Long In Development, Toshiba 'SCiB' Battery Debuts 284
relliker notes Toshiba's announcement of the SCiB, a battery we have been following for years. (As usual, use NoScript to avoid the incredibly annoying timed begging popup on Gizmag's site.) Here is Toshiba's SCiB site. The battery's specs claim 6,000+ charge/deep-discharge cycles with minor capacity loss, safe rapid charging to 90% in 5 minutes, and enhanced safety regarding overheating or shorting out. It could make its way into electric vehicles before long.
SCIB (Score:5, Informative)
SCIB = Super Charge Ion Battery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-titanate_battery [wikipedia.org]
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Specs from Toshiba's web site:
Nominal Voltage 12V
Nominal Capacity 4.0Ah
Max. Charging Current 8.4A
Max. Discharging Current 8.0A (continuous)
25A (within0.3s)
Size Approx. 145 x 109 x 48mm
Weight Approx. 1.0kg
Features of SCiBTM TBP-0501
Safety The battery with advanced safety due to anode formed with oxide materials.
No bursting, ignition, or fumes.*
*According to crush test performed by Toshiba (http://www.scib.jp/en/product/safety.htm)
Long Life The SCiBTM cell offers more than 6,000 charge-discharge cycles.
It co
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The article says it, but not the submission. I for one appreciate the expansion and link as the battery is the star here, not Toyota.
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agreed - at first i was wondering how
Sulfur Carbon Iodine Boron but that would be SCIB not SCiB.. and i couldn't remember what Ci was (turns out it doesn't exist) then i was thinking some damn marketing guy got a hold of it and wanted to shove some apple "i" init...
nope turns out its ALL marketing - might be a revolution in Li ion batteries but not a revolution in energy storage density.
Supposed to work well below freezing... (Score:2)
CAN I HAS for my mobile phone please?
Seriously, it's a problem in the winter.
Re:Supposed to work well below freezing... (Score:5, Informative)
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when it gets to -30 in your jeans pocket/coat pocket, you probably have bigger problems then your cell-phone battery..
Re:Supposed to work well below freezing... (Score:4, Funny)
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when it gets to -30 in your jeans pocket/coat pocket, you probably have bigger problems then your cell-phone battery..
What about the pockets on my spacesuit, you insensitive clod!
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How is the reception up there?
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when it gets to -30 in your jeans pocket/coat pocket, you probably have bigger problems then your cell-phone battery..
Like what? I've had to walk over a mile outside to get to classes when it was -30c (-22f), multiple times. Was it fun? No. Did it kill me? Apparently not.
Moreover, I recall an episode of Ice Road Truckers where it was somewhere between -50f and -40f.
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That's a problem with ICE engines as well. The coolant tends to freeze during cold snaps. Easy to work around, though -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_heater [wikipedia.org]
I imagine similar solutions can be developed for cars that use these batteries.
Re:Supposed to work well below freezing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Like (US) Kansas? -22f is a common temperature in late dec early jan.
Common? In the coldest place in Kansas for which I have weather data handy, it gets to -1.4F or lower fewer than 36 hours per year, on average.
electric trike? (Score:2)
i would not mind getting a electric trike for those "short" trips around the local area.
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i was thinking that a trike would be more stable on troublesome surfaces vs a normal cycle, while at the same time not have the legal requirements for more elaborate vehicles.
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Yes, a trike still needs some licenses, but in some countries, significantly less then a car.
Here in holland for instance, you pay significantly less in road-tax for anything classed as a motorcycle (which trikes are)
Erm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Toyota? Or Toshiba?
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Toyota? Or Toshiba?
As it is another fine "editing" job by Slashdot Hack KDawson, WHO KNOWS?
Re:Erm... (Score:5, Informative)
Toyota? Or Toshiba?
Toshiba, as in TFA. The title is just wishful thinking to get this in the Prius.
Seriously, one of the main issues (other than price) keeping people from buying electric or hybrid vehicles is the time it takes to recharge, which doesn't make them a viable option for long (read: hundreds of kilometres in one go) trips.
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Why read TFA when all the info is on Toshiba's site, linked in TFS?
