The key thing is to get people to charge when you want them to, rather than when they get in from work every evening. So they would charge when either: There is a lot of wind on the grid, There is a lot of solar on the grid or demand is very low. The fact that many cars now have >= 50 kWh batteries should help this as a battery that size should give you a lot of flexibility in when (and what days) you charge. (When people had 24 kWh Leafs, it was a lot tighter in that they probably had to charge every day.) What you need is a charging plan where you say: I need X kWh by time T (say 7am the next morning), rather than just plugging in.

Well that seems pretty clear, then.

It is a pity they don't give more details, like the mpg rating (compared to the previous one), acceleration, etc. Also, I wonder if they considered making a PHEV version of this where you have a 6-10 kWh battery which can be charged every day or night. 8 kWh of electricity will drive you ~28 miles which is about the average daily journey - for longer ones, use the petrol engine. Or, if you want to use the petrol engine every day, just use a smaller battery. Also, consider a solar roof - say 600 watts for 5 hours is 3 kWh and about 10 free miles per day. It adds to the complexity, but keeps the annual CO2 generation to a minimum. (Or maybe simplicity is the key).

If you think of it, there are three new technologies here: Electric flight Personal vertical takeoff vehicles Autonomous flight. That is quite a lot of new stuff. They made a good decision to drop the autonomous bit and just concentrate on the electric and vertical bits. Note that the Pipistrel Alpha Electro is a light aircraft. If its battery fails, it becomes a glider with a steepish glide angle. If an eVtol's battery fails in vertical mode, it becomes a brick with an almost vertical glide angle (so you have to be very careful with quality).

@dursun, good video - message is keep it BEV if at all possible - works for short and medium range transport, gets messy after that. Medium and long range aircraft probably need some kind of synthetic fuel, or fuel offsets (actual offsets, not just paper ones).

Double umlaut - totally excellent. I wonder does it go to 11.

>> "69 US$/MWh and 100 US$/MWh" which look very high by current and projected solar (and maybe wind) costs. oops

Note that the electricity prices they are using are: "69 US$/MWh and 100 US$/MWh" which look very low by projected solar (and maybe wind) costs. Note also that they expect to sell the carbon black and make a good deal of cash from that. It strikes me that if you start doing this at scale, the price of carbon black will nosedive as the supply increases hugely. Still very interesting.

This looks good. The carbon is taken out as carbon, rather than CO2 and thus is easy to deal with (maybe even sell). If they can pull this off, and it is efficient, we could be in business. Imagine if you could use a similar approach to cooking the carbon out of CO2 rather than pretending to liquefy and bury it. (Energy balance might not be good).

Looks like another nail in the coffin for Tesla.

2 or 3 things happened here. a: People moved from diesel to petrol (mainly due to the VW scandal). b: People moved to SUVs from hatchbacks and saloons (just fashion). c: They switched from NEDC to WLTP as a way of measuring CO2. (Though I'm not sure how that is covered, if at all). So it is a double or triple whammy for the EU car manufacturers, and has forced them to develop loads of EVs to try to get their fleet averages down.

The ID.3 and ID.4 are decent cars - nice recovery for VW from the diesel debacle. It is a pity they don't sell the ID.3 in the US, but I am sure VW know what they are doing. Only comment is that both are still expensive in Europe, even after rebates.

@Dave; FYI: as you say, there is more and better wind in the west, but Eirgrid expect loads of trouble trying to bring it across the country (pylon protests etc.) so they will develop less powerful wind on the east coast, nearer the main population centre of Dublin. + it is still expensive to build undersea cables from Ireland to the UK.

Can anyone find out what speed they were going at ? I am going to guess 65-80 kph. Anyone could do it, but you wouldn't get a lot of thanks from other motorists on the autoroutes / hightways / autobahns.

I have mixed views on this. They are putting a load of offshore wind on the east coast of Ireland - far more than we need, and it looks like they plan to soak up the excess by making hydrogen (and storing it and piping it around). This looks OK, until you look at the cost of electricity from Solar in (say) Oman or Portugal. And you can transport H2 (or NH3) around in tankers (or you will be able to soon). So it seems to me that we will be flooded with green hydrogen of one form or another in about 10 years - and people making it from offshore wind will end up selling it at a loss.* https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-is-now-cheapest-electricity-in-history-confirms-iea * and as an Irish taxpayer, I will probably end up funding this.

