Electric Car Nano-Batteries Aim For 500-Mile Range 650
An anonymous reader writes "Consortium members read like a Who's Who in technology research for the Battery 500 Project which aims to use nanotechnology to extend the range of all-electric cars 200 miles beyond the 300-mile range of gasoline powered cars. IBM, the University of California at Berkeley and all five of our US National Labs are collaborating to make the 500-mile electric car battery. Within two years, they promise to have a new kind of battery technology in place for the 500-mile electric car. If that happens, then I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make the Toyota Prius look like a fad."
It's not news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't make this claim if they didn't have some hard science to back it up. That's a lot of big organizations putting their reputation on the line, so I'm more worried about how much this battery will cost and how long is its lifetime, because if it is high and low respectively, then it's just as impractical as 200 mpc.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but they're proposing to do it with lithium-air, which I find to be a very uninteresting tech. All of the "air" cells tend to be plagued with every downside in the book except for energy density (which they excel at). We're talking efficiency, longevity, power, price per watt, price per watt-hour, and flammability.
I'm much more interested in some of the advances to li-ion (fluorinated metal or layered cathodes, silicon or tin nanoparticle anodes) and lithium-sulfur. Neither are as extreme of an ene
Re:It's not news (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's not news (Score:5, Funny)
> In fact, the poster should have read the article.
Slippery slope.
Next you'll be asking slashdoters to read the whole post instead of just the title.
Re:It's not news (Score:5, Insightful)
Next you'll be asking the moderators to read the comments before modding them!
Re:It's not news (Score:4, Insightful)
There doesn't have to be. There is enough in seawater [wikipedia.org] to make up the difference.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, pet peeve.
Re:It's not news (Score:5, