The gist of the document in the link says something about sons who inherit their father’s money and go on to live a life of excess. There is a link to a video on a Chinese video sharing website, but the video is not there.

The “related content” underneath points to legal matters, probably reflecting the contents of the document.

http://www.nciku.com

So I think the sentence means “New Money (something) 2 Watch Online”

I saw the Bolivia story recently (half the world’s Lithium lives there), not sure if that’s a problem or not, could be an opportunity for the country and it’s people – important though that the ‘owners’ of this resource don’t get screwed in the process – in the classic style of Oil to date.

Hear what you say about Hydrogen and Lithium maybe both being needed in the future – there’s probably more to add to that list, I imagine a diverse range of participating solutions, inc the ones we can’t see yet.

But with global shortages of water already apparent and predicted to become potential flash points of the future (for resource wars) – I’m not sure how much of an advantage for Hydrogen it is that it’s source is water. That might just be another nail.

Cheers.

Thanks keep on trucking

Diarmaid O Seigefriede

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7707847.stm

An inescapable fact is that, with fossil fuels our utter dependency is as much of a problem as the climate change aspect. Such a significant proportion deriving from just one region of the globe merely compounds our hostage status. Diversification and not having all our eggs in one basket is the key to a future – any future. To pin all our hopes on any one technology, and particularly on any one geographical area, is akin to the madness that has got us where we are today.

Hydrogen is regarded by some as the longer term viable alternative to lithium battery technology. It has significant problems, not least of all storage difficulties – it will leak out of just about any container, eventually. However, it has one truly unbeatable quality, which is that its source (water) is so widely available in almost all regions on the world. With a significant part of the global fuel and power market no longer able to be used as a political lever, the democratisation of sustainable transport might actually become possible.

If the hydrogen we need for road transport can be electrolysed from water using dedicated renewable generation capacity, close to the point of use / sale, a decentralised hydrogen (and lithium) economy can really get going. It cannot be one or the other – it has got to be both.

How about wind-powered fuelling stations able not only to recharge hydrogen tanks for fuel cell cars (locally sourced hydrogen as well), but also charge lithium batteries for battery electric cars?

Who knows, perhaps the familiar BP / Shell / Esso branding of our roadside environment could in time be replaced by “Ecotricity” – or perhaps “Zerocarbonista”? Or perhaps the point should be to wean ourselves off all such messages of soviet- style centralisation.

We chose the batteries for our car on the basis of a compromise between performance, longevity and safety – from all the options you list here. This being a sports car, power to weight ratio is important, Phosphate didn’t offer that and we also needed something with a good track record (so nothing too exotic/new). On balance this is our choice.

I think you’re being a little emotive to suggest Lithium Iron Phosphate is ‘much much’ safer – we see the difference between this technology and the one we’re using as being analogous to the difference between petrol and diesel.

On cycle life we’re looking at 1200 cycles based on 80% discharge and much more if discharged less fully, which based on typical daily mileages and charging at home each night – will be easily achieved. Your 400 to 500 is way out, in the case of our batteries. Perhaps this in some part leads you to your conclusions, which I don’t share of course. These batteries will have a very long lifetime (approaching Phosphate but not quite 3000 cycles) and are being ‘packaged’ in an extremely safe manner – they’re the right choice for this job.

You may well be right on the green aspect of the batteries though, we didn’t look at manufacturing process.

Cheers.

I’ve had some experience in assessing battery technologies (for electric powered delivery trucks). I found that although Lithium Cobalt Oxide cells have the highest energy density (up to about 180Wh/Kg) and might be great for toys/image driven products like the Tesla, the lifetime economics suck for city vehicle/commuter applications compared to Lithium Iron Phosphate. Although the phosphate chemistry has a little over half the energy density of the cobalt and costs a little more, you can expect about 8 times the life (up to 3000+ charge cycles, compared to 4-500). Plus its much much safer and a bit greener from a chemical point of view too. The other main contenders – Manganese Oxide and Tri-element (Ni Mn Co) fit somewhere between the ones I’ve mentioned.

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Hi Justin, I work on the basis that everything new starts expensive and clunky and mass take up makes it slick and cheap – witness mobile phones (like two housebricks stuck together at first) and laptops – both cheap as chips compared to how they started. That’s just my approach, it’s based on a big part of optimism mixed with some historical examples – so not very scientific…

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Thanks Simon, that’s a very useful and far deeper insight to the question.

