[HN Gopher] Electric Propulsion's Dirty Secret: Why Lithium Can'...
___________________________________________________________________
Electric Propulsion's Dirty Secret: Why Lithium Can't Fly (Or
Float) Profitably
Author : kumarski
Score : 43 points
Date : 2025-04-18 19:28 UTC (3 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (kumarletter.com)
| lucidguppy wrote:
| Flight is a luxury of the current times that will likely not last
| another 100 years except for the very rich.
| cagenut wrote:
| I think we'll see the global rich (western middle class)
| continue to fly well past the onset of the famines and refugee
| waves.
|
| Without a single family detached house and a regular vacation
| flight most "middle class" people would have no idea why to get
| up in the morning. Our whole culture is built around lauding
| and striving toward that pattern as the good life. It will have
| to be taken from them, they will not give it up willingly.
| generalizations wrote:
| > It will have to be taken from them
|
| Be careful when advocating force towards others. Violence is
| the last refuge of the incompetent, after all.
| holtkam2 wrote:
| They may not have been alluding to violence; perhaps
| something like democracy itself would be enough to take
| that lifestyle away from the middle class. If billionaires
| consolidate enough power & resources and push the tax
| burden onto the middle class which makes yearly vacations
| unaffordable
| generalizations wrote:
| Perhaps they were referring to economic force. But 'it
| will have to be taken' isn't a passive statement either
| way.
| lukev wrote:
| Ah yes. George Washington, Simon Bolivar, Vladmir Lenin,
| etc... famously incompetent.
| generalizations wrote:
| Incompetence can take many forms. Some of them include
| starting a fight they can't finish.
| lukev wrote:
| I chose those examples specifically because they were
| completely successful.
| generalizations wrote:
| Those were; many were not. Someone who takes issue with
| the middle class of the USA might not be.
| sadhorse wrote:
| How dare you stand in the way of regular people burning
| hundreds of kilograms of fossil fuel in order to spend a couple
| days at the beach? /s
| linotype wrote:
| When Elon and Taylor give up their jets, I will too.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| People drive to work anyway. A vacation or two every year is
| probably not even a double digit percent of a person's total
| fossil fuel usage, and gives them a lot of happiness and
| reason to work and do things that are good for society.
|
| Also:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft
| sadhorse wrote:
| It is pollution and it harms people. So in order to do
| things that are good we must harm others first (or after)?
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Why is there a segment of the population that wants to
| live in poverty and squalor?
|
| How much pollution is okay? Why not argue for efficiency
| standards rather than bans?
|
| Everything could be said to "harm people". Banning travel
| could make some people depressed and who knows what that
| could lead to? Or it might lead to a less connected world
| and less familiarity with people in other places, and
| maybe makes wars more likely?
| lukev wrote:
| Actual comprehensive high speed rail networks would reduce the
| overall carbon footprint of travel by a huge factor, while
| still permitting a high overall degree of affordable mobility.
| AndriyKunitsyn wrote:
| A one-way ticket for an Amsterdam - Paris train, taken well
| in advance (2 months from now), costs $159.30. It's a 3.5
| hours long trip.
|
| https://eurorails.com/en/trains/amsterdam-
| centraal/paris?dat...
|
| A similar one-way ticket for the same date for a flight costs
| $112 (with no bags), and it takes 1 hour 25 minutes.
|
| https://www.kiwi.com/en/search/results/amsterdam-
| netherlands... (Yes, some people can say that Kiwi is a shady
| website, but it can find some good deals if used right.)
|
| I think most of the public would choose the second option.
| And this is a 500km long trip. Anything longer, and planes
| win by even larger margin.
|
| If you're talking about the US, there's more about its rail
| networks density than unwillingness of Americans to build new
| railroads. It's also because people... don't really like
| using trains for long-distance transit?
| lukev wrote:
| I'm not saying it'll cost the same, I'm saying it'll still
| be accessible. (Also, comfort level on a train is typically
| much better.)
|
| And it'll properly price in externalities, which is not
| currently the case.
|
| Also, just to quibble, I think the _total_ travel time is
| actually not that different considering you're supposed to
| get to the airport at least an hour early, and how
| accessible airports are to population centers relative to
| train stations.
|
| If you had to catch a cab either two or from the airport,
| but could avoid it with a train, the costs you cite are
| suddenly about the same.
| kumarski wrote:
| HSR infrastructure costs $50-80 million per kilometer in
| developed countries.
|
| :(
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Chill, biofuels or gas synthesis will be fine and carbon
| neutral for big jets. Once solar or fusion produces the primary
| power cheaply the conversion loss isn't a huge deal.
| philipkglass wrote:
| I believe that by 2050 synthetic hydrocarbons made from carbon
| dioxide and clean electricity will be deliverable at a real
| (inflation adjusted) cost less than than 3x current oil prices,
| on an equivalent-energy-content basis. That could more than
| double the costs of a transatlantic flight, but still wouldn't
| price it out of reach of the upper middle class.
|
| Synthetic methanol made with renewable energy has already been
| commercialized on a modest scale:
|
| https://carbonrecycling.com/technology
|
| Methanol can be reformed to kerosene as a drop-in replacement
| for oil derived jet fuel:
|
| "Fischer-Tropsch & Methanol-based Kerosene"
|
| https://aireg.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/airegWebinar_FT_...
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Just build more nuclear power plants. There's absolutely no
| reason why modern civilization still needs to rely so heavily
| on hydrocarbons. Unlimited electric energy, with a
| electrified rail network, public transportation and EVs for
| commuting, should take care of most use cases, except maybe a
| few where the energy density doesn't make sense.
|
| And don't even get me started with the "our grid cannot
| handle it" nonsense. If it cannot, then make it so that it
| can. When this country started off, we didn't say "our roads
| cannot handle the cars", instead we built them, quite a lot
| of them. We can do that again.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Sure, nuclear too. I'm fine with any low-emissions energy
| source. Electrification can take care of most terrestrial
| transportation. I still think we'll eventually use
| synthetic hydrocarbons for long range flights and a few
| other niche applications like rocket launches.
