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Comment by genericid | Hacker News Reader

Is energy density even important for grid storage? France is larger and less mobile than a car or a computer.

Not at all. Even in cars, further density improvements are not needed, as the limitation to general adoption is cost rather than range or performance. In restrospect I ought to have mentioned that in my previous comment…

Density + charging speed are definitely important but I do agree that cost is without a doubt the biggest problem. For some people, gas will still be preferable until electric charging speed is close to gas AND speedy charging units are as available as gas stations AND batteries match the range of gas tanks (my new subaru gets like 500 miles on a full tank when driving on the interstate which is super convenient and good luck getting long distance rural drivers to switch without the 3 problems I cited).

It's too far out to say if electric cars/dynamic grid/renewable energy will revolunatize our planets energy usage since we are very entrenched in the current system (and anyone claiming anything beyond 5 years underestimates how fast shit changes IMO) but I am seriously excited about these changes with how much the economics have been improving for a clean energy society.

I’m a lot more pessimistic than you about the rate of change. I recently went through Eureka (California) and most of the cafes and restaurants there did not accept Apple Pay, contactless payment, or even chip and pin payment. Eventually we found a place that did accept Apple Pay so we could eat.

While Apple Pay itself is only about four years old, contactless payment has been fairly standard in the UK for about 10 years, and chip and pin is over 20 years old.

It is not important. As you mentioned, plenty of space.

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