8 ms·

Sandy Munro Talks Battery Battles, Calls Solid State “Kiss of Death” for Gas

55 points by 1970-01-01 4y ago

cs702 4y ago
By all accounts, battery technology sure looks like it's about to hit the fastest-growth portion of the usual "S" adoption curve -- "gradually then suddenly," to paraphrase Hemingway. By implication, demand for fossil fuels sure seems to be at risk of falling, also "gradually then suddenly," in a mirror "Ƨ" curve.
- runako 4y ago
  Odd Lots did an episode on what happens to fossil fuel demand as we go through the transition to renewables: https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/what-so-many-people-get-wrong-about-the-energy-tra https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/what-so-many-people-get-wrong... They also cite the Jevons paradox in a discussion of the possible counterintuitive outcomes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - cubefox 4y ago
    As an aside, EV doesn't mean renewable. In Germany the nuclear reactors have been turned off due to the influence of the Green party, and natural gas transfer from Nord Stream I was stopped by Russia due to the Ukraine war. As a consequence, more energy is now created from coal, since renewables like wind and solar are too volatile to replace nuclear and natural gas.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      By this logic, using diesel-powered haul trucks to Mike uranium, and building nuclear reactor facilities with massive amounts of steel rebar and concrete, both of which we don't even know how to decarbonize, means that nuclear is not low emissions either. The only valid argument is a quantitative one, and in that regime, EVs powered with a tiny fraction of coal, like the grid in Germany, are a massive win. But I will say that I'm not surprised to see yet another pro-nuclear, anti-other-clean-tech take. These two things seem to go hand in hand.
    - bob_theslob646 4y ago
      I'm not sure why this comment is being down voted. All it is stating is facts. Most of the lithium needed for electric vehicles is going to be mined and that is not an environmental friendly process. No one's talking about how they're going to power electric vehicles in the United States... It's a ticking time bomb for energy infrastructure in the United States. They should be pursuing everything all at once,not reducing because you always need a backup.
      - epistasis 4y ago
        None of this is true. Coal is a minor component of Germany's power, and even if it were bigger, EVs are a big win on pollution even when largely powered by coal. And as for lithium being "dirty" have you bothered to even compare it to other sources of mining? Such as for the massive amount of stew that goes into cars? Or the absolutely massive amounts of waste and destruction that happens to extract oil to power cars? Citing "environmental damage" but not acknowledging right away that it's far far far less than the alternatives is simply playing rhetorical games. We must be far more logical and realistic and pragmatic if we want to take care of the environment. Above all, factuality is important.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        cameldrv 4y ago
        Coal is about 35% of electricity in Germany.
        cubefox 4y ago
        Yeah: > More than a third (36.3%) of the electricity produced and fed into the grid in Germany in the third quarter of 2022 came from coal-fired power plants (third quarter of 2021: 31.9%). https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2022/12/PE22_518_433.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2022/12/PE22_518_433.html And that number is from before the last nuclear reactors were turned off.
        4y ago
- cubefox 4y ago
  Could this lower oil prices, or would cartels like OPEC just reduce oil production to keep the price stable?
  - dd36 4y ago
    That’s what they’ve been doing.
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    Depends on how supply performs relative to demand… price is just a function of the balance between these two. Fossil fuel consumption is still growing globally, and faster than production. So prices currently look set to rise. Higher oil prices make renewables look relatively more attractive though, so its a bit reflexive
  - abathur 4y ago
    Would be interesting to see expert analysis, but I imagine it's really hard to know how every player will react. As (if?) likelihood of a demand collapse increases, I imagine some fraction of potential suppliers with ~easy/cheap oil left would have a healthy incentive to open up the supply for as long as it takes to force everyone with ~hard sources to wind down, leaving them to price-set the long-tail? Hopefully the price of any PoW crypto is sufficiently low that it doesn't make marginal economic sense for any players to extract-and-mine?
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    OPEC only produces about 30% of the world's oil.
  - toss1 4y ago
