Finding Ways to Think About the Future…

Our news media once held promise to be the common campfire that bound us as a community to discuss the important issues of our time. It could have continued to evolve in that mission, but for various reasons has abandoned it in favor of entertaining us with inexpensive talking heads on the dubious assumption that “opinions” are somehow important. They are at least saleable apparently and so television has largely devolved to selling products using the conflict of argument as an attractant.

Leaving many many important issues of our time entirely unnoticed. Health and health care is among them. But also employment – what is the mass of humanoids to DO once we have identified “employees” as a major impediment to profit and a cause of jurisprudence, and we have turned the machine of producing technology toward eliminating employees? What is the rest of humanity to do with their time and how will they gain the resources to eat, and sleep in safety, and pursue their interests?

Largely ignored, the overwhelmingly and often instantly addicting nature of synthetic opiods offered by Big Pharma have essentially murdered thousands of our children, but adults as well. It is occasionally mentioned with no real information or inquiry by the media. It has grown to pandemic proportions across the land with only an occasional mention. An entire TOWN in Kentucky was found to be addicted to Oxycontin. Ohio is a wasteland of grieving parents. Maine is on its knees. The state of Missouri just filed a $100 million lawsuit against three opiod manufacturers.

Similarly we are simply missing the evolution of miracles in our age. They are barely mentioned. But I believe that the development of the photovoltaic cell and the lithium ion battery are nearly enough miraculous, and are harbingers of a tsunamic change in life on earth – a historic inflection point. I really cannot describe how very much this will change life in the coming decades and it is mentioned only in passing and then with no real insight into what it means.

I could easily cast the Internet and mobile communications in the same vein. They allow humanoids to group and share information on a global scale but at a micro level in ways that were simply not possible prior. Our “campfire” would have us believe that this is simply an evil attractant and communications drug enslaving our children. That the masses of humanoids use this communication medium for idiotic applications rather misses the point. Things like ancestry.com and the International Association of Near Death Experiences, illustrate new forms of human organic growth. Contributions from many individuals can be pooled to form new data sources previously impossible. As individuals contribute findings on their ancestral lineage, the binary number system nature of having two parents causes those contributions to congeal into an increasingly complete picture of lineage for us all.

But beyond communications, we are rapidly entering a new age of energy. Energy to power our lives and enable us to do incredible things. And we face a quieter, greener, cleaner future of unlimited energy at very low cost.

The concept of using the sun to power activity on earth is not really earth shaking. The sun has always powered ALL of it. Our ability to bend those forces to our will, individually or collectively, have been crude. We spent much of civilization burning trees to gain access to the stored power of the sun and more recently have developed means to access “fossil fuels” or sunlight stored in mineral deposits in more efficient means of accessing the power of the sun. Eventually we will learn that the “fossils” are more fossilized microbial life than dinosaurs and plants, but it is the same concept, deposits of sunlight.

The “great leap” is the concept of converting sunlight into energy for our use directly. And the photovoltaic cell is a kind of “magic rock” that can turn the direct blows of photons from the sun into electricity, a fungible energy resource that can be applied to almost anything we want to do. From heating our houses to turning a shaft to do work, to making light in the darkness of night. The harnessing of electricity over the past two centuries has been a marvel. But now to convert sunlight DIRECTLY into electricity is just a miracle.

That the photovoltaic cell will do this with no moving parts, no emissions of any gasses whatsoever, no noise of any kind, no friction, no heat, no other actions at all make it a magic rock. An inert, motionless device that simply receives photons and produces electron flow. It really doesn’t even “wear” in the normal sense, although the output will decrease over a 20 year lifespan. The advances in efficiency and cost so far always make photovoltaics obsolete long before they wear out.

Some view sunlight as energy source as somewhat variable and unreliable. Actually, that is a purely local perspective. Wherever it is night, it is elsewhere day. And wherever it is cloudy, it is elsewhere clear. With an efficient and global grid, electricity can be easily ported about the planet to wherever it is needed, with more than adequate energy available where sunshine falls.

The most recent satellite measurements indicate about 1361 watts per square meter assuming a plane facing the sun at earth orbit. What actually reaches the ground is roughly calculated as about 1120 watts per square meter at its zenith. The average American home now uses about 935 kWh of electricity per month or 31kWh per day.