| kumarski wrote:
| At 10-15% conversion efficiency, you're burning 85-90% of
| your energy just making the damn fuel, requiring 6-7x more
| renewable infrastructure than direct electrification. Current
| production costs are $15-25/gallon (not the fairy tale
| $2-3/gallon of jet fuel), and the physics won't magically
| improve to hit their "3x oil prices by 2050" fantasy. To
| replace global aviation fuel would demand a staggering 32,000
| TWh of new clean energy generation - that's roughly
| equivalent to building 900 nuclear plants just to make luxury
| jet fuel while the rest of the grid still burns coal.
| ggreer wrote:
| Why do you say that? Typical fuel consumption values for
| passenger aircraft are 2.5-4 liters per 100km per passenger. So
| if you fly 1,000km, you'll use 25-40 liters of fuel. At current
| prices (around 60 cents per liter), that's $15-25 worth of
| fuel.
|
| A liter of jet fuel contains 35-38 megajoules of energy, which
| is around 10 kilowatt-hours. Assuming 5% efficiency of using
| CO2, water, and cheap solar electricity (3 cents per kwh) to
| synthesize fuel, the cost of input energy per liter would be
| around 60 cents, which is the same as current fuel prices. The
| actual cost would be higher because you need to pay for the
| plant, workers, consumable catalysts, transporting the fuel to
| airports, etc. But real world efficiency would likely be higher
| than 5%. Also solar panels are still getting cheaper and more
| efficient, so 3 cents per kWh may be considered expensive in a
| decade.
|
| Even without electric aircraft, there's no reason in principle
| why aviation needs to be expensive or bad for the environment.
| If demand for petroleum causes prices to increase enough,
| synthesized fuels will become economically competitive.
| kumarski wrote:
| Density is a must have in our civilizations....
| metalman wrote:
| lithium is most definitly profitable in thousands of applications
| including boats, and light aircraft, now. The intercontinental
| heavy aircraft, and marine segment is not there yet, but there is
| a lot of progress bieng made every day, and every single major
| player in the transpotation sector is watching closely, as the
| chance of a disruptive battery technology de-stealthing is
| significant
| sokoloff wrote:
| Aircraft getting lighter as they burn off fuel is a feature.
| Lithium energy storage doesn't get lighter as it discharges,
| meaning the aircraft doesn't get more efficient as stored
| energy decreases and the landing weights/speeds are higher than
| a comparable fossil fueled aircraft.
|
| I'm more hopeful that synthetic jet fuel will be a practical
| solution than batteries for long-range flight.
| lolc wrote:
| > meaning the aircraft doesn't get more efficient as stored
| energy decreases
|
| While I read that, I imagined booster packs detaching from
| airplanes when they reach cruise height. In my mind they look
| like heavy quadcopters stuck to the wings. They would cycle
| back to the airport for charging before assisting the next
| climb.
| chris12321 wrote:
| I recently read The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley
| Robinson, and one of the ideas in it that I thought was very good
| was replacing our cargo ships with wind-powered ships, basically
| giant sailing ships. In the book, they were incredibly slow, with
| shipments taking months to complete, but if supply lines were set
| up correctly, that wouldn't matter for a lot of cargo. Cargo
| ships are a massive CO2 contributor, and it was interesting that
| a solution could be to return to sailing ships.
|
| I know there are probably huge engineering problems preventing
| this from happening, so feel free to tell me why it's impossible.
| hyperhello wrote:
| There's nothing stopping it, here's a link to an article from
| 2023: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66543643
| xterminator wrote:
| Why can't cargo ships deploy floating solar panels to power the
| ship motors?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Because floating solar panels add drag proportional to their
| area, and it takes a lot of area of panels to power a motor
| that is sufficient for a cargo ship even without the added
| drag of the panels. Also, because oceans and the things one
| runs into in them aren't easy on solar panels being dragged
| along by cargo ships.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Would make more sense to produce chemical from solar energy
| harvested on the water fuels, collect the fuel and then use
| this with ships
| retrocryptid wrote:
| i wish there was more talk about this. it seems i heard a
| lot about making hydrocarbons from co2 in the air + solar
| or algae a couple years ago. if your hydrocarbons are
| made this way it seems they would be carbon neutral.
|
| i'm guessing there's more research to make it feasable
| since i haven't seen "carbon neutral gas alternative" at
| the local Chevron.
| crote wrote:
| There has been quite some buzz about ammonia, as it is
| fairly easy to turn electricity into hydrogen, and
| hydrogen into ammonia. It has a reasonably high energy
| density, is not too nasty to handle, and already has a
| huge industry built around it.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| My understanding is that drag is more about the "front-on"
| view of a craft than how long the craft is.
|
| Since solar panels are very thin and aimed up, it feels
| like they add minimal cross-sectional area to the craft.
| Your assertion seems trivially incorrect to me?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Ships drag across sticky goop, not fly through soup.
| aliher1911 wrote:
| There's a pressure drag and skin friction drag. Friction
| drag is supposedly a majority component unless you sail a
| brick. But I don't have sources to prove that.
| ben_w wrote:
| Oceans can be extremely rough, but even mild waves make
| it inappropriate to approximate PV as thin.
|
| The requisite area to power a ship is huge, something
| like 1.4km^2 (ballpark estimate for 20% cells, reasonable
| capacity factor guess, 60 MW consumption requirement). If
| a ship is about 30m wide, it's trailing about 45 km of
| PV. You're not even into 4 digits of cargo ships before
| the combined length is longer than the circumference of
| the planet.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| Economics.
|
| The solar panels would be more expensive than bunker fuel.
|
| Sails would be cheaper.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| it might be fun to try to make a modern wooden sailing ship
| cargo fleet.
|
| maybe with an emergency diesel engine in the back.
| xnx wrote:
| Interesting idea, but that would require more than a square
| kilometer (or a 100m strip 10km long) of solar panels (not
| accounting for the additional power required to tow the panel
| array).
| Retric wrote:
| Solar power being useful doesn't require 100% of propulsion
| to come from solar panels.
|
| You see solar panels added to a wide range of boats because
| even bunker fuel isn't free and panels are light for the
| power they provide over even a few days. A current 399.9 *
| 61.3m container ship doesn't need panels everywhere to
| benefit, but the potential savings is significant if they
| do.
| svnt wrote:
| This is not true because of the dynamics of diesel
| engines: there is by design surplus energy relative to
| requirements from running them at efficient operating
| points. Otherwise the ship is not a good ship.
| delusional wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but I've worked close to some of the
| engines that power those ships. My gut feeling is that you're
| vastly underestimating how much power those ships consume
| (and therefore produce).
