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Category Archives: Batteries
Review of “The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World” by Steve LeVine
Preface. This is a book review of Steve Levine’s 2015 “The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World”. If you ever wondered why batteries are still not even close to powerful enough to replace fossil fuels, … Continue reading
Posted in Automobiles, Batteries, Energy Books
Tagged battery, electric car
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Hybrid electric trucks are very different from HEV cars
Preface. The National Research Council paper I review in this post explains why it is hard to transfer auto hybrid technology to trucks. They are entirely different animals — medium-duty trucks weigh up to 10 times more, have up to … Continue reading
Posted in Batteries, Electric & Hydrogen trucks impossible, Trucks: Electric
Tagged battery, electric truck, HEV, hybrid
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Electric truck & car range less in cold weather
Preface. What follows are two articles. The first has excerpts from Calstart’s study of the effects cold weather had on lithium and Sodium Nickel Chloride e-truck batteries. The second article is from Consumer Reports, which says that half of driving … Continue reading
The periodic table limits battery development
Preface. My book, When Trucks Stop Running, makes the case that civilization ends when trucks stop running. The replacement for diesel fuel that everyone expects, especially because Elon Musk has told them it’s on the way, are battery electric trucks. … Continue reading
Would Tesla, SolarCity or SpaceX exist without $4.9 billion in government subsidies?
[ Tesla has made no new battery breakthroughs. Batteries aren’t much better today than they were 200 years ago. All Tesla did was build a better battery management system (BMS) by stringing tiny batteries together — thousands of them. But … Continue reading
Posted in Debt, Lithium-ion, Photovoltaic Solar, Subsidies
Tagged altnerative energy, debt, renewables, subsidies, tesla
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All Electric Trucks. Probably not going to happen. Ever. Why not?
There are “forms of transport that cannot be electrified — heavy-duty trucks and planes… Even if the electricity problem can be solved, it won’t address the needs of planes, trucks, ships and some industrial heating that cannot be electrified” (Long). … Continue reading
Posted in Batteries, Lithium-ion, Trucks
Tagged A123, all electric, battery, e-truck, electric truck, fuel cell, Smith Electric, subsidy
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What is the life span of a vehicle Lithium-ion Battery?
How long a lithium-ion battery will last depends on many factors Lithium-ion battery life is defined in studies as beyond its useful life when its capacity falls by 20 percent or more. Lithium-ion batteries start to degrade as soon as … Continue reading
Posted in Lithium-ion
Tagged battery, life span, lifetime, lithium ion, longevity
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Revolutionary understanding of phsics needed to improve batteries – don’t hold your breath
What this Department of Energy document shows is that we can’t make the necessary REVOLUTIONARY breakthroughs to electrify cars until we understand the physics of batteries, and points out that “battery technology has not changed substantially in nearly 200 years.” … Continue reading
Posted in Batteries
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American Physical Society: has the Battery Bubble Burst?
Aug/Sep 2012. Has the Battery Bubble Burst? Fred Schlachter. American Physical Society. APS News Vol 21, number 8. Phys.org Three years ago at a symposium on lithium-air batteries at IBM Almaden there was great optimism. The symposium “Scalable Energy Storage: … Continue reading
Posted in Batteries, Transportation Infrastructure
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Electric Grid Energy Storage
Storing electricity Electricity can’t be stored. It has to be converted to something else. Nearly all of the electric grid storage (95%) comes from pumping water up to a reservoir so the water can fall again and generate electricity. But … Continue reading
Posted in Batteries, Electric Grid
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