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Google "Plug-in Hybrids".
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There exist plug-in hybrids [wikipedia.org]. Most of them I've seen are Prius conversions involving much larger battery packs and warranty voiding.
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Toyshiba? Or Toshota?
"Toyota" really? (Score:5, Funny)
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No, only the people look the same to me.
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Somewhere it said that Mitsubishi Motors is working with Toshiba in the development, but Toyota...?
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Nobody has, considering "Japanese" isn't a noun.
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but you just used it as one in the very sentence you attempted to refute the fact in! :)
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In meta-grammar (yes I just made that up) terms all words can be used as nouns if you're using the word to refer to the word itself rather than using the word to convey its intended meaning, but in a normal usage context the word "Japanese" is not a noun.
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I don't know. I'm thinking the Japanese might disagree with you.
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Actually using the OP's style, you'd have to say "I'm thinking Japaneses might disagree with you", since "the Japanese" would presumably refer to something of Japanese origin.
It's a bit like referring to Windows or Outlook as "Microsoft". I actually have met some people that do this, but I certainly don't envy their intellectual capabilities.
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Hey, you're the one who said it wasn't a noun. I was just respectfully disagreeing.
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When referring to a person I really don't think it sounds like a noun, though someone else has pointed out a dictionary definition that says it is. And I have no problems saying "an American", so I guess it's just that I'm not used to hearing anyone say "a Japanese".
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It's worth noting that you can use "Japanese" as a noun in other contexts as well -- for example, "Japanese has complex grammar."
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I live in Britain, the only person I've ever heard talking like that is my grandpa. I didn't really think of "an American", I do kind of think of that as a noun, though I definitely wouldn't call myself "a Scottish", in that case I'd say "a Scot".
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Toshiba (Score:5, Informative)
My original post's title did not have the company name in it :)
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Dammit (Score:2)
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It's good to know the editors are doing something. We should be supportive of their attempts instead of discouraging them by jumping on every little mistake.
I'm supportive when CmdrTaco, Timothy, or one of the other editors make a mistake. It happens, Soulskill (who sticks to Idle) made one the other day and he owned up to it and even made a funny joke, but kdawson is the worst editor /. has had in a while. He regularly messes up the article, makes unnecessary edits that end up making the article incorrect or cause grammatical errors to make it as if the person who submitted it made the mistake.
There's trolls for every article, but kdawson continually makes mis
Time for the maths! (Score:5, Informative)
To match the Chevy Volt's 16Kwh You'd need around 160 of these. That's for a tiny 40mile range. These aren't going to be the main power source of a car any time soon
Re:Time for the maths! (Score:4, Insightful)
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt#Battery), the driver can only use 8.8kWh of the full capacity, to maximise the lifetime of the battery. Given that the lifetime of these batteries is the main draw, you might be able to get away with 90 SCiB-model batteries for a comparable capacity. Incidentally, that works out to about 180kg, comparable to the Volt's 170kg Li-ion pack, which is still an improvement given that Li-ion are one of the best battery types for energy/weight ratio. So it'
Re:Time for the maths! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Time for the maths! (Score:5, Insightful)
You could maybe come up with a design that uses batteries like this for hard accelleration, climbing, and startup, when drain is high - and use the base-load batteries for other times, meanwhile shifting charge from the base-load back to the high-drain ones while driving normally. Such a design would get better use out of both battery types.
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A 2kg battery pack is 24V for 4.2Ah. That's ~100wh
Indeed. The energy density seems to be about 0.05Wh/g. Compare with about 3Wh/g for LiFePo4 batteries, which have the same safety benefits, and you start to see why this won't be appearing in EVs any time soon.
Use for laptops? (Score:3, Informative)
According to Wikipedia, the disadvantage compared to Lithium Ion batteries is that they store less energy in a given space/weight, which is why this tech may not extend to small devices such as laptops.
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from what I see on their page, a 1kg battery can hold 48Wh (abigsmurf commented on this before you). A laptop might use somewhere between 15 to 30 W (for reasonable usage), so you get to use a laptop for 3 to 1.5 hours, depending on how hungry it is. I don't really get what the advantage of this new SCiB thing is, except that it is NOT Li-Ion.