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Currently, ships need human sailors. They perform maintenance
| aboard ship as well as have legal oversight of the craft. We
| are not yet able to replace the crew with automation.
|
| It's difficult to find skilled crewmembers willing to sign up
| to extremely long rotations away from home.
| hansvm wrote:
| It just takes money. $100k-$300k/yr is plenty to have your
| pick of pretty good people, especially if there are any perks
| like the food being halfway decent (should be basically a
| given if you have to pay the chef a lot anyway).
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| With a fraction of the money, you pay for energy to move
| faster ...
| lelandbatey wrote:
| That's not even close to true for the kind of large
| shipping we're talking about. Crews are small (the Ever
| Given had 25 people on board) but the ships they crew
| take up to ~100k gallons of fuel per day (Ever Given has
| a fuel capacity of 3622168.679 gallons, 13711400 liters,
| and is set up for voyages of ~30 days underway).
|
| Fuel costs are ~$2.5 USD/gallon for bunker fuel. That
| means a cool $200k per day (conservatively).
|
| It is absolutely not the personnel costs that'd be the
| big differences in expenses.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Good point, I didn't have a handle on the fuel costs.
|
| Backup argument: if you go at half-speed, you'll need
| twice as many ships for the same throughput.
| hansvm wrote:
| Not really. The unit economics work out heavily in favor
| of wind even with slower trips and absurd wages and the
| fact that oil has its externalities pushed to other
| people. Ignoring local manufacturing minima, the reason
| we don't do more of it is that the capital outlay is
| important and heavily favors faster trips, much like how
| excess solar for refinery power isn't often enticing
| because the factory spends too much time idle. Combine
| that with manuverability in canals (so you probably need
| a powerful engine anyway), and the project needs a lot of
| TLC to make economic sense while oil is subsidized to
| this degree, but unit costs aren't the culprit, and even
| wages at that extreme are totally fine.
| pragma_x wrote:
| > if supply lines were set up correctly, that wouldn't matter
| for a lot of cargo.
|
| One of the big problems facing logistics across the board is
| just optimization. But at some point, you run out of intuition
| to uncover more efficiencies. This space is actually a really
| good use for AI. In fact, it's even useful for predicting what
| to put on that boat ahead of when it's ordered/purchased (up to
| a point). So yes, longer shipping times might not be that big a
| deal for non-perishables and frozen products.
| DickingAround wrote:
| We should not under-estimate the need for speed in supply
| chains. Predicting future demand is hard. To be more specific,
| we're talking about predicting ~100M unique products (the order
| of magnitude that moves on the pacific) and some of them have
| very lumpy demand (e.g. invent a new product, but it depends on
| 100 other obscure products).
| ted_dunning wrote:
| We should also not over-estimate the need for speed. Just
| because _some_ items need speed, it does not follow that
| _all_ items need speed.
| sightbroke wrote:
| Or Nuclear Propulsion:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Merc...
|
| > Nuclear ships are currently the responsibility of their own
| countries, but none are involved in international trade. As a
| result of this work in 2014 two papers on commercial nuclear
| marine propulsion were published by Lloyd's Register and the
| other members of this consortium.... > This is a small fast-
| neutron reactor using lead-bismuth eutectic cooling and able to
| operate for ten full-power years before refueling, and in
| service last for a 25-year operational life of the vessel. They
| conclude that the concept is feasible, but further maturity of
| nuclear technology and the development and harmonisation of the
| regulatory framework would be necessary before the concept
| would be viable.
|
| > In December 2023, the Jiangnan Shipyard under the China State
| Shipbuilding Corporation officially released a design of a
| 24000 TEU-class container ship -- known as the KUN-24AP -- at
| Marintec China 2023, a premier maritime industry exhibition
| held in Shanghai. The container ship is reported to be powered
| by a thorium-based molten salt reactor, making it a first
| thorium-powered container ship and, if completed, the largest
| nuclear-powered container ship in the world.
| crote wrote:
| Nuclear ships are technically possible, but have a _massive_
| number of downsides.
|
| - The construction cost would be significantly higher than a
| conventional ship.
|
| - Reactors are far from trivial, so you'd double or triple
| the crew required.
|
| - Shipbreaking would become even more of an issue than it
| already is. You can't just beach a ship like this in
| Bangladesh and have a bunch of untrained people attack it
| with plasma cutters.
|
| - The ship would be a huge target for pirates and terrorists.
| It's essentially a floating dirty bomb, after all, just
| waiting for the USS Cole treatment.
|
| - A lot of countries would not accept nuclear ships, both due
| to perceived security risks and for more ideological reasons.
|
| ... and that's probably only the tip of the iceberg.
|
| Nuclear is barely economically viable with land-based large-
| scale nuclear power plants running for 50+ years. They are an
| attractive option for some military ships, but I doubt anyone
| would be willing to risk it for regular commercial shipping.
| sightbroke wrote:
| > They are an attractive option for some military ships,
| but I doubt anyone would be willing to risk it for regular
| commercial shipping.
|
| There's been a few built over the years, mostly for
| research.
|
| Russia apparently still operates one.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput
|
| Despite hurtles you've pointed to it is still being
| considered:
|
| https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/news-
| research...
|
| > This source of power confers some advantages. "You will
| have ships going maybe 50% faster because the fuel is
| essentially free once you have made the upfront capex
| investment," Sohmen-Pao said.
|
| You achieve ~0 emissions AND avoid increasing transit time
| going with pure sailing ships.
| jmward01 wrote:
| This appears to ignore the new technology that electric brings
| in: Reduced maintenance, (for aircraft) reduced weight in other
| parts of an aircraft, new propulsion capabilities that increase
| efficiency of the energy used, new performance envelopes (like
| flying much higher because the physics are totally different),
| etc etc. Sure. Take an existing vehicle optimized for burning
| things and just swap that small part and things look bad but
| start optimizing for the new way of doing things and the equation
| totally changes. Additionally, that 60x claim is getting old by
| the minute. We are getting to 300+ with advancements coming in so
| fast they are hard to keep track of. That 60x could drop to 10x
| or lower in just a few years and that, again, doesn't count the
| reduction in weight that could come from removing a literal
| explosion maker from an aircraft can achieve.
| MegaButts wrote:
| > reduced weight in other parts of an aircraft
|
| The bigger problem is that the overall weight increases.
