Here’s a way to jump start America’s advanced battery industry and raise (a bit) the average MPG of our auto fleet. You guys can do the math.
Offer every car owner the option to trade in their lead-acid car battery for a lighter battery from an American manufacturer (lithium ion?) at taxpayer expense. Maybe do it by a tax credit, but it would be simpler to just set it up so the swap is free. How much gas would be saved by reducing the weight of 100 million cars by 20 to 30 pounds each? How much would this jump start America’s advanced battery industry, making electric cars and hybrids less expensive?
For new cars, have manufacturers switch from lead acid batteries to lighter ones and offer a tax credit equal to the cost difference, either to the manufacturer or the car buyer.
OK, I did some of the math. According to the feds, the average mileage is 13,000. Call that 500 gallons a year. Also according to the feds, you save 1-2% for every 100 pounds removed from your vehicle. So call the savings 0.5%. So you’re talking about saving 2.5 gallons per year per car.
That’s not enough to have most people do this on their own, but if the government goosed it for 100 million cars, that would be a reduction in fuel usage of 250 million gallons.
How many electric vehicles would it take to reduce fuel usage by the equivalent of 250 million gallons a year? How much of a rebate is being given to buyers of electric vehicles?
At the taxpayer’s expense ?
Tax credits from a ‘‘check book’’ that’s already in massive negative numbers only de-values the dollar even more.
Lithium-ion…where do we get that ?
Plastic housings and components…oil based product…where do we get that ?
American manufaturer ?
American assembled perhaps but from whence comes the components ?
‘‘American’’ vehicle manufactures have been lightening vehicles for decades with ever increasing amounts of PLASTIC – a mere trade-off of oil base product. Do you put it in your tank or build your vehicle from it ?
The Porsche 911 GT3 RSR uses a lithium ion battery to save weight. But the car costs several hunderd thousand dollars. Saving weight is the main issue with racing cars, not the cost of a battery. I wouldn’t be surprised if its battery costs upwards of $1000. That would mean a subsidy of about $900 to buy the battery, It doesn’t make sense to me.
Regardless of how much weight you try to save to make EVs functionally competitive, range anxiety and the inability to heat the interior on trips, in the north, in the winter, prevents them from being serious replacement contenders and relegates their usefulness to second and third vehicles. When that happens, people will drive more, not less with their savings in cost and oil consumption could remain static.
I bet most Li-ion batteries are not made in the US, while most lead-acid batteries are. This would do the exact opposite of the desired result, with negligable mpg improvement, at great cost and unneeded government involvement.
Yeah I like that idea. A subsidy for losing weight. That’s kind of the problem, everybody has a way for the feds to spend money, but don’t want to pay for it.
Let’s just not have batteries in cars, put magnetos on the engines to make the spark and a hand crank to start the engine. Cars get lighter, people get exercise and lose weight. Win-Win!
If you want to reduce unnecessary vehicle weight, close all the fast-food joint drive-thrus…Forget the lithium battery, just don’t super-size those frys!!
An amazing number of people drive trucks because that’s what it takes to move them around…Drat! I can’t reach my seat-belt extender!
That’s the problem now. Too much government doing too many things at “taxpayer expense”.
You want to shave weight? Eliminate electric windows, cruise control, electric door locks, 12 speaker stereo systems, along with a 100 things including air conditioning.
Maybe people having to roll their own windows up and down while sweating to the oldies on a single speaker radio could aid in the fight against obesity…
Now, if we got rid of the engine and replaced it with pedals…we could all eat like Lance Armstrong and still stay thin, plus we would save a lot of gas.
Now that Armstrong is cured, I don’t think cancer has any effect on him. He did lose a lot of weight during his time off from racing while he recovered from cancer, though.
A lithium-ion starting battery would cost 10 times as much as lead-acid and wouldn’t last very long in the hot engine compartment.
A different charging system would have to be retrofitted.
‘Taxpayer expense’ would be unfair to those who don’t drive vehicles.
One tax credit that calls out in my mind is one to businesses for each American worker they hire instead of outsourcing. How about no medicare/medicaid charge for a year?
There are no rechargeable batteries made in the US besides lead-acid mainly due to environmental regulations.
On the battery proposal, I like the idea, but spending discretionary funds on this kind of thing is not going to happen in this political climate. Let’s first pay off the deficit so we can stop paying interest on borrowed money. Then, when our budget is in the black, and our debt is down to zero, we can look for ways to spend money.
On the bright side, the government is already subsidizing battery R&D. If this money isn’t being thrown down the tubes, the lithium ion batteries will become cheap enough for this transition to happen naturally in the market without government interference.
On Lance Armstrong, he did permanently lose weight because of the cancer. If you look at before and after pictures, before the cancer, he had broad shoulders and a thick build. After recovering from the cancer, he had what is typically considered the perfect cyclist’s body, with narrower shoulders and a thin build. Some believe that actually gave him a competitive edge. If his teammates keep coming out of the woodwork and claiming they saw him shoot-up, eventually, we might believe it. Maybe someone needs to invent steroids for our cars.
My motorcycle battery recently gave out and it was time to buy a new one.
I had a couple of choices. The stock battery was an AGM which had begun to seep something out around the terminals which was sort of pretty but bad for performance. Not liking this extra growth I started looking for options other than lead-acid technology.
I finally ended up deciding on a Lithium-Iron battery. That is not a misprint and I don’t mean Lithium-Ion as they are two different things.
Yes, the Lithium-Iron battery cost close to twice the price of the stock AGM replacement. However as a trade-off I replaced a battery that weighed around 12 pounds with one that weighs around 2 pounds. The battery is also close to half the physical size of the stock one. On a further plus side battery life is expected to be twice that of the lead-acid counterpart.
At this point they are not making batteries for cars but I see it coming.
