An anonymous reader writes "Consortium members read like a Who's Who in technology research for the Battery 500 Project which aims to use nanotechnology to extend the range of all-electric cars 200 miles beyond the 300-mile range of gasoline powered cars. IBM, the University of California at Berkeley and all five of our US National Labs are collaborating to make the 500-mile electric car battery. Within two years, they promise to have a new kind of battery technology in place for the 500-mile electric car. If that happens, then I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make the Toyota Prius look like a fad."
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't make this claim if they didn't have some hard science to back it up. That's a lot of big organizations putting their reputation on the line, so I'm more worried about how much this battery will cost and how long is its lifetime, because if it is high and low respectively, then it's just as impractical as 200 mpc.
Exactly right. A 'statement of direction'. In fact, the poster should have read the article. IBM states that they should know in 2 years whether lithium-air technology will work or not. They didn't state a battery would be ready at that time.
There's not enough lithium carbonate that can be produced at *$5/kg* with *today's non-experiental technology*. Which is, of course, irrelevant to the big picture. With lab tech today, lithium can be produced from seawater (in essentially unlimited quantities) for $22-$32/kg [osti.gov]. And way cheaper than that for other terrestrial sources (such as Western Lithium Corporation's Kings Valley mine in Nevada) -- just not as cheaply as the Argentinian and Bolivian salars.
So? Well, for example, the Nissan Leaf only contains 4kg of lithium. That's about 20kg worth of lithium carbonate. I.e., about $100 worth. Honestly, who gives a rat's arse if that doubles, triples, quadruples, even quintuples? That's not the impediment to li-ion EV costs. The non-automotive li-ions are limited largely by cobalt costs, while the automotive li-ions are limited by capital costs and labor due to their current low-volume production methods. And contrary to popular belief, the battery packs aren't the only thing that's overpriced right now. The motor, inverter, and charger are, too. They're still largely handmade, very small volumes. The Tesla Roadster's drivetrain is descended from AC Propulsion's AC-150, which will run you about $25k today. However, AC Propulsion expects that if they were made in volumes of hundreds of thousands per year, it'd be more like $3500.
Especially when it's battery technology, which hasn't improved much in... how many decades?
I guess we have to hit every myth in the book on this thread, no?
The best secondary cells on the market in 1989 were the newly introduced Nickel Metal Hydride cells, which, at introduction, boasted 40Wh/kg. Today, the best secondary cells on the market are 200Wh/kg li-ions (which are *way* better than the li-ions from 1999). We're talking a 4.5x increase in energy density and a 10x increase in power density in 20 years.
It's true that for much of the 20th century, battery tech largely stagnated. However, then came along the consumer electronics revolution of the 1980s, and people actually started putting real money into rechargeable batteries. That, combined with our modern understanding of materials and fabrication allowed for a boom in battery technology, which today is about a 10% increase in energy density per year. And that rate is rising, not falling. And EVs will probably make it rise even faster.
If IBM had said "we have batteries that can last 500 miles", and Stanley Kubrick shot videos of the long-range electric car in a Hollywood studio, then it would be like the moon landing.
In my area, gas is currently $2.50/gallon. Filling up with 10 gallons would be $25, and in a 30mpg vehicle would get you 300 miles. End cost is 8.3 cents a mile.
Meanwhile the Tesla Roadster* has a 53 kWh battery that would cost $5.30 or less in my area to fill up, at home. Could be as low as $2.65 if you make some deals with the power company and have the charger on a circuit they can turn off when electrical demand is high. Per the wiki, it can go 244 miles on that charge. That gives me 2.17 cents per mile.
Basically divide your gas bill by four in order to figure out how much an EV would save you in gas money**.
Right now the difficulty isn't so much the range or lifespan of the battery, it's the COST. If the batteries were 1/10th their current price, we'd be driving EVs today.
*I know it's too expensive, but it's the best known commercial EV. **Assuming your driving habits are compatible.
I already pay $8 / gallon, so do most of Europe, and it's WAY to low. There's just no incentive to save fuel.
A recent study on the impact of price on fuel consumption concluded with a recommandation of trippling existing fuel costs (to about $24 / gallon).
If you civilization requires gas prices below $4 / gallon to survive, you should start planning for it's demise. It will not survive, nor should it.
Oil is a finite resource, and it's price will rise faster than the growth of the global economy in the coming years. In addition the cost of repairing the damage caused by burning oil must be included in the price.
I've been doing fine with $5/gal gas for years. $20-$25 per gallon gas would go mostly unnoticed if we all have electric vehicles. Aviation, on the other hand, would become prohibitively expensive as there is no affordable replacement for fossil fuels in sight for large aircraft.
All the more reason to switch to electric cars and renewable+nuclear and conserve what fossil fuels are left. The planes really need the dinosaur juice.
Well they are more of a fad/statement then anything else. You don't buy a Prius to be "green", you buy one to say "Look at me, I care about the environment". Now that may come off a bit trollish, but that certainly is the reality of the situation.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday October 01, @12:30AM (#29602187)
In order to replace the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine,) charge time needs to drop to less than 10 minutes. With recharging stations nearly as common as gas stations.
Batteries aren't going to do that. Supercapacitors will. (Or some yet-to-be-invented technology.)
Or battery swap stations. Seriously, what is needed more than range is a universal standard for batteries with built in meters, so you can swap them at gas stations, paying for what you used when you swap it out. The "recharge" stops could then be much quicker than gas stops, and it leaves gas station owners happy, as they're still where you come to when you're out of juice, as it is much more convenient than plugging in at home and putting up with the brownouts as the car sucks more current than your household circuits were designed for.
Within two years, they promise to have a new kind of battery technology in place for the 500-mile electric car. If that happens,
and the cost of the battery allows the car to be similarly priced to a gasoline car, and the charging time is reasonably short so when you run out you are not carless for 8 hours or something, and the infrastructure is in place to charge the car on the road,
then I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make the Toyota Prius look like a fad.
