The Batteries For Electric Cars

[fmdog44]

Reading about the batteries in electric vehicles and their recycling issues and challenges it was written the battery for the Chevy Volt weighs 1,000 lbs. and the average for car batteries is 900-1,000 lbs. Makes me wonder how much the batteries for busses and 18 wheelers weigh.

 

[Gardenlover]

It also makes me wonder about the carbon footprint it takes to create and then charge the batteries. An then there is the concern of how to dispose of these batteries. Is this technology really saving the planet?

 

[win231]

An all-electric car needs huge batteries to provide a decent range between charges. Maybe the trade off is no gas vs battery disposal. Personally, I think the "cleaner air" is an offset - unless (as I've heard) the batteries can be recycled somehow.

 

[JonDouglas]

This thread reminded me that electric cars (and discussions thereof) were quite popular in the decade after 1900, especially with ladies of means. Women didn't care much for the arm-busting crank starters on gasoline powered carriages of the time. Below is picture of such a vehicle with its charging station. It is a 1908 Bailey Electric that was the favorite of a wealthy, gearhead woman named Isabel Weld Anderson.

Better quality Edison batteries added about 500 lbs to the carriage and gave the car a range of around 120 miles. It should be noted that the charging station to the right is a GE mercury arc vapor rectifier, which was a necessary but not-totally-safe requirement for the car.

This car is in the basement of the Anderson's carriage house (now a museum). You can't see it but there an open-air seat for Isabel's footman in the back. She liked to drive.

 

[Don M.]

Several automakers are moving towards electric vehicles, and plan to stop producing gas/diesel vehicles within the next decade, or two. On the surface this sounds good, but there are a lot of issues that need to be taken into consideration to make this a practical transition. First, can our present electrical grid handle such a massive increase in KW hours? Can wind and solar supply such an increase? Can household "charging stations" be installed, at an affordable cost, to allow workers to recharge every day? Can millions of charging stations be built all over the nation to replace gas stations? Can the capacity of batteries be increased to allow for extended driving without having to wait hours to recharge the battery on a longer road trip?

Lowering fossil fuel use is an admirable objective, but doing so is going to be a lot more complex, and costly, than we can currently imagine.

IMO, the best long term solution would be centered around Nuclear Fusion reactors to supply the energy needed to separate water into its hydrogen/oxygen components, and using the hydrogen to fuel vehicles, which would recombine with the oxygen to recreate water. The "pollutant" released with such a system might be little more than steam or light fog.

At any rate, the transition away from fossil fuels is going to take many years, and trillions of dollars in research and implementation, and I don't see any major steps being taken to make such a transition practical, within the current projected timeframes.

 

[Jeni]

An all-electric car needs huge batteries to provide a decent range between charges. Maybe the trade off is no gas vs battery disposal. Personally, I think the "cleaner air" is an offset - unless (as I've heard) the batteries can be recycled somehow.

in many of these ideas the theory of being recycled and actually being recycled are different.......

recycling an item is often messy and time consuming as well as in this case hazardous to health from caustic chemicals of anyone who would work in recycling........... unless there is $$ in it not going to happen on big scale.

i remember in my area plastic grocery sacks were not recycled .....
the only recycle plant was a few states away the group that would haul wanted stores to take up a two pallet section to store used bags wanted use to make sure nothing was in ( paper etc) bags and they would pick up after we had a big enough load........
was not worth it to use but customers were happy thinking they were being taken acre of so we left collection bins out and then threw the bags away in the store trash.........
On the face a person bought into the idea they were recycling when in fact.....................

 

[JonDouglas]

Several automakers are moving towards electric vehicles, and plan to stop producing gas/diesel vehicles within the next decade, or two. On the surface this sounds good, but there are a lot of issues that need to be taken into consideration to make this a practical transition. First, can our present electrical grid handle such a massive increase in KW hours? Can wind and solar supply such an increase? Can household "charging stations" be installed, at an affordable cost, to allow workers to recharge every day? Can millions of charging stations be built all over the nation to replace gas stations? Can the capacity of batteries be increased to allow for extended driving without having to wait hours to recharge the battery on a longer road trip?

