Many used cars are selling for more than new right now since the manufacturers cannont get the chips to finish the cars on the line.
China does not own that high of percentage of rare earth metals. They may currently be mining that high of percentage becasue they are not being good stewards of the environment. There are currerntly two major lithium mine projects being debated over their environmental impact in the Charlotte area right now. They are saying that the deposits are someof the largest in the world. There is also an active gold mine, as well as many inactive ones.
My wife was reading that article yesterday. Shipping prices have gone up 7x for goods going back to Asia, plus the friegt increase to get material to the ports. The farmers can afford to ship their grain, so containers are returning empty.
Containers are used for whatever they can hold. Except for liquids, those you ship in ISOcontainers. The days of shipping loose bulk grain have long vanished.
Battery technology is being worked on. The biggest hurdles are charging time, battery degradation, and weight. Range is a seconadry issue but should improve if they can cut weight.
Most of the lithium mines in Africa are actually owned or run by the Chinese. The working conditions are atrocious.
That must come as quite a surprise to all of the bulk carriers carrying bulk commodities across the seas.
www-wsj-com.cdn.ampproject.org
It's wreaking havoc on goods from other parts of the world in the meantime. I work for a Japanese tire manufacturer, and our backorder situation is out of control due to this chaos.
A 25kW PV system shouldn't cost more than ~$60k and it's going to produce ~45MWh/yr. That's a ~10 year payback BEFORE the federal tax credit or ~8 years after the FTC.
Define “responsible”. 60% of the electricity in the US is generated by fossil fuels and another 20% by nuclear. Only 17.9% of US electricity is derived from wind, hydro, & solar (eia.gov source).
You don't need to guess... this is a known quantity. ~300wh per mile for a large EV.
Roughly 2/3 of current cobalt supplies come from DRC/Africa. Australia has massive cobalt deposits as well. A lot of cobalt is produced as a secondary product from nickel & and other metal mining operations. The good news is that cobalt is becoming less and less necessary in Li ion battery formulations. Tesla has demonstrated that it can be virtually eliminated from nickel based chemistries, and it was never needed in Iron based chemistries.
If (when) EVs become the dominant vehicle choice, I have a hard time understanding your comment above. The SOP will become: drive to work, drive home from work, plug the car in. That would indicate that most charging will take place in early evening when everyone is also making dinner and ramping up the HVAC system to make it more comfortable in the house. Even if we assume that all chargers have a timer to initiate charging after midnight, just for a choice of time, then you know have all of these chargers coming on line so the peak will shift.
When I said 'aggregate EVs' I mean combine them into a network creating a 'virtual power plant' as Tesla is already doing with their PowerWalls. You get home, plug-in and your car joins thousands of others in a 'virtual power plant'. Wind is being curtailed? Cars in the network charge faster. Demand has picked up but wind is the same? Cars in the network charge slower. The utility wastes less renewable energy and you get to charge your car for next to nothing. Ford even wants to make this Bi-Directional where your car can actually sell power into the grid.
Why wouldn't they? Instead of a big thermal plant cutting its output because wind turbines ramped up they get to chug along at exactly 1100MW while the EV fleet fluctuates with variations in supply and demand. What they hate is when you have 27GWs of wind predicted to be a full capacity from 1am - 4am but demand is only going to be 25GW. 4M EVs each wanting ~10kWh and they don't much care when would solve that problem.Oh I'm sure the power station managers would love that, LOL...
bkmetz ???
A local power company is already doing something close to this. My colleague has solar and is installing powerwalls. His power company will pay him to run off his batteries during peak demand periods. Helps them put off building more capacity.
Here's an article from 5 years ago. I'm guessing cost is one reason it never really took off. They're quoting $1,000/kW. Most EVs have at least a ~7kW charger so adding an EV to a network would provide the same value as ~$7,000 in ice storage.
Refrigeration is a pretty mature technology, not really any opportunities to do more with less. If anything the cost has gone up in the past 5 years. Ice storage would be even worse since the bulk of the cost is going to be just raw materials.
That's also $60K I don't have. I think the quote I got for a 25kW system through our co-op was under $30K, but still, it's money I don't have. And I honestly wasn't wild about a loan through them, because there's still interest tacked onto it.
Yeah, probably not for me. Right now, I have my truck parked down by my gate. It's a 1995 F-450, and I keep my 20 foot trailer permanently attached, since I don't use the truck without the trailer, and quite frankly, it's a pain in the ass having to hook/unhook the trailer on that truck by myself. I suppose if I went the EV route, I could charge it in the same spot, but I don't want to think of what it would cost to run a charger down there. Distance-wise, it's about 800 feet from my breaker box, and I don't currently have any power going there right now. I also would assume the charging station for residential use is water resistant, like what I would see in a parking lot for a supercharger?
I've been in quite a few. Just ask @turbobrick240 about my luck with deer. Hit a white tail on the way to his farm a few years back. That wasn't a fun night. In my neck of the woods, we have white tail and Axis deer, black buck antelope, wild hogs, coons, and vultures. Yes, people have hit vultures, which usually means a broken windshield and regurgitated stomach contents all over the interior. I've heard horror stories from a friend who owns a body shop in town.
Same here. Last year, I only drove about 53K miles, but I'm usually putting on 55K-80K a year. This year, I might be even lower, at around 40K projected. It's not uncommon for me to drive 350-500 miles in a single day in-state for work purposes.
Charging time to me would definitely be the biggest hurdle. I don't like milling around at a fuel station, acting like a tourist. I like to get my fuel, record my mileage on a receipt for later input into excel, and be on my way. Or if I'm tired, I might take a 20-120 min nap in the packing lot with the AC on full blast (did that yesterday while it was 105 in Houston).
Oh yes... I forgot to ask - the home-based supercharger. How much current do they take? Remember my situation, too. I really don't have any room on either driveway right now for vehicles, so along the road from my gate would be where things would get charged. In fact, that's where trucks, tractors and trailers are presently stored. Also, I don't really get 40mpg unless my car is devoid of a trailer.
??? How did you arrive at a 18 year payback on a PV system that costs under $30k and saves ~$6,000 per year?