| Rearranging the COG doesn't really matter when most of your
| energy is spent literally fighting gravity.
|
| This is the first thing that popped up in google when I wanted
| to compare gravimetric density between gasoline and lithium ion
| batteries. Gasoline is still approximately 30x denser. That is
| at least one revolutionary breakthrough in battery technology
| away, if not several.
|
| https://research-archive.org/index.php/rars/preprint/downloa...
| GaggiX wrote:
| Considering the thermal efficiency of a modern jet engine,
| the usable energy compared to a lithium battery will be ~15
| higher per kg, still bad, but not as bad.
| seb1204 wrote:
| This is not correct for electric trucks. Replacing diesel
| motor and gearbox with battery pack and electric drive train
| is close to a zero sum game according to
| https://youtube.com/@electrictrucker?si=RjdWBQQXansebUyJ
|
| Definitely not a huge penalty.
| dmoy wrote:
| Fair, but the context here is planes (and boats I guess
| though that seems less difficult than planes)
| staplung wrote:
| Other than potentially reducing maintenance costs, I'm not sure
| any other part of this stacks up. I don't see how
| electrification would allow you to save weight in other parts
| of the aircraft. I don't think electrification adds any new
| propulsion capabilities that are more energy efficient, not for
| airplanes or boats anyway. For boats, the electricity would
| still be turning a screw and for airplanes the only method of
| propulsion that would work is an old-fashioned propellor. That
| last is the same reason you can't fly electric planes in new
| performance envelopes: prop planes can't get that high and
| wouldn't work if they somehow found themselves in one. Even
| turbo-prop planes (which have gas turbines that enable them to
| work more efficiently at high altitudes) are limited in
| altitude by the fact that the tips of the propellors are going
| very nearly the speed of sound.
| decimalenough wrote:
| I can buy these arguments for airplanes. I'm more intrigued by
| the throwaway tweet claiming "electric scooter companies can
| never be profitable", because I don't see why this should be the
| case, unless "scooter" here is referring specifically to Ola
| style light motorcycles that compete directly with ICE
| equivalents, and not Lime style electric kick scooters that
| don't?
| kumarski wrote:
| Fair point, check the post again, I've posted on twitter about
| the benchmark for productively profitable venture and PE
| dollars.
|
| It's our taxpayer dollars at work.
|
| As a public market pegged to the same grid constraints, I
| prefer $POWL over most of the private lithium companies being
| pitched.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Only got to the subhead so far but mention of "energy return on
| investment" suggests this is going to be bullshit.
|
| edit: after reading, it was worse than I expected.
| cagenut wrote:
| this post is a fake argument with no one? the typical internet
| outrage pattern of using overly dramatized language like "dirty
| secret" to describe something thats... common knowledge? not a
| secret at all? openly talked about at any and every relevant
| industries conferences and trade shows?
|
| everybody who isn't just reading clickbait and comments sections
| is well aware that the wh/kg for li-ion will never cross the
| atlantic much less the pacific, via air or sea. thats why the
| aviation industry went in on SAF/eFuels, thats why the shipping
| industry is playing with hydrogen and ammonia. everybody knows
| the litany of challenges there (please spare us yet another
| internet commenters thoughts on hydrogen), but the very fact that
| they're trying is in and of itself a clear admission of the
| understanding that li-ion doesn't get you there.
|
| so like, who is this guy even talking to?
| renewiltord wrote:
| NASA has quietly admitted that aliens have not been found on
| other planets.
|
| One fact fusion engineers don't want you to know: there's no
| commercial fusion plant
|
| Babies' "dirty secret": they pee without asking
|
| It's just the usual clickbait crap. I'm with you. Blocking this
| domain for myself.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Numbers are thrown around without making sure like is compared
| with like. The central argument is energy density and is
| supported by handwaving and a broken link to
| https://www.technologyreview.com/energy which does not exist
| and likly moved to
| https://www.technologyreview.com/topic/climate-change/ but that
| is not even an article but just a section there.
| MiguelHudnandez wrote:
| I appreciate by default any attempt to make a full accounting of
| the costs involved in energy transmission and storage. Many of
| these grid & battery costs are abstracted away from consumers and
| great effort must be made to understand them fully.
|
| That said, have you done a similar analysis involving the costs
| of removing finite organics from the ground, burning those, and
| releasing the byproducts into the atmosphere? Even if one is
| better in the short term we should still be working toward better
| options.
| kumarski wrote:
| Yes.
| m463 wrote:
| The same thing could have been said years ago about solar power
| in california.
|
| But with PG&E's regulatory capture and people paying 50c/kwh for
| electricity, solar is economically practical. Even with
| batteries! (and wholesale electricity is still 3-4c/kwh)
|
| My point is that the math could change in a moment due to
| regulation and/or energy repricing.
|
| (example: disallow non-electric planes at certain airports or
| certain distances; allow in-city electric flight; wholesale
| electric rate for electric aviation/shipping; etc)
|
| (that said, writer is probably right about this moment in time)
| crote wrote:
| The math would already change quite a bit if airplanes had to
| play on a level playing field. For example, in the EU there are
| no taxes on aviation fuel. For a country like Germany that's
| the equivalent of a yearly 7 billion euro subsidy.
|
| Add fuel taxes and CO2 surcharges, and same-continent rail
| travel suddenly becomes a _lot_ more attractive!
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Just going off the tweet about electric scooters being a scam:
| Nothing in that tweet is convincing.
|
| Let's just take at face value the assertion that a KWh of energy
| in an electric scooter costs $5 (as an EV owner: I'm skeptical).
|
| I'm going to use Lime (an SF based scooter rental company, chosen
| at random) as an example. I tried finding exact battery specs,
| and couldn't, but based on the range and some general scooter
| efficiency metrics I found, I doubt it has even a full KWh
| capacity, but let's round up, and assume that when fully charged,
| it has $5 worth of electricity in it.
|
| Lime is charging $1.00 to unlock and $0.50/minute of use
| (somewhat cheaper with the subscription).
|
| The claimed top speed is ~15 mph with a range of 20-30 miles.
| Let's the take the lower range value there. So assuming that the
| scooter is doing nothing but driving at it's full top speed for
| the entire rental period, it would use up the battery in ~1.3
| hours. That's a total rental fee of ~$39. Doing nothing but
| driving it full speed seems like an unlikely use case, so I think
| this represents a close to worst-case scenario for rental fee
| paid to electricity used.
