2035

[Uncle Gump]

Will a few hundred acres be enough to provide enough material to build a billion batteries?

 

[fastpakr]

I'm still a bit confused as to where all these raw materials are coming from to build all these batteries?

Maybe someone answered that already and I missed it.

No question that there's going to be a ton of lithium mining, especially early on. Chile/Bolivia/Argentina have quite a bit. China does as well, but I think Australia is the largest known provider. It's going to be messy. But the current situation isn't any better. There will need to be a huge emphasis on reuse/recycling.

 

[Curious Hound]

Will a few hundred acres be enough to provide enough material to build a billion batteries?

Nope. You have to do this a bunch of times, all over the place. It's not quite like drilling a little hole several thousand feet deep and letting the energy stuff come squirting out.

 

[RonD]

I'm still a bit confused as to where all these raw materials are coming from to build all these batteries?

Maybe someone answered that already and I missed it.

Australia

 

[Fast Eddie]

Oh the irony...

It doesn't have to make sense. It's now a religion with some people and all they see and hear is what their prophets dispel.

 

[don4331]

Well, you scrape away all the trees, grass, bushes, flowers, etc. From a few hundred acres of land. Then you dig up what's under that, process it with a bunch of toxic chenicals, using a bunch of electricity along the way....

Were you talking Lithium mining or what they are doing to get oil out of the tar sands?

p.s. The tailing pits from the tar sands are every bit as dangerous/toxic to wildlife as lithium pits are. And the old refinery locations with their lead contamination are pretty bad too.

p.p.s. The Lithium in the batteries can be re-refined, just like the lead in your lead acid battery (or steel in frame) for reuse. So, the combination of recycling and re-refining will reduce need for raw minerals should we ever meet the initial demand.

 

[Fast Eddie]

Someone was asking about battery self-charging. Hey, if you're jumping on a bandwagon, go all in...
"Eolo features giant horizontal propellers or wind turbines on the front, which spin fast as the car moves, taking in wind and converting it into electricity to charge the batteries of the electric car."
Meet Eolo, A Wind-Powered EV From Colombia (iamrenew.com)

 

[sgtsandman]

I'm still a bit confused as to where all these raw materials are coming from to build all these batteries?

Maybe someone answered that already and I missed it.

I think China is the major active source. Rumor has it there are locations in Afghanistan and Africa. We have some here too but the tree huggers would absolutely flip is we started digging here.

 

[Bill]

MSN

It's a headline used to get people like you all excited by leaving out the details. It's a typical "Flex Alert" wherein they ask people to reduce electric use during peak hours, which is 4-9 PM. The headline implies people aren't supposed to charge their cars at all during the heatwave.. This is the kind of journalism that has led the country into the state of insanity that it's in.

http://www.caiso.com/Documents/excessive-heat-starting-tomorrow-will-stress-energy-grid.pdf

 

[Fast Eddie]

I think China is the major active source. Rumor has it there are locations in Afghanistan and Africa. We have some here too but the tree huggers would absolutely flip is we started digging here.

China's influence in Afghanistan and Africa is not to be ignored, so we're at their mercy there too. This whole damn thing makes absolutely no sense at all.

 

[Fast Eddie]

It's a headline used to get people like you all excited by leaving out the details. It's a typical "Flex Alert" wherein they ask people to reduce electric use during peak hours, which is 4-9 PM. The headline implies people aren't supposed to charge their cars at all during the heatwave.. This is the kind of journalism that has led the country into the state of insanity that it's in.

http://www.caiso.com/Documents/excessive-heat-starting-tomorrow-will-stress-energy-grid.pdf

So you can't drive anywhere if there's a heatwave? Help me understand.

 

[fastpakr]

Someone was asking about battery self-charging. Hey, if you're jumping on a bandwagon, go all in...
"Eolo features giant horizontal propellers or wind turbines on the front, which spin fast as the car moves, taking in wind and converting it into electricity to charge the batteries of the electric car."
Meet Eolo, A Wind-Powered EV From Colombia (iamrenew.com)

There's a good reason that project (joke?) seems to have disappeared four years ago.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

There's a good reason that project (joke?) seems to have disappeared four years ago.

Interesting tangent:

Air Driven Generator(Ram air turbine)

A ram air turbine (RAT) is a small turbine that is connected to a hydraulic pump, or electrical generator, installed in an aircraft and used...

ourame.blogspot.com

Cropdusters use fans in the airstream to power their chemical pumps too.

 

[fastpakr]

Interesting tangent:

Air Driven Generator(Ram air turbine)

A ram air turbine (RAT) is a small turbine that is connected to a hydraulic pump, or electrical generator, installed in an aircraft and used...

ourame.blogspot.com

Cropdusters use fans in the airstream to power their chemical pumps too.

Absolutely - no question you can generate power from wind. But trying to do it that way on a car makes no sense when you can regen from the wheels instead during braking. Or if you're trying to do it full time, it's just as fruitless as the idea of running constant regen to draw 'free' power from the coasting wheels.

 

[Bill]

So you can't drive anywhere if there's a heatwave? Help me understand.

That's what you would think if you believed that headline. What the idiot who wrote the article didn't explain is that, due to the heatwave, CALISO expects a high load on the grid and they've asked people to reduce the use of appliances during peak hours of 4-9 PM. You can still use them if you want. They are just requestion that people don't use them. Electricity is also very expensive during that time. Most people are using timers to charge their cars and they set it to charge when the rates are cheaper.