Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

kbd512 · 2022-11-29 18:33:13

Climate 360 News - Lithium: Not as clean as we thought by Alex Kim

While electric cars reduce fossil fuel emissions once they are on the road, the production of the lithium-ion batteries that power them causes more displacement and CO2 emissions than the production of regular gas-powered cars. Disposal of the batteries at the end of their life cycle is also a growing concern.
“There are carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions that come with the process of extraction,” said Zeke Hausfather, a scientist at climate research nonprofit Berkeley Earth told Climate360. “[It’s] not like CO2 comes out of the lithium, but it does take energy to mine things — today many of those systems involve emitting CO2.” Lithium-ion battery mining and production were determined to be worse for the climate than the production of fossil fuel vehicle batteries in an article from The Wall Street Journal.
Cumulative energy demand (CED) measures how much energy is expended in the production of car batteries. According to scientists measure CED, production of the average lithium-ion battery uses three times more electrical energy compared to a generic battery.
However, once the car batteries are produced, their rate of fossil fuel emissions becomes much lower than a gas-powered car. The U.S. Department of Energy shows that the national averages of fossil fuel emissions for gas-powered cars are more than double the average of that for electric car emissions. This creates the misconception that electric cars are 100% better for the climate than gas-powered cars.
A 2019 study shows that 40% of the total climate impact caused by the production of lithium-ion batteries comes from the mining process itself — a process that Hausfather views as problematic. “As with any mining processes, there is disruption to the landscape,” states Hausfather. “There’s emissions associated with the processes of mining like CO2 emissions creating sulfuric acid and other things used in the mining process — the life cycle of all of these things involves some environmental impact.”
The disposal of these batteries also poses a threat to the climate. Though these batteries contain less toxic waste than other kinds of batteries, a study from Australia found that 98.3% of lithium-ion batteries, not exclusively car batteries, end up in landfills. This massive influx of batteries into landfills significantly increases the likelihood of landfill fires that can burn for years. One landfill in the Pacific Northwest is reported to have seen 124 fires between June 2017 and Dec. 2020 due to lithium-ion batteries. Consequently, fires are becoming increasingly more common, with 21 fires reported on the site in 2018, rising to 47 by 2020.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), lithium-ion batteries and devices should not be disposed of in household garbage or recycling bins, rather they should be taken to a certified battery electronics recycler and disposed of there. They advise that each battery and/or device should be placed in separate plastic bags, with non-conductive tape over their terminals; in most cases, lithium-ion batteries have three. Dr. Florian Knobloch, a policy advisor at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, suggests a change in policy in how we globally dispose of these batteries.
“The system must be set up in a way in which you as a customer don’t have to question [where to dispose of your batteries] at all,” Knobloch told Climate360. “It should be a no-brainer. When you return your car, [the company should] send it back to the manufacturer or scrapyard … It’s a system that needs work, and individual people need to get involved.” As it stands, households that improperly dispose of these batteries, often classified as “hazardous waste,” do not fall under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA); therefore they are exempt from hazardous waste regulations.
While lithium-ion batteries power some common items like cars, scooters, vapes and phones, the notion that they don’t pose a threat to the global climate crisis is misleading. Mining, extraction, production and improper disposal all play a role in the encroaching threat of climate change, especially given the volume of these batteries’ life cycles. Until federal legislation is placed upon households to discourage improper disposal, or more recycling companies and organizations give consumers proper instructions on how to dispose of their batteries, lithium-ion will continue to grow and burn quietly in the background.

About the author, Alex Kim:

Written Content Creator, LMU
I’m a sophomore transfer from Otis College of Art and Design, and I am currently majoring in Journalism. I’m the diversity/inclusion chair member for Delta Sigma Phi, and love making music and chillin with friends!

Who knew that the next generation of "wokies" would be astute enough to recognize an old environmental problem being replaced with a new one?

Maybe all we really need to do is to teach the next generate of self-absorbed ingrates to fear / hate batteries and electronics, so that way we can destroy the environment and over-consume our way into electronics oblivion a little more slowly while dealing with the climate change boogeyman that can't seem to "boogie woogie" fast enough for anyone to notice. Then again, many of them are sterilizing or sexually mutilating themselves or committing suicide after being brainwashed, thus self-deleting from civilized society.

We'll be lucky if half of the total number of people on the planet right now still exist in 50 years, but the majority of the population is already past reproductive age and dying out fast.

Void · 2022-11-29 21:32:15

OK, this is all that I said:

OK, I will stir the hornets' nest.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Me … &FORM=VIRE
I am not in a position to validate or refute the materials in the post.
It is of interest though.
Done

I did not say that I understood the tech or did I vouch for it to be accurate.

It is good that you got your opinions and information out, but I am a bit sad that someone may be upset. That was not so much what I intended, rather just opinions.

Done.

Calliban · 2022-11-30 00:55:19

Interesting study.
https://undenial.files.wordpress.com/20 … p-2022.pdf

Since 2017, global passenger vehicle production has declined by 20%. The decline started long before the pandemic. According to Berndt, the surplus energy of petroleum production is declining rapidly. By 2027, it will have declined to zero. Berndt extrapolates that global vehicle production will be zero by 2034.

