The car companies are putting their resources into battery technologies which use materials which are too uncommon to be able to provide for most cars – notably Lithium, but Nickel Metal Hydride batteries, although nickel has somewhat better availability, would still not be able to provide power for enough cars to make a substantial difference.
Due to this misjudgement we are likely to be severely limited in oil available to get around until at least 2020, when perhaps we can hope that they will have changed to the more suitable zinc-air technology.
Oil from both conventional and unconventional sources such as tar sands are unlikely to be able to cover more than 30% of present volume in the developed world by that date, as demand from China, India and other places is increasing whilst supplies are static, and present exporters are using increasing amounts of their own oil with less availble for export.
I am prepared to argue this case, and it is one held by large numbers of responsible analysts, but for the purposes of the present post we just want to see if electric vehicle and battery technology will dig us out of problems of short supply, first through increasing mileage inplug-in hybrids, and later through all electric vehicles.
As will be seen critical materials for the batteries the car industru is emphasising are in too short supply, and price will be far too high and availability too high.
It appears that the only technology with the right resource base and characteristics such as high capacity is zinc-air.
http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/EVRsrch.htm
It is also the only battery alternative with the right characteristics to run heavy lorries and machinery.
Since everything but Lithium is now getting trivial amounts of funding in connection with car battery technology, then that blind alley is going to mean further delay in moving to a electric economy.
With time lags you must surely be talking about 2020 before they can be in widespread use, effectively long after oil is in serious short supply and after it has lead to large reductions in automobile use.
I therefore find it persuasive that major disruption is likely.
You will find further information on Nickel availability also here:
http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/EVRsrch.htm
Meridian International Research - EV Research Papers
Download the document 'The Trouble With Lithium'
The basic problem with the Nickel Manganese batteries is the word 'Nickel', it is expensive and in short supply, although not as bad as lithium.
From the pdf I link Sodium Nickel Chloride may be the current best alternative, although it is limited by Nickel availability and price, however they use a lot less than nickel metal hydride.
Replacing the Nickel with Iron seems hopeful for the future, but this is very early days for the technology, and I had not yet looked into it so I omitted it from the analysis as for present purposes it seemed sufficient to show that there were batteries available which could potentially do the job but none of them were being funded, and Zinc air fills that job whilst also providing the possibility of discharging and recharging a slurry so effectively using a similar refill technology to the present.
Sodium nickel chloride batteries use nickel a lot more efficiently than Nickel Metal Hydride, but probably not enough to solve the availability issue, and may have other problems as detailed below.
A Google using the terms 'Sodium Iron Chloride battery' or 'Sodium Nickel chloride battery' comes up with results which are mostly around 1995.
This perhaps provides some indication of the level of interest in research in this technology and shows that it would not be possible to scale production to significant levels anytime soon.
The term 'Zebra battery' brought up this:
http://tyler.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/7/16/2130125.html
Wikipedia shows that many molten salt batteries have issues if shut down and not left under charge, taking days to pre-heat them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_battery
Another alternative also uses zinc, there is the possibility of using solar energy to make zinc from zinc oxide which is then powdered and transported to filling stations, where it is used to make hydrogen by combining with steam and the car is filled with hydrogen.
http://www.isracast.com/articles/51.aspx
IsraCast: ZINC POWDER WILL DRIVE YOUR HYDROGEN CAR
The zinc oxide is then transported back to be re-cycled.
This is the only practical way I am aware of of going to the hydrogen economy without incurring huge inefficiencies.
However, AFAIK the only practical way at the moment of using a fuel cell to utilise the hydrogen in the car is a membrane as developed by Ballard, and they also utilise rare materials.
This might change with future development of Fuel cells, but as of now they cost a fortune and have resource issues even graver than for lithium.
One possible technology which might use the hydrogen is this:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/10/super_soaker_nasa_boffin_heat_en...
Super Soaker inventor touts solid state heat-2-leccy | The Register
This consists of a closed cycle engine which uses any heat source to force hydrogen through a membrane between two different temperature regimes.
Much further work needs to be done to perfect the membrane, but efficiencies of 60% seem possible.
This if it works is very efficient, much more so than burning the hydrogen in an ICC, which I would guess would require prohibitive amounts of hydrogen and vast scaling up of the zinc production, likely more so than would be practical in it's early days would be my guess.
In summary, there are good prospects of running everything including heavy machinery and road haulage using batteries and/or hydrogen, but the time horizon is some way out, and currently alternatives which would not do the job are those being pursued.
Severe fuel constraints are therefore likely at least until the 2020 time period, and likely until around 2025
The only potential 'Get out of jail free' card we would appear to have which would enable similar consumption patterns of liquid fuel as in the past to continue in the immediate future would seem to me to be liquid fuels from algae.
Since this is a immature technology any idea that it could be ramped to substantially replace oil within the next few years up to 2020 would seem to me mind-bogglingly optimistic.
We are still at prototype stage.
Liquid fuel and car use would appear to be likely to suffer severe constraints for many years.
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