If we average the sunlight from sunrise to sunset it of course varies from Zenith but we can come up with a rough average and for most of the U.S. you can calculate about 4.5 hours per day at this level. And so an output of 6888 watts over that 4.5 hours would give us our 31000 watt hours needed for a day. At 1120 watts per meter, that’s a little more than 6 square meters. And so an area of about 8 feet long and 8 feet wide receives enough sunlight to power your average home.

Of course our magic rocks are not 100% efficient. Indeed they are not very efficient at all and the best solar panels currently available will do about 22% efficiency. But even then, we are talking about 30 square meters of panel. And so an area 18 feet by 18 feet of photovoltaic cell.

So as a practical matter, every roof in America probably has more than sufficient area to capture and convert all the energy needed to power the building. Indeed Elon Musk is again correct that the proper evolution is to simply replace existing roofing materials with materials that generate electricity from the sun. Twenty years hence, it will not occur to anyone to put a roof on a building that does not inherently harvest sunlight in the form of electricity. Why would you?

But again, the sun doesn’t shine at night, and into each life a little rain must fall.

Bringing us to our other “magic rock” lithium ion batteries.

And again, there are no moving parts. No noises. No friction. Entirely inert blocks of metal and carbon and lithium and other compounds. It is disappointing to disassemble a lithium ion battery. Internally it looks more like a book than a miracle. Alternate pages of copper and aluminum foil, with black ink printed on both sides, and a plastic trash bag between each page. Wow. Little heat, no noise, no moving parts – it is a magic rock. And you can put electricity IN, and you can take it back OUT later. And you can do so thousands of times before it “wears out.”

And so I am captivated by these two magic rocks. One converts sunlight to electricity. The other stores electricity and produces it on demand. And to watch them in action is a thing to behold. Actually it is NOTHING to behold. Nothing moves. Nothing makes any noise. Nothing is emitted. They are entirely silent, dead rocks. You can’t tell they are doing anything by looking at them. No humanly observable activity of any kind. No blinking lights. No buzzers. Nothing. Totally inert.

But together, they can power every conceivable human activity. Including personal transportation at speeds and accelerations we can barely withstand and the traffic won’t allow anyway.

The costs of all this have been heretofore heroic. But they have come down by two orders of magnitude and are now only painful. And so if you can take the pain, you can have the gain. It is just NOW feasible to power your life individually using sunlight directly.

At the request of many, I ATTEMPT in this episode to explain and describe the process of converting sunlight to electricity. This is a bit difficult. We have theories, and they become so familiar many actually think they know how electricity and photovoltaics work. As it happens at the quantum level, in truth we do NOT actually know. And so explaining what we don’t know, referring to theories that appear to more or less “work” is a little awkward. Understanding that some of our viewers have Phd’s and are actively working in this field, while others can’t put two batteries in a flashlight and get it right before the third try, makes this a challenge subject to criticism by all parties. Some will find it ponderous and others probably won’t believe it. But miraculously, I’m pleased to report that on continuous testing from 1954 to 2017, it does indeed work.

After the two magic rocks, it is merely and simply a matter of ordinary electrical equipment to make all this happen. In this weeks episode we demonstrate a device, Morningstar TS-MPPT-60-600V-48-DB TriStar 600V Solar Charge Controller, that can take the power from our 13.4 kW test array of photovoltaics, and very efficiently use it to charge a 20 kWh group of four Tesla Model S battery modules. And we are playing with a couple of devices that can take the 48vdc power from that battery and make the standard 60Hz 120vac and 240vac that all of our devices already use.

The Morning Star can deal with a wide range of photovoltaic voltages from 100 to 600 volts. It can charge a 48v battery at up to 60 amps. A little less than 3kW. Use as many as you like to charge the battery.

The interesting thing about the Morning Star is its wide range. Most 48v charge controllers are limited to 100 or 150 volts on the photovoltaic side. This one can do 100 to 600v which allows us to use our 460v test array directly.

Further, the output range of most of such controllers is limited. This one does 18 to 72 volts which is the widest output we’ve found.

The Magnum Energy MagnaSine MS4448P can do 240vac OR 120vac at up to 4400 watts continuous power and up to 8500 watts for five seconds if you need to startup an air conditioner or something similar. You can of course use more than one in parallel and the battery is quite capable of well over 50,000 watts for brief periods.

The Sunny Island 6048 is for some odd reason limited to 120vac and you need two of them to do 240vac. But it is a bit stronger at 5750 watts and can do 11000 watts for 3 seconds. And so two of the Sunny Island units could do over 11,000 watts continuous at 240vac.

