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Technology Hardware

Toshiba's One-Minute-Recharge Li-ion Batteries 413

Posted by timothy from the zap-zap-zap dept.
TheGuano writes "No idea if this is related to Altair's six-minute-charge Li-ions,, but Toshiba has just announced a similar Li-ion that recharges to 80% capacity in one minute, while losing only 1% total capacity after 1000 cycles. It's set to debut in 2006 for use in hybrid cars (my current Toshiba Satellite doesn't get very far on battery power, but it's a beautiful shade of blue), but 'should' make its way to other, hopefully smaller devices eventually."
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Toshiba's One-Minute-Recharge Li-ion Batteries More

Toshiba's One-Minute-Recharge Li-ion Batteries

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  • Nice but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by klatty ( 871061 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:05PM (#12084747)
    I'm still waiting out for wireless power :-D

    • Re:Nice but... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Is that you, Nikola?

    • Wireless? (Score:5, Funny)

      by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:37PM (#12084992)
      "I'm still waiting out for wireless power :-D"

      That's fine, but how about my nutty idea? Imagine a service where music could be transmitted wirelessly, and you could have a receiving device even smaller than an iPod to listen to the music with. I wonder if anyone would or could ever invent something like this?

      • Re:Wireless? (Score:3, Funny)

        by N Monkey ( 313423 )

        "I'm still waiting out for wireless power :-D"

        That's fine, but how about my nutty idea? Imagine a service where music could be transmitted wirelessly, and you could have a receiving device even smaller than an iPod to listen to the music with. I wonder if anyone would or could ever invent something like this?

        Yeah but it'd probably go the way the internet: First it'd be a nice public service but eventually they'd start filling it with adverts :-)

    • Didn't Tesla come up with something like that?

    • Re:Nice but... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Marko DeBeeste ( 761376 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:56PM (#12085132)
      Yeah, if Tesla had only overcome that pesky "Hair-and-teeth-falling-out-in-bloody-clumps" problem.

  • Different recharging techniques. (Score:5, Informative)

    by sanityspeech ( 823537 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:05PM (#12084749) Journal
    To answer the submitter's implied question (i.e. No idea if this is related to Altair's six-minute-charge Li-ions...) I would have to say that it is unlikely that both are using the same technology.

    From the New Scientist article:
    Altair's patented modification is ... achieved using a carefully controlled sequence of evaporative steps when making the lithium titanate [nano]crystals.
    From the press release by Toshiba:
    A breakthrough technology applied to the negative electrode uses new nano-particles to prevent organic liquid electrolytes from reducing during battery recharging. The nano-particles quickly absorb and store vast amount of lithium ions, without causing any deterioration in the electrode.
    It would be futile for Toshiba to try to mimic Altair, since the New Scientist article also states:
    ...The firm is keeping the chemistry that allows it to do this pretty close to its chest for commercial reasons. But the patent (US 6689716) reveals that the increased surface area is achieved using a carefully controlled sequence of evaporative steps when making the lithium titanate crystals.
    • The parent shouldn't be so confident because he/she is obviously lacking a background in chemistry (or patent law, for that matter...) Simply from the quotes he/she gave, it is likely both technologies are very similar. They both rely on vastly increasing the reactive surface area of chemicals in the battery using nano particles. For those not chemically inclined, if you wanted to soak a loaf of bread with water, it would be a lot easier if you chopped it up into tiny pieces. In this case, pieces on th

  • sigh heard round the world (Score:3, Funny)

    by peculiarmethod ( 301094 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:05PM (#12084750) Journal
    women sigh round the world heavily, while dreaming of AA size waterproof versions.

  • I'm a beta tester... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:06PM (#12084755)
    Ok...I just charged these things for exactly one minute. Everything is working fine so fariweofaidfoiafoaif

  • Altair's == Toshiba's? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TopSpin ( 753 ) * on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:06PM (#12084757) Journal
    Doesn't look like it. The Altair battery uses "nano-crystals" to vastly increase the surface area of the anode. Toshiba has come up with some kind of "nano-particle" that... absorbs more Lithium ions. Neither of these advances appear to directly contribute to capacity. They improve charging (and discharge) efficiency.

  • Fantastic for travelers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mytest23 ( 172505 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:06PM (#12084763)
    I regularly run through airports leeching power briefly between flights. I would pay handsomely to recharge 80% in a minute my: Laptop, Cell Phone, Video Camera Batteries, etc.