    They will try, and it'll work for a while, but they won't be able to maintain it, and doing so would speed the death of oil As EVs get cheaper to buy, and more importantly, to run, the petrol-fueled vehicles start to become uneconomical. As use declines, availability of fuel declines, as petrol stations become more unprofitable. Further encourages EV adoption. Range anxiety now comes to petrol-powered vehicle owners as it is now for EV owners, further incentivizing the switch. While the general impression is that this will be gradual, I think it will be a gradual decline, then sudden, as the overall inconvenience and cost levels cross. Then some minor precipitating event changes the overall mindset, and petrol-powered cars become a perceived liability, and those still stuck with them will barely be able to unload them. As the decline happens, OPEC will surely try to manage the price of oil, but with demand declining, one of two things will happen. To the extent that they keep the price high, they speed the transition away from oil. They are also much more likely to fail, as the US is now a major producer, and has every incentive to work against OPEC. Plus, their friends are gone. Teh car companies figured out in the 2008 price spike that the oil industry is NOT their friend as that economic crash and oil price spike forced them to look over the cliff of doom as auto sales nearly stopped dead. Then we saw Russia's blatant attempt to use their oil & gas supply to blackmail the world into yielding to their genocidal invasion of Ukraine. No rational businessman now thinks that the oil industry is a reliable supply partner, and will cut them out of the equation at the first opportunity. The oil industry and countries may have some good days ahead, but beyond the intermediate term, they are absolutely screwed.
- seydor 4y ago
  So, brownouts are about to happen?
brk 4y ago
I doubt this is going to play out as optimistically as the pro-EV crowd thinks. No personal bias against EVs, but there are still issues with range for towing/hauling, and longer duration "road trip" style commutes that make it impossible to be "pure EV" on the roads any time soon. Also, the marine and aviation industries don't have viable EV options in the short term (10 years), same with heavy equipment (CAT, Deere, etc.), this will keep at least enough of a market for gas/diesel engine production that they won't go away.
- theK 4y ago
  You are right, the hauling and aviation industries will probably stick to burning fuel for a while. Maybe eFuel someday but still burning fuel. But this don't mean that average Joe transportation (which incidentally makes up 99%ofprivate vehicle travel) cannot be realistically electrified. Sure, even there people will keep running their classic cars and probably even some sports and muscle cars but for the biggest majority of casual commuters the writing is on the wall. There just is no real upside to sticking with ICEs even today.
- runako 4y ago
  There's wisdom in what you say. At the same time, technology adoption curves only get to 100% at the asymptote. For example, one still encounters a need to send a fax from time to time, and some people still have landlines. That said, the auto market at 50% or 70% EV adoption will still be a big deal! And we might find out that some of the issues that folks see with EVs are solvable and/or aren't that important anyway. For example: the average American summer road trip is under 300 miles, so the range anxiety might be ameliorated by wider availability of faster chargers than are available today. Similarly, we might learn that users of heavy equipment are in the habit of taking breaks during which they could charge their equipment, etc.
  - calvinmorrison 4y ago
    My bigger concern is just how damn reliable new vehicles are. The average age of a car on the road today is like 12 years. Even if we start selling 100% electric cars tomorrow, the curve is a lot fatter and the cut over slower. On the other hand, this is a great thing because it will smooth out the transition
hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
This is great and all, but still really stupid if you stop and think a lot of EV use is just replacing ICE use that shouldn’t exist in the first place. A lot of daily commute isn’t necessary, or not necessary by car with public transportation, but the economic incentives aren’t there to build cities for that - need to keep selling cars.
- wilg 4y ago
  It’s much less stupid if you think about it as a way to halt global warming and reduce pollution and noise.
  - pengaru 4y ago
    > It’s much less stupid if you think about it as a way to halt global warming and reduce pollution and noise. s/halt/slow/
    - wilg 4y ago
      Slowing it is how you get to halting it. These things can run on purely renewable energy, so if we get to a 100% EV fleet it will be relatively easy to go carbon-neutral on vehicle transport.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        "it will be relatively easy to go carbon-neutral on vehicle transport." For the fuel maybe. Probably not as easy on other components.
        wilg 4y ago
        For the fuel definitely. But we have to solve the problem for other components anyway. EV batteries in particular are great because they are 99% recyclable, so that's going to be the long term strategy.
      - pengaru 4y ago
formvoltron 4y ago
That's funny because the inventor of the lithium battery isn't so impressed with solid state.
- worrycue 4y ago
  What is he or she not impressed about? Why should we care?
  - baking 4y ago
    I assume this is what is being referred to: https://spectrum.ieee.org/lithium-ion-battery-disruption-ready https://spectrum.ieee.org/lithium-ion-battery-disruption-rea...
