I feel your anticipation. But I think the more such experiments happen, the more we as consumers would accelerate towards zero emission transportation future. As it stands, time to charge battery (especially on long road trips)is one of the factors discouraging consumers to adopt electric vehicles.
Right. This is a flow battery/fuel cell; you change the liquids rather than recharging it in place. The new feature is that this doesn't use a membrane to separate the two liquids. They're immiscible and one is denser, so they stay separate, in layers. Why this doesn't short out at the liquid interface isn't clear.
There are commercial flow batteries that use membranes.[1] One uses zinc-iron. The energy storage capacity is limited only by tank capacity, so you can fill big tanks using solar power or wind and draw it out later. Typical system is 288 kW/960 kWh, and occupies 6 shipping containers.
> Why this doesn't short out at the liquid interface isn't clear.
The same reason metal does not rust without water (the metal/oxygen is touching after all without a membrane) - you need a second path for the electricity, which is what the water does. (The water does not chemically do anything - it simply acts as a wire.)
So they are pumped into the system in suspension and then settle into two layers?
I'm having visions of the battery liquid sloshing around while driving.
This seems neat, though I think often academics solve one problem in a lab and then imagine a whole string of other problems will easily be solved to get their product to market.
The guy said the biggest problem is "man power". I'm skeptical of this claim.
They haven't built anything other than a table top demo -- I'd of liked to see them build a unit that could power something significant. Stick one in a golf cart at least.
This is pretty cool. The general idea is that a gas station dispenses a water and ethanol solution that acts as the electrolyte and provides energy for the battery. And then recharging is done by reprocessing the electrolyte with renewable energies. If this turns out to be a technology that can work well on large scales, it could really be a game changer.
Can you also recharge it in the battery with electricity, or do you have to go to a special station? The ability to "fill up" at home is one of the great advantages of EVs, although I realize a lot of people can't do that.
I have a Tesla, and if I had to make a choice between a traditional battery and a battery I can fill instantly but can't fill at home, I'd take the traditional battery without hesitation. Faster charging on trips would be nice, but not worrying about it the rest of the time is even nicer.
You're confusing the worst case with the average case -- maybe you should instead ask Tesla owners if they're happy with long distance travel? The overwhelming answer is "yes".
Duh? The limitations of EVs are known before you buy the car. The people who still choose to buy them is a strict subset of people who are okay with the downsides.
Tesla owners are distinctly not representative of the average person's situation.
mikeash was asking, can you also charge it at home. It's a fair question, since most of the time the overnight home charge is all you need, and even more convenient than going to a gas station. So an EV that can do both is great, an EV that must be filled at a gas station only, that's actually a tricky trade-off, and reasonable to assume a large number of current EV owners would not make that trade-off.
In otherwords, if you're adaptable to home charging, then you really want home charging. Makes perfect sense to also observe all current EV owners are adaptable to home charging, by definition.
So strictly speaking adding it expands the market to different kinds of EV owners who would treat it like a gas car, just with no direct emissions. If you can add this feature without sacrificing anything else, I'd say that's a very big deal.
I assume that in reality this tech is a decade of hard work away from even being usable in an EV, so we'll never see it made.
Chargepoint claims that 10 minute charges are coming soon. That's plenty fast enough considering that most charging is done when a car is parked at a destination or a pee break.
There's really no point to exchanging the electrolyte in an EV, even a 45 minute charge while grocery shopping or eating is "one less stop."
Question: Why is this a flow battery and not a fuel cell?
My impression is that the difference between flow batteries and fuel cells is that flow batteries are closed systems whereas fuel cells are open systems. Since this can be refueled, it sounds like an open system.
Edit: Your linked Wikipedia article answers my question. "A flow battery is a rechargeable fuel cell." I guess the distinction is not closed vs open, but rechargeable vs unspecified.
I think a fuel cell is distinct by having the oxidizer be from the environment, and not within it.
A flow battery is completely self contained.
Getting your oxidizer from the environment obviously helps with weight, but it comes with its own set of problems since it's hard to control purity.
The wikipedia definition kinda touches on this. Since everything is contained in the battery you can recharge it with just electricity.
In contrast a fuel cell will emit the waste (water usually), so you no longer have the raw material to recharge it anymore. (Although obviously you can just make more by collecting it from the environment - think emit the water, then electrolyze other water to recharge the battery.)
Yes, and this bit might make you pause : "'We are at a stage in the company’s growth that we are looking for additional financing to build large-scale prototypes and subsequently manufacturing partners,' Cushman said."
The whole "Breakthrough! Just add money!" thing is really tiresome not because it would be wonderful if it was as simple as just adding money, but because so very many people have abused it when they really had no idea at all about what the issues were with their technology.
I like the concept of flow batteries, and have read a number of interesting papers over the years on them. They solve a number of problems if you can get them to work and the instant recharge is perhaps the best one.
That said, a very good flow battery demonstrator project would be a set of solar panels (cheap these days), continually pumping electrolyte from a reservoir and 'charging' it (inverting its oxidation reaction). Coupled to a flow battery and a constant load.
If you can't build that, and show that by putting 'nX' load of solar cells in the loop, and continually run the base load 24x7, then you've got the basis for an actual breakthrough. Even doing it for a small "meaningless" load like 50 watts (1.2kWh / day), you will have demonstrated not only that your battery works but that it can be combined in a system that currently requires "previous generation" batteries.
And from that demonstrator you can make educated guesses about how much maintenance would be required for a larger scale system, how well the system performs 24x7, how to maintain it while it is operating, Etc.
Then you can say, for $X we estimate we could run a typical house off grid. For $Y we estimate we could provide Z MWhr of base load. If you can't build the 50W system though, it is unlikely you can build any system yet.
Perfect, Vanadium is only $28/kg[1]. 500W of solar cells is less than $1,000 these days. Saltwater and Methanol are also pretty cheap. Well you can charge it, so if the charge rate is .1C you hook your solar panels to 1000 cells that are charging ("charging" cells) and their electrolyte is then pumped into the 100 "load" cells for delivering load. But that only keeps you even, so 10,000 cells charging and filling the reservoir while 100 cells providing load. Damn the laws of thermodynamics!
Still I would love to read how Dr. Cushman sees it working out.
I remember this being envisioned in Popular Science magazine in the 1970s. The front cover image depicted a "fueling station" with fresh electrolyte pumped in through one hose while depleted electrolyte was pumped out through another.
* Refueling requires hooking up and exchanging hazardous materials (fluids).
* This assumes that there's a single universal electrolyte fluid.
* Variability in fluid quality / consistency (across areas and batches) / return materials fraud are problems.
* The less sealed nature of the batteries is probably a safety hazard (increased crash/fire risk, etc).
I think that the public would be better served by standardizing on a few /types/ of battery packs as physical interfaces, and having rapid 'tank replacement' stations (robots) and leased battery packs.
Innovation in storage tech and/or picking a pack sized for the expected use would allow for improvements and competition as well as changes in technology.
Gasoline is mostly just flammable (and the vapor /slightly/ explosive).
We'd need to know more about what type of chemicals are used in this battery, but glancing at what's involved for 'flow batteries' I'd make a /slightly/ educated guess that these would all be considered 'industrial' materials. You might see a public bus using them, but I doubt it would be safe to allow the average driver to self-refuel.
The average driver refills their vehicle using decades old technology which would probably be unsuited for exchanging the fluid these batteries would need. Any kind of system for exchanging the fluid in a flow battery would probably be self contained and would be better designed than holding a lever on a nozzle dumping a flammable liquid into an empty vessel.
