Mainstream media
Is this a sheepdog?
Historically, electric cars have caught fire much less often than petrol cars (even accounting for the lower number of EV's on the road). Most of these have been from a single battery manufacturing line and caused by a single misaligned robot that placed the battery terminals too close together. These batteries have all been recalled under warranty.
There are battery types that are better for grid storage than hydrogen. One of the main drawbacks of hydrogen storage is its low round trip efficiency of around 30%.
Redox flow batteries are easily scalable, liquid metal batteries have very low maintenance costs and long lifespans, and sodium ion batteries are much cheaper than lithium ion batteries. It will be interesting to see if any of these options make mass market.
Car batteries last more than 10 years in cars, have a second life as static storage for likely much more than 10 years, and we currently have the ability to recycle over 95% of battery materials into new batteries.
Hydrogen used in fuel cells has a round trip efficiency of around 30% (compared to 90%+ for batteries). If the hydrogen was generated from solar power, we would need 3 times as many solar panels to drive hydrogen cars vs battery cars.
Most (98%+) of all hydrogen is currently made using fossil fuels. The most common method is methane steam reformation. The methane (natural gas) is combined with high pressure, high temperature steam. The methane reacts with the steam to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide is usually vented to the atmosphere (some places capture the CO2, and use it to pump oil out of the ground where the CO2 is also released into the atmosphere).
The hydrogen also contains less energy than the methane that was used to make it.
If every car was instantly converted to electric, the grid would struggle but not collapse. There is a lot of extra (but more expensive) production capability on the grid, and EV's are being added gradually, not instantly.
The grid is currently being upgraded to support air conditioners and heat pumps. EV charging can be scheduled for times when the grid is under less load, so EV's will have a relatively small impact on the grid.
TL:DR: The grid will be fine.
It's always projection.
I have a 2011 Nissan Leaf AZE0 24kWh with about 40% battery degradation. It can drive about 80km (50mi), which is perfectly adequate for a second car. It is rarely driven more than 20km in a day.
My other car is a 2018 Nissan Leaf ZE1 E+ G 62kWh with about 4% battery degradation.
The fastest battery degradation happens when the battery is new, and the degradation slows down gradually over time. I expect the 2011 Leaf to still have at least 50km range in 2041, and the 2018 Leaf to still have at least 200km (130mi) range in 2038. Both of these will still suit my needs.
Friend was idiot. Try to tell friend. Only have calculator. Forgot talking was option. Didn't work.
There are some browser extensions that can do this for you.
Old Reddit Redirect is one I found with a quick search. Also available for Firefox. (I can't remember which extension I use)
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joined 2 years ago
https://piped.video/watch?v=YyzQsVzKylE
Lithium batteries scale power and capacity at the same time. Flow batteries can scale power and capacity independently.
The advantage of flow batteries is that they can have enormous capacities without the added cost of upgrading the power, making it ideal for grid scale storage.
Even if this new flow battery reaches the energy density of a lithium battery, and can output sufficient power, it would still need to reach price parity to be competitive.