- Animatronio 4y ago
  I'd like to know his arguments against solid state batteries, but he's been dead for 19 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Urry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Urry
  - baking 4y ago
    I assume he means one of the inventors who are not dead.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    He means Goodenough
    - baking 4y ago
      Wasn't he working on solid state batteries?
      - selimthegrim 4y ago
        Sure but I’m not the one who made the original remark
mypgovroom 4y ago
I dunno how I feel about this guy? I like his positive energy but sometimes I wonder if how much BS is spewing?
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  He is Tesla shill who earned 120k USD in Tesla stock sales without disclosing it while he was holding it, but later bragging about money he made on video. https://twitter.com/TheSmokingTire/status/1388494562331484161 https://twitter.com/TheSmokingTire/status/138849456233148416... So whatever this guy says can be put into ballpark of other Tesla fan-fic videos on YouTube.
numbers_guy 4y ago
It will be interesting how this develops. Right now EVs are just starting to become affordable. I wonder what would happen, once they reach the second hand market. What about people who live in apartments with only street parking available? Cars are parked bumper to bumper. Will there be a charging dock every 2 meters on every single street?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Majority of housing in the US is single family homes. Some jurisdictions have mandated EV charging installs at multi family/apartments. More can. Tesla places superchargers in lots of places at grocery stores (conveniently allowing you to charge while you shop). Walmart is rolling out charging at thousands of stores. Power is everywhere, this is straightforward to solve for. 20% of EV sales in California this year, so far, are EVs. They are the 4th-5th largest economy in the world. Extrapolate accordingly. My previous comment on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463224 https://electrek.co/2023/04/06/walmart-to-launch-coast-to-coast-ev-fast-charging-network/ https://electrek.co/2023/04/06/walmart-to-launch-coast-to-co... > Walmart already has nearly 1,300 EV fast-charging stations through a partnership with Electrify America installed across over 280 US retail locations. The new initiative will promote a coast-to-coast network across thousands of Walmart and Sams Club Stores by 2030, according to the retailer. > With a Walmart store or club located within 10 miles of roughly 90% of Americans, the EV fast-charging network will help increase access to affordable charging solutions as demand grows. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-07-29/biden-has-a-5-billion-plan-to-eliminate-america-s-ev-charging-deserts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-07-29/biden-has... (Biden Has a $5 Billion Plan to Eliminate America's EV Charging Deserts) https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map https://www.plugshare.com/ https://www.plugshare.com/ (scope to your location on above maps)
  - admax88qqq 4y ago
    Indeed. In my city I see plenty of Teslas parked on street parking with no charging connected. People just use the charging at grocery stores, downtown parking, their apartment building and seem to manage fine. Charging is slower than gas but the charging locations also seem to be more abundant which maybe balances out the time spent.
aynyc 4y ago
I think the biggest gain is actually EV in commercial vehicles. Like delivery vans, construction vans and work vans in the bigger cities. Those vans are quieter, NEVER IDLES!!!, less polluting, and don't required 300 miles range (I read average miles driven is 75 miles per day), usually return to shops where they can be charged. Given the right incentive and competitive pricing, I definitely see a huge win there both in global warming and quality of life in neighborhoods.
- readthenotes1 4y ago
  What could go wrong? https://youtu.be/T71cVhxG_v4 https://youtu.be/T71cVhxG_v4 https://youtu.be/5r-yN8SugWM https://youtu.be/5r-yN8SugWM https://youtu.be/_8YClwsWTyU https://youtu.be/_8YClwsWTyU https://youtu.be/tnNqBgOeCUQ https://youtu.be/tnNqBgOeCUQ Might be a few things to iron out...
  - jeffrallen 4y ago
    Maybe it's just buses are flammable: https://youtu.be/_oP9bQxl3to https://youtu.be/_oP9bQxl3to
  - worik 4y ago
    The very definition of Cherry Picking Batteries that store vast amounts of potential energy are a fire risk, duh! Just like tanks of petroleum.
    - readthenotes1 4y ago
      And so easy to pick!
  - recursive 4y ago
    Yes, EVs haven't yet reached the goal of zero fires, but they're closer than fossil fuel-powered vehicles. https://www.kbb.com/car-news/study-electric-vehicles-involved-in-fewest-car-fires/ https://www.kbb.com/car-news/study-electric-vehicles-involve...
- 4y ago
Ralo 4y ago