    • There go the circuit breakers (Score:5, Informative)

      by JoeBuck ( 7947 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:24PM (#12084888) Homepage
      If you can put the same power into your battery in one minute that your laptop sucks out in two hours, it follows that, for that one minute, your battery sucks 120x the power. So, if your laptop uses 100W or power, you need 12 kW for a minute to recharge it. It's going to take a special circuit to deliver that power (100 amps at 120V).
    • I regularly run through airports leeching power briefly between flights

      I can see it now -- microwave antennas on the back of your laptop, phone, etc. to geta free boost from the omnipresent TSA. "It's OK officer, I don't mind you taking a nice long look at the X-Ray..."

  • Ah... but, here's the catch: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:07PM (#12084765)
    These batteries also drain 80% in one minute!
    • Actually that would be a very usefull ability if in fact it could discharge 80% of its capacity in a minute, for that would lead to a awesome power-density.
      • From Toshiba's web site:
        The new battery can quickly store energy produced by locomotives and automobiles.

        So, they intend to use these in large scale applications. I wonder how that would work out on a train that has to climb a long grade, then decend for miles. On the decent, the batteries charge up quickly, then the power is available for the next upgrade.

        I can see where they would want to show these batteries off in cars and trains [japan-guide.com] before bringing them to our favorite Toshiba Laptop.

        Concerning lapto

      • Re:Ah... but, here's the catch: (Score:5, Funny)

        by yincrash ( 854885 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:17AM (#12086018)
        Actually that would be a very usefull ability if in fact it could discharge 80% of its capacity in a minute, for that would lead to a awesome power-density.

        ah yes. we call them capicitors. what a crazy hitech world this is!
  • There are good and bad things that come from battery technology finally making some headway:

    The Good: Efficient transportation, long lasting mobile electronic devices, and of course light sabers.

    The Bad: People get totally freaked out when the engine on a hybrid car shuts down as the electric kicks in. That silence is just plain wrong, the engine should stay running. Oh, that and a lot of my clients are oil companies.

    • Re:Battery Tech: Good and Bad (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:10PM (#12084791) Journal
      You get used to the gas engine cutting off after a few weeks. After that, it sounds weird when you drive a twentieth century car and hear it idling at stop lights.
    • I drive a Prius, and none of my passengers ever freaked out about the engine turning off; it's so smooth that you can only notice if the radio and fan are off and it's quiet in any case.

      Imagine how much quieter cities are going to be at rush hour once a significant fraction of cars are hybrids.

    • easy way around, decent speakers and a recording of your engine idling. So you have virtual engine idling. Could add Dual Shock ability to make the car rumble as if the engine is idling. But only if you buy the rights 1st :P
    • The Bad: People get totally freaked out when the engine on a hybrid car shuts down as the electric kicks in.

      Yeah, kind of like IE users get freaked out the first time they use FireFox and experience browsing without pop-up ads.

      I drive an '05 Prius. I love the fact that the engine cuts off so much. A small fraction of people who ride with me think it's weird at first, but they get used to it after 5 minutes. Most people think it's the coolest thing ever.
    • There are good and bad things that come from battery technology finally making some headway:

      The Good: Efficient transportation,

      are you nuts?

      I recently bought a car that was designed in the 1980's that regularly get's more gas mileage than a honda Insight.

      It's a Geo Metro with a 955cc engine. After adding low rolling resistance tires and adjusting steering camber to 0 (just like the honda) I get on average 58mpg. I have yet to see an insight with that high of an average. (I know of 5 owners of them,

  • So how much heat do these give off? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DeafDumbBlind ( 264205 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:08PM (#12084778)
    How hot do these babies get?
    • Well, an efficient battery shouldn't give off much heat. Maybe they solved that problem too. I remember as a kid playing with an RC car that the nicads would be very hot after about 15 minutes of crusing around.

    • Re:So how much heat do these give off? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:27PM (#12084908)
      ... and how much power will they require to charge? People are forgetting something. If you expect steady, large power over a large discharge period then you'll need huge power if your charg period is a small fraction of the discharge period.

      It makes me question the scaling the article implied for hybrid cars. The "one minute" charge timeframe is very much depending on having a power source capable of delivering that much energy to the battery. Hybrid batteries are many times the size of standard car batteries. That's a lot of power to deliver in a minute.

      TW
      • The "one minute" charge timeframe is very much depending on having a power source capable of delivering that much energy to the battery.
        Two words: regenerative braking.
        • Thee words, conservation of energy.