Outback Power is actually the 800 lb gorilla in this space. They had announced a new device termed the “Skybox” by quarter 2 of this year. They missed that deadline. Now they are talking about a 48v version by the end of the year and a high voltage version sometime thereafter. It will combine the charge controller, the inverter, battery communications, and advanced grid interface management into a single box.

Ultimately, it IS about higher DC voltages. The cabling becomes much more manageable for one thing. But what we are doing in this episode is kind of central. There will be MANY more electric cars. And they are routinely wrecked. And their batteries diminish to the point where they are not very effective at driving a car, but still have MORE than adequate life left to power a house. Houses have much lower peak power demands than cars do and the “capacity” or “range” just isn’t nearly as important.

The Tesla car needs 350 kW of power. 20kW PEAK for a house would be absurdly high and that is more than an order of magnitude less.

Similarly an 85kWh Tesla pack would be considered “finished” at 80% or 68kWh. You just would not tolerate that in a car and would replace the battery. But 68kWh is an immense amount of storage for a house. Two days and nights of operation in one battery and there is absolutely nothing in this world preventing the use of two Tesla packs.

And so I would advocate sizing the equipment to use the vehicle batteries at their native voltage and form to provide the storage for the houses. It is precisely where vehicle batteries should go to die. And there will be sufficient electric cars built and wrecked that a brand new battery for home storage of electricity doesn’t even make sense.

How, when and why these outputs coordinate with the 240vac input to your house is a bit of a minefield and potentially a battlefield. The utility companies at this point for some reason would just as soon it go away. But as the prices drop for all this, increasingly what they want will be immaterial. The existing grid would be ideal for sharing this power around efficiently, but it really is not ultimately necessary and if they become too annoying, I would see increasing numbers of individuals simply cutting the tie and avoiding them altogether. Natural gas is cheap and efficient for heating and cooking, but is ultimately obsolete as well. All that can be done by electricity – given enough of it.

I believe that timing is everything. And at this MOMENT we are on the cusp of a violently disruptive revolution. I think the existing utility companies WILL do exactly what large corporations always do, behave badly and not even in their own interests. It remains ridiculously expensive to build your own power plant using batteries and equipment and photovoltaics, but it is now only painfully expensive. Some (like me) will be sufficiently enraged by utility company misbehavior to do it anyway. Costs will continue to drop as individuals choose to adopt this anyway, which will lead to more individuals making the same choice in a cascade effect just as all technologies are wont to do.

My observation is that all of this typically takes decades of grueling effort and ridiculous expenditures by the adventurous, followed by a sudden hockey-stick upturn in the adoption curve by all. This lunge will finally and inevitably occur within the next 10 short years. Ultimately, even the utility companies will adopt photovoltaics as their main source of electricity – assuming they even survive at all as we know them.

And so yes, I’m a little giddy this week with a deep joy as I see all of this laid out on a wooden table in front of me in my shop. The charge controller, the batteries, the battery controller we are working on, and a couple of examples of AC inverters. Really trivial work when you think about it in accessing Tesla’s BMS boards and communicating with the Inverters by CAN to glue these existing bits together. And of course, you can charge an electric car with it as well.

As Bill says, Driving on Sunshine….

This then is the future. It is as inevitable as rain.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this will illuminate some of our following and viewers on the apparently puzzling enigma of Jack and the Global Warming fracas. I THINK it is probably nonsense perpetuated by morons. But it doesn’t matter and it never did. We don’t need to save the planet, and we never did. We need MORE EFFICIENT AND ELEGANT technologies to deal with energy and empower our freedom of movement and all our OTHER activities on the planet, and we always did. Magic rocks are the answer. But what precisely was the question?

I can easily observe that every building fire occurring in the City of Cape Girardeau has been accompanied by the presence of a large, expensive, red firetruck. So should I focus on eliminating firetrucks? Would that bring down the statistical incidence of building fires in the city? Could I unite all the citizens of Cape Girardeau against firetrucks if I could seize control of the media and all studies of firetrucks? How about dealing with it indirectly? Could we just tax firetrucks? Or perhaps pass a tax on everyone who SAW a firetruck? Driving firetrucks into hiding by the force of our numbers?