|
| Now, I don't know what the rest of the overhead is. So I'm not
| going to claim that this is an obviously profitable business
| model, but the _electricity_ costs in this equation are not the
| reason why it 's going to fail.
|
| If the author thinks that this tweet is a slam dunk, I'm not
| going to bother reading the rest of the article. I too am
| skeptical of batteries utility in flight especially, but there
| are probably better sources to get those analyses from.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Was going to post something similar. I love me a screed where
| the author rails against some group saying they don't know what
| they are talking about, and then goes on to demonstrate that
| they don't know what they are talking about. :-)
|
| For a long time I didn't understand what 'talking past each
| other' meant but this article is a good example of that. Mostly
| it's bad form to make sweeping generalizations. But let's be
| specific;
|
| From the article, here is the "TL;DR" --
|
| _Lithium propulsion for aircraft and boats is fundamentally
| unprofitable across the entire U.S. grid. The numbers don 't
| lie: 60x worse energy density than jet fuel, 3.3x higher
| operating costs, 22% reduced asset utilization, and payback
| periods that consume 2/3 of the asset's lifespan. Anyone
| claiming otherwise is ignoring basic physics or hiding most of
| the energy and economic costs._
|
| So first let's talk definitions. "profit" is, by definition,
| "gross revenue" - "costs". "costs" come in two flavors,
| "direct", "marginal", and "operational". Direct costs are what
| you pay, every time for the thing you need. Marginal cost is
| what you pay for just "a bit more" of the thing you need. And
| operational costs are the costs you pay so that you can operate
| your business.
|
| So there is a direct cost of a lithium battery which is
| included in the manufacturing of a widget, there is the
| marginal cost of charging that battery up to full capacity, and
| there is the operational cost of maintaining the battery and
| presumably repairing or replacing it, when it doesn't do what
| you ask of it any more.
|
| There is a fourth cost, which is "externalities", that covers
| the cost of remediating the environmental damage which is done
| by your energy source and while important, and the focus of
| climate change awareness, its rarely considered in the
| discussion of 'profitable' vs. 'unprofitable.'
|
| If we keep this discussion on "lithium" which is the "gas" of
| these transportation modalities. You can say that building a
| battery pack is much more expensive than building a gas tank.
| So cost wise a gas is cheaper. The marginal cost of energy in
| Watts between gasoline and electricity leans heavily in
| electric's favor for a number of reasons. The operational costs
| of fueling and maintaining the "source power" for electric cars
| nominally similar.
|
| But all of that, has to be put into the context of the _system_
| cost which includes vehicle fabrication, power 'converters'
| (aka motors) that turn fuel into motion, and mechanical
| maintenance.
|
| Then you jump into a bigger frame of reference and consider all
| transportation modalities and how they combine as a system to
| get someone from point A to point B, and what are the costs of
| building, expanding, and operating that?
|
| The author doesn't see a path between 'here' and what they know
| to 'there' where Lithium batteries have "improved" non-vehicle
| transportation modalities over what fossil fuels can do. That's
| fair, I don't see one either precisely, but there are
| interesting paths to explore. Foreclosing one's thinking to
| possibilities on those paths is not usually the right thing to
| do. A better strategy is to think about it in terms of what
| would have to be true in order for these paths to be viable
| updates to the way we travel/ship/transport.
| fragmede wrote:
| In the larger discuss is of course, solar panels, and how
| they can be installed cheaply enough and with enough storage
| to make it feasible. Vertical integration is the key here and
| yes it's additional initial capital outlay, but if someone
| wants to run the numbers, I bet there's somewhere where it
| makes sense.
| svnt wrote:
| He is for some reason comparing the levelized cost of energy.
| This is a metric used to analyze energy generating devices, not
| energy consuming devices.
|
| His tweet says that if you wanted to buy electricity from an
| electric scooter and use it to run your house, it would cost
| the utility providing it $2 to $5/kWh, assuming that the sole
| function of the scooter is to provide its electricity to
| consumers directly.
|
| LCOE goes up the further you get from the source, but his
| analysis is also based on outdated numbers and largely wrong.
|
| That said, he isn't totally wrong. Electric marine has a tough
| road ahead of itself due to the inefficiency of boats relative
| to cars. Boats can be calculated roughly as a car that is
| always going somewhat uphill.
|
| Electric planes are a niche use case for the foreseeable
| future.
| testing22321 wrote:
| "Gasoline's dirty secret: it's toxic, expensive and using it
| kills the planet."
|
| This type of framing is utterly pointless, and tries to make out
| like electric propulsion shouldn't be used for anything because
| it's not ideal for everything.
|
| Even if we never get to everyday electric planes (debatable),
| that has zero bearing on the fact electric cars are already
| excellent for many uses.
| xnx wrote:
| > Electric scooter companies by definition can never be
| profitable
|
| Lost me right at the start by being proud(?) of this wrong
| understanding.
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| If you used floating wind/solar farms as recharging points across
| the ocean, how much space would they take up?
| kumarski wrote:
| impractical, the number of ships to install these things is
| already constrained, not to mention the dispatch, repair, and
| transmission costs.
| baq wrote:
| You don't need to rant when it's enough to show that a few dozen
| airliners consume a day's worth of a nuclear reactor power
| production (for some size of an airplane and a nuclear reactor;
| we should be accurate within an order of magnitude). Imagine
| every single airport needing its own huge ass power plant and you
| get your point across in an HN comment.
|
| Not sure what's the point in attacking physicists, either. They
| should be the first ones pointing this out and I can't imagine
| one not nodding in agreement.
| beloch wrote:
| His beef against physicists is likely rooted in confirmation
| bias. Musk has a BA in physics that some debate if he even
| completed, but one bad egg does not prove the rule. It would be
| just as easy to point out engineers who have gone on to lead
| dodgy enterprises but, again, a few bad eggs do not prove the
| rule.
|
| His reason for attacking another group is likely to make his
| own group look superior. This works on the playground and in
| more professional situations than it really should. He might
| also just be airing his prejudices thoughtlessly.
|
| Either way, it's probably going to limit the audience he
| reaches and invite some nasty responses. He'd do well to avoid
| spewing such nonsense in the future.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| but the metric the OP was using was power density. nuke fuels
| are MUCH more energy dense than hydrocarbon fuels. but putting
| a reactor on each plane would probably have negative
| externalities.
