[HN Gopher] The lithium-ion battery may not be the best bet for EVs
___________________________________________________________________
The lithium-ion battery may not be the best bet for EVs
Author : rbanffy
Score : 64 points
Date : 2024-03-01 11:26 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| paulsutter wrote:
| Surely they mean per kwh of capacity, since they really can't
| mean 31kg of carbon per kwh discharged (which would make
| batteries 60x worse than natural gas)
|
| > lithium-ion cell ... 30.9 kilograms of emitted carbon dioxide
| per kilowatt-hour generated
|
| This still suggests that you don't breakeven on carbon until 60
| full charge-discharge cycles
| papercrane wrote:
| What the study actually says:
|
| > current Li-ion cell, primary data were used in this study
| resulting in 50,8 kg CO2eq/kWh in the WCS and 30,9 kg CO2eq/kWh
| in the BCS.
|
| From the context in the study it's clear they're talking about
| capacity.
| thsksbd wrote:
| Which is what? About 25 000 km? Doesn't sound unreasonable. Ive
| seen studies suggesting it might be an extra order of
| magnitude.
|
| If you assume battery capacity as a limiting factor, EV don't
| even break even compared to hybrids.
|
| Cars, all cars, are terrible. I say this as a car guy who
| doesn't give a rats butt about GW. The externality of cars are
| far more damaging than CO2 emissions.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| A battery lasts 1000-3000+ cycles. That takes the emissions of
| a car down to 6-2% of an equivalent ICE for the life of that
| battery. Most cars fall apart before the battery reaches that
| point so recycling of the cells will likely occur but still
| that is a monumental saving if you can charge that car from
| clean power.
|
| All of those emissions can be replaced with electrical
| replacements, from the machines that extract and move the
| material to the processing and making the batteries. So as
| electrical vehicles take over that number will drop to nothing.
| There are already replacements for a lot of the big machinery
| that extracts from mines that can run all the time in the US
| and other places in the world.
|
| It will obviously take an amount of CO2 emissions to transition
| but the emissions aren't intrinsic to the process but rather
| the power we are using to make it happen.
|
| A common complaint about Solar panels is they take quite a bit
| of power to make, which is true but if you also look at any of
| the solar manufacturing plants around the world they are not
| surprisingly getting their power from their own solar panels as
| well. When we study the emissions of these things we need to
| think more about what can not be easily replaced yet, like
| steel manufacture.
|
| Oil also has similar externalities in emissions too from all
| the extraction and moving of barrels of it around the globe,
| its one of the largest industries in the world for emissions.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >A battery lasts 1000-3000+ cycles.
|
| Modern lithium typically _wears out due to time_ , not cycle
| count (when used outside of extremes).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Still, if recharged once a day, that's 3 to 10 years,
| what's completely in line with the time durability. The
| time degradation will just bias the lifetime into the short
| end of that interval.
|
| If you have an electric car, and don't use it often, then
| your numbers will be worse. But if you use it weekly (what
| is normal for lightly used cars), you need about an year
| and half to reach the OP's number and become better than
| the next best alternative.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| A charge cycle is one full cycling of capacity, such as
| 0% to 100% once, 30% to 80% twice, or 70% to 80% ten
| times.
|
| I'd be surprised if there are _any_ EV drivers
| consistently doing a charge cycle every day, outside of
| commercial vehicles where the battery size was picked to
| not be any bigger than its daily route.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's not that simple. Going from 100% to 0% is far more
| damaging to the battery than going from 80% to 70%. This
| is why most EVs are so conservative with their battery
| usage, they're trying to avoid needing replacement
| batteries before the rest of the car has fallen apart.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Right, just generalizing on how charge cycles are
| counted, but I'd probably file regular 0-100s into
| grandparent comment's "(when used outside of extremes)"
|
| The average American drives around 13500 miles per
| year[1], so supposing a car with 250 mile range that's 54
| charge cycles, just about one charge cycle per week. The
| vast majority of that will mostly be with under 20% of a
| cycle per day, plus a handful of outlier days every year
| with longer trips.
|
| 1000 cycles at 54 cycles per year would be 18.5 years,
| and 3000 cycles would be 55.5 years. I'm no expert on
| lithium ion battery aging, but that sounds like it's well
| into the range where age is more of a problem than cycle
| count for an average driver.
|
| [1] https://www.caranddriver.com/auto-
| loans/a32880477/average-mi...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My newest car is 20 years old. I refuse to spend what a
| new car costs when a car costing 10% of that does the
| job. I don't know what I will do for cars when the
| battery craps out after 10 years.
|
| More and more I think the whole EV concept is a way to
| make cars that don't last as long but cost just as much
| if not more, so that automakers can extract more money
| from their customers
| wlesieutre wrote:
| My previous car made it to 18 and I'm hoping to keep its
| replacement alive as long as possible to see what the
| track record of car companies looks like for lifespan of
| their electric cars.
|
| It's not just the battery, they're increasingly turning
| into smartphone-like gadgets. And performance on that
| type of device never seems to get better as it stretches
| toward the end of its supported life. Even in the best
| case automakers are saying things like "we'll give it 15
| years of android updates." On the one hand, that's not
| long enough, and on the other at that 15 year mark I half
| expect the car will take 30 minutes to launch the maps
| app because "technically gave you an update" doesn't mean
| "gave any shits about the user experience on 15 year old
| hardware."
|
| If anything, the battery is the part where there's a
| possibility of a 3rd party replacement/refurbishment
| market improving things. Not so easy to replace an EV's
| infotainment system as it was to swap a single DIN tape
| deck out for a bluetooth radio.
| jandrese wrote:
| It gets even stranger when you think about how some EV
| companies are pushing autonomous driving so hard. Will
| the AI driving system be able to run on 20 year old
| hardware? Or will they have to cut people off and say
| "oops, the feature you already bought wasn't really
| possible on your hardware after all, only new cars will
| get the update." Tesla isn't the only example here, but
| it is the most egregious.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Meanwhile GM is pulling CarPlay from their EVs to make
| sure when your car gets older and the software is a huge
| heap of shit, you can't use the car's screen for maps
| from your 15-years-newer smartphone (or whatever smart-
| gizmo we're using in 15 years). Want better maps? Buy a
| new car!
|
| I have to hope people will turn around from that and buy
| their next car from someone other than GM.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > I don't know what I will do for cars when the battery
| craps out after 10 years.
|
| Not really how batteries tend to degrade.
|
| Consider how your cellphone battery degrades. It's not
| that you one day wake up with a phone that doesn't charge
| at all, instead the charge simply doesn't last as long.
