That is actually a pretty good point. The liquid chemistries are not nearly as powerful though at the moment, but it is a ngood thought still.
Chevy Volt - Electric Car
- Thread starter nintenho
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That is actually a pretty good point. The liquid chemistries are not nearly as powerful though at the moment, but it is a ngood thought still.
Are they all pretty toxic chemicals, though?
Depends what the chemicals are in the cell. And remember gasoline is already a pretty toxic chemical. If we had not all grown up with it it would not currently be deemed suitable for the general public to mess with.
NaS batteries might not be too toxic. There are a whole bunch of different chemistries, but the higher power, lower weight and volume ones tend to win in a PHEV scenario. And currently that means ones without a liquid that can just be changed in and out. Plus the filling station would be a bit complicated, nothing that could not be handled though.
It seems the electrodes would get plated though at a very high rate in this kind of system. The ions go into solution then you plate them back onto the electrode. I would have to think about this more, but it doesn't seem like a long term feasible thing, but I could be wrong.
Mintmaster
Veteran
Renting is inconvenient, expensive, and not as rewarding as doing it in your own car.
BTW, you still haven't given us a reason why we should skip PHEV and go all-electric. I don't see any advantages to the latter.
True, but even though gas is established, it's pretty obvious that's we're paying more than just sticker price for its convenience, no? And we can talk about shrinking cars all we want, but the reality (in the US) is that ppl want relatively large cars (and SUVs) and up-front gas prices still aren't high enough to change buying habits.
I don't think that's quite true.
Chevy SUVs and trucks and Ford trucks have been having a really tough time the past 4 years or so.
Chevy SUVs and trucks and Ford trucks have been having a really tough time the past 4 years or so.
Well, you seem to be advocating helicopters or VTOL planes for everyone. That people don't go for those, is that they're not used to them. Same like with Linux/OO vs Windows/MS Office.
"Yes, but mine can do something yours can't!"
"But mine does too!"
Sorry, I didn't. I was at home and it was late.
I agree with the latter, but in the cities here we have a very convenient car rental system where you can book your car online up to five minutes in advance, and then just walk up to it, hold your keycard next to it, get in, type a pin, and get your key. It comes with a gas pass as well. You pay something like 25 euros a month fixed fee, or half that if you already have a train discount pass which costs only 75 euros a year and everyone who doesn't have a car typically has (or should have) already, and then 20 cents per liter (and a 200 euro deposit when you become a member).
This is in fact very, very cheap, and I've used it until I started working for my current employer who urged me to get a company car (and the Prius being taxed low, I'm now paying 140 euro a month gas included - and a full tank, just 45 liters, costs 60 euros here, so it's a bit of a bargain).
Even so, this rental system is probably still cheaper than that if you stay under 400km a month, which is easily possible for most people who live in a city here.
Actually, I don't think the energy densities are ever going to make 'flow batteries' feasible for personal automobiles with decent range. The concept certainly does have a niche in acting as a buffer to store off peak generating capacity.
Where it might have a role in transportation is for LRT. Maybe it would be feasible to use as a power source. A design that could automatically allow for 'filling' while trains are stopped, picking up passengers. This would allow the trains to carry a minimal of electrolyte. Furthermore the rail company could 'recharge' the electrolyte off hours. Kind of like a just in time energy system.
I don't get this. If you have a LRT why not just electrify the tracks? Seems easier than messing about with this sort of thing.
Maybe buses though, they are already using lead acid batteries often times so obviously weight is not as important there.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
Well, that's been done in a few places around the time when a few companies were pushing purely electric vehicles. Problem is that it needs to be widespread for it to be worth anything. Perfecting the vehicle is one thing, but even if that's done today, it'll be another decade or two for the infrastructure to proliferate enough to be measurable. At least here in the US. Many other countries might be significantly faster or significantly slower.
Particularly, for the US, that latter part is the big one. There's a romanticism about having ones own car and the image of "freedom" tied to it (i.e., that your locomotion is by your own volition). That's also why a lot of big cities throughout the US don't really have very expansive mass transit coverage. Not enough people care. They'd rather have a clear network of roads so they can get anywhere on their own.
Have they had a tough time because they're SUVs and trucks or because foreign manufacturers are getting to be more successful horning in on that market? Chevy, Ford, and GMC are still ruling the day for "work" trucks, but it's quite surprising how many people buy trucks for no reason other than to own a truck. And for that, the Nissan Titans and the Honda Ridgelines and the Toyota Tundras often do better.