My first impression is that the theoretical basis for Berndt's work is flawed. He attaches a great deal of weight to oil wells changing the thermal gradient of the local crust. I fail to see the relevance of this to the net energy return of oil production. Secondly, a great deal of conventional oil wells are already drilled. Conventional oil wells have (compared to tight oil aka shale) a relatively shallow depletion rate. Most oil wells producing today, will still be producing in 2027, and their energy cost is already paid for. I will report more as I review more of this gentleman's work.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-11-30 01:08:31)

kbd512 · 2022-11-30 02:38:00

Void,

I'm not the least bit upset with you or anyone else here on this forum. The part that upsets me is how people who should know better can't or won't connect the dots as to where this is ultimately going. The same people who tell us we should consume less are also the ones suggesting that we can consume 10X / 100X / 1,000X more stuff to build these new "magic machines" that make or store power while "emitting nothing", except those of us who are not "Pollyanna-level" naive understand the "big lie" behind that mythology.

Burning things is bad, very bad you see, so now we're going to accelerate that process of burning through fuel on the order of hundreds to even thousands of times over the next 10 to 20 years (unless the energy for mining and refining and shipping is all coming from nuclear power plants, because it sure as hell isn't coming from wind turbines or photovoltaics), and then a miracle happens, whereby we suddenly cease burning coal to make steel or Aluminum or glass or batteries or wind turbines or photovoltaics.

So, serious question here:

Why aren't we doing that right now?

Why are 95% of the world's photovoltaic panels made using coal and gas?

Why are none of the mines powered by photovoltaics and wind turbines?

The mines and metal foundries are stationary and not going anywhere for a very long time, because it takes 10+ years to get one up and running, so why is all the power coming from diesel-fueled machines and coal?

Has it never occurred to any of the solar panel manufacturers to put their own product on their rooftop, or is that a case of "getting high off your own supply?"

Since Tesla is getting power from coal-fired power plants across the border from California, do they know something that the rest of us don't?

Is it because they know the machines would be so expensive that almost nobody could ever afford to buy one if all the input power for the GigaFactory and Lithium mines came from clean green energy (you know, the solar panels and batteries and electronic stuff they make there)?

The yearly tonnage of electronics waste products is now greater than the total tonnage of all the commercial aircraft ever manufactured, in the entire history of airliner manufacturing. Despite that fact, environmentalists fixate on the fuel that the jet airliners burn. The fossil fuels burned to create said electronics is only slightly less than the tonnage of kerosene that all our in-service airliners burn each year. To actually recycle all of that electronics waste, then we'd need to double-up the energy input and then some. What a joke that would be. That's probably also why we don't do much in the way of electronic waste recycling. Whereas a jet airliner typically spends 20+ years in service, a computer nominally lasts for 3 years before it gets replaced with a newer model. Now you know why I keep my 2010 MacBook Pro in service, which I'm writing this response from, rather than replacing it with a newer MacBook Pro model. The new computers are very cool and obviously far superior in a myriad of ways, but this older model still works and there's no point (in my mind) to generating more electronic waste if I don't have to.

A single wind turbine farm with a dozen wind turbines contains more plastic than all the soda straws in the entire world. Where did all the material and energy come from to do that? Oh, that's right, that all came from oil and gas. The environmentalists flip out over soda straws while a literal handful of their green energy wind turbines shot right past the total tonnage of soda straws on planet Earth- but they STILL want to build these things by the millions! Where is the logic in that? I can't see it, so someone please show it to me. From my perspective, it's just blind subservience to ideology, actual results be damned.

A gasoline powered car weighs 10,000 times as much as an iPhone, but only consumes 400 times more energy (because that's how bat guano crazy the energy investment into advanced electronics happens to be). 400 iPhone or Android smartphones are therefore equal in terms of embodied energy to a traditional gasoline powered car.

Remember how I said that I would choose to build cars that weigh 1/4 as much as they currently do (which Chrysler demonstrated they could accomplish while I was still a teenager; note to self- I'm getting old)? Look at the emissions from gasoline powered cars in the "Annual emissions per vehicle" graph in my Post #76. If the car has 1/4 the weight and 1/4 the horsepower of a modern car, then how do you imagine that emissions figure will change as a result? I'd wager it'd have to decrease, even for people with a severe weight imbalance in their right foot.

