Stanford Develops Fast-Charging, Stable Aluminum Battery 142
An anonymous reader writes: Stanford researchers have announced the creation of an aluminum-ion battery that they say will charge quicker, last longer, and be generally safer than common lithium-ion batteries. "Aluminum has long been an attractive material for batteries, mainly because of its low cost, low flammability and high-charge storage capacity. For decades, researchers have tried unsuccessfully to develop a commercially viable aluminum-ion battery. A key challenge has been finding materials capable of producing sufficient voltage after repeated cycles of charging and discharging. ... For the experimental battery, the Stanford team placed the aluminum anode and graphite cathode, along with an ionic liquid electrolyte, inside a flexible, polymer-coated pouch." The researchers' main challenges now are getting the battery to produce a higher voltage and store energy at a higher densities.
The main challenges... (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically, they're only challenges left are making it into a decent battery?
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Re:The main challenges... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because it's not a good battery for your laptop - yet - doesn't mean it's not a good battery for other applications.
Compare it to lead-acid, for instance. It's lighter, it's probably non-toxic (the electrolyte is unknown), and I'd be surprised if it were much more expensive. And it charges fast, so it probably discharges fast too. Sounds like a great starter battery for cars or scooters, etc.
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Yeah, but if your energy density is so low that a supercapacitor beats it, you have nothing useful, as they will always have superior power density.
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Another use for an inexpensive long lasting battery is to store energy from solar panels for dark periods. In this application storage density isn't the primary concern.
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"The electrolyte is unknown"
From like the third or fourth paragraph in the article:
"The electrolyte is basically a salt that's liquid at room temperature"
Molten salts, in an electrolyte, pretty much. Probably something like ethyl-methyl-imidazolium bis-(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)-imide
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This is basically a large heater for MRE packages but controlled to make it useful in some way other than shorting out and creating heat. This isn't really new except for making it practical I guess.
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No, if you go and chase down the original article the electrolyte is NOT unknown, but an anhydrous aluminium chloride/organic chemical. The cells the researchers are producing are putting out around 1.9 to 2 volts, and the cells are resilient over at least 7500 charge/discharge cycles. The cathode is graphite foam built on a nickel foam substrate, the anode is aluminium foil.
To be honest, the only real kicker about the entire battery is the fact that water in the electrolyte severely reduces the performance
rtfa, kid (Score:1)
"A key challenge has been finding materials capable of producing sufficient voltage after repeated cycles of charging and discharging."
they seem to have accomplished this.
it is good news.
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So basically, their only challenges left are making it into a decent battery?
If you RTFA, they mention that it puts out close to 2 volts.
While that's almost perfect as a replacement for lead-acid batteries, it's not enough to replace two AA batteries (2.4v/3v) or one lithium-ion (3.6~3.7v)
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Almost 2V you say? Considering a single AA is 1.2, 1.5, or 1.6V (Ni-Zn) I could see this having plenty of use in AA format, depending upon capacity.
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i presume they mean actually it being effective at delivering the voltage. the single cell voltage doesn't matter so much, you can stack them anyways.
I think they're just using voltage in the stub just as "electricity yo!" and meant that the density and practicality aren't there in it. perhaps the way they built their pouch is also non scalable easily..
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If you RTFA, they mention that it puts out close to 2 volts.
While that's almost perfect as a replacement for lead-acid batteries, it's not enough to replace two AA batteries (2.4v/3v) or one lithium-ion (3.6~3.7v)
If it's sufficiently close to 2V then it will be an ideal replacement for Li-Ion, simply by doubling the number of cells. A fully-charged Li-Ion is 4.1 or 4.2 volts, not 3.7... Have you ever even charged an 18650A cell?
Re:The main challenges... (Score:4, Informative)
I would argue that the cell voltage is largely irrelevant. If you need to put more cells in series, it doesn't matter much. What matters more is the energy density - if you end up with twice as many cells (to get voltage equivalent to li-ion), but have equal or better energy density (Whr/kg or Whr/L) at equal or better cost, then you still have a win.
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Exactly, I can get the equivalent voltage of a li-ion cell by stringing together lemons. Doesn't mean it would fit in the back of my cell phone.
