I think you'll have a good deal of adoption in suburban areas where sheer range is not nearly as important as curb appeal of owning a truck. Is it going to be a great work truck? I guess that depends on how far you have to drive to the job site. If you're a contractor who works more or less within ~150 KM of home exclusively, this is your Swiss army knife dream come true.
Yes, I think it's ideal as a short haul city work vehicle. It's got lots of great features for that. That's why I'm wondering why there isn't a short cab version.
To extract those needles, recyclers rely on two techniques, known as pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy. The more common is pyrometallurgy, in which recyclers first mechanically shred the cell and then burn it, leaving a charred mass of plastic, metals, and glues. At that point, they can use several methods to extract the metals, including further burning. “Pyromet is essentially treating the battery as if it were an ore” straight from a mine, Gaines says. Hydrometallurgy, in contrast, involves dunking battery materials in pools of acid, producing a metal-laden soup. Sometimes the two methods are combined.
Each has advantages and downsides. Pyrometallurgy, for example, doesn’t require the recycler to know the battery’s design or composition, or even whether it is completely discharged, in order to move ahead safely. But it is energy intensive. Hydrometallurgy can extract materials not easily obtained through burning, but it can involve chemicals that pose health risks. And recovering the desired elements from the chemical soup can be difficult, although researchers are experimenting with compounds that promise to dissolve certain battery metals but leave others in a solid form, making them easier to recover. For example, Thompson has identified one candidate, a mixture of acids and bases called a deep eutectic solvent, that dissolves everything but nickel.
Both processes produce extensive waste and emit greenhouse gases, studies have found. And the business model can be shaky: Most operations depend on selling recovered cobalt to stay in business, but batterymakers are trying to shift away from that relatively expensive metal. If that happens, recyclers could be left trying to sell piles of “dirt,” says materials scientist Rebecca Ciez of Purdue University.
A few other good points made here. With millions of EV's out there already, is this going to be a bit of a disaster in a decade? Glueing cells together doesn't seem like any thought has been put into the recylcability of these things. I wonder if we will be paying EV disposal fees, or deposits in the future.
So I’ve been driving a Fusion Engeri (PHEV) for over two years and I don’t think I could ever go back to a straight gas engine again. The Energi has a small 7kwh battery and even that has been great. I have the luxury of plugging in at work (when I have to go to the office with Covid). Even with the small battery I am usually getting 2000-2500 km out of a 40l tank.
I drove my dad up to Drayton Valley a couple weeks ago and even just on hybrid mode it’s still getting sub 6L/100km.
My only problem is I want a truck again and I was tempted to get either a Cybertruck or a F150 Lightning but there is a rumour of a PHEV 2022 Ranger or possibly a PHEV Maverick… I love the practicality of the PHEV having the best of both worlds.
The new Hummer will weigh 9000 lbs and do 0-60 in 3 seconds. This thing is gonna be a wrecking ball.
It also continues to be an environmental nightmare. That weight does a few things destroys roads, gives off massive break dust, and tire dust. Side points for the person who hits someone in a crosswalk at low speed and kills them instantly.
Its something many don’t factor in to their green posturing. That electric vehicles weigh more than gas and the electricity source isn’t always clean. They also are death bricks if they hit anything smaller.
By all means get a EV hummer to save on gas, but your doing no service to anyone else.
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It also continues to be an environmental nightmare. That weight does a few things destroys roads, gives off massive break dust, and tire dust. Side points for the person who hits someone in a crosswalk at low speed and kills them instantly.
I'm not sure I follow. A typical transit bus or small delivery truck will weigh 4 times more than that. A semi-trailer that's loaded will weigh 10 times more than that. A normal road surface should handle a hummer just fine.
It also continues to be an environmental nightmare. That weight does a few things destroys roads, gives off massive break dust, and tire dust. Side points for the person who hits someone in a crosswalk at low speed and kills them instantly.
Its something many don’t factor in to their green posturing. That electric vehicles weigh more than gas and the electricity source isn’t always clean. They also are death bricks if they hit anything smaller.
By all means get a EV hummer to save on gas, but your doing no service to anyone else.
Absolutely not.
- There are heavy duty vehicles on roads all the time
- A Tesla Model 3 weighs less than a Ford F-150
- EVs have regenerative braking which means significantly less brake and tire wear
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The Hummer is and will always be the symbol of American excess. I would be embarrassed to be seen driving one as I want no association with that kind of American.
A few other good points made here. With millions of EV's out there already, is this going to be a bit of a disaster in a decade? Glueing cells together doesn't seem like any thought has been put into the recylcability of these things. I wonder if we will be paying EV disposal fees, or deposits in the future.
EV Batteries are generally not going to be recycled, they will be reused for stationary power grid storage.
EV Batteries are generally not going to be recycled, they will be reused for stationary power grid storage.
But at some point they will need to be. And when there are hundreds of millions of EV's, all in different configurations, is it going to make sense to repurpose all of them? I'm not suggesting it's a "now" problem, but it will be one in the future.
Yes, there are. It doesn't change the fact that there are challenges with how current battery packs are produced, and how to manage that(as described in the article, if you read it). I suspect one of the big improvements in the next decade will be packaging and material reduction.
This is why it's good to have plenty of different manufacturers jumping in, as they will all innovate differently. The drawback is you end up with loads of different materials, designs, components, etc that make a generic recycling processes harder to optimize.
I'd say battery packs are pretty much all the same except swap in/out a few different metals. I 100% agree it is a major challenge to try and create a mostly closed loop manufacturing system. But I strongly feel this can be done much cleaner than the dead end process of oil exploration, refining and consumption.
My basic rule is, are humans doing it? Yes? Then it's bad for the planet.
It also continues to be an environmental nightmare. That weight does a few things destroys roads, gives off massive break dust, and tire dust. Side points for the person who hits someone in a crosswalk at low speed and kills them instantly.
Its something many don’t factor in to their green posturing. That electric vehicles weigh more than gas and the electricity source isn’t always clean. They also are death bricks if they hit anything smaller.
By all means get a EV hummer to save on gas, but your doing no service to anyone else.
1) They give off almost zero break dust and on average less tire dust than ICE vehicles
2) There's no evidence the extra weight of a battery will do anything to roads that routinely have much heavier vehicles on them
3) Regardless of electricity generation, (and even with 100% coal generated electricity) electric vehicles produce fewer GHGs
4) Everyone agrees less vehicles is better than more, but EV>ICE for environment without any serious argument for the opposite
That the trucks will be so heavy, however, is an unfortunate side effect. It will wear down roads, eat into air-pollution improvements, and harm whoever is unfortunate enough to get in the way.
Quote:
But electric vehicles still do pollute the air they drive through, in large part because they weigh so much. Local air pollution from traffic—the kind you breathe in, not the kind that heats the planet—is mostly caused by nonexhaust pollution such as brake wear, tire wear, road wear, and what the literature refers to as “road dust resuspension.” And those impacts are projected to rise with the adoption of heavyweight electric vehicles, in spite of improvements like regenerative braking.
