Developing Battery Replacement Infrastructure For Electric Cars 369
FathomIT sends in a NY Times profile of Shai Agassi, owner of a company named Better Place, who is working to build the infrastructure to support large numbers of small-scale charging spots for electric cars, as well as fast, automated battery swap stations.
"The robot — a squat platform that moves on four dinner-plate-size white wheels — scuttled back and forth along a 20-foot-long set of metal rails. At one end of the rails, a huge blue battery, the size of a large suitcase, sat suspended in a frame. As we watched, the robot zipped up to the battery, made a nearly inaudible click, and pulled the battery downward. It ferried the battery over to the other end of the rails, dropped it off, picked up a new battery, hissed back over to the frame and, in one deft movement, snapped the new battery in the place of the old one. The total time: 45 seconds."
Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, there are battery designs where the container can be reused an "unlimited" number of times. One such design is the vanadium redox battery [wikipedia.org]. Unfortunately, they do not begin to compare to lithium ion batteries in terms of energy density. However, if this tech or similar tech could be improved to the point where you could build an auto-sized vehicle that could get 150-200 miles per charge, then it's not hard to imagine a world where gas stations have been replaced by "electolyte swap facilities" where the discharged battery is "recharged" quickly by draining and replacing the electrolyte solutions. The same car could also be recharged by mains power at night.
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Necessity is the mother of invention
Battery technology is advancing each year and will eventually get to the point where filling stations convert to recharge stations.
I personally see a plug-in EV in my near future for short around town trips, charged with solar and wind generation. Would be nice to see charging stations develop eventually to permit longer trips.
The day will come...
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, vanadium redox *can't* be improved to that point. Take the molecular weight of the relevant ions and the reaction potential, and that will give you how many electrons at how many volts a kilogram of the relevant chemicals can produce, which is just a units conversion away from joules or watt-hours per kg. Add even a modest allowance for stuff to dissolve those ions in and acidify the solution, and it doesn't stand up to LiIon for capacity.
However, capacity per kg isn't the only metric of interest -- cost and ease of refueling / recharging are both quite relevant. The lack of aging problems with the electrolyte is also useful. I suspect vanadium redox will never see widespread use outside of stationary load-leveling applications, but there's no guarantee of that.
The other major tech to watch, of course, is EEStor's capacitors. They claim energy densities similar to current LiIon tech with a number of improved capabilities, but last I heard still hadn't (publicly) demonstrated a working prototype.
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Actually, you don't have to make it handle the full range. If you only handle the 30V-100V range, thanks to E=CV^2 you're not using the last 9% of the energy, meaning you get to use 91% of the capacity. More realistically, you could design your power electronics to provide full motor power at 30V, but keep working at reduced output power (they're mostly limited by max voltage and max current, so at 15V they can provide half the max power as at 30V). Then, when your car's battery gauge starts showing E, y
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I'm not sure if you want to be swapping electrolytes at a 'charging station'. Ever gone to a gas station and they had the hose leak? I know gas stations where that has been the case for at least 6 months, nobody is fixing it. Then there are the gas stations where the ground has to be sanitized after one of those large containers has sprung a leak, a preventable problem to begin with and regulations have required the container to be inside some type of enclosure for the last few years so you can imagine how
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
iCar? I suppose it will have some sort of circular gizmo to control which direction you want to go.
It may also have a shuffle feature that takes you to random destinations.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
Or, if Google gets in the act "I'm feeling lucky" (only drives you to certain bars).
Shai is a modern hero (Score:3, Insightful)
Shai Agassi is somebody I've been watching for a while. He's the only person I've seen with a plan that:
1) Will not result in a loss of quality of life for US citizens
2) Can eliminate the US' dependency on foreign oil.
3) Can "fix" the problems that the power grid has with "alternative" energy sources, which generally produce energy as available rather than as needed.
4) Will actually *save* money and resources over the current transportation system.
5) Eventually result in a power grid that's virtually immune
Interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
Not reported != not happening (Score:4, Interesting)
That's interesting, since a co-worker bought her Prius in 2002 and got a surprise battery replacement in 2006. (She hadn't noticed any problems, and isn't the type to ask questions; she took the car in for routine maintenance, they told her they'd replaced the battery and weren't charging her anything for it, she said "Cool!")
I don't know how prevalent this is, but for my N=1, I'm seeing a 100% replacement rate at four years.
Of course, the weasel words "due to wear and tear" let them get away with anything.
Re:Not reported != not happening (Score:5, Interesting)
Depending on the environment, the Lead-acid battery can need regular replacement. The NiMH battery should not need replacing unless it was defective.
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The fact that they performed the replacement at NO charge is a positive for the Prius. I know quite a few that have bought these hybrids, they all seem very happy with them.
