Researchers achieve EV battery breakthrough with silicon-based materials and gel electrolytes, moving closer to a 1,000-kilometer range on a single charge.
The problem is we can’t keep the same resources waste up. Lower range and smaller cars is what is needed. The perfect car of the future would be a one-seater that is as small and light as a electric velomobile (~70kg). Build a few millions of them and replace all cars in a city with those. Ideally self driving and as a robo-taxi, but even without the self driving this would be good. Of course cars isn’t really that high on the list for climate change.
But as a civilization we are simply not an intelligent species.
yeah but think of what would be lost when the saying, “Don’t make me turn this car around!” is never uttered again. The loss of decades of tradition… ;)
Yeah I always wish my car had one of those divider windows like limos have so I can close the kids in the back when they argue. It’s not really offered though haha
Yeah it’s not a solution to everything. I imagine the standard “super light” robo taxi as a two seater with the seats facing each other. Without a driver seat you can redesign individual transport to be narrower which improves aerodynamics.
But yeah for families or cargo transport you still need larger vehicles. Or take two. And I also imagine this to be more of a “gap filler” besides public transport or bicycles. It would really require a pretty big redesign of how we live and work to reduce our energy and resource usage to zero.
I’d love gel and lithium-ion batteries in an ebike or a velomobile. It would result in a 40% increase in range with no extra weight, making them more of a viable alternative for somewhat longer commutes (think 10-15 miles). Sure we should be serving those by high speed public transit, but this would be a faster stopgap/alternative.
Oh and it would be useful for electric trucks too, even short-range ones could be made lighter with less batteries.
Actually surprised how little cars actually contribute to climate change I thought it was a major factor but they’re not really. If everyone in the world just switched to using LED light bulbs rather than incandescent it would be equivalent to removing half of the world’s cars from the road. And honestly seems easier to upgrade everyone’s light bulbs to LED than to replace every car.
Directly via exhaust? It’s a significant number, but maybe not the biggest one. But add manufacturing, oil (or battery materials) extraction and refining, road infra construction and maintenance, emissions connected to suburbanization, microplastic pollution from tires, health and safety impact, and you’ll get a much grimmer picture. LEDs won’t cut it, and cars do not scale to 8B people.
Yeah, the single biggest thing we could do is ban industrial meat production and regulate food production to be more local. But the overall scale of change needed is staggering. We’re not going to do much really.
Consider something like 50% bigger than a podbike.
3000 miles is not something we as a society should accommodate to travel by car. The whole problem is that everyone thinks we can keep doing the same lifestyle just with zero carbon. We simply can’t. We need to change how we live and work.
Huh this video just dropped which is one possible solution to design a different work / live environment. If you imagine a village like that but large enough to have a school and some more amenities:
Building a village designed for people (not cars) near Phoenix
But you’d still want public transport, bikes and delivery vans. But in Europe you also get a lot of cargo quadricycles to deliver goods.
The problem is we can’t keep the same resources waste up. Lower range and smaller cars is what is needed. The perfect car of the future would be a one-seater that is as small and light as a electric velomobile (~70kg). Build a few millions of them and replace all cars in a city with those. Ideally self driving and as a robo-taxi, but even without the self driving this would be good. Of course cars isn’t really that high on the list for climate change.
But as a civilization we are simply not an intelligent species.
A single person vehicle will never be the solution because families exist. No parent would want their kids in a separate vehicle.
I wish my kids would have separate vehicle sometimes. I’m sick of playing eye spy with people that can’t spell.
yeah but think of what would be lost when the saying, “Don’t make me turn this car around!” is never uttered again. The loss of decades of tradition… ;)
Yeah I always wish my car had one of those divider windows like limos have so I can close the kids in the back when they argue. It’s not really offered though haha
Yeah it’s not a solution to everything. I imagine the standard “super light” robo taxi as a two seater with the seats facing each other. Without a driver seat you can redesign individual transport to be narrower which improves aerodynamics.
But yeah for families or cargo transport you still need larger vehicles. Or take two. And I also imagine this to be more of a “gap filler” besides public transport or bicycles. It would really require a pretty big redesign of how we live and work to reduce our energy and resource usage to zero.
I’d love gel and lithium-ion batteries in an ebike or a velomobile. It would result in a 40% increase in range with no extra weight, making them more of a viable alternative for somewhat longer commutes (think 10-15 miles). Sure we should be serving those by high speed public transit, but this would be a faster stopgap/alternative.
Oh and it would be useful for electric trucks too, even short-range ones could be made lighter with less batteries.
Actually surprised how little cars actually contribute to climate change I thought it was a major factor but they’re not really. If everyone in the world just switched to using LED light bulbs rather than incandescent it would be equivalent to removing half of the world’s cars from the road. And honestly seems easier to upgrade everyone’s light bulbs to LED than to replace every car.
Directly via exhaust? It’s a significant number, but maybe not the biggest one. But add manufacturing, oil (or battery materials) extraction and refining, road infra construction and maintenance, emissions connected to suburbanization, microplastic pollution from tires, health and safety impact, and you’ll get a much grimmer picture. LEDs won’t cut it, and cars do not scale to 8B people.
I too watched veritasium today
Yeah, the single biggest thing we could do is ban industrial meat production and regulate food production to be more local. But the overall scale of change needed is staggering. We’re not going to do much really.
Lmfao tell me you’re an over privileged fuck in some hyper urban city without using those exact words
My life, and lives of hundreds of millions of people in the global south would go TO SHIT if this euro-centric shit takes™ ever get any light of day
how do we magically get goods to and from?
grocery store trips?
what about other items from the store such as TVs?
what about families?
have you seen what is required daily or weekly for a baby?
what about a Micro Center trip?
https://www.velomobileworld.com/
not intelligent to be able move people and objects around?
travel over 3,000 miles every few months for work out of state and could not see myself in that taking naps at a rest stop comfortably
with such out of touch comments the petrol conundrum may never be solved
Consider something like 50% bigger than a podbike.
3000 miles is not something we as a society should accommodate to travel by car. The whole problem is that everyone thinks we can keep doing the same lifestyle just with zero carbon. We simply can’t. We need to change how we live and work.
Huh this video just dropped which is one possible solution to design a different work / live environment. If you imagine a village like that but large enough to have a school and some more amenities: Building a village designed for people (not cars) near Phoenix
But you’d still want public transport, bikes and delivery vans. But in Europe you also get a lot of cargo quadricycles to deliver goods.