Answer to Question #92184 in Electric Circuits for Boris Moscoff

Question

Battery technology. Why can’t car batteries be charged up in Saharan countries then be transported in quantity to Northern Europe and fitted into cars designed to accept a ‘click and clunk’ method (similar to my battery drill). This would mean not having to accept waiting for a charge. Cars would need to be re-designed to accept an independent battery pack automatically pulled out and pushed in. Free sunshine in Northern Africa could help their economies in the transition from fossil fuels to battery technology. Ships could be designed to take fresh drinking water south and re-charged batteries north. This is a question!

Answer 1

That would be a good idea if you want to use your electric cars (or drills) once. Imagine: 6 am, you're in London rushing downstairs from your house to the car trying not to be late to your office, but when you turn on the starting button, you see a notification that the battery is almost depleted. Sending the battery to Sahara will take a lot of time, would be quite expensive and inconvenient.

The cost of building a special solar power plant in Sahara is very high because of absence of proper infrastructure. The cost of delivering anything from Sahara to Northern Europe is also very high, so it will be much cheaper if you simply charge your car's batteries in Helsinki from local power plants.

Building such a solar charger in Africa or other sunny location will require covering more than 2500 miles (4000 km) on land and sea, which will negatively affect the ecological situation, since trucks, trains and cargo ships still work on diesel. And imagine how much oil you will spend and what volumes of exhaust gases will be in the air to deliver all this to Northern Europe. The end does not justify the means.

So as we can see, there are more disadvantages than benefits in this idea, at least nowadays while ships, trucks and trains do not use solar power.