Alcohols and water are just the solvent. It probably use some metal ion too. The charge of the ion can change "easily", so you can charge, discharge and recharge it.
The never-wind people in an area I lived in shouted about rogue electricity killing cows.
Worrying about quality control of the fluids is similar. The global energy industry is up to the challenge of reliably producing batches of chemicals that narrowly match a particular specification.
That's where you (completely earnestly) start talking about how much more concerned you are about the extra wind and all the dangers from it, and maybe how you want the windmills there to slow down strong winds. Avoid discussing the danger of wind spills, you don't want it to be obvious that you're trolling them - you want them to start explaining to you that "it doesn't work that way."
If you can get them looking into it enough to try to teach you about it (seems like human nature to want to correct people who are wrong) then you've won because they'll also pick up (without being told in ways that get their backs up) that they were also wrong and they can just quietly abandon that stand.
Read the (currently) top post by Ars linking to the Wikipedia page.
There's a table of the currently known public chemistries near the bottom.
There are applications with better power density than Lithium based batteries (at the electrodes), but I don't know about how an overall solution would compare to a gasoline setup.
I think the only fair comparison in such a case would be to have a roughly standard car design and compare complete solutions (currently common petrol / diesel depending on vehicle size, hybrid (electric), full electric (batteries / 'flow batteries' of different types)).
This sounds interesting. It got me thinking about some other ideas.
What about solar panels on the roof? I found this article [1], and Elon Musk has said they'll "probably offer it as an option" [2].
I wonder how many extra miles you could get with that. If nothing else, it would be nice to know that you could slowly recharge your battery if you get stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Another idea - highways where you could drive while recharging. Maybe something similar to train tracks, or an overhead wire. Or wireless power transfer through the wheels, if that would be possible? (I don't think it is.)
Solar panels charge really slowly compared to how much energy is needed to move a car.
I'm probably totally wrong here, but if the whole car was solar panels I would expect 600 watt to be generated. An electric car would need that for 0.8hrs or so to move one mile (0.44 kWh/mile?) plus acceleration.
Another issue is that most people prefer to have a sunroof on their car. (Ideally a large, panoramic one, as Teslas have.) Can't really do that with solar panels.
Our Nissan Leaf does (give or take) 4 miles/kWh, or 0.25 kWh/mile, FWIW. I did the math one time, or someone else did, I forget. Anyway, cover the roof of the Leaf with panels and it would make a negligible difference in range. In a fit of dreaming of life off the grid in an RV, I can fit eight 100W panels on the top of our VW camper, and the usable roof on that thing is probably twice what the leaf has.
The sun is ~1 kw/square meter and solar panels are 15-20% efficient.
So for every square meter of roof space covered in panels you can get a max of about 200 watts of power.
This is a lazy, handwavy characterization of the situation, but it paints the picture, it isn't much of a contribution as batteries head north of 50 kw-h.
At 90 degree incidence, after that it falls off as the co-sine of the angle. So if you don't track the sun it will drop considerably, you daily average compared to the ideal is more likely going to be between 7 and 12%.
I was thinking about this the other day actually. You can’t get enough power from panels on a regular car roof to do anything useful.
A 100W solar panel typically generates about 400 Wh per day, and has an area of 0.7 m², weighs about 8 kg, and costs about $100.
Using the range and battery data for the Tesla S:
A 200 km daily commute (i.e. an hour each way) you would require ~35 kWh, and require 90 100W panels, or 60 m², weigh 700 kg, and cost $9000. Possible, but only as a fixed install, not on the car’s roof!
For touring, you could do 500 km per night (about maximum range for the 100 kWh Tesla S) and charge during the day, but would require 250 panels / 175 m² / 2000 kg / $25,000. You would require a trailer to carry them, and the set up & tear down each day would be laborious, but it would be possible and you could then travel indefinitely. A bit like what Mark Watney does in The Martian. If you were willing to spend multiple days charging for each 500 km leg, or only travel a couple of hours per day it would be even easier.
Edit: I just looked up The Martian and Watney had 18 kWh of batteries for his rover, 28 m² of panels (with longer days but less power), travelling a max of 90 km per day for over a month. So yeah.
> The greatest hurdle for drivers is the time commitment to keeping their cars fully charged.
For a large percentage of common use cases this is not an issue. EV drivers by and large do other valuable things while their vehicles charge, like work and sleep.
> Current electric cars need convenient locations built for charging ports.
This is only true for apartment dwellers (for now). People who live in houses typically charge at home.
> Designing and building enough of these recharging stations requires massive infrastructure development, which means the energy distribution and storage system is being rebuilt at tremendous cost to accommodate the need for continual local battery recharge
> Users would be able to drop off the spent electrolytes at gas stations, which would then be sent in bulk to solar farms, wind turbine installations or hydroelectric plants for reconstitution or re-charging into the viable electrolyte and reused many times.
How is this fueling and distribution system cheaper or more efficient than the grid plus a bunch of 240v/60a outlets, most of which are already available in home garages. If instant refueling is a really a dire need for someone, they can just get a plugin hybrid (i.e. Chevy Volt) and no new infrastructure needed at all.
Because the landlord might take issue with you installing a 220V charger in the house. Why, I would have no idea, since it would seem to add (a minuscule) value to the house.
Wait a minute, it's Germany, don't y'all already have 220V/240V/whatever it takes? In which case, yeah, I guess you could just plug into an outlet and charge just as quickly as I do in my American garage with its special charger because our outlets are 110V.
Canada has 110v and electric kettles. America apparently just doesn't care for tea (and/or have much of the subpopulations from areas of the world that got big into boiling their drinking water before chlorinated public water came about, and so who see drinking even clean unboiled tap water as gross.)
While some countries moved away from permanent chlorination, it is still widely used, either as a permanent (all the way to the faucet) or punctual (just in the treatment facility) water disinfection solution.
The UK, for example, uses permanent chlorination.
So depending where you live, maybe its time to find all tap water gross.
They can use UV light, ozone, or even chlorine, but they remove the chlorine before pumping the water into the system.
The downside is that it requires a highly precise tuning and maintenance of the water systems to avoid any contamination downstream. Most countries don't seem to have the discipline to do so (US for example).
But they do fluoridate the water, depending on the country and region.
Water fluoridation's positive impact is small when the population frequently brushes their teeth with fluoridated toothpaste, and both fluoridation and chlorination don't have any negative impacts on health.
Actually they use it, the deal is that you just don't notice.
Chlorinated water is used in Germany depending on the city and source. Cities using aquifers for drinking water, like Berlin, usually require less disinfectants as the original water carries little to no organisms.
They might still use chlorine for emergency disinfections. But usually the levels are very low and hard to notice.
Cities that don't have good aquifers usually resort to rivers and lakes, requiring heavier disinfection both at the treatment and on the way to the homes, so they need to add higher levels of chlorine.
All cities I've ever lived in, or ever been to, have used aquifers for their drinking water, and have never fluoritdated or chlorinated their water due to that. We currently use UV desinfection where I live.
Yeah, if you use rivers and lakes I could understand it, but I never actually knew places would do that.
I just used one to make a cup of coffee. I haven't timed it, but it can't take but three minutes to reach boiling. I wish the U. S. had standardized on 220V for a lot of reasons, but the time it takes to heat a kettle of water is not one of them.
You mean 110V countries don't just run at double the amps?