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No argument from me there Chris…

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Hi Ian, a theory that I think a few people share is that the car and oil companies have a shared vested interest in the status quo – internal combustion engines and liquid fuels. A ‘Hydrogen economy’ as it’s often referred to would suit the oil companies current infrastructure and business model rather well. They’d make the stuff in refineries, ship it in tankers and retail it from petrol stations. The car companies have a lot invested in the internal combustion engine, which can run on Hydrogen, so for sure they like the sound of it. I don’t think it’s more than that, a business preference. Capitalism in action.

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Hi Michael C, I went back to the manufacturer of the batteries we’re using, to check their product expectancies against your statistics here.

They tell me the batteries will be good for up to 10 years if looked after – charged and discharged properly. And that the batteries are good for 1200 cycles at an 80% discharge rate – we reckon that’s good for about 180,000 miles – way above the current lifespan of a car.

So I’m not sure the problem is as bad as you think. Yes the batteries will ‘wear out’ but it may well be on a timescale not dissimilar to a typical car lifetime (14 years in the UK) and with a total range in excess of today’s typical car.

Pairing with ultra capacitors can only make that better perhaps.

Cheers all

Yes electric cars have been around for as long as steam cars and petrol cars but they died out for a reason, it was cheaper and easier to make IC engines not mention they were a lot more fun!

Electric cars will only flourish if there is either no reasonable alternative and/or if they are marketable to the public. I love the idea of a Lotus based electric sports car as it appeals to the petrolhead in me. The limitation has always been POWER and refuelling. if I’m going on a 1,000 mile business trip over 3 or 4 days, I need to know I can refuel easily and quickly and at the moment that rules out electrics.

I’m watching this project with great interest

Check out the documentary ‘Who killed the electric car’. From what I hear electric cars have been around for the best part of a couple of hundred years in some crude form. My dad always complains that they’ve had electric milk floats since he was a kid! So I think it’s a very valid question to ask why we have not persued this technology more aggressively.

One factor I keep hearing that battery powered vehicles are relatively low maintanence. The battery being the main thing to replace. This would I’m sure mean millions in lost revenue for car/parts manufacturers and their garages. The govt. could attempt to stimulate this type of R&D, but then where would they get their tens of billions in oil revenue from?! I suspect it comes down to a web of economics related reasons!

The Reason that Hydrogen is still being developed at such a rate is because it still requires a distribution network. this means Oil companies will still have fueling stations and the need to move fuel around and manage sites etc. Its a corporate thing!
Batteries are the future, the next step are hybrid batteries, Lithium mated with super capacitors.
Watch this space, the next few years are going to be very exciting!
Mark

In 3 years (if 900 million cars could be made with batteries) 900 million cars will need new batteries. (the only technology that could reduce the wear on batteries is pairing them with ultra capacitors)

The upshot is that lithium reserves may be a serious concern. Add in the fact that much of the proven reserves are in Russia, China, Zaire, etc.– the same areas causing political problems for other resources, and it becomes a worrying situation.

Source: http://books.google.com/books?id=Ua2SVcUBHZgC

Does anyone know why Industry seems to avoid talking battery?

The more I learn about this, the more it sounds like you need to sell a ’sustainable transport package’ rather than just an electric car. I mean the whole caboodle – the car, the green electricity to charge it, the recycling service, and also the opportunity to invest in new green energy projects.

And the published numbers which has been scrutinised thus are also not good enough to give a defintive answer to the li-ion debate.

People have only really looked into lithium over the past three years – it is now that companies are scrambling for new deposits,and doing resource calculations.

The only good resource data is from the established players (of which there are few: SQM,Talison, Chemetall, FMC.

The reserve calaculations for the untouched deposits are from the 60s and 70s, dated and inaccurate comapred with today’s means and needs.

At the moment, more li carbonate supply is coming online, the car manufqacturers are simply talking about li consumption but not taking it. In 3 years time we shall see…

All will be discussed at the Lithium Supply & Markets conference in Chile, 26 Jan 09 –

http://www.indmin.com/lithium

should give us a clearer picture at least

The real question is: what is the quality of the ore that can be extracted and at what cost – both in terms of price and energy required to extract and process it?

The point being that lower quality ore gets exponentially more expensive to process as the % content goes down. It’s not just about the raw numbers.