|
| When people talk about the cycle life of batteries, they
| are talking about the time it takes for battery capacity
| to go from 100% to 70%. This is also taken from a
| generally super pessimistic viewpoint (Charging from 0%
| to 100% == 1 cycle). Pessimistic because lithium ion
| batteries are somewhat damaged at very low and very high
| charges.
|
| If you get an EV, keep the charge percentage between 40
| and 80 (which is usually more than enough for daily use)
| the battery can last a LOT longer. And that's just
| talking about NMC batteries.
|
| LFP lithium batteries have ~5 to 10x the cyclelife of NMC
| batteries.
|
| I'm currently driving a 2018 tesla model 3 with 120,000
| miles. It's got 95% it's original battery capacity. The
| actual maintenance I've done has been nothing compared to
| what I've had to do with ICE vehicles. Basically just new
| tires and windshield wiper fluid.
|
| > More and more I think the whole EV concept is a way to
| make cars that don't last as long but cost just as much
| if not more, so that automakers can extract more money
| from their customers
|
| EVs may have a higher upfront cost, but they aren't
| making automakers more money. The opposite is true.
|
| Now, if I'm cynical, I believe the place automakers will
| try and shorten the life of EVs is with the software, not
| the hardware. I've no clue how much longer my EV will get
| OTA updates.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| I haven't heard of this effect. What is the timeline of
| degradation from just chronological aging?
| philipkglass wrote:
| I don't know if ProllyInfamous is correct about electric
| vehicle batteries wearing out more from age than from
| cycling, but it _is_ an effect that shows up in
| batteries. The terms to describe the effects are "cycle
| life" and "calendar life." Increasing calendar age can
| degrade batteries that just sit there without deliberate
| charge or discharge processes. An example would be an old
| package of Duracell batteries, never used, that sat in
| the closet for decades and lost power before they ever
| went into a remote control. Those batteries reached the
| end of their calendar life.
| tzs wrote:
| They say that is a "cradle-to-gate" analysis, which means it
| covers the cost from gathering resources through manufacturing
| up to the point it leaves the factory.
|
| Consider an EV with a 75 kWh battery pack. Using their numbers
| that would be 2318 kg of CO2 to make that battery. If the
| battery lasts 1000 full cycles that would be 75000 kWh of
| energy produced.
|
| Amortizing that 2300 kg of CO2 over that gives 0.0303 kg
| CO2/kWh discharged.
|
| A typical EV gets about 4 miles per kWh, so that's about 0.0076
| kg of CO2/mile driven.
|
| A gallon of gasoline releases 8.8 kg of CO2 when burned. Given
| an ICE car that gets 40 miles/gallon that's 0.22 kg CO2/mile.
|
| That's 29x as much CO2 per mile as the EV.
|
| Instead of amortizing, and assuming clean electricity, the EV
| costs 2318 kg CO2 upfront for its equivalent of a gas tank but
| has 0 CO2 operating cost. The ICE has negligible CO2 cost for
| its gas tank up front, but costs 0.22 kg CO2/mile operating
| cost.
|
| Breakeven for the EV vs the ICE is at 10300 miles. For the
| average American that's about 9 months worth of driving.
|
| PS: I took a look at non-clean electricity. Electricity from
| coal or petroleum burning power plants is about 1 kg CO2/kWh.
| An EV gets about 4 miles/kWh so that's about 0.25 kg CO2/mi if
| you charge your EV with 100% coal or petroleum based
| electricity. Slightly worse than a 40 mpg ICE car.
|
| The US average is around 0.4 kg CO2/kWh electricity, which
| would give 0.11 kg CO2/mi to operate an EV. That's about 2x the
| cost of the 40 mpg ICE.
|
| Note that the above is ignoring the CO2 costs of producing the
| gasoline. Brief Googling suggests that is somewhere from 1.5-3
| kg CO2/gallon from well to gas pump, which would raise the cost
| of buring a gallon of gas from 10.3-11.8 kg CO2/gallon, or by
| 17-34%.
|
| That would make the EV slightly better than the ICE when
| powered from coal or petroleum plant electricity, and 2.3-2.7x
| better when powered by average US electricty, and 34-39x better
| when powered by clean electricity.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Does refining oil into gas have a CO2 cost?
| tzs wrote:
| Almost certainly. A more thorough comparison would need to
| take that into account. It would also want to consider
| electricity generation because not every place has 100%
| clean electricity.
|
| But if all one is trying to determine is whether 30.3
| kg/kWh cradle-to-gate cost of batteries is enough to bring
| EV cars up to anywhere near the CO2 cost of ICE cars for a
| typical use case the ICE car uses way more without taking
| making the gas costs into account so there is no need to go
| farther.
|
| I've updated the original to include a look at the case of
| non-clean electricity and to consider the CO2 cost of
| producing gasoline.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Absolutely -- both in terms of the energy cost of refining
| and in direct emissions from the process. Extracting crude
| oil, transporting it to the refinery, and transporting the
| resulting gasoline to the gas station all have substantial
| carbon costs associated with them as well.
| biomcgary wrote:
| Thanks for this detailed computation. I think the increase
| from 2.5x better (current US electric) to 35x better (clean
| electric) illustrates the value of providing daytime charging
| infrastructure that utilizes solar.
| brnt wrote:
| The preexisting term for this sort of analysis (and deeper)
| is well-to-wheels analyses. The aim is to account for any
| externality.
| jandrese wrote:
| Why do these sorts of studies always measure the cradle-to-
| grave CO2 output of EVs to only the CO2 released per gallon
| of gas in the ICE?
|
| Very rarely do you see the studies that include factors like
| CO2 released in extracting, shipping, and refining the oil in
| the first place. The CO2 released when fighting wars in
| foreign countries to insure access to said oil. The CO2
| released in making the ICE car in the first place and all of
| those supply chain issues like people always bring up with
| EVs and renewable power systems.
| Retric wrote:
| In part because crude oil is used for many different things
| so it's not as clear exactly what the gasoline specific
| emissions numbers are. Roughly speaking 50% is a good
| estimate, but it varies quite a bit based on your
| assumptions.
|
| Similarly the ICE engine, gas tank, and transmission should
| be compared to the battery + electric motors not just the
| battery vs gasoline.
| nomel wrote:
| I imagine the ICE and EV _body_ is relatively similar. The
| extra metals found in an ICE engine probably aren 't that
| much greater, considering all the extra support/casing
| requiring for the batteries/weight.
|
| It would be interesting to see the numbers.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I think it's very good to ask this question: which is the most
| environmentally friendly battery?
|
| However, I also hope that we ask the question, how can we make
| our society better such that we have to drive less and use less
| energy? Because what would be even more friendly than a lithium-
| sulphur battery is no battery at all.