Re:Not reported != not happening (Score:4, Informative)
I am familiar with this recall because my wife has a 2007 Prius, and I would not buy a Prius until the bugs had been worked out of the system. This was one of the two noteworthy bugs.
This problem was contamination or corrosion or something on the positive terminal resulting in increased resistance. The engine computer notes the increased internal resistance of the pack, says WTF, and sets a code. There is much debate as to the proper fix, with some dealerships swapping out the battery pack entirely, and some expending considerable labor hours completely disassembling the pack, cleaning the terminal, and reinstalling. In some countries they all swapped, in some they all rebuilt, probably depending entirely on the cost of local labor vs the cost of factory new.
Also, I would take a wild guess that Japan told them it would take 15 minutes labor each, then the dealers found out it took 3 hours, and the end result is the first few people got the reassemble procedure and PO'd techs and the last few people all got the swap procedure. Perhaps if you make an appointment they'll assume you've got the time to do the reassemble procedure, vs if you're just there for an oil change you'll get the swap procedure.
There is quite a bit of info on this on Google. But don't confuse it with the recall around 03, where the engine computer shut down the engine too quickly, so it would stall on the highway occasionally. That was a simple firmware flash.
Other than that, a remarkably recall free vehicle, at least compared to domestic models.
Also wear and tear weasel words do not apply until after 100K or 10 years whichever comes first.
Finally since there is no market for the batteries, there is no 3rd party market for the batteries, thus the ridiculous $3K cost is the usual dealer and OEM markup. Just like you can pay $25 for an oil drain plug at the dealer, or $1 at autozone. I am sure that in a decade you'll be able to buy a prius battery from batteries plus for perhaps $300. If I recall correctly, its just a huge array of NiMH D cells, not anything exotic at all.
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Also wear and tear weasel words do not apply until after 100K or 10 years whichever comes first.
Actually, if you look at most warranties they put those weasle words into the agreement, something along the lines of "Except for regular wear and tear", effectively making the warranty a "catastrophic failure" deal instead of the "if it breaks we fix it" agreement that covers everything. Also, it is the dealer who determines what is a failure and what is "wear and tear", which means they rarely pay out under the warranty if it is anything but completely obvious that the part should not have broken under t
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
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Did you read the links? Individual taxis drove 100,000, 200,000 and even 250,000 miles individually, with no reported battery issues. Not to mention that even the post you replied to didn't talk about fleet-miles.
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I'm a little confused by your post... Your parent poster linked to topics that indicated cars who have driven 240,000 and 300,000 miles each without any problems to the battery. The second article ,http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=3579 [jcwinnie.biz], said:
"Only two of our 182 hybrid battery packs have had to be replaced during the years hybrids have been a part of the city's taxi fleets," Gillespie said. "One was replaced under warranty and the other was driver error." The taxis in the city average 90,000 miles a year.
So maybe you could clarify your post for me because it is a little confusing on what you said against the data presented.
Re:Interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, it would be your problem. Say that I have a brand new car with 150 miles on the battery. I go to one of these battery exchange stations and my new battery gets swapped out for a battery with 200,000 miles on it. That to me would be a big problem (and is why I have only used the BBQ propane exchanges when I have had very old tanks).
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That's the problem with rumors, now isn't it?
Not only is the "battery life problem" a complete myth (as was pointed out to you below), but so is the replacement price. It is not "a significant cost of the vehicle". Battery prices for *new* batteries on the Prius are $2,299 for the 2000-2003 model years and $2,588 for the 2004-2008 model years [autobloggreen.com]. You can get used ones for under $1k.
Will this work with the Apple iCar? (Score:3, Funny)
In future news, Apple announces the release of their new, sleek iCar! With touch-screen capabilities, smooth acceleration, and lots of eye candy. Better Place, however has been stymied by the fact that the iCar's batter is sealed and hidden inside of the frame of the car, and cannot be swapped out. Millions of iCar fans can only hope to travel 250 miles and struggle to find their lost iCar charging adapters, while Microsoft and PC-maker made Windows-Roadsters take advantage of the Better Place swapping program.
gCar and kCar enthusists, while having the first electric cars out there can be seen at the side of the road, can be seen hand-wiring in their own D-cell battery replacements every 100 feet, soldering gun in hand.
Re:Will this work with the Apple iCar? (Score:4, Funny)
In future news, Apple announces the release of their new, sleek iCar! With touch-screen capabilities, smooth acceleration, and lots of eye candy. Better Place, however has been stymied by the fact that the iCar's batter is sealed and hidden inside of the frame of the car, and cannot be swapped out. Millions of iCar fans can only hope to travel 250 miles and struggle to find their lost iCar charging adapters, while Microsoft and PC-maker made Windows-Roadsters take advantage of the Better Place swapping program.
gCar and kCar enthusists, while having the first electric cars out there can be seen at the side of the road, can be seen hand-wiring in their own D-cell battery replacements every 100 feet, soldering gun in hand.
