Germany looking to ban ICE's by 2030

In reply to bigben:

Theoretically, this can also be a way off of imported energy. Germany is pretty coal rich, and if they used this to generate all the energy needs for the country, including transportation, well...

bigben wrote: One good volcanic eruption spits out more greenhouse gasses than all of the cars in the world.

Source?...All of the science I've been able to find seems to contradict this commonly used but unsubstantiated claim:

USGS - Volcano CO2

Politics will be a big problem for massive EV implementation. In order for it to work you'd have to integrate them into the power grid in a way that would require so much top-down dictation of how it's going to work that it would nearly be on the level of nationalizing the electric utilities.

Having said that, widespread implementation of EVs into a smart, integrated power grid would have tremendous advantages. But with most of the economic and power elites thinking 'just let me die rich first, then do whatever you want', it's a near impossibility.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

Agreed. Market needs will dictate better than regulation. There will likely be certain situations where ICE vehicles will be preferred over EV's, but for the average driver just going to work every day, EV's will eventually become the norm. Of course there will be situations where EV's are not appropriate - like crossing the Australian Outback or the Western US. At least not until they develope an EV that can average 70-80 mph for 8 hrs on a charge. Hard to say if a 600+ mile EV range is possible, but maybe we'll see it in our lifetime.

As mentioned in other threads, gasoline won't go away, but it may get harder and more expensive to get. Owning a classic car will be like owning a horse.

For energy production, mass production is generally more efficient from both an economic and emissions standpoint than when produced individually. Especially when solar, wind and better electric storage systems become more widespread.

If Musk gets his way, home solar use will increase, and make charging your EV little or no hit to the local power grid. Charging stations could benefit from similar tech to reduce their overall impact. Heck, the cars themselves could incorporate solar panels to charge on the go, or while parked in a lot. Wireless charging is already available for some EVs. If that were incorporated into parking spaces, your 300 mile range EV could get you to work, charge while you're there, and get you home. I don't know many people that commute 300 miles each way.

I know people have been saying that solar power is 'the next big thing' for about 50 years now, but maybe they're right this time? It may not be a full replacement, but it could supplement the existing infrastructure enough that switching to more and more EVs isn't such a strain. Coupled with more efficient tech in homes and businesses like LED lighting, improved HVAC, and low energy appliances I wouldn't expect the draw to be much more than what the utility companies can handle implementing on their own due to market demands.

GameboyRMH wrote:

alfadriver wrote: No reliability issues? Do you realize how much voltage and current is required to charge for a nominal 200 mile range in 10 min? The cooling system required to deal with that would be really big. Hundreds of volts and hundreds of amps- enough to melt dirt (and I have seen that done with electricity). How does that not come with the same charging and battery issues that Samsung is dealing with right now?

You're assuming that we're putting that much energy into a present-day li-ion battery, which would indeed end in a fireball almost as quickly as boosting the engines in the Wright Brothers' plane. For a different type of battery, the waste heat from the charging process could be manageable, or even negligible - a graphene supercapacitor might take it like it's no big deal.

Just for clarity here, having lived with a Leaf for two years, and working in the energy sector, and having a strengthening disdain for nuclear power...

I like EVs. A lot. If I had money for a proper daily driver, it would be another Leaf, hands down. I loved it. Simpler, less to break, less ancillary systems to maintain, less wasted energy.

That said I think you're missing what alfadriver is laying down. It's got nothing to do with the battery, it just that transferring that much energy quickly is hard. It's easy with gasoline because it's super energy dense and super safe. There are not a lot of unintentional gasoline fires due to refueling.

Pretend you have the 100% perfect battery from the year 2100. It can take as much energy as you can throw at it without heating up one single degree. It is perfectly efficient in that it gives you back 100% of what you put in as fast as you could want it. So you still have to get power into it somehow. Alfadriver is saying that the diameter of the cord required to get that much energy into the car that fast is going to be measured in feet. We just can't throw infinite amounts of electricity down a wire or we melt it and then get a giant spark plug. If we really expect to charge an EV capable of 100+ mile ranges in under a minute, it's going to require a not-invented-yet refueling station which has, at a minimum, a liquid cooled cable that's bigger than you can lift. Perhaps this ends up looking like a plate which pops up under the car or something, but it's going to be complicated.

