(08-22-2024, 01:51 PM)jagibelieve Wrote:

(08-22-2024, 12:38 PM)mikesez Wrote: There is a strong correlation between oil prices and US inflation.  A lot of that is because other countries buy and sell oil in dollars. So it's kind of a cycle, the two things cause each other.

There are ways we can try to de-couple food prices from oil prices.  While lithium batteries don't make much sense for passenger air travel or for long haul trucking, they would make a lot of sense for farm and construction equipment, especially if they were packaged as swappable crates.  Caterpillar and John Deere should be working on it.

I happen to know a lot of people in the farming and heavy equipment industries that would very much disagree with you (myself included).

The landscaping and light construction industries are relying more on rechargeable, swappable batteries every year.  No reason farms and heavy construction can't be next.  The level of torque you can get out of a well designed DC motor beats a four stroke diesel pound for pound every day and twice on Sunday.
It's just a matter of packaging the batteries and converting the skeptics. 
The batteries, compared to a diesel fuel tank, are more cost and more dead weight.  That's a major disadvantage for heavy trucks, but for applications where vehicle weight is less of a limitation like tractors, cranes, etc, it would not matter much.

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