Recall how enamored I was at first with air powered cars (right up until I did some basic math)? The compressed air tanks weighed more than a cast Iron small block V8 engine, in order to achieve a range somewhere between 50 and 100 miles at most. It had to be Aluminum just to keep the weight that low, which means it also required 3X more energy input than steel. After recognizing and accepting that sobering little fact, that "good idea" didn't look so hot anymore. In fact, it looked remarkably similar to a battery, but with greater probability of at least some recycling. It might still make sense to run cars inside cities using air compressed by solar or nuclear heat engines, but such vehicles come with severe range and payload capacity limitations attached to them, else they will easily be as heavy as trucks, similar to Tesla cars, while still achieving modest range and payload capacity. I might revisit this idea if composites become significantly less energy-intensive, but the embodied energy is bonkers and composite cars not designed and fabricated by F1 racing teams (where money is no object) have poor crashworthiness. Rather than blindly pursue a (mostly) dead-end idea, which I'm still very fond of, I said to myself, "Once again, there are no free lunches in engineering and I have to consume energy like gangbusters because I opted for a system with an energy density no better than a battery."

If I flip the bird to basic physics, the environment, and practicality, then an air powered car "can be done". This accurately describes electric vehicles. Nobody is willing to compromise on anything. The car's not going to accelerate like a race car, it's pretty heavy for what it is, and you need to skip all the very cool but very unnecessary electronics gadgets for sake of practicality and keeping costs sane.

Here's what I'm actually worried about:

I don't have a crystal ball, but I'll make a prediction about what the near-future has in store for us, if we blindly pursue this "latest newness" ideology:

"Oh my goodness gracious, it turns out that after we consumed fossil fuels like they were going out of style in order to create all of these magical green machines, but somehow we're still burning more coal and gas and oil, emitting more and more CO2 each year, and oh by the way, our learned experts just figured out that energy density is real, mining metals and making concrete and glass requires mind-blowing amounts of energy, but somehow making electronics requires even more than that, and now we're fresh out of both money and materials to create the next generation of replacement photovoltaics and wind turbines and batteries because we completely bankrupted ourselves trying to create the first generation of green machines before the technology was truly ready for prime time."

That's exactly what I think is going to happen. I see no evidence that anything else will happen. None. The only new energy technology that give me a little bit of hope about our current predicament (some "baked in" climate change vs making the problem worse), is the promise of nuclear fusion eventually replacing all the nearly unworkable solar / nuclear fission / fossil fuel technology we have today.

I think we're almost infinitely better off cutting back on the mind-numbing over-consumption associated with "planned obsolescence" that's almost attached at the hip to overly-complex / over-engineered machines with silly levels of complexity to achieve pedestrian results. We must commit industry to only manufacturing durable goods that stand up to the test of time. We need to suck out all the CO2 we dumped into the air over the past 50 years or so and use Sabatier reactors for synthesizing all of our hydrocarbon fuels using solar heat energy as the input, because that's the best and most sustainable use of solar power we actually know how to make. If we continue with fission reactors, then we should use the reactors to generate electricity and industrial process heat, with a keen eye towards designs that only require a single fuel load per life cycle, if at all possible. The synthesized hydrocarbons then become our energy store, because that's the only type of energetic material with the raw energy density necessary to keep storage volume within the realm of sanity, thus it doesn't require entirely new-build infrastructure with strings of zeroes behind the monetary and energy cost. We absolutely must forego that last little bit of imaginary efficiency in favor of perpetual sustainability. Over the next 20 to 50 years, maybe some bright and enterprising young person will pull off a real miracle in the realm of battery energy density. Unfortunately, today is not that day.

If all of these "I believe climate change is real" people actually pondered the cause-and-effect associated with their consumption patterns, I think the technology selections would change overnight, upon realization that you cannot consume 10X / 100X / 1,000X more materials, and still (somehow) reduce your total energy consumption. There is no evidence for that at all.

If over-consumption of energy and things made using energy is the problem, then you cannot "buy your way out of the problem" by purchasing ever more expensive machines that require ever more energy to make and sustain. Thinking that you can is American-style thinking to a "T", but it still doesn't work. The very nature of poor energy density is like owing money to the mafia. The less money / energy you have to work with, the closer you are to getting knee-capped by Mother Nature.

My shiny new green machine is 2X more energy efficient (even though it took 3X more energy to make it, which is why it costs 3X more- nothing to do with labor or land or greed or any other nosense, which is why none of your average workers / consumers who use the machines have had a functional raise over my entire 40+ year lifetime after inflation is accounted for). Unless said machine lives long enough, that still doesn't help you at all. Most of the new electronic machines are obsolete or malfunctioning in various ways within 5 years, so they quit making replacement parts for them. With near-zero aftermarket support, your otherwise functional machine's next stop is the junkyard. At human civilization level scale, that sort of proposition is an unmistakable energy trap, even if some of us with plenty of surplus income from better / more prosperous times refuse to "see it" because we really don't like what it means (our children will be poorer than we were).

I didn't arrive at this thinking overnight. I looked for "free lunches" and "escape clauses" for many years. There aren't any. You will give the devil his due, one way or another. You can deal with the devil you already know or take your chances with the new devil, but know that the entrapment scheme is the same old game that we've all been playing the entire time, no matter which devil you select. We already know how to deal with the devil we know, because we have well-developed counter-moves to keep him in check. This new devil has convinced some of the players that they're playing a new game. Those of us who have been around the block a time or two and have played this game before, already know how it ends.