The only problem with the Better Place swapping program is that you have to hunt all over the place to find them, answer a stupifying amount of questions to gain access and then accept a GRA (Genuine Roadsters Advantage) tracking device/kill switch to make sure that you don't violate the TOS. The gCar and kCar include a Battery Manager that finds the nearest Power Stop for you, guides you there and charges the car for you when you arrive.
Makes Sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Good idea this. The main complaint about totally electric cars is the charge time and this would negate this for a small cost. The company taking the battery could charge it up and use it as stock for the next hot-swap to come in.
If they can get this right (both the infrastructure and the price for the service), it could really help electric car adoption in the future since you'll be able to "re-fuel" just like a normal car, in some respects.
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You do realize how large battery packs are, right? And how heavy?
And how different vehicle designs have radically different profiles, thus necessitating different battery profiles (traditional sedan like the Volt = center tunnel T; kei car = under the floor or seats; RWD large pack, trunk-shaped; etc)
And weight distribution needs? (FWD, RWD, etc)
And how different motors/inverters have different voltage requirements?
And not just different target voltages, but specific ranges?
And how different packs need to
Future benefits (Score:2)
One of the major benefits of this is that the batteries can be charged independently from the car being at-rest - basically, charge according to electricity supply rather than demand.
When (if) we finally start to make the major switch to renewable electricity and electric cars (the only long-term sustainable solution for personal transport), we will need to ensure that our load on the electricity infrastructure meets supply. This is a good step in that direction. That, or charging stations with really big
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Yeah, the fact that they can charge the batteries at night, when electricity demand is lower, should be a big advantage.
But if they're going to swap out the powerpacks at refueling stations, why should they actually be rechargeable batteries instead of some other power source that can be recharged in some other way (e.g. a more complicated chemical process that can be implemented at the refueling station)?
Re:Future benefits (Score:4, Interesting)
Standard values not applicable here. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you buy a litre of petrol, it should take you a set distance. When you fill up on LPG, Hydrogen or whatever, the same is the case. There is one important factor in the battery swapping idea that is fundamentally different though. Batteries degrade and can at times do so in strange ways.
Say, for example, that someone has let a spare battery sit idle for some months, charges it up at home and, knowing it's rubbish now, goes off to the nearest fuel stop to change it. Automated process charges it, dispenses it. You get stuck on the freeway after only a few kilometres.
If you stick to your own battery, then you can tell the condition of the battery over time. No dramas. Even with thorough checking though, battery changing services have a lot of questions in regards to reliability and liabilities if it is to work. Who picks up the tab for a dead battery? The owner or the 'fuel' vendor?
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Interesting point. In this case, perhaps the vendors could advertise on the fact that their batteries are guaranteed to output a certain number of Ampere.hours (at whatever voltage is is that these things run at)? They would then test and discard any substandard batteries.
Does anyone know if battery testing technology is sufficiently advanced for this to be feasible?
Re:Standard values not applicable here. (Score:5, Informative)
Does anyone know if battery testing technology is sufficiently advanced for this to be feasible?
Shouldn't be too hard. Apply a voltmeter and then draw a heavy current on a separate circuit over a set time. That should a reasonable indication of the basic quality of the battery. Same way you test a car battery now. Apply voltmeter, crank motor. If the voltage drops fast, the battery is toast.
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That kind of test doesn't really work accurately. It only tells whether a chemical battery is completely (or almost) unusable, but otherwise it's remarkably unreliable.
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If you paid by amps (or whatever the relevant unit of electricity is) instead of miles, it would further encourage you to drive in an efficient manner. Sounds like a win-win.
Of course, the car is going to need an accurate way to gauge how far the battery can go, and service stations would probably
Re:Plenty of problems. (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if the automobile industry was just starting today, or perhaps was always electric cars but we had to switch away from it (say, discharging batteries were found to cause cancer), just imagine what all the nay-sayers would be saying if someone proposed a system where the average moron could just go to any corner service station and start pumping extremely flammable/explosive liquid that has percent-levels of known highly potent carcinogens (note surface water needs to be in the part-per-billion of such compounds to be considered safe). Imagine the liability of a bunch of grease monkeys managing storage tanks with 1000s of gallons of this toxic stuff.
Puts things in context. Anyone can come up with good reasons for not doing anything. The key is selecting the best of an array of imperfect choices.
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Who picks up the tab for a dead battery? The owner or the 'fuel' vendor?
In Agassi's plan, the "vendor" owns the batteries. Whenever you "fill up" your car by swapping them out, you're basically renting the batteries for the duration.
