[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

Batteries for all of these new electrified machines will be the choke point.
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Scale
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We are up to 1.3 billion light vehicles on the roads in the world today. Replacing them all with EV's with 60kWH batteries requires that we build out 78 TWh of batteries. just to replace the cars and light trucks already in use. Not to mention providing a car to the other 5 billion people in the world that want one, but never had one.
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How many TWh will be needed for all of these earth movers, farm tractors, tractor trailers all over the world?
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We need hundreds of TWh of batteries but marveled at the announcement of the first GigaFactory which was said to upon it's completion (Is it complete yet? After how many years?) at once double the world manufacturing capacity. With .035 TWh/ year! Has it ever come close to this number yet? The next big rave I am hearing about is a proposed joint venture in Germany with a hoped for capacity of .1 TWh/ year. These are immense projects when viewed on the ground, but pale when considered in the scale that would be required to replace all liquid fueled infrastructure that keeps us alive right now.
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World battery production capacity is said to be .4 TWh/ year right now (all hauled with liquid fuel). I'm not seeing that much anywhere but will have to take their word for it. And is projected to grow to 1 TWh/ year by 2025. It must be remembered that the exponential growth that we have seen in solar, wind, and battery build out is easy to double when you start with next to nothing and will level out at some point. So even if it did double in 6 years, and double again by 2030, it will take 40 years to make enough batteries just so the rich 1.5 billion people of the world can have cars. Then we can get started on putting batteries in earth movers and tractor trailers. If there are any minerals still within reach.

Make friends with a mechanical engineer.They live for these challenges.