Will this be tomorrow's transportation?

[turnkey4099]

There is no way to solve the range problem. Too many people are clueless about physics and chemistry and they believe the engineers will solve it soon. There will be no solution or manor improvement unless the Almighty adds some new elements to the periodic table.
Upgrading batteries is like horse breeders attempting large gains in endurance and strength but it is just is not there . The next technological step will have to be as different as the horse is from a JD 4020.

Maybe they'll bring back "the amazing air car". Run on compressed air. No matter how much explanation was given as to whey it was not a viable thing, the idiosts sucked it up.

 

[turnkey4099]

I think developments in lighter than air heavy lift has potential for long distance shipping in the future. Instead of venting helium in order to reduce bouyancy the helium is compressed, so issues with the ship being hard to manage on the ground are alleviated. Imagine shipping a container of your household goods cross country in a container while you relax in a stateroom. The ship could make stops, dropping off a tractor to a farmer and picking a container of produce. Emergency supplies, even portable MASH units could be delivered to disaster areas while serious cases could be medivaced out by the same ship. NY to LA could theoretically be done in 56 hours carrying 150 tons.

Freight traines could beat or equal that speed while caryying 10x as much. Okay, the 10x may be a bit much but...

 

[the old grind]

Tesla doesn't have a prototype semi yet. Pictured (two links) is Nikola Motor's. I share B&D and DF's skepticism. Nuclear will remain set back on its heels until we explore other fuels that have a much lower radiation o'all and no tendency to 'run away' Chernobyl-style.

Thorium has been studied for such, requires excitation, and when that is turned off the reactor cools. I suppose there's more Uranium on the planet than Thorium, but if not it must be scarcity of it, the usual 'inertia', or profit margins that deter further study or application. Nuclear isn't a problem in concept, just the fuel source.

Yeah, a Tesla is fast. Is that what matters most? Remember GM's leased '96 - '99 EV-1 electric? Fast was what it did well, not much else. To say that Tesla is more economical than a factory 'hot rod' we should remember one aspect of powerplant specialization. All too often that $$ saved on fuel goes into the carmaker's pocket. (Chevy Volt, report!)

btw, my brother bought his '12 Jetta wagon with the TDI option (yeah, that). Now the company is offering peanuts for a buyback ... just as he's about to break even on option cost vs economy ... at >80k mi.

 

[MossRoad]

Maybe they'll bring back "the amazing air car". Run on compressed air. No matter how much explanation was given as to whey it was not a viable thing, the idiosts sucked it up.

When we were out in Rapid City, SD, we stopped by this little park called Story Book Park. While walking around in there, we came across this...



Its a compressed air locomotive. They used them in coal mines. They could run for several hours. Only problem was it took hours to charge it up.

 

[vvanders]

We already produce enough oil in the US to not need foreign sources anymore and have a lot more available that isn't currently cost effective to produce. The primary reason we import oil isn't that we don't have enough, it's that our refineries are setup to refine their heavier crude. EPA and other government regulations make it cheaper to continue to import and refine that oil than it would be to refit the refineries for US produced oil. Eliminate the government involvement, or at least make it more reasonable, and that would probably change.

Fuel cells are the future, this battery powered electric vehicle thing is just a middle step. Limited range with a long recharge period isn't going to be acceptable.

You're not talking just Oil though, Solar and Hydro are great power sources and they don't require extra energy to refine the base product into something usable.

With respect to fuel cells a couple people have already touched on the issues around them. It's *really* hard to store hydrogen. Most commercial installations have hydrogen sensors because just about every tank leaks and if you don't have proper venting it collects and then explodes under the smallest spark.

Second as they age they get less efficient with the same amount of fuel. You'll pay the same for less range where as with batteries capacity lowers so you pay less. It's also not clear how the aging process works over the lifetime of the cell. We've got 43k miles so far on our EV and I've got less than 1% degradation in rage.

Lastly, the energy required to create and use hydrogen is really poor compared to battery EVs. This( Why a hydrogen economy doesn't make sense ) breaks it down. I think fuel cells have a place in high energy density applications like planes but probably not in a car.

