Justin Mikulka: This will be an interesting day to reflect on in the future. "Battery cells at $50/kWh means the technology to decarbonize most of road transport globally is already here, as opposed to in some future scenario." EVs are cheaper than ICE now. Today.

This will be an interesting day to reflect on in the future. "Battery cells at $50/kWh means the technology to decarbonize most of road transport globally is already here, as opposed to in some future scenario." EVs are cheaper than ICE now. Today.

China’s Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shiftswww.bloomberg.com We no longer need to model for when cell prices drop far enough to decarbonize road transport. That day is here.

The thing that makes this day interesting to me is that as we learn that battery electric vehicles are cheaper than ICE vehicles, we also learn that Saudi Aramco is investing heavily in ICE vehicles. heatmap.news/electric-veh...

Saudi Aramco’s Big Bet on Combustion Enginesheatmap.news On the future of ICEs, stuck bridges, and patriotic appliances

cheap batteries at a high cost

Corruption and Rights Abuses Are Flourishing in Lithium Mining Across Africa, a New Report Finds - Inside Climate Newsinsideclimatenews.org On a Sunday afternoon in March 2023, Darlington Vito was shot in the head outside an industrial lithium mine in Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe. A subsistence miner, he had been searching for chunks of o...

Bingo. I always include the horrific abuse and abuse exploitation that comes with the batteries whenever I have to speak about or teach energy transition

thank you because not enough people do

Exactly. Cobalt too.

That's true. Yet I always remember the true cost of cobalt and cobalt mining, a key ingredient necessary for every battery operated computer, device, appliance, car, etc and all the more frivolous products that are given batteries these days. #DRC is largest supplier

Is cobalt the blood diamond of electric cars? What can be done about it?www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com If you’ve got electronics with a battery – a mobile phone, laptop, water, or electric car – then there is a reasonable chance that parts of it were mined through the gruelling work of miners in the De...

Everyone needs to see Neptune Frost

Not all batteries contain Cobalt, particularly for EVs and energy storage batteries.

*waves from the lithium fields siezed by fiat*

Lithium ion batteries tend to use cobalt for cathodes.

Not true. EV's use cobalt.

I talk & teach about all forms of problems around sustainability discourses, about climate injustices, of external ozone costs, human rights abuses, etc. I’m a geographer so I read interdisciplinarily & internationally, but these things are personal to me too so been doing it for two decades.

Yes, all kinds of batteries. And cobalt is another precious metal being stolen and sold for cheap.

Women and girls living in cobalt-mining communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are reporting a “staggering” rise in serious reproductive health issues, including miscarriages and birth defects due to contact with contaminated water they have to bathe in and clean their homes with. #DRC

‘Staggering’ rise in women with reproductive health issues near DRC cobalt mines – studywww.theguardian.com Investigation reveals reports of miscarriages, infections and birth defects among women and girls in mining communities

I feel like this “just buy DIFFERENT things” approach to every problem might possibly be insufficient

that's why we really need to get sodium ion batteries going. Nobody's gonna miss some fuckin' seawater.

And a fully circular industry recycling all the components at the end of life. We'll be able to mine less because of it, still a bit early in the cycle to have supply of EoL batteries

Sodium ion? That’s a thing now?

they don't perform as well as lithium batteries *yet*. but the bonus is there's no shortage of sodium, plus they use aluminum anodes rather than copper, which is another cost reduction.

Two abundant materials, definitely a great choice going forward.

Discovering a huge lithium deposit in California will also help with this a bit.

PResumably that would make them lighter as well eh?

i have no idea the copper density inside batteries, so I wouldn't have a clue. at least marginally, sure.

Reinventing the Dutch rubber plant. And every other horror built in the name of industry. Woo.

Do… do you have any idea how much damage fossil fuel mining does? The amount of material needed to replace 100% of FF powered vehicles with BEVs is about 1% of *one year* worth of fossil fuel mining. After that it almost all comes from recycling.

Solid state batteries are close to production too. Higher efficiency and lower weight. Cause right now too many evs in this country are total pigs.

Even with current batteries the biggest limit is access to chargers. In some regions the grid also needs to be upgraded. In fact, we're not far of from the scenario where parked EVs can be turned into power grid demand stabilizers, and with solid state batteries the extra wear won't even matter

We're already starting to see this on a very small scale, of course. Those who already have their homes off grid in rural areas are using the car as a backup battery bank. We're setting up our own system for this in fact. Worst case scenario, you can drive the car to the town charger.

Even charger access is starting to be not as much of an issue as many companies have pivoted to the NACS (ie Tesla) charge type. With the V2 and V3 versions, and assuming your car is set up for it, you can pump a hundred+ miles into a battery in ~10-15 minutes. Goes from a lunch stop to coffee break

It's trivial for me to charge in my garage, but I do wonder about people who live in apartments. I think we need to incentive building owners to put chargers for tenants. My daughter's apartment had 1 charger for 200 people.

Yes! One charger with a long enough cable to reach two cars. It can be lower amperage to focus on overnight charging. Put in a small monthly fee for the power and upkeep. It would make a huge difference to the EV market.

We need new standards. Because we are rural our 30kWh Leaf with SOH of 74% is getting marginal but with 22kWh still good, we want to replace it (easy) and add it to our storage capacity - NO standards so NO sparky will sign off on it

The irony that a 'used up LEAF' still is a reasonably decent house bank does not escape me.

If we didn't live over Bombay Hill, if we had stayed in GI, we wouldn't even be thinking about it after 7 yrs & 84k km, for city use it would be good for another 5 years at that rate As home bank it should be good for almost forever and would >double the storage

Chargers are a real issue for apartment buildings cause mostly nobody is going to charge outside their home 95% of the time

Yeah, no doubt. I'm not particularly pro EV but just pleased that lighter vehicles and more efficient vehicles are in our near future.

Solid state batteries are 2 to 3 years away from production. Dr Volts just interviewed one of the leading companies: www.volts.wtf/p/whats-up-w...

What's up with solid-state batteries?www.volts.wtf CEO Siyu Huang of Factorial Energy talks through recent advancements in solid-state batteries, which promise significant improvements in energy density and safety and are paving the way for electric v...

Ah, there we go.

DECARBONIZE NOW

I really wanna get one of them electric bikes... but I'm worried there is soon gonna be some huge leap in battery tech that will make all the current ones obsolete.

We have e-bikes and they’re an absolute blast to ride- and any revolutionary batteries will carry a revolutionary price tag for years. GET ONE

I got an electric scooter that I've put at least 5000 miles on joyriding... but I been watching the market for a bike... I can be patient and wait for the right one to come my way.

What scoot you got?

Segway Ninebot G30P - real solid unit, no complaints aside from how difficult that rear tire is to replace and how fragile the mudguard is... otherwise mine has taken a hell of a beating and keeps going.

Nice! I have 600 miles on a Ninebot E2 Plus, also love it, only complaint is I think I want suspension or air tires, the ride is often harsh.

I have an electric kickscooter I keep in the trunk of my car.. so I have an EV in my EV. I used it to scoot around to lunch today, and it is fantastic.

This has been the real main hurdle in grid-scale energy storage, no sense investing $10bil in a battery facility when it'll be obsolete halfway through construction.

I can imagine theres a lot of nail biting decisions to be made in regards to this tech... I'm just a normie on the sidelines and I can see that these batteries are getting smaller and faster to charge at a crazy rate.

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