Nope, because then you need bigger wires, and copper ain't cheap. Whereas on the same wires if the voltage is bumped, you get a wattage bump, too. So Europe gets kettles that heat twice as quickly as U. S. kettles.
> Wait a minute, it's Germany, don't y'all already have 220V/240V/whatever it takes? In which case, yeah, I guess you could just plug into an outlet and charge just as quickly as I do in my American garage with its special charger because our outlets are 110V.
Actually, we have up to 400V/60A for stoves and charging cars, or as main line for your apartment. But if you rent an apartment, you won't have that at your parking space.
Germany doesn't have that, and will never have that? Quite a prediction. In the US, most apartments don't have chargers, but they're starting to install them. And where I live, new construction is required to have chargers in the garage.
Germany doesn't have that, and will never have that? Quite a prediction
The only one predicting anything is you, Captain Pedantic. Parent used the present tense, which I take to mean that if I look for an apartment today in Germany, I won’t find an apartment with a charger. Tomorrow? Who knows, no one was talking about tomorrow. On top of that, speaking from a German perspective, odds are that English is a second language. But you go right ahead and pick apart that sentence for something to criticize.
Some places already have on-street chargers, and who knows what the future will bring? My apartment complex has a shared charger in the garage, and new construction in my city is required to have that.
Although quick fueling is a selling point, I think the real advantage lies in use of an existing distribution system for energy in liquid form. This would facilitate widespread adoption of electric vehicles without requiring new purpose-built grid infrastructure.
If I understand correctly, this technology is a (perhaps better/more robust) flow battery into which one pumps fresh electrolyte after removing "discharged" electrolyte.
We now pump and convey by ship, rail and truck, liquid fossil fuels. Fresh electrolyte would be handled likewise.
The return loop for used electrolyte is already there. Gas trucks now return empty for refill. In many cases, an empty ship or train returns to a fuel source for refill. These could bring electrolyte back to recharging facilities. Whether these are powered by renewable or nuclear or other energy wouldn't impact the distribution system much.
Repurposing the existing fuel distribution to handle electrolytes doesn't seem prohibitive. It's something I hadn't considered, as I'm not used to thinking of electrical energy as a liquid I could deliver in a truck.
> We now pump and convey by ship, rail and truck, liquid fossil fuels. Fresh electrolyte would be handled likewise.
A lot of refined petroleum is shipped by pipeline. If you live in, say, the DC area, then your gasoline is coming from crude oil refined somewhere in Texas or Louisiana and shipped by pipeline to a distribution terminal. The refuelling trucks are only traveling from the distribution terminal, maybe 20 miles or so, not all the way to the refineries.
According to <https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu..., pipelines carried 63.3% of refined petroleum products in 2009, and an even higher share of (79.8%) of raw crude oil. The numbers for crude are likely to be rather different for today thanks to the Bakken oil field (which happens to not be in a conducive place for the existing pipeline network), but I don't think that refined petroleum products are likely to be very different.
You would have to build a new parallel distribution infrastructure, even if it utilized the same kind of components. New tanker trucks and pipelines for moving the product. Local fueling stations would need new underground tanks to store it. New pumps at the fueling station.
Charging EVs via the grid involves minimal new distribution infrastructure. The grid already supports high loads like the kind that EVs impose and the nightly pattern of EV charging actually complement wind as an energy source.
Flow batteries seem much more promising as utility scale storage for intermittent renewables.
Another benefit is that the current electrical grid, especially the residential portions, does not have the capacity to service the nightly recharging of EVs if everyone does it. Using existing liquid fuel infrastructure removes the need to upgrade the electrical grid to handle this demand.
This is only the case in a minority of neighborhoods with very old local distribution infrastructure [1]. Most other local distribution grids can handle the load with little or no upgrades.
Even still, between time of use rates and smart charge scheduling, much of the EV charging load can be dispatched in such a way that actually postpones or mitigates altogether the need for grid upgrades.
It is great fun to drive. It's quick, and it feels even quicker than it really is owing to the instant response (no downshifting required), and silent acceleration. The heavy raft of batteries on the bottom gives it a low center of gravity, so it doesn't lean back much when you punch it.
I also really enjoy the one-pedal-driving enabled by the "L" mode, which tells the car not to mimic an automatic, rather to use regenerative braking as aggressively as possible. I can drive all over town without touching the brakes.
I haven't driven a Leaf myself, but I know people who have, and they much prefer the Bolt EV.
I'll try to keep an eye on this thread if you have any specific questions.
Thanks for the response. I've done a little more searching about, and the general opinion is that the Bolt is genuinely a better vehicle. That L mode sounds interesting. Are there any negatives you've come across?
There are a few downsides, mostly minor. For one, it doesn't come with a spare tire or jack (probably to save weight and improve range). It uses special tires to reduce the likelihood of a flat, but a blowout would require roadside assistance unless you add a jack and tire.
For another, it's small inside, especially horizontally. It's not a big deal for me, but two large people side by side would be quite close together.
The gauge cluster screen is a bit boring, it seems like it could be more attractive and interesting. But that's a minor quibble.
Nothing else comes to mind, it's mostly been an excellent car so far.
> This is only true for apartment dwellers (for now). People who live in houses typically charge at home.
Having stations built in convenient locations means that you can greatly extend your effective range. If I have a car that can drive for 80 miles, then I can only go 40 miles away before reaching bingo 'fuel'. Often, one will leave some buffer.
Doesn't matter if you are picking up someone at the airport, grocery shopping or working. If charging stations are everywhere, then you would only need to worry about how far you can go.
If said stations were also wireless, then one might not have to stop to charge at all.
That future isn't here. At my current job, people are encouraged to go out and move their cars when charged, and still they can't be confident there will be a charger available every day. My previous job had none.
If I could drive down the street and replace my electrolyte, neither changing jobs nor moving would suddenly make an electric vehicle unusable.
Your current job problem is an interface problem. If you could arrive at work and plug in, with a guarantee that you'd get X charge by the end of the workday, that'd give you the confidence that you're lacking with most of today's charging systems. It's not hard to imagine how to do that: a smart system with reservations is not rocket science. Even better: if you have a big battery and don't need to charge every day, your car can help smooth variations in wind and solar power.
If you want to protect yourself against both a job change and a home change, well, sure, a new job and a new apartment might not offer charging.
It's just ridiculous to claim that recharging time is not a huge downside to EVs. If I have to drive more than the range of the car, I've now added hours to my trip instead of the minutes a liquid fuel refill takes.
I often drive more than the range of a Tesla and certainly more than the range of something like a Leaf, which is why I have not considered buying one.
According to Tesla it takes 1h15m for a full charge. If you don't happen to be around a supercharger and have to use a 240v outlet you're looking at 9.5h for a full charge.
What's especially cool about this is that most homes in the U.S. have a 240v outlet in or near the garage, meaning it's easy to recharge while visiting friends or family.
I'm remodeling a house and putting in 240 just for the dryer an an unusual French range. Why would I need that in the garage? I certainly won't have that long an extension cord.
yeah I was mostly joking, although I couldn't afford one. The last vehicle I bought was a 1993 Ford Explorer - it was worth it because I got to learn how to replace an alternator. Crackheads eventually stole it. Next vehicle will be a pre 1996 mercedes turbodiesel so I don't have to get it smogged in california (poor people problems)
Dryers are often in the garage or in the small room adjacent to the garage that we called the "service porch" when I was a kid. I think it's because the garage is a good place for the main junction box (near the street, where the main power lines are, but indoors so creepers don't mess with it), and since 240-volt wiring is thick and expensive, it's cheaper to put any 240-volt outlets near the junction box.
