Catalyst value

[TonyS9]

This doesn't shock me, why do you think it would?

Cobalt is recognised as a shortage material and all battery develiopment is looking to reduce the requirements and find alternatives.

The article seems overly negative as it starts with the comment comparing annual cobalt production with requirements over 30 years, thats just stupid.

I'm not going to go into all the details but this guy seems to be a general scientist and not qualified to talk about power genertion. I can probably counter it or neutralise it given time. This is also evidence that he just doesn't like electric cars. Its not a proper 'report'. 20% increase over 30 yrs is nothing. Generally there is plenty of overnight capacity available and with smart power there will be further control and incentive for investment as needed.

With industrial changes like this there are always challenges. Its in the interest of the money makers to take account of it. Its something industry is good at.

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by TonyS9

This doesn't shock me, why do you think it would?

Because LIthium is another of the resources he mentions. I don't see a future in electric cars, i think they are a metphorical Band-Aid on a gaping hole in our transport and power requirements not just in deacdes but centuries to come.

I agree the whole picture is much bigger and the report is a snap-shot in a collage of information. Whether the author of the reort likes electric cars or not isn't really relevant IMHO, the fact is the earth doesn't have the resources (as far as we know at the moment) to support manufacture on that scale of electric vehicles (EVs).
The bigger problem as i see it is what are we going to do with all the cars being made now? Will they just be discared in favour of a new-fangled EV like more landfill? Will they truly be recycled?

A bigger problem for the earth as an entity in its own right is if we're mining more and more minerals etc from it, there will surely come a time when the surface is so weakend by the various mineshafts that the whole thing is likely to collapse inwards.
When i was at primary school there was a belief the centre of the earth was a red hot, molten mass of iron - we don't yet know if this is true. We also don't know for certain what exactly is between us on the surface an the centre of the earth. For all we know, it could be an alien planet on the inside and UFOs fly out of holes in the north and south Poles or from the depths of the ocean to see what's going on "up top".

I don't have or know the answers, i wish i did as i'd be worth more than my weight in platinum never mind gold! I don't think anybody has any answers at all at the moment, just possible theoretical solutions of which EVs are one which appears (only appears) viable at the moment.

There must surely be an answer to the question of where we can get free, sustainable, reliable energy from and i believe Tesla (as in NIkolai Tesla, not the Elon Musk Tesla!) had found and proved the theory but it was suppressed by the powers (no pun intended) that were at the time.
If that could be found and "reinvented", we could all have clean, reliable, renewable and sustainable power for anything and everything we need or want. I also believe his other thoeries would give us a lot more stuff that could be used. If you're interested enough, investigate the Tesla valve, the Tesla turbine and anything else that takes your fancy from his inventions. You may agree with what i'm thinking that he has found something and it has been hidden away/suppressed or whatever or you may think he found things that weren't really relevant to life in any form.

Like many inventions, the general public would have said "It'll never catch on" - things like vacuum cleaners, fridges, electric light, cars and so on

[TonyS9]

I'd suggest reading more New Scientist and less watching You Tube.

I think electric cars are doing and will do just fine. They will be the majority solution for the future, what other option is there?

Surely having an electrical background you know electric motors are just a much better solution for driving wheels than reciprocating engines?

[aardvarkash10]

The days of having a 1-tonne device to shift 1.1 people at a time while costing a year's salary in capital value and approximately 10% of the capital value in operating costs, with an economic lifetime of 12 years, and requiring 5% of the land area of countries it is commonly deployed in - those days are closing.

This without considering the health and social costs.

Hydrocarbon, hydrogen, electric, steam - it makes no difference. The private car is a hugely wasteful extravagance that has crippled economies worldwide.

I love them, but I won't mourn the demise of them.

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by TonyS9

I'd suggest reading more New Scientist and less watching You Tube.

I think electric cars are doing and will do just fine. They will be the majority solution for the future, what other option is there?

Surely having an electrical background you know electric motors are just a much better solution for driving wheels than reciprocating engines?

I'd rather not read New Scientist as in general, most of it is sponsored somewhere along the lines by people with a vested interest in making their ideas seem moe viable than othes. At least that's the impression i've got from reading a few sample copies at various points over my life.

As for YouTube, until i do my own research and investigation, i take anything remotely scientific or engineering based with a huge pinch of salt.

As such, you're way off when you try to second guess the operation of my mind!

On the face of it, electric motors are more efficient (about 80%) than most ICEs (about 60% give or take, depending on myriad factors) but how does the electricity get to the motor in the first place?

First we have a generator - about 80% efficient. So far, so good. Then there are a whole series of transformers and distribution networks, sub-stations and so on - all of these have losses.
By the time the electricity reaches the batteries in the EV, in usable terms there is about 30% of the energy that first went into the generator in the first stage of the power generation. Let's say the motor in the EV is 80% efficient - that means 80%of the 30% we're down to is available for use to actually move the EV - that works out as 24% - way lower than directly feeding the ICE propelled vehicle with fuel in the first place!

If that first generator runs on fossil fuels, we're already a lot worse off running an EV, not to mention the diminished range.

There are many other reasons why i don't believe EVs are the answer, even in the short term.

In fairness it's a few years since i did those calulations and big steps have been made in battery efficiency and to a certain point, motor efficiency but the fact remains not much has changed in power generation, therefore the EV is still an inefficient alternative.

