there are significant initiatives to develop a US domestic source of neodymium, dysprosium etc for defense applications
Excellent! I didn’t know that. I’m not as far over as you are about the success (or not) of government intervention, but I’m not a huge fan of it either. But in this case it seems essential.
The mine you mention is on the California/Nevada border near Las Vegas and was shut down years ago
Yes, and then someone invested billions to reopen it, and then gave up. Fact is the reserves are there, and no doubt in plenty of other places too, if only the financial incentive was right.
due to no resistive losses on the field winding
Async motors don’t have a field winding. They have an aluminium (usually) disk surrounded by a rotating magnetic field, created by windings and a bunch of power transistors. They are universal in high power applications like trains. I think the inefficiency is due to eddy currents in the rotor, which are an essential part of how they work. My point is that while efficiency is a Good Thing, if it makes you 100% dependent on China, maybe slightly less efficiency would be better.
My point is that while efficiency is a Good Thing, if it makes you 100% dependent on China, maybe slightly less efficiency would be better.
That’s certainly true for many applications, but not all and the current situation is alarming to many.
The current situation is alarming to many which is why Europe thinks it is a good idea to reduce its reliance on Oil, gas and because of enviromental pressure inside their own countries, coal.
The fact that China is cornering the market in raw materials for EV batteries is a major problem but so.is reliance on Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc.etc.for oil and gas.
Or the Congo, Mali, Niger for other materials such as cobalt or uranium. The latter 2 now in hoc militarily to Russian Wagner troops and all 3 coming closer to China through its belted road or whatever it’s called nowadays.
And what about the USA. Well European leaders have been given a dose of MAGA and they can’t unsee that.
I was not aware of ‘white H2’, learning every day.
Surely challenges remain, like compressing and storing, but it could be promising. I thought about where to post it, and the ‘car’ thread is probably more appropriate than the ‘aircraft’ one, for now.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/29/climate/white-hydrogen-fossil-fuels-climate
There is some funny business going on here in the UK, probably driven by several highly publicised cases of EV fires when parked at home
It does appear true that normal cars rarely catch fire by themselves while parked, whereas EVs obviously do it periodically. I don’t know how the charging works and how it is divided between the charger and the car. I would expect, for commonality reasons, the charger is just a fixed voltage output and the car contains the entire charge regulation mechanism. It should thus be impossible for a badly designed or faulty charger to set the car on fire.
In contrast, a number of e-bike fires (another thing in the news a lot) could easily be caused by a cheap charger (again; I don’t know and stand to be corrected but I would be surprised if an e-bike, especially the “cheap” 2k-priced ones, contained all the charge regulation) and I would expect the chinks to be churning out plenty of counterfeit e-bike “brand-name” chargers, whereas this is a lot harder to do for the big car units which (in the UK, if you want to collect the subsidy 
) have to be installed by a qualified electrician… a big ripoff since the electrician will obviously price the job to consume the subsidy Actually the £1.5k e-bikes I rent on say Alderney are said (by the rental place) to overheat or catch fire just by going up a steep hill for too long.
It would be great if statements like “It does appear true that normal cars rarely catch fire by themselves while parked, whereas EVs obviously do it periodically” were backed up by some facts.
There are about 300 vehicle fires in the UK every single day. 2/3rds of these appear to be arson, which leaves 100 fires per day. 7% of vehicles in the UK now have a significant battery (pure electric or hybrid). So we would expect around 7 fires per day.
In the year July 2022-June 2023 there were fewer than 250 EV fires in the UK. Less than one per day.
So likelihood of a battery vehicle going up in flames is around one order of magnitude lower than for a combusion engine vehicle.
I would expect, for commonality reasons, the charger is just a fixed voltage output and the car contains the entire charge regulation mechanism. It should thus be impossible for a badly designed or faulty charger to set the car on fire.
AC chargers are indeed in the car, they do the whole AC-DC rectification and charge regulation on board. One of the little annoyances for new EV owners, especially at the cheaper end of the market, is discovering that even when hooked up to a 21 kW (3 × 32A) charger, the car only charges with 11 kW because that is all the on-board charger can do.
DC chargers negotiate voltage and current delivery with the car. So the actual control takes place in the car, but the delivery of a particular voltage and current is done by the charger, which, in effect, is asked to deliver a particular voltage with a current cap (so it automatically lowers the voltage to prevent overcurrent) or a particular current with a voltage cap.
So in both instances, the actual power delivery to the battery is controlled by the car’s battery management system based on state of charge, temperature etc.
big ripoff
Indeed. An AC EV charger is nothing special. Basically a plug with a DC capable RCD and minimal electronics, and installing one is about as difficult and dangerous as installing an electrical oven. Nobody though it necessary to restrict this installation to a sub-set of electricians.
Here is one example – I wanted to change my charger to a better, solar capable EV charger. The charger itself I could get for £700; a company quoted £1,000 for the installation and would of course supply the charger at £1,000. For a job that anyone with a screwdriver and capable of securing screw terminals can do in 15 minutes.
Regular electrician needs to have a special course to touch EV chargers, and many don’t bother because initial installation is tied up in the subsidy farms and that is where the volume is.
So likelihood of a battery vehicle going up in flames is around one order of magnitude lower than for a combusion engine vehicle.
While parked? Maybe there is no data on that. EVs are at a disadvantage there because they are probably being charged.
Of course, many many petrol/diesel fires in crashes.
21 kW (3 × 32A)
I wonder what % of people have 3 phase. I would have to pay 5k-10k to get it, and that is based on a ~5m cable run to the meter, and doing everything-DIY after that (which is legal but one has to pretend it was done by an electrician who then emigrated, if you want a connection made to it later ) I have mostly pre-wired the house for 3 phase but have no need to actually finish it.
Domestic three-phase is a lot more common on the continent, although typically 3x 16A for home chargers is what you can get easily so 11kW instead of the 1×32A / 7kW in the UK.
Neither will be much of an issue overnight at home, the disappointment is public AC “fast charging” infrastructure which delivers 21kW so you pull up expecting two hours and need four.
This is less and less of a problem with the standardisation of DC charging and prevalence of CCS in Europe, but there are still a lot of AC charge points around.
The number of buses to go on fire n service in Aberdeenshire this year is now 2. The company’s buses are all recent, and complex. I can’t recall fìres in the old buses which were all that were available when I was a kid.
UK car insurer LV has a page on why insurance is more expensive:
- Labour costs for repairs: up 50% since 2019, due to inflation, shortage of skilled workers and the energy crisis. (Source: Auto Body Professionals)
- Cost of vehicle repairs: up 46% since last year. Reflecting rising costs, energy inflation and more expensive repairs. (Source: ABI)
- Vehicle theft: up 20.8% last year compared to the previous year, leading to increased claims. (Source: data from ONS)
- Paint: prices went up 20% in 2022 and most claims require paint work. (Source: ABI)
- Courtesy cars: the cost of courtesy cars has jumped up 52% – an important part of our service. (Source: ABI)
- High-tech: vehicles with sensors, cameras and high voltage systems are raising the cost of replacement parts and also require specialist labour to fit.
- Long-term care: providing care for people with life-changing injuries (customers, other drivers, passengers and pedestrians) accounts for around 30% of our claims cost. (Source: LV= data)