The miracle of the last 10 years is that now ALL the pieces are available for sale off the shelf to anyone willing to pay the price. And the economics will follow as water downhill. And the act of pumping and spewing shit into the atmosphere never DID make any sense, and no matter what the impact, unless you are among the minority who LIKE suck-starting an Oldsmobile through the exhaust pipe, you all knew this all along.

Environmentalism always seems to be about a small minority leveraging the government into forcing the majority at gunpoint to spend their money and resources doing something the minority THINKS will be a good thing. These people never DO anything. They “advocate” that YOU do something at the point of a gun. They always have good intentions. But despite their fawning affectations, their intellectual and technical chops are actually very poor. As a result, their outcomes are poor and their “unintended consequences” legion and too often, tragic.

The difference between communist/totalitarian regimes and the libertarian philosophy is I will spend MY money to demonstrate a way that you can SEE will work or not work, and show you how to do the same thing. If enough of us demonstrate conclusively that it DOES work, then as the solution is refined and costs come down others will follow as well. And if it works on a small scale, it will work better on a large one, all other things being equal.

For me, it has always been about empowering INDIVIDUALS at the expense of corporations and governments. Wresting control away from those who would enslave us for money. That’s what the Internet thing was all about. It’s what the EV thing is all about. It’s what the energy thing is all about. That is what Jack is all about.

Or as Elon Musk so awkwardly, but oddly at the same time eloquently put it:
“It is about finding ways to think about the future that don’t make us sad….”

And he didn’t build an advocacy group.

He built a car…

By way of update to the graph, as of the end of 2016 the current estimate is 302 GW of photovoltaic capacity worldwide.

BTW: Checkout viewer Ben Stewart’s build video below. Just a great build all around….

18 thoughts on “Finding Ways to Think About the Future…”

  1. Very poetic at the end there. . .

    “For me, it has always been about empowering INDIVIDUALS at the expense of corporations and governments. Wresting control away from those who would enslave us for money. That’s what the Internet thing was all about. It’s what the EV thing is all about. It’s what the energy thing is all about. That is what Jack is all about.

    Or as Elon Musk so awkwardly, but oddly at the same time eloquently put it:
    “It is about finding ways to think about the future that don’t make us sad….”

    And he didn’t build an advocacy group.

    He built a car…”

  2. I have been dreaming Tesla HV Packs since Jack brought up the idea of using the complete pack as one unit. Now he mentions a charge controller with wide i/o voltage range. I have a large solar system at home in a location with poor energy grid and batteries are insanely expensive. So I need a solution with a complete pack or multiple packs. Major criteria is safety as mention by Jack in earlier posts.
    I suggest that the best and safest way to charge and use a Tesla Battery pack is to do it the Elon way. That is – using a 230v ac Tesla charger (or dual), a Tesla HV Junction Box and a Tesla Pack cable with a Tesla battery pack, complete with appropriately sized Tesla coolant circuit.
    We charge the Tesla pack by Solar (stacked Sunny Boys or similar with ac 230v output), Grid or Generator. At night or low tariff, the charger can switch to the grid, but leave space for solar harvesting for the following day except the weatherman says not to do so. The output of the Tesla Pack (again taken from the Tesla Junction box) goes to stacked Sunny Boys (or similar) for direct ac output, or, if converting an existing 48v system, via stacked Morningstar TS-MPPT-60-600V-48-DB TriStar controller or similar to the existing 48v batteries. In the former system with stacked Sunny Boys as ac output devices, in the evenings you switch the input Sunny Boys over to the stack at the output for addition evening /night load carrying capacity, if the pack has been optimally charged in the afternoon by solar to reduce the number of stacked Sunny Boys needed at the output. Question is, can Jack sell us the EVTV controller, firmware for this arrangement, at what cost?

    1. We will have a Tesla Battery Module controller first. I’m hoping to hit the price of a single module for the controller, but the BOM keeps growing. But hopefully something in the $1350 range.
      Once that is finished, we will return to the full Tesla Pack controller, which will operate somewhat similarly. And hopefully at the same price.

      FInally, we are going to do a build with the module controller in a steel 36x30x12 NEMA enclosure, holding six Tesla Modules for 30 kWh at 48v. This will likely be sold complete with battery modules installed. No idea of the pricing yet but probably around $11-12000.

      Jack Rickard

  3. An interesting read Jack – totally agree with you regarding being on the cusp of a fundamental change in the global production, storage and use of energy.