Re:Standard values not applicable here. (Score:5, Informative)
Plus, the battery packs are not the same as ordinary batteries. There are brains built into them to monitor health, balance cells, control charging and discharging, and generally prevent degradation in the first place.
time will tell if your concern is borne out in practice, but I personally am not too concerned.
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Unfortunately, there is still no reliable method for assessing the state of a battery, only whether the battery is completely ruined. The various electronic circuits built into laptop batteries are, sadly, a testament to this. The only accurate methods for assessing the state of chemical batteries are still, sadly, destructive.
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We already have years of experience with embedded charge electronics in batteries for laptops and other electronic widgets. They aren't perfect; but they are generally good enough. A battery can easily report its status, number of charge/discharges already performed, etc. The charge depot could easily enough use those data to avoid handing out defective batteries and p
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I don't think this is insurmountable. Each battery gets a tamper-resistant monitor board with NVRAM to record its charge/discharge history. Substandard packs get taken out of circulation and refurbished. Monitor hacking gets dealt with as criminal fraud, just like odometer tampering or miscalibrated gas pumps.
(Of course, those analogies are a bit fragile -- odometer readings are tracked with the full force of automotive title laws, and gas pumps are subject to regular state inspection, neither of which w
Re:Standard values not applicable here. (Score:4, Informative)
Better Place Business Model [betterplace.com]
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Batteries degrade and can at times do so in strange ways. Say, for example, that someone has let a spare battery sit idle for some months, charges it up at home and, knowing it's rubbish now
Morbo voice: "EV battery packs do not work that way!"
Ever heard of the RAV4EV? They've been running on their original battery packs (there are no replacements) since the 90s. Most of them are still at above 80% capacity.
EV battery packs are accelerated aging tested to ensure reliability under a wide range of condition
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When you buy a litre of petrol, it should take you a set distance.
On what planet? It depends on how fast and well you drive, how powerful your engine is and what condition it is in...
What you mean, is that a litre of standard petrol contains a known amount of usable chemical energy, whereas the yield of a fully charged battery will decline over time.
battery changing services have a lot of questions in regards to reliability and liabilities if it is to work.
You never actually own the battery - it belongs to the power company - you just pay a deposit when you pick up your first battery. Regular wear and tear on the battery is included in the fuel costs - mistreat it and you lose y
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I think you missed the point. You don't own the battery, your power-provider does.
It becomes their problem to ensure that spent batteries are appropriately down-cycled from the system ... and that is what makes this idea beautiful.
OK, what if I normally "rent" my batteries from the local service station (You're supposed to buy local to support local businesses, right?)? If I take a road trip that is outside the range of those batteries, I'm kinda screwed.
Even if you don't buy local, I don't want to pigeon holed into buying my batteries at a single service station chain. What if I can only find a Shell electric station and my batteries came from Exxon?
Standardization problem (Score:2, Insightful)
This requires all batteries to have a standard size and compatible electrical properties. If we settle for a standard now, it will hamper development of better models that require changes that break the compatibility. Current technology appears to be unsuitable for widespread electric car use, so this is not the time where you want to slow down any improvements.
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Propane Tank Model (Score:4, Insightful)
This is similar to the Propane Tank business model.
The BIG problem I see here is that with a propane tank, you always get the same amount of propane in return. I see potential for old batteries to float through the system, getting less charges.
Now that I think about it, I bet this will be like buying "premium" gas.
Premium = Batteries 2yrs old, etc. /rambling
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good point - this does have to be taken into consideration.
standard testing and rating of 'how old' the battery is would be useful. it would give consumers confidence. plus, its IS a safety issue, you need to know the batt you are driving with is GOING to make it that X amount of miles between swaps.
otoh, if you got a 'bad' batt, the worst case is that you drive with it until you swap again.
how do you deal with 'too frequent' a swapper, btw? can you swap these as many times as you want, even inside a day
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otoh, if you got a 'bad' batt, the worst case is that you drive with it until you swap again.
The worst case is that it falsely reports much greater capacity than it has, and you get stuck with no power a couple miles away from the swapping station.
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That is trivial to fix, you simply pay for the charge you used instead of the charge that the battery holds. These are after all not stupid batteries, they will have electronic in them that monitors what is going on with them.
Standardize battery pack (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Standardize battery pack (Score:4, Interesting)
Manual? Are you serious? What are we, weightlifters?
A lot of battery pack swapping proponents have no clue how big and heavy EV batteries are. Let me be specific: picture an internal combustion engine. Now double its dimensions and mass. Give it high voltage connections that must be firm to prevent arcing, and keep it securely in place so it doesn't shift around. Now go manually swap that.
