" And, as the global middle class continues to grow and exercise their buying power, the demand for oil will continue to grow alongside them." Wrong, these new customers will buy EVs.

Not sure if I understand enough, but since the pollution issues were discussed under the partial load section, can I safely assume that pollution is not an issue at full load? If so then it is a good candidate as a generator in a series hybrid car as is.

Are they good for billions of cycles like conventional capacitors? If not, then no market to replace supercaps, and much lower energy density than A123. Why wasn't the very important specification of cycle life given?

Why are my posts deleted?

HarveyD; The problem with hydro is that there just isn't much more water to dam up. All the logical sites for hydro power have already been built. Ontario is now looking at many smaller rivers to build small hydro for local use, but this is not going to make a major difference in available power.

Massive extra bureaucracy, almost nothing to reduce climate change. The single most effective change that can be made is to develop and implement the LFTR. Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors were proven viable in the late 1960s at Oakridge National Labs. Promises to be MUCH cheaper than conventional nuclear power, in fact some argue cheaper than coal. No long term radio-active waste, inherently safe see: http://flibe-energy.com/attributes/ The BRC seems to be mostly concerned with nuclear waste disposal. LFTRs could burn this waste, turning it into electricity. There is $27B allocated to waste management, and this could fund the entire LFTR program.

I only agree with the battery development. Putting more money into FC, NatGas, and biofuels is a waste. However it doesn't matter as the Republican controlled house will not pass it anyway.

Seems dangerous to have a pure lithium cathode in an aqueous solution. If the coating was to crack in an accident, you would have a major fire on your hands.

Fortunately we will all get to see how successful this is in Germany before other countries commit to the hydrogen highway. Best thing to do right now is wait. I predict that only a segment of the wealthy will embrace hydrogen fuel, and that market will become saturated in 5 years after full roll-out. The rest of us will choose BEVs, as being cheaper and more convenient with home charging. Only then will we have a good sense of how many sales/year, it will never be a major portion of the market. Unfortunately, this will turn out to be a massive subsidy for the rich.

Doesn't seem to be nearly as promising as this: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/09/alginate-20110909.html?cid=6a00d8341c4fbe53ef015391772940970b

I don't understand why they even consider such a thing. We should be building LFTRs. Low cost, pollution free, inherently safe, nuclear power that can run off the world's vast supply of thorium for tens of thousands of years. No radio-active waste concerns either, and can slowly burn the waste we already have. See http://flibe-energy.com/attributes/

SJC: Having a closed system does not solve the chemical issues in making a battery. It is just one alternative to the issue of keeping moisture out. Your post implies that a partial solution is no good if it does not solve all the problems. Dollard: Any high energy storage system has its dangers. Gasoline, natural gas, diesel fuel, hydrogen, and lithium are highly flammable. Even something as simple as compressed air is dangerous. Oxygen itself does not burn, but if mixed with other things will make burning more intense.

At first pass this is beginning to look pretty attractive. The whole system, oxygen tank and battery with electrolyte at a little more than 50 bar or 735 psi would do it. Not too onerous compared to hydrogen tanks which are 350 to 700 bar. 700 bar = 10,000 psi. I remember doing a rough calculation of the oxygen requirements a while back, and I think it was about 50 lbs for 300 miles.

Just thinking out loud here, one could avoid compression-decompression losses by running the whole system at high pressure, maybe even high enough that the oxygen is always in a liquid state. This would eliminate the requirement of a 3 phase solution.

I hadn't thought of a closed system. I suppose the advantage of no contamination may be worth the storage issues of O2, which I imagine would be compressed to a liquid.

Many years ago, GM-Delphi developed Magna-Quench magnets which GM has used in starter motors ever since. This does not use rare earths, although when Delphi went bankrupt the patents were bought by a Chinese company (can't remember the name now) and they now market Magna-Quench as being neodymium magnets. The original Magna-Quench sinstered iron magnets have near rare-earth capabilities. Rare earths are not rare, it has just not been profitable to compete with China. Now that China has announced restricted exports, other rare earth mines around the world can be re-started profitably.

@Harvey "5. Clean electricity is sustainable and plentiful." Not yet. And the third requirement is cheap. Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors have amazing potential. They run on free thorium, are inherently safe, proven technology, produce no long-term radio-active waste and should be much cheaper to build than conventional nuclear reactors. See: http://flibe-energy.com/attributes/ This style of nuclear reactor also naturally follows the load curve and is easy to shut down and re-start. Thorium is free because it is a waste product of rare earth mines.

There are many high energy anode designs reported but almost no cathodes to go with them. This shows great promise.

I think all the aids for the driver are desirable, but I question giving over control of the vehicle in some situations. I am more comfortable with automatic braking, especially in reverse than I am with automatic steering. But as these techniques get better, I agree with HarveyD, the accident rate could be dramatically reduced.

Although the article says many times that this is cheaper than existing platinum catalytic, I had to look up how efficient platinum is. Turns out to be 50% to 80%, not bad at all. Still compared to a battery, the hydrogen cycle would by 80% (water to hydrogen) * 90% (compression/decompression) * 70% (fuel cell) = 50% vs about 90% for lithium battery. This means the fuel would be only about 80% more expensive. Much better than I expected. Are drivers willing to pay a 1.8 times premium for fast hydrogen fill-up vs DC quick charge, and at the same time give up the low-cost convenience of charging at home? I don't think so.

Well, you are not including the anode, separator, casing, or any specialized support equipment. Also the standard Li-ion batteries can produce 1C to 10C output, that is about 1 amp/g, where as this is about 1/10, so you would need a battery 10 times larger than the Leaf battery to get the same acceleration. This is an intriguing development, but hardly the holy grail.

EEStor was claiming 4000 to 6000 volt operation. There is no mention of voltage. Supercapacitors are typically very low voltage 2.5 volts to 4 volts. EVs operate at 350V to 650V.

So Renault Fluence is about Euro 21k and battery lease Euro 82/mth. Nissan LEAF Euro 30k. I guess this is a bargain as it would take 9 years of battery leasing to make the 9k difference in price. I wonder how they do it? Or am I not comparing properly with VAT and incentives not equivalent. It doesn't make sense to me that a battery would be effectively half price just because it is leased.

This is absolutely ridiculous! The laws are to prevent discrimination of local producers vs out of state producers. ARB is not trying to promote California produced ethanol vs out of state ethanol. If this court decision is upheld, then there is no point to any state trying to reduce its pollution or control any product it decides is undesirable. It forces this to be only federal.

There is a very obvious solution, which they specifically ignore for reasons beyond my understanding. Liquid Flouride Thoroium Reactors are inherently safe, do not produce long term radio-active wastes, and run on cheap (as in free) and plentiful thorium. Theoretically, LFTRs should produce electricity cheaper than any other method including coal. See flibe-energy.com and energyfromthorium.com A few years ago, you could say researchers in the energy field might be ignorant of this fantastic opportunity, but now with exposure on Popular Science, and Wired you would have to be blind and deaf not to be aware of the incredible promise of the LFTR. An LFTR based reactor was built in the late 1960s at Oakridge National Laboratory and was run for 4 years, so the technology is proven. However this research was abandoned because it was no good for building nuclear weapons.