Are Tesla's days numbered?

[Alb]

The cruise ship I was on this summer was propelled by electric motors powered by diesel generators. Things like that are going to be fairly easy to convert to battery operation when the right batteries are available.

Commenting because this is my specialist area
It won't be even remotely feasible for big ships to do this any time soon. Propulsion power for a large cruise vessel would be in the order of 80MW so to run at full power for just an hour would require an 80+MWh battery!

 

[Rolfe]

Fair enough, I know nothing. It was quite funny listening to the engineer expounding how this all worked, and claiming that the ship was basically a Tesla!

As far as I understand it though, hydrogen isn't any more practical for this purpose.

 

[T1 Terry]

Lots of slightly to hugely inaccurate information out and about on the interweb.
Green hydrogen is a viable alternative, an electrolyser isn't the only method of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The process is energy intensive, but electricity isn't the only energy that will split water, heat energy does it very well, ask anyone who has had to work on a blast furnace when a tuyere blows out because the water cooling jacket leaked water/steam into the burden along with the super heated air used to create the whole blast principle. The heat turns the water droplets into water gas, the perfect mix of oxygen and hydrogen to create intense heat the whole fire brick lining was never intended to contain.
A mix of heat energy and electrical energy will do the job, intense heat developed by concentrating solar energy will do it, not just good for torturing ants :lol:
Heat manganese to a molten state and quench it with pure water, the oxygen is immediately separated from the water to oxidise the metal leaving the hydrogen to be syphoned off, reheat the oxidised metal and the oxygen is released, repeat the process .....
These ideas came from a book written quite some time back called Light, Water, Hydrogen: The Solar Generation of Hydrogen by Water Photoelectrolysis by SUDHIR RANJAN - Hardcover - 2007 - from Zubal Books (SKU: ZB1222152) ..... there is a lot of new tech coming out lately involving using carbon in the plates rather than the very expensive titanium Towards cost-effective and durable bipolar plates for proton exchange membrane electrolyzers: A review

Just for information purposes, the hydrogen used for rocket fuel is methane subjected to steam reformation .... basically stripping the carbon molecule away leaving hydrogen https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-natural-gas-reforming#:~:text=In steam-methane reforming, methane,for the reaction to proceed. Now you understand why the fossil fuel industry is backing hydrogen, methane is also known as natural gas .....

The excess renewable energy in the middle of the day or at night when the wind is blowing but everyone is asleep so the electricity isn't needed, could be used to generate hydrogen and the Sabatier reaction method used to combine CO₂ with the hydrogen to form green methane ..... relatively easy to store and decant compared to hydrogen, big business in Australia liquifying methane for ocean going ships to transport around the world .... like Japan .... can you see why they are in favour of hydrogen rather than battery storage?

T1 Terry

 

[Bam Bam]

Fair enough, I know nothing. It was quite funny listening to the engineer expounding how this all worked, and claiming that the ship was basically a Tesla!

As far as I understand it though, hydrogen isn't any more practical for this purpose.

It is better described as a diesel-electric rather than as being like a Tesla.

Pretty much all diesel trains work like this; the diesel creates electricity to run the electric motors. Otherwise you need pantographs or mahoossive batteries to store the energy.

There are a couple of battery electric trains being put in use on branch lines these days, including to Tesla's GigaFactory Berlin.

 

[Bam Bam]

Lots of slightly to hugely inaccurate information out and about on the interweb.

The excess renewable energy in the middle of the day or at night when the wind is blowing but everyone is asleep so the electricity isn't needed, could be used to generate hydrogen and the Sabatier reaction method used to combine co2 with the hydrogen to form green methane ..... relatively easy to store and decant compared to hydrogen, big business in Australia liquifying methane for ocean going ships to transport around the world .... like Japan .... can you see why they are in favour of hydrogen rather than battery storage?

Michael Liebreich is good on green hydrogen.

He created the Hydrogen ladder with A and B being very likely uses of hydrogen and the others being unlikely to be competitive with other uses.

Hydrogen Ladder Version 5.0 - liebreich

A much awaited update on Michael’s Hydrogen Ladder, now on version 5. Including 3 promotions, 7 demotions, 5 wording changes, combined use cases, and the inclusion of 4 new or partially new use cases, the new update incorporates all of Michael’s learning in the space over the last two years...

www.liebreich.com

Long term energy storage seems like a good idea if you can find a way to store the smallest atom (not at all easy - underground salt caverns seem to be the most likely idea for long term storage). Companies rarely transport hydrogen because it is such a bugger - it is mostly made on the site it is needed using cracked methane gas.