|
| Let's not forget that with all this optimizing within our
| existing lifestyles, we should also try and make our lifestyles
| different so that we don't need any cars at all...(I know, not
| possible on a massive scale immediately, but over time...)
| oblio wrote:
| > However, I also hope that we ask the question, how can we
| make our society better such that we have to drive less and use
| less energy? Because what would be even more friendly than a
| lithium-sulphur battery is no battery at all.
|
| Depending on where you live, forces such as fear, uncertainty,
| misanthropy have lead to the exact opposite.
|
| We live in insane times where in parts of settlements at peace
| you can't even WALK to where you need.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Yes, that is true. Suburbia and cars make it cheaper for
| people to live in the short-term, but it then leads to even
| more dependence on mass industry that they are slaving away
| to keep afloat, while their hard-earned money is taken away
| in part by taxes to provide subsidies to hide the true
| unsustainability of it all.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Suburbia done well can be great. Not everyone wants to be
| crowded into cities with noise and crime and no access to
| nature.
|
| Suburbia can still have mixed use areas. We had a shopping
| center in our development for all the basic needs. We had
| parks and nature preserves and even areas with condos for
| cheaper housing.
| moffkalast wrote:
| As much as the implementation usually leaves much to be
| desired, soviet-style microdistricts with a few apartment
| blocks, a park and playground, and a handful of local
| shops is a pretty decent option. Put a few of these
| around a primary school and a shopping mall and you have
| a really decent suburban area where everything you might
| need is in a 10 min walking distance, and kids can be
| left alone in that microcosm until they leave for high
| school.
|
| Western individualism doesn't really play with that
| collectivist setup though, everyone needs their own
| private building, their own private micro park, etc.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| See Japan also, the mamachari....
| bashmelek wrote:
| I don't want to point any fingers at western culture on
| the whole, and the idea of individualism. At this point
| it feels more like fragmentation. Community pools were
| really popular in the States some decades ago, and then
| when segregation ended you start seeing a lot of pools in
| backyards, and white flight to the suburbs. Even in
| today's less racist society we just plain hate our
| neighbors. Their decorations, messy lawn, or loud baby.
| It is almost as if we forgot how to live with others.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > soviet-style microdistricts with a few apartment
| blocks, a park and playground, and a handful of local
| shops is a pretty decent option.
|
| Why stop there? Build communal cafeterias and dormitories
| that you can hot-bunk 3 shifts per day. Quality of life
| is totally a thing, mang.
|
| Weirdly, for a "decent option" these only seem to exist
| as the norm in areas where people are forced into them by
| totalitarian governments.
|
| In the United States the few setups like this that have
| existed were called "The Projects".
|
| To put it mildly, they were not widely considered to be
| desirable places to live.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Y'all do understand that people move to the suburbs
| voluntarily, right? That they aren't forced to move there
| at gunpoint or something like that?
|
| Have you ever considered that your "collective anthill"
| housing ideas might actually, you know, suck ass? And
| that the basic idea has wound up sucking ass every single
| time it's been put into practice? And that essentially no
| one (very likely not even you, if it came down to it)
| would move into one of these human zoos voluntarily?
| dukeyukey wrote:
| > Not everyone wants to be crowded into cities with noise
| and crime and no access to nature.
|
| Good Christ, I lived for years in small towns in the most
| rural area of the UK without a car! Your towns aren't
| built for walkers and public transport and that sucks,
| but there's no need to project that to everywhere else!
| eropple wrote:
| It's not even true in the United States. In the Boston
| area, there are still plenty of those "strong towns" the
| bloggists go on about. I live in one. My car gets used to
| go to Home Depot, to drive to visit my parents four hours
| away, and if I need to go to my doctor who's just a
| little too far off the beaten path to drive to. The rest
| of the time, I walk, and I'm within a mile of a commuter
| rail station to get to Boston proper.
|
| Of course, we have not here decided that Government Is
| The Problem, so we tend to wield it a little better. A
| number of my neighbors want to change that, being as
| afraid as they are of "Transit-Oriented Development" (you
| can guess what _that_ means), but hey--democracy isn 't
| free, we need to push that nonsense back.
| tw04 wrote:
| >Your towns aren't built for walkers and public transport
| and that sucks, but there's no need to project that to
| everywhere else!
|
| And I'd say you're grossly mischaracterizing the US.
| Every small town I've lived in has ample sidewalks,
| crosswalks, and is easily walkable. Where my children go
| to school I can walk from one end of town to the other
| without ever having to risk life and limb. Heck a few of
| the sidewalks extend a mile out into the country just in
| anticipation of the city eventually growing. The town I
| grew up in was the same. The entire US isn't small-town
| Texas.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| I wasn't characterising the US at all, I have no idea
| where the parent commentor lives.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Good Christ, I lived for years in small towns in the
| most rural area of the UK without a car!
|
| The UK is smaller than the US state of Oregon, which is
| the 9th largest state in terms of area.
|
| There is literally nowhere in the UK that counts as
| "rural" by US standards. The UK has a population density
| of 277/km^2, while the United States as a whole has only
| 35/km^2. The comparison is much worse if you look at
| western/northern states like North Dakota (4/km^2) or
| Alaska (0.5/km^2). Even California (widely considered a
| very crowded state) has only 250/km^2, still considerably
| less than the UK. In fact, there are only 4 states of 50
| which have a greater population density than the UK.
|
| The old saying that Americans consider a hundred years a
| long time, while the British consider a hundred miles a
| long distance seems to be accurate even in the long term.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Why do you think I was talking about the US? I don't know
| where the parent poster lives.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Because this is a US-based website?
|
| In any case, the UK is 52nd worldwide in terms of
| population density, meaning that it is more dense than
| 197 other regions and dependencies.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depen
| den...
| dukeyukey wrote:
| An American website by ownership - the actual users are
| pretty international. And anyway, the county I lived in
| was about 100 people per square mile, it about 184th in
| that list. Around the same as Alabama.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > Suburbia done well can be great. Not everyone wants to
| be crowded into cities with noise and crime and no access
| to nature.
|
| Which you can answer that cities done well can also be
| great.
|
| Noise, crime and no access to nature is not a common
| denominator of cities. While my city is noisy, mostly due
| to the overuse of vehicles, I am 15 minutes by foot / 5
| minutes by bicycle from the nature[1] and crime is not a
| something of concern here.
|
| If you want an example of a city that does well in all 3
| areas I think Utrecht is a good example.
|
| > Suburbia can still have mixed use areas. We had a
| shopping center in our development for all the basic
| needs. We had parks and nature preserves and even areas
| with condos for cheaper housing.