If battery engineers can actually increase energy storage densities to allow 500 mile range electric vehicles, there will be something of a stampede among car buyers, yes. However, one key remaining factor will be the range achievable with about a 15 minute quick charge (i.e. a stop for a Slurpie). If that range is, say, about 200 miles (40% of maximum), and assuming the economics otherwise work (i.e. battery costs and durability), we may finally see the end of the internal combustion engine in widespread automotive use.
I used to be super-excited for electric cars to come out. Then I realized I have no place to charge one. I park on the street, and I can't run an extension cord from my house to my car.
Maybe at some point in the future I'll have a house with a proper garage, but until then, I'll be stuck with gasoline.
Electric transportation is humanity's next (and very important) step in reducing CO2 emissions. It has to happen. It will happen. But I think this (non)story is a little optimistic.
Many great minds have been working to improve chemical energy storage devices for 50 years. It's a fantastically complex problem. We've made strides, to be sure; compare the latest commercial lithium ion polymer batteries to 80s NiCD, and the future looks bright.
But two years is a very short time period, in battery development.
It's NOT the next step, it;s a later one, our next step is efficincy improvements to gas engines, followed by a massive investment in grid expansion to support those electrci cars.
It's also only going to happen for about 30% of the people in the world, since the rest have nowhere to plug-in said electreic car... even with a milti-trillion dollar investment in wind power, and 15-20 trillion in grid overhaul over 30 years, you;re still not going to change the fact that charging at the power station down the street on a fast-charge rig is going to cost twice what charging at home would, and since charging at home is only 50% cheaper per mile driven (in energy terms only, not accounting for the premium price on the car), it will be impossible for people without garrages to break even on the massive price difference of a $10K battery pack vs a petrol car.
Chemical energy storage? Yea, it's called HYDROCARBON. Screw batteries, screw off-peak power storage, use the electricity to MAKE gasoline, using waste CO2 as input into RWGS process engines. It;s technology used since WWII, and with modern changes to catalysts, heat exchangers, recouperators, and more, it can now be done for about $3 a gallon... 100% clean gas (no sulfer wastes) and it;s carbon nuetral, and available today. Stop screwing around with technologies that can be monopolized, start using something we have today that works, and lets people keep using current cars, current mechanics, current fuel infrastducture, and in 30-40 years when the grid and the battery industry are ready, we'll start with the electrci cars.
What will happen on the demand side of electricity when electric cars become common? Could it be that demand will quickly outgrow supply? What, oh what, will a KWH cost then? DIE, ELECTRIC CAR, DIE
What will happen on the demand side of electricity when electric cars become common? Could it be that demand will quickly outgrow supply? What, oh what, will a KWH cost then? DIE, ELECTRIC CAR, DIE
I don't think you understand how utterly inefficient a car engine is at converting gasoline into movement.
Basically, you could build gasoline power plant and run electric cars off the output. You'd power more cars and reduce kWh cost.
BTW: Oil is non-renewable, which means demand is guaranteed to outgrow supply.
300 miles is needlessly far for a city car, and still not long enough for long trips.
If they can make such dense batteries, I'd rather have 50 mile range with 1/6 the battery weight / cost. No use dragging around excess batteries all the time.
Last time I checked, the Volt's gasoline engine was not part of the powertrain, but used as a generator to keep the batteries going after the charge gets low. It is only directly moving on the electric motor subsystem.
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday October 01, @01:24AM (#29602475)
We can have batteries that are good for 10000 miles per charge and charge in 5 minutes, and that truly would be great, but that is not enough to make electric cars a mainstream technology. The real questions is, where will the energy come from? What energy source will be used to generate all of that additional electricity that our power grids will require? In North America we already have important segments of the power grid that are under supplied during peak load. Rolling blackouts are occasionally experienced. There is no capacity in the system for this.
The original poster states, "Within two years, they promise to have a new kind of battery technology in place for the 500-mile electric car. If that happens, then I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make the Toyota Prius look like a fad."
This is simply impossible... without first figuring out how to generate huge amounts of additional cheap electricity.
Oil is an incredible substance. It is abundant ( which is why we can use rediculous amounts of it ) and very energy dense.
Creating a better battery is and exercise in developing an energy storage solution. We are talking about a battery with a high enough energy density to take us 500 miles on a charge. Thats nice but not nearly a game changer. This addresses the "energy density" problem, but not the bigger "energy supply" problem. In order to have a "mass exodus from gasoline", we have to find another source of cheap abundant energy first.
To get us all into electric cars we would need to generate much more electricity. We could:
- burn more natural gas or coal. In North America we burn copious amounts of that already to generate electricity. But then again,I'll stick with my gasoline engine if its going to come to that. As a bonus, in this case it is more wasteful to power our electric cars this way. We would be better of fueling our cars directly with natural gas. We would save the energy lost converting to electricity. Coal....could be complicated.
- pepper the world with renewable energy generation projects. I sure hope we do this. I'm pretty sure we will, but it will take time and a very large investment. Germany is WAY ahead of everyone else on this and still, they only hope to realize a goal of 45 percent renewable energy in Germany's total energy mix by 2050, and they don't think that will be possible without major conservation efforts. So, don't strap your buick to the backyard windmill just yet.
- innovate - find new power sources. I hope we do this too. Although the next big breakthrough could happen tomorrow, this will probably also take a lot of time and money.
Oil is an incredible substance. It is very abundant ( which is why we can use rediculous amounts of it ) and very energy dense. Replacing it will be a big challenge.
By the way, we already have an energy storage soltion that has a far greater energy density that of gasoline....hydrogen. Hydrogen is just like a battery. It is an energy storage medium (a very good one too) but not a source of energy. There is no freely available source hydrogen. Like electricity, we have to create it using some other source of energy.