Anyway, I understood you can buy (as in it's already available) a car that can go for more than 100km on one recharge. If I ever want a car for a city, that's what I'm
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One big advantage i noticed was that they don't explode when punctured.. like Li-ion / LiPo.
Question on power output (Score:4, Interesting)
According to this page they state "SCiBTM is a well-balanced battery that combines high power output and large capacity with power density almost equal to that of capacitors":
http://www.scib.jp/en/product/detail.htm [www.scib.jp]
Also on this page, they state 96 watts per kilogram (12 volt x 8 amp):
http://www.scib.jp/en/product/spec.htm [www.scib.jp]
Only 96 watts per kg? That's not close to a capacitor which is about 1000-10000 watts per kg. Maybe I'm missing something but what gives?
Re:Question on power output (Score:5, Informative)
You confused power density and energy density. A cap may be 1000-10000 w/kg but that's energy density. It looks like these things are like caps in the sense that they can charge/discharge FAST compared to everything else. How much energy you get from it is a different matter.
A 9V battery is the same energy as several rounds of 9mm pistol shots, but it should be immediately obvious that 9V batteries aren't able to dump that energy as FAST as a 9mm...
Re:Question on power output (Score:5, Funny)
Doesn't that depend on the speed of the battery?
Bert
In case of short replies, Slashdot hates people who can speed-type.
Re:Question on power output (Score:5, Informative)
No the 1000-10000 w/kg is power density. Energy density would be W-h / kg. Power density is W/kg. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Supercapacitors_chart.svg [wikipedia.org]
Mod parent up (Score:2)
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For a given weight, certain battery technologies can only provide so much power output. So it does make sense to say "power per kilogram" as well as the obvious "energy per kilogram". Try Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Supercapacitors_chart.svg [wikipedia.org]
A shame you probably won't read this and be able to learn though as you posted anon.
game changing, if true (Score:5, Insightful)
The electric motor beats the combustion engine in every way: Simpler, more reliable, much more efficient, more powerful, smoother and leveler output of power over a wider range of RPMs, quieter, smaller, lighter weight, and much less expensive. The big reason we don't use them everywhere is lack of a way to store sufficient energy that is 1) cheap, 2) lightweight, 3) quickly refillable, 4) durable, 5) not bulky. The humble gas tank is far better than the batteries, fuel cells, ultra capacitors, and other things (like flywheels?) that we have now. Solve these problems and bring the battery to the point where it is at least competitive with the gas tank even if still a little inferior, and powering cars with gasoline will be history so fast that the oil companies won't know what hit them.
Overhyped breakthroughs that really aren't are legion. But often it really does happen. 2009 was the year of the LCD. I'm still astonished at how quickly the CRT vanished last year. Over the last decade, the incandescent light bulb was pushed into niche applications as compact fluorescents took over But seems they won't reign long with LEDs steadily improving. The 1980s was huge, with the shift from vinyl records to CDs, the microwave oven, and the PC. The 1990s was even bigger with the Internet and the gigantic leaps in hard drive capacity. Doesn't seem there will be a year of the Linux desktop, more like a decade.
But this change seems very likely to be real. We've had electric motors on the sidelines for more than a century, and we know they work great. We've also had batteries a long time, so maybe we should be more cautious and skeptical about breakthroughs. But what we haven't had all that long are all these new battery materials such as lithium-ion. So I think that even if Toshiba's advance is less than it sounds, many others are working hard on the same problems, and we'll see huge improvements soon. Like LCDs were 5 years ago, batteries are on the cusp, and it really won't take much more to make the battery + electric motor combination better, much better, than combustion engine + gas tank. I'd be hesitant to buy a new car with a combustion engine. Might be obsolete very quickly, the way CRTs went last year. Combustion engine powered cars still have a few years, perhaps, the only question is how many?
Pretty soon, except those without their own garage (Score:2, Informative)
Pretty soon, except those without their own garage.
When you can charge up enough for ~2-3hours driving in ~15 minutes with an hour or so between possible recharges, this will be fine for long distance driving.