Batteries which get refueled through some liquid, or swapped, get around this neatly, and that would be a welcome innovation.

Frankly, most people need that type of range so infrequently that I believe that limitation will remain a limitation for a long time and most of us will just charge at night.

Great, now I want an EV again.

tuna55 wrote: Batteries which get refueled through some liquid, or swapped, get around this neatly, and that would be a welcome innovation.

This is an avenue that I'm surprised hasn't caught on. A couple of years ago, Tesla had tech to swap entire batteries in less than 2 minutes, without getting out of the vehicle. They had a station setup to do it somewhere between LA and SF that they recently closed because nobody was using it. The free superchargers they have are apparently good enough for most people.

Video of Tesla battery swap from 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

Well in terms of the charging system, that's right, dumping such massive amounts of energy into a car will become a bigger problem than having the car store all that energy. You might say we're already at the point where the charging system is becoming the bottleneck in charging speed - you can't quick-charge an EV at home right now unless you happen to have 3-phase power.

At home, 220v charging will do the job well enough for just about everyone, but at gas stations you'll probably see these things happening to help EVs charge faster:

1. On-site energy storage, using supercapacitors, compressed air storage or flywheels buried under the parking lot just like the gas tanks are now. This way a car can charge faster than the gas station can take energy from the grid.

2. Ever-increasing charging voltages...480V for starters, to keep the cable beefiness and waste heat down.

3. Possibly some extremely beefy charging cables. Think like 2 gas filler hoses going into a car, but the hose is all wire. The cables for a Level-3 480v "quick charge" system are already collectively about the width of a gas filler hose.

STM317 wrote:

tuna55 wrote: Batteries which get refueled through some liquid, or swapped, get around this neatly, and that would be a welcome innovation.

This is an avenue that I'm surprised hasn't caught on. A couple of years ago, Tesla had tech to swap entire batteries in less than 2 minutes, without getting out of the vehicle. They had a station setup to do it somewhere between LA and SF that they recently closed because nobody was using it. The free superchargers they have are apparently good enough for most people. Video of Tesla battery swap from 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

I did not know that they had done that. Very cool. I also think there is a model for buying the car and leasing the batteries. Getting a fresh battery pack every day for $50 or so monthly would be worth it over paying for gasoline and worrying about the long term condition of the cars battery.

GameboyRMH wrote: Well in terms of the charging system, that's right, dumping such massive amounts of energy into a car will become a bigger problem than having the car store all that energy. You might say we're already at the point where the charging system is becoming the bottleneck in charging speed - you can't quick-charge an EV at home right now unless you happen to have 3-phase power. At home, 220v charging will do the job well enough for just about everyone, but at gas stations you'll probably see these things happening to help EVs charge faster: 1. On-site energy storage, using supercapacitors, compressed air storage or flywheels buried under the parking lot just like the gas tanks are now. This way a car can charge faster than the gas station can take energy from the grid. 2. Ever-increasing charging voltages...480V for starters, to keep the cable beefiness and waste heat down. 3. Possibly some extremely beefy charging cables. Think like 2 gas filler hoses going into a car, but the hose is all wire. The cables for a Level-3 480v "quick charge" system are already collectively about the width of a gas filler hose.

You're on the right track, but you can't increase the voltage to infinity, and to get close to the energy density of flowing gasoline, you need more voltage than normal people can be around to make the cable manageable. You can do the math, I have in the past, it's just a lot of energy no matter how you look at it. 480V is not nearly enough. Beefy doesn't begin to cover it. To get enough energy into the car that quickly, you won't be able to pick up the copper, it will be too heavy.