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No, they are not only challenges. Presumably, they are normal people.
Why do supposedly educated people persist in making spelling errors that wouldn't be acceptable in second grade?
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Like most other "wonder" battery technologies of recent years. I predict that this one will not materialize in any useful form either.
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"The researchers' main challenges now are getting the battery to produce a higher voltage and store energy at a higher densities."
So basically, they're only challenges left are making it into a decent battery?
Add the other quote from the summary, "A key challenge has been finding materials capable of producing sufficient voltage after repeated cycles of charging and discharging".
So, for decades now, the key challenge has been the thing that is currently the main challenge for the researchers? IE. no real change.
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"Store it"? You are doing it wrong.
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Huh.. What DO batteries do?
Re:Aluminium -- low flammability ?? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Aluminium -- low flammability ?? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can light steel wool with a common cigarette lighter. We should definitely stop making firetrucks out of steel.
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No one smokes anymore, you can light steel wool with a fresh 9V and shoving it in the wool.
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I don't follow. I can't even think of a place that sells lighters in plain view, but the same places have racks of batteries.
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Well then there must be odd Dollaramas here in Montreal, they all have their battery display cases at the cash registers, but I can't recall ever seeing a lighter there. Chocolate bars, yes.
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They're easily found next to the charcoal and lighter fluid in every grocery store. How else do you light your 50000BTU_barbecue?
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Every smoke detector has a 9V battery.
Until the first time it goes off while you're cooking.
Anyway, smoke detectors are storage space for dead 9V batteries.
Aluminium is Flamable (Score:2)
You can light steel wool with a common cigarette lighter. We should definitely stop making firetrucks out of steel.
Aluminium is actually far more flammable than steel. This is why they stopped using it for the superstructure of warships and you will not see aluminium armour [g2mil.com]. Aluminium is highly reactive but what stops it burning is that it very rapidly forms an inert, oxide layer in air which, unlike iron that has rust, remains strongly attached to the metal. However under the right conditions you can overcome this and then aluminium burns which is clearly not the case for steel.
However I expect that it will be a lo
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And you know what can do it? Lithium. It's why there's a restriction on lithium batteries sent via airmail - lithium eats at the aluminum oxide and basically destroys it since the exposed aluminum form
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And you know what can do it? Lithium.
I did not argue that lithium was not a fire hazard only that, in the right circumstances, aluminium can be as well so there is still a need to be careful.
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It still burns it's just harder to do. That's how an oxy-acetylene cutter works after all.
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Yep, aluiminium is more reactive than steel, though you can also burn steel, which is how a thermal lance operates.
As for the link, I don't know about the other cases, but that's incorrect in the case of the HMS Sheffield. It was struck with a turbojet powered exocet missile. The missile failed to explode but dumped a fair fraction of it's fuel (which has much more energy than the warhead) and ignited it. The missile strike also knocked out the water main used for firefighting.
So almost all of the damage w
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Re:Aluminium -- low flammability ?? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the things we europeans do right -- we build our houses out of stone.
That's awesome for regions that don't have appreciable seismic activity.
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Some of the indigenous people of South America did a remarkable job of building structures out of stone which are very earthquake safe. Not that it's a very cost effective method of construction. Although, with modern technology perhaps we could produce generic blocks with enough precision cheaply.
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Practically any material can cause terrific explosions when powdered and airborne. Sawdust explosions have reduced more than one lumber mill to ash, but that doesn't mean we stop building houses from wood.
Time out outlaw bakeries. That flour is a fire hazard!
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It's most certainly a lower flammability hazard than the Lithium and Magnesium being used in the current generation of batteries.
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More patents for Stanford. The rich will get richer. Stanford is in the top 5 for universities granted patents. Schools still don't make enough money from tuition so they have to steal their students ideas.
People who try to invent things tend to own more patents than people who do NOT try to invent things. Ideas without work tend to be worthless in many cases. It is the hard work of profs/students combined with the resources of the Schools that pays off for all the people involved. Tim S.
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Smart people get rich at an alarming rate. Maybe we need to stop them from being so smart? Or at least so industrious?
Seriously, where do you go to school, Columbia? Bates?
