New Lithium-ion Batteries from Toshiba

Toshiba to ship new rechargeable battery

"Toshiba Corp.'s Super Charge ion Battery (SCiB), to start shipping in March, can recharge to 90 percent of its full capacity in less than five minutes."

"The new battery will first be used in electric bicycles, motorcycles, forklifts and construction machinery. It can work in temperatures as low as minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit."

90 percent full in less than five minutes. That's impressive. That's accomplished from a 50 amp circuit (not your standard household outlet). They are also only recharging a 24V battery. Will that still be possible for a forklift battery? Our company has an electric forklift that requires a very industrial sized outlet to recharge it. Recharging is done overnight. Fast charging is not a necessity for us. However we have run the thing dead more than once because someone forgot to plug it in at night.

If this can scale up for mass produced EV battereis then there might be a use for all those gas stations once gasoline becomes scarce. They can become rapid charge stations. Of course if you can slowly recharge at home overnight then the bulk of gas stations will have to find something else to do if they are to remain viable businesses. Maybe then can become bicycle storage and repair shops?

The press release does not mention what materials are being used in the battery so it remains a question of how sustainable these batteries will be if they are mass produced (or even if they can be mass produced). They also fail to mention if the batteries can eventually be recycled or safely disposed of. The devil is always in the details.

The SCiB could actually beat Tesla's roadster to market. If Toshiba has at least as good a product as Tesla then Tesla could eventually be left at the side of the road. The real payoff for Tesla would be licensing it's technologies to the big automakers. How long before the SCiB can be adapted to power a vehicle still in an unanswered question but I think it is now going to be a race between Tesla and Toshiba. Of course they aren't the only two companies in the race, just two of the more visible ones.

Notice that electric bicycles are mentioned first in the quote above. Now how much is one of these things going to cost? Doesn't matter much to me because I'm happy to keep pedaling for now. But once the knees go, I hope there's a battery that will do the job.

Tesla Motors founder ousted

Tesla pushed out the founder of the company last week in a moved that surprised everyone including founder Martin Eberhard himself.

Think rolls first production vehicle off assembly line.

Two related stories on electric vehicles. The Telsa is still due to start delivering within a couple of months despite problems with their transmission. Their plan to start supplying the EV market with batteries has been put on hold until they work out the issue with the transmission. The trickle down effect of the improved battery will have to wait as well then.

But in the meantime, Think Vehicles starts to roll their Think City vehicle to the Norwegian market. The electric vehicle (EV) is happening and will be coming to a city street near you soon.

Thermodynamics and EROEI (Part 1)

If you are new to the peak oil debate you may not have seen the acronym EROEI. If you have any financial background you may however have seen ROI (return on investment). EROEI is a similar concept used to evaluate energy systems (e g. corn ethanol production, oil production and refining, electricity generated from wind turbines). EROEI stands for Energy Returned on Energy Invested.

Oil production and refining have a very wide range of reported EROEI's. Crude oil from Saudi Arabia is (or was) sometimes quoted as having an EROEI of 100:1 while Syncrude produced in the tar sands of Alberta has been quoted as having an EROEI of 1.5:1. Overall the EROEI of the Oil and Gas industry has been steadily dropping. The crude oil with the highest EROEI is extracted first while oil with the a lesser EROEI balance is left for later. It is accepted wisdom that a process with a negative EROEI cannot be sustained indefinitely. However that hasn't always stopped people from trying.

The 1st law of thermodynamics states that, "energy cannot be created or destroyed; rather, the amount of energy lost in a steady state process cannot be greater than the amount of energy gained". The 2nd law of thermodynamics states that, "energy systems have a tendency to increase their entropy over time". So for example, when gasoline is burned in an engine, some energy is converted to mechanical energy while some is converted into heat and some is left as unburnt vapors that get released into the atmosphere. Energy will tend to dissipate from a more concentrated form to a less concentrated form if left alone.

So how does EROEI and the laws of thermodynamics apply to one another? The laws of thermodynamics cannot be used to validate or contradict the use of EROEI calculations. However both concepts are talking about the same stuff, namely energy. The laws of thermodynamics applied to an energy production system mean that the energy put into a process must ultimately equal the energy out. A positive EROEI means the energy returned in a particular process is in excess of the energy put in. The key difference is that EROEI calculations are only accounting for energy invested. So this energy investment has to come from a stored source of usable energy and the energy returned includes energy you can pull free from the environment. While some of the returned energy is added free to a given process and some of the energy invested in the process in lost to various inefficiencies in a given conversion, if all inputs and outputs could all be accounted for then (applying the 1st law) the resulting ratio must be 1:1.

