this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2023
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Amazing stuff.

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[–] MeanEYE@lemmy.world 117 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Betteridge's law of headlines... "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 74 points 10 months ago (8 children)

I don’t get it. For the average consumer, EVs as they exist right now are fine. Charging is generally 20 mins every 2-3 hours and only on road trips. Charging an EV at home is a trivial technical challenge. I understand that there aren’t chargers on street corners, but vehicles are rarely parked more than 20 feet from some kind of electrical service.

The idea of shipping liquid fuel in trucks and dispensing it out of hoses at special fuel stores is just silly. Rolling out that kind of infrastructure is unnecessary, and hydrogen has already showed that it doesn’t work. We only did it with gasoline because there was no other way.

I can see liquid fuel being useful in certain applications, but for the typical consumer, BEVs are the way to go.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 39 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I can explain. You're thinking like a scientist, not a capitalist. Money will go into this tech because it forces you to be dependent on that charging system. They want that. It's better margins than electricity creation.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You are not completely incorrect here, but the capitalist side of this entire industry shifted to obtaining the rights to the raw resources a long time ago. There's a reason Tesla and Toyota have been snatching up mineral rights via acquisitions for years now. They want the entire supply chain, not just the proprietary means to deliver the product.

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

But that’s the supply chain for the vehicles, not for the fuel. One of the best parts about BEVs is that if a new better technology is invented tomorrow, as long as it continues to use electrons being pushed around, all the infrastructure will continue to work. I don’t care what companies or governments try to do, I can still plug my car into the wall.

There’s money in hoarding the lithium, but not the kind of printer ink/razor blade money that you have with fuel sales.

[–] kameecoding@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's because people have this mindset that they might need to travel 600+kms twice a year, therefore they need a 700km range BEV because Despite 99% of their car usage is sub 200km ( and 90% is sub 100) it is somehow prudent to carry all that extra battery material and weight around unused

I think hydrogen makes sense in a few applications namely trucking and long range cars for the few who need it, though I would say it's probably better to invest heavily in trains and handle most shipping with trains then put the stuff on trucks for the last 50kms and stuff

[–] ImpishCook@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Hydrogen is also important in construction when utilities aren't typically present.

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I just want a half decent second hand EV that will do 120 miles, for a reasonable price.

I can buy an acceptable ICE car for £5k, and it'll do that.
But at that price range, the only BEVs can get are shagged leafs that will do 50 miles on a good day.

The really annoying thing, is that 95% of my journeys are sub 50 miles. But I'm not willing to spend more than half the journey time charging midway through.

[–] themoken@startrek.website 3 points 10 months ago

I test drove a Leaf and honestly it felt bad brand new. I got range anxiety just taking it on the highway and back to the dealer.

So far, I think Tesla has a monopoly on practical EVs. Say what you will about the cars (or their leadership) but the charger network they built out and having ~150 miles of actual range is hard to beat in an existing product.

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[–] Tetsuo@jlai.lu 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The idea of shipping liquid fuel in trucks and dispensing it out of hoses at special fuel stores is just silly.

I don't necessarily disagree with that but I hope you see that this type of infrastructure is exactly what we currently have and have proven to work.

It wouldn't be that stupid to reuse an existing infrastructure that is already built. The issue with our current fuel infrastructure is that it is moving fossil fuel.

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[–] supercriticalcheese@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Putting a charger on every street parking location will become disproportionately expensive.

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[–] phoneymouse@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Apparently, no one read the article. The primary application of this was for the military. The article is based on research done by DARPA. For military use, lithium ion batteries have way too short of a lifespan and the charge times are too long. Also, they can catch fire and burn for a long time, probably a real problem in a military context.

Flow batteries can mitigate all these issues and they’re cheaper and lighter. They can be made from inexpensive materials that are more readily available than lithium.

Given these benefits, it seems obvious that consumer applications will take off. The original researchers see an opportunity here and that’s why they formed a company.