In 2 years of ownership charge times have never been an issue, we leave the house will a full charge and use DCFC for a 30 min charge to 75%(300A @ 400VDC straight to the battery pack!).

 

[MossRoad]

Freight traines could beat or equal that speed while caryying 10x as much. Okay, the 10x may be a bit much but...

Your guess was too conservative....

150 tons for the airship.....

A Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range ore train pulled by a single 2-8-8-4 "Yellowstone" steam locomotive which totaled over 19,000 tons.... One steam engine pulled a train with 19,000 tons! That's 126X the amount of the airship.

Many main routes in the western US allow cars with gross weights up to 157.5 tons PER CAR! Many of those trains are 100 cars long or longer. That's 100 times as much.

 

[vvanders]

You might want to look into where most of the lithium is mined. Here's a clue, it ain't here.

You mean like in Nevada? Tesla agrees to buy lithium from Nevada mine near Gigafactory

Lithium is a small fraction of the material in batteries, they're largely carbon and the manufacturing techniques are the main driver of prices.

 

[dickfoster]

Tesla doesn't have a prototype semi yet. Pictured (two links) is Nikola Motor's. I share B&D and DF's skepticism. Nuclear will remain set back on its heels until we explore other fuels that have a much lower radiation o'all and no tendency to 'run away' Chernobyl-style.

Thorium has been studied for such, requires excitation, and when that is turned off the reactor cools. I suppose there's more Uranium on the planet than Thorium, but if not it must be scarcity of it, the usual 'inertia', or profit margins that deter further study or application. Nuclear isn't a problem in concept, just the fuel source.

Yeah, a Tesla is fast. Is that what matters most? Remember GM's leased '96 - '99 EV-1 electric? Fast was what it did well, not much else. To say that Tesla is more economical than a factory 'hot rod' we should remember one aspect of powerplant specialization. All too often that $$ saved on fuel goes into the carmaker's pocket. (Chevy Volt, report!)

btw, my brother bought his '12 Jetta wagon with the TDI option (yeah, that). Now the company is offering peanuts for a buyback ... just as he's about to break even on option cost vs economy ... at >80k mi.

Actually thorium is more abundant than uranium and we happen to have heaps of the stuff right here in the good ole USA. In fact we have a lot of it stockpiled already. We've actually built LFTR type reactors and they worked great. That was back in the late 60s. As you pointed out it's a throttled reaction so is not like trying to herd wild cats the way light water uranium reactors are. Oh BTW unlike uranium reactors, a thorium fueled LFTR reactor is so inherently safe it needs no containment vessel. There is no viable reason we aren't doing it now. There are no physics problems to overcome, no knotty engineering to develop or conquer, it's real, it's viable, it's proliferation resistant, it can be used to replace the heat source in every existing fossil fuel plant today, it's easily scaled to meet large and small energy demands, it can even be used to consume some of the stockpiles of radioactive wastes from uranium reactors that were currently stuck with. The only things really standing in the way are politics and the existing economic powers. If we don't stop piddling around with this idiotic solar and wind stuff and get busy on something that has real promise, China or some other country is going to get to it first and leave us in the dust. And if they do, that is where we will stay, following not leading.

 

[dickfoster]

You mean like in Nevada? Tesla agrees to buy lithium from Nevada mine near Gigafactory

Lithium is a small fraction of the material in batteries, they're largely carbon and the manufacturing techniques are the main driver of prices.

I thought they were forced to shut that mine down by the enviro wackos. Glad to here it's on again, if it is. A lot of it comes out of Bolivia.

 

[the old grind]

I wish I could link to the ultra-con anti-green bunch who insisted that if enough wind turbines were erected they would stall the Earth's rotation.

Of course we know (most of us, anyway ) that there will always be more trees than turbines, and that their moving and waving will maintain our existing wind patterns and our planet's 24 hr rotation. After I'm dead, who cares? :laughing::laughing:
(... Are we done with wood-gassification internal combustion so soon?? Aww....)

Seriously:

Vvanders, thanks for sharing real experience for those of us who often just listen to each other. There's always two
sides.