Nuclear costs upwards of $8 million/MW for a power plant and then you have to pay for fuel. This is more than four times as much as for thin film solar PV. You might be thinking that the cost of energy rather than capacity is low. Not so. It is also the most expensive on a kWh basis. http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E09-01_NuclPwrClimFixFolly1i09.pdf [rmi.org]
Comparatively cheap per megawatt, and per megawatt, the most enviromentally friendly power source we've yet discovered.
At least in SyFy books. In real life however the actual evidence points to a net energy deficit when the entire fuel cycle is taken into account. But for some reason as soon as someone says something good about nuclear power on slashdot they instantly get modded up. I simply don't understand why there is a collective drop in IQ when the available scientific *evidence* and an examination of the legal and political constructs demonstrate statements like these are complete fantasy. So lets examine them;
Comparatively cheap per megawatt
Operative word "Comparatively", but what about some institutional assesments?
Standard and Poor's assessment of the Nuclear industry's financial viability"the industry's legacy of cost growth, technological problems, cumbersome political and regulatory oversight, and the newer risks brought about by competition and terrorism keep credit risk too high for even federal legislation that provides loan guarantees to overcome"
an assessment supported by Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs"even with an explicit tax on carbon-based power generation, new nuclear power plants cannot be economical without government subsidies"
The breakdown of U.S energy research and development reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to SUSTAINABLE energy sources. In addition to what I mentioned above you can add the 2005 U.S energy bill which provided another $13 billion dollars worth of subsidies, revocation of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA) which was put into law in 1935 to stop a re-occurrence of the 1929 stock market crash. The Price-Anderson Act to underwrite the Nuclear industry with $600 Billion of Taxpayer money and closer to a trillion if you factor the huge amount of land you are going to lose in the event of an actual accident.
Half a billion dollars worth of subsidies for procuring companies (i.e oil companies) proposing "pre-approved" reactor designs, even if they don't build it, and a 1.8 cent per kilowatt hour tax credit if they do. The reality is if the Nuclear power industry was forced to cover it's own liability and fund itself it would cease to exist. I could go on and on but the bottom line is how can America, of all countries, continue to justify this form of corporate welfare?
the most enviromentally friendly power source we've yet discovered.
Ok, lets look at radioactive isotope emissions only. Over the entire industrial process radioactive isotope emissions are inevitable. Here are the *authorised* effluents not the accidents.
Mine tailing: radioactive mine tailings from open cut mining where ever it has occurred, radon 220, radium 226, thorium etc.
Enrichment: U-238 or DU. Used as weapon projectile, is pyrophoric and burns into a radioactive powder. Groundwater contamination from leaking Hexafluoride tanks [wikipedia.org]
Reactor facility: tritium, iodine 131, xenon 141, 143, 144, cerium 141, 143, 144, tritium, tritium and tritium AND Noble Gasses Which Decay Into More Dangerous Daughter Products (Xenon 137, Krypton 90, rubidium 90, strontium 90, Xenon 135, xenon 133, krypton 85, Argon 39). Of course no epidemiological studies have been performed on the noble gas venting which are released hourly from *all* Nuclear reactors. (did I mention tritium) 4000 gallons of primary coolant water PER DAY containing plutonium 238,239,241, technetium 99, iodine 129, carbon 14 and *ahem* tritium which is highly mutagenic once it's in the foodchain.
Reactor decommissioning: cobalt 60, iron 55, nickel 63.
Radioactive Waste: Plutonium, Strontium 90, Iodine 131, Cesium 137 and on and on
In real life however the actual evidence points to a net energy deficit when the entire fuel cycle is taken into account.
This is how far I read because if you seriously think Nuclear power ends up in an energy deficit you are either completely ignorant about the subject, your sources are rubbish, or you are deliberately lieing ( or possibly a combination of the three ).
To give a slight idea of just how much energy is released in a nuclear reactor, the main limit of a reactor's power rating is how high temperatures the construction materials and cooling system can cope with. The reaction itself is limited only by the temperature at which the ceramic fuel rods and steel cladding melts, and at any time the fuel present in a large reactor contains more energy than entire countries consume in a year. If that is not enough to convince you, consider that the energy bound in chemical molecules like gas or petroleum is measured in electron volt, while the energy released in a fission reaction is hundreds of millions of electron volt.
Or put another way, one atom of uranium when fissioned will release an amount of energy equivalent to hundreds of millions of molecules of conventional fuel. Even if you take the fuel that has the highest chemical energy/weight ratio there is ( hydrogen ) it still releases only 1.53eV per atomic weight unit, while uranium fission is closer to a million eV per atomic weight unit.
For nuclear power to end up on an energy deficit the energy needed to extract, refine, burn and dispose it would have to be hundreds of millions times larger ( per atom counted ) than the energy needed to extract and refine conventional fuels. Now I accept that handling, mining, burning and disposing uranium and the waste products may be more involved than say coal. I'll even let you say 100 times more energy intensive, or heck why not say 10.000 times just for the hell of it, lets even assume coal is used 100% efficiently, and that only 1% of uranium is burned. You would still have THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE to account for.
Really it is hard to grasp the energy released in nuclear reactions. A few kilograms would be enough to turn an entire city to ash, a couple of metric tonnes correspond to entire nations' annual energy consumption. Even though most reactors today only burn about 5% of it the amount much power you can tap from it is limited only by how much energy the cooling system can safely transport away, and the energy content is enough that a reactor can run for years without refueling.
I sold my car, and bought an electric cycle this year, and I'm pretty impressed with it. I commute on it - charge it overnight once or twice a week, and don't get a sweat up even on hills into a head wind. Costs $5 per year to charge it, and $12 to insure it. Compared to my car it's ridiculously cheap - and because most of the time I'm passing cars that are waiting for other cars ahead, I get to work in around the same time as a car (12 minutes by bike. When there's no traffic I can do it 10 minutes in a car, but a normal morning is 15-20 minutes).
I've seen those tuk-tuk's around where a bike pulls a carriage and takes a couple of people in the back. All you need is a carriage on it and a bigger motor and you could go anywhere in the city on it all weather, but to be honest it's not too hot to wear rain gear on the bike anyway as you aren't working, the battery is.
