Topic bump up for the new members to see and read for perspectives.
Be sure and scroll up and begin with Billy Norths statements.
Regards
Steve unruh
6 Likes
I wish I wouldn’t have, but I watched Bruce’s video, up a ways, again. Woke up today and it’s 72F. Couple of months and we are going to look something like that. Getting scarier every year. 300 inches of snow. Not sure I could handle that any more. Our average has been around 13 feet for a long time but the last few years we are closer to 10. You would not believe how much easier that loss of three feet makes life here. Living in harsh environments requires a lot of planning and forethought. You don’t wake up one morning in October and think, geez, I better get some wood cut and stacked. All that is pretty apropos of nothing except that living on your own terms requires a work ethic and a lot of energy. Using wood as motor fuel is the same. The average person will never do it. That required work ethic has been programmed out of them. I’m not sure you wood gassers realize just how different you are from the herd. Still, hybriding, if not absolutely necessary, is still a valuable tool that makes driving on wood a more seamless process. I just think that more effort needs to be put into an alternate hybriding source. Methanol seems like the best alternative. Working alone and growing older each day, I will never get a chance to explore all the ideas rattling around in my skull but the ability to produce some sort of homemade liquid fuel for the temporary enhancement of wood gas that so many are relying on gasoline for, seems a priority to me. Sorry about the semi sensical rambling.
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The only problem with electric cars is ware do all the batterys go, and how much of the batterys cost VS waiste battery products lithium gunk and SO ON, if they caint slave the people with gas prices , it will be battery mounthly payments, STILL ware will all the crap batterys end up. BATTERY CARS ARE THE FUTURE, What NEXT will it be the battery yen. VS the petro dollar, who has the best batterys will be winning the younger generation, untill they get exstorted over batterys priceing/ material shortages, still can make lead acid batterys, unless of coarse there is a lead shortage. Gess thats why the bible SAYS lay not up for ourselves treasure here on earth, ware theives break in and steel.
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They get recycled. 98% of Lead batteries are recycled now. 95% of the entire battery pack is recyclable and fairly cheaply which is right around the recycling rate of the current car. I believe there are two US companies, and one canadian company in the US that have recycling facilities for them. Second, they are working on the chemistry to improve the cycle life so the battery packs last longer so you aren’t stuck with huge battery payments.
The hope is battery prices will improve and the price will tank over time (the goal was 2030 for sticker price parity between gas and electric so 8 years away) Part of it is volume, and part of it is paying off the investment cost in building and machinery and part of it will be technological improvements in battery chemistry, and part of it will be improvements to the manufacturing process. They are close to the $100/kwh that was supposed to be the ‘breaking point’ for cost parity between sticker prices.
The problem right now is lithium prices skyrocketed to a record high which is probably a combination of demand and market speculators.
There are other battery chemistries that are under development that don’t use lithium like sodium which is part of table salt. it is like 220 dollars a ton instead of 71k/ton (record high).
It looks like some of the chinese are thinking about sodium batteries.
Batteries aren’t the only issue. There are a large number of kinks to work out.
It isn’t easy, it was just going to be a lot of hard work and take decades.
2 Likes