|
| Also, isn't that getting close to the definition of a
| small town...which is itself kind of a small city?
|
| [1] And I don't mean a park.
| jsight wrote:
| > Also, isn't that getting close to the definition of a
| small town...which is itself kind of a small city?
|
| Kind of? A large master-planned community might have
| thousands of homes and its own commercial district.
| They've always reminded me a bit of historic small towns.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Having 1000 single family homes and a small commercial
| area is not at all how historic small towns actually
| operated.
| jsight wrote:
| Care to enlighten us? :rofl
| panick21_ wrote:
| > Suburbia done well can be great. Not everyone wants to
| be crowded into cities with noise and crime and no access
| to nature.
|
| That such a hilarious understanding of 'nature' and
| 'cities'. I live in a city and I can be in nature very
| quickly.
|
| In fact, the sprawling nature of suberbia is what
| destroys the most amount of nature and makes it harder
| for everybody to access nature.
|
| > Suburbia can still have mixed use areas.
|
| The term 'Suberbia' talkes specifically about US style
| subburbs and just based on facts, 99% of it simple
| doesn't allow commercial usage.
|
| Sometimes you have commercial zones next to the R1 zones,
| but usually the ratio is very small and the distance to
| the commercial zone is very far for the majority of
| people. Thus commercial areas are often reached mostly by
| car.
|
| Mixed use zoning is almost nowhere to be found in most of
| the US.
|
| The term 'Suberbia' refers to that.
|
| > We had parks and nature preserves and even areas with
| condos for cheaper housing.
|
| Then it isn't really what is called 'subberbia' at all.
| Subburbs can be done well, but not subberbia.
|
| And in most places in the US where there is a massive
| lack of alternative housing options with a vanishingly
| small part of the total land area allowing anything but
| low-density residential zoning.
|
| So yes, subburbs can be done well, but if its done well
| its not called 'subburbia' anymore. And the amount of
| places where it was done well is incredibly small.
| jjav wrote:
| > That such a hilarious understanding of 'nature' and
| 'cities'. I live in a city and I can be in nature very
| quickly.
|
| Which city? It's always helpful to look at google maps to
| see if people are using terms in a different way.
|
| A city by definition is surrounded by suburb (sub-urbe)
| and neither is forest, so if you live in the city you
| need to get to the suburbs and the cross the suburbs
| before you can get to a forest (or desert/etc).
|
| I'm sure there's some city somewhere where the highrise
| apartment building transition immediately to forest, but
| I'm not sure where. Not common, for sure.
|
| > So yes, subburbs can be done well, but if its done well
| its not called 'subburbia' anymore.
|
| This is a circular claim. So if a suburb works well it's
| not a suburb?
| dgfitz wrote:
| This is such an ignorant take.
|
| Not everyone is going to live in a city. Not everyone wants
| to live in a city.
|
| Cars aren't going away, ever.
|
| This narrative needs to go away. Don't worry though, your
| virtue has been signaled.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Suburbia is not cheap at all, not even in the short run.
|
| The reality is that it is very expensive and heavily,
| heavily subsidized. US style Suberbia is a result of the US
| government massive policies in encouraging suburbia style
| housing and highway building during the New Deal and then
| in the Post-WW2 boom, plus of course the Red-Lining and
| destruction of city centers.
|
| These places never ever pay for themselves. You can look at
| the data gathered by 'Strong Towns' and 'Urban3'.
|
| In fact the poorer parts of the city/state and of course
| the town center are subsidizing the richer suberbia. Its a
| fucking travisty of epic proportion.
|
| Suberbia is expensive to set up initially, needs massive
| infrastructure backing to be viable and is horrible energy
| inefficient.
| jjav wrote:
| > Suburbia is not cheap at all, not even in the short
| run.
|
| Cheap for who, though?
|
| As an individual I can't change society but I can choose
| where to live. So if rent in the city is 4K for 1 bedroom
| and in the suburb it's 2K for 3 bedrooms, suburb is
| cheaper.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| I enjoy my car but I think the same way we have the ADA for
| public buildings, there should be some level of walkable
| areas nearly everywhere. I'm currently frustrated in my new
| location that there are random sidewalks that aren't
| connected to each other and I have to walk on the street with
| traffic for a few hundred meters at a time.
| i80and wrote:
| I live in the most densely populated state in the US.
|
| The car mandate is INSANE. I'll drive somewhere, then figure
| "the next place I need to go is a five minute walk. I'll
| walk!"
|
| Then the sidewalk disappears and I'm trudging across lawn
| next to 60mph traffic.
|
| Another time I wanted to walk to a shop right on the other
| side of the road. It would have taken _45 minutes_.
|
| The cultural hostility towards pedestrians is wild.
| swayvil wrote:
| It's dominance by business that's to blame.
|
| Business says "put money in the hole. Deliver money to hole
| with fast wheeled box."
|
| Everything else is disposable, sacrificial.
| marliechiller wrote:
| Thanks for this anecdote. It really made me realise I take
| a lot of infrastructure for pedestrians for granted here in
| the UK
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Not just the UK. The US really is an outlier. Pedestrian
| infrastructure is better almost everywhere else.
| Certainly in every country I have visited from Canada to
| China and a dozen others in between.
| alephnerd wrote:
| In my experience, Canada is similar.
|
| We couldn't afford a car when I was younger so we had to
| subsist on Translink and Skytrain, and those systems were
| roughly on par with Muni and VTA. Outside of the
| Vancouver core, pedestrian infrastructure was weak to
| nonexistent in suburbs like Richmond, Surrey, South
| Vancouver, etc or towns/cities like Nanaimo or
| Abbotsford.
|
| Calgary and Edmonton were worse.
| ponector wrote:
| Why not to use a bicycle? I've spent a summer in Fairbanks,
| AK and it was totally fine to navigate anywhere around the
| city and suburbs by bike. Almost no bike lanes there, of
| course.
| i80and wrote:
| Safety.
|
| Friends have lost friends cycling on mixed-mode roads.
| Drivers don't expect to see cyclists, and the normal
| traffic speeds involved leave little room for the kind of
| error that even benevolent humans make all the time, to
| speak nothing of the many hostile drivers.
|
| I would love to cycle. I love bicycling, and am glad it
| was an option for you! But I don't believe it's viable
| where I am without significant structural changes.
| stetrain wrote:
| Cycling on 45mph+ roads (really stroads, or in-town
| highways) with no separated bike lanes or sidewalk is
| pretty dangerous. This kind of road is kind of the normal
| in most American suburban towns or even bigger cities
| outside the actual downtown area.