I had to go out of town on a bus instead, but cost about the same as petrol for the trip would have or maybe even cheaper.
Not quite the same freedom as having a car, but at less than 10% of the cost, I'm happy enough.
I would say that within 3 years, at least 30% of the population will move to electric simply because of the cost. And I think it will be bikes not cars that show the biggest growth.
I completely agree. Also, people will find it much more efficient to have one electric bike for commuting and an electric Trike pulling a small trailer for shopping. The far flung suburbs will need to be plowed under as farmland - the end of cheap oil is going to have a significant impact on our ability to move fresh food at a low cost. A lot needs to happen, and quickly. This battery system from IBM et al I think it going to be MUCH more useful for trucking companies. Also: keep an eye on Eestor. They're working on an ultracapacitor, which, if it works, will eliminate the slow charging problems of batteries.
Gasoline is only explosive under very specific circumstances. That's why cars have exotic hardware like carburettors and multi port fuel injection systems - to get the exact mix of gasoline and air that will ignite with the biggest bang.
Gasoline BURNS quite readily, but except for an initial "whoosh", it's not particularly explosive. In a sealed container it won't burn at all.
Smoker2, these two nice gentlemen from the FBI would like to have a chat with you about your posting of a detailed set of instructions to make and use a weapon of mass destruction.
No matter what the range is, there is always someone who needs to go a little further. If the battery range is 1000 miles then this author is likely to whine that he wants to go 1200 miles.
The car/battery needn't be useful for everyone in every circumstance to sell well, just useful enough for enough people to buy it. I can't go 600 miles in a day on my bicycle, but I still use it daily.
I live in Great Britain, so the furthest I could drive without meeting water is 837 miles [google.co.uk] (and the only people doing that trip are cyclists, it's a traditional route for obvious reasons). The furthest I've ever driven in one go is ~400 miles from ~Birmingham to the Scottish Highlands. If I'm travelling alone, a train is my preferred way to go (because of comfort and cost), with more people the car gets less comfortable but cheaper.
In continental Europe water doesn't get in the way, but still most people won't drive much more than 500 miles at a time for a bi-annual holiday.
But you don't need 3 MW of power to move a car. Half the reason it uses so much energy is that A. two-thirds to three-quarters of the energy input is wasted (mostly in the form of heat), and B. another huge chunk of it is wasted lugging around that insanely heavy engine block and all the crap that it requires. You can easily get equivalent amounts of torque from an electric car that uses much, much, much less energy than a gasoline-powered car.
Gasoline contains 121 MJ per gallon, but by the time you factor in the efficiency, you're getting closer to 25-35 MJ per gallon, which is only about 8.3 kWh. With a 15 amp circuit at full capacity, every 5 hours charging is equivalent to a gallon of gas (approximately). As long as you don't *average* more than 60 miles per day, charging overnight is likely to be sufficient. And that's assuming a 110VAC charger. Most electric car chargers, AFAIK, are at 220VAC with a 30 amp circuit or larger, so it would only take two nights (or all day one day and night) to charge up a battery with a 500 mile range, give or take.
Sadly, it's not necessarily cheaper. At my current PG&E rate, even after accounting for the engine efficiency, gasoline is at a dead tie with what I paid at the pump on Monday---literally within tenths of a cent per gallon. If I could buy an engine that was 100% efficient, it would cost a fourth as much money to run a gasoline-powered generator as it does to buy power from PG&E, and that's at full retail gas prices. There's a fun stat for you, as though I needed any more proof that PG&E is screwing me.
yeah right, its going to be REAL PRACTICAL to put 500 mile range into a battery pack. the gasoline nozzle pumps 3 MEGAWATTS of energy into your gas tank in 2 minutes. try to get a battery pack to recharge that fast or hold that much energy and what you have is a BOMB (literally, a coupla sticks of dynamite)..
However, you cannot fill up the gas tank at home. That is one of the killer features of the battery: no more annoying visits to the gas station, just plug it in when you get home. No more fiddling around with plastic gloves/wait for your fingers to stop smelling of diesel.
And seriously, driving more than 800km in a day is a long stretch.
But I do not really believe that range will be the range on a motorway for a holiday-packed car:)
You're making contradictory assumptions. You can't claim that rapid charging is only for long distance trips and then claim that the 99% of commuters on highways will need to use it.
The only people who need a quick recharge are those going more than 500 miles at once with no long stops. If they stop to sleep then that's 10 hours to recharge at a hotel/motel. If they get to their destination same thing. If they stop to eat same thing. If the car isn't driving it can be charging.
With some rare exception even long distance trips are generally less than 500 miles one way and probably even both ways.
It's silly to take a system designed for gasoline and apply it to electric cars with no consideration for the inherent differences. Unlike gasoline electricity is everywhere. Every street, building, house and apartment has a gigantic ever refilling storage tank of it. You don't need to have special locations with giant underground tanks and tanker trunks to deal with it.
Many people don't need 150 mile/200 Km range, and can start the switch petrol --> electric right away. I also don't see much need for a hybrid if you have 300-mile/500 Km electric cars. especially if there are battery-switch stations. You have also to realize that electricity costs less per mile/Km than petrol.
People will drive their cars and people will eventually switch but 2 years is MUCH too soon to think that we can start tearing down gas stations.
I expect that I'll still be driving the same car in five years, at which time it will be 30 years old.
Would I drive a new car if I could afford it? Possibly. Would it benefit me financially to do so? Probably not.
I've done some reasonably major repairs in the last couple of years - a reconditioned cylinder head, a wheel bearing, the distributor - but I've still spent far less in higher fuel consumption and those repairs than I'd have spent in interest on a loan and lost in depreciation on a newer vehicle.