          Less you are going down a hill you can't reap more energy from regen braking than you put into it... and wind resistence means constant input to the system you will never see back from regen. However this will make regen systems more effective since you would not need to further complicated the system with large banks of capacitors to absorb the high energy output of hard braking.

          Makes times in between refuling farther apart as well.

      • Re:So how much heat do these give off? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Viceice ( 462967 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @11:09PM (#12085211)
        You're not getting it. Just because the battery is capable of absorbing 80% of it's total capacity in a minute doesnit mean it must.

        The real benefit here is from having a battery that is very efficient at absorbing energy in a situation where energy comes inconsistantly in intermittent intervels.

        See, hybried cars charge the car battries when

        1) The gas engine is running at such a situation where part of the power is used to run the car and part of it to charge it.

        2) When the car is breaking.

        So, when both situations occur isn'ty all that predictable and depends on the drivers driving style, meaning that the battery cannot get it's charge in a slow and steady stream but in occasional big gulps.

        The problem with the big gulp today is that if the gulp is big enough and the battery can't take it, energy is going to waste. So this new battery solves that problem by giving the battery the ability to drink up energy faster then the car can generate it.

        And if the reverse is true and the battery can discharge as fast, imagine what it can do for acceleration.

  • It is my hope (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eobanb ( 823187 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:10PM (#12084792) Homepage
    ...that this breathes new life into electric vehicles. The real problem with them right now is that it takes hours to recharge, whereas an internal combustion vehicle can just tank up at a service station in a minute or two. If this could work with electric vehicles as well, the scene could TOTALLY change. Imagine plugging in your car at the BP station for a minute or two, and being off on your merry way. The same goes for the insignificant capacity loss over time. Cells for electric vehicles are currently REALLY expensive, and heavy. Lithium ion cells are much lighter, and you could keep them for the life of the car.
    • Chevy just dumped all their lead acid cars. They just are never quite with it.

      With that said, the hywire may be able to use this in place of a fuel cell arrangement.

    • Re:It is my hope (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cartman ( 18204 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:36PM (#12084991)

      The problem wasn't that it takes hours to recharge. The problem was energy density: electric cars used conventional lead-acid or NiCAD batteries which were terribly heavy, relative to the amount of energy they stored. This greatly reduced vehicle range, because so much energy was expended carrying the heavy batteries. Adding batteries helped little, because that increased the weight of the batteries still further.

      An example of these problems was the GM EV1, which had a range of ~40 miles in an underpowered subcompact. The problem was energy density: the EV1 devoted ~90% of its energy to carrying its own batteries.

      Car manufacturers (like GM) considered using Lithium-Ion batteries, but were deterred by two facts: LiIon batteries are very expensive, and they need to be replaced every few years because they lose the ability to hold a charge. Replacing expensive batteries every 2 years or so made the vehicle costs skyrocket.

      A LiIon battery that can be recharged many thousands of times, and that can be recharged in a few minutes, solves all of these problems. An EV can be built with a range >100 miles and an acceptable cost. Even long distances could be tolerated if you don't mind stopping every 100 miles or so for a brief recharge.

      This potentially wouldn't even require a hybrid. Straight electric seems achievable.

      • The problem wasn't that it takes hours to recharge. The problem was energy density

        No, it was both. People want a car that they can take on vacation, easily refueling ever once in a while. While refueling every 50 miles isn't ideal, people would live with that if it only took a minute and was cheap. You shouldn't be sitting still for longer than that anyway for health reasons. However nobody is willing to wait hours for a recharge.

        The problem was energy density: the EV1 devoted ~90% of its energy

      • Re:It is my hope (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Osty ( 16825 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @11:21PM (#12085298)

        A LiIon battery that can be recharged many thousands of times, and that can be recharged in a few minutes, solves all of these problems. An EV can be built with a range >100 miles and an acceptable cost. Even long distances could be tolerated if you don't mind stopping every 100 miles or so for a brief recharge.

        How many cycles before the batteries start losing capacity? If a battery has a 3000 cycle life (call it 8 years of daily recharges, more than enough life since most people will have replaced the car by then), but starts losing capacity after 750 recharges (2 years), that's not good. If the range is only 100 miles at 100% capacity and the battery is down to 80% capacity after two years, range has been significantly shortened.

        Also, a range of 100 miles is still very small. 200 miles is really the sweet spot (that's about where the worst gas guzzlers are at today), but to be really fair that measurement should be in terms of end-of-warranty battery state. If the warranty is 4 years and the battery has degraded to 65%, I still want 200 miles. That means the car needs to do better than 300 miles when new.

