cold at age 25.
this is another approach to possibly improving batteries. Maybe combined with the TiO2 nano tech mentioned earlier.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/153614-new-lithium-ion-battery-design-thats-2000-times-more-powerful-recharges-1000-times-faster
I think the “powerful” mostly refers to the ability to maintain very high currents. High surface area electrodes could also maintain higher capacity also.
Buy an electric car. Then tow it with your horse. Simple and sustainable. What’s not to like about that?
Another consideration is that there is a massive infrastructure throughout the US and other countries that allow on to drive almost anywhere. This includes refineries, gas stations, fuel storage tanks, pipelines, tankers, barges and trucks that deliver liquid fuel extensively throughout most countries even to remote areas. This was built by the capital of large companies, small companies and even individuals who opened gas stations.
The cost to replace fossil with another fuel source such as electricity is massive and in fact the government is already doing this on a minuscule scale with tax dollars. Also one needs to keep in mind the non fuel products from crude oil such as plastics that are extensively used in the products we enjoy today.
Of course the government does not mind telling us that they will use more of your tax dollars to provide electric battery charging stations everywhere, they just hide the cost.
Lithium is a psycoactive drug. It treats depression and can suppress creativity and independent thought. So if our lives are to be run on Li batteries will some of it leak onto us? Is that part of the plan – to solve simulaneously the problem of climate skepticism, by a kind of chemical mental castration?
Sodium fluoride is already used for this very purpose, hence in the water. Calcium fluoride would help your teeth, a little.
Calcium fluoride in the water would mean increased costs for industrial users of water who fully expect their water to consist entirely of H2O. At present they have top at great expense remove all the chlorine and fluorine and cough mixture and any other medications put into the water, of which no more than 0.001 % is every actually drunk by someone, or something (animal).
People whose kids have sugar decayed teeth should buy their own fluoridated tooth paste if they want fluoride in their kids.
The only overwhelming potential advantage from electric vehicles is the generation of electricity and associated pollution remote from the point of use. Mainly of benefit in cities.
That aside electric technologies are presently materially inferior.
Low energy density batteries which limit range. Simply increasing the size of battery packs is not a solution as adding batteries adds weight making the “package” less efficient
Limited recharging infrastructure. Creating new generating capacity is possible but hugely expensive. The distribution infrastructure (cables, substations etc) would also need major upgrade.
Long recharging times. Fast charging may be possible but would require more extensive changes to the distribution network even if overall average demand was unchanged.
High cost and possibly limited life and safety issues with battery packs.
Also worth noting that energy consumed in use is a function of vehicle weight, speed, acceleration, aerodynamics. EV are not zero energy and a comparison with conventional vehicles needs to recognise efficiencies in the production chain – electricity generation, transmission losses, battery losses, charging losses, motor efficiencies etc. Hard data is difficult to find but given the current battery weight penalty there may be little to commend EV over conventional.
Current EV sales are either niche applications or heavily subsidised. In the UK capital subsidies ar4e provided and taxation of energy for vehicle use is massively higher than for domestic.
For electric vehicles to take a substantial chunk of sales they need a real competitive operating advantage to justify the costs of infrastructure development. At present they are almost wholly deficient and I would not expect 100% electric to become common for (optimistically) 10-20 years. Hybrids may be the future as it could allow vehicles to benefit from both technologies – short and city journeys on electric with the ability to undertake longer runs. But this comes at a cost of increased complexity and capital cost.
So why is Apple jumping in?
Good for their Green Image? They’ve got a few bucks to spend on such things it seems.
In todays world Green means Greenbacks $$$, Otherwise they would be pushing for green none polluting technologies like hydrogen powered cars.
To me using the grid is only putting money in the pockets of the big polluters. If you can make hydrogen as simple as this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyDdEuQafn4 with only 9 volts and salt water , then we’re all being stooged. Stanley Myers had the right idea with his water powered car making hydrogen on the go with no storage . http://waterpoweredcar.com/stanmeyer.html Will coal ,oil and gas ever give up their energy monopoly and let this technology advance ?
The only thing that gasoline is good for is burning in internal combustion engines. If we stopped using it for that, then what are we to do with it?
