CATL will start mass producing sodium-ion batteries

Also sounds like this technology may be a good application for RV battery replacements...like the old multi golf cart battery banks.
 
Probably still too heavy says the guy that just put 2 new SLA batteries in the camper at 75 lb each. Lithium would probably be under 30 lbs total but 4 times as expensive , IIRC.
 
Timpo said:
I think solid state still is the next gen, as Toyota is getting ready for solid state, I think that would be a game changer.
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They’ll also use those batteries in hydrogen fuel cell cars like the Mirai eventually. There’s a ton of movement in hydrogen service stations in Japan lately too. I’ll pass on that until my diesel is deprecated by law in 2050 - if I’m still around 🤣.
 
kmccune said:
We get our "flamm's mixed up from time to time
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VoltMan99 said:
They’ll also use those batteries in hydrogen fuel cell cars like the Mirai eventually. There’s a ton of movement in hydrogen service stations in Japan lately too. I’ll pass on that until my diesel is deprecated by law in 2050 - if I’m still around 🤣.
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I don't know, I think hydrogen can be pronounced dead. Hydrogen is a revolutionary energy storage system and electric is an evolutionary one, and history has shown us that evolutionary changes almost always win.

Revolutionary ones always suffer from the chicken and egg problem, where its not really viable until you have a hydrogen infrastructure in place but how do you put a infrastructure in place if there is no demand and visa versa. Regular electric can and did slowly evolve from hybrids and we already have electricity everywhere.

The sad thing too is even expensive lithium batteries that we think are massive capacity are actually pretty miserable when you compare them to your diesel. A gallon of diesel has around 40kWh of energy, the true king of density. o_O
density.png
 
Where do hydrogen fuel cells fit into that? By the way, the chicken-egg problem was there when gasoline came into use. For a while, people bought gasoline at the general store. It took decades to build up that infrastructure.
 
Kayakguy said:
Where do hydrogen fuel cells fit into that? By the way, the chicken-egg problem was there when gasoline came into use. For a while, people bought gasoline at the general store. It took decades to build up that infrastructure.
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Compressed hydrogen gas. There was no infrastructure to replace when gasoline came into use in the early 1900s. Steamers were too expensive and labor intensive to ever achieve mass adoption, and the first mass adopted vehicles like the Model-T were gasoline. To completely scrap an existing system, the new system has to prove that its not only equal but significantly higher performance than that which it replaces to warrant the undertaking, which is why revolutionary changes almost always fail. Evolutionary ones though like small changes to the fuel blends or additives or adding ethanol that work on the same pumps and in certain quantities on the same cars are easily and quickly implemented though. That's why electrification took off while hydrogen failed, as you could baby step to hybrids blending with established technology which hydrogen can't, and now the mainstream next baby step is to make plugin hybrids commonplace which again is an easy evolutionary change since everyone has electricity at home. Eventually as the batteries get better the evolution will slowly phase out range extending ICE generators in the hybrids making for a smooth transition. IMO the only reason hydrogen even exists right now is because some governments are forcing its continued investment as the free-market understands its a dead end tech. Its a shame as so many billions have been wasted on it that could have gone into other techs.
 
JASmith said:
I don't know, I think hydrogen can be pronounced dead.
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Probably because you live in America. It’s a pretty common sight around here in Tokyo. All of the buses are being converted from liquid natural gas. A few different types of cars too.
905D76FA-43D9-4261-9FE3-438094165FED.jpeg
 
VoltMan99 said:
Probably because you live in America. It’s a pretty common sight around here in Tokyo. All of the buses are being converted from liquid natural gas. A few different types of cars too.
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A common sight because its an economically viable solution that private investors have brought to market, or because the government is forcing its adoption directly or through massive subsidy/tax credits? That's the issue IMO. Even with the billions upon billions that governments keep throwing onto that bonfire, out of the 1.4 billion vehicles on the road, there are only ~6.5K hydrogen vehicles worldwide, and frankly I think there would be zero if the government would stay out of it and allow natural selection in the free market to pick winners and losers organically. The biggest growth market is also going to be China, not Japan's domestic market, and China is pretty much all in on electrification, especially important since they know they are very poor in oil and gas reserves compared to the US and are now the world's largest importer and dependent on the middle-east. Speaking of Japan, that type of energy insecurity is what brought Japan into WW2 when the US starved Japan of 90% of its oil imports with an embargo.
 
JASmith said:
A common sight because its an economically viable solution that private investors have brought to market, or because the government is forcing its adoption directly or through massive subsidy/tax credits?
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What difference does it make really? At least it exists in Japan. Why don’t you post a picture of your free market funded Electric powered public bus. Then we can bicker about funding and viability. 🤣
 
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VoltMan99 said:
What difference does it make really? At least it exists in Japan. Why don’t you post a picture of your free market funded Electric powered public bus. Then we can bicker about funding and viability. 🤣
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Its not my taxes, so I guess it makes no difference to me what Japan does, but I would care about what happens here. BTW, to clarify, I don't think electric busses are a good idea either, and a waste of limited resources. Since batteries are currently expensive and low density which becomes increasingly more problematic with scale (for an electric 18 wheeler to carry the same energy on board as its 300 gallons of diesel would be over 12,000kWh of batteries, or about 120 extended range Tesla batteries) which is so bulky and heavy it couldn't carry much of a load anymore before being over the weight limit), it makes more sense to use them in lightweight vehicles or for midsize and up to hybridize vehicles.

After all, if you can have one pure EV bus and nine pure ICE buses or ten hybrid buses, which fleet do you think will use less fuel? I'd wager 10 hybrid buses would win by a landslide and be more flexible in operating in the exact same way they currently are requiring no retooling. As batteries become cheaper and faster charging the batteries in the buses could grow to become plugin hybrids, etc. Nice smooth evolutionary transition that operators would undertake for peak economical benefit to reduce costs of operation. 👍
 
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