Poverty is not a given, but we must flatten the energy increase curve before it flattens us. That will functionally never happen so long as the new green machines consume exponentially more materials. Playing a shell game with the fossil fuel energy consumption is preposterous, but that's what we're presently doing while paying lip service to the still-notional idea of cleaner energy. That's why we see total fossil fuel energy consumption increase every single year. It's baked into the pie. In the same way that you cannot have "apple pie" without the apples, you cannot have an overall reduction of fuel consumption when you require more energy consumption to create the next generation of short-lived and energy-intensive machines that, in the kindest possible terms, simply status quo. If anyone wants energy that truly is cleaner than what we have now, then you'll have to make your peace with what you were told was "the enemy".

Additionally, you'll have to view many of these "feel-good" short-term propositions as the "Pyrrhic victories" that they are. Example: We banned all soda straws. Yay! Great news, right? Well, it should've been, but now we're making wood straws that require even more materials and energy, this time from cutting down trees, and they're still treated like trash, despite costing more money. To add insult to injury, that last batch of wind turbine blades we laid-up into the molds at the blade factory represented a significant portion of the total global tonnage of plastic used to make those infernal plastic soda straws. Net net, what did we accomplish? Not much, to be honest. The entire "no soda straws in the ocean" is a very noble idea, and in principle a real accomplishment. Unfortunately, ugly reality immediately crapped all over our good / green intentions. Now we're right back to where we started, minus the utility of those cheap / lightweight / fit-for-purpose plastic soda straws. Was the trade worth it, though? I can't say on this one. My gut feel is that we minimally altered the source of all that plastic garbage floating in the ocean.

kbd512 · 2022-11-30 04:07:32

Calliban,

If we predict the end of the world often enough, then eventually someone will be proven correct. Unfortunately, that doesn't make such predictions useful to anyone. Given all past history of such predictions, starting in the 1950s, maybe just maybe we should take all such predictions of impending doom with an entire mountain of salt.

The one question I keep asking, which nobody can seem to answer, is if either existing technology or new technology is a panacea, then why is the new or existing technology not applied to assuring production into perpetuity? Why is that not Priority #1?

You and I both believe that low energy density and short-lived systems are anathema to long-term energy security.

My overriding assertion is that focus should be on low-tech / long-lived thermal power systems that are either cheap to construct and maintain (my preference) or extremely energy-dense (your preference), because building the next copy using energy generated or stored by the first copy is much easier to do than without assured-cost energy.

The fact of the matter is that we have enough very arid land here in America, already devoid of much vegetation or animals, to supply energy to most of the world that actually needs it for the foreseeable future, and the two giant moats on either side make invasion improbable if not functionally impossible. The UK is in a similar position, but the weather is not amenable to solar power systems, thus it must be nuclear powered.

Similarly, most of northern Africa / Australia / Chile / China / Saudi Arabia have perfectly good land for such solar thermal projects. For all intents and purposes, we will never run out of sunlight and CO2 and H2O to make the next batch of fuel and fertilizers. I realize that the capital investment is high and our pseudo-environmentalists will shriek like the spoiled children they've always been, but the capital loss associated with no energy is higher still. That makes the choice between energy security and energy poverty a given. We have no other practical way to store the amount of energy required to run civilization, because we've already invested so heavily in combustion. The Africans won't be operating nuclear reactors until at least 10% of them can read and write at a collegiate level, and that will never happen absent a guaranteed energy supply for the next generation or two.

I look at this entire endeavor as guaranteed money. Does anyone think that nobody is going to buy oil and gas? Not on this side of hell. Not if they want to eat and live indoors. Not if they want to at least have a chance at their "green dreams". Politicians default to being dumber than a box of rocks when it comes to technical matters, but even most of them can figure out that they're on the menu if the people are starving. The engineers, on the other hand, have no such excuses that pass muster. The engineers need to help our politicians to extricate their heads from their rear ends long enough to get enough O2 to their brains to make half-way intelligent energy choices.

Calliban · 2022-11-30 04:32:50

The Chinese are using solar panel manufacturing as a way of accessing stranded coal, especially in Xinxiang. This coal is too far from the Chinese population centres to provide direct energy to the Chinese economy. So they use cheap (and often slave) Uiyger labour to mine the coal, which is then burned in powerplants close to the mine heads. The resultant electricity is almost free and allows the Chinese to produce polysilicon and build modules very cheaply. The modules can be thought of as stored coal energy and are shipped out by rail. It would not be practical to ship the coal out by rail over thousands of miles to the Chinese heartlands. But the panels provide a way of embedding the coal energy into something that can release that energy later on.

