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[Richard230]

Here is page one of an article that was published by the NYT in my newspaper today regarding how far ahead the Chinese are with their EV fast charging infrastructure compared with the U.S.

[Richard230]

Here is page 2 of the article.

[Specter]

Sounds like more of your typical China so much further than America weekly propaganda to me.  Why have we not seen any of these magical batteries?  If they existed they'd be all over Alibaba.  What is their quality, or another typical product made of hi quality Chinesium, that will catch on fire in your garage.  What about the hundreds and hundreds of acres of electric cars in china rotting in grave yards because the govt bought them to make their numbers look good, look at us world, we ARE successful, then left to rot.  How many cycles can they take?  At that rate it will tear them up pretty quickly.  How big are these batteries?
The only truthful part of that article is that yes it'd take a ton of power, and getting it to the charging stations.  How much do one of these batteries weigh?  What about the overall car.  Yes, in theory, you could put enough power in 5 minutes to drive 200 miles, but have they actually done that yet?  Where's the car?   What voltage does it run, even at 1000 volts, a 'megawatt' charger would have to push 1000 amps.  I think the highest voltage platform ive seen is GM's Ultium, running at umm 800 ish volts?  They'd need 1200 amps to push a megawatt.  Do you have any idea how big those wires are, let alone the weight?  In the navy we use shore power cables to hook up the ships to the pier, each one of those was 9 lbs per foot, you'd need two of them 18 lbs. per foot to handle that power.  They are not very friendly handling either as far as bending and connecting.  The head is about the size of a 3 gallon paint can.  That's gonna generate some heat too, better have some pretty hefty cooling system to handle it.  Also, if one of those faults, you don't want to be anywhere near it.  450 volts was fireworks enough, i don't want to see a kilovolt cable turn into a copper fuse.

I could see a battery powering maybe a train or a semi truck, but for a car, this is still a bit impractical.

I've also heard that the new Sodium Battery is going to be out 'any day now' that will make this obsolete anyways?  So which unicorn is going to fart first for us?

Aaron

[Fran K]

So EV isn't going to catch on on the merits there needs to be policies that support a transition away from combustion.  Pretty much from the second to last paragraph.  There is stuff that may be true but lack context like origionally there was a $7500 federal incentive for the first certain number of vehicles then when Tesla and GM sold that many it got changed to until a pot of money is used up and she writes it up like the legislation times out, which may be accurate.

https://www.nytco.com/press/claire-brown-joins-climate-desk/

Of course China has a more strategic intrest in battery vehicles, think the secondary sanctions for using Russian fuel.  I think they are working on battery submarine stuff and any spin off progress from a defence related quasi state entity isn't wanted here in the USA.  Perhaps some reason for the tarrifs she mentioned.

[T.S. Zarathustra]

Sounds like more of your typical China so much further than America weekly propaganda to me.

Unfortunately US (not America, but part of it) has by now thrown away the international leadership position it inherited after WW2 (mostly by virtue of having not been invaded). These days China is ahead in almost everything that matters for the future of their nation. Specially education and infrastructure. In China schools get good funding. Currently US is telling teachers to purchase teaching supplies for their own money, between shooting incidents. Let's not mention home-schooling, where untrained and unsupervised people are teaching the kids. In China the electrical grid is relatively new and powerful. Including the largest dam in the world. In US the aging Hoover dams reservoir (largest reservoir in US by volume) is nearly empty. The largest dam in Americas is not even in the US but between Brazil and Paraguay. US does have some large coal power plants though.

Why have we not seen any of these magical batteries?  If they existed they'd be all over Alibaba.  What is their quality, or another typical product made of hi quality Chinesium, that will catch on fire in your garage.

Basically the article states "a battery that has a peak charging capacity of" 1 megawatt. Have a large capacity battery and it can charge at 1 megawatt without issues. No magical batteries required.

I could see a battery powering maybe a train or a semi truck, but for a car, this is still a bit impractical.

I've also heard that the new Sodium Battery is going to be out 'any day now' that will make this obsolete anyways?  So which unicorn is going to fart first for us?

Large portion of trucks sold here today are electric. Selection here from Renault as an example https://www.renault-trucks.nl/I/elektrische-vrachtwagen-elektrische-bedrijfswagen? 20 to 80 % charging in under hour and they don't need cables that weigh a ton. Warehouse near my work has 12 charging bays for truck overnight charging. Most of its trucks will need maximum one charge during the day.
My bet would be on solid state, battery beating sodium battery. Not that I believe solid state battery is anywhere near production ready.

[Specter]

solid state .vs. supercap it will be interesting to see what pans out on that.  Sodium is a jump up on the periodic table than lithium, ok fine, why go there, why not jump right into potassium?  it's cheapish and abundant, very reactive.  I think we are about at the limits of our known chemical abilities for battery power, just like computers are about the limit on speed .vs. density without something new, ie the quantum computer.  I mean yah you can stack more cores but you are about at the end of making them smaller.

We've heard rumblings about solid state stuff but nothing really showing up.  I think the ones to watch are really going to be Japan, THEY are the big innovators when it comes to this stuff.  Even with electronics, it's been the Japanese who lead the way there, and their quality is second to none, unlike cheap crap from china, or even the us nowadays. 

I think what will really be the kicker is AI.  If mankind manages to NOT use it to destroy ourselves, AI could possibly leap frog us into the future in a few years here. But. that is a two sided blade.  The more 'intelligent' our machines get, to do the work for us, the stupider mankind is going to get, ie why should i learn to do this, the machine will take care of it, im lazy.  Weed and WiFi, let the machines take care of running the world, im good man is going to be the attitude.  Those few who see the dangers of this will be too few to stop it really. but hey with self driving motorcycles we won't even have to worry about the thrill, the machines will do that for us too!!