Serious question, how would we charge these new high density batteries? Just to charge our current EV's, we need to run dedicated circuits at max capacity and it still takes a couple hours. Are we going be running 1000v circuits in our homes? How do we upgrade the local grids to have this amperage in each home? I'm not an EE, but are our current batteries just poor at "absorbing" this energy while our chargers just waste tons? While these new solid state batteries will hold it all? There's high power fast chargers, but I want to come home and plug in my car after work. It just seems like batteries aren't the bottle neck. It's our efficiency to produce and distribute this electricity. ICE isn't perfect, but it's an extreme dense form of energy and the output of it rotational energy. Which is exactly what our end goal is. In electricity production we outsource it, then store it. Basically the same concept as winding up a spring loaded toy then letting it go when we want to use it. The spring isn't the source of power, it's just the energy storage. Just because we made the spring bigger and output more doesn't make it more efficient. Simply mean we need to spin it more, and with more energy. We cannot even make the electric motors more efficient, we already run at 80-90% efficiency. What will we see? 1% more? 2% more? It really depends where your energy comes from. If your energy comes from dams/solar/wind, those have low impacts and can be an efficient way to "wind up your spring" but they generally aren't extremely reliable and cannot power an entire city of EVs. If your energy is from coal, those are horribly inefficient. They run around 33% efficency [0]. All this electricity needs to transported but the power lines waste power, the charger wastes power, the AC-DC converters waste power, the EV motor wastes power. It's so many little losses outsourced to someone else. I like the idea of EV. There's many pros, but far too many cons still. And it's not the cars fault. It's already maximizing what it can do with what it can get. Personally, the battery pack prices are the biggest killer for me. I drive a 90s Toyota pickup. It's been problem free. I've driven it for years. Unless it rots to the ground, I'll never see a surprise bill in 10-20 years saying I need a new battery pack. My motor could entirely fail and it would be a $500 fix. Not to mention, it's entirely recyclable. People will give me money just for the metal. It seems like EV is a nice option for rich people at the moment but if the majority switch over, the concept really falls on its face. Although, high capacity cell phone/laptop batteries would be pretty sweet. However, we already have problems with phones being pretty dangerous. [0] https://www.energy.gov/fecm/transformative-power-systems#:~:text=The%20average%20coal%2Dfired%20power,States%20operates%20near%2033%25%20efficiency https://www.energy.gov/fecm/transformative-power-systems#:~:....
photochemsyn 4y ago
There does seem to be a lot going on right now on the solid-state battery front: https://www.electrive.com/tag/solid-state-batteries/ https://www.electrive.com/tag/solid-state-batteries/ In particular, more on the sodium-ion battery discussed by Munro: https://www.electrive.com/2023/02/23/hina-launches-sodium-ion-battery-tests-in-vehicles/ https://www.electrive.com/2023/02/23/hina-launches-sodium-io... The ICE will probably go the way of the Stanley Steamer for cars and trucks in the relatively near future. Those fossil-fueled steam engines were surprisingly capable, incidentally: > "A Stanley Steamer set the world record for the fastest mile in an automobile (28.2 seconds) in 1906. This record (127 mph or 204 km/h) was not broken by any automobile until 1911" (wiki)
stillbourne 4y ago
I don't intend to get an electric car until solid state batteries are available.
mikewarot 4y ago
So, the question I always have, is, can the grid even support this... surprisingly the answer is yes, but just barely: "The record high level of finished motor gasoline consumption was about 392 million gallons per day in 2018."[1] "Petroleum liquids–12.69 kWh/gallon"[2] So, that's 12.96 * 392 Million kWh/day --> 5.08 Billion kWh/day Smoothed out to the same rate every hour --> 211 Million kW "At the end of 2021, the United States had 1,143,757 MW—or about 1.14 billion kW—of total utility-scale electricity generating capacity"[3] So, in theory, we could run everything, and charge the cars when the demand was lower, at night. --- [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=23&t=10#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20about%20134.55%20billion,8.78%20million%20barrels%20per%20day https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=23&t=10#:~:text=In...). [2] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=667&t=6#:~:text=Coal%E2%80%930.89%20kWh%2Fpound,Petroleum%20liquids%E2%80%9312.69%20kWh%2Fgallon https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=667&t=6#:~:text=Co... [3] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
- mikewarot 4y ago
  5.08 Billion kWh per day * $138/kWh[1] --> $701 Billion That's a lot of batteries, and that's only if they were perfectly sized, in reality it's going to be 2-10 times as much. --- [1] https://lawnlove.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-cost/ https://lawnlove.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-cost/
hokkos 4y ago
I really doubt the analysis of Munro when they praise the Tesla 4680 as it seems a failure compared to the cell to pack batteries of CATL and BYD that have better pack density, thermal and price. He seems to be very biased for Tesla.

