"Electric car range anxiety to be cured by battery that charges in five minutes"

More interesting is how the cable interconnection and plug/socket cope!

We used to have some very high DC current supplies and magnetic repulsion between the supply wires would cause metal fatigue after a while. It will be interesting to see how a battery copes with it too.

A supercapacitor might be OK but I can't see diffusion limited chemical reactions tolerating superfast charging without a much shortened life.

Your car has an estimated range of (let's say) 50 miles remaining in the battery. You still have 200 miles to go. How much extra range will you add in a 20 minute break? Enough to get you home? I doubt it.

When we do a long journey we tend to take sandwiches and other snacks and eat in the car. And we'd choose somewhere quiet with a nice view, not a garage forecourt or motorway service station. Back to the problem that the place where you would choose to stop is not the place with the power.

Exactly. The laws of physics/chemistry (governing charging rates) are more immutable than the law of the land (you will not buy a petrol/diesel car after a certain date).

Assuming that there is a charge pont clear.

I'd considered that as a possibility when thinking about buying an electric car. Ah - I'm 81 and hiring a car if you're over 80 it is, apparently, very difficult.

How many vehicles? Where is tehextra enery going to come from?

If the alternative is climate catastrophe, then I'm prepared to stop occasionally. I'm surprised that anyone would suggest otherwise. Ofc, if you think the whole climate catastrophe thing is hooey, you'll obviously resent any lifestyle changes whatsoever.

You are overstating the length of the break, btw. The biggest Tesla chargers can charge at up to 250 kW. That implies a more or less complete recharge in under half an hour.

Surely, if everybody has electric cars, that won't be a problem? At the moment, there's very little electric car infrastructure, as there are very few electric cars.

How d'ye know that's the alternative?

We've already pointed out the magnitude of the problem re the charging infrastructure required. Perhaps you weren't paying attention. Behind that of course is a many-fold increase required in power distribution and generation.

so, a picnic spot in the wilds of nowhere is going to have a charging poit?

Let's do a risk analysis:

Suppose all the scientists concerned about climate catastrophe are wrong, then you'll be suffering a little inconvenience unnecessarily. That's not the end of the world.

Suppose all the scientists concerned about climate catastrophe are right, but we refuse to suffer a little inconvenience. That is the end of the world.

I don't feel that I need to know for certain that the climate catastrophe hypothesis is correct. It's just not fair to future generations to risk it.

All right, that's a fair point. However, I don't think it justifies ruining the planet.

In any case, my wife refuses to pee in the bushes, so we'll have to go somewhere with a more or less decent loo. :)

Do you think the "end of the world" hyperbole helps? I am sorry to say that to me it just signals someone who (consciously or not) has bought into the hyperbolic non-science. And probably also thinks that eating meat should be banned from 2025.

A little inconvenience? Are ye mad? We'd be spending trillions to completely change our infrastructure and lifestyle and you call that "a little inconvenience".

But other's have involved setting off with only a couple of hour's notice for a family funeral - again "non-stop", Manchester, Holyhead, Dublin Sligo, Church, Graveyard, Cemetery, Meal, Belfast, Stranraer, Manchester.

The point is that even if you don't do it often, electric cars aren't capable of it when needed. I don't want two different cars, just one to fill all the roles I need it for. For me a plug-in hybrid would make the best sense. 60 miles range would cater for me in day to day driving on electric only, almost all the time, but with the ability to do longer journeys, as and when, at zero notice.

Why? Anything is possible. At one time, you had to buy petrol from a chemist shop.

Not been around when petrol was in short supply? I have been.

Not even I can recall the Suez crisis! :-)

I couldn't resist the wording. Sorry about that! Runaway climate change would make life on earth extremely difficult, and that is one of the possible outcomes. Clearly, the earth would continue to exist.

The point, though, is that people are complaining that they may not be able to use their favourite picnic spot on long journeys, whilst ignoring the idea that people in arid areas may effectively be without water. Those too losses don't seem comparable to me.

The options weren't clear enough for you then?

Whilst I doubt it will happen from 2025 (it will continue going that way of course) but do you think we will be able to continue to feed an ever growing population AND as many livestock as people on the current viable land indefinitely? Or do you think we should just carry on flattening places like the Amazon [1] and other ecosystems until we fell the last tree and then look to see what other planet we can f*ck up?

But, for those who have been indoctrinated to *believe* we actually have to eat the flesh of an animal to survive (when millions of people around the world haven't for thousands of years) they you should still be able to get your carnist 'fix' from 'Syntho meat', grown in the lab and not needing to waste all those resources and pollute the planet.

Irrespective of any MMGW, we have more and more people consuming and in turn they are producing more pollution where currently much of that is livestock farming (ground, air, sea).

Fell / slash cut / burn that and plant animal feed and the nutrients are exhausted very quickly and so not supporting plant growth for animals (and so man) for very long. You then can't grow anything there and it will take *years* for any of it ('The lungs of the world' remember) to recover.

Even if it could sustain trees again and they were replanted, it takes

One of the manufacturers was looking at a little trailer with a motor + generator that you could hire for long journeys. Or leave in the garage until needed, so you weren't lugging around a heavy engine just for a trip around town. It doesn't seem to have caught on. Maybe, it will.