Re:Tesla offered $325M for Salton Sea startup
by CydeWeys on Saturday June 11, 2016 @09:26AM
(#11883370)
Compared to overall lifecycle energy costs of something like a car, the one-time cost to boil one of the manufacturing components up front isn't very much. Better to boil a lithium soup once than to burn gasoline to power your car for fifteen years. Plus renewable energy is easier to use in manufacturing processes than it is in mobile applications (like vehicles). Check out the history of aluminum manufacturing, for example -- it's been heavily dependent on renewable energy in the form of hydroelectric power for almost a century.
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Re:Tesla offered $325M for Salton Sea startup
by colechristensen on Saturday June 11, 2016 @11:40AM
(#11883826)
You might think that but you need information to back up your intuitions (which are wrong)
A significant amount of the total lifetime energy usage of a car is made up by it's manufacture. It is not trivial to say you should always buy something new and more efficient.
Re:Tesla offered $325M for Salton Sea startup
by CydeWeys on Sunday June 12, 2016 @11:04AM
(#11888387)
You're making arguments against something that I didn't say.
All cars have significant manufacturing costs. So saying that making batteries has energy expensive processes isn't an argument that disqualifies EVs. An EV will have much less impact on the environment over its lifetime than a gas-powered car manufactured in the same year.
Re:Tesla offered $325M for Salton Sea startup
by HeyLaughingBoy on Saturday June 11, 2016 @12:33PM
(#11884069)
Better to boil a lithium soup once than to burn gasoline to power your car for fifteen years
Put bluntly: if I'm the battery manufacturer, my main goal is a profitable operation, not the end-user's ecological footprint.
If having to "just boil it" means I lose money on the product, then I don't have a business.