As a global entity, we would have been better off researching better methods of powering the ICEs we already have, a cleaner, cheaper fuel that is more sustainable.

I'm convinced there will come a time when we have EV-Gate or similar when eventually it's realised that EVs aren't the answer, the same as diesel never was.

Anti-gravity engines and ionic propulsion are the way forward but at the moment they take huge amounts of energy and cost obscene amounts of money.

That means the problem still remains of renewable energy. Whether this air-filled aluminium battery will alter things for EVs is another matter.

[TonyS9]

You are saying that the grid is the problem, and I don't disagree, but that isn't the fault of the car. In many ways we'd be better buring the fossil fuel in the vehicle or house (which is why, I think, we do heating that way), but you are immediately at 20-30% for locomotion in that case. All things considered grid is just better, expecially if its from non CO2 generation. Their answer is HVDC grid, but I think a better answer for overall efficiency is microgeneration using CHP, solar and wind, however there is alot of vested interests in keeping the grid centrally powered. We might need all.

I did think that hybrids could be a good interim answer, as long as they achieve good mpg, like 100+ in town, but for some reason that hasn't happenen. Tesla has some really good batteries now, still expensive, but certainly a viable solution as far as I can tell. I'm mainly concerned there about how the car reports range. We just don't know this, and it represents the betteries life and value 2nd hand. The Nissan leaf didn't try to measure capacity atall, it just underestimated it when new, Leafs seem to drop capacity very quickly, 5-6yrs they are scrap. Tesla groups are reporting 10% capacity reduction after 500K miles which is good if true, but if not true might be your battery gate. For example if they used a number of recharges to estimate capacity reduction rather than volt drop per kWh. That calculation needs to be known, but lasting 500K miles is good in itself (if true). Battery capacity warranties have only come out in the last 2 years. Prior to that most consumers thought they would be protected against that because of unlimited mileage 6 or 8 yr warranties covering the 'battery', what they didn't know was that capacity reduction was not covered. New leafs now offer a decent battery warranty.

Not sure where you get that New Scientist is sponsored, they sell magazines. Adverts are clearly market and any conflicts of interest are declared, however such articles are rare and NS seems to generally disapprove of vested interest articles. They address the pertinant points and indeed report on credible anti-global warming studies. I find them honest, scientific and unbiased. having said that this is todays problem, knowing who to believe and trust. While it all very well being able to replicate a result for a study, few of us are able to do that.

[TonyS9]

Anyway back to the OP.

I got my money (£170 each), but there was a moment where the buyer presented me with a stock market output showing me a 5% drop due to the virus and how he is losing money. This was on Saturday when he received the items. I didn't respond and gave him to today to 'review the cats' and pay me the money. He sent me another message asking (pointlessly) did I want the money sent to the same paypal as the first.

On the whole I'd say a business that you can visit and gives you the money straight away is much less risk than an individual doing a bit of moonlighting. But do phone around, the price variance was £120-£340 for 2 cats.

[tofufi]

Would you mind forwarding me the contact details for your man?

Cheers!

[aardvarkash10]

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

On the face of it, electric motors are more efficient (about 80%) than most ICEs (about 60% give or take, depending on myriad factors) ...
By the time the electricity reaches the batteries in the EV, in usable terms there is about 30% of the energy that first went into the generator in the first stage of the power generation.

Apparently, no.

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

As a global entity, we would have been better off researching better methods of powering the ICEs we already have, a cleaner, cheaper fuel that is more sustainable.

I've been doing a lot of work in system-level problem solving recently. There is an almost universal truth in this process and that is that the best way of fixing a problem is by eliminiating the cause.

Its worth bearing in mind that the embedded energy and resource costs of a car generally exceed its energy and resource consumption in use. Given this, the solution to the energy and resource wastefulness of the private motor vehicle lies in eliminating the private motor vehicle as we know it.

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

Anti-gravity engines and ionic propulsion are the way forward but at the moment they take huge amounts of energy and cost obscene amounts of money.

Buck Rogers science of the first order.

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by TonyS9

Their answer is HVDC grid, but I think a better answer for overall efficiency is microgeneration using CHP, solar and wind, however there is alot of vested interests in keeping the grid centrally powered. We might need all.

Using an HVDC grid is going back to the argument between Tesla and Edison over a century ago!

As for CHP, i know of places where that is used to power/heat blocks of flats but i don't quite get hybrids. Using a petrol engine to drive the car and a generator to recharge the batteries is one thing, we already do that with the alternator but obviously for the batteries for motive power, the load on the generator is much higher. Seems daft using petrol to charge a battery to then drive the car with the efficiency losses incurred.

First, the generator is about 80% efficient and it charges the batteries which then power the motor which is also about 80% efficient so we're down to 64% efficiency from the output from the engine that drives the generator. I'm sure the losses through the drivetrain would be less so it would make sense to make the engine more efficient in the first place.

It's all a question of perspective, you see hybrids as being a good idea, i don't for the reasons above.
I'd rather see the generator in the hybrid being used to power a Browns Gas generator to reduce the amount of petrol the engine used and the emissions it produced.

However, as you suggest in a way in your post, it appears that ti won't be down to us mere mortals to come up with the idea.