Most people have heard of Moor’s law, the law that computing power keeps doubling every two years, with the price remaining the same, but the same law is observed with other tech products, notably lithium ion batteries and solar cells.
By my calculation the price of lithium ion batteries has fallen 98% so far, at a rate of 12.5% per year. That’s a remarkable drop given that the chemistry has hardly changed. The size has dropped too; it’s nowhere near as much as the price but enough to make batteries a reasonable choice for powering automobiles, scooters, and power tools. Batteries still lack the range and fast charging for some applications, but even there the low cost means that hybrids become attractive, combining for cars and truck, the long range of gas with a reduced cost per mile. The rate of decrease suggests that prices will be below $100 per kWh by 2025. That’s an $8000 cost for a battery powered car with 300 miles of range.
As for where the electricity comes from, the price of electricity is going up and becoming less reliable. In part that’s because of regulations on coal and nuclear power and the inherent problems with large-scale wind and solar. But decentralized solar may turn out to be a winner. Solar prices have fallen 99.6% since 1976. Even though the rate of decrease is slower, about an 8% drop in price per year, there is a sense that solar power has entered the mainstream. Combined with cheap, home batteries, it may soon make sense to power your home and car by solar cells on the house; there isn’t enough area on a car to quite power it.
My last post included a rather gruesome bit of poetry by Rudyard Kipling where he describes the Afghani women coming to kill the wounded British soldiers in the first Afghan war. It’s sexist, or anti-sexist, if you like. Since it reverses a stereotype of the non-violent, female home-body. Then again the Afghanis had wiped out an entire British army, killing virtually everyone including civilians.
What follows is The Betrothed, one of Kipling’s first published poems, appearing in “the civil and military gazette”, Lahor, India (near Afghanistan), November, 1888. Kipling was an assistant editor). It has a more traditional view of women, or of British women who do not go out murdering, but who do wish to control/ stop a British man’s cigar smoking. In a sense, such stoppage is murder. The inspiration was a breach of ‘Promise of Marriage’ case in Glasgow, August 1888, where a young woman, Maggie Watson, sued her fiancee because he continued to smoke cigars after she insisted he stop. Kipling explores the psychology of the choice between smoking and marriage. I think Freud would approve.
The Betrothed.
OPEN the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout, For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.
We quarrelled about Havanas—we fought o’er a good cheroot, And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.
Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a space; In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie’s face.
Maggie is pretty to look at—Maggie’s a loving lass, But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.
There’s peace in a Larranaga, there’s calm in a Henry Clay; But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away—
Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown— But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o’ the talk o’ the town!
Maggie, my wife at fifty—grey and dour and old— With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!
And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are, And Love’s torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar—
The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket— With never a new one to light tho’ it’s charred and black to the socket!
Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a while. Here is a mild Manila—there is a wifely smile.
Which is the better portion—bondage bought with a ring, Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string?
Counsellors cunning and silent—comforters true and tried, And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride?
Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes, Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close,
This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return, With only a Suttee’s passion—to do their duty and burn.
This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead, Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.
The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main, When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again.
I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal, So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall.
I will scent ’em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides, And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides.
For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between. The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o’ Teen.
And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear, But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year;
And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.
And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove, But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o’-the-Wisp of Love.
Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire? Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?
Open the old cigar-box—let me consider anew— Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?
A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke; And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.
Light me another Cuba—I hold to my first-sworn vows. If Maggie will have no rival, I’ll have no Maggie for Spouse!
Sigmund Freud with his cigar. The whole attraction of cigars, is a strange one, as Freud knew better than most. Cigars are deadly, but casual, often with a good flavor, and a sucking comfort. The death-risk of one is small and distant. Cigars thus represent risky fun they are thus life, in a temporary, risky way. Marriage is permanence and safe, and binding. The binding permanence is a sort of death, but children are good, and that’s life. Freud’s choice was to smoke himself to death. Kipling got married and eventually gave up smoking.
Robert E. Buxbaum, September 17, 2021. Kipling has a great sense of words, and an attractive sense of the subjects, great and small. For years he was the voice of his generation in Britain, but by the end of his life, his views were unacceptable. sexist. On the other hand, he remained staunchly anti-Nazi, anti eugenics, and anti Soviet. By comparison, George Bernard Shaw was a vocal fan of Stalin, of Hitler, and of the eugenic removal of Jews and other undesirables. Shaw’s words remain fashionable, while Kipling’s do not. Such is the nature of fame.
As bad as our exit from Afghanistan has been, the slow British exit in the 1840s to 1920 was worse. While we lost a lot of stuff and left hundreds of Americans and contractors behind, the British, in their first try at leaving, lost a whole army including thousands of civilians. Then they returned and left repeatedly for 80 years, having to fight against their own weapons and people that they had trained. We did many of the same things the Brits did, like trusting our security to folks we’d been trying to kill, but we have not lost anywhere near as many people (yet) and we have not returned (yet). What follows is a look at the British exit, based mostly on Wikipedia articles: “The First Afghan War“, and the retreat from Kabul, 1842, and the biographies of Shah Shujah and Akbar Khan, pictures below.
