Comment Re:Solid State batteries (Score 1) 86
They typically have on-site batteries for those chargers.
They typically have on-site batteries for those chargers.
You are saying that rather than trying to understand the science or listen to the scientists, the fact that people you disagree with politically have championed it is making you reject it.
It's just a milder form of this: https://files.libcom.org/files...
Imagine how much time you waste going out of your way to petrol stations and standing around pumping the stuff into your car.
300 mile EVs are sometimes cheaper than fossil cars now. In the UK at the moment you can get a deal on a pre-reg MG S5 with just under 300 miles of range for £23k, which I think is about $28k (accounting for differences in taxes). It's a very nice car, refined, quiet, powerful, comfortable, and MG has a good reputation for reliability. Charge time is about 30 minutes 10%-80%.
Of course the cost of owning it will be much lower too, due to lower maintenance. It's got some nice features like Vehicle 2 Load (you can plug mains powered devices into it, up to 2400W), and with a compatible charger that means you can also do Vehicle 2 Home/Grid.
Are there any confirmed cases of EV battery fires causing loss of ships? I know there are lots of rumours, but they usually turn out to be false. Like the one about Luton Airport car park, which turned out to be a fossil.
In any case, LFP batteries don't have the same issues with releasing oxygen to keep the fire self sustaining. For a start the cathode doesn't have a negative temperature coefficient, so the main cause of thermal runaway is eliminated. Manganese dioxide has stronger bonds than cobalt, so oxygen is released much more slowly, at a rate which cannot sustain a fire. They don't experience expansion to nearly the same degree either, so mechanical safety sealing is unlikely to fail.
They are very resilient oxygen loss in general, so an exothermic reaction is very unlikely. They don't decompose at high temperatures either.
All that adds up to make them less likely to catch fire than an ICE, and if they do the fire it can be put out with water. Here's a video demonstrating that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Note that you only see flames because they are exposed to the air, not in a sealed battery pack, and water works to extinguish it. Most of the burning is the wiring and the plastic housing, not the battery cell itself. And that's after they attacked it with power tools.
They are hoping that there will be enough of a backlash against it to nix the technology, so they won't have to adopt it.
I hope that happens too, otherwise I'm going to need an AI agent to screw with their AI agent until it gets me the best prices.
BYD is already selling 5 minute charge LFP batteries. They are deploying 1000kW chargers for them in Europe now, with the UK getting some this year. LFP batteries are very stable and hard to ignite - you can stab them and they will be fine.
Europe already has commercial EV trucks doing thousands of kilometres for deliveries. Charge times are largely not an issue because the rules require drivers to take regular breaks anyway, to avoid dangerous fatigue. There is also battery swap technology, again already deployed widely by Nio in Europe, and I think BYD have some in China too. Takes less than 3 minutes, probably a bit longer with a truck, but if the desire is there for faster than fuelling "charge" times, the problem is already solved.
Even Mercedes are only claiming "up to" 25% better energy density, but at the rate at which CATL and BYD are improving their batteries, by 2030 when they are ready to launch that will already be behind the curve.
Bottom line is I think it would take a real miracle breakthrough to be disruptive. Toyota is working on solid state batteries too, but they are also years away from sales, while the Chinese eat their lunch. Both Toyota's and Mercedes' current EV offerings are mediocre as well, the rest of their tech isn't up to much.
It will have to live up to German and EU safety standards, so it should be fairly robust when it comes to fires.
LFP batteries are much less volatile than the older lithium EV batteries, but even the old ones were not very flammable, and caught fire less often that fossil cars. These new ones will depend on the chemistry. LFP ones are very robust, you can find videos of people trying and failing to ignite them.
TFA mentions that even Mercedes is saying they "might" be available by 2030, by which point I doubt they will be relevant anyway. If the tech is viable then BYD and CATL will have been mass producing it for years by then.
The batteries used in EVs have a gel in them. It's not liquid as we normally think of it, but it's not solid either.
The real question is if they can get the cost to a level that the market is interested in. We have seen a lot of technologies trying to enter this space, but they usually fail because conventional lithium batteries get cheaper and improve so rapidly that the additional cost isn't seen as worthwhile outside of very niche applications.
That's just a very wordy way of saying that you don't like the conclusions that the science has come to, and don't want to change your lifestyle, so are blaming the Leftist Boogieman for making it too political.
Do they need Gislaine at this point? Seems like there is enough evidence without her, and it's going to leak out eventually.
I'm just amazed that people continue to buy Intel hardware. Multiple security flaws that required massive performance hits to mitigate, CPUs that permanently damaged themselves without the necessary patches and a pathetic warranty response, and some of it is designed in Israel.
Once AMD's chips overtook Intel there really was no reason to buy Intel hardware.
I seem to recall one small nation got a copyright exemption from the WTO because the US wouldn't pay up. They could legally ignore US copyright.
Enforcement would be through the international trade mechanisms like the WTO. Various countries would recognize the rulings and allow for things like seizure of assets, or blocking transfers until the debt is paid.
This isn't the first time countries have sued each other, it's been well established for decades.
There should be a rate limit on trades. It could be as low as one second, and still help, but ideally 1 minute.
For each stock trades would be processed once every minute, on the minute. Any trades made between minutes are buffered and execute in random order.
The rest of the world has been looking at America that way since at least the first Trump administration. China has been pushing that narrative in trade negotiations, painting itself as the stable, fair, non-judgemental partner.
At this point I think until something happens to basically wipe out the Republicans as a political force, that perception of the US isn't going to change. At best we might get 4 years of moderate stability.
By the way, that might also be why the Democrats are so useless. In the pursuit of stability they won't reverse a lot of the bad policies.
"Call immediately. Time is running out. We both need to do something monstrous before we die." -- Message from Ralph Steadman to Hunter Thompson