STM317 wrote:

tuna55 wrote: Batteries which get refueled through some liquid, or swapped, get around this neatly, and that would be a welcome innovation.

This is an avenue that I'm surprised hasn't caught on. A couple of years ago, Tesla had tech to swap entire batteries in less than 2 minutes, without getting out of the vehicle. They had a station setup to do it somewhere between LA and SF that they recently closed because nobody was using it. The free superchargers they have are apparently good enough for most people. Video of Tesla battery swap from 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

I'm not surprised battery swapping hasn't caught on. Flow batteries could work but battery swapping is an idea chock-full of huge problems. Batteries and their fitment into cars would have to be standardized. This would be very bad news for automotive packaging and a death sentence for battery innovation. This would be at least as bad as standardizing CPUs in computers - there's a reason they don't stick to the same socket for more than two years. Then you'd have to risk getting a worn or dud battery at the gas station.

Also it's an idea that doesn't have much of an advantage if your car has 200+ miles of range, like all modern EVs. Most people would like to take a break after all that driving.

tuna55 wrote: You're on the right track, but you can't increase the voltage to infinity, and to get close to the energy density of flowing gasoline, you need more voltage than normal people can be around to make the cable manageable. You can do the math, I have in the past, it's just a lot of energy no matter how you look at it. 480V is not nearly enough. Beefy doesn't begin to cover it. To get enough energy into the car that quickly, you won't be able to pick up the copper, it will be too heavy.

I know, and I admit that these factors are going to reach limits of practicality (somewhere around the point where it's not safe to sit in the car while it's charging, on which side of that point I'm not sure) which will effectively set a hard limit on how quickly an EV can charge, but I think that limit will be enough to satisfy everyday driving needs for just about everyone, especially considering that everyone will be leaving home with a "full tank"

GameboyRMH wrote: Well in terms of the charging system, that's right, dumping such massive amounts of energy into a car will become a bigger problem than having the car store all that energy. You might say we're already at the point where the charging system is becoming the bottleneck in charging speed - you can't quick-charge an EV at home right now unless you happen to have 3-phase power. At home, 220v charging will do the job well enough for just about everyone, but at gas stations you'll probably see these things happening to help EVs charge faster: 1. On-site energy storage, using supercapacitors, compressed air storage or flywheels buried under the parking lot just like the gas tanks are now. This way a car can charge faster than the gas station can take energy from the grid. 2. Ever-increasing charging voltages...480V for starters, to keep the cable beefiness and waste heat down. 3. Possibly some extremely beefy charging cables. Think like 2 gas filler hoses going into a car, but the hose is all wire. The cables for a Level-3 480v "quick charge" system are already collectively about the width of a gas filler hose.

So in the most optimistic versions of EV, they get about 100mpge. Given that EV's are only 85% efficient, that's still pretty high, but good enough for numbers.

For a 300 mile range, you would need the energy equivalent to 3 gallons of gas.

Most people can fill their cars between 1-2 min.

So do that at 10min.

Give or take, that's 360,000 KJ. To deliver that in 10 min, that's 6,013kW, or about 6,000,000 W.

Since 1W=1A*1V, Well... you can do the math.

We were melting dirt in the Idaho desert with about 600V and 600A- turning it into glass.

The reason this is important, someone is going to forget to charge their car overnight. A lot of people will. So fast charging will be a big deal. Or if they are going more than 300 miles in a day.

That's currently the hard point for EVs.

And, to me, makes fuel cells a better option. If they can system efficiency to twice that as a gas engine, then using bio fuels becomes pretty realistic. Especially since we have multiple waste streams that can make HC's.

Unfortunately for luck- ICE's systems have a very easy to deliver and dense fuel, and they can be made out of two of the most common and easy to get materials. Not an easy problem to get around.

GameboyRMH wrote: Also it's an idea that doesn't have much of an advantage if your car has 200+ miles of range, like all modern EVs. Most people would like to take a break after all that driving.

Also, most people aren't on a perpetual road trip.

