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The 5000km range barge needs a 6.5 GWhr battery, which is the equivalent of 130,000 base range model 3s. That's a lot of batteries. Not sure if that much indus
by evilos 4y ago
The 5000km range barge needs a 6.5 GWhr battery, which is the equivalent of 130,000 base range model 3s.
That's a lot of batteries. Not sure if that much industrial capacity will be available soon enough.
Also, I'd really really hate to be the person that has to fight a marine fire on board the 6.5 GWhr battery barge.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jl6 4y agoWould it be a lot worse than a ship storing the equivalent energy in combustible liquid fuel?
- isatty 4y agoYes, lithium fires are a LOT worse.
- rootusrootus 4y agoLithium ion, sure. There are other chemistries, such as LFP, where thermal events aren't nearly as exciting.
- chickenuggies69 4y agoA container ship would use the equivalent of 641825 BMW 3 series of fuel for that trip. Though one would use premium and the other bunker fuel. Math based on 2500 gallons per mile for a 3106 mile trip, converted to km and liters, then divided by a 55 liter tank.
- a9h74j 4y agoVideo of single passenger bus lithium battery fire: http://www.jimstoneindia.com/pagesq22022/page2v.html http://www.jimstoneindia.com/pagesq22022/page2v.html
- sandos 4y agoNo, thats a GAS bus fire!
- ephbit 4y agoDo you have some source for this? According to the linked website: > This video features an electric bus with a new type of lithium polymer battery
- jamal-kumar 4y agoThat's extremely impressive, I've seen videos where people combust lithium cell phone batteries and it's a lot, but roughly how much megawatt hours of capacity go into running a bus by comparison?
- moconnor 4y agoNote: this video is sped up to look more dramatic.
- readthenotes1 4y agoThe author seemed to assume there is no ecological costs to extracting, processing, and shipping massive amounts of rare earth around the oceans, and, as you point out, that they never suffer mishaps
- piannucci 4y ago> ...massive amounts... The entire world production of neodymium was on the order of 80k ton/yr the last I checked (though that was quite a few years ago).
- fancy_hammer 4y agoHow many tons of earth need to be processed to end up with 80k tons of neodymium?
- thematrixturtle 4y agoThere are massive ecological costs to extracting, processing and shipping even more massive quantities of dinosaur juice around the oceans, and they suffer "mishaps" quite frequently.
- dymk 4y agoFrankly, we're in much deeper shit if we continue to add carbon to the carbon cycle, and while strip mining the earth for precious metals isn't ideal, we don't have many other choices. Still waiting on at-scale biofuels.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoElectrification reduces the amount of mining and extraction and transport so if that's your focus you should be excited for this. The key difference being that once you extract it, you can first re-use it for decades, then recycle it. Whereas with fossil fuels you need to continually dig up more to replace the ones you burned and vented into the atmosphere then ship it to where it is used. https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/electric-car-batteries-need-far-less-raw-materials-fossil-fuel-cars-study/ https://www.transportenvironment.org/discover/electric-car-b...
- TkTech 4y agoI wonder if you could design a keel with semi-permanent "slots" for the battery packs. They're going to weigh an incredible amount, so they'll probably need to be as low as possible, and partial surface contact with the ocean would help with the incredible cooling requirements. Fire starts, pod immediately drops into the ocean? There's no real way to put out a lithium fire of that size, even if you extinguish it, it may start again days later. Has to go overboard one way or another.
- kortex 4y agoLithium seems like a bad fit all-around. Plus, just charging all those batteries would put a ton of local strain on the grid. I think this would be an ideal situation for liquid flow batteries. Those seem like only a matter of time, I don't think there is any chemistry /physics reasons preventing their commercial adoption, just engineering.