Yeah, I think given physics you need something really light and really slippery to get decent solar range. It’s interesting, but for many it’s not super practical - this is America and what not.
I know when I was in college, we had a solar car team, I should go look at how those folks are doing now. Tiny cars with skinny wheels and no turn signals or anything, more proof of concept type stuff but it’s fascinating.
Oh, well it could be a net negative if the extra power generated is insufficient to compensate for the extra pounds.
I’m thinking long term… I’m sure short term it can’t possibly be worthwhile. But if they can generate more power with less square footage then eventually they’ll be meaningful.
If you average 7 mph then you can go 2450 miles on a single charge. Now that is worth considering. You would be able to drive from NY to LA with no stops.
As long as we are on the topic of electric vehicles, here’s a story about a guy that was killed by one and his neighbors who were hospitalized…
It doesn’t say in the article but I believe most e-bike fires happen while the battery is charging. I’m hoping that a fast battery swapping network in nyc (like they have in Taiwan, mentioned above) could improve this.
I wonder what the risk of those fast-swapping stations catching fire is. Hopefully the “trained professionals” would start fewer fires, but I don’t have a great sense of how many of these fires are user error vs faulty products vs just the inherent risk of the technology.
No guarantee that it will be 100% safe. But at least it will get it away from residential buildings - apartments/lobbies. Perhaps treat the fast-swapping station (where they are likely to be charging the batteries as well) like a gas station, where there’s some safe distance between it and neighboring buildings.
A ton of e-bikes are made in China with basically no regulation, there is a big push right now on UL certification. Some/many of the larger companies like Lectric and Aventon are UL certified, but if it’s a $500 bike on Amazon, who knows what all is in there?
I didn’t realize that that’s already an electric car with a battery that can be quickly swapped out for a fully charged battery
It’s mostly in China, with a few stations in Europe. It’s only one brand of car that’s compatible with the battery station. But the company is interested in creating an industry standard.
One of the standards will have to be “battery must be accessible for easy removing and replacement.” Currently (still a great gag!), batteries are nowhere near accessible.
Then, the problem becomes, “how do we keep these easily accessible batteries from being easily stolen?”
Well, they still weigh a good bit, so probably not as easy as catalytic converters.
I take it you didn’t watch the video. They get around that by having the battery be easy to replace by a specially designed robot, not by a human being with common hand tools.
I did not watch the video.
What I mean is that it would take every car company to agree to put the batteries in the same easily available spot, in, say, the next generation of models. And, what does this company want, in terms of payment for the idea/patent? That might also be a sticking point, unless a government, or 100, steps in.
Geely and NIO have agreed to develop shareable standards for battery swapping. NIO has 2200 (as of end of Nov 2023) and Geely 300 swapping stations in China.
US regulations might be able to solve that problem.
Like with gasoline, a leaded gas nozzle must be at least 15/16” and an unleaded gas nozzle cannot be more than 13/16”. And if the car takes unleaded, the opening is restricted such that the leaded pump nozzle will not / cannot fit.
It would be a little more complicated to mandate the battery specifications though.
A car battery in an electric car can weigh over 1,000 lbs so I would not worry too much about someone stealing them.
Solid State tech might help, but I think mfr’s would just put more solid-state batteries in cars instead of making them easier to replace.
mfr’s could make certain models battery-replaceable while making others not. The Battery-Replaceable ones would look very similar to each other among mfr’s (IMO), so nothing unique about them. Just refrigerators with wheels.
It could come under the purview of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. As DTNF mentioned, there may be a need for the battery to be easily replaceable, perhaps for safety reasons (in case of fire etc.). The regulators may demand that there be a standard size and location across all vehicles (or there could be two or three standard sizes). The manufacturers would have input but they would all have to agree on a standard.
They already have standard sizes/shapes for regular car batteries that’s been in place for decades and promulgated by -
That won’t stop everyone. Thieves managed to steal a two-tonne sculpture -
Eh, nothing is perfect. I think if it stops 97% of thieves or more you call that a win.
(I’m not sure 97% is the right cutoff.)
Given that it’s taken us until 2025 to more or less agree on what plug to use for EV charging in the US, and we are only converging on USB-C for phones because of the EU, I’m not optimistic we’ll see swappable EV batteries any time soon here.