Australian researchers say they’ve found a way to make cheap batteries last longer.
Lithium-sulfur batteries use cheaper, more abundant materials and are able to store two to five times more energy per kilogram than lithium-ion ones.
But there’s a hitch — they degrade rapidly through the process of being recharged.
Now a team from Monash University say they’ve found a way of making lithium-sulfur batteries that are robust enough to be recharged 1,000 times.
That is one of the issues that is never addressed when it comes to electric vehicles. Currently unless the vehicle is a very expensive one, it is a right off at 10 years old, as batteries cost around £10,000 to replace. So unless the car is still worth very much in excess of £10,000 at 10 years old, it is just not economically viable to replace them.
Plus. Batteries in general are very environmentally unfriendly to produce & dispose of. So is it environmentally friendly to use them?
My biggest issue is not with the batteries, but having a fast charging unit installed at my home address. My incoming supply cable is not able to handle the current including my existing connected load, so a complete new expensive cable would be required from the road outside my home. If every house needs an uprated supply cable, the whole idea is a non starter because the district main cables would not be able to cope with the additional loads.
As with many other things, advances in battery technology are happening all the time.
Despite the push towards using battery technology in cars & other forms of transport, there’s no way of knowing if the technology will be suitable in the medium- to long-term because of issues as are touched-upon in earlier posts.
One good thing though about lithium sulphur technology if it takes off is that plenty of both can be found in Cornwall and in other parts of the UK, which would potentially benefit UK battery manufacturing.
Overnight charging could help some.but I agree, it is not by any means the solution.
In my view, the idea of battery-powered electric vehicles is a non-starter. Well, not exactly a non-starter, but something that will fizzle out fairly soon for a number of reasons.
Ridiculously expensive, short range, long charging time, special facilities for recharging can not always be made at home for everyone, etc., etc.
A far more practical alternative, which should keep the ‘greenies’ happy too, would be the use of hydrogen as a fuel. Produced through the extension of nuclear power stations, refillable quickly at local filling stations the same as petrol and diesel, and what comes out of the exhaust pipe is only air and water.
Another & very problem that goes largely unkown among most, is the fire risk of battery vehicles. Even a slightly damaged battery can prove a big fire risk & once the heating process starts it is very hard to stop & the fires burn exceedingly hot, so are not only hard to fight. But liable to reignite hours later.
Actually EVs were around long before internal combustion engines.so I’m not so sure that they will fizzle fairly soon.
Using batteries? I will agree that electrically-powered vehicles like trains, trams and trolleybuses can be very effective, and have been used successfully in the past as well. The real problem why I believe these new EVs won’t take over is down to the batteries they use.
Hydrogen is a very positive alternative as only a basic conversion is needed to run a petrol engine on hydrogen gas just as they did during WWII.
Yes, using batteries.
" The electric motor is often credited to Hungarian engineer Anyos Jedlik, while French physicist Gaston Plane invented rechargeable lead-acid batteries in 1859. It took an Englishman – Thomas Parker – to combine the two in a carriage to create the first production electric car, built in London in 1884."
Apart from cars there are many industrial battery operated vehicles. This is to avoid pollution when there are enclosed spaces.
Yes. That as well.
I can see far more people paying for such a conversion in the future when hydrogen becomes readily available.
But how far could they travel? How did they recharge their batteries and how long did that take? How fast could they go?
I can imagine it being done as an experiment, but as a reliable and practical means of transport, especially in those days, I have my doubts.
Yes, forklift trucks for example have often been battery-operated for decades and the milk floats of years ago were battery-operated too.
Then quash your doubts!
Milk floats are not an experiment. Nor industrial trucks.
I grant you that the above two examples work within their limited areas, but weren’t we talking about travel over longer distances at higher speeds as presently done by cars, HGVs and public transport vehicles?
Interestingly, now you mention them, milk floats do seem to work reliably over a period of a few hours before requiring recharging and one good thing I remember about them was that the milkman could just hop off and on again and be straight off by just pressing a button. I assume that their batteries would have been much cheaper to replace than those presently appearing in EVs used as domestic cars.
Like every woolley thinker such as those pushing for battery powered cars only see the immediate not the future. Ok lets assume everyone who drives has an electric car. Imagine the nunber of vehicles on a motorway that run out of power . The motorway would be littered with them causing holdups while the recovery trucks collect.
What about people in high rise flats? I just can’t see the cars belonging to the residents having enough charging points . What about cars parked in the road as the premises have no driveway. Does this mean cables across pavements or charging points outside every house. many premises have 2/3 cars does that mean 2/3 charging points in a house garage?
This is what these half brained idiots never think of.
this is let alone foreign vehicles not being able to refuel as they will still be on petrol/diesel power
just brain dead muppets with no intelligence.
Your claim was that the idea of battery-powered electric vehicles is a non-starter. I have demonstrated that is simply not the case.
try putting a fork lift battery in a car??