Elon Musk has no magic formula. At the deep discounts he offers for pre-purchasing replacement battery packs, his LiON battery storage for the Tesla S is still $211/kWh and the energy density is 125 Wh/kg. A typical efficiency gasoline generator can store electricity before generation as fuel in the tank at an energy density of 250 Wh/kg and a cost of about $1/kWh. This 2:1 ratio in favor of gasoline holds true when performing a detailed comparison of drive-train and energy storage components and the comparative range and acceleration between a Tesla S and a 2012 Mustang GT.
A Tesla S with the 85 kWh battery pack is a $95K-$120K car (depending on options) that requires an additional purchase of at least a home charging system if not multiple systems at distances not to exceed its 230 mile maximum practical range (as reported by actual owners). The average American’s home utility service itself will need an upgrade to handle the higher power demand of the 220V charger. If the neighbors all decided to buy electric cars, the distribution grid itself would also need to be upgraded because everybody will be driving during the day and simultaneously charging their cars on 220V during the night, pulling more peak current.
If the Tesla S is driven like a regular car, it will require a new $18,000 battery pack every 5-8 years. When one does the math, it is not even close to a good business case over buying a conventional gasoline or diesel car. A 2012 Mustang GT has twice the horsepower-to-weight ratio in the drive train and twice the energy density in storage, and costs 1/3 the price and overall 6:1 advantage. The reason most cars today do not have Tesla’s lightweight aluminum body is that aluminum requires 5 times as much energy per pound as steel in its mining, milling, and manufacture — hardly good environmental stewardship, and pricing the car out of reach of most consumers.
Speaking of environmentals, when the up-front emissions associated with the mining of the rare-earth elements and toxic lithium and the manufacturing of all the batteries is taken into account and amortized over the life of the car, the emissions of a Tesla S per mile are higher than a Jeep Grand Cherokee (http://www.uniteconomics.com/files/Tesla_Motors_Is_the_Model_S_Green.pdf ).
For all this, Tesla’s commercial viability depends upon $7,500-$15,000 per car in federal and state buyer credits plus now about $200 million paid to Tesla corporate in undeserved zero-emission credits from other car manufacturers. Even so, they produced a grand total of 22,450 cars in 2013 and lost $74 million on the year, and production declined in 2014 (we’re running out of Justin Biebers, thank God).
Musk is a very smart guy and is welcome to take a turn at cracking the stubborn battery problem on his own time and money, but not to dine anymore at the public trough of taxpayer handouts. It’s time to stop being taken in by the snake oil and perpetual motion “giga-promises” of dubiously green energy entrepreneurs.
If there is a coming revolution in electricity storage of the necessary magnitude to make it really viable, it is likely to be nuclear, not chemical.
Why do we let these crooks abuse our tax dollars like this??
Ike,
Good, thoughtful comments. Elon Musk is a HE-RO to the greenies. But it’s not so hard being a hero when taxpayers are forced to subsidize your idea.
If EV’s were such a great idea, then Ford, GM, Toyota, Subaru, etc., would have been producing them for many years. But they don’t get the unwilling help of already hard-bitten taxpayers.
It seems like all the wonderful Green ideas like windmills, etc., are being produced based on subsidies, not on market deemand or any other legitimate reason. Too bad the public is so ignorant of Bastiat’s ‘Broken Window fallacy’, which is what’s really happening.
All we need now is a gird that can handle the vast energy needed to power those vehicles. Given that most grids barely cope as it is and are under serious stability onslaught of variable input from wind/solar this whole discussion is pretty pointless.
The only way to replace fossil fuel is by a groundbreaking invention of a safe mini matter/energy powerplant. Till then the only valid, efficient and safe way to drive electric is diesel-electric.
The change over from gas to electric is to big a leap. To go green means getting rid of all the gas guzzlers ,a total waste of resources already paid for. Why not keep the old beast and combustion engine and save the planet by using a hydrogen conversion kit. People have used natural gas conversion kits to run their V8’s on for years , why not hydrogen ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh9jPdL6VDQ Surely if this got funded most of the pollution problems would not exist.
Because there are no hydrogen mines. Hydrogen is plentiful, but it has already been burned to make, for example, water. Releasing the hydrogen from existing “ores” takes more energy than you get back by burning it in your car engine. Plus, the NOx emissions from an Otto or Diesel cycle engine are just as high when burning hydrogen because NOx is created in the high temperature process using air as an oxidizer, just like burning gasoline or Diesel fuel.