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Won't the electrolyte need to have a component that's explosive?
The electrolyte is 80% CFl3 by volume. Sufficient?
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The electrolyte is 80% CFl3 by volume. Sufficient?
What's the other 20%? Hydrogen perperoxide, or anhydrous hydrazoic acid?
Tweet today from Elon Musk (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tweet today from Elon Musk (Score:4, Funny)
True, but an Al-ion battery definitely has potential* [ornl.gov], even if this team hasn't achieved it yet.
Al also has ~5x the physical density of Li at ~1/5th the price, so even if it doesn't outperform Li's energy density for a while it will still be better for many applications.
* groan
Mod parent funny (Score:1)
At least one of us appreciates this pun...
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Yes but on the other hand it doesn't lack potential.
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What if I told you I had a brand new battery to sell you. True, it only stores 0.14 WHr/kg (compared to 100WHr/kg for LiIon) and of course bugger all power density, but on the up side, the electrolyte is real cheap, and it's good for 10's of thousands of cycles.
You probably tell me to piss off, but in doing to you have dismissed the most popular form of electricity storage we have - pumped storage. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. US stores and releas
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I'd lay odds that's more the entire combined output of all rechargeable batteries in the country.
I'll take that bet. If you add all the batteries in Tesla model S, Chevy Volt Nissan Leaf, Toyota, Prias, Mitsu i-MiEV, Ford Focus Electric, etc they account for more than 5MWh. Just 2/3rd of the Tesla production [hybridcars.com] accounts for over half the 5MWh.
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It did happen but not in the bargain bin yet (Score:2)
Re: Bargain bin (Score:1)
Don't underestimate the importance of the bargain bin. Recently the cheap stuff has become cheap enough to make it commercially interesting even without subsidies.
According to Wikipedia, we already have grid parity in many scenarios: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity#Reaching_parity [wikipedia.org].
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It also appears that the conventional stuff is now far better housed and mounted. A big hailstorm came through near where I live in November and there's still quite a lot of roof repair and window replacement going on now (April) yet I didn't see a single damaged panel. That may have been due to the direction the storm came from, but even then it demonstrates that the solar panels
But is it transparent? (Score:2)
No? I am unimpressed.
Good Progress (Score:1)
Doesn't look like they'll be ready in time for my battery replacement, but who knows.
Ferret
Have they just reinvented the capacitor? (Score:2)
Re:Just what we need... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't be stupid. We're fucking up our planet because of our addiction to fossil fuels. If this actually pans out, then it'll make electric vehicles very economical, and will completely obsolete gasoline-powered cars, which is easily the biggest source of our carbon pollution. We'll need more electric generation capacity of course, but that can be done with lots of different sources, including carbon-free ones such as solar, wind, tidal, and nuclear.
With the obvious problems with our environment at this time, it's my opinion that replacing gas cars with EVs ASAP is a screaming emergency.
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Actually, our addiction to reproduction is fucking up the planet.
That addiction is not universal. Advanced economies don't over reproduce. Among indigenous 'muricans, population is at replacement. Most Western European nations are actually declining. The Japanese government is marketing parenthood to their youth because they've basically stopped breeding.
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>That would take several halvings of the human population.
How do you figure? Even assuming humans and our animals accounted for 100% of the planet's biomass, after a single halving that would be reduced to... wait for it... 50%.
Meanwhile, as already mentioned, the advanced economies have pretty much already stopped growing and are beginning to shrink - it's the developing economies that are still experiencing a population explosion, and they're mostly rapidly reducing their reproduction rates as well as
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How do you figure? Even assuming humans and our animals accounted for 100% of the planet's biomass, after a single halving that would be reduced to... wait for it... 50%.
No. Percentages do not work that way - it would be reduced to 100% in your example. Let's use some absolute numbers: assume there are 99 humans to every 1 non-domesticated animal. Humanity is then 99% of the population. Halve the human population, and say it's now 49 humans to 1 non-domesticated animal. Now humans are 98% of the population.
