Cars - For Car Enthusiasts

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Electric Cars Are Still Not Good Enough (www.theatlantic.com)

submitted 11 months ago by boem to c/cars

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[–] theyoyomaster 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Gasoline has 100 times the energy density of lithium ion batteries. From a technical standpoint, increasing capacity by 20% is a huge scientific breakthrough, the issue is that batteries are so much weaker/heavier that 20% is negligible. Going from 100 to 120 is a great increase but when you’re competing against something that is at 1000 it’s not even a drop in the bucket.

[–] phoneymouse 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I think energy density is not the right thing to look at though. Functionally a battery can give you the same range as a gas vehicle and be recharged in the same time as a gas tank can be refilled.

[–] dragontamer 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Its physically impossible.

A huge amount of "energy" in gasoline is from Oxygen, which isn't even carried inside of a car. In contrast, a Battery must carry 100% of its energy so that it can recharge later. (ex: Cars can let the waste exit as CO2. But a Battery performing that reaction would have to "carry" that CO2 back so that it can recharge somehow by inverting the reaction).

Hydrogen is the only competing technology that takes advantage of this Oxygen effect. H2 inside of the gas tank, release H2O. H2O is common enough that we can later split 2(H2O) -> H2 + O2, save off the H2 and fill back up with H2.