        100 miles on a new battery is fair for a commuter car in an urban area. However, that's not enough for most people* to replace their existing car. Keep in mind that if you misjudge your remaining charge, you can't just dump a can of gas in the tank and make it to the next stop.

        * By "people", I'm really referring to "Americans, or other folks that live in an expansive country where a typical commute may be 30-40 miles round-trip, and vacation spots may be a couple hours away". Your 100 mile electric car would not be able to get you from LA to Vegas on a single charge, and good luck finding a place to recharge in the long, empty expanses of desert.

        • Re:It is my hope (Score:3, Informative)

          by tmortn ( 630092 )
          If the loss rate is 1% every 1000 charge cycles that is 20,000 charge cycles to get to 80%. If it works like that then these would have replacement timelines on the order of engine rebuilds/replacement.

          Ok now I want my T-zero with these batteries in it.

        • Re:It is my hope (Score:3, Informative)

          by danila ( 69889 )
          What's the point of your post? Haven't you heard of S-curves? This technology will not replace internal combustion engines overnight, but if the capacity is sufficient for certain customers, the adoption will gradually increase, supporting additional R&D investments. Eventually both cost and performance will be better than those of existing technologies.

          Complaining that it haven't happened yet is ridiculous.
      • This potentially wouldn't even require a hybrid. Straight electric seems achievable.

        Cost would still be an issue with the new cells; using the batteries as an APU would be much more cost effective. (If cost goes down, maybe there would be a chance for an all-electric.) It seems like the real key is to get the auto manufacturers to have a viable electric drivetrain, which could take advantage of technology advances in fuel cells or batteries.

    • Re:It is my hope (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 ) <deliverance@level4 . o rg> on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @12:23AM (#12085788) Journal
      Bugger that... plop the damn things down in front of traffic lights... long left turn boom full power!.

      Auto credit card payment... Have it stick up to the bottom of your car.

  • Nice power density too (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PxM ( 855264 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:11PM (#12084796)
    2) High Energy Density Small and light, the new battery offers a high level of storage efficiency. The prototype battery is only 3.8mm thick, 62mm high and 35mm deep and has a capacity of 600mAh.
    Given the recharge times that is an amazing amount of energy for PDAs, cameras and the like. However, if you're going to scale up that system for cars, you are going to have a hellishly dangerous amount of current flowing in order to get a charge in a minute (or time similar to a gas station) so they better figure out some good safety systems if they want to go to market with this for pure electic cars rather than the hybrids they're planning for in 2006. However, they might not need the one minute charge if they use the charge at home system the some electric car designs. You could charge to full in an hour or get enough of a charge at the supermarket or other store to make short hops without a problem.

    --
    Want a free iPod? [freeipods.com]
    Or try a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. [freegamingsystems.com] (you only need 4 referrals)
    Wired article as proof [wired.com]
    • you are going to have a hellishly dangerous amount of current flowing in order to get a charge in a minute (or time similar to a gas station)

      My guess is that this super-rapid charging will not be maxed out at a "filling station", but rather during something like regenerative breaking. Having a battery that can suck up current that fast would allow for much greater reclamation of kinetic energy into chemical-potential energy than is currently possible in hybrid/electric cars. Any energy that isn't absorbe
    • A standard AA battery is about 14mm diameter, 48mm long, or 9408 mm**3 if you treat it as square instead of round, and NiMH batteries store about 2000 mAh (old designs ~1600, newer designs 2400.) This is 8246 mm**3, so 87% as large, with 1/4 the storage capacity. On the other hand, NiCd AA are usually about 700 mAh, and they're nasty enough material it would be good to replace those.

      It may be better than lead-acid, so it might be ok for transportation (and differences in memory effect are important), a

  • If a Lion battery with enough Kwh to run a car can be recharged in one minute, do the lights in the entire block dim? Or after looking at the photograph, is this for a hybrid slot car?

  • Hybrid car charging is going to be exciting (Score:5, Informative)

    by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:12PM (#12084808)
    Let's say you want to charge a 48V 500AH battery from 50% charged in 5 minutes.... That's going to want approx 3000A * 48V = 144kW of juice. At, say, 70% mechanical to electrical efficiency that's 206kW == 275 horse power.... and still leave some for the air conditioner and turning the wheels. Hmmm.

    Maybe this technology will allow the battery size to be reduced in hybrids. That would definitely cut some cost out of hybrids and make them more pocket friendly.