So I'm going to know to unplug a dryer and expect my friends to be cool with that? And that plug is plain out in the visible, easily accessible areas and not hidden behind a heavy dryer?
I wonder if it's a regional thing. My experience is US West Coast. The dryer is a source of waste heat, which out here is usually undesirable, so it makes more sense to put it in an extremity of the house where the heat can easily escape. I could imagine that other areas of the country might be more likely to view extra heat as a good thing.
It's dirt simple to add, as the garage is usually where the distribution box is anyway. And lots of tools (and now, electric cars) can take advantage of 240.
Of the houses I've lived in, and the ones of my friends, I'd say ~75% of them have 240 outlets in the garage that were there from the start, usually for the dryer. FWIW.
> And lots of tools (and now, electric cars) can take advantage of 240.
Off topic: That's interesting to know. In Europe (UK) where 240V (well more like 230V these days) is the standard, it's not uncommon to see professional workmen using step-down boxes and 110V power tools for safety reasons.
Really? I have never heard of that in Austria. All power tools use 230V. I've never seen or heard of a 110V tool that's on sale in Europe.
I could imagine that some professional might use a specialized tool in a niche where only a 110V version is available -- but I've never heard of that either.
The safety aspect sounds odd -- 230V is not that dangerous, especially considering that ground fault circuit breakers are mandatory. Accidentally touching a live 230V wire doesn't really hurt that much.
It looks like there's another important safety feature: the center of the output side of the transformers is connected to ground --> this means that you have two phases that both have only 55V to ground.
I imagine that accidentally touching an exposed wire with a voltage difference of 55V is a lot less dangerous than 230V.
Superchargers are not used to fully charge cars, because it's faster to stay lower in the battery -- supercharging is very slow for the last 20%. For this reason, superchargers are placed closer together than the maximum range of the car.
It takes about 20-30 minutes in most cases. The last 10% of the battery takes a loooong time to complete, and it's bad for battery health, so most Tesla owners on roadtrips treat 90% as full and stop charging at that point. It ends up being about the same time it takes to visit the restroom and grab a snack, so there's not much of a time difference vs. any other trip where you're not trying to set a land speed record.
As a Tesla owner who occasionally drives long distance, I've always had superchargers on my route and it never takes "hours" to use them.
Keep in mind that most people mostly don't drive most places -- they drive relatively popular routes between cities, which are well-covered by the supercharger system.
There are two superchargers in my state, according to tesla.com. And neither are anywhere near my normal driving destinations. There is a gas station at nearly every interstate exit anywhere.
So, you're going to complain endlessly about this being an important issue without any interest in quantifying the issue. Gotcha. Great HN discussion topic.
That depends on what you're guessing my attitude is.
I suspect most Tesla owners might be a bit miffed when told supercharging takes hours -- it never does -- and then are told that it's unlikely that trips outside major cities will have any superchargers available -- when they are for the most popular routes.
I totally get that not every route has coverage. But these are questions of fact: unlikely is < 50%, and Tesla passed that level of coverage several years ago.
I'm observing that your attitude is defensive, as if the assertions you're refuting are personally insulting to you, as if they imply that you shouldn't have bought a Tesla. I don't understand why this is so.
Tesla is very popular here in Austin and I'm seriously considering buying one myself. There are a couple on my small street of just a dozen houses. However, the Tesla would only be for use in the city and I would still plan on having a second car for driving around the state.
Texas has, I think around 16 Superchargers; that's one Supercharger for every 1.7 million people in the state, about a thousand times less than the number of gas stations. There are extremely large portions of the state without Superchargers and inter-city driving wouldn't really be practical. Even in a gasoline powered vehicle the distances between stations can be over 100 miles (I'm thinking of the highway that crosses the King Ranch, but that's not the only long stretch).
Your driving habits are atypical. Charging a Tesla at home every night or so is easy for those with typical driving habits. In fact, starting every morning with a full tank, rather than the approximately daily gas station visits that you say you often need, is a huge upside.
Just because those patterns are atypical doesn't mean it's not a valid concern. This problem will stop more people than you would expect from getting an EV. Also many people in major cities do not have the space to charge their car, mostly because of only street parking available, so there does need to be a separate solution besides charging at home.
There's another thread about destination charging. My family's experience is that there's a dryer plug or at least a 120V plug within reach at homes we visit, or else a Supercharger less than ~100 miles (round trip + driving around town) from the hotel where we're staying.
There are also Chargepoint stations in many public parking lots, but we've never had to use them.
It's not as convenient today as gas stations. But Tesla has been adding Superchargers quickly.
Yeah, if you park on the street where you live, an EV will be a burden. I've seen random extension cords plugged into cars on streets in San Francisco, but that's a hack.
This discussion is not a binary question of right vs. wrong. OP said it was "ridiculous" not to view range and charging time as a "huge downside." Perhaps if EVs were marketed toward people who drive 50-60K miles/year as OP does (estimate based on often driving more than 250 miles in a single trip), that would be a legitimate criticism. But for many typical driving profiles (US average around 15K miles/year, average trip < 50 miles), current-generation EVs work fine, and their owners are happy. EVs work for most people, but not for OP. Can't both be true at the same time?
BTW the same discussion happened in the mid-2000s with smartphones. People were apparently ridiculous for giving up week-long battery life for something that has to charge at least daily. Yet for many, the benefits outweigh the costs. Smartphone battery life isn't ridiculous. It's just a better fit for some people than for others.
...you could consider renting a combustor in case of long distance trips. Furthermore, it'll reduce your vehicle's abrasion and even save you money by doing so: driving a combustor costs ~$0.50/mile (http://exchange.aaa.com/automotive/driving-costs/#.WZKZDt9Nz...).
Let's consider a trip of 300 miles.
It'll cost you about $150 with your own combustor.
Renting a car costs about $50/day (or cheaper, depending on which car to go for).
Gas consumption will add another ~$35 which leaves you with a total of $85/300 miles.
Just curious: how often do you exceed the 100 miles range?
I agree with your idea in general (and did similar math myself before buying a car), but I disagree with your numbers. I never drive 300+ miles just to turn around and drive home the next day. If I'm driving 300+ miles it's generally to spend some time at the place I'm driving to, and if renting I have to pay that time as well.
Last year I did 30 000km doing mostly 1500km, one-day marathons - I still do this route a few times a year, but now it includes a stop for the night, because this mode of traveling did a few bad things to my eyes.
I always did at worst a single one-hour stop, because it's simply unhealthy not to do so. I calculated that on this route in a Chevy Bolt I would have to do four stops, and in a 85kWh(or better) Tesla - three. That's three and two more stops respectively. On one hand that's a lot, on the other I could simply take a nap then or get something to eat.
My point is: it's entirely doable with an EV today. Even better: I've seen people do it.
> How is this fueling and distribution system cheaper or more efficient than the grid plus a bunch of 240v/60a outlets, most of which are already available in home garages. If instant refueling is a really a dire need for someone, they can just get a plugin hybrid (i.e. Chevy Volt) and no new infrastructure needed at all.
Simple. The grid - electricity transmission and especially distribution networks (depends on how they are classified at your location) are most likely not designed to sustain the load. There are multiple problems here.
First, not sure about US, though, distribution networks are usually overcommited by some factor (sometimes hundreds of percent). It works only because urban end users in a community do not utilise their line to the max all at once. Plug in whole suburban neighbourhood full of EVs for a night and quite likely will see power outages. Oops.
