Featured Hybrids offer fastest route to reduce CO2, says Emissions Analytics

The front lines of this battle are in Asian and SE Asia where 2/3rds of the world's population lives. Countries like India and China can make a massive shift and they've already made rumblings...

 

I've argued before that the Honda EV Cub might be the EV that "saves the world."

Replace all those motorcycles and autoricks with these things and we'll really be getting somewhere even without climbing on one. I'm in favor of "schemes" to make these available at a radical discount vs. the ICE powered version.

 

Yes, for sure - which is where Hybrid comes in, they're cleaner than the "status quo" - my PRIUS has a life-time EV rate of 32%, plus it's
Atkinson Cycle. In comparison, check an equivalent petrol (or diesel) - Mazda's newly released Mazda 3 - 149grams/km.

 

I've some contacts in rural India - they're reporting that every village has power now. At least part-time, but very unreliable. I think it'll be a long time before you'd be welcome to plug in an EV there. But - we have to start somewhere.

 

I got to see that firsthand a few years ago. I bet electricity can be made more available there, especially if petro fuels get more dear and/or rare. Honda has wisely built this bike to run from removable battery packs, to accommodate hot-swaps, anti-theft, and charging when the grid happens to be up.

 

I'm all for it!!!! - sick of the horrid noise of the Harley up the street which seems to need idling for 5 mins before it'll run properly.

 

that's the same hand wringing that enabled FUD'sters to cry out, "where will all those Jillions of EV's charge?!?". So now there are 100's of thousands of chargers around the world, and growing. Then? More chargers enabled 'em to hysterically cry out, "they'll crash the grid!!!" Never even thinking how most EV charge @ less than 1/2 of many home central air units ... but the grid never concerned 'em then.
Now? It's what about all those batteries that'll need to be built (sight of hands wringing). Where's all the concern about, steel/aluminum/cast iron to build more & more ICE blocks? .... where's all the hysteria about the lead acid batteries in all the cars, forklifts, truck?!? Yes, it's being taken care of. You start building out a chicken ranch, & folks will beat a path to your door upon hearing about it - to sell you chicken coops ... & feed.
.

 

I think you're getting lost in the scale of the problem. There are certainly things to be concerned about regarding production supplies for ICE cars. But that's very different from the problem we have with batteries, and that is simply that we don't have enough. As in, we do not have enough of the actual dirt. The ore, the raw materials needed to get us where you insist we could've been by lunchtime yesterday. That is a much bigger problem than a dirty production process or a leaky recycling loop.

Yes, we have some domestic supply, and they're doing nicely to put it to work. But if that is all we have access to, it's going to take an awfully long time to get to yesterday's lunch.

 

And South Sudan, in the last WHO report, had electricity in ~20% of homes, and those 20% are very unreliable. But - they can buy petrol. And they're selling cars there - mostly ex-Japanese (etc) cars which they didn't bother with the 3yr mandatory check (which is most - there are very few old cars in Japan apparently? And - the best selling cars in Japan were Hybrids - so apparently a lot of hybrids are going there. OK - South Sudan is about the worst place in the world, but there were close to another 100 countries where electricity is a dream for an appreciable number of citizens.

 

The bottleneck is in battery production, and that should be a relatively short term issue. Then hybrids and plug ins don't use the exact same battery type, and I don't know how easy it is to switch a production line between the types.

The article also suggests that we should switch to diesels, because it would be an easy way of reducing CO2 emissions. Their hybrid point has merit, but that alone isn't going to get people to actually buy hybrids over a traditional car. Going by sales growth and pre-orders, people are more willing to buy a BEV. Diverting batteries to make more hybrids won't help if they sit on dealer lots.

What dirt are talking about? Lithium? There is plenty of it. "Even if the market triples, there are 185 years' worth of reserves in the ground, Deutsche Bank estimates." That is of the cheap to get stuff. Even when going after sources that costs more, lithium is a tiny part of a plug in's cost.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-lithium-battery-future/
Why 'Peak Lithium' Is An Irrational Fear

The three largest producers of lithium are South American, China, and Australia. We'd have to truly botch foreign policy to be reduced to just domestic supply.

Cobalt is the limiting mineral. Because of the economic, and even political, issues with its use, much work has, and is, gone into reduce the amount needed, or even eliminating it.

 

I thought that was interesting.

Europe & UK went heavily for diesels back - heavily encouraged in fact as CO2 and fuel demand was considerably lower. I owned 2 small diesels, and they were great cars, very economical - in fact the PRIUS isn't much better than the FIESTA, though a little larger. But the Dieselgate scared me off when I had a 3rd lined up. And the NOx and particulate issues was the other issue

But I understand that there is still a lot of work being done with diesel technology. Euro 6d for 2020 - have a look at it, the CO2 is ½ that of petrol, and NOX is fairly close - only about 20% more, down heaps on what it was.