This also shows the problem with EVs, that of battery size. If most of your trips are short, you should require a smaller (lighter, cheaper) battery. However, the requirement to undertake the odd long run pushes people to purchase larger batteries that they really need. Also, it is hard to find a threshold - there is no obvious "just enough" point - it tends to be whatever the manufacturers are providing (and is about 50 kWh now, as far as I can see). I can see several solutions: a: Small/medium (12-25 kWh) batteries and range extenders b: PHEVs (6-12 kWh) c: Car swapping (formal or informal) for either large battery EVs or ICE cars d: Flooding the main roads with high speed charging stations. e: Hydrogen (vast amount of infrastructure needed) f: Public transport g: Allow people to keep their ICE cars in parallel with EVs and have a merged insurance / road tax system (and high carbon taxes) h: Covalent car ownership, where a group of N (N>1) people own M Vehicles (M>=N) of different types.

20% ammonia and 80% coal will still generate more CO2 than just using natural gas. Also, they are proposing to use Blue ammonia, which is Ammonia made using carbon sequestration (presumably from steam reformed ch4). - Can you trust them to do the sequestration ? (I wouldn't) Why not: a: Burn the CH4 directly in a thermal or b: Sequester the co2 from the coal fired power station directly or c: Burn a mixture of green ammonia and Ch4. and d: sequester the CO2 from the power station. Green ammonia I get, where you make the H2 from electrolysis from solar or wind (or nuclear), I am very suspicious of anything that uses carbon sequestration - the temptation is to plough ahead before the sequestration is working and use it as a smokescreen.

@SJC - exactly, and the combustion of the ICEs you have not replaced with BEVs will create a great deal more CO2 than the PHEVs or range extender BEVs that you have replaced.

You could build 4 PHEVs with the same battery capacity as one BEV. Might be a better approach if we are battery limited. Also, if you use range extenders / dedicated gensets, the petrol side should be quite efficient. Also, you could use biofuels or some low low carbon fuel type (methane / biomethane). Obviosly a PHEV is not zero emissions, but 4 Phevs will have much lower emissions than one BEV and 3 ICEs. Now, if only we could make PHEVs more cheaply ... Maybe a 12 kWh battery and 1 or 2 of the 16 kW range extenders from Aquarius Engines or equivalent, running on whatever.

Or you could use PHEVs or HEVs with 10 kWh or 2 kWh batteries and range extenders running on just petrol or diesel (or some biofuel) and keep it simple. It isn't a perfect solution, but at least you might get it implemented.

How much extra will it cost ? I can see the likes of Mercedes and BMW and other luxury car makers using it to "green up" their cars, but I can't see it being used in rebar and other low cost applications.

They are comparing current battery tech with their forecast tech for 2026, which is hardly fair (but it is marketing). Also how can they claim 14% better mileage from the same capacity battery as a LiIon - is it that the solid state battery can be run down to 0 % charged?

It would be super for hybrids with that power density. You could (almost) use them as a replacement for Ultracaps and short term load management in general. + you could match them with higher energy, but lower power density batteries for EVs. I imagine the problem will be deploying powerful enough chargers, as without very high power chargers, you have very little.

I see no major problem propelling ships with H2, other than the cost compared to bunker fuel, but you can legislate for that. If shipping costs a bit more, it won't kill anyone. As Dave says, the actual hydrogen carrier can be worked out in the market / technically. I do not see H2 as a source for aircraft any time soon as the requirements are too tough in terms of size, safety, weight for a given power/energy level. Weight and size are much less of a problem with ships. But you never know what is round the corner - an ammonia or a methanol economy. And once things take off and reach scale, the costs tumble.

@SJC - from Wikipedia "Typically hydrogen engines are designed to use about twice as much air as theoretically required for complete combustion. At this air/fuel ratio, the formation of NOx is reduced to near zero. Unfortunately, this also reduces the power output to about half that of a similarly sized gasoline engine. " This would explain why a 800 cc engine only generates 16 kW. So the simple H2 ICE may have a place (as long as you can source Green or clean H2). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_internal_combustion_engine_vehicle#Adaptation_of_existing_engines It looks like there is going to be a lot of green H2 (or ammonia) around in 5-10 years.