Join Early Retirement Today
Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 07-30-2010, 08:43 PM   #101
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Lawn chair in Texas
Posts: 14,183
Quote:
Originally Posted by clifp View Post
I simply don't see anywhere near the level of scrutiny about green products that I see for the rest of stuff we buy.
We'll have to agree to disagree, then, but that was supposed to be sarcasm...

I'm sorry, but the whole new wavy, psychobabble, pop psychology spewed on commercials, and for that matter, regular TV programming, has turned us into Stepford consumers. Take this pill, exercise for 5 nanoseconds on the Pie-Master, eat anything you want, wear this "label", and you'll be thinner, younger, richer, and get laid more often...

"Saws an engine block in two, and still slices a tomato paper thin!"
__________________
Have Funds, Will Retire

...not doing anything of true substance...
HFWR is offline   Reply With Quote
Join the #1 Early Retirement and Financial Independence Forum Today - It's Totally Free!

Are you planning to be financially independent as early as possible so you can live life on your own terms? Discuss successful investing strategies, asset allocation models, tax strategies and other related topics in our online forum community. Our members range from young folks just starting their journey to financial independence, military retirees and even multimillionaires. No matter where you fit in you'll find that Early-Retirement.org is a great community to join. Best of all it's totally FREE!

You are currently viewing our boards as a guest so you have limited access to our community. Please take the time to register and you will gain a lot of great new features including; the ability to participate in discussions, network with our members, see fewer ads, upload photographs, create a retirement blog, send private messages and so much, much more!

Old 07-31-2010, 07:39 AM   #102
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
easysurfer's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 13,127
Build them and prices will go down:

Electric cars like Chevy's new Volt are too expensive today, but they won't be for long. - Newsweek

Remember how much you paid for things in the past when they were brand new?
A calculator. A LED watch (before LCD watches). A caller ID display. Now they practically can't give them away.
__________________
Have you ever seen a headstone with these words
"If only I had spent more time at work" ... from "Busy Man" sung by Billy Ray Cyrus
easysurfer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-31-2010, 08:09 AM   #103
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Northern IL
Posts: 26,806
Quote:
Originally Posted by easysurfer View Post
Build them and prices will go down:

Electric cars like Chevy's new Volt are too expensive today, but they won't be for long. - Newsweek

Remember how much you paid for things in the past when they were brand new?
A calculator. A LED watch (before LCD watches). A caller ID display. Now they practically can't give them away.
Except for the tiny annoying little fact that the entire premise of his article is, how should I say this.... WRONG?

I have pointed it out before, the limiting factor for EVs is battery performance/cost. If it was the CPU or the disk drive, we'd all be driving them now. Batteries are just not progressing at that sort of rate, and selling a few hundred thousand EVs before their time won't change that.

Using his 'logic' so generously, why isn't health care cheap like cell phones? I thought everything comes down with volume?

Some links earlier in this thread:

http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...tml#post962447

http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...tml#post962416

-ERD50
ERD50 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-31-2010, 08:32 AM   #104
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Northern IL
Posts: 26,806
But don't take my word for it - here's a summary of the DOE's review of battery technology and on their programs :

Link to DOE report

Lithium-ion Batteries Are Still Not Ready for Prime Time -- Seeking Alpha

Quote:
this new report is a relatively upbeat assessment of lithium-ion battery research and development that once again provides a stark reality check for investors in energy storage stocks.
So even a relatively upbeat assessment is a stark reality check.

Quote:
... discussion on 25 pending research, development, analysis and testing projects that are nowhere near complete. It's clear from the Report that the DOE is coordinating a massively complex and expensive drive to improve lithium-ion batteries to a point where they will be cost-effective in transportation applications. It's equally clear that the effort has a long way to go before we're able to accurately assess the likelihood that all or any of the pending R&D projects will result in innovations that can survive the transition from the laboratory bench to the factory floor. The R&D is critically important, but favorable results are not guaranteed, costs are likely to exceed budgets by a wide margin and timing is anybody's guess. The only certainties are it won't be soon and it won't be cheap.

It's also a difficult industry that's constrained by laws of chemistry, requires massive volumes of commodity raw materials and can only be described as capital intensive heavy manufacturing. That means we can reasonably expect steady incremental progress over a the long-term.