Whilst this is clearly not a sustainable energy source for the world at large, it does make some limited sense for the Chinese to do this. It allows them to use resources that would otherwise be stranded and useless, using forced labour which is unpaid. What's more, the Chinese have huge sunk investments in coal burning powerplants in eastern China, but coal production in the core provinces levelled off over a decade ago and is slowly declining. The cost of coal has risen precipitously. Because the solar panels are made using slave labour exploiting locally abundant coal, they are very cheap. By adding them to the grid, the Chinese can expand power production even as heartland coal production slowly declines, by using the coal plants as backup powerplants. In the mean time, the Chinese nuclear industry is growing rapidly and they have plans for literally terrawatts of new nuclear power generation. But these ambitions will take time to realise, as the workforce slowly expands and the componant industries increase in scale. So the Chinese need to stretch out their coal reserves long enough to allow the transition. Wind and solar infrastructure provide them with a way on doing this, as the coal plants are able to function as backup. The wind and solar are far from useless to the Chinese, but they are only useful as comparatively short term tools in the transition away from depleting coal and towards more sustainable nuclear energy.

Green idiots in the West are happy to pay good money for any surplus panels the Chinese can export, thinking themselves oh so green and virtuous. They pay for these plants, made by slaves burning free coal, using low interest rate loans by environmentally conscious banks and accept generous subsidies from governments. They then gleefully tell the world that their 'green' solar power is competitive with power generated by fossil fuels, which was used to make the plant in the first place and is still needed anyway to provide backup power.

The Greens are essentially peddling stranded Chinese coal, extracted from imperially occupied lands, using the natives as slave labour. They only make economic sense as an energy source if they are cheaper than the fuel they displace from the fossil fuel plants that provide backup. If they are made using stranded coal, exploited by slave labour, that is possible. If they are made using solar power in first world countries, then they provide no economic value and are almost certainly a net energy sink. This is because of the catastrophically poor power density of photovoltaic systems and the huge quantity of refined materials needed to produce industrial quantities of power from PV solar farms. Only by building them with slaves, using otherwise stranded fossil fuel and financing at very low interest rates, can these monstrosities begin to look like economically productive assets.

The way that these panels are made is a neat reminder of the dependance of human freedom on energy abundance. If you make energy expensive, you make life cheap. Ultimately the wealthy elites will continue to enjoy the products of their wealth. And if they cannot be produced using energy slaves, they will resort to using real slaves. Were it not for the geopolitical power games playing out between the US and China, the Davos elites would still be cheering on exports of Chinese made solar panels and patting them on the back for accelerating the global transition to green energy sources. As it is, using slave labour is a politicaly easy way to criticise the Chinese and justify restrictions of their products. But make no mistake, the world's leftist ellites do not and never have cared about those people and they do not care about you. Only when energy is abundant, do little people get to enjoy freedom.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-11-30 05:12:34)

Calliban · 2022-11-30 05:42:35

Kbd512, I am not predicting the end of the world. But the economy is a thermodynamic machine that converts stored fossil fuel energy into stuff that people call wealth. As fossil fuels deplete and surplus energy declines, people will get poorer and life will gradually get crappier, because there is less surplus energy available. This isn't a theoretical problem. It has been a reality in the US and Europe since the first decade of this century. If surplus energy continues to decline, eventually we will lose the ability to do things like spaceflight.

The graphic below shows global crude and condensate production up until 2018/19. Note, this includes growing proportions of condensate as average well depth increases. Condensate is NOT equivelant to crude oil in terms of its value to refiners.

Notice from the graph that conventional crude oil production was growing healthily until 2005. After that, we got a plateau until 2009. During that time, oil prices skyrocketed, triggering the Great Recession. Since 2005, in spite of much higher oil prices and sustained low interest rates, there has been no increase in conventional oil production. Growing production in a few places like Iraq, has balanced falling production elsewhere. All but a few producing countries have seen steep declines in oil production since 2005. Without the contribution from Iraq, which was underdeveloped before 2010, the data would show a general decline in conventional crude & condensate.

There was a substantial increase in unconventional production in the US and Canada. This would have been impossible without the zero effective interest rate policy of world central banks, the access to capital provided by US financial markets and the sunk oil and gas producing infrastructure of the United States. Notice that fifteen years after the start of the shale revolution, there has been no comparable shale revolution in any country other than the US. For this reason, WTI is now several $/bl cheaper than Brent. Since about 2006, 100% of incremental crude & condensate growth has come from Canada and the US. All of this has been unconventional and nothing comparable has been possible anywhere else in the world.

The link below shows trends in per capita GDP in the four largest European economies.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY … R-GB-DE-IT

Between 2006 and 2008, GDP/capita dropped off a cliff edge. It has never recovered to its pre-2008 levels in almost fifteen years, despite very favourable central bank policies, such as low interest rates and pumping free money into bond markets (quantitative easing). The reason is simple. Economic growth depends upon cheap energy, which no longer exists for European countries. Life has definitely become poorer in the UK for most people since the early 2000s. On paper, my wages have trippled since then, but the amount of spare cash I have left each month after food, power and heat, doesn't permit a very affluent lifestyle. And my wages are above average for a man in his 40s in the UK. I don't know how a lot people manage to live. The fact that North Sea oil production declined by 80% during this time was not a coincidence.

