4 ms·

Very interesting, but it is a niche specific case that doesn't answer the question at all. Imagine a tractor in a field. What is the solution for that?

defrost 2y ago
A billion tonnes per annum is niche ? What's the tonnage the tractor moves per annum?
- jimnotgym 2y ago
  Yes your example is extremely niche. It only works where you are going to work on one specific application for many years in the same place. It doesn't generalise to building a house, a supermarket or a road. It doesn't generalise to ploughing the Mid-West. Even in your example it only works if you are taking all of the material to one destination, like an ore refinery. If it was road stone, the rock would get loaded onto a diesel truck for the final part of the journey. So again, the tractor, the excavator on a job site, the lorry, will all stay on diesel or hydrogen ICE
  - defrost 2y ago
    > Yes your example is extremely niche No. It isn't. Mining related excation energy requirements are a major component of the global transport related energy demand. So much earth is moved on an annual basis that the earth's axis alters from the mass balance change. Mining excavation and artisinal water extraction are the two primary human activities that account for the bulk of these mass changes. Simply being unaware of the scale of tonnages moved globally on an annual basis via mining related earth moving equipment doesn't make it niche. This might interest you: https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/metals-mining https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met... although you can find similar data scattered across other presenters.
VBprogrammer 2y ago
I don't think a tractor is necessary a bad use case for batteries. They just need battery packs which can do the equivalent of a days work. Electric motors are almost better suited to the use case due to the torque. I'm sure some of the US mega farms have tractors which run all night (and the emissions of those are the least of their environmental issues) but this isn't common elsewhere.
- jimnotgym 2y ago
  I believe the problem is that a tractor runs for much of the workday at a very high load. Pulling a plough is constant hard work, not like a car that is only using a lot of power while accellerating hard. If you had your foot to the floor in a Tesla constantly you would run your battery flat in a lot less than 8 hours. I have read that the batteries for this application would therefore be infeasibly large.

defrost 2y ago

A billion tonnes per annum is niche ? What's the tonnage the tractor moves per annum?

jimnotgym 2y ago
Yes your example is extremely niche. It only works where you are going to work on one specific application for many years in the same place. It doesn't generalise to building a house, a supermarket or a road. It doesn't generalise to ploughing the Mid-West. Even in your example it only works if you are taking all of the material to one destination, like an ore refinery. If it was road stone, the rock would get loaded onto a diesel truck for the final part of the journey. So again, the tractor, the excavator on a job site, the lorry, will all stay on diesel or hydrogen ICE
- defrost 2y ago
  > Yes your example is extremely niche No. It isn't. Mining related excation energy requirements are a major component of the global transport related energy demand. So much earth is moved on an annual basis that the earth's axis alters from the mass balance change. Mining excavation and artisinal water extraction are the two primary human activities that account for the bulk of these mass changes. Simply being unaware of the scale of tonnages moved globally on an annual basis via mining related earth moving equipment doesn't make it niche. This might interest you: https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/metals-mining https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/campaigns/met... although you can find similar data scattered across other presenters.

VBprogrammer 2y ago

I don't think a tractor is necessary a bad use case for batteries. They just need battery packs which can do the equivalent of a days work. Electric motors are almost better suited to the use case due to the torque. I'm sure some of the US mega farms have tractors which run all night (and the emissions of those are the least of their environmental issues) but this isn't common elsewhere.

jimnotgym 2y ago
I believe the problem is that a tractor runs for much of the workday at a very high load. Pulling a plough is constant hard work, not like a car that is only using a lot of power while accellerating hard. If you had your foot to the floor in a Tesla constantly you would run your battery flat in a lot less than 8 hours. I have read that the batteries for this application would therefore be infeasibly large.