Quote:
Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0
The physics doesn't change in 10 years. Either we store energy directly, or we convert it to ammonia/hydrogen then convert it to hydrogen (if ammonia) then convert it to energy for use or storage. That process is inherently less efficient and would require more utilities to generate power to do the same job. The only reason to do that is so hydrogen could do a job batteries alone couldn't do, but this is a shrinking proposition year by year.
With batteries, we have the system in place to already fuel these cars at home. Adding supercharger stations is incredibly easy in comparison to hydrogen fuel stations. Even if ammonia takes off, we would need to have maybe hundreds of 2m sized 'cracking' reactors at each fuel station, or something bigger, to process the ammonia, or we are left with shipping liquid hydrogen from a 'cracking' plant to the fueling stations, which ammonia avoids shipping large quantities of liquid hydrogen in transoceanic tankers, but is still not ideal at the local level.
With batteries, all we need is more, green utilities, and we need batteries. Tesla has laid the groundwork for other manufactures to follow where they can greatly reduce the factory footprint and carbon footprint of generating batteries, while increasing battery production rates, all from local resources.
Right now, we lack the infrastructure to produce ammonia or hydrogen in a carbon neutral way, nor do we have the fuel stations in place, nor do we have the means to rapidly scale these systems and some of them might be economical, as described below:
https://www.carboncommentary.com/blo...carbon-economy |
Every time you charge and discharge a battery you lose ~40% (~20% each) of the energy to heat generated by internal resistance. And that's not including fast charging, which is far less efficient. It's not "direct" storage of electricity, it's still storing it by chemical means, and there are still significant losses.
Then you need the cooling/heating circuits when the vehicle is not even running to maintain the batteries in certain conditions.
We also lack the infrastructure to produce electricity to produce batteries or the energy to put into them in a carbon-neutral way. The electricity we do make needs to be used on production. If you were to store that in battery banks you are accepting yet another ~40% loss.
Adding a supercharger station is not incredibly easy btw, and you need significantly more of them compared to fueling stations to service the same number of vehicles. I think we talked about this in another thread.
Then you have to look at the whole car. Batteries are heavy, and in order to get good range/performance you need a lot of them. Heavier cars cost more energy to build, use more consumables like tires (which take energy to produce) and put more stress on roadways (which take energy to maintain). The total energy needed to move a heavier vehicle is greater therefore absolute losses from discharging or regenerative braking are going to be higher than a lighter vehicle.