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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 18 2017, @05:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the get-a-"load"-of-this! dept.

Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk says the company will soon move beyond just electric sedans and SUVs to offer something bigger - much bigger. Musk tweeted Thursday that a Tesla semi truck is just months away and work is ongoing on an electric pickup truck as well.

"Tesla Semi truck unveil set for September," Musk said via Twitter. "Team has done an amazing job. Seriously next level."

[...] "We believe the Tesla Semi will deliver a substantial reduction in the cost of cargo transport, while increasing safety and making it really fun to operate," Musk wrote in the plan.

[...] While Musk didn't specifically mention anything about the role that autonomy will play with the company's upcoming truck models, the master plan notes that "as the technology matures, all Tesla vehicles will have the hardware necessary to be fully self-driving."

It would be nice to see them add some extras to the trucks like a hydraulic lift or cargo crane.

Also at NBC, TechCrunch, and Bloomberg.


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  • (Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday April 18 2017, @10:54AM (2 children)

    by ledow (5567) on Tuesday April 18 2017, @10:54AM (#495783) Homepage

    How much energy is used to breakdown, remake, recycle, etc. a lithium battery?

    Again, the "zero emission electric car" is completely accurate while being completely misleading. The car emits nothing. But it's production, manufacture and maintenance cost just as much as anything else.

    There's no way you're going to be buying a new battery for a Tesla for under $10,000 at the moment.

    And "lithium" is not "pure lithium, combined in the right structure, with the right materials, arranged into a safe battery".

    As yet, the only references for actual, production, lithium battery recycling consists of: "Recycled lithium is as much as five times the cost of lithium produced from the least costly brine based process." and "It is not competitive for recycling companies to extract lithium".

    Same way that, in theory, we can recycle plastic, or glass, or anything else.

    Sure. If someone's willing to pay for the product, shipping it to a centre, using energy to reshape it, putting it back into useful production, selling it off and handling all the legalities between (e.g. purity, safety, etc. with batteries would be especially important).

    And using the energy to do all that, every few years, for every battery, in every electric car, then it needs to be taken into account for their green credentials.

    Electric cars push energy usage to other places. Whether that's building solar panels, charging the batteries, or end-of-life disposal for them, it still needs to be paid for as it still costs - financially and environmentally.

    And, as with all things, all costs are eventually reflected in the actual price of the item. When diesels start polluting, suddenly they become more expensive and get taxed out of existence. When batteries are hard to produce and not as easy to recycle as you make out, their purchase cost goes up. When we all start plugging in EVs into the house charges with 400A delivery, electric prices will start to go through the roof. When we demand that electric companies incorporate solar energy in markets where it's not viable, they push the cost down to users (a British electric company has raised prices THREE TIMES this year, totally nearly 20% year-on-year increase, citing the cost of meeting legal obligations on renewable energy as the cause).

    Hence, what really matters at the end of the day is cost.
    And electric cars, and their batteries, are still some of the most expensive items the average person could own today, short of a house. More expensive that combustion cars.

    There's a reason for that. And it's not to do with "not being mass market". In fact, as they become mass-market, things may actually get a lot worse if those extraneous costs are not reduced by significant factors instead of increased.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by butthurt on Tuesday April 18 2017, @04:31PM (1 child)

    by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday April 18 2017, @04:31PM (#495897) Journal

    Again, the "zero emission electric car" is completely accurate while being completely misleading. The car emits nothing. But it's production, manufacture and maintenance cost just as much as anything else.

    You seem to conflate pollution with expense, while making a distinction (which is lost on me me) between production and manufacturing. Certainly the manufacturing of electric cars, and the provision of electricity for them, can be polluting, but there's very little pollution generated at the point of use. Electric cars needn't carry a pollution control system around with them.

    There's no way you're going to be buying a new battery for a Tesla for under $10,000 at the moment.

    At the moment, Tesla has positioned itself as a luxury brand.

    And "lithium" is not "pure lithium, combined in the right structure, with the right materials, arranged into a safe battery".

    I can't tell who you're quoting. It's not the grandparent post, nor the page linked from it. Also, I do not understand your meaning, unless you mean that batteries are unsafe. Certainly batteries can catch fire when there is a crash. That's true of fossil fuels, too.

    As yet, the only references for actual, production, lithium battery recycling consists of: "Recycled lithium is as much as five times the cost of lithium produced from the least costly brine based process." and "It is not competitive for recycling companies to extract lithium".

    Again I'm unsure where your quotations come from. I found a page on the Web which says:

    [...] lithium-ion batteries simply do not contain much valuable metal to make them economically useful. [...] lithium-ion batteries are classified by the US Government as safe to dispose of in conventional landfills. [...] the scrap value of lithium-ion batteries is perhaps only $100/ton, compared to $1,000 to 3,000/ton for lead. By contrast, the cost of collecting, sorting and shipping lithium-ion batteries to a recycler far exceeds the scrap value. However, this could be off-set by the fact that the cost of other materials in lithium-ion batteries, such as cobalt, have a lower recycling cost than mining new material.

    -- http://www.batterypoweronline.com/main/markets/batteries/is-it-time-for-a-lithium-ion-recycling-revolution/ [batterypoweronline.com]

    I found an article about a recycling facility in Ohio, which says:

    Most batteries contain only small amounts of lithium carbonate as a percentage of weight and the material is relatively inexpensive compared to most other metals. [...]