I could count the number of times I drive until my tank is depleted then refill and continue driving each year on one hand and have many fingers remaining. I bet in Germany this type of road trip is even less common.

I bet 90%+ of tanks will be coming from home/parked. If the other 10% of the time it takes 30 mins, it isn't that big deal. Yes, there are certain professions & lifestyles that will be more sensitive to this.

GameboyRMH wrote:

tuna55 wrote: You're on the right track, but you can't increase the voltage to infinity, and to get close to the energy density of flowing gasoline, you need more voltage than normal people can be around to make the cable manageable. You can do the math, I have in the past, it's just a lot of energy no matter how you look at it. 480V is not nearly enough. Beefy doesn't begin to cover it. To get enough energy into the car that quickly, you won't be able to pick up the copper, it will be too heavy.

I know, and I admit that these factors are going to reach limits of practicality (somewhere around the point where it's not safe to sit in the car while it's charging, on which side of that point I'm not sure) which will effectively set a hard limit on how quickly an EV can charge, but I think that limit will be enough to satisfy everyday driving needs for just about everyone, especially considering that everyone will be leaving home with a "full tank"

I live with an average sort of commute in average sort of weather and in two years, the Leaf's range was not sufficient for the day's tasks like three times, so I'm already fine with it. I am just trying to point out that it's never going to be as quick as filling up a gasoline fueled car.

GameboyRMH wrote:

tuna55 wrote: You're on the right track, but you can't increase the voltage to infinity, and to get close to the energy density of flowing gasoline, you need more voltage than normal people can be around to make the cable manageable. You can do the math, I have in the past, it's just a lot of energy no matter how you look at it. 480V is not nearly enough. Beefy doesn't begin to cover it. To get enough energy into the car that quickly, you won't be able to pick up the copper, it will be too heavy.

I know, and I admit that these factors are going to reach limits of practicality (somewhere around the point where it's not safe to sit in the car while it's charging, on which side of that point I'm not sure) which will effectively set a hard limit on how quickly an EV can charge, but I think that limit will be enough to satisfy everyday driving needs for just about everyone, especially considering that everyone will be leaving home with a "full tank"

It takes me just over 30 min to commute. I'm not that willing to wait 10 min to do that. Which is still a stretch for the current high charge systems.

If everyone is charging at work or home at the same time, that, too, is a lot of additional energy to supply at once. Basically, taking all of the gasoline used and replacing it with electricity to charge cars. The phase in of power plants to deal with that is pretty big- say for the US, it would be 15M cars a year to add to the charging system until we reach about 300M cars. That's for a 100% EV market in the US.

To see if it's a big deal, once a month for a year, take 30 min to fuel your car up 1/2 way. See if you can deal with it, since it's not a big deal.

alfadriver wrote: That's currently the hard point for EVs.

Because Americans are insane. Most people don't encounter that situation even remotely regularly. But they want to be able to avoid it should it arise.

ProDarwin wrote:

alfadriver wrote: That's currently the hard point for EVs.

Because Americans are insane. Most people don't encounter that situation even remotely regularly. But they want to be able to avoid it should it arise.

Gameboy suggests 10% of the population will have to deal with that. I don't think that many people would want to sit still for 30 min just to get a fast charge to get home.

To pretend people will always remember is ignoring human nature.

A random half-hour refill once a month is a terrible analogy. Does the average driver exceed, let's say, a 200-mile EV's range once a month? Let's assume they do, that means they've just spent at least 3 hours driving a long distance and would probably like a break anyway. That's not a random inconvenience hitting you like Windows updates on shutdown. That's a normal part of a road trip.

Me personally, the only time I might drive more than 40 miles in a day is in an offroad rally, so if I leave with a "full tank" every morning I would never need to stop for "gas."

(Also the breaks on the offroad rally are at least an hour, so driving an electric 4x4 in them might be doable, once it can safely handle deep wading. Would've saved me nursing a blown HG on the event before last).

I only fill up a little more than once a month anyway. This would be like a once or twice a year thing for me. Basically long distance road trip only.

