this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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Let's see if this breakthrough is scalable. 1200 km's and 10 min charging would definately make EV's more practical. I don't expect hydrogen-powered cars to become the standard anymore, especially since with those you'd still rely on 'gas' stations instead of producing your own energy.
You'd still need "gas stations" to recharge this battery in 10 minutes.
The charging current required for a battery like this would be in the high hundreds of Amps. Not something you can pull out of your wall.
Another thing with at-home charging that I don't see much discussion around;
In 2035 the EU will stop the sale of combustion engines, but when everyone drives electric, how will the electric grid handle millions of cars suddenly being plugged in at the end of each day?
Power companies can manage load. The power provider I'm with manages my charging. All I have to do is pick a time when I want it to be ready (the power company not only gives the half rate night pricing, it also pays me to do this). There's a lot of excess energy at night, off-peak. Millions of vehicles smart charging will balance the load.
The issue is, when millions want/need to charge at peak. Which, I haven't really seen yet (having owned an EV for 4 years now). Mainly because, it's more expensive to do so. What I have seen is the grid being overloaded because of students doing all the heating, laundry, dishwashing and showering when power companies offer a "free hour of power" and they all choose the same hour according to student scheduling (they prefer timeslots between 1600 to 2200)... But I haven't seen the grid go down because of EV's, we mainly pick the later timeslots (2300 to 0700).
Actually smart grids could rely on all those cars plugging in at once. Because cars can put energy back into the grid too.
As someone who works for a power company, it's an extremely difficult challenge we're facing right now to balance the load on the power network. There's high peaks and low lows, constantly increasing demand, people providing back tons of power through their solar panels and a lack of personnel to even onboard all the new customers. It's a real issue that's even leading to some of my colleagues getting harassed in the street by angry customers while working.
Aging Wheels has an excellent video about the Toyota Mirai and hydrogen fuel in general.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing! Several reasons hydrogen powered cars aren't practical for passenger cars.
It'd notably only make a tiny percent of EV trips more practical because nearly all current trips happen within a couple of miles of a home where you can charge at your leisure. More interesting will be how this tech compares to other renewable techs for powering shipping.
The real revolution will come from getting more and more of those car trips replaced with transit & bikeped. Save taxpayer money, prevent thousands and thousands of deaths, improve livestyles, and create more environmental cities.
As a first gen Leaf owner with 50 miles range who has bought 1/3 tank gas twice this year, I second this. BTW, charging on a regular outlet with no fast charger and haven’t seen our electric go up any noticeable amount since before the switch.
Definitely agree that for many people this will be the case, but for people who live in apartments or units without access to convenient charging facilities this new tech, if it scales, would still be quite useful. We do a 300km round trip drive a few times a month, and 150km round trip every day. Once per week we have a 200km round trip drive. Until 2 months ago we did not live in a place that had an external powerpoint anywhere near our allocated carpark and our workplace does not have any charging facilities. 10min charge every couple of days would still have been very doable. In our current place we could go for a current gen ev, if we had the cash, because we actually have a garage- but plenty of people do not.
Totally agree that expanding out public transport and making it affordable would absolutely be the best option and doesn't rely on technology we don't already have though. In our last place we technically could have replaced that daily 150km round trip with a 1hr train + 30mins walking each way, but even ignoring the fact that it was a much slower option, it was also more expensive even accounting for fuel, maintenance, insurance and rego on our car. If politicians wanted an easy environmental win they would subsidise public transport and make it more accessible.
If you ever expected hydrogen cars to become the standard, you must have lived under a rock.
There was a few years there around 2002 ish where hydrogen was being billed as a savior, exactly "becoming the standard" type talk. If you're old enough to remember that you might be of that mindset.