Your cited lithium ion “20 min” charge time is for super chargers only, and in many cases is actually more like 40-45 minutes. Also, super charging is bad for the battery. In all other cases, you’ll be using an L1 or L2 charger which will take anywhere from 8 hours to 72 hours to charge a vehicle.

And, eventually, the lithium ion battery will lose its range as the battery degrades, making the whole car as disposable as that 3-4 year old smartphone you had to toss because the battery can’t hold a charge anymore. Flow batteries will keep refuel times to the same as they are today, and the material can be recharged up to 10,000 times, a huge improvement over lithium ion. And, the lifespan of your car won’t be literally glued and bolted to the lifespan of your battery.

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why do people get hung up on the supercharging stop they would need to make 2-3 times a year and ignore the 40x a year they currently go out of their way to wait in line for cheap gas at Costco?

Also, there are Teslas with 250k miles and 90% range. The batteries can already outlast their vehicles, and finally, recycling batteries is possible and a lucrative business.

[–] Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I have a minimum of eight ~500 mile drives I have to make in a year. I drive a plated and insured golf cart for most of my trips but theirs no way I’m tethering myself to a power cord when I can, with great confidence, pull over and fill my minivan in ~5 minutes wherever I’m at once I get to a quarter tank of fuel. I also end up with several trips a month where having a minivan is convenient as hell. I’d love to be able to reasonably jettison fossil fuels at some point so I don’t understand the criticism towards discovery, engineering, and evaluation of a broad spectrum of solutions and applications.

[–] flango@lemmy.eco.br 4 points 10 months ago

It seems to me that we'll be living in a world with multiple solutions to the "fuel problem". In a city environment, maybe the lithium solution will be the best way to go, but we can't ignore that it isn't scalable for other uses. It's interesting to see how fossil fuels are powerful by the way they solve many problems at once; of course, after we built the insane infrastructure to support it.

We need every thing we got to beat climate change.

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[–] sartalon@lemmy.world 50 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This article uses "nano" way too much for me to take it seriously. It is written like a marketing piece.

[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago
[–] 18107@aussie.zone 22 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Flow batteries are great for long duration storage, but not good for high power delivery.

This means they will work far better as grid storage than as EV batteries.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 1 points 10 months ago

The article is about advancements that are solving the density problem.

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[–] bizzle@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Lithium batteries are an ecological nightmare and I can't wait for better technology

[–] Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz 4 points 10 months ago (6 children)

What makes a lithium iron phosphate battery an ecological nightmare?

[–] bizzle@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If it still relies on mined lithium, it's some pretty bad stuff. Come to find out mining isn't super great for the environment.

[–] Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Much of the lithium is mined in Australia or via salt brines in Chile.

It’s not worse environmentally than the other mined materials that go into a vehicle.

[–] HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

That doesn't make it a good thing.

[–] Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Ok so let’s drill into it further.

Lithium gets mined once and then enters a circular system where batteries can be recycled after 10+ years in service.

It doesn’t exist in isolation either. While lithium is mined, its competitors (oil, coal, gas) are too with significantly higher environmental costs. They’re also not reusable.

Zinc Bromide flow batteries look like a great idea for static energy storage but if you’re worried about mining, I have bad news.

[–] bizzle@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Are lithium batteries getting recycled? Because there are millions of pounds of disposable vapes that just get fuckin yote directly into a landfill. Then they crack and leak PFAS into the ground water.

[–] Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz 1 points 10 months ago

Large car batteries can become second life static energy storage before being completely recycled .

This is one of those instances where capitalism helps us out - there’s money to be made in old batteries.

Single use vapes are pretty damn disgusting all around TBH.

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[–] smuuthbrane@sh.itjust.works 8 points 10 months ago (8 children)

I've always hoped so. Finally deal with both range anxiety and charging time together.

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 3 points 10 months ago

That'd be cool.

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[–] squid_slime@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

make car battery big, use nano liquid, issue fixed?

[–] QuarterSwede@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

That’s some crazy battery technology. This would greatly solve a lot of current issues.

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