TRANSPORT:
Crikey. It was yonks ago when I wrote that. Thanks for specifying the actual quantity of Lithium used in the batteries for the car. My initial sum was a back-of-fag-packet calculation. However, the point still holds. There are only 35MT of the stuff in the Earth and probably, only about half of that can be extracted. It’s a very polluting process that’s ruining swathes of Bolivia with the current (small) demands of phone & laptop batteries… Someone, one day, will have to pay for this devastation. Maybe sooner. Also, as the dynamics of supply and demand kick in, the cost of batteries using lithium will inevitably increase. What is now a pricey vehicle will become very expensive.

In the UK where I live, renewable energy usage is all talk, and for transport, what talk there is, is mainly concentrated on electric vehicles. It’s the be-all and end-all of the argument because people don’t think out of the box.

To answer your question, my finances won’t cover the cost of an electric car, but I wouldn’t want one anyway, not with the current design. However, I’ve had my name down for three years now for an air powered car from Guy Negre’s design. These are small and light and use a minimum of the earth’s resources in their manufacture. Cost in the UK will be ~£7k which I can afford. Their primary energy source (after the sun, etc) is still electricity, but instead of storing it as transportable chemical energy, it’s stored as the transportable potential energy of pressurised air. There’s a lot of stasis in the motor industry which has until now hindered any take-up of manufacture of this vehicle type. Perhaps the catastrophe such as the collapse of GM etc will be the catalyst? I hope so. The financial disparity in R&D investment between air-powered c.f. conventional fossil fuel and now battery power vehicles, is staggering. With proper finance, the cute air powered prototypes will not be so laughable and easily ridiculed by macho men in their 4x4s. It’s a perception thing, all driven by marketting. A Simpson’s episode from the 90s picked up on this (Canyonero, Canyonero).

I may consider an electric car with a different type of, or better, cell. Since I wrote the piece, Lithium has been engineered to be used in better and safer ways. However, the battery of cells still comprises a sizable part of the overall mass of the vehicle and is totally inappropriate for heavy haulage, let alone a little 2-seater runabout.

When I drove artics for a living, my tractor unit weighed ~6.5T and was capable of towing an all-up weight of 38T (legally, it’s gone up in the UK since to 40T on five axles, 44T on six axles) which meant a 24T goods payload for me at that time. Only barges (ships) followed by trains have a better payload to empty weight ratio, so for the foreseeable future most bulk goods delivery to the end consumer will be by road. A battery of cells to push 40T at 90kph on a similar design ratio to the Mini E is obviously out of the question.

The air-powered car on the other hand is scalable in the same way as the internal combustion engine for a variety of vehicle sizes. Considering it’s short period of development (at a time when petrol has been king), I think it has a lot of potential using current materials and technology. For instance, it uses a lot of aerospace technology that is found on my Trek bicycle that I use for commuting to work. e.g. light alloys, carbon fibre, kevlar, high tensile stainless steels, composite plastics…

For 95% of the UK, the Mini E is just too expensive and too impractical. You can afford one, but that’s just you. As a transport solution, it needs many decades probably of development to get it anywhere near the modern engine/vehicle combo. In many respects, it’s design efficiency is like the wonderful Saturn V rocket where most of the vehicle is engine and fuel! AS I read it, the battery needs replacing after a few years anyway and I pointed out the pitfalls with resale value.

There has to be a better way.

POWER SOURCES:
Shell pulled out of what would’ve been the biggest windfarm on the Earth in sea off Britain last year. And since 1863, the plans for a barrage across the second-highest tides on the Earth have come and gone many times. I watch these tides daily as I walk my dog down the River Parrett… It’s a complete waste (the non-usage of the tides, not the dog walking!) This is an example of the talk and actions that get stultified by other concerns.

The US, especially the central, hot, under-populated area is ideal for solar energy production. Swathes of Africa and Asia are the same. The trick, as I see it, is investing in a new electric grid to transport the power to where people live. So you are fortunate in your land. You have pots of sun. In the UK, solar=not so good. ( For me, although I’d love a system, it’s not cost-effective for me. I guess it’s the economies of scale in manufacture, and for that, we really need governmental ‘encouragement’ and/or investment. For instance, the tax breaks and financial assistance to the nuclear industry are phenomenal – and guaranteed. When a private company can’t make a go of it, in comes the taxpayer to prop them up. This applies especially to the ongoing centuries-long costs of clean-up, which for some reason are quietly forgotten in the economic argument… )
However, the UK gets the solar energy for the whole North Atlantic Ocean as it is coverted into the kinetic energy of waves which batter our western coasts – again, where not many folk live. So for the UK, the same trick is needed – investing in a better grid to transport electric power from where the energy is to where the people live. (There have been some really good recent developments in this field in the UK, so there’s hope yet. They’ve spent ~£30m on it – wow! c.f. nuclear energy research £5billion)

In deserts, it doesn’t get cloudy, but it does get dark at night… People say this is a failing of renewables, that is, the diurnal and other variablity of renewable and solar-type energy sources. However, Britain has used one good answer for several decades now.
The answer is to pump water up a hill and let it flow out by gravity when you need it. Dinorwic is a prime example where 1.8GW can be switched on in 16secs! If such a system was repeated in the many sparsely populated highland valleys of the UK, that would be the UK sitting fine and dandy, independant of any foreign energy supplier. How many valleys? I haven’t worked it out, but we have enough. The UK also has quite a few estuaries and bays that could be used as energy storage using polders as well as for generation. Severn, The Wash, The Thames, Morecambe Bay. There are plenty of places to store energy as the potential energy of pumped storage in the UK.

The current state of micro-power generation (c.f. to the large-scale things I mentioned above) is generally deemed to be not cost-effective. Things like 1m wind turbines and solar panels for houses. This is what I’ve found also. However, the UK is awash with massive warehouses and Distribution Centres for supermarkets and the like, all generally having almost flat rooves. This is acres and acres of readily accessible roofspace crying out for a goverment edict to be covered in cheap, yet low efficiency photo-voltaics. (I’m thinking of the flexible photo-cells that can bend to any surface. They are two orders of magnitude cheaper than high O/P cells with one order of magnitude less O/P.)It’s an economies of scale combined with legal pressure thing again. This is a huge energy resource going to waste. Something like this would force down the cost for the average homeowner, and make it feasible to install on our widely different roof types. (My house has a highly pitched tiled roof on a 3-storey Edwardian building. As a town house it’s unsuitable for virtually every conversion I’ve considered, although being a town house, my transport costs are low).

CONCLUSION:
The technology isn’t the problem. We have enough knowledge as a species to solve this. The problem is the overall lack of willpower for change. I see the MiniE as a quirky demo thing for the well-off. It’s not a solution for the masses and is a technological dead end currently. The battery (electric storage) technology may get better, but it has to be several orders of magnitude better, not incremental as it currently is. It’s an advertisers dream fuelled by politicians ignorant of current technologies. The most efficient vehicles are the lightest compared to their payload. 747 jet – that’s pretty efficient. But it wouldn’t get off the ground with a battery (or an air-powered engine either for that matter). So it’s horses for courses obviously and things can’t be compared in that way. But personal transport, in principle, needs to be a lot lighter; not heavier and faster and heavier and faster as is the current trend.

Thanks for your input,
Rees

As for your math – the batteries require about 2 kilograms of lithium per KW, so it is only 70 Kg for the MINI E.

Wind is not the only source of energy, how about solar? I make enough at my house every day to charge up both my electric cars and cover all my other electricity needs. How about you?

Cheers,

David

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