|
| but mixing your comment with a few others, maybe a nuke plant
| on the ground that cracks the co2 in the atmosphere to make
| carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuel.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > but putting a reactor on each plane would probably have
| negative externalities.
|
| Probably? It would be a disaster every time one crashes,
| would carry a huge proliferation and terrorism risk. Oof.
|
| In the 50's some countries were that crazy and they even put
| reactors in space. Two of which crashed and one contaminated
| a huge area in Canada. Luckily common sense prevailed and
| these things don't happen anymore. Though nuclear ships still
| exist, there's only a few icebreakers in the civilian fleet
| AFAIK.
| asn007 wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought we still use RTGs in
| space on some satellites? Not counting extraterrestrial
| research, since those are definitely still powered by RTGs
| toast0 wrote:
| I suspect that there's niches where battery electric boats and
| maybe planes do make sense.
|
| My state's ferry system is investing in electrifying, because
| they project it reduce operating costs. The 'easy' part is moving
| towards hybrid systems that can move with diesel or battery; this
| is projected to save fuel even without shore charging. The hard
| part will be making shore charging work. Our grid is mostly
| hydro, so switching from diesel to electric should be better for
| emissions and the operating budget.
|
| If the routes were longer, shore charging wouldn't be very
| relevant, but they're short enough that many routes could work
| without diesel most of the time.
| whall6 wrote:
| Hot swappable batteries!
| seszett wrote:
| We also have electric ferries here in Antwerp and Ostend. I
| don't think they're hybrid, although it's not clear when they
| get charged, I would assume during the wait times (about 15
| minutes wait and 5 minutes ferrying) but I have not noticed
| them actually connecting anywhere, maybe I just haven't noticed
| though. The communication says it can sail for three hours on
| batteries, so they must charge during the day while operating.
|
| And at my other place around Nantes they're building a new
| ferry that is supposed to be hybrid electric/hydrogen. I'm not
| very optimistic on hydrogen though so I don't know. The latest
| info say the budget has tripled and the delivery has been
| reported from 2026 to 2030.
| svnt wrote:
| Most of them seem to perform opportunity charging (while
| loading/unloading), using direct rapid charging via
| pantograph.
|
| See eg https://www.energymonitor.ai/sectors/transport/the-
| secret-to...
|
| I have also seen designs for ferries to wirelessly charge
| underwater while docked.
|
| Wireless charging can be quite efficient when the two halves
| comprise nesting physical features with similar tolerances to
| actual transformers. But I have not seen this implemented,
| presumably due to biofouling problems.
| sitharus wrote:
| Where I live companies are moving to electric ferries because
| they're cheaper to operate, require less maintenance, and are
| much quieter for the passengers. Plus they don't emit any
| exhaust fumes while idling at the dock.
|
| The port also has an electric tug boat, which their reports say
| is very handy because it changes power output much faster than
| diesel tugs. Charging times are not a factor according to their
| reports.
|
| Our power grid is 80+% renewable though.
|
| Of course the article ignores that it's easier to improve the
| emissions of a few large powerplants than every car, ferry and
| scooter, and that the minerals in batteries don't disappear
| after use.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Also, large power plants are much more efficient than small
| ICEs. Combined cycle power plants can have a LHV efficiency
| in excess of 60%.
| svnt wrote:
| An analysis of the Nordic ferry systems ten years ago found
| that 70% would benefit from electrification --- about 45% could
| go fully electric, while about 25% made more sense as hybrid.
|
| This means for them 30% didn't make sense to electrify.
|
| This was Siemens making the case for selling electric boat
| parts, so presumably this was best case at the time.
| mangecoeur wrote:
| Finance bro decides tweets are better evidence than physics...
| nothing to see here
| kumarski wrote:
| former engineer, but w/e.
| tag2103 wrote:
| I'm not sure he brings anything new to the argument, well except
| a disdain for physicists.
| kumarski wrote:
| fair point, but most people don't open up chemistry books.
| trhway wrote:
| Current lithium batteries Tesla - 270+Wh/kg, cheap AliBaba -
| 250+Wh/kg. Gasoline/jet fuel - 12KWh/kg, with 30% thermodynamic
| efficiency - 3.6KWh/kg. If one takes into account piston engines
| weight and their expensive maintenance or how expensive jet
| engines overall, the electric seems to have a very good niche of
| short range planes, and for multi-rotor VTOL it is unbeatable.
| kumarski wrote:
| Factor in complete system requirements--cooling, casings, and
| safety systems--that 270 Wh/kg battery delivers only 170-180
| Wh/kg of usable energy.
|
| Jet fuel still maintains an 18-19x energy density advantage
| (3.2 kWh/kg vs. 0.17 kWh/kg) at the system level, which
| explains the fundamental range limitations we're seeing in
| electric aircraft development.
|
| For VTOL applications specifically, it demands 2.5-3x more
| energy per mile than conventional flight, electric air taxi
| prototypes remain limited to 60-80 mile ranges--impressive
| engineering, but not yet practical for replacing most aviation
| applications.
| api wrote:
| I remember seeing loads and loads of analyses like this back in
| the 2000s on a site called The Oil Drum about why electric cars
| would never work at scale. (Spoiler: My family has two EVs.) They
| always assume that the technology will never get better, that
| industrial economies of scale don't exist and therefore that
| prices don't decrease with scale, that currently developed
| reserves of resources like lithium equal total reserves, etc.
|
| I do think it will be a while before electrification of long haul
| aviation is practical. Aviation -- all of it -- accounts for only
| 7% of global oil consumption as of 2024. We could cut oil
| consumption by more than 80% without touching aviation. Most oil
| is burned in cars and trucks and those can be electrified today,
| so we should focus our energy on that and on replacing fossil
| fuels in electricity generation and take the win there.
|
| Related tangent:
|
| The popularity of toxic dogmatic pessimism on the political left
| is really problematic. It stops people from offering positive,
| expansive visions of the future. It's one reason the fascists are
| winning by default. They don't buy this shit, so they tell
| stories about the future that aren't "and then we all die in a
| great Malthusian catastrophe, the end." The fascist vision of the
| future sucks, but it's better than that, so it wins hearts and
| minds.