    • lets suppose that we want a car that can run at an average of 30 horsepower for ten hours. and also assume 70% electric to machanical conversion. thats roughly 440 horse-power-hours = 336 kilowatt hours or 1.21 gigajoules. if you push in this much energy in say ten minutes that requires a 2 megawatt power source.

      if you could live with 1 tenth the horse power and 1 tenth the run time then that is 20,000 watt power source to recharge.

      ha! this is ludicrous. I must be making a mistake or electric auto

      • Nope... check into the energy density of gas sometimes then consider it in terms of what you pump in two minutes without even really thinking about it. Seems crazy for an electrical system since we don't use anything that powerfull in electric form. But so to was this once the case for the car. But remember if you shifting the fuel supply from gass delivered to stations you would have to move that power onto the utility grid... which means the grid has to be capable of handling it.

        And interim system would

  • This is cool because it helps efficiency (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:14PM (#12084822) Journal
    Lightly touch the brakes in a Prius, and the drive motor spins backwards as a generator, putting drag on the wheels and transferring the energy to the battery.

    Stomp hard on the brakes in a Prius, and the battery can't absorb current fast enough to deal with the power surge. Mechanical brakes come into play. Energy that could have been recycled turns into heat in the mechanical brakes.

    A super-fast charging battery could eliminate any need for mechanical brakes except as safety backups.
    • You're assuming that the regular brakes come on because the battery can't take the charge quickly enough. I'm not a mechano-electrical engineer, but I'm pretty sure there's only so much force a given engine can put out that way.
      • You're assuming that the regular brakes come on because the battery can't take the charge quickly enough. I'm not a mechano-electrical engineer, but I'm pretty sure there's only so much force a given engine can put out that way.

        The braking force exerted by a motor/generator is proportional to the load on it. Many diesel-electric locomotives brake by shunting the drive motors into a dynamic braking grid (actually a humongous resistor) which provides resistive loading on the motor/generators. In the case of

    • Re:This is cool because it helps efficiency (Score:4, Interesting)

      by theLOUDroom ( 556455 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @11:35PM (#12085402)
      A super-fast charging battery could eliminate any need for mechanical brakes except as safety backups.

      Except that your electrical system would burst into flames if you did a 60-0 MPH panic stop.
      k=.5*m*v^2=.5*1000*26.82^2=359656.2 joules spread this out over 4 seconds and you get about 90,000 watts!

      If you were using a battery voltage of 100V, you would still need a battery system that could handle 900 amps of current. If you were using 0000 gauage wire, which is 0.46" in diameter, you'd be running 3X the reccommend current for that wire guage. So even if your motors and your batteries could handle the current (which they can't), just your wiring itself would probably end up weighing as much as a set of normal, mechanical brakes.

      It would be neat if all that energy could be recovered, but I expect mechanical brakes are going to be around for quite some time. Of course if you did build a car that could do this, and it ever broke, the electrical system in the car could provide enough current to weld itself together (and a half dozen other cars...simulatneously).

      • Re:This is cool because it helps efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Hal9000_sn3 ( 707590 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:23AM (#12086047)
        900 amperes may seem like a lot, but I have seen electrical systems in aircraft designed (with safety margins) for 1500 A, and have also seen ground equipment peg an ammeter past the 2500 A mark. Starter/generators in larger, general aviation, aircraft typically draw 750 A at room temperature with cooled down engine, to get the engines up to speed. More current when cold, and at altitude they have to be able to spin an engine that could easily be at ambient temperatures around -40 degrees.

        Large bus bars, and multiple 00 or 000 guage wires can easily handle that much current with high temperature insulation. The common tables of ampacity for stationary use are very conservative, and you must take into account the assumptions of those tables.

        Then, my understanding is that most hybrid and electrical cars use more like 250-400 volt battery systems, so current handling would only need to be in the 225 to 360 ampere range.

        Probably you would want actually to stop from 60MPH in about 3.5 seconds, and also you would not likely need to dissipate all the energy as generated electricity. In any case the engineering is not as difficult as it might seem, and with good enough bumpers and airbags, who needs brakes anyway?
      • You have a mistake in how much wire you actually need.

        The reason for the "standard" wire sizes given in electrical code is that they are designed to be stuck in insulation, and conduit and other places where they can't dissipate heat.

        However in this case first or all you are only running current for 4 seconds! So they hardly have time to heat up much, and second you can easily put some cooling fins on them.