Second, the problem is not as simple as "more copper = more load". Mainly the grid must have some level of redundancy - single home unit is reached from power plant via multiple paths, so fault of a single line disrupts minimal portion of the grid. Next, there is balancing (or whatever that is called. Balancing is having redundant coal/nuclear reactor to balance quick and unpredictable output variations from e.g. solar/wind, variations in demand quicker than output increase rate of a plant, etc.) - grid designers/operators must ensure that energy flows more or less equally through out the grid. Similar problem to wireless mesh networking - one needs smart routing to avoid bottlenecking at single link.
Some of electric grid and computer network problems are almost the same. While users can say, well 10 years ago we had single desktop at each home unit and were happy. Now we have the problem that each home member has laptop, smartphone, tablet. We will install wireless routers and ISP can "ADD MOAR FIBER!!1". Not that simple, right?
It's nice to be able to recharge the fluid slowly and steadily vs needing to build the infrastructure to provide high current capacity.
I'm kind of surprised that, if they're already assuming they can build the battery and make it small enough to fit in a car, that they don't suggest that they will be able to build a charging station for pretty cheap too.
But transporting the liquid maybe is just even cheaper still, if they assume more of a distribution center with the charging equipment and higher capacity electricity access.
Most electric car charging can (and is) be done slowly and steadily. Cars with big batteries -- Bolts and Teslas -- can go several days of typical driving without recharging, then charge overnight.
My apartment complex has chargers available, because there are a lot of electric cars in the local area. New apartment complexes are required to install chargers. It's not rocket science.
I am not very knowledgeable about battery technologies. How could you ditch the membrane in a system that is expected to be moving and shaking? (eg a car) Is it not important for the fluids to be separate?
Unless I'm misunderstanding how it works, some questions about this idea:
* Presumably, you have to fully empty and then fill your tank?
Over twice as long to refill as for gasoline/diesel. (Still:
not terrible.)
* How do you get refunded for your partially used "fuel"?
I generally refuel around a quarter of a tank. In this case,
that means I'm sending back 25% unused fuel.
(Pump it out, analyze the mixture, provide credit? Seems seriously game-able.)
* Is the power output constant regardless of charge? Can I get 20kW
of output at 25% charge?
Extracting the fluid is already going to be an interesting task (it seems like it'd probably be uneconomical to suck it out with a vacuum). I can see the cars having separate input and output holes. With a clever design in the car you could probably start refilling while you finish emptying.
A recharge should be pretty cheap. The national average cost for electricity is ~13¢/kWh, so refilling a 100 kWh battery would only be $13 of energy. Other costs - storage, maintenance, labor, land, etc - add to that, but you still aren't out that much. It's possible that you just pay full price regardless, since they are giving you totally fresh solution.
One of the most important things about flow batteries is that they're basically invariant with charge and scale, so almost certainly (until you really hit the dregs - you probably lose voltage at 4%).
So maybe this is a biased perspective because I have an existing relationship with Purdue...
Purdue, as with MIT, tends to oversell their research a little bit (a lot). The difference is that MIT's overselling is believable whereas Purdue's wreaks of insecurity and overstating as posturing. As others have noted on a technical level...take it with a grain of salt. The current president (and ex-Republicant governor) Mitch Daniels has been pushing a really hard narrative of privatizing the university and its resources for corporate gain. He neeeeeeds this type of thing, whether or not it pans out.
I fully understand how such a team might run out of money -- it's not an easy work after all, and takes time.
But honestly, for the last 10 or so years, I can't remember even ONE time that I've heard about "revolutionary new battery technology" and it arriving on the market soon after. Or ever.
Honestly, what happens to ALL those people? From genius 13-15 year old school students to established scientists -- did anyone try to contact them, say, one year later?
I am tempted to think that inventing a possible new revolutionary battery technology is closely correlated to suddenly teleporting far away from Earth.
Some of them put their product on the market, but quietly.
One company I've been watching closely which at the same time has been secretive to say the least:
http://www.amprius.com/
Their product is a li-ion battery with a silicon anode and apparently it works, because they put it into an actual device:
http://www.imei.info/phonedatabase/79823-bluboo-x550/ (Note the massive 5Ah battery)
These guys generated quite a buzz back in the day:
https://oxisenergy.com/
For now their product is sort of disappointing, but the lone fact that they harnessed this new chemistry is notable.
Last but not least IMO the most promising company among them all:
https://www.eosenergystorage.com/
I remember when they were promising 6MWh/1MW stacks and 10k cycles instead of the 4MWh/1MW stacks with a lifespan of 5k cycles they are offering now, but the key thing is they are deploying them as we speak - actually, their total production for 2017 was sold out at the start of this year.
These 1MWh stacks are made from 12kWh modules, which sooner or later will be offered to individual customers.
Your knowledge is impressive. I am thankful for your sharing it!
From I gather from the websites, it seems these companies move to bigger batteries and stuff like making more reliable power supplies for machinery -- maybe partially-off-the-grid homes as well?
Does that mean they had no luck in minituarizing their tech to make it viable for smartphones, smartwatches, Bluetooth headsets or car audio systems -- generally a small consumer-grade battery?
I very clearly remember at least two separate cases of teenage Indian school students that managed to demonstrate a prototype of a very quick-charging battery that can hold 1000+ mAh, somewhere in the last 5 years. I am absolutely sure I've read such news.
However, last I heard about them, some corporation gave them free scholarship in an elite university... and after that, full radio-silence. Really makes me suspicous, you know. What the hell happens to these people? Don't they still want to revolutionize the world as they claimed they wanted to when they were teenagers?
> Does that mean they had no luck in minituarizing their tech to make it viable for smartphones, smartwatches, Bluetooth headsets or car audio systems -- generally a small consumer-grade battery?
In the case of OXIS their battery has pretty poor volumetric energy density, so while it's light(about as dense as water) it takes too much space.
On the other hand the Eos's battery has great volumetric/gravimetric parameters, but poor power density - to the point where if you short-circuit it it's just going to seep current for four hours.
They were planning on putting these batteries in cars, but for that they would need at least a 100kWh unit which would still require a small li-ion buffer for short power bursts.
> However, last I heard about them, some corporation gave them free scholarship in an elite university... and after that, full radio-silence. Really makes me suspicous, you know. What the hell happens to these people? Don't they still want to revolutionize the world as they claimed they wanted to when they were teenagers?
Sometimes the research simply goes nowhere. Take for example the case of Sakti3 and Dyson. Dyson bought their business, because it looked promising, but after over a year of silence abandoned the patents that came with it. Apparently the chemistry simply wasn't viable for commercial use.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 239 ms ] threadThere are commercial flow batteries that use membranes.[1] One uses zinc-iron. The energy storage capacity is limited only by tank capacity, so you can fill big tanks using solar power or wind and draw it out later. Typical system is 288 kW/960 kWh, and occupies 6 shipping containers.
[1] https://www.viznenergy.com/product-gs200/
The same reason metal does not rust without water (the metal/oxygen is touching after all without a membrane) - you need a second path for the electricity, which is what the water does. (The water does not chemically do anything - it simply acts as a wire.)
I'm having visions of the battery liquid sloshing around while driving.
This seems neat, though I think often academics solve one problem in a lab and then imagine a whole string of other problems will easily be solved to get their product to market.
The guy said the biggest problem is "man power". I'm skeptical of this claim.
They haven't built anything other than a table top demo -- I'd of liked to see them build a unit that could power something significant. Stick one in a golf cart at least.