And no, a battery is not a battery is not a battery. Go try to shove a laptop battery pack in your flashlight or a AA in your car's engine or a lead-acid battery in your laptop. Different vehicle size, shape, weight distribution, price, performance, and technology profiles have different requirements of size, shape, chemistry, wiring, fuses, and series/parallel cell arrangements in an EV's battery pack.
it was my idea (Score:2, Interesting)
not that its a hard-to-discover idea.
after owning an electric scooter and being limited by the 15mi battery on it, it was OBVIOUS that a battery-swap station would make sense. people do that all the time, informally (the hard core ones do). they'll leave a battery pack (on scooters they are semi-sealed fabric covered 'modules') and charger at work and when they scoot to work, it sits there on charge ready for the return run home at the end of the day; but you also do have a spare batt in case you need it.
Re:it was my idea (Score:5, Informative)
No indeed. It's called a staging-post. It's where a stagecoach would stop, and rather than waiting until the horses were fed and watered and well rested, they'd simply drop off the horses there and take fresh horses for the next stage of their journey.
Re:it was my idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, the "long tail" argument -- that old zombie of electric vehicles. No matter how many times you knock it down, it comes coming at you.
Power plants are more efficient than internal combustion engines. While the engine itself can *peak* at a fairly high effiency number (percentage-wise, as much as the upper 30s for gasoline and mid 40s for diesel), that's not what you get in practice, as that's only for a narrow torque/rpm range. In practice, you also have parasitic and braking losses. Total well-to-wheel consumption is about 14% for gasoline and 17% for diesel. Engines are slowly getting more efficient, but at the same time fuel production is getting *less* efficient as we have to move more to syncrude and deepwater (think tar sands and outer continental shelf). Power plants, however, are only getting more efficient, and fairly rapidly. Well-to-AC power for an average coal plant in the US is 32%, and natural gas is 42%. Those numbers are higher in Europe. Next gen coal plants are over 40% and next-gen natural gas 60%-ish. Coal, the dirty fuel, is only half our generation. After that is natural gas (a very low carbon fuel per unit energy) and nuclear (a near zero carbon fuel). After that is hydro and then wind (both near zero carbon). There's also a smattering of other generation methods such as diesel, solar, geothermal, and biomass that combined make up a couple percent of our grid.
AC power transmission in the US averages 92.8% efficiency. Your typical EV charger is 92-93% efficient (rapid chargers, closer to 90%). Li-ion batteries are generally 96% (rapid charge) to 99% (trickle charge) efficient. Electric drivetrains average 85-90% efficient (they can peak at over 95% on a really good one). And regen braking is pretty much standard. So your net well-to-wheels efficiency is very high, and your carbon is low. And while petroleum gets dirtier, the grid gets cleaner. Last year, for example, over 2/5ths of our new power that went online was wind, and most of the rest was natural gas.
But wait, it gets better. Most EV charging is done at night, on a timer to take advantage of low off-peak rates. Coal power plants take a while to ramp down. In the process, you can sometimes get what's called "spinning standby" -- power generation capacity that's literally wasted because there's nothing to consume it. This mainly occurs in the evenings. Charging off of it is literally free of environmental consequences. Furthermore, most power plants run more efficiently at higher capacity. Evening out the day/night peaks makes the grid as a whole more efficient.
Perhaps having a DOE study conducted at PNL [pnl.gov] explain it to you will help. Here's a graph [daughtersoftiresias.org] comparing the efficiencies of different drivetrain options, and here's one for emissions [daughtersoftiresias.org].
Can this zombie of a notion please accept its headshot and stay down?
It's going to happen (Score:2)
Shai's plan for electric cars was featured in Wired [wired.com] last year. The idea only sounds crazy until you learn more about it, and then starts to take on the air of inevitability. It makes so much sense and is so practical (and profitable!) that someone is bound to do it. Israel and San Francisco signed on to the plan, anyway.
Used batteries? (Score:2)
I've tried to compare this to:
* The propane tank exchanges used often by BBQ owners. The used/empty propane tank is exchanged for one that has a "full charge" and is fully functional. The tank itself might not be new (scratches, rust, paint chips etc..) but it holds a full charge of propane. Sometimes if you get a tank that is "nice and shiny" you can find places that only refill and don't swap.
* Laptop batteries. I couldn't imagine randomly swapping my laptop battery with another persons. As I c
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Serialize the batteries (with strong RFID or something). Make the history of the battery publicly available.
It won't absolutely prevent fraud, but if you go to a reputable power station, they will be able to rent (or whatever you want to call it) you a battery that does what it says on the label. There could even be a battery quality charge (or rebate) included on the energy bill (depending on how much worse or better the replacement is).
I guess the point is that it doesn't have to be a random replacement.
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When you swap in your battery, its condition and the condition of the battery you are accepting affect how much you pay. The battery-swap station sets a minimum level of 'charge' for batteries it uses and we're all set.