Lowering fossil fuel use is an admirable objective, but doing so is going to be a lot more complex, and costly, than we can currently imagine.

IMO, the best long term solution would be centered around Nuclear Fusion reactors to supply the energy needed to separate water into its hydrogen/oxygen components, and using the hydrogen to fuel vehicles, which would recombine with the oxygen to recreate water. The "pollutant" released with such a system might be little more than steam or light fog.

At any rate, the transition away from fossil fuels is going to take many years, and trillions of dollars in research and implementation, and I don't see any major steps being taken to make such a transition practical, within the current projected timeframes.

Some people are slow to understand that neither energy nor matter can be created or destroy - it just changes time and form. The changing of form (e.g., thermal to transmitted electric) is not with cost. Simply put, there is no free lunch or energy silver bullet. Well engineered nuclear and/or hydrogen power may well be the least disruptive to ecosystem. IMO, wind and solar power are almost a joke in terms of their overall cost and usability. Also, the environmental cost of batteries to the environment is not trivial (e.g., impact from finding, mining and processing lithium) and perhaps as bad as or worse than burning coal in the long term.

 

[Packerjohn]

What scares me about those electric cars is that I have read stories where it costs a small fortune to replace those batteries. "Buyer beware" as always. I wouldn't buy one now as I have made mistakes in the past by paying way too much for new technology. I remember paying $100 CND when the new hand held calculators came out. Now, they sell for around $3. Ha! Also, I paid about $1500 CND when the 1st video cameras came out. They were huge & you had to carry a heavy tape recorder on your shoulder. Now, you can make movies with simple cameras. Lesson here is never buy new "toys". Electronic & other toys always come down in price. But then some folks will pay $1600 for a smartphone just to impress others. Go figure!

 

[Jeni]

Some people are slow to understand that neither energy nor matter can be created or destroy - it just changes time and form. The changing of form (e.g., thermal to transmitted electric) is not with cost. Simply put, there is no free lunch or energy silver bullet. Well engineered nuclear and/or hydrogen power may well be the least disruptive to ecosystem. IMO, wind and solar power are almost a joke in terms of their overall cost and usability. Also, the environmental cost of batteries to the environment is not trivial (e.g., impact from finding, mining and processing lithium) and perhaps as bad as or worse than burning coal in the long term.

I agree ..... some areas the cost of electricity is already quite expensive and the source in same areas are coal or gas powered plants ......
once everything is electric how will they deal with that increased demand ?

Some areas already have brown outs or disruptions for use NOW.....
i see people talking about adding charging stations everywhere........... but not discussing where the POWER is coming from .
Solar and wind power is not producing but a tiny fraction.....of the power needed.

 

[fuzzybuddy]

You can't recycle gas. but can you recycle car batteries? I'm not sure, but I think you can. I don't think many understand all the problems of using batteries in car. In the past, gas was cheap, and we weren't aware of the effects on the climate. I believe once we become all electric, what we think are problems may turn out to be assets. There's economies of scale when you have 100s of millions of electric cars that you now don't have.

 

[fmdog44]

The batteries in the modern cars are not similar to that ten pound box under you hood that you buy at the auto part store. The technology is as different as Kitty Hawk vs. NASA. But what will they look like in 10-20 years?? Today there is a computer the size roughly that of a large grain of sand compared to a large storage cabinet back when.

 

[win231]

This thread reminded me that electric cars (and discussions thereof) were quite popular in the decade after 1900, especially with ladies of means. Women didn't care much for the arm-busting crank starters on gasoline powered carriages of the time. Below is picture of such a vehicle with its charging station. It is a 1908 Bailey Electric that was the favorite of a wealthy, gearhead woman named Isabel Weld Anderson.

Better quality Edison batteries added about 500 lbs to the carriage and gave the car a range of around 120 miles. It should be noted that the charging station to the right is a GE mercury arc vapor rectifier, which was a necessary but not-totally-safe requirement for the car.

This car is in the basement of the Anderson's carriage house (now a museum). You can't see it but there an open-air seat for Isabel's footman in the back. She liked to drive.

No air bags?
No water-sensing auto wipers?'
No backup camera?
No auto climate control?
No heated seats & steering wheel?
No 450 watt Bose sound system?

Forget it!