If the natural tendency of the universe is to take concentrated energy and dissipate it then wouldn't it make sense that long term the challenge to sustained energy production is finding ways to concentrate energy versus dissipating it?

If we can accept this idea as fact, can we look at how we currently produce (harness) energy to see if we are concentrating or dissipating energy? I'll conduct that exercise in a subsequent blog.

velomobility

Velomobiles discussed at The Oil Drum

Phil Hart posted an essay yesterday at The Oil Drum about the future of bicycles - How Big is your Bicycle?. Phil is trying to get people thinking about the subject by asking for opinions on how electric and human powered options should be treated, promoted and controlled. I think this is a great exercise to start getting people thinking about how these transportation alternatives will be incorporated into existing infrastructure.

It would be nice if a sustainable, affordable and environmentally benign alternative to the ICE just arrived tomorrow at your local shopping mall but we all know that isn't going to happen by itself. Niche solutions like the electric vehicle or electric assist bicycles/velomobiles need help on so many levels if they are to be adopted on a wide scale. Without individuals willing to champion the cause, humanity will just sleepwalk into the future without developing any viable solutions to deal with the challenge of moving people and goods around with limited liquid fuels.

Velomobiles in the Star

This bike looks like a car from the Toronto Star, Sunday December 2nd.

"While the notion of a bike wrapped in a sleek body may appeal to some – mostly people who already ride bikes regularly – it's likely that the future of the velomobile lies not in pedal power but in the addition of a small engine. "

Seems someone agrees with me about the future of Velomobiles. The bike shown in the article is the Quest. It sells for around $7,500 excluding freight and duties according to their website.

"For many it will be an expensive toy, for leisure or exercise, not a vehicle for daily commutes to work. "I don't see these becoming a utility tool, not in this particular culture, weaned on cheap gas and big vehicles. In other cultures, especially in Asia, it's more of a possibility," says Londry"

I don't disagree with this guy in the short term. The velomobile I like most (the go-one) goes for around 12 grand. Not something that's going to catch on with the commuter looking for a low cost alternative. However in the medium term, lower cost recumbents with electric assist or even conventional bikes with electric assist will be a viable option for most commuters. The biggest issue that needs to be addressed is secure storage for these bikes once they get to their destinations. Even a relatively inexpensive bike once outfitted with an electric motor becomes a very tasty treat for a bike thief and it's no harder to steal than a regular bike. A full fledged velomobile is a harder target to make off with but it's also worth a lot more so would attract more unwanted attention. You can't just leave a 80 lb. vehicle in a parking lot and expect it to be there 8 hours later. You also can't simply lock a velomobile to a bike rack. Until the issue of security can be solved, widespread use of electric assist bicycles simply will not happen.

"But he does see the velomobile as a step in the evolution of what he calls microvehicles – they're like velomobiles, but have small electric motors and "sex appeal.""

Again, I'm in complete agreement on this. As gas becomes prohibitively expensive, people will begin to realize that driving around a couple of tons of metal doesn't make much sense. If you are ready to rethink your entire mobility strategy then you would also consider the efficiency of the internal combustion engine (ICE) vs. an electric motor. Electric motors are many times more efficient than an ICE and recharging batteries is at least as convenient as refueling a conventional vehicle. Micro-cars will help drive improvements in battery technology as well as get people used to making room on the roads for unconventional vehicles. The line between velomobiles and microcars might blur and eventually converge into a single concept.

velomobility

WIll Recreational Riding go to Hell?

This past weekend I did a little bike ride that is affectionately known as "To Hell and Back". The ride is approximately 140km long and includes numerous off road sections with one 10km portion along an abandoned rail line known as 'the hell section'. This informal ride evolved from a race first run in 1999 so this year's ride marked the 9th annual running. The original course can no longer be ridden due to housing and other developments over the years. Nigel, a local pro triathlete, is the force that organizes this ride each year. Nigel pre-rides most of the course in the weeks leading up to the ride. Nigel scopes out all the off road sections to make sure they are passable (being rideable is not required or even desirable). This is only the 2nd year I've taken part in this ride. Last year, my first time out, the weather was almost balmy for southern Ontario. The weeks leading up to the event were mostly dry so the off road sections were hard packed and generally fast. Last year's ride was very hard more for the tempo we rode it at than for the actual course or distance ridden. Nigel summed up last year's ride as "Hell Light". For him, the harder the better.

