Long In Development, Toshiba 'SCiB' Battery Debuts 284
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kdawson
from the could-be-the-one dept.
from the could-be-the-one dept.
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.
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:So... (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: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...
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
refill (Score:1, Interesting)
Someone explain why we can't refill batteries with 'charged' chemicals (drain quickly first) as we would petrol.
Re:Time for the maths! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Supposed to work well below freezing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:game changing, if true (Score:3, Interesting)
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 think something like an AWD rally car with independent electric wheel motors is going to be _fantastic_, performance-wise. But it won't have quite the same emotional pull as the old stuff.
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
Re:Supposed to work well below freezing... (Score:3, Interesting)
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:1, Interesting)
Regular car engines aren't particularly happy starting up cold from -30C either, which is why in "countries that experience a real winter" there are often plug-in block heaters [wikipedia.org]. With some modification the plug-ins might be great for overnight charging, and some power could be diverted to keeping temperatures tolerable in the battery compartment (or the charging process itself might keep it warm).
Re:game changing, if true (Score:3, Interesting)
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 indeed on the vehicle as a whole. Meanwhile, the energy density of hydrogen stored as a gas is still not that fantastic no matter how much you compress it, and you have to spend the energy compressing it. Further, both engine and compressor need changes as compared to engines and compressors for other gases/fuels because of the small size of the hydrogen molecule, and its embrittlement effects. Further, Hydrogen fuel cells are apparently perpetually ten years away from being ready for actual use. Given the complexity and cost of hydrogen storage and use, it's really not suited to vehicular applications at all! And for non-moving installations, there are so many ways to store power more efficiently than using hydrogen (flywheels beat the living crap out of hydrogen in such an application) that it's hard to imagine where Hydrogen actually fits in to our energy consumption.
Further, today the majority of our Hydrogen is cracked from natural gas, which we should be avoiding using any time it is not uncontrollably escaping from the earth. Indeed, given the inherent inefficiencies, the only sensible source of hydrogen is to use wasted base load power available at night from our inefficient and only partially-controllable electrical production facilities. Making hydrogen with electrolysis is not particularly efficient, but it doesn't matter if you're using power which is otherwise going to waste. Hydrogen can be used for the welding and cutting of more metals than those for which we commonly use it due to cost, so I suspect we could find uses for the gas which didn't involve foolishing attempting to propel vehicles with it.
If Hydrogen is the answer, then the question should be reframed until it exists in the real world.
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.