I am certainly not opposed to initiatives aimed at producing synthetic fuels. I am sceptical that the fuels produced using low power density solar energy will be cheap enough to allow economic growth. But your approach uses abundant steels, COTS steam systems and is suitable for mass production. Maybe it will be cheap enough. I hope so, because the only other option is continuing to get poorer. Try to do the same thing using nuclear energy and the NRC and ONR will keep asking questions and stretch out development until they run you into bankruptcy.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-11-30 07:07:49)

Void · 2022-12-02 23:05:29

Perhaps there might be a better place for this, if so, then move it if you like.

To repurpose old Tesla Batteries for stationary power storage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS6OEoBfyWU
Quote:

Company turning old Tesla batteries into storage inundated with orders
The Electric Viking
17K views 16 hours ago
Company turning old Tesla batteries into storage inundated with orders
Get a 10% discount on tickets to Fully Charged Live in 2023 (and meet me in person) us …

So, of course it would be good to get the maximum value from the battery packs, as it has been pointed out the production of them may well have involved the release of the dreaded greenhouse gasses.

And in his video, he suggested that you might be able to get significant money for your Tesla battery pack, or at least I thought that was indicated.

If so, then that reduces the ultimate cost of buying a Tesla.

Something to think about.

I suppose ultimately the hope is to then finally recycle the Lithium, presuming that these are Lithium. Sodium is not as high performance yet, (Or ever?). Well beyond that where do you get enough Lithium?

So, I took a look for some hope: Query: "New sources of Lithium"
General Response: https://www.bing.com/search?q=New+sourc … 98361d41d1

A specific article: https://www.aau.edu/research-scholarshi … hium-found

So, little by little pieces are falling into place, in spite of normal expectations.

That is good.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-12-03 09:56:39)

kbd512 · 2022-12-03 01:55:16

Void,

Repurposing old batteries as stationary storage only means that those Lithium-ion batteries are no longer available for powering vehicles, but in my opinion it's much better than dumping them in landfills where they might catch fire and burn for weeks to months. However, the batteries are obviously well-worn at that point and pose a fire hazard, so the only place they make much sense is a generating station with crushed gravel and concrete underneath them, and no vegetation. Anywhere else is a non-starter, which means they de-facto become part of the grid or perhaps industrial site backup power, which will be needed since we've opted to make the electric grid less and less reliable by adding more and more intermittent generating stations.

Mark P. Mills covered the battery recycling fantasy in some detail. In simple terms, it's not happening at any significant scale and never will unless manufacturers run out of economically recoverable Lithium or are forced to recycle them by law, which will then add even more cost to electric vehicles. Most of the Lithium-ion batteries end up in landfills as toxic waste, een thoug they're not supposed to be tossed in the garbage because they're a fire hazard.

I would hope that Sodium-ion batteries quickly become a much lower-cost / less hazardous and toxic alternative to Lithium-ion if the environmentalists are hell-bent on electric-everything. I also fail to see the point to the math deniers trying to match the range of combustion engines using batteries. A car with a 100 mile range is a perfectly serviceable vehicle, and if someone can deliver one at a good price because they forego the electronic gadgetry craze, then I could see myself owning something like that after our current vehicles bite the dust.

If they really want everyone to switch to EVs, then the car makers need to have a "come to Jesus" moment and realize that fewer and fewer people will be able to afford exorbitantly priced electronic toys that most of them know will become uneconomically repairable the moment the warranty expires. If their customer base disappears, then they go bankrupt. We're left with the existing fleet of combustion engines at that point. Somehow I don't think that's what they want, so they need to figure that out relatively quickly.

There are still hundreds of thousands to possibly low millions of vehicles that are essentially bricks on wheels, for lack of microchips. TSMC's assertions about resolving chip production problems within a few months didn't pan out the way they thought it would, did it?

tahanson43206 · 2022-12-03 07:24:30

Louis created this topic almost exactly one Earth year ago ... as often happens in this forum, discussion strays from the focus of the topic.

I went back and re-read the first set of 25 posts.... I'd like to see this topic return to the original focus for at least a short time.

Louis has not been visible on site since April, so he's not here to defend the topic.

The original focus was inductive charging as an alternative to direct connection.

Forum members went off on various tangents.

If anyone has time, and willingness to pick up the baton from Louis, please report on success of the inductive charging method over the past year.

We have a member who expressed concern about how society (on Earth to be specific) could provide the electric power needed to recharge a large fleet of electric vehicles. That was and remains a concern, so if there have been any updates on that front, they would fit well into this topic.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-12-03 07:56:31

As a follow up to #85, I asked Bing to go looking for updates on inductive charging...

The article at the link below reports on two developments of which I was unaware ...

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/german- … n-indiana/

First, it appears that a German company has found a way to make inductive components in a concrete form, possibly using iron?

Second, it appears that Indiana has decided to make a test road using this technology. That's a "build it and they will come" scenario.

I haven't been thinking of Indiana as innovative, but perhaps that's unfair.

(th)

Void · 2022-12-03 09:53:25

I have copied my post #83 to a new topic: "Index» Science, Technology, and Astronomy» Recycling, Upcycling, Repurposing"

I agree that we did not want to alter the path of this topic. The topic EV charging revolution did not indicate inductive transmission of power to an EV, so I posted here, wrongly it seems.