If you drive less than 2-3 hours to work (actual moving, so traffic jams don't count) and have your own garage, it's good NOW.
If you don't have your own garage, then unless you drive off specifically to recharge, they still don't work.
Unless there's a way to get your home electric power to the car on t
Re:game changing, if true (Score:4, Interesting)
Great points. However I think that with continued development you're going to find that hydrogen is what eventually replaces gas as our power source of choice for cars. Eventually it will pull up, hook up, refuel, drive away. The biggest hurdle there is an efficient delivery system and excess power to create hydrogen with (need more nuclear). Batteries are great in that they're portable power but honestly they're nasty little things, especially when they burn or get damaged. I worked with some super-capacitors for a small company making hybrid electric buses for NYC, they were amazing in that they could hold 1000 Farrads at 2V, however they made a nice cyanide cloud if they burned...
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How do you contain hydrogen in an automobile accident?
It naturally dissipates rapidly. It is, after all, lighter than air - unlike fuel and fuel vapors. Most serious research into the issue indicates hydrogen as a fuel source is actually safer than a gas tank.
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It naturally dissipates rapidly. It is, after all, lighter than air - unlike fuel and fuel vapors.
Which also naturally dissipate if you're not in an enclosed space. It's quite difficult to actually get gasoline to combust. Mostly it just burns. I'd say the risk of having the proper mix inside your car is probably HIGHER with hydrogen because fuel tanks are not on top of vehicles, and hydrogen rises; fuel tanks ARE on the bottom of vehicles, and gasoline vapors tend to fall. Of course, if you roll your vehicle, all bets are off.
Most serious research into the issue indicates hydrogen as a fuel source is actually safer than a gas tank.
...if you spend orders of magnitude more on the containment vessel, and indee
Re:game changing, if true (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't need to renew your gas tank every 6000 charges (admittedly, that's probably a lot of years in an absolutely ideal charging scenario, but the chances that it works like that with ordinary car-use are near-zero). When you do, it doesn't cost you as much as a *new* car (not even a replacement of the car you're driving, a BRAND NEW car). Refuelling your car does not require an enormous infrastructure and 100's or 1000's of amps flowing down a cable (sorry, but I'd rather have a petroleum fire on the end of my fuelling nozzle than have the equivalent happen with an electric charging cable - slight fire that you can extinguish versus KABOOM - plus the price of copper is so high at the moment that people are ripping up telephone lines and melting them down). Fuel stops don't need to have the equivalent of a small power station to run them. You can walk to the station if you run out of fuel and come back with enough to get you to the next fuelling stop. You don't need something like 75% of the weight of the car being fuel (and that weight never lessens no matter how "empty" you're running).
When everyone parks their car at home at 6pm, it doesn't cause a massive power surge larger than our entire towns take at the moment. If you want to go long-distance, you pack some extra fuel, or note the locations of various fuel stops across Europe - because even the tiniest town up in the hills where they barely have electric will have petroleum - I got from the UK through France, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria and back on about £300-400 of fuel - that's the same as a quarter's worth of electricity for my house without an electric car, God knows what it would have cost in an electric car. You don't have to manage and dispose of nearly a ton of Lithium battery every time a car is scrapped (or, similarly, find nearly a ton of it when you build one) - there's more than enough nasty stuff in brake linings and exhausts but it doesn't make anywhere near as much waste.
Seriously, I'm a realist and have been saying for years that oil needs to STOP being used. But at the moment, the tech for electric is nowhere near good enough, hence the rise of "hybrid" (read: two cars wastage for the price of one) and slow-moving, short-range electric vehicles. We've had electric vehicles for decades - my milkman still delivers on a lead-acid-based vehicle that was introduced before I was even born (the 70's) - they charge overnight, do 30mph, and are slowly being replaced by the lithium battery variety. They are on the edge of plausibility but there are still a million, much more difficult, problems to overcome than just inventing a slightly more suitable battery. And in the end, grid-surge means higher peak-demand which means we have to use the only *practical* methods of generating that sort of electricity en-masse: Nuclear, coal, gas and other oil-based burning. All we've done is move the oil-burning into a power station and lost at least 10% of the electricity in storage/transmission.
