EVcast #287: The Death of ENVI

Please understand that all inclusive when thinking about alternative energy and alternative fuels means simply that truly promising technologies will not receive the money necessary to get them into the market because the money needed will be distributed over a variety of technologies that may be dead ends. This has been the perennial problem in the quest to get alternatives to the market. We not only get the alternatives we know about such as ethanol, bio-diesel, electric and such, but we also get those things that shouldn’t be considered simply because they are not going to make it in the marketplace. A good example of this is the car that uses the wind it is pushing through to power the car. (c: }~ You can probably use the flow of air round the car to capture for braking, but electric regenerative brakes work far better. If this stuff is confusing for you than please read my article published in EVWorld.com called “Picking the Winners” http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1608. It is a really complicated article, but simply put, if it can get to market more easily than it is most likely going to be used, if it costs billions upon billions of dollars in infrastructure, cars, rare materials, etc. or if it has a technology that is insurmountable than the chances that it will get wide spread adoption are slim and in most cases none. Learn how to stop advocating for technologies that are going nowhere and keep your eyes open for technologies that are not being considered that could change the nature of the game of energy and fuel. Peace.

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Hi Bo, Ryan & Shannon,

Neodymium magnets are also called " neo magnets". It's easier to pronounce. The usual AC motor that is used for fans, pumps, etc. do not use neo magnets.

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   Bo gave a wonderful summary of the technical questions/issues for the wind powered car.  Very well done sir.

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So I listened to the whole University of Delaware speak given by Elon Musk.  It is mostly a list of his accomplishments with PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla.  Very Impressive guy.

   However, I didn't hear any discussion of Fiskar.  So I wonder where this supposed quote came from?  Is this another crack reporting job from the media.

    Perhaps the one think he said that I found interesting is that V2G does not make sense until the life cycles of the batteries improve.  Basically, if you only have 2000 cycles of life in a $30,000 battery pack, it make no sense to use some of those cycles to sell power to the grid.  If the batteries have a 100,000 cycle life, then sure, go ahead.  But the current batteries are too precious a resource to cycle needlessly.  I wonder if this is true.

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Elon is of course correct about V2G currently not making economic sense if it's cutting into the cycle life of the battery.  However, the a large part of the benefit of V2G technology can be had by simply using it to pause charging during periods of high demand.

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Being an EV owner now, i must say that i don't see the appeal of V2G.  The energy in my batteries means freedom to me.  Do I want to give up this freedom to say watch a couple hours of TV? No, not really. 

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