|
| Ask yourself: what if our civilization _doesn 't_ collapse? Then
| what? The assumption that it will collapse prevents people from
| thinking about the future. Malthusianism is a thought stopping
| cliche.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The Oil Drum was converted to a static archive site in 2013, in
| part because they were finding it hard to attract quality
| content.
|
| Gee, maybe that was because it was clear Peak Oil (in the we're
| running out sense) wasn't happening?
|
| This comment was made to the shuttering announcement: "8 years
| means The Oil Drum came online in 2005, basically matching the
| start the current plateau in crude oil production."
|
| Global oil production has increased since then. The price of
| West Texas crude has gone from $100 (which would be $136 in
| today's dollars) to $64 now.
|
| The left wing pessimism stems from a moralistic view. The
| underlying idea is that we deserve to suffer, so suffering is
| predicted.
| api wrote:
| I didn't mean to imply that the right didn't have its own
| doomer narratives. The current hotness seems to be
| demographic predictions of doom, "great replacement"
| theories, etc. I'm very skeptical of those too.
|
| What I was getting at though was -- I think the left allows
| its doomer narratives to be intellectually paralyzing. If
| everything is going to crash and collapse and burn, there's
| no need to actually try to solve problems or offer a
| compelling narrative about the future.
|
| The right doesn't do this. They feed their own doomer
| narratives into a "rage against the dying of the light"
| narrative. This results in all kinds of ugly racism and
| persecution and authoritarianism, sure, but it doesn't lead
| to paralysis. So, as I said, they win by default. In the
| battle for hearts and minds, they win if they're the only
| ones that show up.
|
| Edit:
|
| Another way of saying it would be to say that for the left
| its doomer narratives are _demotivating_ , while the right
| treats its doomer narratives as _motivating_.
| numpad0 wrote:
| > They always assume that the technology will never get better,
| that industrial economies of scale don't exist
|
| The technology hadn't improved not much more than a quarter's
| worth so far in my lifetime as far as EV is concerned.
|
| Wh/kg figures hasn't changed, even fusion seems closer than
| solid state batteries, mileage figures for EVs is same 4mi/kWh,
| battery recycling still hasn't been figured out. They can't
| even recover Lithium out of Lithium ion batteries. wtf.
|
| Meanwhile, computers had gotten like, up to petaflops per
| nation to per building to per node. Wireless Internet went from
| kilobits to gigabits. Everyone wears UNIX or Linux watches.
|
| IMO, optimistic heuristics floating around EV is too shallow.
| The model just doesn't have enough parameters that it's
| expecting growth where it should not and vice versa. It just
| needs way more grounding to be meaningful.
| api wrote:
| Computers have psyched us out. There is no other technology
| in human history that has _ever_ seen a capability growth
| curve like Moore 's Law. Even aviation, which went from
| biplanes to moon landings in 50 years, doesn't compare.
|
| Still, there has been huge improvement in batteries. The main
| improvement has not been in energy density but in cost. Find
| some graphs of battery cost per kWh of storage. Storage cost
| has dropped by almost 10X in the last 15-20 years.
| Reliability and rapid recharge capability have also increased
| a lot.
|
| Still, for medium to long haul aviation we probably would
| need _at least_ a 3-4X improvement in energy density per unit
| volume and mass, and I don 't see that happening soon. It's
| likely that long range aviation is stuck with liquid fuels
| for the foreseeable future. But as I said it's only 7% of oil
| consumption. We should just let aviation keep going as-is and
| cut fossil fuel use in terrestrial transport and power
| generation.
|
| Part of why we're not recycling batteries much is that
| lithium isn't expensive enough to make the investment in it
| profitable. The major cost in batteries is the manufacturing
| process, not the lithium itself. If lithium prices go up
| there'd be an incentive to figure out recycling.
| kumarski wrote:
| <2.5% of US vehicles are electric.
|
| I bought $AMR, $FCG, $UAN, and $POWL.
|
| I bought $TSLA and sold almost at the top as well, but for
| different reasons than fundamentals. (Greenback boomerang CCP
| dollars etc...)
|
| Chemistry doesn't lie and it imputes all of human behavior.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| i would have given this guy credit if he compared cost of
| production for petro fuels when talking about energy debt.
|
| also conflates power with energy, but fine.
|
| if you talk about cost (dollar or kilowatt hour) per joule
| delivered to a vehicle and then compared the total cost of
| electric vs. the total cost of petro, i would listen. but he
| ignored the fact that petro fuels cost money, energy and water to
| produce.
|
| and there some things electric motors can do that ice can't. an
| electric ekranoplan isn't too infeasible, but we know from soviet
| studies you can't keep salt water out of an aspirated motor when
| you're that close to the water's surface. turns out electric
| motors can be sealed against water.
|
| and dissing physicists? wtf? makes me think he failed out of an
| engineering physics degree cause he didn't understand math. as we
| used to say, the limit of a bs or be as gpa approaches zero is
| bba.
| kumarski wrote:
| I directly compared them in visualization 6 ($75-110/kWh
| conventional vs. $245-380/kWh lithium, all externalities
| included). Electric ekranoplans would be badass, and sealed
| motors solve one problem, but battery chemistry is the real
| beast - we're bumping against molecular bond limitations, not
| just engineering challenges. Current lithium-ion cathodes are
| only achieving 25-30% of their theoretical capacity limits,
| while lithium-sulfur promises 2-3x better density but
| sacrifices cycle life. Trust me, I want electric propulsion to
| succeed, but we need fundamental chemical breakthroughs beyond
| intercalation mechanisms. Got any data on those Soviet
| experiments? Those Russians were decades ahead on some wild
| electrochemistry concepts.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Your being a bit disingenuous by not comparing the relative
| efficiencies of electric vs gas propulsion. Electric motors are
| ~3x as efficient. They also can recharge by capturing energy
| during use.
|
| In a car for example, you need about 9 gallons of gas in a 33mpg
| car to get 300 miles. This is equivalent to a 75kWh EV.
|
| On paper though, with the conveniently leaving out details math
| this guy is using (or maybe it's too physics for him) you only
| need 2.2 gallons.
| kumarski wrote:
| The energy required to extract, process and manufacture lithium
| batteries (70% of total lifecycle energy occurs before the
| vehicle moves) Grid transmission losses (5-8% average, up to
| 15% in extreme conditions) Battery charging/discharging
| efficiency losses The dramatic efficiency reductions in adverse
| conditions (33% range loss in cold weather)
|
| For aircraft and marine applications specifically (which was my
| focus), the energy density problem (60x worse than jet fuel)
| creates cascading inefficiencies as you need more battery
| weight, which requires more energy to move, which requires more
| batteries, and so on.