55 points by 1970-01-01 4y ago

By all accounts, battery technology sure looks like it's about to hit the fastest-growth portion of the usual "S" adoption curve -- "gradually then suddenly," to paraphrase Hemingway. By implication, demand for fossil fuels sure seems to be at risk of falling, also "gradually then suddenly," in a mirror "Ƨ" curve.

runako 4y ago
Odd Lots did an episode on what happens to fossil fuel demand as we go through the transition to renewables: https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/what-so-many-people-get-wrong-about-the-energy-tra https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/what-so-many-people-get-wrong... They also cite the Jevons paradox in a discussion of the possible counterintuitive outcomes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- cubefox 4y ago
  As an aside, EV doesn't mean renewable. In Germany the nuclear reactors have been turned off due to the influence of the Green party, and natural gas transfer from Nord Stream I was stopped by Russia due to the Ukraine war. As a consequence, more energy is now created from coal, since renewables like wind and solar are too volatile to replace nuclear and natural gas.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    By this logic, using diesel-powered haul trucks to Mike uranium, and building nuclear reactor facilities with massive amounts of steel rebar and concrete, both of which we don't even know how to decarbonize, means that nuclear is not low emissions either. The only valid argument is a quantitative one, and in that regime, EVs powered with a tiny fraction of coal, like the grid in Germany, are a massive win. But I will say that I'm not surprised to see yet another pro-nuclear, anti-other-clean-tech take. These two things seem to go hand in hand.
  - bob_theslob646 4y ago
    I'm not sure why this comment is being down voted. All it is stating is facts. Most of the lithium needed for electric vehicles is going to be mined and that is not an environmental friendly process. No one's talking about how they're going to power electric vehicles in the United States... It's a ticking time bomb for energy infrastructure in the United States. They should be pursuing everything all at once,not reducing because you always need a backup.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      None of this is true. Coal is a minor component of Germany's power, and even if it were bigger, EVs are a big win on pollution even when largely powered by coal. And as for lithium being "dirty" have you bothered to even compare it to other sources of mining? Such as for the massive amount of stew that goes into cars? Or the absolutely massive amounts of waste and destruction that happens to extract oil to power cars? Citing "environmental damage" but not acknowledging right away that it's far far far less than the alternatives is simply playing rhetorical games. We must be far more logical and realistic and pragmatic if we want to take care of the environment. Above all, factuality is important.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - cameldrv 4y ago
        Coal is about 35% of electricity in Germany.
        cubefox 4y ago
        Yeah: > More than a third (36.3%) of the electricity produced and fed into the grid in Germany in the third quarter of 2022 came from coal-fired power plants (third quarter of 2021: 31.9%). https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2022/12/PE22_518_433.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2022/12/PE22_518_433.html And that number is from before the last nuclear reactors were turned off.
      - 4y ago
cubefox 4y ago
Could this lower oil prices, or would cartels like OPEC just reduce oil production to keep the price stable?
- dd36 4y ago
  That’s what they’ve been doing.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Depends on how supply performs relative to demand… price is just a function of the balance between these two. Fossil fuel consumption is still growing globally, and faster than production. So prices currently look set to rise. Higher oil prices make renewables look relatively more attractive though, so its a bit reflexive
- abathur 4y ago
  Would be interesting to see expert analysis, but I imagine it's really hard to know how every player will react. As (if?) likelihood of a demand collapse increases, I imagine some fraction of potential suppliers with ~easy/cheap oil left would have a healthy incentive to open up the supply for as long as it takes to force everyone with ~hard sources to wind down, leaving them to price-set the long-tail? Hopefully the price of any PoW crypto is sufficiently low that it doesn't make marginal economic sense for any players to extract-and-mine?
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  OPEC only produces about 30% of the world's oil.
- toss1 4y ago
  They will try, and it'll work for a while, but they won't be able to maintain it, and doing so would speed the death of oil As EVs get cheaper to buy, and more importantly, to run, the petrol-fueled vehicles start to become uneconomical. As use declines, availability of fuel declines, as petrol stations become more unprofitable. Further encourages EV adoption. Range anxiety now comes to petrol-powered vehicle owners as it is now for EV owners, further incentivizing the switch. While the general impression is that this will be gradual, I think it will be a gradual decline, then sudden, as the overall inconvenience and cost levels cross. Then some minor precipitating event changes the overall mindset, and petrol-powered cars become a perceived liability, and those still stuck with them will barely be able to unload them. As the decline happens, OPEC will surely try to manage the price of oil, but with demand declining, one of two things will happen. To the extent that they keep the price high, they speed the transition away from oil. They are also much more likely to fail, as the US is now a major producer, and has every incentive to work against OPEC. Plus, their friends are gone. Teh car companies figured out in the 2008 price spike that the oil industry is NOT their friend as that economic crash and oil price spike forced them to look over the cliff of doom as auto sales nearly stopped dead. Then we saw Russia's blatant attempt to use their oil & gas supply to blackmail the world into yielding to their genocidal invasion of Ukraine. No rational businessman now thinks that the oil industry is a reliable supply partner, and will cut them out of the equation at the first opportunity. The oil industry and countries may have some good days ahead, but beyond the intermediate term, they are absolutely screwed.
seydor 4y ago
So, brownouts are about to happen?