I participated in one of the pre-rides a few weeks ago with Nigel and a few others. We did a couple of the early off road sections. This summer and fall were extremely dry in Toronto and the off-road sections we rode were even more hard packed than last year. There also seemed to be a lot less fallen debris and foliage on the trails (perhaps also due to the dry summer we had). We rode all of these off road sections and even managed to ride up a short steep hill that would have been impossible to ride last year.

Well what a difference a few weeks can make. While Toronto proper still hasn't seen significant snowfall, you don't have to go very far north out of the city to see some accumulation. There was a winter storm watch for this past weekend so the ride had to be bumped up to Saturday instead of Sunday to try and beat the storm. Snow wouldn't have been a big problem however freezing rain was forecasted which might have made the road sections too dangerous to ride. The last minute schedule change meant we lost about half of the 15 odd riders who had committed to ride. 8 of us started out around 7:30am. We set out in 2 groups of 4 based on ability. The temperature at the start of the ride was -10°C. The wind wasn't too bad but when you're moving at 20-30km/hr it starts to bite. Fingers and toes are the hardest to keep warm. From past experience riding in winter, I brought hand and toe warmers. Without these I'm not sure I would have lasted more than an hour. By the time we hit the 'hell section' we were as far north as we would go. It was -16°C and what wind there was was in our face. The hell of the 'hell section' for me is the constant battering your body takes as you navigate ruts that you can't see under the covering of snow. Most of the hell section was rideable but still very tough slugging. Had we waited until Sunday it is likely that none of it could have been ridden. Of the 8 that started the ride only 4 of us started the 'hell section'. All four of us finished the hell section and 3 of us managed to regroup after it and rode the final 40km together to the finish. The ride start to finish took us around 8 hours. According to Nigel it was the longest it had ever taken him so this year's hell will go down as the toughest ever as Nigel gets to look after the record book.

Each of the 2 groups on the road had a support vehicle that followed us as best they could. They reloaded us with Gatorade, hot chocolate, food and provided mechanical support where required. Even while doing the ride I wondered how much longer an event like this can take place. The cost of running 2 vehicles for 8 hours would not be enough itself to make this event too costly to run even if gas prices doubled or even tripled. I was thinking more about things like the hand and toe warmers I was using, the high-tech Lycra clothing I was wearing and even the bicycle I was riding. On a better day I could get by without the toe warmers and my store of Lycra clothing isn't going anywhere so even if I could never buy another high-tech piece of clothing I could be riding in winter for years. The bike itself will probably last a long time however tires and cables need replacing regularly. None of these things by themselves are likely to become unavailable as global oil production wanes. What I was thinking of most was how much longer people will be able to justify recreational pursuits of this sort. How many people would willingly take the vehicle they rely on day to day into a rally car race? If your bicycle becomes as indispensable to your daily life as the automobile is today, will it become less of a recreational pursuit than it is today? If you invest a large amount of your energy every day just moving around, would you willingly spend that energy basically riding in one gigantic circle?

Help grow the Tribe!

Everyone who uses the roads in this country, and possibly in any country, has seen this - Two motorcycles pass each other on the road and give each other a friendly wave. Now this doesn't always happen or even happen most of the time, but it does happen often enough for everyone to know what it is. You may not have ever thought long enough about it to give it a word so I will. This is really a form of tribalism. One of our basic human needs is the need to feel like we belong somewhere. As a cyclist I can vouch that this sort of tribalism also happens between cyclist. However as a group I think cyclist are a little more selective (snobby) about who they wave at. I have to admit that even I have been guilty of deciding who I will wave at based on how serious or even how well outfitted they look. If some grandmother with a basket on the front of her bike goes weaving past me on the other side of the road, I don't think I would even think about including her into the tribe of cyclist.

I've decided that is a terrible attitude to take not just because it is snobby but because I am giving up a opportunity to make cycling more acceptable to the general population. It is highly likely that the poorly outfitted cyclists that weave their way down the road are much newer to using a bicycle for mobility rather than simple recreation. If someone has made the effort to get out on their bike and risk their life in traffic then they not only need some recognition, then also need some encouragement. A simple wave from a serious looking cyclist could accomplish both. It costs you nothing and if done consistently on a wide scale could make a major impact on bike use.

As I've written before, people are not just going to park their vehicles and start using eco-friendly alternatives just because it is the right thing to do for our planet and for future generations. The masses need incentives. What other incentive is so easy to implement and costs nothing? So if you pass me in the streets of Toronto on your bike, you are going to get a wave from me. You don't have to wave back but I hope you do. Even I sometimes need encouragement.

velomobility