152 comments on Biomass Ethanol + Plug-in Hybrids = 95% less emissions?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
User login
Personnel
Classic posts
Archives
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
PONYC Archives
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
Will you ever forgive me?
Not yet. Where he pulled that number from, I have no idea. But it isn't realistic. Maybe someone at Tesla told him that. Maybe they are counting on batteries getting much cheaper by the time they need to be replaced. But the fact is (again, confirmed by someone who works for Tesla) is that it will cost you $50K.
But here is your homework assignment. Tell me how much 6,831 cells cost, and then show me a source. Note that these are 18650's, if that helps.
Or how about this gem which promises to increase capacity by a factor of 100x 'though im betting on 20 to 30x' and is made out of plastic? How ironic: a product of oil used to dramatically reduce our reliance of oil!!
All it takes is a convergance of these technologies with government, or even a wealthy investors backing and we could see a 'total package' if you will in the way we drive. Throw in wind, solar, nuclear, tidal, geothermal and ethanol and we have a sustainable, nearly pollution free alternative to our oil addiction!!
These AREN'T 'pie in the sky' dreams: its a reality that is taking place before our very eyes! The Tesla is just the first embodiment of such progress. These kinds of advances should turn any rational doomer into an optimist like myself.
Sweet dreams doomers :)
As contrasted with my "Maybe they are counting on batteries getting much cheaper by the time they need to be replaced." As far as "economies of scale", do you not think all the laptops using these batteries today are a pretty huge scale.
What we do know, is that given the technology we have in hand, it will take $50K to replace that battery pack at today's prices. If prices go down by 80% in the next few years, then you will have a point.
Sweet dreams doomers :)
In case that's aimed at me, I am not a doomer. I guess I am an optimistic realist.
Gervasio's solution was to use the alkaline compound borohydride. A 30% solution of borohydride in water actually contains one-third more hydrogen than the same volume of liquid hydrogen.
"The difference is that the borohydride is at room temperature, and it's stable, non-toxic and cost-effective," Gervasio says.
Notice how this means that we can now effectively store hydrogen at room temperatures AND it's not only SAFE, but it stores far more hydrogen then when hydrogen itself is compressed into a liquid, a process that I'm sure you know as VERY energy intensive. Ironically enough, this idea was originally meant for gasoline.
Now my own thoughts on the matter: I still say skip the middle man so to speak. Making hydrogen via electrolysis and then using said hydrogen to power a vehicle still leaves a lot of room for waste. A smarter way to go about this is simply improving on battery recharge and storage technology and making sure they are not only cost effective but last long enough for the average driver.
That being said, I could very easily see this being widely adopted by both oil companies and gas stations en mass, as it allows existing infrastructure to be used, and doesn't put 17,600 gas stations out of business. That is, unless they chose to provide 'power up' stations for all electric super fast recharging cars :P
Your thoughts?
No combo of "alternative" energy will be able to displace hydrocarbon depletion--as hydrocarbon reserves were created over geological time.
Perhaps you believe that the earth was created 6000 years ago... maybe that is why the concept of a "hydrogen economy" has such great appeal to you?
See hundreds of millions of years of stocket up solar energy in the form of hydrocarbons is not the same thing as paltry energy per sq meter absorption on the best solar panels (which, as stated before, cost thousands of orders of magnitude too great for average "consumers"). Not to mention the net gain in solar energy in the form of chemical energy when growing "biofuels" (please understand the basic statistics of energy consumption and efficiency patterns before going off on an ignorant pollyanish idea that biofuels can solve our energy perdictament) is wholly unrealistic.
Hydrogen is not a SOURCE of energy--anyone who believes such a thing is absolutely ignorant on the science. Hydrogen needs to be ripped away from H2O. That takes energy. It's called electrolysis, look up it in your new science there. See you need electricity to make hydrogen--and where does electricity come from? 50% coal, 20% natural gas, 20% nuclear, some hydro, then less than 1% is solar and wind added together. Now, you want to add more to the burden of this system, the grid?!
Lets now power hundreds of millions of automobiles with electricity in addition to burning the billions upon billions of tons of coal a year we already incinerate?
Hrm, forgive me if I remain skeptical of your dream fantasy "alternative replacements" for a depleted, finite, geologically old, hydrocarbon endowment. Energy doesn't come from nowhere.
You DO realize that I said that we shouldnt concentrate on the 'hydrogen' economy even with interesting new technology that I've linked. And you are a fool if you believe that I said we should concentrate solely on solar for our alternatives. I'm advocating a basket of renewable and some non-renewable energy systems. Let me go down the list for you again:
Solar, Wind, Tidal, Hydro, Geothermal, Nuclear and Biofuels CAN offset our 'fossil fuel' consumption and allow us to enjoy a future world based on sustainable, low polluting energy. Individually, none of the above listed alternatives can hope to replace Fossil Fuels, but together, they just 'might' be able to get the job done.
As for your hydrogen rant, you only repeated what I ALREADY SAID. It takes energy to produce hydrogen from water, and it seems moronic to then 'burn' that hydrogen in any kind of combustion engine. It makes slightly more sense, albeit still a bad idea, to take said hydrogen, store it in a stable compound and use it in a fuel cell which has 2.5x the efficiency of a regular ICE. I know that hydrogen is a energy carrier, not an energy producer. Thats why I think the future is in EVs and perhapse some unique hybrid-biofuel vehicles.
