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Current electric cars need convenient locations built for charging ports.
"Designing and building enough of these recharging stations requires massive infrastructure development, which means the energy distribution and storage system is being rebuilt at tremendous cost to accommodate the need for continual local battery recharge," said Eric Nauman, co-founder of Ifbattery and a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, basic medical sciences and biomedical engineering. "Ifbattery is developing an energy storage system that would enable drivers to fill up their electric or hybrid vehicles with fluid electrolytes to re-energize spent battery fluids much like refueling their gas tanks."
The spent battery fluids or electrolyte could be collected and taken to a solar farm, wind turbine installation or hydroelectric plant for re-charging.
"Instead of refining petroleum, the refiners would reprocess spent electrolytes and instead of dispensing gas, the fueling stations would dispense a water and ethanol or methanol solution as fluid electrolytes to power vehicles," Cushman said. "Users would be able to drop off the spent electrolytes at gas stations, which would then be sent in bulk to solar farms, wind turbine installations or hydroelectric plants for reconstitution or re-charging into the viable electrolyte and reused many times. It is believed that our technology could be nearly 'drop-in' ready for most of the underground piping system, rail and truck delivery system, gas stations and refineries."
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Saturday June 03 2017, @07:07PM (3 children)
The more different approaches we take, the better chance we have of finding one that works best for most people.
I don't see this as being a big deal - let the filling station do the job of recharging the electrolyte. As long as they have sufficient good electrolyte to service all the cars that come in over 24 hours, and sufficient power to recharge the electrolyte over 24 hours, it'll all be good. The station can work with the electric utility to "load level" and recharge when the utility has excess capacity to keep costs and environmental issues to a minimum, or could install sufficient solar power to recharge it all during daylight.
I'm waiting for my Tesla Model 3, so I've fully internalized the issues associated with an EV, and I'm fine with them. Waking up 360 mornings of every year to a full fuel tank, and only having to worry about on-the-road charging the two or three times a year I take a road trip, is an easy trade-off.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Monday June 05 2017, @06:56PM (2 children)
Tangential question for you, as I am considering a Model 3 as well and you say you've internalized all the issues. How do you cope with the (privacy, particularly) implications of a fully-connected car that may one day drive itself? I mean, a car that gets updates over the air essentially upgrading itself is a great concept, but the flip-side is it's like Onstar intrusion to the next level. Bluetooth radios give root pwnage already on conventional vehicles. I love the Model 3 concept and those are the biggest worries I have about it. What happens to your Tesla when the MBA's finally pull off their coup on Elon Musk and take over the company's apparatus?
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Monday June 05 2017, @09:10PM (1 child)
Certainly way off-topic, but I'm OK with that.
You've hit a remarkably sensitive topic for me. I pull the fuse on OnStar-equipped vehicles that I've owned. I disable location on my cellphone unless I'm actively navigating. I've gone through the apps on my phone, and eliminated what I consider unnecessary permissions - if the app fails, it gets uninstalled. Facebook tracking on my PC is blocked at my router, and I rooted my phone specifically to eliminate it from there. I'll never let my insurance company install a tracker on my vehicle with a promise of "lower insurance rates". I religiously use an adblocker and a script blocker. I try hard (but not ridiculously hard) to maintain at least the appearance of privacy.
But, for some reason, I'm OK with Tesla knowing everything about every trip I take, the acceleration and deceleration rates I use, where I go and when. I'm a bit peeved that they will collect huge amounts of information from my car automatically in the case of an accident, but will share none of it with me who will have paid $40K to buy the car.
Cognitive dissonance? Yup. I really don't understand why I'm OK with it. Perhaps I think the car, and the carmaker's goal, is compelling enough to warrant allowing the the intrusion. Perhaps I simply equate the Tesla to my Samsung S6 cellphone - I carry it even though I know that, at the very least, both T-Mobile and Samsung and trivially access even more intimate details about me. Perhaps I equate it to my PC at home, where two years of fighting Microsoft's attempts to spy on every detail of my PC sessions has left me recognizing that I can't stop them unless I devote an inordinate amount of time to the task (although a switch to Linux and a best-effort attempt at using it is on my to-do list).
If the MBAs kick out Elon Musk, it's not the end of the world. The car would presumably still have value; I could sell it and extract that remaining value and be out from under their thumbs if I thought their information collection was too invasive. A bigger concern would be if Tesla went bankrupt, and the supporting infrastructure shut down - no supercharging, no ability to fix a, for example, corrupt system image. In this scenario, the car could become scrap because of the loss of that infrastructure - think of anyone who bought "Plays for Sure" DRM'ed content.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:41PM
MBAs aren't going to pull the plug on the service infrastructure, they're going to keep milking the company for everything it's worth. What mostly concerns me is that, at the moment of Elon Musk leaving, the company retains historical data on everything you've done - see the NY Times article flap where the journalist claimed the car died, and Tesla could tell his car drove around in circles in a parking lot. Whether or not the car retains its value (I'm sure you're correct on that), that information becomes immediately available for any purpose. I trust Musk as much as I trust anyone, but the man is mortal, and we've heard of people cashing out before.
Thanks for your take on it, I'm in pretty much the same place you are with my privacy concerns and I was hoping there was something I overlooked.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"