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| In some cities/counties you can't even ride a bike on a
| road where the speed limit is over 35 (unless it is a
| county road with implicit limits)
|
| Detroit comes to mind, not sure if the rule is still on
| the books tho.
| krzyk wrote:
| Yeah, I still remember that when I was in Texas, there were
| people that stayed in a hotel very close to the HQ of our
| company - it was just on the other side of a big road (few
| lanes) - but as Europeans think, they assumed there is a
| pedestrian crossing, but there was none, there was no
| sidewalk, nothing.
|
| The only way to get to the other side of the road was using
| a vehicle - there were few hired shuttles that were driving
| people from hotel to work and back, quite insane.
|
| A week before I was in SF and public transport there was
| decent, but the vehicles were like from 1950s in comparison
| what I'm used to use in my country, e.g. if I wanted the
| bus to stop I had to pull a wire (yes, a wire!) to notify
| the busdriver that he/she should stop on the next bus stop.
| That's just one of the issues, and the quality of the bus
| was no where near the current ones we had in Europe.
|
| On the other hand the bus drivers were very friendly and
| open.
| i80and wrote:
| I take the bus into my local (INCREDIBLY WEALTHY)
| downtown out of principle, and I have yet to see a bus
| where less than half of the seats are ripped and torn and
| _maybe_ duct taped. The city bus drivers are usually
| pretty chill, though! The systemic under-funding and
| under-utilization are certainly not their fault.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Hate to play the one-up game but this is too crazy not to
| share. I was doing consulting at Travelocity/SABER, which
| was in the no man's land between Dallas and Fort Worth.
| The company put me up in the Marriott on the other side
| of the highway from their campus. Not only were there no
| sidewalks for the short distance, there were rough rocks
| covering the shoulder like you'd find along a seawall, so
| you couldn't even trudge through the weeds and mud to get
| over to the campus if you were determined to do so. On
| the good side of things, Google Street View shows that
| they are now installing sidewalks, but I have to wonder
| who decided back then that the rocks were a good idea in
| the first place? It's a rural area, relatively speaking,
| and unlikely to have been done for anti-camping reasons.
| At least two decades of people had to take shuttle buses
| between the hotel and campus regardless of their desire
| to walk.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > if I wanted the bus to stop I had to pull a wire (yes,
| a wire!) to notify the busdriver that he/she should stop
| on the next bus stop. That's just one of the issues,
|
| How else do you signal the bus driver to stop? And why is
| this an issue?
|
| The NYC MTA years ago used these rubber push strips held
| in an extruded aluminum profile. They were all over the
| interior next to each window and ran along the edges of
| the ceiling for standing passengers. They were frequently
| broken, cut or pulled from their bases by bored school
| children. This lead to the button circuit being stuck
| closed preventing more presses from triggering the bell
| and annunciator lamp at the front of the bus to notify
| the driver. People would then miss their stops and start
| yelling or walk to the driver to ask them to stop. The
| pull cords are old school but insanely easy to fix and
| maintain.
| oriolid wrote:
| > How else do you signal the bus driver to stop?
|
| In Europe we have buttons. The pull cords and push strips
| seem weirdly over- and underengineered at the same time.
| jjav wrote:
| > (yes, a wire!)
|
| What's wrong with pulling a wire? Works well, easy to
| maintain.
| pengaru wrote:
| > The cultural hostility towards pedestrians is wild.
|
| This is one of the major factors I appreciate about the
| places I've lived in California; for the US it's an
| exceptionally good environment for pedestrians and
| cyclists.
|
| Still not great by any means. But whenever I visit
| friends/fam back in IL where I grew up, I'm teleported back
| to that cultural hostility in a big way. It doesn't end
| there though, even as a driver there's rampant aggressive
| hostility/road-rage behavior to contend with.
|
| It feels like the entire region is full of people fighting
| for scraps on the streets, just without getting out of
| their cars. Pedestrians/cyclists are basically just
| bystander casualties to the mess without infrastructure to
| isolate them from it.
| fyrn_ wrote:
| Many parts of California are very bike hostile. From
| personal expirence it's way worse then Portland or
| Seattle. A lot of it is cultural though, there in the bay
| area many drivers dislike bikes and blame them for
| traffic, etc.
| thsksbd wrote:
| "However, I also hope that we ask the question, how can we make
| our society better such that we have to drive less and use less
| energy?"
|
| By radically lowering speed limits [1] and slowly rebuilding
| our infrastructure to reflect that. It will take a long time,
| it took 100 years to build infrastructure that assumed a person
| could cross 15 miles of suburbia in as many minutes.
|
| [1] I do mean radical; cars shouldnt be able to go faster than
| 30 mph. For folks with a need for speed (myself incld.),
| perhaps will exempt motorbikes
| yetihehe wrote:
| > I do mean radical; cars shouldnt be able to go faster than
| 30 mph
|
| You might just ban them at that point. Why waste ANY
| resources on a car? We could return to horse drawn carriages,
| they are biological and therefore more environmentally
| friendly [1]
|
| [1] https://www.historic-
| uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great...
| krallja wrote:
| Horse poo covering streets is not particularly friendly to
| the environment.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _Horse poo covering streets is not particularly
| friendly to the environment._
|
| Most people did not own horses, especially not in cities.
|
| They were generally limited to farmers, businesses (to
| draw carts/carriages), and the rich (Gilded Age).
|
| For most of history most humans walked to their
| destination on a day-to-day basis. This changed slightly
| with the invention of rail roads and later bicycles. The
| automobile didn't go mainstream until roughly the 1920s:
|
| * https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262516129/fighting-
| traffic/
|
| Look at any pre-WW2 development and you'll see
| neighbourhoods built for human scale:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
|
| Design things 'properly' and neither cars, nor horse-
| drawn carriages, are needed by people for most of their
| daily tasks. This is evidence by the fact that humans
| lived like that for centuries just fine.
| geodel wrote:
| Huh, humans live for centuries in caves also just fine. I
| don't know why cities, streets and bicycles are needed.
| yetihehe wrote:
| But they are slow and don't use petroleum products. Fast
| and petroleum based is used as an argument against car
| ownership.
| tnel77 wrote:
| Not that I want to ban cars, but I'd have to imagine that
| horse feces is better for the environment than motor oil
| and other fluids that leak from a car.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Do horses fart as much as cows?
| yetihehe wrote:
| Depends on the amount of each. One liter of oil is less
| friendly than one dung, but average car leaks much less
| oil than a horse produces dung. Several tons of dung in
| one place is not that good, look at big animal farm
| runoff. Cars were hailed as solution for horse dung
| problem.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is far to complex to make any statement on.
