Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2

   / Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2 #1,691  
How long before there's pressure to remove some of those hydro dams if/when nukes provide most of the electricity? Read somewhere recently that there's a movement to remove some of the dams on the Snake river in Washington to try to bring the salmon population back.
Nuclear will never provide most of the energy, but hydro has a limited service life. Grand Coulee is already over halfway through its design lifetime and will eventually come down. They built it across one of the great rivers of the world. They are talking about removing two dams on the Snake, out of 20.

Hydro supplies about 29 gw in the PNW, and wind provides another 11 gw. You would have to build a lot of nuke plants to catch up, since there is currently only one reactor in operation in the entire region.

Our entire power generation capacity has to be rebuilt every 50 years, and there is no sense in just duplicating projects from half a century ago. We can do better. Some of those projects, like the dams on the lower Snake, have proven to be bad ideas.
 
   / Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2 #1,692  
If you like dams Google the shadfish runs on the james River before and after damns. Would have been an amazing thing to experience before the damns went up.
 
   / Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2 #1,693  
The battery in this boat is about the same size as the battery in my Nissan Leaf.

 
   / Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2 #1,694  
^^^ Very interesting and so close to home… Sausalito California
 
   / Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2 #1,695  
Ever wonder what happens to a hydrofoil that hits a log?

A conventional boat scrapes the bottom and sides and busts off the outdrive/prop, etc.

A hydrofoil gets much more expensive damage.
 
   / Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2 #1,696  

When what will happen in EV battery options are a mystery to me today.

GM Ford and others are announcing new EV battery factories costing billions yet they are using dated technology. Even Tesla's new 4680 is being superceded before maximizing it's production.

If Tesla struggles in staying leading edge EV battery wise is there much hope for old OEM when it comes to EV battery production with China firms holding both the EV battery technology and materials today.

The EV battery is the tail that wags the dog.
 
   / Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2 #1,697  
   / Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2 #1,698  
Little back story on that. When I was looking at used, off lease Ford Focus', I purposely avoided the 'powershift transmissions for a reason and that is, Fords employs an electronically actuated dry clutch assembly in them. The 'Powershift' transmissions are actually 2 transmissions mated together with a common dry clutch and they have always been issue prone (shudder and creep). Not new and Fords should have but didn't change the transmission to something more reliable. I found a low miles off lease Focus with a standard 5 speed (manually activated dry clutch) and purchased that. My BIL is a design engineer at Fords and told me to stay away from the 'Powershift' box and I did. There is a fix for the issue that any owner can do and that is flat foot the car from a standing stop to whatever speed the car shifts into OD at. That 'burnishes the clutch disc and eliminates the jerk and creep for a time but it's something that needs to be done an an infrequent basis when the issue returns.

Frankly, I think it's a bad design that should have been addressed and wasn't, probably because of the cost involved. After all, neither vehicle is a 'luxury vehicle so the profit margin on them just isn't there.

My niece purchased one and it started exhibiting the issue. Said to her, let me take it for a spin and I applied the fix and gave it back to her. So far is hasn't returned.
 
   / Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2 #1,699  
So does that mean now you can park your Ford where you park your Chevy Bolt?

 
   / Battery based vehicles of today and tomorrow pt 2 #1,700  
Nice. Gives new meaning to my term 4 wheel toaster...lol I like the part where Fords says if you see smoke coming from under the hood, immediately turn off the engine. What they don't say is call 911 and request a fire truck and call your insurance company because it's about to be a real toaster.

Fords seems to be having quite a few issues lately.

Teething pains maybe? Or maybe poor engineering.
 
 
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