Comment on A robot just swapped my electric car's battery
RunningInRVA@lemmy.world 2 years ago
I believe battery and charging technology will eventually overcome the need for this.
Comment on A robot just swapped my electric car's battery
RunningInRVA@lemmy.world 2 years ago
I believe battery and charging technology will eventually overcome the need for this.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 years ago
Probably not.
Battery energy density is just about as high as it will ever get while still being a fraction of the density of gasoline. You can’t simply dump more energy into it, physics is the limit here.
You can maybe charge a bit faster but I think we’re hitting a ceiling there as well.
EasternLettuce@lemm.ee 2 years ago
NegativeInf@lemmy.world 2 years ago
“Welp, we invented everything. Universe is over, I guess.”
Daxtron2@startrek.website 2 years ago
It’s more like, we’re approaching the limit according to our current knowledge of physics, which is obviously a still evolving field itself.
Gumus@lemmy.world 2 years ago
With current materials - an important detail.
OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 2 years ago
That, and the internal combustion engine will never replace horses.
dustyData@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Well, it didn’t. If cars replaced horses why are there still horses? Checkmate atheists.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 years ago
So what you’re saying is that the only thing between you and imaginary devices that break physics is just your willpower?
Because that’s not how the world (read: the entire universe) works. You can want all you want but physics is physics, you obey those laws like it or not.
Going “but Elon Musk” isn’t helping either, it only makes it worse as a known incompetent liar will make lots of ridiculous claims that never become reality
OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Your comment is great! I’ve never seen such a calamity of fallacies. Well done. My only point was that doubting the ability of people to solve problems with technological bottlenecks has not gone well by pointing out a famous example of that, but you invented a whole world of misinterpretation that doesn’t seem to apply to my point at all.
Tronn4@lemmy.world 2 years ago
I dream of F-Zero type charging
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 years ago
F-zero?
Tronn4@lemmy.world 2 years ago
Nintendo game. Cars charge up at high speeds over a magnetic track.
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 2 years ago
You lack imagination. What if they had multiple smaller batteries, as some cell phones do? The big reason it’s not more common in phones is that space is a massive premium, which is less of a concern in cars. Weight is a bigger factor here.
EV batteries have hundreds of cells that could potentially be charged in parallel. It’s even possible to do battery swaps one cell at a time, albeit that’s unlikely.
And these are just possibilities that I came up with as a non-EE. I’m sure they have their flaws, but it would bypass those physical limits.
eerongal@ttrpg.network 2 years ago
This is already what they do. Dry batteries that are bigger than about your phone are generally comprised a whole lot of battery cells. If you ever take em apart, you’d basically see the cells are made up of what looks like a whole bunch of AA batteries (but larger).
They do charge “in parallel”, but that’s limited by how much electricity you can feed through into the system as a whole, and doesn’t speed up the process, it just makes them all fill at about the same rate.
Making the cells swappable is basically what this video is about.
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Nollij@sopuli.xyz 2 years ago
I mean separately. Why limit it to a single charging system? What if you had 2 (DC) charging ports, each capable of only charging half of the cells? Many heavy duty trucks have 2 gas tanks, each with a separate fuel door. They can be filled by 2 pumps simultaneously, cutting refueling time in half. What about 4? 10?
Obviously there would be downsides (cost being a big one), but it would enable faster charging.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 years ago
Ugh, again…
Your imagination cannot break physics and just because you can imagine it that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea or that it would ever work on an engineering level.
Take Hyperloop. Anyone with a basic insight into engineering that takes more than two seconds to think about it can conclude that it’s a horribly stupid idea that will never come to reality, yet people have invested billions in it, universities jumped the Elon band wagon because… I don’t know why but for ducks sake, it’s stupid and will NEVER work. Meanwhile in that decade that the US was playing with the Hyperloop shit, china built out thousands of kilometers of high speed rail that actually works and the US is still stuck with the laughably sad Amtrak toy trains. What has Hyperloop done in a decade and tens of billions of dollars? NOTHING.
Just because Elon musk says it’s his idea (it wasn’t, but he lies all the time so there is that) doesn’t mean it’s a great idea.
Batteries as they currently are will NOT get any more efficient. “Yes but” No. Won’t happen “BUT” No. We might be able to squeeze a few % extra here and there but a doubling or anything like that won’t happen.
We might get a new energy storage solution where maybe we store electrons in a plasma cloud in a container or something (this idea is pulled out of my ass right here and now), THAT would be a revolutionary new energy storage that maybe could give us double, tripple storage capacity.
But to give you an idea of energy storage: even the best battery out here still doesn’t get beyond 10-20% of the energy density of gasoline. You want an electrical plane? Sure, make battery energy density about 5x better (that’s a 500% increase) than it currently is and we’ll talk. Until then, it’s physically possible but practically stupid as your batteries will use 50-70% if your aircraft. That is not mentioning what will happen in case of fire. Kerosine is flammable and a problem, but kill the airflow and it’s out. Batteries, on the other hand, are a bitch. A batteries catches fire and it will go until it’s done. A battery catching fire in an airplane is a problem. An airplane on batteries with one of those batteries catching fire is a “you’re fucked” situation. You won’t survive, you’ll get roasted. So again, engineering wise things aren’t that easy.
Take Elon’s SpaceX. Everyone wows it for doing stuff badly that NASA did great 50 years ago, I am not kidding. If NASA did as bad as SpaceX 50 years ago they would have been disbandoned, but SpaceX has deep pockets, apparently, and so people applaud fuckup after fuckup. It’s painful to watch.
I’m dumping on Elon now as he is the biggest abuser of “if I imagine I can then I can” bit he is far from the only one. Dreaming is fine but if you want to make it real then you HAVE to comply with science and engineering. You can solve complicated or hard problems with interesting solutions (flying an airplane with static wings, hello Orvilles)
Have an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out, please.