HYDROGEN IS AN ENERGY CARRIER!!!
I know this, so stop trying to make an issue out of this :P
If that is the case then I would like to direct you to this article If it works as its stated too, the 'hydrogen' economy might actually work.
Then you say:
The last problem being that it takes way to much energy to create hydrogen, and ergo it shouldnt even been explored as a widescale alternative.
Can you please make up your mind?
The hydrogen economy will never work. The problem isn't the fuel cells it's simple laws of physics that prevent us from making hydrogen cheaply.
http://www.efcf.com/reports/E13.pdf
I don't see current prices as a reliable indicator to the future for two reasons:
I've read claims about both the FePO4 and titanium spinel cathodes which claim that the cycle and calendar lives are greatly improved. Iron phosphate and titanium dioxide are both very cheap materials. There's a lot of room for the cost of these things to drop, and we can expect it to do so.
When I did my back of the envelope, I went with the cheapest 18650's I could find to come up with my estimate. Someone from Tesla told me it was in the ballpark, and your estimate is closer to mine than to Hothgor's. That is good news that you can get them for less, but still out of the reach for the public at large.
Don't get me wrong, though. I still think electric transport is the way we need to go, and Tesla has made a valuable contribution.
One thing that we will need to keep an eye on is whether the batteries actually last 100,000 miles. Some people who know more about batteries than me have expressed concern about this.
He also said that with current price trends they expect to purchase the same cells for $12k in 5 years.
He said they guarantee the 100k mileage (roughly 250 miles/cycle x 400 cycles) and 5 year life on the current packs, and hope for more. This would be much better than is usually seen with laptops, but laptops have very primitive battery management, where the Tesla has very sophisticated power management and cooling - heat is the enemy of li-ion life - think how hot your laptop battery gets.
$20k for 100k miles works out to $.20 per mile, which is competitive with a 40mpg car and $8 gas (actually, more than competitive as electric cars have much lower maintenance costs). $12k would equal $.12 per mile, and compete with $4.80 gas.
A123systems' battery is perhaps the most advanced (marketwise) of the next generation of li-ion batteries, which promise much greater cycle life and much faster charging. They're available at retail on Amazon in Dewalt 36-volt packs for $169 and (IIRC) 80 watthours and 2,000 cycle life minimum. With a wholesale 40% discount and 215 watt hours/mile (Tesla's figure) that works out to $1,267/kwhr (about 3x tesla's current cost for conventional li-ion's), about $.14 per mile and $5.60 gas.
So, battery tech isn't quite competitive at current gas prices. OTOH, these costs will fall (and probably very quickly - the 2,000 cycle guaranteed minimum life for next gen li-ion's appears to be very conservative - I've seen tests which yielded 10,000 cycles), and gas prices will rise. I expect that the lines will cross in the next 5 years.
Robert, does that make sense?
I presumed from Hothgor's comment that they must be counting on prices coming way down, because I certainly couldn't come up with a $8-10K replacement cost. Even that was mentioned as being high for the average consumer in the article Hothgor referenced.
OTOH, battery prices are falling relentlessly, and the A123systems' batteries are competitive even now with the costs of the average vehicle when gas hits around $3.70/gallon.
So, it's quite clear that batteries will be up to the job of replacing gasoline, and fairly soon.
Another way of thinking about it: the average cost/mile of operating a vehicle is $.445, per the IRS. An electric vehicle, even at current prices, is likely to cost less than $.05 more, taking all things into account. I'd say that there's no question that Kunstler's vision of the suburbs being abandoned because of prohibitively expensive driving is obsolete.
For anyone interested there is lots of good info here:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/symposium/presentations/presentations.htm
The A123 presentation seems to have been removed for some reason :-)
On the one hand, it's another indication that next-gen batteries aren't quite competitive with gasoline yet. OTOH you can see that they would be usable as is, if you really had to.
So, not quite ready yet, but clearly good enough to use in a oil-depletion emergency, and almost certain to get better reasonably quickly and very likely to get to where it's just as good as gasoline is today within roughly the next 5 years.
Does that sound right to you?
They add $.02 to the cost of driving (US average price of $.10/kwhr x .215 kwhr/mile), and raise the $/gas breakeven point by $.86/gallon (for a 40 mpg car - all breakeven numbers are proportionately less for a comparison with the average US light vehicle at 23MPG).
I use the Tesla numbers because they're well documented (e.g.,estimates for the Prius's kwhr/mile vary from 200 to 250), and because the calculations are the same as for a hybrid.
The only difference between an EV and an HEV is that the number of charge/discharge cycles per year is going to be much higher for an HEV (multiple times per trip, vs once per several days), and therefore the new generation Li-ion batteries, which tolerate greater depth of discharge, and have a much greater cycle life, will have an advantage.
Robert Rapier was wondering about battery life: an interesting note here is that the Prius, using very sophisticated battery/power management appears to be getting many thousands of cycles from NIMH batteries, which is much better than would be expected from routine NIMH battery experience.