This editorial is behind the times, but technically correct. Range is better if you have lots of money.
There's no standardization for electric cars. You can't swap batteries between my Mom's Prime and the neighbor's Tesla.
Why not? Because it makes sense?
First, designing cars with swappable batter packs would make them larger and heavier and more expensive with less range. Because you greatly increase the mass of the multiple frames that holds the pack. One part that is car structure, another to hold the battery cells and electronics in an independent unit with it's own structural needs. Instead of one integrated one.
Second, the shape of the fuel tank in cars is endlessly variable. Every car has to package it between frame ( and other than older or larger trucks, there's No Frame on cars, they are unibody sheet metal sculpture. ) and crash crush zones and cabin.
Remember the Pinto?
No company will agree to a simple rectangle of fixed size! That would be bigger, heavier and thus get worse mileage at a time the mandates keep getting higher.
Better enjoy today's Golden Age of vehicles since Performance will become a dirty joke when cars are mandated to have arbitrary Carbon Footprint/Mileage.
I put hot swap battery packs in the realm of Popular Science Cover Fantasy. Next to the flying cars and personal helicopter.
Except I can actually buy a personal helicopter kit and build one that works.
Further, many car makers already showed off their future Universal Car Slab-o-Battery with wheels and motors, that they can drop a mini-truck or mini van or menopause luxury sports car body on.
I don't recall the original brand name with that concept. GM?
But obviously each company's is unique and proprietary. Until the U.S. & E.U. go full Soviet and steal ALL the wealth so cars are made in State Factory Number X... Badly and only for the Party members.
And standardization up also freezes technology. Future better batteries will need Future better battery controller/chargers built in to the Standardized Pack, not the car.
How angry will you be when the Pack swapped in at the filling station is old and you only get 50 miles before you get the range warning light, or worse, have to call AAA to send the tow truck?
Sure, gasoline can be contaminated too. I bought a tank full for my Suzuki at the Mobile station across the street from work, and got mostly water. They refused to take it back, but luckily there was a Sunoco across the street I had been too cheap and stupid to go to in the first place, so I pushed the bike across the street. Then removed the tank and dumped the oily water on the Mobile station's front lawn. Spelling Words. Then got threatened with the police. ( "we'll call the cops!" " Please! You've got time while I drain the water out of my float bowls" )
Try cursing a lawn with a Tesla!
I'm not especially proud of that maturity level in retrospect.
Basically the author asserts that for over 20 years they've been lying to you.
I am too lazy to track down all the sources and run any kind of analysis, since I already knew they lied to me.
I don't know if this article is right on the math, but after 45 years of waiting for New York City to buy my floating Taxi service, they keep telling me the streets aren't flooded!
And at this point arguing the science is useless, since the UN IPCC already said the science isn't the point, it's the Economic Change. aka, Taking Your Money.
Posted on Wednesday, September 01, 2021 - 01:48 am:
First, Climate Change is real. It's been hotter, and colder. It will be hotter, and colder in the future.
It's even possible, despite the admissions of the UNIPCC that the science is just an excuse to steal your stuff and oppress you, ( phrased as Economic Change ) that the world really will go up a couple of degrees in the next decade. Yea! I like that possibility much better than the more likely one that the Earth will cool a couple of degrees, which will kill millions and starve, weaken and make plagues far worse. And wars for resources. Nasty desperate ones.
And I'm not worried at all about the Doomsday Scenarios pushed by the lying sacks. Why? Because they have never happened, ever. Despite asteroids, volcanoes, Methane Clathrate clouds, and forest fires that make a typical California summer look like a candle, the planet has never done the runaway heat disaster predicted by... The Prophet Gore.
There's a feedback mechanism that's actually fairly well understood. It's happening now. Plant growth is up. In the oceans and on land, the plants suck up the CO2 and lock it in organic material. If every human died tomorrow, they would be wild plants, but with the billions on the planet, and the Western world frantically growing crops, to feed them, some of those plants, we will eat. And lock the Carbon up into ... us. Be of good cheer. Unless we kill all the Bees. That would really suck.
The fact that I'm in Favor of a warmer world, while a bunch of lying thieves and unfortunately fooled folk Fear it with tremendous passion, doesn't change the fact that we could indeed have better, warmer weather.
And that it could lead to reduced crop yields in the plants we have bred for thousands of years to grow in the cold climates of the cold spell we've actually been in for the last thousand years. ( on average ) So, it's a Good Idea to be prepared for warmer, better, happier days with crops that thrive in that more Utopian world.
