UK Students Build Electric Car With 248-Mile Range 192
da_how writes "A group of students and graduates at Imperial College London have built an electric car with a massive range — 248+ miles on a charge at 'reasonable' highway speeds (60 mph). They did this by filling the car to the absolute max with as many lithium iron phosphate batteries as possible — 56 kWh — and designing a very efficient direct drive powertrain, about 90% batteries-to-wheels at highway speeds. The choice of vehicle is an interesting one: it's a converted Radical SR8 — a track racing car with a speed record on the Nurburgring. Not an obvious contender for an endurance vehicle (no windscreen either!) — but then they claim it's lightweight to start with, being constructed of steel space frame and glass fiber. Also, Radical is based in the UK and provided some help and sponsorship. The students plan to drive their 'SRZero' 15,000 miles down the Pan American Highway, beginning July 8 in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and ending up in Tierra Del Fuego three month later. That's about 60 charges."
So instead of a monster gas tank (Score:2, Insightful)
248 mile range? Big deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Tesla Roadster has a 245 mile range. And basic stuff like bumpers.
The student car looks like it has about a 3 inch ground clearance. If that. That's not going to get very far on anything less than a perfect road. And they want to drive it down from Prudhoe Bay? Right.
Re:So instead of a monster gas tank (Score:5, Insightful)
That's something called "proof of concept".
What is the 'proof of concept' here? That if you make a bigger fuel tank you'll be able to go further? Sorry, but electric cars have been around for years. You can buy your own from Tesla Motors. [teslamotors.com]
Re:So instead of a monster gas tank (Score:2, Insightful)
We all get the concept. What we are waiting for is a practical solution.
Re:So instead of a monster gas tank (Score:4, Insightful)
So what -does- it prove ? That if you stuff a lightweight car to the top with batteries, then you've got 50Kwh worth of energy, or an amount comparable to the energy in 1.5 gallons of gas. Sure, electric drivetrains are more efficient, so this gives the car the range of perhaps 3 gallons of gas. But at the cost of having no space for storage, and of making the car hundreds of kilos heavier.
If you stuffed a 18-wheeler with batteries, and drove it at 40mph, it'd go a fair distance too, but it wouldn't be terribly useful, the entire point of 18-wheelers is to have space for CARGO.
Re:So instead of a monster gas tank (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a bad experiment.
You'd be instantly first on the list of "people to fire when we need to reduce costs" and wouldn't probably reach the fifth year, disproving the concept.
Re:All the way down? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Dalton Highway, from Prudhoe Bay to Fairbanks, is unpaved. They might want a little more ground clearance than the car pictured in the article.
Re:All the way down? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems like they wanted to take a summer trip and figured out a way to get someone else to pay for it. Not a bad deal.
And made the common mistake of ignoring the productivity of their work. Spending as much time in any other job would've paid the trip with less risk involved.
Yes, I know there are other benefits to their way. At the very least they can automatically beat any "I just came back from Chile" with their "I just came back from a trans-american road trip in an electric car I built with some other cool friends". We all know which one's gonna get the girl. In the pub next to the engineering faculty, of course.
Re:So instead of a monster gas tank (Score:3, Insightful)
It proves there are lots of people/companies willing to give students money for doing stuff that's rather useless from a scientific and practical viewpoint.
I'd like to see how they handle practical stuff like "air conditioning". If they think that's not important, then that's yet another reason why their car is not important. A college student might put up with 35C or higher temperatures on that "cool trip", most car buyers won't. A 3-4 kilowatt car air conditioner is going to hurt an EV's range a lot more than a fossil fuel powered one.
I'm sure you'd be able to get a "normal car" to travel the same journey for cheaper, faster and in better comfort.
Anyway if the battery costs drop and capacities increase, we'd see more electric cars. To me, Nissan is the one that's doing useful stuff - apparently they've got battery costs down to USD375 per kWh: http://gas2.org/2010/05/05/report-nissan-leafs-battery-costs-a-staggeringly-cheap-375kwh-to-produce/ [gas2.org]
What Nissan is doing is far more useful than a bunch of students going from Alaska to Argentina. Computer analogy (instead of car analogy ;): the former are like Intel/AMD - actually pushing the tech, the latter are just a bunch of case modders.
Could've had 400mi range in 10 minutes work (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong what these guys are doing is great, but ~270 miles range is not terribly impressive considering that's what a stock Tesla has achieved.
Ditching the wing and splitter could have yielded them 20-40% improved range at open road speed, at the small expense of the race car look. It would take a few minutes with a spanner to remove, and to put back on for parking up for a photo shoot with the local press. I hope this is what they do. Some further work with some duct tape or some more ambitious aero mods with some coroplast http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/aerocivic-how-drop-your-cd-0-31-0-a-290.html [ecomodder.com] ecomodder* style and they could have squeezed out more efficiency. The very best road vehicles approach 0.15 Cd, this would have given them a shot at 500 miles range. Lower the speed a little and they may have gone 600mi / 1000km.
I can't find Radcial SR8's aero stats anywhere but I know such track day specials have a fair bit of down force by design, so a drag coefficient above 0.50 is not uncommon. This is largely the result of the wings, air damn, and underbody design. High down force set up might be over 0.70 or more. To compare, a SUV is about 0.40, a good sedan 0.32, and a Toyota Prius 0.27, Aptera is about 0.17 these vehicles are not even designed not to generate lift let alone downforce.
* Yes I do lurk there.
Re:Electric Hype (Score:3, Insightful)
So?
The cars won't appear there overnight. They'll be bought gradually, and be mostly charged at night, when the grid has spare capacity. As the load grows, the places with least spare capacity left will be upgraded first. You don't have to do an "overhaul the entire US" project. And why would it need a stimulus? If people are spending more on electricity, that's where the funding for the infrastructure should come from.