Guess what? Swap a shitty battery for a shiny-new battery and you'll be charged more. Trade yo
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You can reasonably accurately measure the health and capacity of the battery. Presumably the recharging stations would do this, would give you the option of purchasing limited-charge batteries, and would charge you less for them.
free battery replacement (Score:4, Informative)
The next item is battery theft. You might laugh and say they're too bulky, but battery theft has become a serious problem here. The race between locks and thieves was altered by the presence of a widely adopted new design, so thieves just started pulling batteries out of electric bikes and taking those instead (about a third of the bike's cost to replace). Now, there's a new cage add-on thing that you can buy to enclose your battery in a protective shell. Crazy. Point is, I've been riding around on the same battery for a while, it's time to change, and I wish there was a replacement depot I could dump my old battery on and get a fresh new one for free.
Exactly why this is unworkable. (Score:2)
If you own the battery swapping is unworkable for the reasons you state. As most people would quickly realize this and swap their old dead batteries near end of life.
You have to have leased batteries for this to make sense. But then leasing costs for the battery would end up being more than Gas and remind people how uneconomical BEVs really are.
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You have to have leased batteries for this to make sense. But then leasing costs for the battery would end up being more than Gas and remind people how uneconomical BEVs really are.
That's the plan: to lease the batteries. They contend that they can sell you power cheaper per mile driven than you can buy gasoline, and they're probably right. Among other things, consider that they can charge the batteries at night when electric demand (and costs) are lower, and potentially sell back excess during peak times. The charging plant could very likely be a profit center even if they never rented a single battery to end users.
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You are again neglecting the economics of battery life. You can't use batteries to demand shift and make money.
For Example:
16KWh packs costs ~$16000
Lasts 1000 cycles.
You can save what by demand shifting? 5 cents/KWh?
So you can save .05*16kwh*1000 cycles = $800
That isn't an $800 profit. It's a $15200 loss.
You just burned out a $16000 battery to do it.
Now in a car, You get what with that 16K battery? 50 Miles?
How much does it cost to 50 miles. It costs the price for 16KWh of electricity ( ~$1.60) + 1 cycle lo
Re:free battery replacement (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds like a great way to use the hell out of my batteries, and then swap them for a brand new set.
Since you're only renting the batteries short-term in this plan, there's no financial reason for you to abuse them and then swap them out.
The next item is battery theft.
Who would a thief sell them to? The vendor who owns them? I can't imagine the electric company will pay top dollar to buy back its own property, as opposed to just siccing the cops on the thief dumb enough to try.
Swap/recharge my car (Score:5, Insightful)
I was wondering when this would come up. I know way (way) back in the day when they were first almost seriously talking about electric cars, they seemed to indicate swapping the batteries.
A battery swap makes a LOT more sense than recharging in the vehicle. Waiting for an hour or more for batteries to charge would really ruin a road trip, if you had to do it every 300 miles or so. Every 4 hours of drive time on wide open interstates would become 5 hours or more.
Think of a cross country drive. 2500 miles between two places I've driven between a few times takes 41.6 hours, when average 60mph. I could usually average 60 by only stopping to buy fuel and go to the bathroom (same stop). Ya, even those stops really ruin your average speed. That would make it a 52 hour drive instead. I'd rather be at my destination for those 10 hours, rather than still driving. :)
But, there would be other considerations. Does the battery swap location have sufficient batteries to handle peak demand? Like, on a holiday weekend, when everyone's driving electric cars, and they're all going out of town, a swap/recharge facility may be swamped, and not be able to have charged batteries fast enough.
I worked in a warehouse for a while. The battery room not only recharged, but rebuilt the batteries as needed. All the heavy equipment in the warehouse used the same batteries (more or less). We had moments, particularly towards the end of the day, where equipment was being run hard, and they had simply run out of charged batteries. It was simple enough to move people over to doing things by hand if they couldn't use the heavy equipment. In the case of a car, towards the end of a busy day, customers aren't going to be satisfied with "Sorry, we're out of charged batteries. They'll be ready in 2 hours, but we close in an hour. Come back tomorrow, or plug in for the next few hours and charge it yourself."
They will also have attrition to contend with. As batteries fail, they will be pulled out of service. This is a good thing as far as the car owners are concerned. We have the same situation with propane tanks right now. They have a life, where they must be reinspected before use again. There are plenty of places that take your empty tank, and hand you a full one. I've been BBQing for many years with propane, and never had to buy a "new" tank. I have been refused a full tank because they didn't have any though. It's not pleasant to hear that I can't BBQ when friends are already coming over, because I can't get a full tank. Luckily, I've always been able to find another location with available full tanks. It gets tight on holiday weekends though.