|
| Feces (including horse) spread disease. Motor oil leaking
| is mostly leaking on places where nothing grows anyway
| because all the traffic compacts the earth and so plants
| cannot grow (Deer in woods make trails where plants
| cannot grow, this isn't about cars at all) . As such I
| give the win to the leaking fluids for the local
| environment.
|
| Cars generally are burning fossil fuels and putting more
| CO2 into the air. A horse is burning plants and so are
| net zero CO2 (assuming you don't use fuels to make the
| hay!) So for the earth horses are better.
|
| Both cars and horses can kill people if they hit them.
| Car drives generally pay some attention, and horses
| generally will not run over people. However there are
| failures where both can kill. I don't know how to find
| statistic to tell which is worse in practice though.
|
| A horse is a rich man's toy. Generally in the horse days
| humans walked, even the rich would walk most of the time
| - you can walk just as far and fast as a horse in a day.
| The horse was used to pull carts or carry heavy loads
| (though most people fail to realize just how much a human
| can carry and give the horse too much credit here). While
| a car is the common person's way to get around even when
| they could walk. Thus for human's the horse is a win
| because you exercise (though I'd really want to add a
| bicycle to this analysis)
| tnel77 wrote:
| I generally agree with your reply, minus the first part.
| Yes, oil drops on the road where aren't growing food, but
| we cannot ignore the fact that rain sweeps oil away into
| waterways which is awful for local wildlife. Feces
| washing into the waterways isn't ideal, but I'd wager
| it's better for the fish than oil.
| claytongulick wrote:
| > A horse is a rich man's toy.
|
| To be a tad pedantic, it's more accurate to say a "rich
| woman's toy".
|
| The vast majority of horse owners/managers are women [1].
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/388979/gender-
| distributi...
| thsksbd wrote:
| - the Model T had a too speed of 40 mph. Hardly a speed
| deamon
|
| - Horses dont do 30 mph sustained
|
| - Horses eat. A lot
|
| - Horses need care
|
| - More horse riding would be a good thing
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I absolutely agree! I think we should lower speed limits not
| just for cars, but for life in general: economic systems and
| the internet should have speed limits. And I'm being serious.
| Ivan Illich talks about this in his book [1] and I tend to
| agree with most of it after a lot of thought.
|
| [1] Illich, Ivan. "Energy and equity." (1974).
| illusive4080 wrote:
| You've got to be living in a city and unaware of the vast
| swaths of space between rural places in the US. I have to
| make 12 hour drives on occasion with my family in tow and
| you'd make my trip 30 hours.
| thsksbd wrote:
| I live in suburban USA, and I don't appreciate those who
| would flash impose transportations "solutions" solutions on
| us. City folk love to impose costs on others.
|
| Thats why I insist that this is a 100+ year project. Our
| current infrastructure is built around 80mph cars (I drive
| 90!) and it will take forever to build sustainable
| infrastructure.
|
| I drive far; my folks and I get together once a month and
| they live 300 miles away. My in laws live 600 miles away
| and we see them relatively often, again by car.
|
| I hate flying (Im tall and ppl smell), so I drive a lot. In
| fact I love driving, and I will never not own at least one
| car.
|
| But lets be frank. I live 300 miles from my parents because
| cars enabled me to do so. Fast transportation has radically
| lowered the cost of living away from family, lowered the
| cost of not investing in our communal areas.
|
| Besides, I make exceptions for motorcycles: no speed limit
| for them :)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| In the midwest there is so much space/land in the suburbs you
| could run parallel bike/golf-cart lanes - probably speed
| limit them to 25 MPH. If you had protected pathways for small
| electric transport I would imagine people would get on board.
|
| Oddly many of the neighbors seem to already have golf carts
| in their garages ... I guess to tool around the neighborhood?
| (Christ, can't you even _walk_ to the pickleball court, ha
| ha?)
| DinaCoder99 wrote:
| That still binds individuals to cars, though. I imagine the
| actual solution will involve removing the need for cars or
| enabling bulk transportation.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Hard disagree. More energy is the way to grow our society and
| lift everyone up. If it's renewable or nuclear I see no good
| reason we'd want to reduce.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| More energy means more distractions away from the natural
| world. It means less disposable prodcuts.
|
| Renewable energy isn't really renewable. Wind energy still
| requires oil and mining, and dams disrupt river ecosystems.
| Nuclear produces toxic waste that lasts for hundreds of
| thousands of years.
|
| Our society has gotten into an incredible mess with more
| energy usage (e.g. climate change).
| cyberlurker wrote:
| I think eventually we run into a heat pollution problem. More
| efficient use of energy can grow a society as well.
| rplnt wrote:
| Cars need more than energy. E.g. tires that we breathe in.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Hard partial disagree. More energy _used for the right
| purposes_ lifts us up. Wasting energy on things that makes us
| more miserable, like traffic jams and avoidable commute, does
| not lift us up.
|
| Energy use is not in itself creating any value. It's a cost
| for value creation. More energy available can allow us to
| make more value, sure.
| nwiswell wrote:
| > Hard partial disagree.
|
| If only there was a word besides "hard" for this situation
| Fricken wrote:
| It's not clear modernity is making us any happier than our
| hunter gatherer ancestors. Of course, people everywhere tend
| defer to what they're familiar with, so it will be a tough
| argument to make with this crowd.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/5510187.
| ..
| bluGill wrote:
| What are you comparing. A hunter-gather who is starving
| because there is not enough food would be happier in modern
| days where nearly everybody has enough food. Likewise a
| hunter-gather who is in pain for something that is easily
| treatable.
|
| However when things are going well for the hunter-gather
| they did have a lot of leisure time and so they could well
| be happier overall even though the lows were worse.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. A hunter-gatherer would have to
| trade their entire lifestyle for the modern world. And it
| isn't clear to me that the relief he or she would feel
| would be worth the entire destruction of their way of
| life. In fact, I believe it would not be, especially for
| the many more than aren't hungry or in pain.
|
| Personally, I would trade the lows if I could live in a
| world where most technology did not exist (that would
| mean in particular, I could drink from any stream or
| relax without hearing an ICE.) And no, that does not mean
| going off into the woods now, where the experience would
| be vastly different, being surrounded by advanced
| society.
| bluGill wrote:
| When you are not hungry or in pain it is easy to say you
| would make that trade.
|
| There are places in the world where you can get away.
| there are still hunter-gather tribes around, and some of
| them would welcome outsiders to join. (some will kill you
| on sight) You can also buy land in middle of nowhere
| Alaska (or Montana) where effectively there is no
| civilization in anywhere close. I'm not sure what country
| you live in, but odds are there are options where you can
| just disappear for civilization if you really wanted.