Electric cars will stay the SSD's of the vehicle market for a while yet - expensive, with their own downsides, but provide clear benefits, and therefore used mainly by enthusiasts. I'm driving a 1997 car that's in perfect working order with no major mechanical changes made to it. It's the third or fourth car like that that I've owned. That sort of second-hand market will not exist for DECADES in the electric car market, because of the price of spares and batteries - that means most people who are driving second-hand cars (i.e. most drivers everywhere) will not be able to afford to change. Electric cars will cost a lot more for a long while and that means they risk being shunned entirely, or seen as a "luxury". It will take electric cars at least another 10 years after they are "solved" to take over our roads and for everyone "normal" to be driving them. Home maintenance of them is probably also out of the window - good for big dealerships, bad for local garages.
It will happen, eventually, with some te
Re:game changing, if true (Score:5, Interesting)
What a well thought out and rational response. The fact you've been moderated, "troll", seems to validate that statement. Seems many low IQ moderators love to censor when either they don't understand the material at all, or simply don't agree. I encourage others to moderate your post up as it wonderfully highlights many of the very real problems (perceived or actualized) with electric cars. Just the same, I do have some nits to mention.
Refuelling your car does not require an enormous infrastructure
Actually it does. Infrastructure and transport, not to mention localized mixing for local emission laws, is actually a very large percentage of petrol costs. You're just so accustomed to seeing it everywhere, you don't notice. Well that, plus the fact that much of it is on the highways and under ground.
slight fire that you can extinguish versus KABOOM
Actually, many battery technologies are less likely to vent vapors which might burn. Of course, you are correct in a fashion that various battery technologies, such as lion, are very likely to bloat/vent/burn/explode after overcharging, rapid discharge exceeding rating, and blunt force trauma. So it is an issue but in different situations.
When everyone parks their car at home at 6pm, it doesn't cause a massive power surge larger than our entire towns take at the moment.
This is clearly hysteria. Largely, the required infrastructure to support such a scenario doesn't even exist. Besides, both cars and chargers are already looking to address this by "smart" chargers and even simple timers. The reality is, just because you plug in at 6pm doesn't mean it starts charging at 6pm. And even if it does start charging, a simple trickle is frequently all that is actually needed. Designers already understand peak vs off-peak loads and costs and are already actively seeking solutions. Some solutions are already available and/or integrated.
If you want to go long-distance,
Actually, this is exactly why hybrid solutions have appeal. Beyond that, other car designers have small, optional trailers or "back packs" for the vehicle which dramatically extends range. Typically they are generators which allow you to keep your batteries charged using existing infrastructure for long distance trips. Solutions exists. They are not really ideal and of course, add additional cost. Just the same, the long-distance "woes" are certainly addressable.
Others are also exploring alternate solutions such as exchangeable electrolytic solution. Meaning, just as now, stations would maintain large vats of "fuel". Only in this case, the fuel is an electrolytic solution rather than petrol. To refuel, you attach two hoses. One to empty your discharged solution and the other to fill up with a fully charged solution. Again, not really ideal but people are clearly exploring possibilities.
And in the end, grid-surge means higher peak-demand
Actually, most research seems to indicate lower peak demand and much, much higher off-peak demand whereby base load power is frequently wasted.
All we've done is move the oil-burning into a power station and lost at least 10% of the electricity in storage/transmission.
"All"? That's actually a very big deal. Electric motors, even after the 10%-20% transmission loss is still dramatically more efficient that are internal combustion engines. Not to mention, power plants also gain efficiency from scale. Not to mention this allows for cleaner air and centralized pollution mitigation. We all have roughly $1000 added to each vehicle in an effort to simply make the exhaust less toxic; which completely ignores making it "clean." For JUST US car manufacturers, that's roughly $3.6 billion dollars wasted annually.
That sort of second-hand market will not exist for DECADES in the electric car market
This is an exce
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While I certainly agree with the rest of your post, thermal electric plants still aren't very efficient.