Yeah, it'd be nice to have a lower carbon footprint from a more fuel-efficient hybrid. It'd be even nicer to have a slightly lower carbon footprint from an all-electric vehicle (we use brown coal for most of our electricity in my corner of Australia), and even better once our Illustrious Leaders convince the Great Unwashed to let us go nuclear. Trouble is, for all intents and purposes we're a single-income household (one adult is a disability pensioner - car, diesel spill, lamp post) with two kids and all the expenses that go with that. If it's a choice between environmental righteousness and actually maintaining a functional household, the household wins. Even on purely financial terms, without using my family as a rationalisation, keeping my old car going wins.
Theres nothing at all wrong with your Carbon footprint using an old car. Lets say you get a new one every 3 years, regardless of the energy consumption of the car itself, the energy and resources used in building a new car is quite alot. Pressed steel, oil based plastic bumpers, mouldings, interior parts, glass, paints, miles worth of wiring and electrical components, dozens of sensors, and the thousands of spare parts that need to be made to support a new model by the manufacturer. All produced by nice large factories who are about as carbon neutral as that brown coal power station.
However you have one car over 30 years, instead of 10 cars over 30 years, and lets face it, a recon head, a dizzy and a wheel bearing arent alot at all for 30 years of use parts wise. I'd say you are doing well really.
You are an automotive recycler. Be proud!
It's not news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't make this claim if they didn't have some hard science to back it up. That's a lot of big organizations putting their reputation on the line, so I'm more worried about how much this battery will cost and how long is its lifetime, because if it is high and low respectively, then it's just as impractical as 200 mpc.
Re:It's not news (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:It's not news (Score:5, Funny)
> In fact, the poster should have read the article.
Slippery slope.
Next you'll be asking slashdoters to read the whole post instead of just the title.
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Re:It's not news (Score:5, Insightful)
Next you'll be asking the moderators to read the comments before modding them!
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Re:It's not news (Score:4, Insightful)
There doesn't have to be. There is enough in seawater [wikipedia.org] to make up the difference.
Parent
Re:It's not news (Score:5, Interesting)
There's not enough lithium carbonate that can be produced at *$5/kg* with *today's non-experiental technology*. Which is, of course, irrelevant to the big picture. With lab tech today, lithium can be produced from seawater (in essentially unlimited quantities) for $22-$32/kg [osti.gov]. And way cheaper than that for other terrestrial sources (such as Western Lithium Corporation's Kings Valley mine in Nevada) -- just not as cheaply as the Argentinian and Bolivian salars.
So? Well, for example, the Nissan Leaf only contains 4kg of lithium. That's about 20kg worth of lithium carbonate. I.e., about $100 worth. Honestly, who gives a rat's arse if that doubles, triples, quadruples, even quintuples? That's not the impediment to li-ion EV costs. The non-automotive li-ions are limited largely by cobalt costs, while the automotive li-ions are limited by capital costs and labor due to their current low-volume production methods. And contrary to popular belief, the battery packs aren't the only thing that's overpriced right now. The motor, inverter, and charger are, too. They're still largely handmade, very small volumes. The Tesla Roadster's drivetrain is descended from AC Propulsion's AC-150, which will run you about $25k today. However, AC Propulsion expects that if they were made in volumes of hundreds of thousands per year, it'd be more like $3500.
Parent
Re:It's not news (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially when it's battery technology, which hasn't improved much in... how many decades?
I guess we have to hit every myth in the book on this thread, no?
The best secondary cells on the market in 1989 were the newly introduced Nickel Metal Hydride cells, which, at introduction, boasted 40Wh/kg. Today, the best secondary cells on the market are 200Wh/kg li-ions (which are *way* better than the li-ions from 1999). We're talking a 4.5x increase in energy density and a 10x increase in power density in 20 years.
It's true that for much of the 20th century, battery tech largely stagnated. However, then came along the consumer electronics revolution of the 1980s, and people actually started putting real money into rechargeable batteries. That, combined with our modern understanding of materials and fabrication allowed for a boom in battery technology, which today is about a 10% increase in energy density per year. And that rate is rising, not falling. And EVs will probably make it rise even faster.
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Re:It's not news (Score:4, Funny)
If IBM had said "we have batteries that can last 500 miles", and Stanley Kubrick shot videos of the long-range electric car in a Hollywood studio, then it would be like the moon landing.
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Re:It's not news (Score:5, Informative)
In my area, gas is currently $2.50/gallon. Filling up with 10 gallons would be $25, and in a 30mpg vehicle would get you 300 miles. End cost is 8.3 cents a mile.
Meanwhile the Tesla Roadster* has a 53 kWh battery that would cost $5.30 or less in my area to fill up, at home. Could be as low as $2.65 if you make some deals with the power company and have the charger on a circuit they can turn off when electrical demand is high. Per the wiki, it can go 244 miles on that charge. That gives me 2.17 cents per mile.
Basically divide your gas bill by four in order to figure out how much an EV would save you in gas money**.
Right now the difficulty isn't so much the range or lifespan of the battery, it's the COST. If the batteries were 1/10th their current price, we'd be driving EVs today.
*I know it's too expensive, but it's the best known commercial EV.
**Assuming your driving habits are compatible.
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Re:It's not news (Score:4, Insightful)
I already pay $8 / gallon, so do most of Europe, and it's WAY to low. There's just no incentive to save fuel.
A recent study on the impact of price on fuel consumption concluded with a recommandation of trippling existing fuel costs (to about $24 / gallon).
If you civilization requires gas prices below $4 / gallon to survive, you should start planning for it's demise. It will not survive, nor should it.
Oil is a finite resource, and it's price will rise faster than the growth of the global economy in the coming years. In addition the cost of repairing the damage caused by burning oil must be included in the price.
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ZOMG NOT $4 PER GALLON!!!!!11ONE (Score:5, Interesting)
All the more reason to switch to electric cars and renewable+nuclear and conserve what fossil fuels are left. The planes really need the dinosaur juice.
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Prius (Score:3, Insightful)
Could someone please summarize? (Score:5, Funny)
I was too distracted by "Whose Who" to absorb much after that. Of course, most of it was after that.