brk 4y ago

I doubt this is going to play out as optimistically as the pro-EV crowd thinks. No personal bias against EVs, but there are still issues with range for towing/hauling, and longer duration "road trip" style commutes that make it impossible to be "pure EV" on the roads any time soon. Also, the marine and aviation industries don't have viable EV options in the short term (10 years), same with heavy equipment (CAT, Deere, etc.), this will keep at least enough of a market for gas/diesel engine production that they won't go away.

theK 4y ago
You are right, the hauling and aviation industries will probably stick to burning fuel for a while. Maybe eFuel someday but still burning fuel. But this don't mean that average Joe transportation (which incidentally makes up 99%ofprivate vehicle travel) cannot be realistically electrified. Sure, even there people will keep running their classic cars and probably even some sports and muscle cars but for the biggest majority of casual commuters the writing is on the wall. There just is no real upside to sticking with ICEs even today.
runako 4y ago
There's wisdom in what you say. At the same time, technology adoption curves only get to 100% at the asymptote. For example, one still encounters a need to send a fax from time to time, and some people still have landlines. That said, the auto market at 50% or 70% EV adoption will still be a big deal! And we might find out that some of the issues that folks see with EVs are solvable and/or aren't that important anyway. For example: the average American summer road trip is under 300 miles, so the range anxiety might be ameliorated by wider availability of faster chargers than are available today. Similarly, we might learn that users of heavy equipment are in the habit of taking breaks during which they could charge their equipment, etc.
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  My bigger concern is just how damn reliable new vehicles are. The average age of a car on the road today is like 12 years. Even if we start selling 100% electric cars tomorrow, the curve is a lot fatter and the cut over slower. On the other hand, this is a great thing because it will smooth out the transition

hcarvalhoalves 4y ago

This is great and all, but still really stupid if you stop and think a lot of EV use is just replacing ICE use that shouldn’t exist in the first place. A lot of daily commute isn’t necessary, or not necessary by car with public transportation, but the economic incentives aren’t there to build cities for that - need to keep selling cars.

wilg 4y ago
It’s much less stupid if you think about it as a way to halt global warming and reduce pollution and noise.
- pengaru 4y ago
  > It’s much less stupid if you think about it as a way to halt global warming and reduce pollution and noise. s/halt/slow/
  - wilg 4y ago
    Slowing it is how you get to halting it. These things can run on purely renewable energy, so if we get to a 100% EV fleet it will be relatively easy to go carbon-neutral on vehicle transport.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      "it will be relatively easy to go carbon-neutral on vehicle transport." For the fuel maybe. Probably not as easy on other components.
      - wilg 4y ago
        For the fuel definitely. But we have to solve the problem for other components anyway. EV batteries in particular are great because they are 99% recyclable, so that's going to be the long term strategy.
    - pengaru 4y ago

formvoltron 4y ago

That's funny because the inventor of the lithium battery isn't so impressed with solid state.

worrycue 4y ago
What is he or she not impressed about? Why should we care?
- baking 4y ago
  I assume this is what is being referred to: https://spectrum.ieee.org/lithium-ion-battery-disruption-ready https://spectrum.ieee.org/lithium-ion-battery-disruption-rea...
Animatronio 4y ago
I'd like to know his arguments against solid state batteries, but he's been dead for 19 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Urry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Urry
- baking 4y ago
  I assume he means one of the inventors who are not dead.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  He means Goodenough
  - baking 4y ago
    Wasn't he working on solid state batteries?
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      Sure but I’m not the one who made the original remark

mypgovroom 4y ago

I dunno how I feel about this guy? I like his positive energy but sometimes I wonder if how much BS is spewing?