Then there are the secondary problems like storing it and carting it around. Hydrogen’s density is so low that even the cryogenic liquid form has a density about like styrofoam (.017 kg/liter). Pressurizing it as an ambient temperature gas takes a significant additional amount of energy that is not recovered in combustion. Then there is the safety aspect. If you spill some gasoline while filling your car, it evaporates. If you spill some hydrogen, it is far more likely to burn or explode. A hydrogen explosion is what blew the building apart at Fukushima, not the nuclear fuel.
Dan Obvious you did not read my comment and LINKS above and at 11.06, or you would not go on about the safety aspect. If you can make hydrogen with only 9 volts ,then how many volts/watts can be made from a combustion engine using modern electronics http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/33743/Can-a-car-alternator-generate-110v#comment351708
Dan in California
“Because there are no hydrogen mines.”
No mining required ,the ocean is salty and full of hydrogen.
In order to reduce the explosive characteristics of hydrogen you could bind the atoms together with carbon and then burn it to produce power on demand.
Just an engineer
And those new molecules of carbon and hydrogen would not require elaborate energy-consuming, wasteful cryogenic piping and exotic materials like stainless steel and cryogenic insulation and the bigger carbon-hydrogen molecules would be easier to pump (more effcient, yah know) and the bigger molecules of carbon and hydrogen would not leak right through the walls of those expensive exotic material pipe walls needed for hydrogen, and the cheaper and faster welds you need for the cheaper and more efficient carbon steel pipes would be more reliable and be safer ….
MAN! Why didn’t I think of that! We should do that right now! Combine the gaseous unsafe hydrogen produced with some readily available carbon source ….
“Hybrid vehicles have already proven their worth in efficiency so to promote either an entirely-gasoline or an entirely-electric vehicle is wrong and only the reserve of the relevant proponents”
One comment above observed that a Prius had comparable fuel consumption to a similar I/C only car. Last night I watched an episode of “Top Gear”, the UK motoring programme. Well known petrol head Jeremy Clarkson drove the latest BMW M3 and was seen making full use of its performance. He then climbed into BMW’s latest i8 hybrid, and was bowled over by the seamless integration of electric / combined / petrol only power. So much so that he chose it over the M3. However, on returning to the studio, he changed his mind, for a number of reasons, The single most telling one was the “Real World” fuel consumption – not the marketing figure of 134mpg (UK Gallons), but a pathetic 31mpg!!! He said that many owners are reporting similar results. Undoubtedly they are driving “enthusiastically”, but why would you spend that sort of money on a high performance vehicle and not make use of it? The upshot of this comparison is two cars with similar performance, one a full four seater with a decent boot space, but the other very definitely only a two seater, carting round a sizeable battery pack and two motors, yet giving little or no overall benefit.
Unless a hybrid is utilised primarily in electric only mode (and assuming cheap or even free electricity) I see little advantage over a well designed conventional car. What is really needed is a cheap, light, and compact brake energy recovery & engine assist system, which would help considerably in stop-start city driving, but without the substantial weight and space penalty for long distance highway use. Most modern vehicles are now doing a form of this with so called “intelligent” alternators, but they don’t have the ability to pull away from a standstill without the engine.
The i8 is a sports car. If you drive it in London would be £25 a day and 31 mpg otherwise.
James May has his own i3 runabout. This car costs pennies per mile, literally! No clutch, noise, gearbox, no vibrations.
Use your electric and the cars timer or phone remote to prewarm/cool/defrost the car before you get in. Flipping heaven!
PMHinSC
February 15, 2015 at 9:20 am
Can anyone comment on whether electric cars, or trucks for that matter, make sense in confined industrial complexes such as an aerospace manufacturing facility?
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Yes. We used battery powered fork trucks in the factory I worked in 40 years ago.
For those who think cost is the only important factor, and range, speed, and charging times are all minor issues for widespread acceptance, we already have such inexpensive, battery powered vehicles, yet they serve a relatively small niche.
They’re called golf carts.
My golf cart is only a small one. Over 100 hp, climate controlled, a smooth, silent ride and 60~95 mile range between coffee breaks.
Life is so tough….
Patrick
February 15, 2015 at 7:47 am
The most efficient technology (Excluding battery type) for electric motive power was invented in about the 1950’s. Diesel-Electric.