Combination of range *AND* charge time. (Score:3, Informative)
In order to replace the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine,) charge time needs to drop to less than 10 minutes. With recharging stations nearly as common as gas stations.
Batteries aren't going to do that. Supercapacitors will. (Or some yet-to-be-invented technology.)
Re:Combination of range *AND* charge time. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Ifs (Score:5, Insightful)
and the cost of the battery allows the car to be similarly priced to a gasoline car, and the charging time is reasonably short so when you run out you are not carless for 8 hours or something, and the infrastructure is in place to charge the car on the road,
then I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make the Toyota Prius look like a fad.
There, fixed that for you
500 Mile Range=Revolutionary (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:500 Mile Range=Revolutionary (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe at some point in the future I'll have a house with a proper garage, but until then, I'll be stuck with gasoline.
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Well I wish them luck (Score:3, Insightful)
Electric transportation is humanity's next (and very important) step in reducing CO2 emissions. It has to happen. It will happen. But I think this (non)story is a little optimistic.
Many great minds have been working to improve chemical energy storage devices for 50 years. It's a fantastically complex problem. We've made strides, to be sure; compare the latest commercial lithium ion polymer batteries to 80s NiCD, and the future looks bright.
But two years is a very short time period, in battery development.
Still, good luck IBM.
Re:Well I wish them luck (Score:4, Insightful)
It's NOT the next step, it;s a later one, our next step is efficincy improvements to gas engines, followed by a massive investment in grid expansion to support those electrci cars.
It's also only going to happen for about 30% of the people in the world, since the rest have nowhere to plug-in said electreic car... even with a milti-trillion dollar investment in wind power, and 15-20 trillion in grid overhaul over 30 years, you;re still not going to change the fact that charging at the power station down the street on a fast-charge rig is going to cost twice what charging at home would, and since charging at home is only 50% cheaper per mile driven (in energy terms only, not accounting for the premium price on the car), it will be impossible for people without garrages to break even on the massive price difference of a $10K battery pack vs a petrol car.
Chemical energy storage? Yea, it's called HYDROCARBON. Screw batteries, screw off-peak power storage, use the electricity to MAKE gasoline, using waste CO2 as input into RWGS process engines. It;s technology used since WWII, and with modern changes to catalysts, heat exchangers, recouperators, and more, it can now be done for about $3 a gallon... 100% clean gas (no sulfer wastes) and it;s carbon nuetral, and available today. Stop screwing around with technologies that can be monopolized, start using something we have today that works, and lets people keep using current cars, current mechanics, current fuel infrastducture, and in 30-40 years when the grid and the battery industry are ready, we'll start with the electrci cars.
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More bad news for your electricity bill (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you realize how inefficient car engines are? (Score:5, Insightful)
What will happen on the demand side of electricity when electric cars become common? Could it be that demand will quickly outgrow supply? What, oh what, will a KWH cost then? DIE, ELECTRIC CAR, DIE
I don't think you understand how utterly inefficient a car engine is at converting gasoline into movement.
Basically, you could build gasoline power plant and run electric cars off the output. You'd power more cars and reduce kWh cost.
BTW: Oil is non-renewable, which means demand is guaranteed to outgrow supply.
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Whose-Who? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know to whom it belongs, but traditionally the directorty of notable identities is known as Who's Who [wikipedia.org].
No thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
If they can make such dense batteries, I'd rather have 50 mile range with 1/6 the battery weight / cost. No use dragging around excess batteries all the time.
Re:No thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Last time I checked, the Volt's gasoline engine was not part of the powertrain, but used as a generator to keep the batteries going after the charge gets low. It is only directly moving on the electric motor subsystem.
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Strap your Buick to the backyard windmill.... (Score:5, Interesting)
We can have batteries that are good for 10000 miles per charge and charge in 5 minutes, and that truly would be great, but that is not enough to make electric cars a mainstream technology. The real questions is, where will the energy come from? What energy source will be used to generate all of that additional electricity that our power grids will require? In North America we already have important segments of the power grid that are under supplied during peak load. Rolling blackouts are occasionally experienced. There is no capacity in the system for this.
The original poster states, "Within two years, they promise to have a new kind of battery technology in place for the 500-mile electric car. If that happens, then I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make the Toyota Prius look like a fad."
This is simply impossible... without first figuring out how to generate huge amounts of additional cheap electricity.
Oil is an incredible substance. It is abundant ( which is why we can use rediculous amounts of it ) and very energy dense.
Creating a better battery is and exercise in developing an energy storage solution. We are talking about a battery with a high enough energy density to take us 500 miles on a charge. Thats nice but not nearly a game changer. This addresses the "energy density" problem, but not the bigger "energy supply" problem. In order to have a "mass exodus from gasoline", we have to find another source of cheap abundant energy first.
To get us all into electric cars we would need to generate much more electricity. We could:
- burn more natural gas or coal. In North America we burn copious amounts of that already to generate electricity. But then again,I'll stick with my gasoline engine if its going to come to that. As a bonus, in this case it is more wasteful to power our electric cars this way. We would be better of fueling our cars directly with natural gas. We would save the energy lost converting to electricity. Coal....could be complicated.
- pepper the world with renewable energy generation projects. I sure hope we do this. I'm pretty sure we will, but it will take time and a very large investment. Germany is WAY ahead of everyone else on this and still, they only hope to realize a goal of 45 percent renewable energy in Germany's total energy mix by 2050, and they don't think that will be possible without major conservation efforts. So, don't strap your buick to the backyard windmill just yet.
- innovate - find new power sources. I hope we do this too. Although the next big breakthrough could happen tomorrow, this will probably also take a lot of time and money.
Oil is an incredible substance. It is very abundant ( which is why we can use rediculous amounts of it ) and very energy dense. Replacing it will be a big challenge.
