All is proceeding as I have foreseen. 50 years ago one of the founders of Intel, Gordon Moore, predicted that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits would double every year for the foreseeable future. After 1975 he pulled back on that prediction to every two years. He’s been right. Along with its many, many fortunate consequences that has had two unfortunate consequences. People think it will go on forever which is likely not to be the case. And people think it pertains to all technology. That is eminently and obviously not the case.
There is no Moore’s Law for batteries and that has serious implications for electric cars:
A couple of years ago BMW, which is leading the way with battery-only i3 and i8 plug-in hybrid vehicles, said within four to five years electric cars will have twice the current power and double the range. BMW board member Ian Robertson added then, that in the next three to four years there will be more progress in battery development than in the previous 100 years.
Not much sign of that and time is running out.
It may be that there is some great breakthrough in batteries just around the corner and that will allow brilliant new things in electric cars. Or we may have already reached the acme of electric car technology.
If memory serves, and it serves less well with each passing year, we had a recent exchange about some work being done at Purdue. It’s fine work. But it’s classic process engineering: incremental, not groundbreaking. And I know I’ve related that my college roommate worked on electric cars way back when. That’s a long time ago. There is no Moores Law
It’s just when you say such things that you get bitten in the ass. But physics sets boundary conditions, and design or properties of materials set practical engineering boundary conditions. I’ve heard or seen nothing to make me think a breakthrough is within even 20 years.
Electric cars will remain econoboxes or fancy sports cars for those willing to suffer their shortcomings. Niche products. Nothing wrong with that, but not a solution to energy consumption issues in the transportation sector.
“Since 2008, the cost of Tesla’s battery packs has been cut approximately in half, while the storage capacity has increased by about 60 percent. ”
http://www.technologyreview.com/review/534866/why-we-dont-have-battery-breakthroughs/
Maybe we have reached the end of incremental change in lithium batteries. Not sure. I am pretty sure that we don’t actually spend that much money on basic research in the area. With the steady decrease in the cost of solar and wind, I am not sure the dollars there are going to be wisely spent anyway right now.
Steve
I thought the cost of wind flattened out about a decade ago. The cost of solar is hard to estimate—it’s been enormously subsidized for the last couple of decades. It’s still early days in seeing what effect China’s reducing its subsidies will have on the trajectory of the cost of solar.
All of the studies of the nature that steve cites have a common problem: the problem of scale. If batteries have 10% of the efficiency, 10x the cost etc of x, you can say you have increased/decreased their (variable) by 60% but it still leaves them woefully behind. A gnat can increase in size by 500%, but it’s still crushed by an elephant.
Batteries are nowhere.
All the possible electrochemical reactions and the energies have been known for a century. No chemical battery will ever approach the energy density of gasoline or diesel, currently an order of magnitude greater than the best batteries. Teslas and other electric cars will never achieve the range of gas/diesel vehicles.
Musk and his ilk are rent seekers and parasites living off government subsidies.
Somehow I suspect that very few politicians understand that those two sentences are just different ways of saying the same thing.
Green energy is wonderful for those who can afford it, and for those who have the right circumstances where it can be applied. We have had solar in our S. CA home for years. The costly installation was somewhat buffered by applying for a subsidy from the state. The annual dollar savings to us, though, has been impressive. However, we live in an area where sunshine is plentiful, with a roof line that is adaptable to the solar panels, and a southern exposure which captures good light. Nonetheless, similar to Drew comments about electric cars, it’s a niche energy source rather than a reliable one that is adaptable and cost-effective for the general public.
Electric cars, IMO, are even more dubious, regarding their long range applications. It’s not only holding a battery charge for longer distances, but manufacturing batteries in a cost-saving, energy-saving fashion, sizing them down to fit smaller spaces, and then finding ways to environmentally dispose of these rather toxic items. I think some other kind of energy source will be discovered in the near future that will put today’s “Greenies” electric cars on a back burner, similar to what happened during the Edsel craze.
Green energy is wonderful for those who can
afford itmake money off their political connections.FIFY