Oh, and if I lived in Germany, it would pretty much be never. Because public transit.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

I drive 300 miles a week. 200 miles is quite realistic here in the US. Ask any Challenger how far they drove and how many breaks they took.

Again, to assume people are 100% charging is a false assumption.

We keep getting into the thinking that the "average commuter only needs X" which has never, EVER been close to correct. How is going to EV's going to change that? Unless that F150 that has one driver and is empty actually a Fiesta that is in disguise.

Germany is just like the US- just smaller spaces so that C cars are just as popular as C/D cars. Few actually have just a commuter car. They have a car "just in case" just like we do. And if public transit was that effective, they wouldn't have a market for cars right now.... The usage is MUCH higher than the US, sure. But it's nowhere near 100%.

In this area, the electrical grid becomes taxed in the summer time when everybody wants to run their A/C. The power company has asked for remote throttles that they can trip when demand is high to limit A/C usage. I can imagine a massive overhaul of the grid being required if everybody wanted fast charging.

Also, and I don't understand battery technology well, but I thought constant partial charging of batteries was a bad idea. It might be a specific type (I think I am remembering that it is) but is that still a limitation?

With gridlock, energy usage would be down, overall, since the batteries are only powering things like A/C, the radio and such. I can see the on-off systems that are on lots of cars overseas becoming a lot more common before EVs take over.

If everyone charges at night, when the typical load is lower, its not a big deal. Also, I know a company you can call to help out with some super efficient gas turbines to bring some power to your town.

Really though, that's the point. A combined cycle natural gas plant can be as much as 63% efficient. That's well more than double the most efficient cars, and most of it is simply because of the size. Granted there are losses, but if the natural gas energy goes to the car and gets whittled down to something like 50% to the wheels, that's still crazy far away from where an ICE is today. Alfadriver can say better than I can, but I think a very efficient car is at something like 25% to the wheels.

So, we have more power plants. So what? They are more efficient from an energy perspective and also from a pollution perspective than the ICE's they are replacing.

One thing people seem to be forgetting.. you are looking at it from our perspective. In my lifetime, I have seen people pooh-pooh Catalyst exhausts and the way the first ones cut power the engines were able to produce.. but here we are today with your average going to the store car producing 300+ hp and being an ULEV on top of it.

Something else, I know about this because I am looking into it for my boat.. self generation. Solar cells integrated into the hood, roof, and trunk of the car will go a long way towards extending range and speeding up charging. You can even get solar "glass".. literally the windows in the car can generate power.

alfadriver wrote: In reply to GameboyRMH: I drive 300 miles a week. 200 miles is quite realistic here in the US. Ask any Challenger how far they drove and how many breaks they took. Again, to assume people are 100% charging is a false assumption. We keep getting into the thinking that the "average commuter only needs X" which has never, EVER been close to correct. How is going to EV's going to change that? Unless that F150 that has one driver and is empty actually a Fiesta that is in disguise. Germany is just like the US- just smaller spaces so that C cars are just as popular as C/D cars. Few actually have just a commuter car. They have a car "just in case" just like we do. And if public transit was that effective, they wouldn't have a market for cars right now.... The usage is MUCH higher than the US, sure. But it's nowhere near 100%.

Why is it a false assumption to assume people are charging to 100% at home? If you didn't, you've done the equivalent of leaving your cell phone unplugged overnight or letting your car's gas run too low to make it to work the next day, you messed up. The exception in the short term will be people who live in cities and only have curbside parking - but they're in an EV's ideal habitat, doing short distances in stop-and-go traffic, and they're more likely to have charging available at work, so they're not completely out of luck.

The "average commuter only needs X" is also a valid construct to use. You drive 300 miles a week, an average of under 43 miles a day. If you had an EV with 200 miles range, and you plugged it in overnight just like your cell phone, how often would you need to stop for a charge? Let's say you're super-wasteful and it's a bigass American pickup that you drive empty all the time and it only has 100 miles range. How often then?