And some are working on diesel hybrid - which hasn't been as attractive an option, though I think PSA and Daimler Benz dabbled with it, but didn't VW group show a concept recently?

 

Considering how every car already has a lead-acid 12V battery and we have a well-developed lead-acid battery recycling system, I don't see why we can't do that same with Li-ion or other types of batteries. Its mostly a matter of economics, which should improve with scale and the regular tech advances were are currently seeing in vehicle batteries.

 

look it up .... Traction packs ARE recyclable, & are already being recycled. Often as a 2nd life for home backup power & beyond. When Nissan sold their first Leafs ~ 2011, they announced there's complete recycle-ability.

.

 

I have no problem with ICE manufacturers adding or moving to hybrids, simple or plug-in. Incentives already exist.

Should we force Tesla and other EV-only makers to add engines as a hybrid or like my BMW i3-REx, an engine-generator?

There is an assumption batteries and controllers are a commodity item . . . but expensive. My observation is only Tesla and possibly Rivian have figured out how to make or use commodity cells, 18650 or 2170, assembled into customized battery packs. The rest are buying one-of-a-kind batteries which badly inflates the costs and prices.

Personally a fusion powered, hydrogen fuel cell cycle makes more sense. They are the future (and always will be.)

Bob Wilson

 

Lead acid starting batteries are a little smaller and there's already over a billion of them in circulation. We can make the next billion out of the last billion.

Not so for lithium batteries. Lots more mining to do.

 

Lead acid batteries have been around for a long time, and so it's recycling process has been advanced - as the process matured - even as more and more lead cells became spent. Same with lithium. Cell production has just ramped up exponentially. Since the cells May easily last for a decade, the recycling process matures - following the uptick in depleted cells. Here's a good video showing that they are recyclable, but there is not as much recycling done with lithium batteries compared to lead, simply because it's a relatively new tech. Meaning, the batteries will last significantly longer than lead, & so there has yet to be ( compared to lead) a massive downstream of spent cells - which is only then, followed with massive lithium recycling. Everybody said Chicken and the Egg regarding charging infrastructure and electric cars. It's the same thing for recycling. No one builds massive lithium recycling infrastructure until you have massive lithium battery Manufacturing.
Order chicken coops for my Chicken Ranch? Yes I'll take 10 please.

.

 

Start with mining the landfills full of Prius batteries.

Bob Wilson

 

If we were to assume the hypothetical goal of making all 2 billion cars on the road battery electric, it would take something like 100 million metric tons. Lithium's supply would be a problem.

If we take the more realistic assumption that electric cars will be less than 5% of the global fleet over the next 5 years, lithium will not be a problem at all and by the time it does, we will probably have better battery chemistry or ramped up supply.

In either case, there is a strong argument that we should be putting a lot more hybrids on the roads. They can be made with much smaller batteries (and lower energy chemistry) at lower cost and would reduce the emissions of the remaining part of the global fleet dramatically.

 

Hey, I'm a fan of diesel because it might have a better chance of getting to a renewable fuel. The emission controls are improving. People have forgotten how bad emissions were from gasoline cars, and how long it took to clean them up.

I think it was PSA had a diesel hybrid. VW had a diesel PHEV that was a small number production model made for maximum efficiency; it is in the six figures in US dollars. Volvo had a PHEV that they had trouble keeping in stock, but that was before the current owners. The reason there isn't many, is because of cost. Diesel adds to the car's price, then the hybrid system adds to it, and the improvement usually isn't enough to get people willing to pay for it.

repurposing a traction battery isn't technically recycling, but it does help.
Did Nissan say they could reuse the lithium for batteries. The articles I recently read said that wasn't possible yet. Though we do use lithium in a lot of another industries that could use the recycled material.

How did we get all that lead in the first place? Or even the steel and aluminum? Lithium mines are expanding to meet demand, and like petroleum, we'll figure out ways of getting the resources that aren't considered economical now.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing that we should put more hybrids on the road. Agreeing doesn't get the public to buy more hybrids though. That has been the hard part in the US. The expansion of hybrid options has only worked to stem the lose of Prius sales. Maybe more SUV options will lead to growth, but not likely with our low fuel prices.

The other path is to increase CAFE targets to get mild hybrid systems standard on models.

 

Which TOYOTA don't mind. PRIUS has been the test-bed for the same Hybrid Synergy Drive which they use in Highlander, RAVE4, Camry etc etc, various LEXUSes - and will go into LandCruiser according to hints I saw recently - not sure if it'll ever make it into Tundra and Tacoma though?

I suspect they don't particularly care if I buy a PRIUS, LEXUS "h" or a RAV4 hybrid - they've sold me a car.