Excellent, well done. Recycling expensive LiIon batteries will be a key part of the "new automotive economy" both resource wise and financially. If the batteries are easier to recycle, they will have a higher end of life value and will reduce the cost of owning electric cars.

There are situations when this could be very useful. I wonder is there anything there that could be used in a range extender ? I suppose the two applications are very different - in the CHP thing, you aren't so worried about generating heat - as long as you capture it, while a range extender should just be as efficient (in a narrow revs band) as possible.

70 KwH battery pack. Power: 2000 Ps (?) 0-60 in <3 seconds, fine. Max speed of 200 mph - fine Range: 250 miles - at what speed - 70 mph ? Bit of a shame. I would sell a version with a 100 kWh battery (heavier) with lower acceleration to get better range, or better range at some decent speed. (like Tesla does).

Should give better motorway cruising for EVs, They don't say how much better it makes things, however.

@EP, RBMKs ran OK after Chernobyl, once they figured out their operating parameters etc properly. Probably wouldn't do too well with a terrorist attack, though. It is easy enough to do safe nuclear, or cheap nuclear. The trick is to do safe, cheap nuclear.

5 gms/km is not to be sneezed at, but you'd have to see the figures with actual cars. I assume this can be used for both petrol and diesel engines ... The manufacturers are under quite a bit of pressure to get to an average of 95 gms/km, especially with the diesel cheating blown, and consumers moving to SUVs (even small SUVs as are popular in Europe).

The problem with renewable energy (Solar and wind) is that it is intermittent, while fossil based generation is "on demand", or dispatchable, as it is known. Thus, you need to keep dispatchable cover for the renewables. This could be gas or coal or transmission or batteries or hydro. All of the non fossil alternatives are capital intensive. Batteries are good for load shaping, but not long term power - maybe overnight if you have a lot of solar. If you limit renewables to 60-70% and go solar, wind, gas + batteries, it will probably work. You can go deeper if you have a lot of hydro, else, you are in for very expensive electricity. Nuclear could work, but currently is very expensive, and has a great fear factor in the west. People have done cheap nuclear, and they have done safe nuclear, but they have not done safe, cheap nuclear.

Phrase of the day "Carbon nano-onion". Look like useful things: "ultrahigh power super capacitors", + "support for Pt in direct methanol fuel cells" 3 orders of magnitude cheaper! Sounds good to me.

What is the point of an electric Harley ? Surely the point of a Harley is to announce your presence to all and sundry by making as much noise (and CO2) as possible, and to drive all day without a helmet, proclaiming your freedom (to do so). You won't be able to do either with an E_Harley. No noise*, and a short range. The Verge quotes 110 "city miles", so that might mean 90 miles at 60 mph. Anyway, I wish them well. [ I have nothing against "normal" e-motorbikes, like the Zero, it is the "excess" of a Harley that does not work well with electric drive [IMO]] *Or will they have to add noise by tuning the "exhaust".

it looks good, but, as they say, they have fitted batteries sized to the short, fast run and so have made the cars lighter, but very short ranged. And hence have no relevance to real life driving. It would be better to agree a minimum KwH level for electric race and record cars, say 40 KwH (not so large as to make them into tanks, but large enough to appear in cars that people actually buy).

It can give you 44 - 56 km solar power per (sunny) day, which is about the average driven km for most people - which is excellent. I am impressed with the efficiency of the solar cell - 34% on a production vehicle (not in a lab or on a satellite). However, I wonder how much it all costs - and would you be better just adding 1 - 2 KW of solar to your house any pushing the excess into a battery or the grid? + WHY do they call them solar batteries - they are batteries charged by solar power. You could put this material on buses as well - reduce the power load on the alternator or battery. In Summary, technically, it is excellent, I just hope it is affordable. Well done Toyota!

@Christos, that's it - how much extra does it cost. + do you really need 80 kw - 40 might be enough for nearly everything (if it is a PHEV). If it is 2-4K euros onto the customer vehicle price, we could be in business.

Catalysts with the least amount of Platinum have to be a good thing. OK, so they are 50% better, and have to get to 80% - quite a bit to go, but still worth pursuing (+ I wouldn't take the 80% as a hard limit). I am 50/50 on hydrogen, IMO batteries are simpler, but H2 provides better large / medium scale storage possibilities.