But neat and inspiring nonetheless.
1. would this be dispensed just gas? Pull up, pay, and pump it in?
2. But in this case you would also pump the old stuff out?
3. Is there any "prep" time needed for the solution? aka charging
I have a Tesla, and if I had to make a choice between a traditional battery and a battery I can fill instantly but can't fill at home, I'd take the traditional battery without hesitation. Faster charging on trips would be nice, but not worrying about it the rest of the time is even nicer.
Tesla owners are distinctly not representative of the average person's situation.
In otherwords, if you're adaptable to home charging, then you really want home charging. Makes perfect sense to also observe all current EV owners are adaptable to home charging, by definition.
So strictly speaking adding it expands the market to different kinds of EV owners who would treat it like a gas car, just with no direct emissions. If you can add this feature without sacrificing anything else, I'd say that's a very big deal.
I assume that in reality this tech is a decade of hard work away from even being usable in an EV, so we'll never see it made.
That's confirmation bias at best. You should ask why folks who don't buy Tesla (and buy cars at the same price point) decided otherwise.
There's really no point to exchanging the electrolyte in an EV, even a 45 minute charge while grocery shopping or eating is "one less stop."
This one is different by not having a membrane.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery
My impression is that the difference between flow batteries and fuel cells is that flow batteries are closed systems whereas fuel cells are open systems. Since this can be refueled, it sounds like an open system.
Edit: Your linked Wikipedia article answers my question. "A flow battery is a rechargeable fuel cell." I guess the distinction is not closed vs open, but rechargeable vs unspecified.
A flow battery is completely self contained.
Getting your oxidizer from the environment obviously helps with weight, but it comes with its own set of problems since it's hard to control purity.
The wikipedia definition kinda touches on this. Since everything is contained in the battery you can recharge it with just electricity.
In contrast a fuel cell will emit the waste (water usually), so you no longer have the raw material to recharge it anymore. (Although obviously you can just make more by collecting it from the environment - think emit the water, then electrolyze other water to recharge the battery.)
The whole "Breakthrough! Just add money!" thing is really tiresome not because it would be wonderful if it was as simple as just adding money, but because so very many people have abused it when they really had no idea at all about what the issues were with their technology.
I like the concept of flow batteries, and have read a number of interesting papers over the years on them. They solve a number of problems if you can get them to work and the instant recharge is perhaps the best one.
That said, a very good flow battery demonstrator project would be a set of solar panels (cheap these days), continually pumping electrolyte from a reservoir and 'charging' it (inverting its oxidation reaction). Coupled to a flow battery and a constant load.
If you can't build that, and show that by putting 'nX' load of solar cells in the loop, and continually run the base load 24x7, then you've got the basis for an actual breakthrough. Even doing it for a small "meaningless" load like 50 watts (1.2kWh / day), you will have demonstrated not only that your battery works but that it can be combined in a system that currently requires "previous generation" batteries.
And from that demonstrator you can make educated guesses about how much maintenance would be required for a larger scale system, how well the system performs 24x7, how to maintain it while it is operating, Etc.
Then you can say, for $X we estimate we could run a typical house off grid. For $Y we estimate we could provide Z MWhr of base load. If you can't build the 50W system though, it is unlikely you can build any system yet.
https://whova.com/embedded/subsession/icpma_201705/177114/17...
Still I would love to read how Dr. Cushman sees it working out.
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/metals-vanadium-prices-idUSL4...
* Refueling requires hooking up and exchanging hazardous materials (fluids).
* This assumes that there's a single universal electrolyte fluid.
* Variability in fluid quality / consistency (across areas and batches) / return materials fraud are problems.
* The less sealed nature of the batteries is probably a safety hazard (increased crash/fire risk, etc).
I think that the public would be better served by standardizing on a few /types/ of battery packs as physical interfaces, and having rapid 'tank replacement' stations (robots) and leased battery packs.
Innovation in storage tech and/or picking a pack sized for the expected use would allow for improvements and competition as well as changes in technology.
We'd need to know more about what type of chemicals are used in this battery, but glancing at what's involved for 'flow batteries' I'd make a /slightly/ educated guess that these would all be considered 'industrial' materials. You might see a public bus using them, but I doubt it would be safe to allow the average driver to self-refuel.
Gasoline is incredibly toxic, we are just accustom to it so we don't give it much though.
Worrying about quality control of the fluids is similar. The global energy industry is up to the challenge of reliably producing batches of chemicals that narrowly match a particular specification.
If you can get them looking into it enough to try to teach you about it (seems like human nature to want to correct people who are wrong) then you've won because they'll also pick up (without being told in ways that get their backs up) that they were also wrong and they can just quietly abandon that stand.
There's a table of the currently known public chemistries near the bottom.
There are applications with better power density than Lithium based batteries (at the electrodes), but I don't know about how an overall solution would compare to a gasoline setup.
I think the only fair comparison in such a case would be to have a roughly standard car design and compare complete solutions (currently common petrol / diesel depending on vehicle size, hybrid (electric), full electric (batteries / 'flow batteries' of different types)).
What about solar panels on the roof? I found this article [1], and Elon Musk has said they'll "probably offer it as an option" [2].
I wonder how many extra miles you could get with that. If nothing else, it would be nice to know that you could slowly recharge your battery if you get stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Another idea - highways where you could drive while recharging. Maybe something similar to train tracks, or an overhead wire. Or wireless power transfer through the wheels, if that would be possible? (I don't think it is.)
[1] https://thinkprogress.org/prius-solar-roof-breakthrough-2b92...
[2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/794575003446480896
I'm probably totally wrong here, but if the whole car was solar panels I would expect 600 watt to be generated. An electric car would need that for 0.8hrs or so to move one mile (0.44 kWh/mile?) plus acceleration.
So for every square meter of roof space covered in panels you can get a max of about 200 watts of power.
This is a lazy, handwavy characterization of the situation, but it paints the picture, it isn't much of a contribution as batteries head north of 50 kw-h.
At 90 degree incidence, after that it falls off as the co-sine of the angle. So if you don't track the sun it will drop considerably, you daily average compared to the ideal is more likely going to be between 7 and 12%.
A 100W solar panel typically generates about 400 Wh per day, and has an area of 0.7 m², weighs about 8 kg, and costs about $100.
Using the range and battery data for the Tesla S:
A 200 km daily commute (i.e. an hour each way) you would require ~35 kWh, and require 90 100W panels, or 60 m², weigh 700 kg, and cost $9000. Possible, but only as a fixed install, not on the car’s roof!
For touring, you could do 500 km per night (about maximum range for the 100 kWh Tesla S) and charge during the day, but would require 250 panels / 175 m² / 2000 kg / $25,000. You would require a trailer to carry them, and the set up & tear down each day would be laborious, but it would be possible and you could then travel indefinitely. A bit like what Mark Watney does in The Martian. If you were willing to spend multiple days charging for each 500 km leg, or only travel a couple of hours per day it would be even easier.
Edit: I just looked up The Martian and Watney had 18 kWh of batteries for his rover, 28 m² of panels (with longer days but less power), travelling a max of 90 km per day for over a month. So yeah.
For a large percentage of common use cases this is not an issue. EV drivers by and large do other valuable things while their vehicles charge, like work and sleep.
> Current electric cars need convenient locations built for charging ports.
This is only true for apartment dwellers (for now). People who live in houses typically charge at home.