    I do find your views on global warming challenging to understand.
    I believe you appreciate (as do I) what Elon Musk is doing regarding sustainable transport and energy production/storage – what do you think of his views on global warming? In particular the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKCuDxpccYM

    Thanks.

    (btw, if you’re interested – did my first ever video the other day of my converted Mazda 6. Very non-technical overview, but thought you might be interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fdeRKWfnkI )

    1. I know you do, and I wish I could help. But I probably can’t and it’s kind of a waste of time.

      You do bring up an interesting point with Elon Musk, but not the one you would like to I fear. I’ve actually followed this expressed views somewhat carefully over several years, and it is a complicated theme. He has a huge economic motivator to really, really really believe all this. Then too, he is in a location and surrounded by friends and co-workers and employees who have 100% guzzled the kool-aid. And so it would be quite natural for him to be all in on this one and I’m good with that.

      Oddly, I have long detected a serious discomfort in his presentations on this topic. And I think I know why. I suspect he is a bit closer to my point of view on this than you think. It is important to move away from fossile fuel energy sources anyway, without regard to the climate or at least to carbon in the atmosphere, which is actually different from other real atmospheric damage. And I probably agree that if it could be possible, given readily available and superior alternatives, it would be a really dumb experiment to run. Those are probably inarguable points, and I find it intensely interesting that those are the ones on which he focuses.

      But when he goes over the edge and starts promoting carbon taxes etc., I lose all interest. And I’m disappointed in his PC surrender, even though I understand he has many reasons to do so.

      If anthropological climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions were at all real, then why the religion? Why are dissenters hounded completely out of their careers? Why the emotional distress? Why are data changed or “corrected” to support the narrative? Why are outlier findings not just dismissed, but really a career ender for anyone studying them? Why do other points of view routinely get quashed from publication? In other words, if you are winning, why are you cheating? You already won.

      I have looked at the 97% claim and it is total fraud. It’s materially suspect on the face of it. I have never been in the room with intelligent people, much less engineers and scientists, who could garner more than about 35% agreement on what day of the week it was or whether it would ever rain again. But this particular claim is actually traceable to a minor league grad student and the most idiotic methodology I’ve ever heard of. Currently, some anti’s have gathered 31000 signatures of scientists, 9000 of them Phds, who tell me you are full of shit and they never agreed to any of this crap. But they can’t even get air time.

      I can smell shit if you daub a little bit on the end of my nose. And the “shit” surrounding climate change is actually burying me up to the neck. And so all other things being equal, I can safely assume that it is 100% bonafide certified bullshit without really examining the data very closely.

      I have an army of viewers that are EMOTIONALLY DISTRESSED that I do not share their views on this. That by itself is a huge alarm bell to me. Given that I am clearly devoted to magnetic drive, battery technologies and solar energy, and have invested far more than any of you in it, why would you care? We are not just ultimately but immediately on the same mission, and if that belief system somehow works for you, what we are doing here supports it. So WHY do you insist I agree on the nonsense that doesn’t matter to the mission anyhow. THAT FOCUS is a huge alarm bell.

      Climate change discussions have ceased to be interesting to me because it has been entirely taken over by religious zealots. If you are one of them, I simply cannot have a discussion with you on this topic. I am sorry. It is a waste of my time and will annoy you hugely – perhaps actually causing emotional stress and lifelong scarring. Not my monkeys. Not my circus.

      As to the underlying central question of does carbon emission from fossil fuels affect the climate and the weather materially and to the point I would care, even over a long period of time, after a careful analysis and the review of SOME reliable data, I can assure you that I DO NOT KNOW. And I would rate the rewards of further research into the topic given the data gathering capabilities available as very meager.

      What I HAVE learned implies a hugely complex system with an enormous set of variables the limits of which have not only not been defined but which are updated almost monthly. Every satellite launched and every sensor deployed DRAMATICALLY shows how little we know about it. Now that’s the kind of real world information I’m accustomed to. Bullshit free. Reality immersion.

      Higgs just barely LIVED long enough for his theory to gain some experimental support. Einstein waited years on general relativity. Unfortunate, but everything does not just “fall into place” in the real world of science.

      In the face of THIS knowledge, which I DO have, I see an overwhelming number of young 24 year old tittie blond girls on TV assuring me absolutely and without fail that THEY DO KNOW and here it is. What am I supposed to do with that?

