attn peak oil fearmongers: fuel cell cars take a leap forward

[wacki]

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Fancy math? Knowing how much energy sunlight contains per square meter is just basic to the issue. And no smart person thinks it's a non issue. Solvable, maybe. But only if we recognize it as an obstacle to deal with.

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I used the term fancy math because I really don't feel like replicating a peer review journal and going through every single tiny statistic. The image I showed earlier shows more than enough land for 10 billion people. That graph is from a peer review journal. As for costs well the only number I care about is the cost for kilowatt produced. And current numbers aren't that bad. This should be shown by the fact that solar companies are having problems producing cells fast enough.

[Al68]

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Fancy math? Knowing how much energy sunlight contains per square meter is just basic to the issue. And no smart person thinks it's a non issue. Solvable, maybe. But only if we recognize it as an obstacle to deal with.

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I used the term fancy math because I really don't feel like replicating a peer review journal and going through every single tiny statistic. The image I showed earlier shows more than enough land for 10 billion people. That graph is from a peer review journal.

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OK, assume that image is correct. Offhand, it looks like it may be in the same ballpark as my "fancy math".
Each "little" square looks roughly the size of Ohio to me. Maybe not impossible to do, but hardly a "non issue".

[J.A.Sucker]

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Slightly off topic, but the movie Who Killed the Electric Car attempts to answer that very question. If you want a copy, PM me about it.

The ultimate answer, though, was that battery power was definately not the limiting agent in our lack of electric cars,

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Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't those cars use lead acid batteries? NiCad, Nimh, and Li-Ion are far better technologies. Despite the availability of much better technology battery powered cars still blow massive chunks. The Tesla, while extremely fast and gets great range, has a $50,000 battery pack that needs to be replaced every 400 or so charges.

I think I'm going to go to blockbuster and rent that movie.


That being said the oil companies are responsible for killing the trains and public transport sector in this country. There is no doubt about that.

Without a doubt, solid state batteries, super caps, and carbon nanotube storage, and other battery techs are the future. Most of these techs have an indefinite lifespan and will make gasoline look slow and clumsy.

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wacki,

The problem with batteries in the near future (10+ years) is that they require a ton of energy to produce and dispose of in an eco-friendly way. This is a HUGE part of the equation that nobody ever seems to mention.

Nate Lewis, who's probably the best electrochemist in the world, gives a completely unbiased view of alternative energy. He's a huge proponent of solar energy, but acknoledges that there is no way to do it cheaply right now. Of course, if global warming is to be stopped, we have to develop this technology YESTERDAY. It's kind of scary, really. However, he does make the following comments about cars:

- Oil cannot be beaten for power per volume.

- Electric/hybrid cars are terrible (at least right now).

Put it this way, the energy it takes to make and dispose of a battery in a Prius (~ 100K miles lifetime) exceeds the amount of energy consumed by a Hummer H2 over this 100K miles. Yikes! These are Lewis' numbers. It's all about total energy used, and gas is fine for cars in the forseeable future. What we need to do is get rid of fossil fuel power plants, and that's difficult for lots of reasons. See Lewis' webpage @ Caltech for more.

Of course, the rub of all of this is without consumer interest, people won't develop the technology. WHile hybrid/electric cars are bad NOW, doesn't mean that they will be bad in 20 years, but we need to develop them. People should just have their eyes open.

Lewis also makes the point that the #1 issue with solar energy is storage. Battery technology is terribly slow to develop and still relatively sucks. Niether I nor anyone else honestly knows what the battery techs of the future are, but I'm pretty sure it isn't carbon nanotubes. It's hard to make good batteries, and these things have to have a long lifetime and be easy to make. Finally, they have to be easy to dispose of - solid state materials are typically aren't. This is probably the #1 problem in Chemistry of the 21st century in my informed opinion.

Best,

The Sucker

[wacki]

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Of course, if global warming is to be stopped, we have to develop this technology YESTERDAY. It's kind of scary, really.

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Yes but global warming isn't a binary thing. 1 degree is better than 2 which is better than 3. Obviously the polar bears can't be saved (outside of putting them in a zoo) but giving up and ramping the atmosphere's CO2 content up to 750 would make this planet a very different place. So to say it's too late to stop it is misleading and rather inaccurate. Only certain tipping points can't be stopped.

As for the batteries I'll check out his site. Up to this point I've relied on the dust to dust study from these guys:
http://www.cnwmr.com/

They agree that the first hybrids were more costly than hummers but not because of the batteries. It looks like I have some more reading to do and some friends to e-mail. Thanks for posting sucker.