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But, there would be other considerations. Does the battery swap location have sufficient batteries to handle peak demand? Like, on a holiday weekend, when everyone's driving electric cars, and they're all going out of town, a swap/recharge facility may be swamped, and not be able to have charged batteries fast enough.
How do gas stations make sure they have enough gas to handle peak demand? Is there a real reason why having enough batteries on hand should be so much more difficult? In one sense, it seems like it could be easier. They have to continually transport gas to each station, but a battery station would only really require the transport of electricity to charge the batteries onsite (barring defective/damaged batteries that need to be replaced).
RTG's, baby... (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone needs to shoot this battery idea in the head.
RTG is the only logical source of power for a tractor-trailer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator [wikipedia.org]
You need A LOT more power per gram than batteries will EVER allow for if you intend to start replacing infrastructure.
People KNOW this. Why, then are they pushing us towards failure? What's in it for them??
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Re:RTG's, baby... (Score:5, Insightful)
You need to give a bit more justification than 'it can be done' if you want people to take you seriously. RTGs have a terrible power to weight ratio. The best one in the article you linked to is around 0.06W/Kg just for the power source. Let's assume that this is a terrible design and we can improve on it by an order of magnitude, giving 0.6W/Kg. Now let's assume that the car and passengers weigh nothing.
The formula for kinetic energy is E = 1/2 mv^s. By dividing both sides by a time factor, we get P = 1/2 ma^2. Divide through by mass, and we get P/m = 1/2 a^2. Substituting in the value from the RTG output (Power / mass) we get 0.6 = 1/2 a ^2, or a = sqrt(1.2), approximately 1.1 metres per second per second.
Remember that this is for a massless vehicle with an RTG with an order of magnitude higher power output than any that anyone has built so far. It would take a little over 26 seconds to reach 60mph. Even a fairly rubbish battery powered car can reach 60mph in under 10 seconds - this hypothetical RTG-powered car would take 13 seconds to go from 0-30mph, which is a dangerously low acceleration for most urban roads. And, note, that this is assuming that the (massless) engine is also 100% efficient. In the real world, you would be lucky to get a tenth of this acceleration, so you'd take more than 2 minutes to go from 0-30mph. Not really a very practical solution.
RTGs are great for applications where they do not have to move (or, as with spacecraft, where the motive force comes from elsewhere), or which have a constant power drain. They are incredibly badly suited to automotive applications. Betavoltaics, as I said, are potentially a viable solution, but RTGs are not. Just because something can give 40W for a number of years does not make it a good replacement for something that gives several kW for a few hours. Sure, the energy output may be the same or greater, but the power output is much lower.
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RTG is the only logical source of power for a tractor-trailer.
Very true, if you want a tractor-trailer with a maximum speed of a few feet per minute but runs decades without refueling.
RTGs produce very little power for a given size/mass. Their advantage is that they can keep doing it for a long time.
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I'm not sure battery replacement has a future (Score:2)
Many people argue that electric cars won't work because they sometimes take far trips in their cars. I would argue that electric cars migh
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That mentality IS practical. If the electric car works for 95% of my needs but th
Great Plan! (Score:3, Insightful)
Just remember to get the automakers to buy in and actually *use* standardized batteries and mountings.
Good luck with that. I don't see many advantages to Toyota adapting their designs to whatever Ford chooses.
I don't see car makers actually choosing even very limited (2-3) types of battery/mounting combinations. There are more variables in vehicle design than that, and it's unlikely that you can accomodate the same configuration in a next-gen Prius that you do in an electric Escape that you do in an electric Civic.
Of course, we could all drive cars very similar in size, layout, and rear-end shape. Sure. that's the solution, make us all drive the same car. I'm sure whatever they have in mind will let me drag home a few bales of organic mulch, or a new big-screen TV, or that new sofa I've been just creaming over at the store.
Nope, not likely. Nice idea, and if it serves 50% of vehicles out there, it might be worth it. Just don't think it will be the one-size-fits-all fix. I wish him the best of luck, and hope he can make it work for half of us.
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That is why these types of systems will be driven by the Service Station companies. working with the automakers. One can not do it without the other. As far as what incentive the Service Station companies have to install this system, ultimately it will have to be profit.
The oil companies expect to be here for the indefinite future and they realize, better than most, that they have a rapidly depleting product. If there is anyone that has an incentive to be part of, "the next big thing," it is them.
So, the Se
Nice! Averages out the cost and risk. (Score:2)
What I like about this idea is that the company operating the battery replacement station gets to deal with any issues about battery life, defective batteries, improvements in battery technology, etc.
A Prius battery may be guaranteed to last ten years, but it's still around $3,000 to replace one, and pure-electric cars will need much higher capacities and presumably cost more. Batteries may be reliable on the average but it could be a major bummer if the premature failure happens to you.
