Tesla pickup, possibly

[vvanders]

Seems like i bought a big screen tv at $1200 and now can have a bigger higher definition one for less the half that price. Or maybe im misunderstanding what you mean by (at a higher cost) or maybe you didn't mean, "it's the nature of technological consumer goods" to mean all tech consumer goods. :confused3:

Ayup, I remember paying $1400 for a 42" 1080p LED panel where I can get one now for under $300. Economy of scale is an incredible thing once it gets going.

 

[/pine]

Seems like i bought a big screen tv at $1200 and now can have a bigger higher definition one for less the half that price. Or maybe im misunderstanding what you mean by (at a higher cost) or maybe you didn't mean, "it's the nature of technological consumer goods" to mean all tech consumer goods. :confused3:

And that "bigger higher definition" one is hardly the current state of the art set...just like LCD and plasma went down when LED entered the market and it's been well surpassed...

 

[/pine]

You're gonna want to cite some of those claims because the li-ion market has been doing pretty much the opposite: Falling lithium-ion battery prices to drive rapid storage uptake pv magazine USA

Generally tech process improvements tend to compound their improvements(see Moore's law on the transistor side).

Li batteries are going to go the same way nicad batteries did...watch and see...

 

[/pine]

Right now, 45 per cent of global cobalt supply is consumed by lithium-ion battery production, and if lithium battery use doubles or triples as is expected, cobalt supply will be easily overwhelmed.

It's not scalable, said Gerbrand Ceder of Berkeley Labs Materials Sciences Division."If we're ever to all drive electric vehicles, there's no way a cobalt-only technology can make it.

Next generation battery technology: Goodbye lithium? | Financial Post

 

[David_Kb7uns]

My take on the Walmart electric truck idea would be to have a battery on the truck but a larger battery on the trailer that could be recharged when the trailer was at the dock.

Since Walmart sends the trucks to the same store with a trailer, and all stores are within a days drive of the regional distribution center, drop trailer and return with empty while the store crew unloads the trailer it could be recharging. So each store would have a charger and the distribution center would have one for the truck battery and one for the trailer.

A few years ago they were playing around with an electric truck with a large battery and a small high speed diesel that could maintain truck on the flats and the batteries would help out on the hills with regenerative brakes recharging on the downhill.

David

 

[Egon]

Yes but only to a limited degree...and only in urban areas...but you must have missed what I said about developing both recovery and refinery techniques and processes that could easily push the cost of gasoline back to under a dollar a gallon...there is way more money being invested in those areas than there is in batteries...rechargeable batteries are not ever going to be the cats meow when it comes to EVs...EVs will not really come into their own until an independent onboard power source is available...and that is where the real money should be invested...not rechargeable batteries...so I really don't see them coming down in cost..in fact they will get more expensive as their range increases mostly due to the high cost of rare earth elements used in both the batteries and the controllers...

Hydrogen fuel cells are portable onboard power. The hydrogen can be handled much like propane or CNG. There are even some filling stations around.

 

[/pine]

Hydrogen fuel cells are portable onboard power. The hydrogen can be handled much like propane or CNG. There are even some filling stations around.

H-fuel cells have been around a long time...it seems they have had a lot of time to perfect them but for some reason they have not been able to get them safely usable for the average consumer level applications...but they would be an alternative to rechargeable batteries...

 

[Egon]

California seems to have a few hydrogen filling stations"

[video]https://cafcp.org/stationmap[/video]

 

[Spindifferent]

H-fuel cells have been around a long time...it seems they have had a lot of time to perfect them but for some reason they have not been able to get them safely usable for the average consumer level applications...but they would be an alternative to rechargeable batteries...

A very safe consumer fuel cell vehicle is available now: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car | Toyota Mirai

 

[/pine]

A very safe consumer fuel cell vehicle is available now: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car | Toyota Mirai

That is moving in the right direction but the industry leaders are still relying on rechargeable batteries...it seems like if the current fuel cell technology was viable they would all be going that route...