| While you can get to civilization from the above if you
| want, it wouldn't be hard to avoid it.
| vladms wrote:
| You might ignore other aspects of life. A good part of
| the children dying before reaching 10 years old (and not
| only). People not knowing why things happen and worrying
| is a vengeful god or spirit, or living in fear of the
| village shaman.
|
| Not sure why you say going to the woods now is not an
| option. There are enough people choosing to do similar
| things (ex: Amish style of people). Nowadays we have more
| options in terms of life style than at any point in
| history (not without some tradeoffs, but still). You have
| to make a choice and make your peace with it, don't think
| it's productive wishing you would not have the options...
| audunw wrote:
| No matter which energy source you use, increasing energy use
| will eventually cause problems.
|
| With nuclear power, eventually you'll add so much waste heat
| added to the atmosphere that it will be worse than greenhouse
| gases:
|
| If we continue increasing energy consumption at current rates
| and cover it with nuclear power the ocean will boil in 400
| years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vRtA7STvH4
|
| Obviously that's not meant to be a serious scenario. But it's
| illustrative.
|
| I don't see the problem of lifting everyone up while using
| less energy. We just gotta be smart about the solutions we
| make, rather than just brute-forcing it by using lots of
| energy.
|
| Like: I prefer to bike to work. That makes my life better. I
| also prefer living in a walkable/bikeable town. If I'm forced
| to drive a car the energy associated getting to work will be
| very high. If I can use an e-bike it's a tiny fraction, and I
| get to exercise without wasting time in a gym.
| everdrive wrote:
| I think I agree with you on a fundamental level, but there must
| be solutions to this problem where the answer is "everyone
| should live in a city" (or a relatively urban environment) I
| would go to any lengths not to live in a city again.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I don't think everyone should live in a city. I HATE cities
| with an absolute passion. But it would be nice to have more
| local, self-reliant solutions in smaller towns and rural
| areas that require less driving, too. I'm thinking more along
| the lines of small, local economies rather than packing
| everyone in a city.
| vladms wrote:
| I have the impression that too many people think about
| actual examples (like: I hate New York - or insert your
| hated city name here) rather than the idea of a city.
|
| I have lived in a couple of large European cities and each
| was very different from each other, so I can't draw a
| "generic conclusion".
|
| Cities can become what people imagine they would like -
| which sometimes is wrong/sometimes is right (in the sense:
| sometimes they imagine they would like X but when they have
| it they are more unhappy, other times they are more happy).
| But we should talk more about what we like and wish rather
| than where we want to be or not (city/country-side).
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| I live in a large European city with the highest
| population density in Europe.
|
| It's okay but noise is a real problem as is air pollution
| and crime.
|
| I think in the future China with its electric vehicles
| and strict law enforcement will probably end up with
| better cities.
| infecto wrote:
| I am excited how we the human race and use increasing amounts
| of energy to drive new innovation. The more energy we consume
| the more innovation will happen.
|
| I am ok with those that want to live on a self-sustaining
| homestead but its not for me.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| The problem is that your desire for more technological
| innovation direclty drives the destruction of land and the
| environment that other people could potentially use to live
| more sustainably.
| infecto wrote:
| There is more than enough land for people who want to live
| "sustainably".
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| It is not just a matter of land, but of poisoning the
| land and also allowing other species to live on it.
| Clearly, based on the massively increased extinction
| rates due to us, we have not been very nice to other
| species. And we have no right to continue destructive
| mining and agricultural practices to feed your continued
| desire for growth.
| infecto wrote:
| Perhaps its clear to you but I think the vast majority of
| the globe would generally disagree. A balance is required
| and I don't think believe the way forward is for your
| calls but rather improved technology that maintains that
| balance.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| There's a truth to this but this reductionist naive approach
| to progress is also extremely dangerous. We have to be able
| to keep two thoughts in our head. More is good but we must
| exist in a balance with nature or we will destroy ourselves.
|
| To grow beyond current limitations we must first acknowledge
| them on a fundamental level.
| infecto wrote:
| I don't disagree with you. Its a balance in my opinion. I
| just follow the side of progress instead of massive
| population reduction.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > how can we make our society better such that we have to drive
| less
|
| Carbon tax and VR? I wish cities were more walkable and that
| people didn't buy so much junk.
| surcap526 wrote:
| Enegry sources that Mitochondrion uses are most environmentally
| friendly.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Why are these studies always factor in the carbon impact of
| production when they are looking at technologies that are at
| least a decade away from mass market adoption? Is there any
| reason to assume that production/mining won't be electrified and
| produce zero emissions?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why would they assume something that's not the case today?
| jupp0r wrote:
| The study is about the potential environmental impact that
| these in-the-lab battery technologies would have if they were
| scaled up to industrial scale in the future.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| I think we need both. We need to understand how much the
| transition will cost in CO2 and also what the situation will
| look like once that is done.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Instead of tracking the carbon impact of manufacturing, they
| should track the energy input. Or just track the overall cost.
| As you said, it is hard to calculate manufacturing cost, and it
| depends on the energy source for factory.
|
| Then can assign cost to the carbon emitted or saved, and then
| compare that to the overall cost.
| d--b wrote:
| I always thought the best bet was making lighter vehicles, and
| use sodium batteries, but I know very little about any of that...
| bluGill wrote:
| Chemically it appears that sodium batteries should be better.
| However the devil is in the details and so far the details of
| sodium batteries have not been worked out. Maybe we will in the
| future, maybe we won't - I cannot guess. Today sodium batteries
| are not ready.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Sodium Batteries now exist and are available in the market and
| BYD already has cars based on them. The energy density is quite
| a bit lower so the cars are more like 250KM range but they can
| be charged very quickly (3C) and the available cycles are more
| like LIPO around 6000. They are also considerably cheaper,
| about 1/4 of that of Li ion.
|
| I suspect Sodium batteries will be big in the home and grid
| storage battery market once we have inverters that support the
| high Voltage range they operate in. I don't think we will see
| them much in phones and laptops with half the capacity in the
| same weight and size but where that doesn't matter they are a
| much cheaper solution.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| And that's fine. More battery variants that can be used in
| various applications is fine.
|
| Most important factors will be energy density, cost (per kWh of
| storage) and environmental impact. It doesn't have to be ideal
| for EVs, that's just one of many use cases.
| swayvil wrote:
| Flywheels. Man, what a sweet energy storage solution. If only we
| could get that to work for vehicles.
|
| Advancements in the technology have been made. We might be close.
|
| Also, anybody know anything about "vibrating weight on a spring"
| storage? (Whatever you call it). Does that approach flywheel
| efficiency?