> Designing and building enough of these recharging stations requires massive infrastructure development, which means the energy distribution and storage system is being rebuilt at tremendous cost to accommodate the need for continual local battery recharge
> Users would be able to drop off the spent electrolytes at gas stations, which would then be sent in bulk to solar farms, wind turbine installations or hydroelectric plants for reconstitution or re-charging into the viable electrolyte and reused many times.
How is this fueling and distribution system cheaper or more efficient than the grid plus a bunch of 240v/60a outlets, most of which are already available in home garages. If instant refueling is a really a dire need for someone, they can just get a plugin hybrid (i.e. Chevy Volt) and no new infrastructure needed at all.
Edit: removed snarky words
In Germany, over 65% of people rent. So, the supermajority would be affected by this.
EDIT: I meant "live in rented apartments". "Miete" implies renting an apartment here, usually.
Wait a minute, it's Germany, don't y'all already have 220V/240V/whatever it takes? In which case, yeah, I guess you could just plug into an outlet and charge just as quickly as I do in my American garage with its special charger because our outlets are 110V.
http://www.lenntech.com/processes/disinfection/regulation-eu...
While some countries moved away from permanent chlorination, it is still widely used, either as a permanent (all the way to the faucet) or punctual (just in the treatment facility) water disinfection solution.
The UK, for example, uses permanent chlorination.
So depending where you live, maybe its time to find all tap water gross.
Pretty sure I'm right in saying they don't flouridate the water either.
The downside is that it requires a highly precise tuning and maintenance of the water systems to avoid any contamination downstream. Most countries don't seem to have the discipline to do so (US for example).
But they do fluoridate the water, depending on the country and region.
Water fluoridation's positive impact is small when the population frequently brushes their teeth with fluoridated toothpaste, and both fluoridation and chlorination don't have any negative impacts on health.
Chlorinated water is used in Germany depending on the city and source. Cities using aquifers for drinking water, like Berlin, usually require less disinfectants as the original water carries little to no organisms.
They might still use chlorine for emergency disinfections. But usually the levels are very low and hard to notice.
http://www.evoqua.com/en/brands/Wallace_and_Tiernan/Pages/be...
Cities that don't have good aquifers usually resort to rivers and lakes, requiring heavier disinfection both at the treatment and on the way to the homes, so they need to add higher levels of chlorine.
All cities I've ever lived in, or ever been to, have used aquifers for their drinking water, and have never fluoritdated or chlorinated their water due to that. We currently use UV desinfection where I live.
Yeah, if you use rivers and lakes I could understand it, but I never actually knew places would do that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector#/media/File:NEM...
Nope, because then you need bigger wires, and copper ain't cheap. Whereas on the same wires if the voltage is bumped, you get a wattage bump, too. So Europe gets kettles that heat twice as quickly as U. S. kettles.
Actually, we have up to 400V/60A for stoves and charging cars, or as main line for your apartment. But if you rent an apartment, you won't have that at your parking space.
The only one predicting anything is you, Captain Pedantic. Parent used the present tense, which I take to mean that if I look for an apartment today in Germany, I won’t find an apartment with a charger. Tomorrow? Who knows, no one was talking about tomorrow. On top of that, speaking from a German perspective, odds are that English is a second language. But you go right ahead and pick apart that sentence for something to criticize.
What about people who only have street parking without a driveway or garage?
If I understand correctly, this technology is a (perhaps better/more robust) flow battery into which one pumps fresh electrolyte after removing "discharged" electrolyte.
We now pump and convey by ship, rail and truck, liquid fossil fuels. Fresh electrolyte would be handled likewise.
The return loop for used electrolyte is already there. Gas trucks now return empty for refill. In many cases, an empty ship or train returns to a fuel source for refill. These could bring electrolyte back to recharging facilities. Whether these are powered by renewable or nuclear or other energy wouldn't impact the distribution system much.
Repurposing the existing fuel distribution to handle electrolytes doesn't seem prohibitive. It's something I hadn't considered, as I'm not used to thinking of electrical energy as a liquid I could deliver in a truck.
A lot of refined petroleum is shipped by pipeline. If you live in, say, the DC area, then your gasoline is coming from crude oil refined somewhere in Texas or Louisiana and shipped by pipeline to a distribution terminal. The refuelling trucks are only traveling from the distribution terminal, maybe 20 miles or so, not all the way to the refineries.
According to <https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu..., pipelines carried 63.3% of refined petroleum products in 2009, and an even higher share of (79.8%) of raw crude oil. The numbers for crude are likely to be rather different for today thanks to the Bakken oil field (which happens to not be in a conducive place for the existing pipeline network), but I don't think that refined petroleum products are likely to be very different.
Charging EVs via the grid involves minimal new distribution infrastructure. The grid already supports high loads like the kind that EVs impose and the nightly pattern of EV charging actually complement wind as an energy source.
Flow batteries seem much more promising as utility scale storage for intermittent renewables.
Even still, between time of use rates and smart charge scheduling, much of the EV charging load can be dispatched in such a way that actually postpones or mitigates altogether the need for grid upgrades.
[1] http://et.epri.com/Communications_Potential_Impacts_of_Vehic...
I also really enjoy the one-pedal-driving enabled by the "L" mode, which tells the car not to mimic an automatic, rather to use regenerative braking as aggressively as possible. I can drive all over town without touching the brakes.
I haven't driven a Leaf myself, but I know people who have, and they much prefer the Bolt EV.
I'll try to keep an eye on this thread if you have any specific questions.
For another, it's small inside, especially horizontally. It's not a big deal for me, but two large people side by side would be quite close together.
The gauge cluster screen is a bit boring, it seems like it could be more attractive and interesting. But that's a minor quibble.
Nothing else comes to mind, it's mostly been an excellent car so far.
Having stations built in convenient locations means that you can greatly extend your effective range. If I have a car that can drive for 80 miles, then I can only go 40 miles away before reaching bingo 'fuel'. Often, one will leave some buffer.
Doesn't matter if you are picking up someone at the airport, grocery shopping or working. If charging stations are everywhere, then you would only need to worry about how far you can go.
If said stations were also wireless, then one might not have to stop to charge at all.
If I could drive down the street and replace my electrolyte, neither changing jobs nor moving would suddenly make an electric vehicle unusable.
If you want to protect yourself against both a job change and a home change, well, sure, a new job and a new apartment might not offer charging.
I often drive more than the range of a Tesla and certainly more than the range of something like a Leaf, which is why I have not considered buying one.
I'm remodeling a house and putting in 240 just for the dryer an an unusual French range. Why would I need that in the garage? I certainly won't have that long an extension cord.
Certainly no one in an apartment building!
someone needs to create self-driving mobile supercharging units - just call one up to meet you somewhere
QED.
Off topic: That's interesting to know. In Europe (UK) where 240V (well more like 230V these days) is the standard, it's not uncommon to see professional workmen using step-down boxes and 110V power tools for safety reasons.
I could imagine that some professional might use a specialized tool in a niche where only a 110V version is available -- but I've never heard of that either.
The safety aspect sounds odd -- 230V is not that dangerous, especially considering that ground fault circuit breakers are mandatory. Accidentally touching a live 230V wire doesn't really hurt that much.
This blog post lists the reasons professional builders in the UK could use 230v and an RCD but generally dont.
https://www.its.co.uk/blog/buying-guides/what-is-110v-do-we-...
It looks like there's another important safety feature: the center of the output side of the transformers is connected to ground --> this means that you have two phases that both have only 55V to ground.
I imagine that accidentally touching an exposed wire with a voltage difference of 55V is a lot less dangerous than 230V.
I love HN. You learn new stuff every day.