By the way, we already have an energy storage soltion that has a far greater energy density that of gasoline....hydrogen. Hydrogen is just like a battery. It is an energy storage medium (a very good one too) but not a source of energy. There is no freely available source hydrogen. Like electricity, we have to create it using some other source of energy.
How to generate huge amounts of cheap electricity: (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear.
Comparatively cheap per megawatt, and per megawatt, the most enviromentally friendly power source we've yet discovered.
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Nuclear is most expensive per MW (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:How to generate huge amounts of cheap electrici (Score:5, Informative)
At least in SyFy books. In real life however the actual evidence points to a net energy deficit when the entire fuel cycle is taken into account. But for some reason as soon as someone says something good about nuclear power on slashdot they instantly get modded up. I simply don't understand why there is a collective drop in IQ when the available scientific *evidence* and an examination of the legal and political constructs demonstrate statements like these are complete fantasy. So lets examine them;
Operative word "Comparatively", but what about some institutional assesments?
Standard and Poor's assessment of the Nuclear industry's financial viability "the industry's legacy of cost growth, technological problems, cumbersome political and regulatory oversight, and the newer risks brought about by competition and terrorism keep credit risk too high for even federal legislation that provides loan guarantees to overcome"
an assessment supported by Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs "even with an explicit tax on carbon-based power generation, new nuclear power plants cannot be economical without government subsidies"
The breakdown of U.S energy research and development reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to SUSTAINABLE energy sources. In addition to what I mentioned above you can add the 2005 U.S energy bill which provided another $13 billion dollars worth of subsidies, revocation of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA) which was put into law in 1935 to stop a re-occurrence of the 1929 stock market crash. The Price-Anderson Act to underwrite the Nuclear industry with $600 Billion of Taxpayer money and closer to a trillion if you factor the huge amount of land you are going to lose in the event of an actual accident.
Half a billion dollars worth of subsidies for procuring companies (i.e oil companies) proposing "pre-approved" reactor designs, even if they don't build it, and a 1.8 cent per kilowatt hour tax credit if they do. The reality is if the Nuclear power industry was forced to cover it's own liability and fund itself it would cease to exist. I could go on and on but the bottom line is how can America, of all countries, continue to justify this form of corporate welfare?
Ok, lets look at radioactive isotope emissions only. Over the entire industrial process radioactive isotope emissions are inevitable. Here are the *authorised* effluents not the accidents.
Mine tailing: radioactive mine tailings from open cut mining where ever it has occurred, radon 220, radium 226, thorium etc.
Enrichment: U-238 or DU. Used as weapon projectile, is pyrophoric and burns into a radioactive powder. Groundwater contamination from leaking Hexafluoride tanks [wikipedia.org]
Reactor facility: tritium, iodine 131, xenon 141, 143, 144, cerium 141, 143, 144, tritium, tritium and tritium AND Noble Gasses Which Decay Into More Dangerous Daughter Products (Xenon 137, Krypton 90, rubidium 90, strontium 90, Xenon 135, xenon 133, krypton 85, Argon 39). Of course no epidemiological studies have been performed on the noble gas venting which are released hourly from *all* Nuclear reactors. (did I mention tritium) 4000 gallons of primary coolant water PER DAY containing plutonium 238,239,241, technetium 99, iodine 129, carbon 14 and *ahem* tritium which is highly mutagenic once it's in the foodchain.
Reactor decommissioning: cobalt 60, iron 55, nickel 63.
Radioactive Waste: Plutonium, Strontium 90, Iodine 131, Cesium 137 and on and on
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Re:How to generate huge amounts of cheap electrici (Score:5, Informative)
This is how far I read because if you seriously think Nuclear power ends up in an energy deficit you are either completely ignorant about the subject, your sources are rubbish, or you are deliberately lieing ( or possibly a combination of the three ).
To give a slight idea of just how much energy is released in a nuclear reactor, the main limit of a reactor's power rating is how high temperatures the construction materials and cooling system can cope with. The reaction itself is limited only by the temperature at which the ceramic fuel rods and steel cladding melts, and at any time the fuel present in a large reactor contains more energy than entire countries consume in a year. If that is not enough to convince you, consider that the energy bound in chemical molecules like gas or petroleum is measured in electron volt, while the energy released in a fission reaction is hundreds of millions of electron volt.
Or put another way, one atom of uranium when fissioned will release an amount of energy equivalent to hundreds of millions of molecules of conventional fuel. Even if you take the fuel that has the highest chemical energy/weight ratio there is ( hydrogen ) it still releases only 1.53eV per atomic weight unit, while uranium fission is closer to a million eV per atomic weight unit.
For nuclear power to end up on an energy deficit the energy needed to extract, refine, burn and dispose it would have to be hundreds of millions times larger ( per atom counted ) than the energy needed to extract and refine conventional fuels. Now I accept that handling, mining, burning and disposing uranium and the waste products may be more involved than say coal. I'll even let you say 100 times more energy intensive, or heck why not say 10.000 times just for the hell of it, lets even assume coal is used 100% efficiently, and that only 1% of uranium is burned. You would still have THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE to account for.
Really it is hard to grasp the energy released in nuclear reactions. A few kilograms would be enough to turn an entire city to ash, a couple of metric tonnes correspond to entire nations' annual energy consumption. Even though most reactors today only burn about 5% of it the amount much power you can tap from it is limited only by how much energy the cooling system can safely transport away, and the energy content is enough that a reactor can run for years without refueling.
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I kind of believe it's not far off (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I kind of believe it's not far off (Score:4, Interesting)
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Anything would make the Prius look like a fad. (Score:4, Funny)
> I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make
> the Toyota Prius look like a fad.
It was.
Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The battery pack doesn't have to charge that fast. And a normal petrol tank is also a bomb.
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Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:5, Informative)
And a normal petrol tank is also a bomb.
Gasoline is only explosive under very specific circumstances. That's why cars have exotic hardware like carburettors and multi port fuel injection systems - to get the exact mix of gasoline and air that will ignite with the biggest bang.