Akbar Khan. The British tried to kill him, then negotiated with him. Sketch by Vincent Eyre
Britain’s Puppet King, Shah Shujah, Sketch by Vincent Eyre.
The British went into Afghanistan, as we did, to create a more stable and western-friendly government. Their first act was to remove the king, Mohammed Khan, and install a more pliant leader, Sultan Shujah. Mohammed was part of the Khanate, that is the Moguls (Mongols), a deadly violent group who the British were fighting in India. We did the same when we entered Afghanistan. We removed the elected president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, a “radical Moslem” associated with the Taliban leader, Mohammed Omar, an even more radical moslem. Omar was associated Osama bin Laden who’d attacked the US on 9-11. We replaced these, long-bearded Moslems with Hamid Karzai, a moderate Moslem: short beard, reasonably popular, US-friendly, elected in Bonn, Germany. The problem with Shah Shujah and Hamid Karzai is neither one had legitimacy in the eyes of the people, nor respect from the army, either. In part that’s because we put them in power and kept them there, in part that’s because we never let them lead in war or diplomacy. Our follow-on leader, Ashraf Ghani, had no beard, and even less legitimacy and respect. The Afghan army left Ghani as soon as we started leaving; they’d done the same to Shah Shujah when the British left in 1842.
William Macnaughten, the British Envoy, prison sketch by Vincent Eyre, the same fellow who sketched Akbar and Shujah above.
Shah Shujah had a habit of mutilating those who worked for him whenever he got upset. All of Shujah’s servants were missing ears or noses or testicles. Strangely, this seems to have given him more legitimacy than Ghani had. Perhaps if we allowed our leaders to lead, or at least mutilate, the army would have stayed loyal. Then again, maybe nothing would have prevented the puppet from collapsing when the puppet-master left. Both we and the Brits relied on our own troops to keep the peace, along with payoffs and occasional assassinations (we call those airstrikes). It worked for a time, but did not build loyalty or love.
Among those the British paid off and occasionally tried to kill was Akbar Khan, the son of imprisoned Mohammed Khan. Eventually, the British felt they needed Akbar’s help to protect their exit, as he controlled the hills around Kabul including the old Silk Road that the British hoped to travel. Similarly, in the end, we found we needed Taliban help to clear the road to the airport. We didn’t quite get the help, nor did the Brits.
On December 23, 1841, the British envoy, William Macnaughten, visited Akbar Khan and proposed that he would hand over Shah Shujah and make him king in return for safe passage for 16,500 people under General Keith Elphinstone on a journey from Kabul to fort Jalalabad: 93 miles due east. Akbar agreed, but had Macnoughton arrested and later killed. His body was hung in the bazaar. Akbar seems to have figured that anyone willing to betray his old friend would be likely to betray him as well.
Kipling was stationed in India, near the Afghan border. His view of the locals is rather gruesome.
General Elphinstone left Kabulon January 5, 1842 with 4,500 armed soldiers, several cannon, and 12,000+ unarmed civilians. The going was slow and supplies didn’t arrive. Five days later, January 10, allies of Akbar attacked in the hills and killed or captured most of the group. Akbar invited Elphinstone to tea the next day and announced that the group was now his prisoner. He offered safe passage for the women and children, but demanded payment. The alternative was that they freeze in the hills. Elphinstone, at first refused, then ransomed himself and others, in all nine people. The rest of the group were shot, stabbed, taken by the Afghanis to be wives, or stripped of clothing and left to freeze. Younger children were raised as Afghanis, only identified as British sixty or more years later– the British liked to pretend they had not left them. Of the rest, only two survived. One soldier, William Brydon made it to Jalalabad, January 13, 1842. Elphinstone died in captivity in Kabul, April, 1842. According to Kipling’s poem, the Afghanis mutilated British bodies. More likely it was animals.
Hamid Karzai, American supported President, now under house arrest.
The British re-invaded Kabul several times after that, each time hoping to free captives and show who’s boss. There followed a second Anglo Afghan war (1878-80) and third (1919-20), and arguably a fourth (2001-21). Our exit isn’t as bad, at least not yet. We’ve left behind 200-300 Americans plus hundreds of helicopters, trucks, and high-tech weapons. The Taliban are now in charge, folks we’d tried to kill, all of them were associated with Omar, and several with Osama bin Laden, too. Our security forces have been shot, the embassy translator is scheduled to be beheaded, the new government includes several senior members who had been detained at Guantánamo Bay, released to Qatar in a prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl in 2014. Hamid Karzai is in captivity, and we’ve taken 100,000 Afghanis who may not integrate well into US society. But at lest there is no sign we’re going back, not for Karzai, or the Americans, or for anyone else. It’s very bad, but it could be worse. Biden calls it a success. Compared to the British exit, it is so far.
