So someone is suddenly going to find a magic way to make batteries so much better? Some way of proving physics and chemistry all wrong? Why don't we just prove gravity wrong and go directly to antigravity flying machines?
Did you know that we largely have the advent of automotive air bags to thank for glass cockpits in GA aircraft?
The sensors used for airbags are also used in GA glass cockpits. The size of the automotive market made them worth the R&D spend, and now we get to use them too.
Similarly, the EV market being larger means that there's more money available for R&D in batteries fit for that purpose. It's not magic, it's money. More eyes on the problem means more, better, quicker solutions.
One big change is the LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) battery chemistry. Roughly half of the new Tesla's worldwide now have LFP packs. The LFP pack eliminates all rare-Earth metals. No nickel or cobalt.
Where are you getting that data from? It seems maybe a little optimistic to me.
My car is one of the first batch of LFP Teslas released in the US in late August of 2021. They were using them in China beforehand.
However, it's only the Standard Range Model 3s using LFP. One of the disadvantages of LFP is the lower energy density compared to the NMC chemistry, so an LFP battery with the same energy is physically bigger and heavier. Great for the shorter range models and even more so for stationary storage applications, but not as good for long range.
How much weight of freight was it carrying? And what was the gross weight? Critical questions that need accurate answers. If its a truck that grosses 100,000 pounds but carries a payload of only 10,000, the truck will never pay for itself unless freight rates skyrocket.
Nobody is going to bother building a truck that weighs 90,000 pounds empty. See my first post in this thread for more realistic numbers. It will have an effect, but likely not an overly significant one.
The exact same problem that held back the adoption of automobiles in rural areas. Sure, cars were commercially available in 1910, but some horses and wagons were still being used in more remote places even into the 1950s because there were no service stations, or they were far apart. And with few or no car owners to buy fuel, there wasn't much incentive to build service stations. The government did not step in and spend vast amounts of taxpayer dollars to build them, either. Those were the sane days when they let the market figure it out.
Kinda like how Tesla built their own Supercharger network?
3) The statement that you need to "double" the size because of the reduced payload is bogus. A diesel semi can carry a 68000# payload and be at 80000#. A Tesla semi can carry 54000# and be at 82000# (EV's are allowed slightly more). That's 25% - not double.
Diesel semis aren't carrying a 68,000 pound payload. When I was driving - After the advent of trailers built of modern materials, but before all of the wacky aerodynamic devices - An empty trailer weighed just shy of 10,000 pounds on its own. The tractor, a diesel sleeper with composite body panels, weighed around 23,000 pounds. That left 47,000 pounds for payload.
I didn't watch that 500-mile Tesla truck run video, but did it have to handle any significant hills? In BC, where I grew up, there's no way that that truck would go 500 miles though those mountains, and BC is mostly mountains. I've heard of Tesla car owners hating those climbs. Maybe they get some regen from the downhills, but there will still be losses.
There will be losses, but not as much as you'd think. You get about 2/3 of the extra energy back. It affects an electric truck less than a diesel truck because the diesel truck still needs to burn the extra energy on the way up, but then wastes nearly all of it on the way down as waste heat (either in the brakes or via the compressed air released from the Jake Brake), with only a bit of extra momentum at the bottom if the driver lets it roll a bit.
Yeah, there's no governmental pressure limiting choices that's effecting the market. Absolutely not. *cough* All the best products required government regulation for people to adopt them. *choke*
Are you having trouble finding gasoline vehicles to purchase? I doubt it. Plenty of them out there. For sure, there have been government programs promoting EV adoption, but it's not "limiting choices" it's providing incentives.
Honestly, EV's are a horrible choice for the average person. I own one.
Why? And what do you own?
EVs are a fine choice for the average person. It's the edge cases where burning dinosaurs is still necessary.