Gasoline BURNS quite readily, but except for an initial "whoosh", it's not particularly explosive. In a sealed container it won't burn at all.
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Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:4, Funny)
I would like to subscribe to his newsletter.
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Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:4, Funny)
Great - now they're going to outlaw beer bottles!
Maybe they'll outlaw clothing, too, to eliminate rags.
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Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:4, Insightful)
No matter what the range is, there is always someone who needs to go a little further. If the battery range is 1000 miles then this author is likely to whine that he wants to go 1200 miles.
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Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The car/battery needn't be useful for everyone in every circumstance to sell well, just useful enough for enough people to buy it. I can't go 600 miles in a day on my bicycle, but I still use it daily.
I live in Great Britain, so the furthest I could drive without meeting water is 837 miles [google.co.uk] (and the only people doing that trip are cyclists, it's a traditional route for obvious reasons). The furthest I've ever driven in one go is ~400 miles from ~Birmingham to the Scottish Highlands. If I'm travelling alone, a train is my preferred way to go (because of comfort and cost), with more people the car gets less comfortable but cheaper.
In continental Europe water doesn't get in the way, but still most people won't drive much more than 500 miles at a time for a bi-annual holiday.
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cue knee jerk fear-speak from big pertroleum (Score:3, Informative)
Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:5, Interesting)
But you don't need 3 MW of power to move a car. Half the reason it uses so much energy is that A. two-thirds to three-quarters of the energy input is wasted (mostly in the form of heat), and B. another huge chunk of it is wasted lugging around that insanely heavy engine block and all the crap that it requires. You can easily get equivalent amounts of torque from an electric car that uses much, much, much less energy than a gasoline-powered car.
Gasoline contains 121 MJ per gallon, but by the time you factor in the efficiency, you're getting closer to 25-35 MJ per gallon, which is only about 8.3 kWh. With a 15 amp circuit at full capacity, every 5 hours charging is equivalent to a gallon of gas (approximately). As long as you don't *average* more than 60 miles per day, charging overnight is likely to be sufficient. And that's assuming a 110VAC charger. Most electric car chargers, AFAIK, are at 220VAC with a 30 amp circuit or larger, so it would only take two nights (or all day one day and night) to charge up a battery with a 500 mile range, give or take.
Sadly, it's not necessarily cheaper. At my current PG&E rate, even after accounting for the engine efficiency, gasoline is at a dead tie with what I paid at the pump on Monday---literally within tenths of a cent per gallon. If I could buy an engine that was 100% efficient, it would cost a fourth as much money to run a gasoline-powered generator as it does to buy power from PG&E, and that's at full retail gas prices. There's a fun stat for you, as though I needed any more proof that PG&E is screwing me.
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Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah right, its going to be REAL PRACTICAL to put 500 mile range into a battery pack. the gasoline nozzle pumps 3 MEGAWATTS of energy into your gas tank in 2 minutes. try to get a battery pack to recharge that fast or hold that much energy and what you have is a BOMB (literally, a coupla sticks of dynamite)..
However, you cannot fill up the gas tank at home. That is one of the killer features of the battery: no more annoying visits to the gas station, just plug it in when you get home. No more fiddling around with plastic gloves/wait for your fingers to stop smelling of diesel.
And seriously, driving more than 800km in a day is a long stretch.
But I do not really believe that range will be the range on a motorway for a holiday-packed car :)
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Re:impossible for consumers to operate it. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're making contradictory assumptions. You can't claim that rapid charging is only for long distance trips and then claim that the 99% of commuters on highways will need to use it.
The only people who need a quick recharge are those going more than 500 miles at once with no long stops. If they stop to sleep then that's 10 hours to recharge at a hotel/motel. If they get to their destination same thing. If they stop to eat same thing. If the car isn't driving it can be charging.
With some rare exception even long distance trips are generally less than 500 miles one way and probably even both ways.
It's silly to take a system designed for gasoline and apply it to electric cars with no consideration for the inherent differences. Unlike gasoline electricity is everywhere. Every street, building, house and apartment has a gigantic ever refilling storage tank of it. You don't need to have special locations with giant underground tanks and tanker trunks to deal with it.
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Re:Batteries are history (Score:4, Funny)
I spend all night charging my mobile phone. Its such a pain, sitting there and waiting for it to finish.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
how about witching batteries ?
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/better-place-unveils-battery-swap-station/ [nytimes.com]
that's a battery swapping station, like a fuel station, except you don't have to leave the car, and it is faster.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people don't need 150 mile/200 Km range, and can start the switch petrol --> electric right away. I also don't see much need for a hybrid if you have 300-mile/500 Km electric cars. especially if there are battery-switch stations. You have also to realize that electricity costs less per mile/Km than petrol.
Re:2 Years (Score:5, Insightful)
People will drive their cars and people will eventually switch but 2 years is MUCH too soon to think that we can start tearing down gas stations.
I expect that I'll still be driving the same car in five years, at which time it will be 30 years old.
Would I drive a new car if I could afford it? Possibly. Would it benefit me financially to do so? Probably not.
I've done some reasonably major repairs in the last couple of years - a reconditioned cylinder head, a wheel bearing, the distributor - but I've still spent far less in higher fuel consumption and those repairs than I'd have spent in interest on a loan and lost in depreciation on a newer vehicle.
Yeah, it'd be nice to have a lower carbon footprint from a more fuel-efficient hybrid. It'd be even nicer to have a slightly lower carbon footprint from an all-electric vehicle (we use brown coal for most of our electricity in my corner of Australia), and even better once our Illustrious Leaders convince the Great Unwashed to let us go nuclear. Trouble is, for all intents and purposes we're a single-income household (one adult is a disability pensioner - car, diesel spill, lamp post) with two kids and all the expenses that go with that. If it's a choice between environmental righteousness and actually maintaining a functional household, the household wins. Even on purely financial terms, without using my family as a rationalisation, keeping my old car going wins.
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Re:2 Years (Score:5, Insightful)
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