If you like I can delete #83.

Inductive power from the roads does look interesting. 95% efficiency is rather good.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-12-03 09:56:27)

kbd512 · 2022-12-03 15:47:20

tahanson43206,

The Sodium-ion batteries I spoke of are part of the "EV charging revolution" of this topic, assuming the claims of Natron Batteries are not more false advertising. They're claiming 25,000 to 50,000 cycles (before capacity drops to 80%; which means the batteries achieve one of my central goals of "planned foreverence" vs "planned obsolescence" (See what I did there?) / constantly building new energy-intensive machines and consuming more and more energy to do it- none of which is coming from anything "green" except the color of money), fast-charging in 8 minutes (without damaging the battery), and I've already seen their videos where they shoot their batteries with AR-15s, cut them up with shears, and crush them in hydraulic presses, alongside various Lithium-ion batteries. The best part is that the batteries, after being shot multiple times, appear to retain most of their original voltage, which is very important for those times when you're doing a drive-by .

Any battery technology that passes the rifle fire / hydraulic press / cutting shears / flame thrower testing regime, is something I don't have any qualms about charging overnight in my garage. If it "only" gets my car to 100 to 200 miles or range vs 400 miles, but at half the cost or less, then "oh, well" (I don't care). I drive 50 mile increments, maximum (that's sitting in the car for 1 to 2 hours, aka "traffic hell"). I can recharge it as fast as a gasoline engine and be on my way. In reality, it takes about 10 minutes in total, to pump fuel at a service station. I don't have to worry about the battery instantly achieving arc welding temperatures. I don't have to worry about the battery exploding like a stick of dynamite and releasing toxic fumes.

Whether or not the battery or vehicle's windshield glass passes the thermonuclear explosion test is irrelevant to actual driving. If the Russians are flippantly dropping nukes about the place, then nobody will be driving anywhere.

SpaceNut · 2022-12-04 18:39:26

The danger is many when it comes to battery use no matter what the type is as they are upping the voltage as well as the currents that they must supply. Sure, increasing the voltage does lessen the currents and wire gauges but for how long until they want more power?

Tesla Launches 1,000-Volt Powertrain: Semi Is First But Not The Last

Normally the cars are a 400 volt system but some EV manufacturers have already introduced electric car models with 800 V or even 900 V level systems.

SpaceNut · 2022-12-09 18:28:58

How Much Does It Cost To Install An EV Car Charger In Your Home?

If you already have a 240-volt circuit available at home, Carvana says that a typical EV charger installation will cost an average of anywhere from $250 to $400. However, running 50-amp dedicated wiring will increase your costs to anywhere from $400 to $1,700. On the other hand, if you are mounting a new station, installing a new service panel, and adding a 240-volt circuit, you can expect your charging port to cost anywhere from $1,500 to $4,500.
Keep in mind that if you do the electrical work yourself, you can install an EV charger at home for far less, as Carvana notes that these average rates are usually in part due to electrician labor costs – which you can expect to be anywhere from $40 to $100 per hour on top of wiring and installation.
Lastly, don't forget to factor in your building permit cost, which can cost anywhere from $50 to about $160, depending on your state.
If you can afford the price of an EV upfront, experts say you can make up the cost in what you save on gas over time. Additionally, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, you can save on the overall cost of upgrading to an electric model thanks to the federal tax credit offered to EV owners. Depending on various qualifying factors, you could be eligible for a tax credit of up to $7,500 if you make the switch to electric. Various states also offer personalized incentives for those making the switch.

SpaceNut · 2022-12-16 20:08:22

Charging an electric car isn't as simple as pumping gas. Here's what to know.

There are three main types of EV chargers.
Any electric vehicle can use multiple charger types.
Tesla's proprietary plugs exclude other cars from its branded Superchargers.
Among connectors or plugs, there are two categories: AC and DC, short for alternating or direct current. Type 1 and Type 2 AC plugs are standard on EVs from America and Asia and deliver charge speeds between 7.4 and 43 kilowatts, depending on the charger you're plugged into. At these speeds, a full charge would typically take several hours.

Next are the level of chargers

5 Hidden Costs of Electric Vehicles

Most likely not 1 of the 5 but a garage would solve it.
Check Out Winter And Cold Weather EV Range Loss Data From 7,000 Cars

7 long-range electric vehicles that let you go the distance

While I do not believe that it will is-solar-power-the-future-of-electric-vehicles video or at least not until we change how we use cars..

SpaceNut · 2023-01-08 17:33:38

No need to look to find a charging station when you bring it with you.

This solar-powered car just broke a major world record for driving distance — without having to recharge

In late 2022, the Sunswift 7 — an insanely sleek and lightweight race car that weighs only a quarter of what a Tesla weighs — was granted the Guinness World Record designation after traveling 1,000 kilometers in just under 12 hours.