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Submarines used it decades earlier, before WWI.
Electro-motive diesel trains have been ubiquitous since the 1930s.
Weight and space considerations are different for cars than for ships and trains. There have been some still-born attempts to use electro-motive systems in cars. I vaguely remember a Jaguar concept where they used a pair of turbine engines to run generators to charge batteries. It would work, but the engine noise was too great.
Like electric cars, the technology has been around for a century. That it hasn’t been used in cars in a hundred years tells me it’s not likely to be.
After further review . . . they didn’t decouple the generator-diesel engine in submarines until the 1930s.
To be fair, Diesel-electric locomotives are not hybrids. The electric part is the transmission, not an energy storage feature. Modern locomotives generate about 600 HP per axle; each axle having an electric motor of about that size. The Diesel engine turns an alternator and all the power goes to the wheels via the electric ‘transmission’. Delivering 3600 HP to the wheels with a mechanical transmission while moving at 0.5 mph would be extremely difficult, not to mention the clutch that would be rather a high maintenance item. 🙂
It’s a more efficient system when one considers all factors in conventional (Gas only powred) transport systems. I mean, you do not need a country wide network of charging points for fully electic powered cars, if we are going to use them as a serious alternative to gas powered cars. In a city, it would probably work, but then we have public transport for that need. The battery pack on such a vehicle can be much much lighter than a full electrically powered car, saving even more “fuel”. This is one problem with battery (Energy) storage (Its the same for off-grid power systems), it just does not work as well as a gas powered system. We already have a country wide system of fuel/energy supply and storage. We call them gas stations and gas tanks.
The Fisker I mention above is a great example of how such a gas-electic system would work, sadly no longer made!
I did not know there were diesel-electic subs before WW1. I do know the Germans were developing their “E” boats just about the end of WW2, and if they had got more than one into service, the war of the Atlantic would have been very lost for the Allies.
Diesel-electic locomotives are, indeed, not hybrids. Hybrid cars have a gas engine with a conventional transmission. Connected to the transmission is an electric motor. Both provide power to the same transmission. The electic motor is used until more power/speed is called for, the gas engine then starts, proving power and charge. I am talking about a total petrol/diesel-electic system. It’s the best way to extract the most “energy” form the fuel and convert that into motion through tranction motors in which each wheel can be driven independently removing the need for heavy transmissions/axles etc.
Can anyone comment on whether electric cars, or trucks for that matter, make sense in confined industrial complexes such as an aerospace manufacturing facility?
It depends on the performance requirements.
Sorry to miss you at AAAS, Anthony!
All this is moderately amusing for those of us who have been studying the thermodynamics of energy production and propulsion for the past 40 years.
When I was in grad school, one of my professors came up with a marvelously simple alternative to electric batteries: liquid air. You run it through an evaporator (using the heat from the ambient air environment) and an expansion-cycle engine. If you consider the fact that the Carnot efficiency is measured relative to the lowest temperature in the cycle, it works out to something very respectable, even in cold air (think in terms of Kelvins). There were practical problems in their attempts to bring it to mechanical fruition, but not necessarily unsolvable. Their funding was almost nil, so no surprise.
But the point is that liquid air, aside from the cryogenic temperature, is a pretty benign and extremely cheap commodity. You can fill a tank as fast as with gasoline. It causes no special hazard in a collision and leak scenario. It cannot catch fire (cold, remember). It is not toxic or a smothering hazard. (They started out with liquid nitrogen as the “fuel,” but realized it might prove to be a suffocation hazard.) It is infinitely reusable. There is already a supply and distribution infrastructure. You still have an energy penalty to run a heater, but at least you could smile at the irony.
Would you be willing to render that in English? Thank you.
“Advances in the Storage of Fossil and Nuclear Energy to Power Electric Cars.” There. I fixed the title for you.
A lot of words expended here. Lets cut the BS to a couple of lines.
Lithium sulphur cells have a severe life issue, the sulphur expands/shrinks & cracks enough over a couple of cycles to kill the cell. They may never happen
Another is Lithium silicon and that also has huge problems.
A way to increase capacity is going to be the ability to implement carbon nano tube tech for more surface area.
I only wish people degenerating here about Tesla’s and the like, to stop being such jealous and clueless bigots. Most times your comments are so far removed from the facts, they make a mockery of this blog.
Its embarrassing.