The general problem is that all the conversions you mention require energy and you lose some energy in the process. Batteries will win for a lot of applications because they are 80-90% efficient whereas some hydrogen processes will only be 20% efficient. You have to assume a lot of free energy from spare renewable capacity to make that worthwhile. If it means you have to build loads of extra renewables then that is another expense.

 

[Rolfe]

It is better described as a diesel-electric rather than as being like a Tesla.

Pretty much all diesel trains work like this; the diesel creates electricity to run the electric motors. Otherwise you need pantographs or mahoossive batteries to store the energy.

There are a couple of battery electric trains being put in use on branch lines these days, including to Tesla's GigaFactory Berlin.

I was reading about BEV trains being introduced on cross-Pennine routes where the tunnels are too tight for any hope of a pantograph being installed. Looked promising. The trains themselves looked pretty cool.

I would have thought trains wouldn't be too difficult. Have a separate battery "coach" that can be uncoupled, and just switch coaches when the batteries are getting low. I don't know if that's how they're doing it though.

 

[DuracellBunny]

So you wouldn't buy a Tesla because Musk changed Twitter. I don't know what you drive as it's not on your profile, but being on this forum suggests you still have an interest in cars made by a company belonging to the Chinese State government that has done far worse things than Elon Musk could even imagine.
It's nice to have principles.

It is an MG5, you can see it in my profile pic. Same as your profile pic so by your logic you lack principles too.

 

[Joningy]

No MG content, but we know because we own Chinese cars, that the Chinese are definitely coming...


Low-cost, high-tech Chinese EVs have stirred fears of a government subsidized existential threat to automakers around the world. So what do these vehicles have to offer? How do they compare to the Tesla Model Y, which in 2024 was the best-selling car in the world? CNBC’s Beijing bureau chief Eunice Yoon tested four of them from large and high-profile Chinese brands to see how they stack up, and how their rivals might compete.

That is really interesting Bricktop, I did not realise there are so many Chinese EV makers! thanks for posting that snippet.

 

[Bricktop X PWR]

That is really interesting Bricktop, I did not realise there are so many Chinese EV makers! thanks for posting that snippet.

Neither did I!

There are brands called Chery, Leapway, Leapmototor, Aiways, and others here, or coming soon.

Prices should tumble with any luck.

 

[T1 Terry]

This is the latest arrival over this side he seems to think it's a Tesla killer, but the more tricky gadgets, the more things to go wrong, so, not for me .... but then the Tesla was never on my radar anyway ... well, except for the first one, the Roadster, liked that one ......

T1 Terry

 

[m4rmite]

Not in the EU, they will have a 9% tariff on their chinese made cars, whilst MG will have a 36.3% tariff added - the same % as a non compliant company.

 

[T1 Terry]

Not in the EU, they will have a 9% tariff on their chinese made cars, whilst MG will have a 36.3% tariff added - the same % as a non compliant company.

Can you import a damaged MG EV over there? A lot of enquiries on another forum about parts for doing an EV conversion but it seems anything MG EV isn't known much at all ...... Well, in the USA anyway ......

T1 Terry

 

[decrep]

we

Hydrogen seems to be the God of the gaps. Maybe not private motoring, but commercial vehicles. HGVs. Farm machinery. Diggers and the like. Shipping!

But we've had electric vans for years, electric buses are all over the place, and practical electric HGVs are starting to appear. Farm machinery too. It's a while now since I watched a film about EVs in Norway, and one of the segments was about a construction site close to a nursery school. Normally they would have been required to stop work for an hour in the early afternoon to let the children have their nap, but this one was allowed to work right through at any time, because all the machinery was electric.

All new short-haul ferries in Norway are now electric and I think they're BEVs. The cruise ship I was on this summer was propelled by electric motors powered by diesel generators. Things like that are going to be fairly easy to convert to battery operation when the right batteries are available.

There are already electric light aircraft and I read recently that electric flight across the USA from coast to coast was the next goal.