However, the game changing 'Moore's Law' type advances we've come to expect from information and communications technology are simply not going to happen in energy storage.
Sorry, don't be mad at me, I'm just the messenger.

-ERD50
ERD50 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-31-2010, 03:09 PM   #105
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
clifp's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 7,733
Quote:
However, the game changing 'Moore's Law' type advances we've come to expect from information and communications technology are simply not going to happen in energy storage.
The obvious solution is to have Gordon Moore (who is happily retired and giving away his billions via his foundation) stop looking for Extraterrestrial life and start looking at batteries. It is basically a chemistry problem and Gordon has a PHd in Chemistry from CalTech so he is clearly no dummy.

Then issue the Moore's battery law
"The energy density of batteries will double every two years. "

Hey it couldn't hurt.
clifp is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-31-2010, 03:29 PM   #106
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 11,401
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nodak View Post
I am curious how well the hybrid and fully electric vehicles handle extreme cold conditions (40 below zero). I have my doubts about how well they would work in those situations.
It does help that we have the plugs readily available in parking lots!
Meadbh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-31-2010, 04:52 PM   #107
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Nodak's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Cavalier
Posts: 2,317
Quote:
Originally Posted by Meadbh View Post
It does help that we have the plugs readily available in parking lots!
True, but the affect of cold on batteries leads me to believe that the engine of the Chevy volt will be running constantly to keep the battery charged. That would have a big impact on the cost savings. Don't get me wrong, the electric motor is the perfect power plant for a car, we just don't have the energy storage technology to make it work well yet.
__________________
"Don't take life so serious, son. It ain't nohow permanent." Pogo Possum (Walt Kelly)
Nodak is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-31-2010, 04:57 PM   #108
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
Koolau's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Leeward Oahu
Posts: 17,714
Quote:
Originally Posted by clifp View Post
The obvious solution is to have Gordon Moore (who is happily retired and giving away his billions via his foundation) stop looking for Extraterrestrial life and start looking at batteries. It is basically a chemistry problem and Gordon has a PHd in Chemistry from CalTech so he is clearly no dummy.

Then issue the Moore's battery law
"The energy density of batteries will double every two years. "

Hey it couldn't hurt.
Assuming you're totally tongue in cheek about "Moore's law" for batteries, it does make me think: There should be a relatively easy way to calculate a "theoretical" maximum energy density for batteries. I never took electrochemistry, but I would think you would pick the two chemicals with the highest electrical potential between them and then calculate the volume or weight of those two chemicals per watt or other energy measure that would be possible. In practice, those two chemicals might be too exotic or incompatible to be used in an actual battery, but at least, then we would have some idea of how big a battery would actually be needed to power a car for a reasonable distance. My SWAG is that "you can't get there from here". Energy density like you have in gasoline (because you can burn it - not convert it electrically) is MUCH higher than the potential between an electron donor and an electron acceptor. Fuel cells can get you there, but then we really aren't talking about "charging" a battery anymore. We're talking about fueling a cell instead. Something you can plug in and charge MUST have an absolute limit of how much energy per volume or weight that it can hold. Just as liquid HC have roughly 125,000 BTU per gallon (+/-) there must be a way to calculate the potential of a theoretical "perfect cell".

Maybe it would be better to go the complete opposite way from battery technology and back to ICE technology. With gasoline, we throw away (what?) 85% of the heat of the combustion. If we could cut that in half (by reusing the waste heat - think of a trubocharger that instead operates an alternator to charge up the Prius battery faster than braking. Or maybe the cooling medium for the engine block is an exotic CFHC which can be used to power a "steam" engine to operate an alternator. I'm sure the "smart" folks have already rejected such ideas, but it sure seems easier to my pea-sized brain than trying to find exotic chemicals which can hold electrons in suspended animation for later use. Just my $.02 worth. And, oh yes, YMMV
__________________
Ko'olau's Law -

Anything which can be used can be misused. Anything which can be misused will be.
Koolau is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 07-31-2010, 06:10 PM   #109
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
samclem's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: SW Ohio
Posts: 14,404
Did anything ever develop from that rumored "almost ready for market" research on supercapacitors? At least it's a different (non-chemical) approach to electricity storage.