Real numbers are surprising on the actual proportions. I offer you this visual representation. [xkcd.com]
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Ah, well, if you're talking *immediately*, then yes, it's different. I was presuming the new steady-state would be the relevant number, in which case halving the resource demands would make room for the wild populations to expand. Though considering the densities we maintain, the fact that we'd abandon the most desirable land last, and the fact that we would probably continue exterminating wildlife to maintain agriculturally convenient populations (neither wolf packs nor roving herds of elephants are cond
Re:Just what we need... (Score:5, Interesting)
The 70s called and want you back. In every developed nation, we've reached zero population growth, except for immigration. Every time people get to a high enough state of wealth, they stop having lots of kids (except for a few wackos like the Duggars). All the other nations are developing pretty rapidly at this point; China has a huge and growing middle class, and labor rates have grown so much that they're going to be looking at outsourcing stuff to cheaper countries before long. Eventually, we're going to have to figure out how to get along in our societies without ever-increasing populations.
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Best argument to a global basic income I've heard so far.
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Population growth as a global threat is entirely discredited. Point to some nation where pop growth is noticeable, and you'll find a nation where food supplies are hampered by war, dictators, or racial strife. Food on our planet, even in Africa, can be produced in abundance. Getting it to those who need it, especially in refugee camps, is the first problem.
And Africa seems to have more than its share of strife. The UN has certainly punted on that, and the US should rethink its policies. The list is long
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A "resource" can also be people's brains, just as it used to mean people's muscles, ie. slavery.
The point is, people invented stuff, which meant we could do far more, using stuff which was previously of no use. Resources can be "created".
I mean, that's the whole point about green technology isn't it? Use something which was previous mostly useless, like tides and wind. Likewise, we'll "create" new "resources" if we can invent new ways of doing stuff. And if you're worried about running out of rocks, well we
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obsolete gasoline-powered cars, which is easily the biggest source of our carbon pollution
No, that's not the case. Heating and cooling the buildings that house billions of people, and doing things like farming and treating/transporting water and other important things are hugely more polluting than cars. Electric cars are just going to move the pollution to another place. That won't help until aging hippie hand-wringers stop getting their panties in a twist, and get out of the way of us building a lot more modern nuclear power plants. Nothing else will even put a dent in it.
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Surely washing clothes by hand cuts down on energy usage :)
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That may or may not be the case. It depends heavily on the energy investment for that water - how much energy went into getting it, purifying it, distributing it, and heating it. Next, consider the amount of soap you are using. A modern high efficiency washing machine uses very little soap per clothing article. Human hand washing (clothes or dishes) tend to oversoap, which is wasteful on its own, but also requires more water to rinse out. Fin
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Modern washing machines (esp. horizontal-axis ones) are so water and energy efficient it's just idiotic to bother washing clothes by hand. It's just like modern dishwashers; they're far more efficient (both water and energy, since you need hot water to wash dishes well, and it takes a lot of energy to heat water) than washing dishes by hand.
Dryers are different, since they do use a lot of power (just look at the electric cord on them): you can dry things in the air outside. However this requires you to ha
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> 's just like modern dishwashers; they're far more efficient
I have a brand new Frigidaire dishwasher. It's most efficient cycle, using air drying and "eco mode", uses 22 litres of water, takes 99 minutes to complete, and something like 2 to 3 kWh of power. That is in addition to the gas water heater that supplied the hot water.
I can do that same load of dishes in less than 10 minutes, typically closer to five. I use no electricity to do so, and about 15 to 20 litres of water. Those who use a stoppered s
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I have a brand new Frigidaire dishwasher. It's most efficient cycle, using air drying and "eco mode", uses 22 litres of water, takes 99 minutes to complete, and something like 2 to 3 kWh of power. That is in addition to the gas water heater that supplied the hot water.
Your dishwasher is likely using most of its power to heat the water it uses beyond the temperature it's getting it from the water heater. Boiling-hot water works wonders in cleaning dishes.
Did you actually measure your dishwasher's power usag
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Re:Just what we need... (Score:4, Interesting)
Heating and cooling the buildings that house billions of people, and doing things like farming and treating/transporting water and other important things are hugely more polluting than cars.
Wrong. Most of those things (particularly HVAC) can be done with electricity, so it's at least highly feasible to move that to non-fossil-fuel energy sources.
Electric cars are just going to move the pollution to another place.