So no, supercharging does not take hours.
Keep in mind that most people mostly don't drive most places -- they drive relatively popular routes between cities, which are well-covered by the supercharger system.
I suspect most Tesla owners might be a bit miffed when told supercharging takes hours -- it never does -- and then are told that it's unlikely that trips outside major cities will have any superchargers available -- when they are for the most popular routes.
I totally get that not every route has coverage. But these are questions of fact: unlikely is < 50%, and Tesla passed that level of coverage several years ago.
Texas has, I think around 16 Superchargers; that's one Supercharger for every 1.7 million people in the state, about a thousand times less than the number of gas stations. There are extremely large portions of the state without Superchargers and inter-city driving wouldn't really be practical. Even in a gasoline powered vehicle the distances between stations can be over 100 miles (I'm thinking of the highway that crosses the King Ranch, but that's not the only long stretch).
1. driving to a relatives 2. driving somewhere for vacation
There are also Chargepoint stations in many public parking lots, but we've never had to use them.
It's not as convenient today as gas stations. But Tesla has been adding Superchargers quickly.
BTW the same discussion happened in the mid-2000s with smartphones. People were apparently ridiculous for giving up week-long battery life for something that has to charge at least daily. Yet for many, the benefits outweigh the costs. Smartphone battery life isn't ridiculous. It's just a better fit for some people than for others.
Let's consider a trip of 300 miles. It'll cost you about $150 with your own combustor. Renting a car costs about $50/day (or cheaper, depending on which car to go for). Gas consumption will add another ~$35 which leaves you with a total of $85/300 miles.
Just curious: how often do you exceed the 100 miles range?
I always did at worst a single one-hour stop, because it's simply unhealthy not to do so. I calculated that on this route in a Chevy Bolt I would have to do four stops, and in a 85kWh(or better) Tesla - three. That's three and two more stops respectively. On one hand that's a lot, on the other I could simply take a nap then or get something to eat.
My point is: it's entirely doable with an EV today. Even better: I've seen people do it.
There are plenty of houses out there that use on-street parking.
Simple. The grid - electricity transmission and especially distribution networks (depends on how they are classified at your location) are most likely not designed to sustain the load. There are multiple problems here.
First, not sure about US, though, distribution networks are usually overcommited by some factor (sometimes hundreds of percent). It works only because urban end users in a community do not utilise their line to the max all at once. Plug in whole suburban neighbourhood full of EVs for a night and quite likely will see power outages. Oops.
Second, the problem is not as simple as "more copper = more load". Mainly the grid must have some level of redundancy - single home unit is reached from power plant via multiple paths, so fault of a single line disrupts minimal portion of the grid. Next, there is balancing (or whatever that is called. Balancing is having redundant coal/nuclear reactor to balance quick and unpredictable output variations from e.g. solar/wind, variations in demand quicker than output increase rate of a plant, etc.) - grid designers/operators must ensure that energy flows more or less equally through out the grid. Similar problem to wireless mesh networking - one needs smart routing to avoid bottlenecking at single link.
Some of electric grid and computer network problems are almost the same. While users can say, well 10 years ago we had single desktop at each home unit and were happy. Now we have the problem that each home member has laptop, smartphone, tablet. We will install wireless routers and ISP can "ADD MOAR FIBER!!1". Not that simple, right?
I'm kind of surprised that, if they're already assuming they can build the battery and make it small enough to fit in a car, that they don't suggest that they will be able to build a charging station for pretty cheap too.
But transporting the liquid maybe is just even cheaper still, if they assume more of a distribution center with the charging equipment and higher capacity electricity access.
A recharge should be pretty cheap. The national average cost for electricity is ~13¢/kWh, so refilling a 100 kWh battery would only be $13 of energy. Other costs - storage, maintenance, labor, land, etc - add to that, but you still aren't out that much. It's possible that you just pay full price regardless, since they are giving you totally fresh solution.
One of the most important things about flow batteries is that they're basically invariant with charge and scale, so almost certainly (until you really hit the dregs - you probably lose voltage at 4%).
* what is lifecycle of batt?
* cost (not $ cost, resource cost?)
* slave-made?
how much trans-national exploitation occurs to produce one such batt?
Purdue, as with MIT, tends to oversell their research a little bit (a lot). The difference is that MIT's overselling is believable whereas Purdue's wreaks of insecurity and overstating as posturing. As others have noted on a technical level...take it with a grain of salt. The current president (and ex-Republicant governor) Mitch Daniels has been pushing a really hard narrative of privatizing the university and its resources for corporate gain. He neeeeeeds this type of thing, whether or not it pans out.
But honestly, for the last 10 or so years, I can't remember even ONE time that I've heard about "revolutionary new battery technology" and it arriving on the market soon after. Or ever.
Honestly, what happens to ALL those people? From genius 13-15 year old school students to established scientists -- did anyone try to contact them, say, one year later?
I am tempted to think that inventing a possible new revolutionary battery technology is closely correlated to suddenly teleporting far away from Earth.
(Not sorry for sarcasm)
One company I've been watching closely which at the same time has been secretive to say the least: http://www.amprius.com/ Their product is a li-ion battery with a silicon anode and apparently it works, because they put it into an actual device: http://www.imei.info/phonedatabase/79823-bluboo-x550/ (Note the massive 5Ah battery)
These guys generated quite a buzz back in the day: https://oxisenergy.com/ For now their product is sort of disappointing, but the lone fact that they harnessed this new chemistry is notable.
Last but not least IMO the most promising company among them all: https://www.eosenergystorage.com/ I remember when they were promising 6MWh/1MW stacks and 10k cycles instead of the 4MWh/1MW stacks with a lifespan of 5k cycles they are offering now, but the key thing is they are deploying them as we speak - actually, their total production for 2017 was sold out at the start of this year.
These 1MWh stacks are made from 12kWh modules, which sooner or later will be offered to individual customers.
From I gather from the websites, it seems these companies move to bigger batteries and stuff like making more reliable power supplies for machinery -- maybe partially-off-the-grid homes as well?
Does that mean they had no luck in minituarizing their tech to make it viable for smartphones, smartwatches, Bluetooth headsets or car audio systems -- generally a small consumer-grade battery?
I very clearly remember at least two separate cases of teenage Indian school students that managed to demonstrate a prototype of a very quick-charging battery that can hold 1000+ mAh, somewhere in the last 5 years. I am absolutely sure I've read such news.
However, last I heard about them, some corporation gave them free scholarship in an elite university... and after that, full radio-silence. Really makes me suspicous, you know. What the hell happens to these people? Don't they still want to revolutionize the world as they claimed they wanted to when they were teenagers?
In the case of OXIS their battery has pretty poor volumetric energy density, so while it's light(about as dense as water) it takes too much space.
On the other hand the Eos's battery has great volumetric/gravimetric parameters, but poor power density - to the point where if you short-circuit it it's just going to seep current for four hours.
They were planning on putting these batteries in cars, but for that they would need at least a 100kWh unit which would still require a small li-ion buffer for short power bursts.
> However, last I heard about them, some corporation gave them free scholarship in an elite university... and after that, full radio-silence. Really makes me suspicous, you know. What the hell happens to these people? Don't they still want to revolutionize the world as they claimed they wanted to when they were teenagers?
Sometimes the research simply goes nowhere. Take for example the case of Sakti3 and Dyson. Dyson bought their business, because it looked promising, but after over a year of silence abandoned the patents that came with it. Apparently the chemistry simply wasn't viable for commercial use.