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Can Flow Batteries Finally Beat Lithium?
(spectrum.ieee.org)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I don’t get it. For the average consumer, EVs as they exist right now are fine. Charging is generally 20 mins every 2-3 hours and only on road trips. Charging an EV at home is a trivial technical challenge. I understand that there aren’t chargers on street corners, but vehicles are rarely parked more than 20 feet from some kind of electrical service.
The idea of shipping liquid fuel in trucks and dispensing it out of hoses at special fuel stores is just silly. Rolling out that kind of infrastructure is unnecessary, and hydrogen has already showed that it doesn’t work. We only did it with gasoline because there was no other way.
I can see liquid fuel being useful in certain applications, but for the typical consumer, BEVs are the way to go.
For the average consumer most EVs are too expensive. The batteries probably aren't going to get much cheaper due to the rarity and expense of lithium. Finding a better battery tech could make the whole idea of mass electric car ownership make sense. I do wish people would stop caring about the range issue so much tho. Just charge the battery every night and you'll almost never need more then 80 miles of range
I hope we drop the idea of mass car ownership tho. Effective mass public transit and micro mobility seems like a much safer and more efficient direction to go
Doubtful this will plan out tho. These articles are basically just corporate press releases. A couple of these battery techs might pan out and work at scale
Any base on those claims that batteries aren't going to get cheaper? They have been for 15 years. There is still progress to be made. There are LFP that get rod of cobalt. There are sodium batteries in testing that will reduce lithium demand.