|
| Electric cars have different economics than aircraft/boats and
| can make more sense in certain contexts. But my analysis was
| specifically about why lithium propulsion for aircraft and
| marine vessels faces fundamental economic and physics
| challenges that can't be solved with current technology.
|
| The tires on an electric vehicle wear down about 20% faster
| because of the load bearing of the battery weight.
| scythe wrote:
| But they can do the ground effect pretty well, because the
| _motors_ become lighter:
|
| https://www.regentcraft.com/news/regent-begins-sea-trials-of...
| refulgentis wrote:
| This is a really nice article, in that its long and provides a
| good example of knowing everything yet nothing.
|
| Setting aside individual problems with it, this is because it
| suffers from a broad and blindingly obvious problem: investment
| is occurring in this area b/c it will be absolutely politically
| unpalatable in 20 years to still be emitting CO2.
|
| A long analysis showing lithium is more expensive than just using
| gas is unnecessary, and not even wrong when its used to prove VCs
| are dumb or whatever.
|
| Things are going to get that bad. Mark my words. It's like how it
| was obvious COVID was going to be a pandemic after January 2020.
| You could derive it from basic #s.
|
| They're not looking to be cheaper-than.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| What's wrong with CO2? It's not a serious issue, it's just an
| easy proxy for real environmental damage, focusing on CO2
| simplifies complex issues like deforestation, pollution,
| resource depletion, and actual toxic emissions from the rest of
| the world. The idea is we're going to implement another tax on
| the plebs to drive a carbon economy and that will compensate
| for the damage the elites and 3rd worlders are doing. Then on
| top of that all the other inherent taxes like lithium
| batteries, transmission, windmill subsidies, solar recycling,
| and so on. And of course, this has to be done on the back of
| the most productive people in society because who else is going
| to do it.
| refulgentis wrote:
| I honestly don't know what's going on here.
|
| I don't know how "we collectively de-fossil fuel and some
| prices may go up who knows, science!" becomes "damage by
| elites and 3rd worlders" and "tax" becomes "lithium
| batteries" "transmission" "windmill subsidies" "solar
| recycling", and given all that, how it's being done on the
| backs of the most productive in society (is this a fancy way
| of saying: people who buy things will buy things with
| batteries?)
|
| If the idea is strictly "What's wrong with CO2"...who said
| CO2? :)
| kumarski wrote:
| Sulfur Hexafluoride and Nitrogen Trifluoride proliferate under
| a CO2 minimization regime. Nobody is arguing with Arrhenius
| proofs.
|
| Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) is a potent greenhouse gas with a
| global warming potential (GWP) of 17,200 over a 100-year
| period, meaning it's 17,200 times more effective than carbon
| dioxide (CO2) in trapping heat in the atmosphere. This GWP
| value is used to calculate the CO2 equivalent of NF3 emissions.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| The profitability will come when we factor in the environmental
| damage in the prices.
|
| However the elephant in the room at least for aviation is that
| the energy per kg is about 50 higher for kerosene than for
| lithium batteries. A very large part of an airliner is fuel
| already. 50 as much? Not gonna happen. This will remain a really
| short range thing unless a really amazing breakthrough happens.
| pfdietz wrote:
| One possible path is the hybrid aircraft, where combustion
| turbines or fuel cells produce electric power that drives small
| ducted fans via electric motors. The enabling technology here
| is superconductors. Airbus is working on superconducting motors
| and generators for such hydrogen-powered aircraft.
|
| One can imagine regenerative braking in the fans, for example
| to recover energy as aircraft descend, and also with batteries
| providing emergency backup power.
| zik wrote:
| His estimate the LCoE of an electric vehicle with lithium
| batteries is off by a factor of ten. My back-of-the-napkin
| calculations make it to be $0.22-0.25 per kWh.
|
| Let's compare two vehicles - an EV car vs an ICE car - in terms
| of their energy costs per mile, including energy storage. Using
| the above numbers the EV comes out to around $0.07 per mile
| including the lifetime costs of the battery, and the ICE comes
| out to around $0.125 per mile.
|
| In short - his numbers are completely wrong and when calculated
| correctly prove the opposite of what he's trying to say.
| londons_explore wrote:
| For the marine uses specifically, the use of hydrofoils promises
| to dramatically reduce the amount of energy needed for movement
| at any decent speed.
|
| Previously hydrofoils weren't used because they rely on complex
| feedback mechanisms to maintain ride height despite waves etc.
|
| Sure, someone _could_ pair hydrofoils with gasoline engines, but
| I suspect they won 't, and that means hydrofoil+electric will win
| out over conventional hull+hydrocarbon fuels for a bunch of use
| cases.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I came to the comments hoping for lots of electric apologists not
| reading the article and I was not disappointed
|
| As a recap (for those who don't like to read)
|
| - 70% of EV cost comes before the vehicle ever moves and must be
| recouped over the life of the vehicle (and takes much longer than
| traditional fuels)
|
| - the energy density & cost of certain fuels is the only reason
| certain vehicles are able to be profitably operated in the first
| place
|
| - the only way to create enough energy to match said fuels/demand
| with electrics (at present) would be to hook up coal or nuclear
| plants to airports, and even then it'd be expensive as shit
|
| - we basically need a 5x improvement in battery energy density
| _at minimum_ to even think about profitability, and that 's only
| one of the things that would need to be addressed before it's
| practically feasible
| johnea wrote:
| I'm not so sure about this assessment.
|
| But one thing I would agree with is that Li ion is not the
| ultimate battery chemistry.
|
| Several others with greater density, increased cycle counts, and
| more readily available minerals are in development.
|
| Of course there's BYD, which was a battery company before an EV
| maker:
|
| https://engineerine.com/byd-blade-battery/
|
| And a survey of upcoming chemistries and technologies:
|
| https://thecalculatedchemist.com/blogs/news/the-future-of-en...
|
| Just another indication of why we should have started emphasizing
| battery electric power, and the chemical research into possible
| solutions, 50 to 75 years ago when the problem of CO2 altering
| the atmosphere became scientifically indisputable.
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