At one point, high-speed flywheels offered much better energy densities and lower costs than batteries. For vehicle use, dealing with the gyroscopic forces would be a challenge, but I think there were approaches using gimbals (so the flywheel could pivot and allow the vehicle to change direction without fighting the flywheel). The safety problems (kinetic energy of the flywheel) were largely solved by using a composite flywheel in an evacuated composite containment vessel. If the container is compromised and admits air, the flywheel pretty much disintegrates into some epoxy dust and fiberglass yarn.
samclem is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-31-2010, 08:28 PM   #110
Moderator Emeritus
Nords's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Oahu
Posts: 26,855
Quote:
Originally Posted by samclem View Post
If the container is compromised and admits air, the flywheel pretty much disintegrates into some epoxy dust and fiberglass yarn.
I'll bet that gets exciting.

Submarine inertial-navigation systems used to use a beryllium ball spinning at some ridiculously high RPM in an evacuated chamber which responded to the sub's changes of motion by nudging accelerometers. It was horribly expensive, incredibly delicate & fragile, and a huge PITA to calibrate/maintain. Every submariner heaved huge sighs of relief when it was replaced with ring-laser gyros.

I bet substandard batteries & capacitors could still store more energy than the world's best flywheel... and a lot more cheaply, too.
__________________
*

Co-author (with my daughter) of “Raising Your Money-Savvy Family For Next Generation Financial Independence.”
Author of the book written on E-R.org: "The Military Guide to Financial Independence and Retirement."

I don't spend much time here— please send a PM.
Nords is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-31-2010, 09:17 PM   #111
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Northern IL
Posts: 26,806
Quote:
Originally Posted by Koolau View Post
There should be a relatively easy way to calculate a "theoretical" maximum energy density for batteries. I never took electrochemistry, but I would think you would pick the two chemicals with the highest electrical potential between them and then calculate the volume or weight of those two chemicals per watt or other energy measure that would be possible.
Excellent question. I have no idea, but I got a pretty quick result from this link from a google search. It seems right in-line with your questions ...

The limits of energy storage technology | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Quote:
And if research regarding the substitution of silicon for carbon in the anodes is realized in a practical way, then the theoretical limit on lithium-ion batteries might break 3 mega-joules per kilogram. Therefore, the maximum theoretical potential of advanced lithium-ion batteries that haven't been demonstrated to work yet is still only about 6 percent of crude oil!

Without considering the practicality of building such a battery, we can look at the periodic table and pick out the lightest elements with multiple oxidations states that do form compounds. This thought experiment turns up compounds of hydrogen-scandium. Assuming that we could actually make such a battery, its theoretical limit would be around 5 mega-joules per kilogram.
If I'm getting that, looks like the theoretical limits of untested compounds are around 10% of what gasoline can do. That doesn't sound too promising . But EVs are ~ 4X better at turning KW into moving the car than an ICE is, so the 6% number really translates to maybe 25% at the wheels.

So that might mean we need to carry 4x the weight of batteries as gasoline for the same range? 12G of gasoline is ~ 72#, so we might need ~ 300# of batteries? Workable if the cost can come down. Not clear how much extra is required to support those batteries (I think the article is based purely on the chemistry, not the packaging?). The Tesla is 53KWHr (191MJ) @ 450Kg. ~0.43MJ/Kg - close to the .5MJ/Kg that they mention for LION.

And flywheels:

Quote:
Energy density comparable to lithium-ion batteries has been demonstrated with flywheels, and a theoretical device composed solely of toroidal carbon nanotubes could reach 100 mega-joules per kilogram. But the fabrication and safety challenges inherent in such a device render it unlikely that even a small fraction of this potential will ever be realized.
BTW, gasoline is ~ 44MJ/Kg

PS - don't trust my math, I'm tired and multi-tasking.

-ERD50
ERD50 is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are Off


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Vehicle Safety: 1959 Chevy crashes into 2009 Chevy samclem Other topics 24 04-06-2010 11:30 AM
Every Chevy Convertible Since 1912 mickeyd Other topics 0 02-04-2010 03:54 PM
Dumb Chevy Volt Logo TromboneAl Other topics 64 08-14-2009 08:52 AM
12 volt coolers Notmuchlonger Other topics 11 01-10-2009 08:23 AM
'56 Chevy stuff calmloki Other topics 11 08-28-2007 02:38 PM

» Quick Links

 
All times are GMT -6. The time now is 03:43 AM.
 
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8 Beta 1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.