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
He is Tesla shill who earned 120k USD in Tesla stock sales without disclosing it while he was holding it, but later bragging about money he made on video. https://twitter.com/TheSmokingTire/status/1388494562331484161 https://twitter.com/TheSmokingTire/status/138849456233148416... So whatever this guy says can be put into ballpark of other Tesla fan-fic videos on YouTube.

numbers_guy 4y ago

It will be interesting how this develops. Right now EVs are just starting to become affordable. I wonder what would happen, once they reach the second hand market. What about people who live in apartments with only street parking available? Cars are parked bumper to bumper. Will there be a charging dock every 2 meters on every single street?

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Majority of housing in the US is single family homes. Some jurisdictions have mandated EV charging installs at multi family/apartments. More can. Tesla places superchargers in lots of places at grocery stores (conveniently allowing you to charge while you shop). Walmart is rolling out charging at thousands of stores. Power is everywhere, this is straightforward to solve for. 20% of EV sales in California this year, so far, are EVs. They are the 4th-5th largest economy in the world. Extrapolate accordingly. My previous comment on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463224 https://electrek.co/2023/04/06/walmart-to-launch-coast-to-coast-ev-fast-charging-network/ https://electrek.co/2023/04/06/walmart-to-launch-coast-to-co... > Walmart already has nearly 1,300 EV fast-charging stations through a partnership with Electrify America installed across over 280 US retail locations. The new initiative will promote a coast-to-coast network across thousands of Walmart and Sams Club Stores by 2030, according to the retailer. > With a Walmart store or club located within 10 miles of roughly 90% of Americans, the EV fast-charging network will help increase access to affordable charging solutions as demand grows. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-07-29/biden-has-a-5-billion-plan-to-eliminate-america-s-ev-charging-deserts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-07-29/biden-has... (Biden Has a $5 Billion Plan to Eliminate America's EV Charging Deserts) https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map https://www.plugshare.com/ https://www.plugshare.com/ (scope to your location on above maps)
- admax88qqq 4y ago
  Indeed. In my city I see plenty of Teslas parked on street parking with no charging connected. People just use the charging at grocery stores, downtown parking, their apartment building and seem to manage fine. Charging is slower than gas but the charging locations also seem to be more abundant which maybe balances out the time spent.

aynyc 4y ago

I think the biggest gain is actually EV in commercial vehicles. Like delivery vans, construction vans and work vans in the bigger cities. Those vans are quieter, NEVER IDLES!!!, less polluting, and don't required 300 miles range (I read average miles driven is 75 miles per day), usually return to shops where they can be charged. Given the right incentive and competitive pricing, I definitely see a huge win there both in global warming and quality of life in neighborhoods.

readthenotes1 4y ago
What could go wrong? https://youtu.be/T71cVhxG_v4 https://youtu.be/T71cVhxG_v4 https://youtu.be/5r-yN8SugWM https://youtu.be/5r-yN8SugWM https://youtu.be/_8YClwsWTyU https://youtu.be/_8YClwsWTyU https://youtu.be/tnNqBgOeCUQ https://youtu.be/tnNqBgOeCUQ Might be a few things to iron out...
- jeffrallen 4y ago
  Maybe it's just buses are flammable: https://youtu.be/_oP9bQxl3to https://youtu.be/_oP9bQxl3to
- worik 4y ago
  The very definition of Cherry Picking Batteries that store vast amounts of potential energy are a fire risk, duh! Just like tanks of petroleum.
  - readthenotes1 4y ago
    And so easy to pick!
- recursive 4y ago
  Yes, EVs haven't yet reached the goal of zero fires, but they're closer than fossil fuel-powered vehicles. https://www.kbb.com/car-news/study-electric-vehicles-involved-in-fewest-car-fires/ https://www.kbb.com/car-news/study-electric-vehicles-involve...
4y ago