And if you are a caffeine addict like me...This is Great News.
The CCP knows Climate Change is a tool to wreck Western Civilization, a false fear scam of Biblical Proportions.
On the cycles where the Ruskies are pretending to be friends to the CCP I'm sure they shared the Plan the ( then KGB ) runs with Euro-Greens and American Baizuo to trash western industry and conquer.
That's why the CCP is gleefully selling crummy solar panels and not wasting money on wind farms as they build coal fired power.
And Russia is building pipelines it can turn off to blackmail Europe and ditto wind/solar waste of money and pollution.
China is just pretending to believe what the Baizuo say. They don't. Lying is part of the Religion of the Marxist cults, so it's not hypocritical to lie about following a treaty you have zero intention to.
Ditto the American Baizuo. Cult of lies.
So it's not hypocritical. It's all deliberately Evil.
So where's the resort with the next record setting collection of luxury jets at the Climate Party?
I've come to the conclusion that what intermittent power, ( wind, solar ) needs is cheap storage.
Most high performance energy storage systems are expensive. Duh. High performance anything costs more.
Lithium batteries are ecologically bad. Gravity/potential is either geographically limited ( pumped lakes ) Or ludicrously expensive. ( counterweight or flywheel ) I'll leave superconducting loops to science fiction.
Nope. Chemical batteries are needed to load level. Darn it. Really jacks the costs.
Morever, inefficiency in power in/out cost magnifies everything in a classic engineering cascade failure. ( and economic, too )
And... You want to use commonly available resources, like iron or aluminum, and a recycling system that doesn't leave lots of hazardous waste. ( lead acid recycles ok, but less toxic is better )
And cheap.
Nowhere in that list of requirements is light weight, small, high density, or fast.
Food for thought.
(Message edited by Aesquire on September 11, 2021)
Growing up in Nebraska and South Dakota kids were told that it was an ocean long ago, then things changed.
Also, as recently as ancient Egypt, Mammoths were being hunted there.
I'm waiting for Mammoth steaks. Bring those back! Bet it tastes like Bison more than elephant. ( Bison are megafauna of the same period, we just didn't eat all of them. )
Good idea. The real polluters won't agree to limits, and Joe* hasn't come through yet with his theft of money from you.
It's going to take time to slide the multi-trillion buck pork bill through Congress, and stuff several billions in Danegeld in.
It's also going to take time to come up with a suitable bribe for China and India to get them to go on record lying about reducing emissions. It's not that either government intends to not lie, because neither intends to reduce emissions for the Con instead of feeding their people and growing their economies and militaries.
But they don't want to lie for free. Both know that in a few years, their ignoring treaties will get them bad press, at least India will. China will just threaten to destroy the economy of any complaining hypocrites.
So it's a good idea to blame "vaccine inequity" to hold out for a better deal on stolen money and lying promises.
Consider, Joe*'s family made a lot of money in European ( Ukraine ) gas business. Joe* gave the go ahead for Vladimir to lay a new pipeline that he can turn the valve on to manipulate Europe, and planetary pricing. ( While halting the pipeline to feed Canadian oil to U.S. refineries ) Joe* unilaterally chose to re-engage the Paris Con Conference, where the only country that actually met any goals was the one that dropped out, us. Joe* also halted any gas development of natural gas resources on Federal Land.
OTOH, the Hated Donald gave us energy independence for the first time in my lifetime, Now gone, thanks to the Harris/Biden* Occupation, and had promised the Brits that we'd be happy to sell the gas so they wouldn't have to worry about Vladimir's blackmail. Joe* won't answer Boris's calls. I assume that he'll wreck the sometimes tenuous but century long alliance, just because he's trashing all Trump's work.
And since the crowning diplomatic coup of the Trump Presidency was dropping out of the Paris Con, and getting multiple countries to be cordial with Israel, it's a sure bet that the Harris/Biden* Occupation will mess things up even more in the middle east, after the Saudis told him to go pound sand.
I'll point out the Carter administration's Stagflation and gas lines when Carter annoyed the Pan Arab alliance & OPEC with his actions and inactions during the the 1973 War.
Could be much worse, this time, with the Iranian Mullah's and China's CCP AND Vladimir ready to take action this winter. Vladimir with the handle on the valve for gas, Iran by shooting up tankers, and China by cranking up consumption to raise prices higher. And threatening their neighbors, maybe a nice little invasion or two, and always the threat of another plague for CNN to blame on Trump.