        You don't need anywhere near as much wire as you might think.

        (i.e. if it's safe to run 15 amps in

  • fuel cells (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Lotharjade ( 750874 )
    Im still waiting for fuel cell vehicles to become standard. If they would just make a car we would ACTUALLY use. None of these tiny little fly traps. Get me a BIG fuel cell vehicle and Ill be there in a flash.

    Im sure we will use the lessons from hybrids and new battery design in the future of fuel cell vehicles, but I suspect that hybrids are only a step on the way to better cars.

  • One minute? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:18PM (#12084851) Homepage Journal
    What sort of amperage would that be on a typical battery? The articles aren't specific. For laptops, I can see that the limitation would be what can be drawn by wall power.

  • Mine's better (Score:5, Funny)

    by KFK - Wildcat ( 512842 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:19PM (#12084861)
    it's a beautiful shade of blue
    Heh, mine's better; it's painted with a super intelligent shade of blue.

  • 6 minute batteries (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jaiden ( 64072 ) <jaiden0 AT hotmail DOT com> on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @10:23PM (#12084880)
    This will go well with my 6 Minute Abs tapes.

    Though I may have to throw them out if they come up with 1 Minute Abs.

    Seriously though, you still have to pump in the energy you want to get out later. For a car this is a LOT of energy. I'd do the calculations if I were more clever. Without distributed power generation (think fuel cells) it may be hard to get that much juice in one spot without frying someone.

    You'd have to bump up the voltage to keep the wires from being too thick to be managed by a single person. Then you have to worry about shocks (rain anyone?) and fumes (presumably there would be filling stations in/near gas pumps for legacy support). Also, some batteries vent hydrogen. not sure if these do though.

  • Talk about some amps (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How does one charge a ev in 1 minute? I mean the EV1's lead-acid pack is (16.3 kW-hr). So 80% of that is 13.04kw-hr. So what is this magical charger that can do 782.4kw for one min? Its gona be nice sucking 3556 amps from the 220 line.
  • I mean, if the charge rate holds so that for every minute of charging, you charge 80% of the remaining capacity, that means that after about 4 minutes of charging, you will be over 99% fully charged (99.84%, specifically... if starting from 0). That's pretty respectable, really... but does anyone know if that 80% in one minute holds after the first minute?
    • i was going to moderate, but i'm sure there are a small horde of /.'ers thinking the same thing.

      Short Answer: No

      lithium batteries can take a fast charge, up to a point, after that most chargers (or is it the internal circuitry) will switch to a slower charge rate.

      this is done to avoid thermal runaway = disaster.

      with good cooling, most rechargeables can handle a very high recharge rate (Cx2 or Cx4) till around 75% capacity, but you'll need to slow charge 'em to reach 100%

    • Lithium Ion/Poly batteries charge using "constant voltage" charge, so the last 20% often takes as long as the first 80% (because the voltage difference between the charge source and the batter gets smaller and smaller meaning less power is being transferred for a unit of time).

      I know with my aircraft, we use LiPoly batteries and it's a real curse to sit there and watch your batteries race to 60~70% charge in 30 minutes only to then sit back for another hour waiting for the rest :-\

      Paul.
  • 'should'

    Funny, the word should doesn't appear anywhere in article. Who do you suppose said it?

  • Smaller Devices will benefit regardless (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Artifakt ( 700173 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @11:17PM (#12085273)
    The best part of this is the batteries are being developed for cars. Compare this with the various high tech alloys and such that end up being available first in luxury items such as golf clubs or tennis racquets but not making it out to more fundamental products for another generation, or more. If this really starts showing up in 2006 models, it should slow the increase in gas prices within a few years, maybe a great deal if sales are good.
    For Americans, would you rather have these batteries make it more quickly to your MP3 players and laptops, or have 2010 gas prices only rise to say $4.50 instead of $5.75 a gallon?
    (And for most Europeans figure somewhere around EU 8 or 9 instead of EU 12, even if the Euro rises against the Dollar, as most of your governments have already agreed to discout hybred fuel costs in various ways, but a lot of the cost will still be taxes).
    Indirect savings, i.e. from trucked goods costs and smaller winter spikes in heating oil prices would add substantially to that.
    $1.25 a gallon difference (or likely more) will pay for lots of older model batteries for all your smaller appliances, and then some.

  • It's a sticker! (Score:3, Funny)

    by StikyPad ( 445176 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @12:41AM (#12085861) Homepage
    More details about this amazing technology can be found here [slashdot.org].

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