Even otherwise, all it takes to revive the SUV market is a momentary price drop and the resulting amnesia. Seriously, if gas prices dropped from $3.00 to $2.75, you'd immediately see people rejoicing, "All right! $2.75! Now I can get that Hummer I've had my eye on!"
In the US, that's a near impossibility. My commute, for instance, would be considered about average for people in this country, and I drive around 250 mi (~402 km) per week. And that's just for daily commutes 6 days a week, not including the other routine stuff one does aside from work. Of course, there are often reasons for this sort of thing as well. For instance, when I was living in Dallas, I lived with an 18 mile commute because living that far from work saved me $500 a month on rent, and even if gas were at $10.00 a gallon, I'd have been coming out ahead.
Well, that's also one of many reasons why rental is not at all cheap (nor will it ever be cheap) in the states. People don't typically put only 400 km a month on a car they rent or own. I suppose if you were a rental outfit within the city that put mileage limits on the vehicles and only rented to people who had perfect driving records in towns full of mostly "law-abiding" drivers on the roads, and all sorts of other restrictions, you could probably make it work on the cheap. But that's actually quite ridiculous. A more realistic possibility is for some level of government to be behind such a system, and that often means that the number of miles you'll cover in the vehicle will be nothing compared to the number of miles your pen will cover in filling out all the paperwork.
I should have been more clear. By LRT, I am including streetcars also. Perhaps my opinion is skewed by my experience in Toronto. We do have streetcars which share the road with cars. They are powered by overhead lines. My guess is that the cost of the overhead power lines is substantial, besides being unsightly. Furthermore they would be powered from the grid in real time. By moving to a system like I proposed thy could purchase the electricity off hours at a discount.
Buses, like you mentioned, might also be a viable use.
Still it seems that it would be more cost effective (if the infrastructure in overhead lines is already there) to install a NaS system at the port authority headquarters and then sell the electricity back to the grid effectively. They can buy it cheap at night and use it in the day, and be paid a premium for it likely.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
Replace "year" with "day" and you're getting somewhere.
Among the things people feel free to do by having their own cars doesn't just include things like taking a long road trip twice a year. It includes being able to drive 40 miles to try out a particular restaurant on some random night. It includes being willing and able to cross three towns in order to get to a particular store that sells that candy you like any time you want. It includes being able to drive 150 miles or so for some little weekend getaway.
So unless you can cover for all the little whims (basically by having the range and the infrastructure), it's not a cause that can live in any form. It's easy to say "hydrogen is the answer", but where's the hydrogen. If I'm in a populated area and I have to go more than 2 miles to find a hydrogen filling station, then that's no different from it not existing. If I'm running on a gigantic battery pack that can't cover my commute for a full week on a single charge, it's a useless vehicle. Plug-in sounds easy, but where do I plug in while the vehicle is sitting in a parking lot? Maybe I should spam the IT dept. and ask if they have a spare 1000 ft. extension cord lying around.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
Sure... and do you see anything there about storing hydrogen? Or are they suggesting that its output is great enough that you can fill a fuel-cell on demand as long as you've got constant sun? Or if not, how many of these do you need to supply a single filling station to handle the typical level of influx of customers that area would see in a day? And then if all that comes out to infeasible answers, you've got the question of transporting it... Assuming that you've got some process or series of processes that can produce hydrogen in large quantities in some sort of foundry setting, you've got to move it from place to place. And then how much can you store? It's not like a huge volume of hydrogen gas equals a great deal of mass, and it's not exactly feasible to demand that all filling stations have mechanisms to keep their undergound hydrogen in liquid form.
So again, where is the hydrogen? Until you've solved every one of those problems and then some, the reality is no, it's not coming.
Some people buy a small, Japanese car, others buy the biggest hummer available, or a truck. Just for personal transportation.
Now, the pick-up/Hummer/truck owner can make a long argument that those silly and small Japanese cars really don't work, as they're totally unsafe when colliding with a "real" car, and they can't carry any load. And who doesn't need to be safe and regulary able to get a truck full of fire wood?
Still, those Honda Civics and all sell pretty well.
Now, the pick-up/Hummer/truck owner can make a long argument that those silly and small Japanese cars really don't work, as they're totally unsafe when colliding with a "real" car, and they can't carry any load. And who doesn't need to be safe and regulary able to get a truck full of fire wood?
Still, those Honda Civics and all sell pretty well.