Death of Internal Combustion Engine May Be Exaggerated

choi

(1) Roadkill. The internal combustion engine had a good run. But the end is in sight for the machine that changed the world. Economist, Aug 12, 2017 (cover story).
https://www.economist.com/news/l ... changed-world-death

Note:
(a) Horses still draw vehicles, "lamented Le Petit Journal, a French newspaper, in December 1893. Its answer was to organise the [1894] Paris-Rouen [Rouen is northwest of Paris] race [of '126km (78-mile)' ] for horseless carriages"
(i) Le Petit Journal (1863–1934; daily; in 1895 "it had a circulation of two million copies, making it the world's largest newspaper")  en.wikipedia.org
(ii)
(A) Karl Benz, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, undated
https://www.asme.org/engineering ... utomotive/karl-benz
(B) Bertha Benz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Benz
(section 1.2 First cross-country automobile journey: 106 km (66 mi) )

(b) "Today's electric cars, powered by lithium-ion batteries[:] * * * The Chevy Bolt has a range of 383km; Tesla fans recently drove a Model S more than 1,000km on a single charge. UBS, a bank, reckons the 'total cost of ownership' of an electric car will reach parity with a petrol one next year—albeit at a loss to its manufacturer."
(c) Lithium-ion "batteries get cheaper and better—the cost per kilowatt-hour has fallen from $1,000 in 2010 to $130-200 today. * * * There are now about 1bn cars on the road, almost all powered by fossil fuels. * * * Compared with existing vehicles, electric cars are much simpler and have fewer parts; they are more like computers on wheels. * * * [in future:] Lots of shared, self-driving electric cars would let cities replace car parks (up to 24% of the area in some places) with new housing

parking lot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking_lot
("parking lot (American English) or car park (British English)" )

(d) "Roughly two-thirds of oil consumption in America is on the roads * * * a scramble for lithium is under way. The price of lithium carbonate has risen from $4,000 a tonne in 2011 to more than $14,000. Demand for cobalt and rare-earth elements for electric motors is also soaring. Meanwhile, Lithium is used not just to power cars: utilities want giant batteries to store energy when demand is slack and release it as it peaks. * * * lithium-rich Chile * * * The internal combustion engine has had a good run—and could still dominate shipping and aviation for decades to come. But on land electric motors will soon offer freedom and convenience more cheaply and cleanly."

choi

(2) Briefing: Batteries  l  Electrifying Everything. The battery industry has a world-changing ambition.  Can it achieve them?  Economist, Aug 12, 2017   
https://www.economist.com/news/b ... costs-plummet-after

Quote:

"Though Leafs [Leaf is the name of Nissan electric car] are the world's biggest-selling electric vehicle * * * Nissan has so far lost money on every Leaf it has made.

"Many forecasters reckon that the lifetime costs of owning and driving an electric car will be comparable to those for a fuel burner within a few years

"The first such [lithium-ion] batteries went on sale just 26 years ago [1991], in Sony's CCD-TR1 camcorder. The product was a hit: the batteries even more so, spreading to computers, phones, cordless power tools, e-cigarettes and beyond.

"The top five manufacturers [of lithium-ion batteries in the world]—Japan's Panasonic, South Korea's LG Chem and Samsung SDI, and China's BYD and CATL [Contemporary Amperex Technology Co, Ltd 宁德时代新能源科技股份有限公司, based in 福建省宁德市]—are ramping up capital expenditure" to increase capacity

"The fundamental operating principles of the lithium-ion battery are easily understood. When the battery is charging an electric potential pulls lithium ions into the recesses of a graphite-based electrode [anode]; when it is in use [eg, to power a device] these ions migrate back through a liquid electrolyte to a much more complex electrode made of compounds containing lithium and other metals—the cathode.

"The New York fire department remains concerned that lithium-ion batteries in buildings pose a fire hazard, however. When they [in-house batteries] are being installed, it [NYFD] keeps its [fire] engines on standby. As the externally combusting fiasco of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 smartphones reminded the world last year, lithium-ion batteries can, if badly or over-ambitiously designed, short circuit in incendiary ways. In general, however, new materials and ceramic coatings for electrodes have made the batteries for cars very safe.

Note:
(a) The briefing, which does not deal with electric motor, is long. There is no need to read the rest.
(b) About quotation 3. "1991 – Sony and Asahi Kasei [Corp 旭化成株式会社] released the first commercial lithium-ion battery."
(i) The kanji for asahi may be either 旭 or 朝日.
(ii) in Japanese: 化成工業 chemical industry; 化成肥料 chemical fertilizer
(c) For quotation 3, see Julianne Troiano, How do Lithium Ion Batteries Work? A Nanotechnology Explainer.  Sustainable Nano, Oct 15, 2013.
http://sustainable-nano.com/2013 ... ion-batteries-work/
(a pair of graphics)