I also saw a video that was rubbishing hydrogen as ever being a practical fuel for long haul shipping or aviation, because of the physics of storing and carrying the volumes of fuel that would be required. All the applications the hydrogen enthusiasts fall back on to justify continuing to back the notion are busy falling like dominoes.

I don't understand the fascination with it, not from Toyota or from JCB or from all the "EVs are just a stop-gap until the holy grail of hydrogen arrives" fanbois. To me it has always been self-evidently ludicrous, but I thought I might be missing something. Turns out I wasn't.

I do see that the petrochemical companies are keen to promote it because it's basically another fossil fuel, another product they can diversify into as petrol and diesel sales wither away. (Green hydrogen is simply daft, inefficiency on steroids.) But why does anyone else think it's a good idea or get so keen to promote it? It's a mystery to me.

Over here, in the North, there's stacks of sunshine, and probably wind, and not much people. So converting water to methane and transporting it wherever is a possibility

 

[T1 Terry]

we

Over here, in the North, there's stacks of sunshine, and probably wind, and not much people. So converting water to methane and transporting it wherever is a possibility

They could either liquify it, or pump it via pipelines the way they did from Bass Strait up the east coast. The Sydney govt bus fleet use it as a diesel replacement fuel, not sure if there is a mist of diesel still sprayed into the combustion change to ignite the gas mix, but they are certainly quieter and the evil smell around bus stops has gone.

If they built the pipeline beside the highway, they could pump out of it at service stations to fuel the truck conga line that seems to travel each way .... then add geothermal power to the solar and wind and produce green methane that way and add it to the pipeline. A better proposition than building an east/west DC power network to join the two grids, no where near as much energy loss pumping the gas compared to trying to move electricity that far. The communities along the way could also power their diesel gen sets with green methane and add more EV charging points ....

Yeah, dreaming again, like the fossil fuel industry would let a major cash cow like that disappear without putting up a fight ...... Maybe Twiggy Forrest has the $$ to fight it ...... Maybe run it along the rail lines so the big diesel locos could switch to green methane .....

T1 Terry

 

[Robf]

The development of batteries in cars is interesting, a bit like memory development in computers. When I first started my EV journey the best cars had 22 kWh batteries capable of 100 miles. The MG4 LR bought just over a year ago was pretty good at 64 kWh and 260 miles. Watching the news the other day newly developed cars are now expected to be doing over 350 miles (not sure of the battery type though). This is also not highlighting the development of charging speeds (I went from 28% to 80% in 20 mins at a Tesla charger).
If this trend continues we will be looking at cars averaging well over 500 miles and charging at over 200kW by 2027.
Despite his less attractive attributes history is very likely to view Musk as the enabler of this (and keep an eye on what he is up to with his satellites).

 

[Rolfe]

I was chatting to a guy at the Cherwell Valley service station yesterday evening who was sitting in an MG4 ER. He was boasting about getting 300 miles practical range.

 

[Gomev]

It is an MG5, you can see it in my profile pic. Same as your profile pic so by your logic you lack principles too.

I have principles but try to avoid hypocrisy. I am quite happy to charge at Tesla superchargers, in fact I did so on Monday.
Looks can be deceptive hence I try to avoid making assumptions. Yes my profile picture is my old MG5 but I now drive a Kona.

 

[Rolfe]

This was yesterday.

I remarked to a passing Tesla driver that I felt a bit like a cat in a dog suit, but she just smiled and laughed.

 

[DuracellBunny]

I have principles but try to avoid hypocrisy. I am quite happy to charge at Tesla superchargers, in fact I did so on Monday.
Looks can be deceptive hence I try to avoid making assumptions. Yes my profile picture is my old MG5 but I now drive a Kona.

My principles and your principles will not overlap entirely.
At the time when you bought/leased/used the MG5 was China any better than when I bought mine or now?

Hypocrisy riles me as well and find China less hypocritical than Musk.

 

[Gomev]

My principles and your principles will not overlap entirely.
At the time when you bought/leased/used the MG5 was China any better than when I bought mine or now?

Hypocrisy riles me as well and find China less hypocritical than Musk.

When I bought my ZS EV and then my 5, I bought purely on value for money and price. Two separate things. When I charge on the road, since all electrons that I feed the car are equal, I choose by location and price. i.e. the cheapest where I need/want to charge.