Well, they are still more efficient than everyone having their own ICE. And to be clear, when I said, "transmission", I mean electrical transmission and distribution, not a mechanical transmission. While transmissions have become much more efficient in recent years, they still impose something like 8%-13% frictional loss. Electric motors, when done right, do not require a mechanical transmission.
So in the end, even with older thermal plants, electric vehicles provide for a more efficient form of locomotion.
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Refuelling your car does not require an enormous infrastructure
Actually, it does; oil rigs, oil wells, refineries, transportation of the fuel, and gasoline stations. It's just that you don't notice the infrastructure because it's been there all along. If you had electric cars you would only need charging stations while travelling, as you could charge it at home.
We've had electric vehicles for decades
Longer. [wikipedia.org]
But electric cars are the SSD's and 3D movies of today
I agree with the SSD, but I really don't think 3
Re:game changing, if true (Score:5, Insightful)
You shouldn't have been marked troll but i think you underestimate the ammount of use you get for 6000 cycles. At 100miles per cycle that's 600,000 miles of life! Even 50miles per cycle is still 300,000 miles. During that time you skipped like 200 engine oil changes. Didn't consume 20,000 gallons of gas (assuming 30mpg). Air filter changes too. If you drove an average of 100miles per day, that's 16 years of non-stop use.
I get what you're saying about no electric charging points around. But where there is elecricity, there could be a charging point, right? There aren't many places without electricity. I would think gas-stations would want to usher in electric cars because if it takes 30min to quick charge.. that's 30 minutes those people have to buy stuff at the station. They don't make much on fuel sales anyways, what do they care.
Disclosure: I drive a year 2000 Jeep Cherokee and also use an SSD. The TV is still 2D.
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Oh, they have many years to go. I know quite a few people with driving habits that make a 50 mile radius look pathetic. Hell, if you drive the main road north from the capital here in Norway towards the nothern parts of the country, you won't even make it across the Dovre mountain. That is if they deal with temperatures of 0 F and below in the winter. I got a friend who lives in the midwest US, don't think he'll get an electric any time soon either. Yes, maybe it will take over in the cities where people do
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Nissan LEAF provides a real-world range of about 70 miles (max advertised 100.) These systems warm up as you use them due to inefficiency just like any other vehicle, so freezing temperatures are only a problem until they warm up. And yes, it has the potential to replace the second car now, and both cars in a generation or two, if we would just get on it!
But I fully expect a car I buy now to be a bucket of rust well before the gas guzzler is an endangered species.
There's certainly a lot less to go wrong with an EV. What bothers me about cars is that for less money than silicone-filled synthetic rubber they could us
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Except for the reasons you later pointed out:
Those are some pretty major ways that intenral combustion beats electric.
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The electric motor beats the combustion engine in every way
Not quite _every_ way. What it's missing is "soul" (all you folks driving stock Hondas won't notice any change, har har): the howl of a GT-1-spec V8 that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, the growl of a boxer-6, the scream of a racebike at 16k RPMs, even the burble of a tuned street-V8 idling. I guess you can play pretty motor sounds from a speaker, but still, it's not the same. :)
And there really is a lot of cool engineering in modern ICEs. Some of us will miss that.
Don't get me wrong, I th
ENERGY DENSITY? (Score:2)
Ridiculous (Score:2)
Read TFA carefully, and you'll notice they never guarantee 6000 cycles AND 5-minute recharge at the same time.
Also a 5-minute recharge is NOT going to be very economical-- a significant fraction of the applied power is going to be lost as heat.
In a real car, you'll need a few dozen of these little bugers, and when you stack them, heat dissipation will be a huge issue. A real design ... and they d
will require a very fancy liquid cooling system to keep the thing from melting down during charge and discharge.
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
If I had to bet, I'd say it's "22".
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Catch is 6000 charge/deep-discharge and rapid charge in 5 minutes.
Though my girlfriend is not impressed with those figures.
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Less voltage per cell than ordinary lithium-ion, lower capacity than ordinary lithium-ion, and the fact that supplying enough volt-amps to fast-charge a car-sized battery pack remains decidedly non-trivial.