    “Right now it hardly pays to recycle lithium, but if demand increases and there are large supplies of used material, the situation could change,” says Linda Gaines, a researcher at the Argonne National Laboratory’s Transportation Technology R&D Center.

    -- https://www.technologyreview.com/s/414707/lithium-battery-recycling-gets-a-boost/ [technologyreview.com]

    The problem, if you will, is that lithium is inexpensive.

    Same way that, in theory, we can recycle plastic, or glass, or anything else.

    Your comparison is apt, because recycled plastic and glass also attract low prices.

    Electric cars push energy usage to other places. Whether that's building solar panels, charging the batteries, or end-of-life disposal for them, it still needs to be paid for as it still costs - financially and environmentally.

    In our industrial society, that's true of any form of transportation, even walking. The extraction, transport, and refining of petroleum also requires energy and also does environmental harm. The final step of burning it in an internal combustion engine is inefficient, compared to the final step of discharging electricity from a battery to an electric motor. If electric cars are charged from solar power, the charging could perhaps be arranged to take place during the daytime.

    When batteries are hard to produce and not as easy to recycle as you make out, their purchase cost goes up.

    You seemed to be saying that not much recycling happens. The sources I found seem to say that as well. They say that the lithium has little value. The recycling facility in Ohio (mentioned in one of them) received $9.5 million from the U.S. government to add lithium recycling to its existing capacity for recycling lead-acid and NiMH batteries. The article explains the process, saying it's largely automated. According to my other source, just putting old lithium batteries in the tip is a valid option.

    When we all start plugging in EVs into the house charges with 400A delivery, electric prices will start to go through the roof. When we demand that electric companies incorporate solar energy in markets where it's not viable [...]

    Without EVs, demand for electricity varies during the course of the day (and night). The outputs from solar or wind generation also vary, differently. Fossil-fired and nuclear stations run most efficiently when they are run continuously. If we normally let EVs charge slowly, rather than quickly as you suggest, their demand can, as I said above, potentially be adjusted over the course of the day. That could keep the renewable energy from being wasted, and let the fossil and nuclear power be used more efficiently (because the plants wouldn't have to be shut down so often). Another possibility is for EVs to feed energy into the grid at the times it is most needed, lessening the need for costly "peaking plants." EV owners who participate in such a scheme could rightfully expect to be charged a favourable rate for electricity; other rate-payers could rightfully expect rates to fall. Of course, that might not happen. A bad thing that could happen is that we could burn more coal--however, it's been said that EVs powered by coal plants could result in less carbon dioxide emissions than would ICE cars burning petroleum fuel.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_plant [wikipedia.org]

    Hence, what really matters at the end of the day is cost.
    And electric cars, and their batteries, are still some of the most expensive items the average person could own today, short of a house. More expensive that combustion cars.

    There's a reason for that. And it's not to do with "not being mass market".

    According to the sources I consulted it's not to do with lithium being expensive. And is it even true? I looked at a few advertisements, and it seems that (in the USA at least) the prices aren't outlandish:

    Used 2016 Nissan Leaf SL for sale - $18,500, 7,145 miles with Leather Seats, Backup Camera, Navigation System, Alloy Wheels
    [...]
    Used 2013 Nissan Leaf S for sale - $6,888, 12,197 miles
    [...]
    Used 2012 Nissan Leaf SV for sale - $6,545, 30,647 miles with Navigation System, Bluetooth

    -- https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-Nissan-Leaf-d2077 [cargurus.com]

    Used 2013 Chevrolet Volt Premium for sale - $11,495, 45,197 miles [...]

    Used 2012 Chevrolet Volt Base for sale - $11,999, 32,218 miles with Navigation System [...]

    -- https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-2012-Chevrolet-Volt-c22985 [cargurus.com]

    Used 2016 Chevrolet Volt LT for sale - $20,416, 15,195 miles with Backup Camera, Alloy Wheels

    -- https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-2017-Chevrolet-Volt-c25655 [cargurus.com]

    Used 2014 FIAT 500e Base for sale - $7,200, 15,826 miles with LE Package, Sport Package, Leather Seats, Sunroof/Moonroof, [etc.]

    Used 2013 FIAT 500e Base for sale - $5,995, 27,370 miles with Sport Package, Bluetooth, Sunroof/Moonroof, Navigation System [...]

    Used 2014 FIAT 500e Base for sale - $8,981, 10,812 miles with Sport Package, Bluetooth, Sunroof/Moonroof, Aluminum Wheels, Power Package, Navigation System

    -- https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-2013-FIAT-500e-c24318 [cargurus.com]

    The Fiat 500e is electric; if anyone is still reading, compare the prices of these fossil-powered Fiat 500's:

    Used 2014 FIAT 500 Pop for sale - $5,499, 47,990 miles with Bluetooth

    Used 2012 FIAT 500 Sport for sale - $5,999, 53,286 miles with Bluetooth, Sport Package, Alloy Wheels

    Used 2012 FIAT 500 Abarth for sale - $9,995, 23,967 miles with Bluetooth, Leather Seats, Sunroof/Moonroof, Alloy Wheels

    -- https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-FIAT-500-d1327 [cargurus.com]

    I only took a cursory look, but they seem rather similar in price.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @06:03PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18 2017, @06:03PM (#495933)

      I believe GP was trying to create some kind of moral equivalence between petrol and battery in order to argue that batteries are either no more "green" than petrol or are less "green" than petrol.

      Thanks for ruining that with your facts and reasoning!