It’s been a while since I did an assessment of hydrogen and batteries for automobile propulsion, and while some basics have not changed, the price and durability of batteries has improved, the price of gasoline has doubled, and the first commercial fuel cell cars have appeared in the USA. The net result (see details below) is that I find the cost of ownership for a gasoline and a battery car is now about the same, depending on usage and location, and that hydrogen, while still more pricey, is close to being a practical option.
EV Chargers. They look so much cooler than gasoline hoses, and the price per mile is about the same.
Lithium battery costs are now about $150/kwh. That’s $10,000 for a 70 kWh battery. That’s about 1/5 the price of a Tesla Model 3. The reliability that Tesla claims is 200,000 miles or more, but that’s with slow charging. For mostly fast charging, Car and Driver’s expectation is 120,000 miles. That’s just about the average life-span of a car these days.
The cost of the battery and possible replacement adds to the cost of the vehicle, but electricity is far cheaper than gasoline, per mile. The price of gasoline has doubled to, currently, $3.50 per gallon. A typical car will get about 24 mpg, and that means a current operation cost of 14.6¢/mile. That’s about $1,460/year for someone who drives 10,000 miles per year. I’ll add about $150 for oil and filter changes, and figure that operating a gas-powered car engine costs about $1,610 per year.
If you charge at home, your electricity costs, on average, 14¢/kWh. This is a bargain compared to gasoline since electricity is made from coal and nuclear, mostly, and is subsidized while gasoline is taxed. At level 2 charging stations, where most people charge, electricity costs about 50¢/kWh. This is three times the cost of home electricity, but it still translates to only about $32 for a fill-up that take 3 hours. According to “Inside EVs”, in moderate temperatures, a Tesla Model 3 uses 14.59 kWh/100 km with range-efficient driving. This translates to 11.7¢ per mile, or $1170/year, assuming 10,000 miles of moderate temperature driving. If you live in moderate climates: Californian, Texas or Florida, an electric car is cheaper to operate than a gasoline car. In cold weather gasoline power still makes sense since a battery-electric car uses battery power for heat, while a gasoline powered car uses waste heat from the engine.
Battery cars are still somewhat of more expensive than the equivalent gasoline car, but not that much. In a sense you can add $400/year for the extra cost of the Tesla above, but that just raises the effective operating cost to about $1,570/year, about the same as for the gasoline car. On the other hand, many folks drive less than 50 miles per day and can charge at home each night. This saves most of the electric cost. In sum, I find that EVs have hit a tipping point, and Tesla lead the way.
Now to consider hydrogen. When most people think hydrogen, they think H2 fuel, and a PEM fuel cell car. The problem here is that hydrogen is expensive, and PEM FCs aren’t particularly efficient. Hydrogen costs about $10/kg at a typical fueling station and, with PEM, that 1 kg of hydrogen takes you only about 25 miles. The net result is that the combination hydrogen + PEM results in a driving cost of about 40¢/mile, or about three times the price of gasoline. But Toyota has proposed two better options. The fist is a PEM hybrid, the hydrogen Prius. It’s for the commuter who drives less than about 40 miles per day. It has a 10kWh battery, far cheaper than the Tesla above, but enough for the daily commute. He or she would use charge at home at night, and use hydrogen fuel only when going on longer trips. If there are few long trips, you come out way ahead.
Toyota 2021 Mirai, hydrogen powered vehicle
Toyota also claims to have a hydrogen powered Corolla or debut in 2023. This car will have a standard engine, and I would expect (hope) will drive also — preferably — on hythane, a mix of hydrogen and methane. Hythane is much cheaper per volume, and more energy dense, see my analysis. While Toyota has not said that their Corolla would run on hythane, it is supposed to have an internal combustion engine, and that suggests that hythane will work in it.
A more advanced option for Toyota or any other car/truck manufacturer would be to design to use solid oxide fuel cells, SOFCs, either with hydrogen or hythane. SOFCs are significantly more efficient than PEM, and they are capable of burning hythane, and to some extent natural gas too. Hythane is not particularly available, but it could be. Any station that currently sells natural gas could sell hythane. As for delivery to the station, natural gas lines already exist underground, and the station would just blend in hydrogen, produced at the station by electrolysis, or delivered. Hythane can also be made locally from sewer gas methane, and wind-power hydrogen. Yet another SOFC option is to start with natural gas and convert some of the natural gas to hydrogen on-board using left-over heat from the SOFC. I’ve a patent for this process.
Speaking of supply network, I should mention the brown outs we’ve been having in Detroit. Electric cars are part of the stress to the electric grid, but I believe that, with intelligent charging (and discharging) the concern is more than manageable. The driver who goes 10,000 miles per year only adds about 2,350 kWh/year of extra electric demand. This is a small fraction of the demand of a typical home, 12,154 kWh/year.It’s manageable. Then again, hythane adds no demand to the electric grid and the charge time is quicker — virtually instantaneous.