Ralo 4y ago

Serious question, how would we charge these new high density batteries? Just to charge our current EV's, we need to run dedicated circuits at max capacity and it still takes a couple hours. Are we going be running 1000v circuits in our homes? How do we upgrade the local grids to have this amperage in each home? I'm not an EE, but are our current batteries just poor at "absorbing" this energy while our chargers just waste tons? While these new solid state batteries will hold it all? There's high power fast chargers, but I want to come home and plug in my car after work. It just seems like batteries aren't the bottle neck. It's our efficiency to produce and distribute this electricity. ICE isn't perfect, but it's an extreme dense form of energy and the output of it rotational energy. Which is exactly what our end goal is. In electricity production we outsource it, then store it. Basically the same concept as winding up a spring loaded toy then letting it go when we want to use it. The spring isn't the source of power, it's just the energy storage. Just because we made the spring bigger and output more doesn't make it more efficient. Simply mean we need to spin it more, and with more energy. We cannot even make the electric motors more efficient, we already run at 80-90% efficiency. What will we see? 1% more? 2% more? It really depends where your energy comes from. If your energy comes from dams/solar/wind, those have low impacts and can be an efficient way to "wind up your spring" but they generally aren't extremely reliable and cannot power an entire city of EVs. If your energy is from coal, those are horribly inefficient. They run around 33% efficency [0]. All this electricity needs to transported but the power lines waste power, the charger wastes power, the AC-DC converters waste power, the EV motor wastes power. It's so many little losses outsourced to someone else. I like the idea of EV. There's many pros, but far too many cons still. And it's not the cars fault. It's already maximizing what it can do with what it can get. Personally, the battery pack prices are the biggest killer for me. I drive a 90s Toyota pickup. It's been problem free. I've driven it for years. Unless it rots to the ground, I'll never see a surprise bill in 10-20 years saying I need a new battery pack. My motor could entirely fail and it would be a $500 fix. Not to mention, it's entirely recyclable. People will give me money just for the metal. It seems like EV is a nice option for rich people at the moment but if the majority switch over, the concept really falls on its face. Although, high capacity cell phone/laptop batteries would be pretty sweet. However, we already have problems with phones being pretty dangerous. [0] https://www.energy.gov/fecm/transformative-power-systems#:~:text=The%20average%20coal%2Dfired%20power,States%20operates%20near%2033%25%20efficiency https://www.energy.gov/fecm/transformative-power-systems#:~:....

photochemsyn 4y ago

There does seem to be a lot going on right now on the solid-state battery front: https://www.electrive.com/tag/solid-state-batteries/ https://www.electrive.com/tag/solid-state-batteries/ In particular, more on the sodium-ion battery discussed by Munro: https://www.electrive.com/2023/02/23/hina-launches-sodium-ion-battery-tests-in-vehicles/ https://www.electrive.com/2023/02/23/hina-launches-sodium-io... The ICE will probably go the way of the Stanley Steamer for cars and trucks in the relatively near future. Those fossil-fueled steam engines were surprisingly capable, incidentally: > "A Stanley Steamer set the world record for the fastest mile in an automobile (28.2 seconds) in 1906. This record (127 mph or 204 km/h) was not broken by any automobile until 1911" (wiki)

stillbourne 4y ago

I don't intend to get an electric car until solid state batteries are available.

mikewarot 4y ago

So, the question I always have, is, can the grid even support this... surprisingly the answer is yes, but just barely: "The record high level of finished motor gasoline consumption was about 392 million gallons per day in 2018."[1] "Petroleum liquids–12.69 kWh/gallon"[2] So, that's 12.96 * 392 Million kWh/day --> 5.08 Billion kWh/day Smoothed out to the same rate every hour --> 211 Million kW "At the end of 2021, the United States had 1,143,757 MW—or about 1.14 billion kW—of total utility-scale electricity generating capacity"[3] So, in theory, we could run everything, and charge the cars when the demand was lower, at night. --- [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=23&t=10#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20about%20134.55%20billion,8.78%20million%20barrels%20per%20day https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=23&t=10#:~:text=In...). [2] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=667&t=6#:~:text=Coal%E2%80%930.89%20kWh%2Fpound,Petroleum%20liquids%E2%80%9312.69%20kWh%2Fgallon https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=667&t=6#:~:text=Co... [3] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...

mikewarot 4y ago
5.08 Billion kWh per day * $138/kWh[1] --> $701 Billion That's a lot of batteries, and that's only if they were perfectly sized, in reality it's going to be 2-10 times as much. --- [1] https://lawnlove.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-cost/ https://lawnlove.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-cost/

hokkos 4y ago

I really doubt the analysis of Munro when they praise the Tesla 4680 as it seems a failure compared to the cell to pack batteries of CATL and BYD that have better pack density, thermal and price. He seems to be very biased for Tesla.