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the fact that supplying enough volt-amps to fast-charge a car-sized battery pack remains decidedly non-trivial.
that caught my eye right away, sure the battery might be able to handle 90% in 5 minutes, but good luck setting up infracstructure that can deliver that amount of juice, say a car would need 30kw to maintain motorway speed (say 50, for ease of calculation), and ranges 200 miles, that means you need 120 KW/h of stored energy, pack 90% of that in five minutes, and you end up with roughly 1.3 Gigawatt of drain sustained over 5 minutes...
IT'S OVER 1.21 GIGAWAT!! (yeah i know, i got my meme's mixed)
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
say a car would need 30kw to maintain motorway speed (say 50, for ease of calculation), and ranges 200 miles, that means you need 120 KW/h of stored energy, pack 90% of that in five minutes, and you end up with roughly 1.3 Gigawatt of drain sustained over 5 minutes...
IT'S OVER 1.21 GIGAWAT!! (yeah i know, i got my meme's mixed)
That would be 30 kW (not kw), 120 kWh (not KW/h), 1.3 MW (not GW) ;-)
So no, it's not over 1.21 gigawatt, just a factor 997 lower...
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oh frack, MW not GW...
Don't know whats up with me, missing three orders of magnitude.
(and point taken on the capitalization, been too long since my physics prof had a word with me)
anyway, 1.3 MW, still a enormous amount of juice
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Normally I wouldn't mind so much, but further down in the thread, people are quoting your GW number, and basing their conclusions on it. ;-)
And I think your physics prof would take more offence from the nonsensical kilowatt-per-hour (that's a factor of hours squared off!) than from the capitalization
Anyway, in the end you are right, more than a megawatt _is_ a lot of power.
Re: (Score:2)
how do you mean nonsensical kW/h?
if a car does 200 miles at 50mph, needing 30kW to sustain that speed, how does that not make the total energy needed 120 kW/h? charging 90% of that energy in 5 minutes would need ~1.3 MW right?
And honestly, i didnt fuck up my calculations, i just sort of forgot there is a Mega between Kilo and Giga... (as i said, dont know whats wrong with me today)
Re: (Score:2)
That would make the total energy 30 kW * 4 h = 120 kW * h, not 120 kW / h.
The units are multiplied / divided the same way as the numbers.
If you would have a power that was linearly increasing from zero to 30 kW in 15 minutes, then you would have an increase of 30 kW / 0.25h, or 120 kW/h.
As you see, the unit kilowatt per hour is rarely encountered.
When you speak of energy, you have kilowatthours, not kilowatts per hour.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1. The Tesla Roadster has to go nearly 85mph to consume 30kW to maintain speed. At 50mph, it takes about 12kW. The Roadster is approximately equally efficient as the Leaf and Volt; it has a small cross section but a much higher drag coefficient.
2. A general number used to represent highway consumption for a typical efficient EV is 250Wh/mi. 200 miles range * 250Wh/mi = 50kWh. 90% of 50kWh in 5 minutes is 540kW. Aerovironment makes an 800kW charger [google.com]. Now to be fair, most rapid charging systems don't ex
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Charging the suckers for one thing...
If you think a few windmills can screw up the electrical grid, imagine a couple of hundred thousand electric cars hopping on the grid to charge...
I sure as hell wouldnt want to be in charge of the grid *cringe* even with timed charging functionality in the cars.
Not that it is a problem yet.. most households lack the fusing to allow such large loads.. not something I expect to change fast as it requires a lot of expensive upgrades
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If that were the case, you could roll in to a refitted petrol station to exchange your battery, and the system can manage with the grid when it juices the batteries up.
If you had enough batteries in rotation, you could even charge them during low usage periods, but you would still be able to rapidly charge in times of high demand.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
having 5 minute recharge was needed to get away from the battery-swapping trick, as that has the nasty side-effect of giving you a battery which may or may not be as good as your old one, with scrapping of old ones being the responsability of the power-stations (which wont ever scrap one, if they can rent it out for a few bucks)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If this takes off your at home charge station will probably be a larger battery bank which gets topped off overnight rather than direct power from the grid.