Seems quite good

SpaceNut · 2023-01-10 19:19:58

Do not just change the charging game but change what we are charging in that we are seeing preliminary test results
Scientists Test A Potentially More Stable EV Battery Solution

solid-state composition showed no degradation after 400 charge cycles

SpaceNut · 2023-01-21 20:55:58

Seems that the lithium battery breakdown is not to just automobiles as its now being seen with E-bike battery blaze in NYC kills man and hospitalizes 10 others

Most of the batteries that spark fires are pre-owned and resold and not compatible with a new device or have been damaged by repeated wear and tear on the roads.
Some landlords, as well as several colleges, have banned lithium-ion battery-propelled scooters and e-bikes from their buildings because of the potential dangers. The City Council is also considering legislation to regulate the sale of the batteries.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission sent a letter to 2,000 manufacturers and importers of e-bikes and other e-devices late last year urging them to comply with relevant safety standards due to an uptick in fires.

kbd512 · 2023-01-21 21:57:19

SpaceNut,

In the article they're already talking about banning or already have banned Lithium-ion batteries.

What is it about Democrat thinking that causes them to believe that the solution to all potentially dangerous things is to ban it?

You don't want people to burn gasoline, but now they can't use Lithium-ion batteries, either.

So, which is it?

Can people be trusted to use any energy responsibly, and can we accept the consequences associated when someone doesn't, or are we all supposed to go back to living like cavemen?

We invented motor vehicles for a reason. They're useful. Anything can be dangerous when improperly used, but people are fundamentally dangerous. The inanimate objects they manipulate are not.

Since no actual investigation has been done, this entire article could literally be talking out its rear end. The Scooter, for all we know, was a factory-fresh model and not abused in any way. The scooter's owner could've been whispering sweet nothings into the battery the entire time it was charging.

The FDNY has repeatedly warned about the dangers of placing e-bikes and scooters near staircases, which would cut off means of escape if they catch fire. Fire officials have also cautioned against allowing the batteries to charge overnight.

FDNY is here telling people not to charge their electric vehicles at night. Well, when and where the hell should they be charged? We're supposed to "save money" by charging all this battery powered nonsense at home, remember?

“It’s really sad to have such a loss over something like a battery,” he said.

As opposed to gasoline or diesel or natural gas or the building caving in from being too old?

If it was a meteor that crashed into the house and set fire to it, would that then constitute a good way to die?

SpaceNut · 2023-01-21 22:06:02

I am not seeing many gasolines moped fires as caused by filling them up inside the home, so the issue is the cheap electronic charging unit that is not built with a system charge timer, overload fold back circuit disconnect from power in a breaker opening on the unit. Lithium batteries units are not to be constant DC voltage charged and that is what most of them are. The battery units' box must also be able to interact when heat from charging exceeds the threshold where a few more degrees start a fire burning with in them as part of the disconnect of line coming into the charger.

kbd512 · 2023-01-21 23:15:59

SpaceNut,

If the only reliable method of charging EVs is using a very expensive charger unit, then we're right back to using service stations which can afford the cost of sophisticated chargers and electronics technicians to ensure they're routinely serviced and replaced, if necessary. Telling people not to use useful things is a non-starter and non-answer. Following rules is one thing, banning things is another entirely. We're not saving any time or money using batteries and electronics, though. Regulators and corporations have seen to that, because it's not part of their agenda.

SpaceNut · 2023-02-04 17:17:24

GM Is Ordering a Massive Overhaul With Its EV Batteries: Report engineering overhaul to switch from pouch cells to cylindrical cells in the batteries built for its electric cars.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-09 11:05:21

EV battery has 50% more energy density than lithium-ion, 10-minute charge

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/02/08/ … te-charge/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-03-10 12:27:04

Firms search for greener supplies of graphite for EV batteries
https://www.economist.com/science-and-t … -batteries

On Mars a different environment, other minerals, maybe a carbon monoxide fuel cell for Mars and the Japanese want to test their car on the Moon the Lunar Toyota.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#76 2022-11-29 18:33:13

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#77 2022-11-29 21:32:15

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#78 2022-11-30 00:55:19

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#79 2022-11-30 02:38:00

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#80 2022-11-30 04:07:32

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#81 2022-11-30 04:32:50

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#82 2022-11-30 05:42:35

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#83 2022-12-02 23:05:29

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#84 2022-12-03 01:55:16

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#85 2022-12-03 07:24:30

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#86 2022-12-03 07:56:31

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#87 2022-12-03 09:53:25

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#88 2022-12-03 15:47:20

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#89 2022-12-04 18:39:26

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#90 2022-12-09 18:28:58

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#91 2022-12-16 20:08:22

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#92 2023-01-08 17:33:38

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#93 2023-01-10 19:19:58

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#94 2023-01-21 20:55:58

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#95 2023-01-21 21:57:19

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#96 2023-01-21 22:06:02

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#97 2023-01-21 23:15:59

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#98 2023-02-04 17:17:24

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#99 2023-02-09 11:05:21

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

#100 2023-03-10 12:27:04

Re: Wireless/induction EV charging revolution

Board footer