It's never easy, is it.

Our lizard overlords are blocking it. They'll be out later tonight to do a mind wipe.

If you split young people into urban / rural and with / without children, it should be obvious that the people who need cars are rural and with children. Not many people under 24 will have children, and those who do, or live in the country and need a car, buy secondhand. After that, they need to buy a house (or rent one) so that soaks up their money from 25 - 44. Only then, do they have the cash to consider new cars. (Or maybe in 2007, the banks were handing out more cash !)

Lots of work to be done. Lots of money to be made recycling batteries. Much easier to mine from local "dead" batteries than from a raw state. Health and safety might be a lot tougher in the UK than Bolivia (until Boris gets his way).

OK, double energy density for a supercap sounds good to me. Could be used for all urban vehicles and diggers, bin lorries etc which need sudden bursts of power. As long as it doesn't cost too much.

Better send 10 million of these to Delhi.

@EP, I agree, maybe they just want to keep it simple. I imagine it will get very good gas milage on the highway, the Note E-power was rated 80mpg US. This is a larger car, so obviously, it will be less, but I would expect it to be good, still. If successful, you could experiment with solar roofs and PHEV. IMO, you do not pure EVs*; there is a lot to be said for hybrids, parallel, serial or PHEV. *because the batteries are way too big for most journeys.

Wow - big deal if it works out at scale. Very big deal.

It strikes me that the surface area of a battery is not very large, especially when you pack them up to fit into a car. You might have to build LEDs into the battery or cells which sounds complicated. No mention of how intense the light should be. How far into the cathode can you shine the light ? Still, an interesting idea - faster charging is good, and increasing cell life is also good, especially for grid storage.

@SJC, they may have .. https://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/12/20181205-amprius.html hard to say how many cycles they can get out of the cells.

@Yoat, They are hardly beggars and they are certainly not going to war. Perhaps you mean: "Two mid sized car companies merging". Not as dramatic though.

It makes sense - they need more scale to tackle electrification and autonomous driving. It makes little sense to duplicate efforts. Better to combine and share engines and other bits - keep the brands alive for their fan bases. I am sure a lot of engineers will be disappointed to see their pet projects (or life's work) axed, but it is more important that the original companies survive. The game is much bigger now with China and India in the game; it is not just the EU, US and Japan any more.

Sounds really cool. 200 miles in 10 minutes = 1200 miles in an hour / 3 miles / Kw = 400 kW. Seems reasonable. I'd stay clear of the 400 kW cables, though. Also, how would it go at 150 kW, which is more common ?

battery capacity ? 32 kwH? No mention of range. As long as you have access to another car for long runs, you should be fine. MINI should have a "car swap" service so if you want one for a long run over the weekend, you can arrange to swap it for an ICE Mini (which could be used) at low cost, say twice a year for up to 5 years. For an additional payment, you could have the MINI guys go to your house and swap the car [ "valet car swap" ]. On the other hand, most couples or families would probably have access to another car anyway.

@Steve, here's a link. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029801813003843 (I haven't read it)

@Steve, I think the safety requirements would make it too expensive. + if you got hijacked, you would have a larger problem. Better to keep it on land - I have no personal objection to nuclear, although many do.

The problem with shipping is that it is international and thus difficult to enforce regulations. Even if Maersk obey the rules, it will be very hard to get a decent compliance rate. IMO, the easiest would be methane (bio or otherwise), but they point out the "methane slip" problem which should really be called "methane leak" problem.

@Thomas, we have 23% VAT on top of the price + VRT as well. Rates are here: EVs are zero rated. PHEV + HEV pay tax based on gms/km as below VRT Band CO2 Emissions (g/km) VRT Rate Minimum VRT A1 0 – 80 14% €280 A2 81 – 100 15% €300 A3 101 – 110 16% €320 B1 111 – 120 17% €340 B2 121 – 130 18% €360 B3 131 – 140 19% €380 C 141 – 155 23% €460 D 156 – 170 27% €540 E 171 – 190 30% €600 F 191 – 225 34% €680 G > 225 36% €720 diesel is 1% higher We are bringing in a NOX tax in January. Most cars are A3 - B3 these days. The co2 level is based on NEDC which is about 40% too low. Switching to WLTP "soon" (which is only about 20% too low). They'll probably adjust the bands to avoid stalling the car market. So nothing like 150%. The americans (and brits) have none of this, hence they have Golf GTis and we have Golf tdi's (very few GTd's over here).

Of course they will create congestion, If people can do whatever they like in their cars, instead of driving, they won't mind spending longer in the car. They could live further away then they do now and sleep, or work or surf while being driven in for 2-3 hours, no problem. Also, if the car could drop them at the office and then park elsewhere, what do they care if it clogs up the traffic. + the notion of sequential car sharing is BS, you might get 2, maybe 3 goes each morning, but that is it, everyone wants to go to work at more or less the same time. As Harvey says, you have to get more than one person into each car. Ideally 4-6 in a minivan. I heard recently that people prefer to car share with 2 or more extra people, rather than just one. One is a bit intense. Google should organise car sharing, or at least facilitate it. They know your every move, where you live and where you work, and what time you go there. They could easily pair you up with others with similar or overlapping routes and build up little "daisy chains" of commuters. You'd have to solve the privacy problem. IMO, opting in is not enough, because most people wouldn't. You would have to tell them that there are good options for them to car share (if they are in a daisy chain). Once you get them to opt in, they can input their preferences, (say talk/no talk, classical / pop music, democrat / republican, man/woman). If you think of it, there is a huge gap between single car occupancy and public transport, where you could share with 100 people. If you can find a socially acceptable way of bridging that gap, you have solved the traffic problem.

In Ireland, the smallest diesel and petrol versions will be the biggest sellers. It is an incredible number of engine configurations for one car (admittedly a very important car). I wonder how much extra the mild and PHEVs will cost. We have a very high (13% up to 30%) extra tax on cars (based on the NEDC (for now)) CO2 levels) in Ireland which tends to keep people on the lower cost models.

Lets hope it works out. Fingers crossed. I wonder how much Pt it requires per ton of output...

Sounds good, if not earth shaking. 20% lighter (in how much of the body ?) can't be a bad thing. Unless it costs significantly more...

Sounds like a reasonable neighbourhood vehicle, although very slow at <= 60 kph. I think the problem will be selling them, as who would want one ? My brain might say yes, but my heart would have other ideas. Maybe stick a solar panel on the roof and go for the ultra green crowd. Maybe get the speed up to 70 or 80 kph.

This sounds like good news to me (assuming it is not already known). So well done to PNNL and Dr Yang et. al.

Some good comments there. You will NOT be able to avoid all crashes. At all costs, avoid hitting pedestrians and cyclists as they have no protection. Next (I suppose), it is better to rear end the car in front than hit an oncoming car. It is better to run your car off thee road rather than hit an oncoming car. is it better to run your car off the road than hit the car in front ? and so on. Better to get this out in the open than keep quiet about it.