This way, the statio
Why not avoid batteries altogether? (Score:4, Informative)
1. batteries in general are a poor solution because of several things:
a. poor energy density compared to chemical energy
b. battery production is inherently filthy, and quite bad for the environment on its own
c. charge times are awful. people like the model of gas. several hours to deplete the energy, but you can replenish it at a filling station in under 5 minutes, assuming you don't have a semi or something.
d. even the best batteries are quite heavy, and thus make the car less efficient.
happily, there is a very good solution. ultracapacitors, sometimes known as ultracaps. they hold more than batteries, weigh an order of magnitude less (sometimes 2 orders) and can be charged, quite literally, in seconds. (not with plugs at your house... you'd have to go to a filling station that can generate a LOT of current to recharge this fast. you could still trickle charge at home in the evening, but for a quick fillup, you'd need a power station). ultracaps are not dirtier to make than LiON batteries. ultracaps have good staying power, last virtually forever (no practical limit on charge cycles) and hold much more than a battery of similar size, and orders of magnitude more than a battery of the same weight.
Re:Why not avoid batteries altogether? (Score:5, Informative)
happily, there is a very good solution. ultracapacitors, sometimes known as ultracaps. they hold more than batteries, weigh an order of magnitude less (sometimes 2 orders)
That's pure, unadulterated BS!
The best ultracaps have less than 10% of the energy density of a rechargeable battery: 30Wh/kg as compared to 300Wh/kg for LiIon and 370Wh/kg for zinc-air. To put things in perspective, the gasoline energy density is 12500Wh/kg, 30 times better than the best commercially available batteries...
Ultracapacitors cannot even begin to compete with batteries as the primary energy storage, their role is limited to storing regenerated energy (e.g. from braking).
Re:Why not avoid batteries altogether? (Score:4, Informative)
"chicken and egg" of energy stations (Score:2)
If stations are so rare, then so will be the vehicles. How do you break the logjam?
Or you could just charge it ( no seriously ) (Score:2)
With fast charging batteries this will be obsolete before it is deployed.
Say we consider 10 minutes an acceptable charge time.
The Tesla roadster fully charged is about 53 kWh, assuming we use a fast charging battery pack
with this capacity in total ( such batteries already exist ) from flat we need to deliver 190.8 Mj in 10 minutes
10 minutes is 600 seconds, so the necessary power is 318 kW
Batteries will likely be able to handle this power since the better models have an efficiency exceeding 99.8%. I.e the he
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"The required current is then 318 Ampere."
Most houses in the US have electrical service of 200A or less.
Business love the rent model, Customers hate them (Score:2)
zinc-air (Score:3, Insightful)
That's where the future lies, not H2 and not LiIon. "Recharging" involves removing the spent anode and inserting a fresh array of zinc rods and can be done fast. The salt can then be processed off-site to retrieve the zinc metal, usually by electrolysis (that's the true recharging step).
It's a proven technology,already powering mass transit and postal systems in US, Europe and Singapore, it's cheap, has good power density while still having room for improvement, what's not to like about it?
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Maybe he's a Nascar driver...
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If you're paying 20/30K for a battery, sounds like the crooks already got you. Ha!
The battery swap stations are going to be at Gas (Petrol) Stations and will be for Electric Only (NOT hybrid) cars. Specifically, it's for longer journeys where battery capacity can't manage.
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If some crook swaps out a battery pack for a fake one, how is the crook going to drive the car? It's not like you can just show up with a case full of cinder blocks and try to pass it off as a battery.
OK, pedantry aside, I think that, yes, the battery swap stations will be able to determine the authenticity and condition of a battery when it comes in. Something like an encrypted ID chip could easily be built
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This is a really stupid idea. Batteries for cars can costs upwards of $20-30k. What happens when some crook swaps out a fake battery for a real one? Are these stations really going to check the quality, retention, chemical composition, and other physical properties of every battery in 45 seconds?
No, but they will check the RFID located in the battery pack.
Get a good one and it'll do enough crypto to authenticate itself and then it'll relay any messages from the tamper resistance sensors located all around the pack. You could probably do this today for less than $20 extra per pack.
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Oh, you remember the HyWire, then. In 2003, GM promised they'd have them in showrooms by 2010. That, they said, was why they weren't developing hybrids: they had something that was going to be much better.
Of course, for that to work we'd have had to have hydrogen filling stations on the corner by 2010 as well, and so far I haven't seen any at the local Mobil station.
Methinks the Chevy Volt is another HyWire--a PR stunt. I can't imagine Bob Lutz would want to leave at the moment of his greatest triumph, if h
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Given the last two posts, I feel that in order to fit in I should say something about a particular organization for African-Americans of unorthodox sexual orientation. Either that or I could share an anecdotal story about a strange experience in a men's lavatory culminating in very strange items being put into a freezer.