| bastawhiz wrote:
| Wouldn't a flywheel big enough to power a car be such a giant
| gyroscope that it would affect your ability to turn? A flywheel
| under the hood that has all the energy needed to move my car
| hundreds of miles stored as _kinetic energy_ sounds like it
| would vaporize me in a crash.
| swayvil wrote:
| Yes and yes. Those are the technical challenges facing us.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| It seems an impractical solution for a car, and better used
| as a massive and immobile mechanism where you can trade out
| a lot of that velocity for mass, and where your housing
| isn't actively fighting the storage the whole time. I would
| love for someone to do the math on how much kinetic energy
| you'd need to store in a wheel that can fit in the engine
| compartment to allow a 2 ton vehicle to go 200 miles in
| stop and go traffic.
|
| Not all energy storage solutions can work in every problem.
| We won't be using hydroelectric for cars either.
| bluGill wrote:
| To store enough energy in a flywheel would change the way
| the earth orbits the sun.
| cman1444 wrote:
| I've wondered in the past if a giant flywheel the size
| of, say, a building and filled with a heavy material like
| concrete could store enough energy to make a difference
| in intra-day grid loads.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Wouldn't having two flywheels spinning on opposite directions
| cancel out the gyroscopic effect?
|
| There were some flywheel buses in Switzerland that used
| flywheels. They charged a bit at every bus stop so they had
| enough energy to make it to the next stop. Source:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus
|
| As for affecting the ability to turn, that would only be the
| case if the flywheel was vertical. If it was horizontal, it
| wouldn't affect turning at all.
| swayvil wrote:
| Here's an idea. Vibrator storage.
|
| Like a guitar string. You set it vibrating and that's your
| storage.
|
| (Then you find ways to keep the vibrational energy from
| bleeding off. Vacuum, magnetic bearings...)
|
| I'm pretty sure it's a thing.
|
| Sortof a linear flywheel.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Flywheels are neither efficient nor practical.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus
| dayofthedaleks wrote:
| I was expecting this to be about thermal performance rather than
| climate impact. The fact that you have to dump energy to heat
| LiIon batteries for safe charging or use in cooler weather is
| nuts to me. How's 0degC performance of Lithium-Sulphur?
|
| I'm pretty enthusiastic about LithiumIronPhosphate prismatics in
| cooler regions even if they're a little more heavy.
| lopis wrote:
| I look forward to have more choice in battery chemistry when
| buying a new car. Depending if you live in warm or cold weather
| and if you do mostly short or longer trips, you should be able
| to choose what battery is best for you. But at this point
| Lithium-ion is still just the cheapest option due to economy of
| scale.
| samatman wrote:
| This sort of speculative analysis is pretty useless. The process
| of bringing products like this to market is where the actual
| industrial manufacturing process is proven and improved, and
| meanwhile the assumptions they made about the raw material are
| continually changing as industry marches on.
|
| There's a role for this sort of napkin-level environmental
| accounting, but it's a limited one. The toolkit is most
| applicable for products which actually exist, as products.
| nomel wrote:
| Please note this is an _ieee.org_ article, targeted at
| electrical /electronic engineers, talking, in part, about peer
| reviewed research [1], which you're calling napkin math.
| There's lots of money and focus going into lithium-sulphur
| batteries, because they are promising, and any engineer that
| works with batteries is keeping an eye on them.
|
| Talking about the possible future, and shortfalls of the
| current state, isn't useless, it's the _foundation_ of
| engineering. And, it 's fun.
|
| [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10418456
| Animats wrote:
| It's "IEEE Access".[1] That's the low end of IEEE
| publications. Costs US $1,995 to publish an article. There's
| some minimal peer review, plus they run the content through a
| plagiarism checking program. This is two notches down from
| Proceedings of the IEEE.
|
| [1] https://ieeeaccess.ieee.org/
| nomel wrote:
| Sure, but calling it "napkin math" is disingenuous. If
| there's a specific problem with the math presented, they
| should point it out, rather than slandering the authors.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. Various companies have been trying to make lithium-sulfur
| batteries for decades, without much success. The latest company
| trying is Lyten.[1] Supposedly they started up a battery
| production line in San Jose in 2023. Or at least they issued a
| press release about doing so. Can you order sample batteries
| from their web site? No. Is there pricing info? No.
|
| Lyten uses graphene sheets, which may not be cost effective.
|
| Toyota and CASIP (a battery consortium in China) are investing
| heavily in solid-state lithium-ion batteries. That's likely to
| be working sooner. And, of course, lithium-iron phosphate
| batteries are taking over the low end.
|
| It will probably be a good thing when batteries capable of
| thermal runaway disappear from the market.
|
| [1] https://lyten.com/products/batteries/
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Another great reason for battery-swapping technology to become
| standard, like Nio's.
| xyst wrote:
| EVs in general are not the best for the environment. Would rather
| have precious resources powering our grid rather than powering
| wasteful cars that pollute in other ways beyond "tail pipe
| emissions" (ie, tire wear particles, brake dust, "e-waste" when
| car becomes obsolete by manufacturer, further dependency on car
| centric transportation which displaces where people live with car
| storage)
| jandrese wrote:
| Rebuilding our cities and societies around alternative
| transport is a _much_ bigger ask than replacing polluting cars
| with much less polluting cars. Also, that level of change is
| close to impossible due to the level of pushback it would
| receive from all corners of society. It 's certainly something
| to work towards, but you can't let it block you from taking the
| short term and more practical wins.
| acyou wrote:
| Whenever you see a cell chemistry with metallic lithium in the
| anode, watch out! They tried that 50 years ago, the result was
| unexpected dendrite growth after many years, causing cell short-
| circuit, fire, and loss of life and property.
|
| Bona fide new cell chemistry ready to go in and displace the
| existing leaders could easily be another 50 years away! We have
| not had a new real leader in cell chemistry emerge since lithium
| ion emerged 50 years ago, just basically incremental improvement.
| It's like saying the car might not be the best bet for a vehicle
| that you can drive. Sure, a flying car would be better, if it
| existed.
| soperj wrote:
| I mean, bike is better for everyone.
| webdoodle wrote:
| Batteries aren't a solution for EVs, they are a stopgap at best.
| Fuel cells and hydrogen burning engines are a much better
| solution.
| grecy wrote:
| Another day on HN, another article that boils down to "Don't buy
| an EV now! Wait! Better things _might_ be coming at some unknown
| point the future ".
|
| i.e. Keep spending money where you always have, because otherwise
| interests that currently make hundreds of billions a year will
| only make tens of billions a year.
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