Wrong, they allow you to use non-fossil-fuel energy sources. They're also far more efficient than small ICE engines, so even if your energy source is fossil fuel it's still more efficient.
That won't help until aging hippie hand-wringers stop getting their panties in a twist, and get out of the way of us building a lot more modern nuclear power plants. Nothing else will even put a dent in it.
Wrong again. As I said above, EVs are so much more efficient that even if you stuck with fossil fuel power plants it'd be more efficient than millions of shitty, poorly maintained, inefficient gas engines. And solar power is being used more and more; Germany gets a huge amount of power from solar, and that's not a particularly sunny place unlike much of the US. Wind is also supplying a lot of power these days.
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> Most of those things (particularly HVAC) can be done with electricity
And for most, georeturn HVAC is far, far more energy efficient than any other source.
It's expensive when everyone has their own tubing, but it seems to me there's a lot of municipal greywater that could be serving this purpose.
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Those are excellent points. Geothermal HVAC is extremely efficient, unfortunately its initial cost is higher so it's not used that much.
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can be done with electricity
Which has nothing to do with the post I was responding to, which asserted that internal combustion cars are "the biggest source of carbon pollution." I'm pointing out that that post is simply incorrect. Wrong. Bad information, commonly spread around as if it were true. It's not.
You're talking about what could, in principle, be done. In the future. Which is not now. Which has nothing to do with that GP's false meme about cars and pollution.
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> That won't help until aging hippie hand-wringers stop getting their panties in a twist,
> and get out of the way of us building a lot more modern nuclear power plants
The only thing stopping nuclear power is the cost of the plants.
They cost $8/W CAPEX and come in sizes of 900MW and up. Finding someone willing to put up the tens of billions of dollars needed to build a typical multi-unit plant is difficult in a market economy. That is the reason, *the only reason*, that more nukes aren't being built.
Bu
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Do you really believe that nukes are so horribly supported that the entire industry has been stopped dead by "aging hippie hand-wringers"?
In effect, yes. Because of undue squeaky wheel influence over legislators that don't want to upset their small number of professional activist-type far left base members, the people in question play a large if somewhat indirect role in blocking such things. The resulting regulatory hurdles make what certainly is (at the infrastructure level) an expensive proposition prohibitively expensive because of the multi-decade red tape and litigation hurdles that must also be crossed. So much so that the efforts are
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Nope, not even close. If you want to make an argument, don't just pull crap out of your arse - it just makes you look dumb.
I do agree our addiction to fossil fuels is a huge problem, but moving to EV cars now won't make one jot of difference, because the electricity we use to charge them comes from... fossil fuels. Of course it's easier to replace fixed generating plants with alternative energy, so EV cars will get greene
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It makes you look dumb when you pull this crap out of your ass. EVs are so much more efficient than gas cars that even if they're ultimately powered by fossil-fuel power plants, today's fossil fuel plants are so much more efficient than gas engines that you'd still use less energy and generate less pollution.
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> Nope, not even close
Here we go, this should be good...
> but moving to EV cars now won't make one jot of difference
Moving to EVs will lower emissions by about one half...
> because the electricity we use to charge them comes from... fossil fuels ...because the energy we use to charge them comes from a mixture of sources that are, on average, far less polluting than a gasoline engine:
https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/wells-to-wheels-electric-car-efficiency/
Moreover, the most fantastical
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How ironic that you decide to take me to task on this - a person who is actually a builder of EVs and a great believer in the benefits of an electric power-train. My point was merely that the OP's claim that petroleum-powered vehicles is the biggest source of carbon pollution is a pile of crap, as your own quoted figures demonstrate. If every car on the planet were replaced overnight by an EV, carbon pollution would not change significantly, and in any case
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If this actually pans out, then it'll make electric vehicles very economical
It will also help mightily if night-time storage of daytime-generated (PV) electricity can be made much more economical (especially for regions where "grid-as-storage" is not viable, or won't be viable once the financial incentives for doing so been done away with).
Re: Just what we need... (Score:1)
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Huh? One of the ions used in the electrolyte in a battery is probably not a majority of the battery's weight. And aluminum is one of the least-dense metals there is.
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