Everyone plugging their charger into their vehicle and then starting to do cooking, laundry etc. after work is going to create some horrid spot prices for power in the late afternoon.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If this takes off your car will trickle-charge to 100% directly off the grid overnight the vast majority of the time, when power demand is at its lowest. You get home, you plug it in, and if you know you are going back out soon you push a "charge the car now, I know it'll cost me more" button and it'll draw whatever it can get to load up the batteries as quickly as possible.
Most of the time, you'd plug it in and the charger would start itself at 10PM or whenever you get better rates, and it would know it h
Re: (Score:2)
Not that it is a problem yet.. most households lack the fusing to allow such large loads.. not something I expect to change fast as it requires a lot of expensive upgrades
Comment above says you'll need 1.3Gw.
My 220v 200A service gives me 44Kw, right?
I don't believe my electric company is going to put the kind of capacity into my neighborhood to let me recharge at home like that.
A battery recharging station next to a substation would work. The only problem is that there isn't a substation on every corner, like gas stations.
BTW, how big do the wires have to be to handle 1.3Gw without getting too hot to touch?
Re: (Score:2)
To put it like this:
Kollsnes Gas Processing plant in the western Norway treats and compresses 150 million s3m of gas for the european market per 24/hours.
They have 6 compressors in use... 5 are 40MW, one is at 50MW..
A few years ago they had an operator mixup and 4 compressors were set to start in parallell... The hydro-electric plant supplying power cut the transmission line supply due to the fact that they detected the load as a dead SHORT of the lines.
Yeah... I dont think we want 1.3GW loads :p
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You need 1.3MW - the comment above was three orders of magnitude off, the guy, on a techie website, forgot that there's a "mega" between "kilo" and "giga"!
Anyway, your car can trickle charge overnight (although you'd still need an updated power feed), or you can go into a "gas" station to get faster charges. These places aren't going to go away, and they will update their offerings as required.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Because you can charge in 5 minutes, doesn't mean you have to charge in 5 minutes. The fuel station can have local battery storage that evens out the load on the grid, and the charge time can be upped for a more reasonable charge rate. You can also have trickle chargers in parking spaces that deliver the energy at a much slower rate. A "charge while you shop" or "charge while you dine" sort of deal.
But the biggest benefit of a fast recharge will be recovering energy from regenerative braking. Currently
Re: (Score:2)
From the above wiki link above, the tradeoff for fast charging is low voltage and capacity:
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The spinel structure of LTO has a three dimensional network for lithium-ion conductivity and allows fast charge and discharge. The problem with lithium titanate anodes (Li4Ti5O12, LTO) compared to carbon anodes is the higher potential (0.2 V for carbon, 1.5 V for LTO) leading to lower voltage for the battery and lower energy density.
The upside of the high potential is that LTO is within the stability window of all the usual organic electrolytes used in lithium-ion batteries. This means the electrolyte doesn
Re: (Score:2)
This would be a boon to auto makers pushing electric automobiles. They have very poor resale value due to the fact that the battery must be replaced after a few years, and they are prohibitively expensive. Some stating they lose as much as 60% of their value compared to their combustion counterparts.
Re:And.... (Score:5, Informative)
The problem isn't the battery technology, it's the fact that laptop batteries are pretty much put through hell. Complete charge-discharge cycles (Tesla doesn't charge the battery above 85% or allow it to go below 10%), and they have no form of cooling (Tesla uses the vehicle's air conditioning system to keep the batteries at a nice temperature).
Do all that, and the battery will last much longer. But that's generally not practical for a laptop. Allowing room for cooling will result in either a bigger battery pack or less capacity, as will limiting the charge band.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
AFAIK most of these still use the "traditional" LiCoO2 cathodes. Good energy density but known for degrading even without being used. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Shelf_life [wikipedia.org].
Personally, I would prefer a more long-lifed battery type, even at the expense of having to lug around a bit more wight for the same capacity. LiFePO4 batteries are said to be pretty durable. There is a list of materials at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Cathodes [wikipedia.org].
*notices Li(LiaNixMnyCoz)O2 and