      As I said, I cannot live in your world. I’d like to spend a restful afternoon there just for entertainment purposes, but unfortunately I can’t even do that. It just doesn’t work for me.

      IF you are really truly concerned, move inland. Missouri works for me.

      https://youtu.be/vpTHi7O66pI
      This illustrates complexity, ignorance, learning, good intentions, and the needless and wrongheaded death of 40,000 elephants AND potentially huge implications for atmospheric carbon and climate change, all in one very humble presentation.

      Jack Rickard

      1. Very refreshing Jack! I would add that in my neck of the woods (Valley Center CA) there are farmers experimenting with a new “cash crop” motor controlled solar panel farms. San Diego Gas and Electric( former San Diego Gouge and Extortion ha ha) has seen the writing, whether GW or just too much pollution ( the reason I retired my 1986 Acura 3.2 TL). The Chinese company BYD ( Build Your Dreams) concept is to use those rocks to generate huge amounts of power to charge electric vehicles, and use the electric vehicles to power houses and businesses. I am an Uber/Lyft/ Door Dash driver and had a Prius. BUT because of pollution ( I live on a pristine Palomar Mountain CA) I lease instead a Chevrolet Bolt. It looks like the engineers took a lot of your ideas and suggestions for operation and the driver interface. For instance they have an “L” mode with about 25% regent and a paddle on the back of the steering wheel for variable control of regen braking up to 75%. Also they have a hill power limiter to maximum 80%, so you do not overcharge the battery on steep downhill grades.

  4. Ladson Geddings

    The debate about Climate Change isn’t about the Earth warming or the atmosphere building up greenhouse gasses. The question for argument should be: Should we continue to mine fossil fuels and burn the products in the atmosphere?

    There is no argument that fossil fuels pollute the land, air and water. There is no argument that fossil fuels are detrimental to good health; the carbon fuels people won’t argue about polluting because they know they pollute and they admit they do. But, to counter and to continue the ‘status quo’, they deflect the argument from Pollution to ‘Climate Change’ because it is an obscure, esoteric subject with difficult to prove consequences.

    The real argument is simple; Should we transition from fossil fuels to clean energy? Those who argue against Climate Change, find themselves aligned against Clean Energy even if they don’t want to be because they have been tricked into arguing the wrong question.

      1. Thanks for the link Dennis. Fascinating. Unobtainium, but fascinating. We are really on the advent of a new age in home solar and everyone seems to be working on vastly improved products. We’ll contact Midnight Solar and see if we can supoport their B17 system.

  5. There was a recent Smart EV meltdown not far from us in the adjacent county. Nothing left.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4679416/Electric-car-left-charging-overnight-destroyed-fire.html
    About a year ago I helped a UK Car maker (Chinese owned) who had an older conversion with Thundersky cells, that they used for Inductive charge assessment. The cells went into meltdown, probably through over charge with a rubbish BMS. But being Lifepo4 they just got hot and smoked a lot. To deal with this you just need to pump loads of water in to manage the thermal situation. But what if that pack were in a house?. The smoke would be appalling, and different chemistries would go up like the Smart.
    In part of an AC installation thermal management by water isnt an option and other systems like Halon or CO2 just wont work.
    I do think that some sort of external sealed vents and separate AC systems should be adopted with any such installation. AT least in an externally vented sealed unit the fire men could pump water through the pack to cool it down. Food for thought.

  6. @Jeremy Bloomfield
    Am probably mistaken in the context in which you mean to flood the pack in case of a fire incident.
    I understand Lithium does not like hydroxyl ions much? The reaction is exothermic and produces hydrogen gas. What is particularly worrying about said incident is that the lithium cells produced by MB in the 2nd generation Smart EVs are particularly safe but were expensive to produce.
    Quote MB was “forced to shut down the company’s own lithium ion cell production this past December, where Daimler’s former Li-Tec unit produced a special type of cell designed to prevent the kind of overheating that saw some electric vehicles catch on fire.
    “We had the best cell, which no customer could feel because the differences are minimal, but we had far too high costs,” the Daimler CEO remarked”. Unquote
    Wonder what model Smart was involved in this particular case?
    Lithium battery chemistry, heads you win, tails you lose. The take away is that if you use Tesla or any other car lithium battery modules outside of the vehicle, be careful and have it well engineered.

  7. Pingback: Finding Ways to Think About the Future… | Car News, Reviews, & Pricing for New & Used Cars.

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