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The big advantage of a flow battery is that "recharging" can be just about as fast as filling up a gasoline-powered car. The energy is in liquid form... you ju

The big advantage of a flow battery is that "recharging" can be just about as fast as filling up a gasoline-powered car. The energy is in liquid form... you just drain the used liquid, fill it up with "charged" liquid, and you're back on the road. The "dead" liquid is "recharged", but that happens in tanks at the fueling station. The car doesn't have to sit there and wait.

elif 3y ago
Based upon their example "just about as fast as filling up a gasoline-powered car." Is not exactly accurate for a number of reasons. On paper, it would be more like filling up and emptying 4 gasoline-powered cars. That's about 8x the process in the ideal case. Other considerations would be the necessity for 8x as much storage in gas stations, 8x as many refilling trucks to supply and empty those stations, and above all, the development of a nationwide network of such infrastructure as pervasive as the existing fuel network. This is even more dead on arrival than hydrogen.
- dlgeek 3y ago
  Why would it need 8x the storage or trucks? They'd recharge the spent fluid on-site and re-use it.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  You do understand that conventional gas pumps are legacy devices on which the UI dates back to the days when the gas was literally pumped by hand? That they don't remotely approach maximum practical flow rate that can be produced by a pump, even a small one? That there are quick connectors that can vastly exceed the flow rate of the current hand-held nozzle shoved into a hole?
DoesntMatter22 3y ago
Well made electric vehicles are A) getting faster to charge B) already have the infrastructure in place C) Way cheaper to install. No fluids to exchange, no facility to create/store/handle fluids. Standard Model 3 has 272 miles of range. That 4.5 hours of driving, which is way more than most people are doing in a day. I drive 30k miles (~3x the average) a year but average about 80 miles a day. Unless you are driving across the country frequently this isn't really going to make any sense. Then on top of that you are going to have to support totally different battery tech, then also the density of these batteries isn't great. This is just never gonna happen.

elif 3y ago

Based upon their example "just about as fast as filling up a gasoline-powered car." Is not exactly accurate for a number of reasons. On paper, it would be more like filling up and emptying 4 gasoline-powered cars. That's about 8x the process in the ideal case. Other considerations would be the necessity for 8x as much storage in gas stations, 8x as many refilling trucks to supply and empty those stations, and above all, the development of a nationwide network of such infrastructure as pervasive as the existing fuel network. This is even more dead on arrival than hydrogen.

dlgeek 3y ago
Why would it need 8x the storage or trucks? They'd recharge the spent fluid on-site and re-use it.
Turing_Machine 3y ago
You do understand that conventional gas pumps are legacy devices on which the UI dates back to the days when the gas was literally pumped by hand? That they don't remotely approach maximum practical flow rate that can be produced by a pump, even a small one? That there are quick connectors that can vastly exceed the flow rate of the current hand-held nozzle shoved into a hole?

DoesntMatter22 3y ago

Well made electric vehicles are A) getting faster to charge B) already have the infrastructure in place C) Way cheaper to install. No fluids to exchange, no facility to create/store/handle fluids. Standard Model 3 has 272 miles of range. That 4.5 hours of driving, which is way more than most people are doing in a day. I drive 30k miles (~3x the average) a year but average about 80 miles a day. Unless you are driving across the country frequently this isn't really going to make any sense. Then on top of that you are going to have to support totally different battery tech, then also the density of these batteries isn't great. This is just never gonna happen.