Quote:
Originally Posted by Spuds
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.
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Of course there are losses. There are losses in everything. Hydrogen has greater loses and would require more infrastructure and more utilities to produce electricity. Producing hydrogen from excess energy could be a thing of the future, but I can't see hydrogen being the dominant or even significant format for passenger cars and most other vehicles.
The cost and speed of installing Supercharger stations is considerably cheaper. The cost to just set up a 120V outlet in garages, parking lots, etc is even cheaper. Supercharging will be nice, but the reality is that it just isn't that necessary. Home, overnight charging will be the preferred method. The average person drives 29.2 miles a day, so charging at night can accommodate that use with only 120v. Still, there is already technology for fast charging, but they are waiting for the batteries to catch up. There are companies with chargers that can add 20 miles a minute. That would be 100 miles in 5 minutes. Where will it be in another 15 years?
You say we need a lot of charging stations, but this assumes people will spend more time at charging stations. If most of the charging is done at home or at work or in parking garages then Supercharger stations will be used primarily for anyone who is commuting many miles in a given day. This is very different from how people refuel now. Right now, fueling stations aren't used all throughout the day. They are used at certain peak times like before and after work. At night, most of them are empty. A car could be programmed to drive itself to the nearest charging station in the middle of the night to charge itself. In states like Oregon, a person can't pump their own gas, so having an attendant plug in the car isn't a big deal. In all likelihood, the process will eventually be fully automated.
A Tesla Model 3 standard range weighs 3,550 and the long range weighs 3,800lbs. That is on par with other cars in its class like a Lexus IS or BMW 3 series. Battery weight will only drop from there over time. Most people just won't need a large battery too, once we lose range anxiety. Just like a family may buy a SUV for storage and trips and a small car or sports car, a family may opt for a long range vehicle and a short range vehicle. I commute 2.4 miles to work, so I could definitely live with a car with less range. And as it pertains to hydrogen cars, they are not lighter. The Toyota Mirai is 4100lbs. Batteries will most likely get lighter. I don't think hydrogen fuel cells, fuel tanks, etc will fundamentally be able to get lighter.