7 years development - better get their skates on. OK, it is research engine. lets hope it turns out a range extender as part of its work. IMO, a medium battery size EV and a range extender should be a really good system, most of the time on battery, but no need to worry about range - like a PHEV, but simpler to produce.

@EP, lets hope so.

You can see the gearbox companies are getting into hybrid drives as fast as they can - see also the Continental post a few days ago. Both Mild (<=25 Kw) and full hybrids are produced. All due to the EU's 95 gms/km specification. lets hope they do not increase the price too much and can be used on less expensive cars like VW Gold and Ford Fiesta. There is no point in building exquisite solutions that can only be used on a few 40-50K Euro cars, they need to work on the 16-20K ones where the mass market is.

Great to see this. Hopefully they'll be able to get this into loads of cars at reasonable cost ( say +1K to the driver) Then improve it further. The new Eu 95 gms/km ruling might accelerate the uptake. (Will not might).

Interesting - old cars are now so good (and too many people have become impoverished) that that can keep them to 16 years in the USA. It doesn't bode well for turning the fleet over to newer, more efficient vehicles if people won't buy new ones.

It is a triple whammy for the European car manufacturers: People are switching from diesel to petrol (Thanks VW) People are switching from cars to SUVs. The Eu has started to use the WTLP test rather than the NEDC (which was not at all fit for purpose). IMO, they should synch the 95 gms/km back to the WTLP test - 115 apporx perhaps, or have I missed something.

I would have to agree with EP, you don't need to go full EV, you could go some kind of hybrid with much less batteries required. Increasing the power supply by 20% sounds very doable. I'm all for the nukes, but you had better start doing the PR groundwork now. (Wait till they have mostly forgotten "Chernobyl"). Also, you could encourage the use of electric buses and trains running on overhead power supplies. The task here is to reduce CO2 emissions as soon as possible. You don't need to get them to zero - if you got them to 25% of what we have now, you'd be doing very well. Also, you don't need to pick a solution, just get to whatever kind of low CO2 motive power works.

@harvey, I wouldn't think so. High speed rail needs a lot of power. Handy for shorter range, or mixed overhead / non overhead routes, as they say. I am not sure about H2. It is very complex requiring fancy storage and a reformer. Also, it is usually made from methane. Why not just use natural gas and a generator, like a diesel electric engine, only a lot cleaner.

The problem with renewables is that some days they are not there, so you need an alternative. These days, this means gas - and you'll have to be able to power 100% of the grid from gas for those days when there is no wind and no sun and your batteries are flat. So it is certainly possible to get to say 70% wind+solar+battery, but you'll still have to keep 100 % gas coverage for the dull, still days, or runs of days. So, it is possible, but it is NOT cheap as you'll have to keep full dispatchable coverage (read fossil, or fossil+hydro), in terms of plant and people to operate it. Also, you'll probably want 80% coverage of both wind and Solar. So you'll end up with 260% generating capacity, which will cost a lot. I suppose it depends on the interest rate you are paying to fund all that plant.

@lad, I would suggest that the place to install solar is at grid level (rather than individual home level) - that way, there is nearly always a market for the energy without huge expense in batteries. Also, lots of people do not have the roof space for solar. I'm inclined to agree with the basic thesis that lots of hybrids are better than a few pure EVs, Over time, you could incresae the battery capacity in new generations of hybrids so they become PHEVs to some extent (and save a lot more power). The problem with BEVs is that people size their batteries to distances which they rarely travel, wasting a lot of batter capacity. With hybrids and PHEVs there is essentially no battery capacity wasted.

Why would anyone expect AVs to reduce fuel consumption ? They might reduce car ownership, but, as long as they are used by one person at a time, there is no reason to expect lower VMD and hence lower CO2. If you were able to use them for ride sharing, it would help, especially if you could get 4 - 6 people into each one. If you went to EVs, this would help, especially if the source is renewable or nuclear. But it could just as easily be human driven EVs. Also, if ways are found to improve the economy of AVs. they could probably be applied to human powered EVs as well.

sorry, wrong thread.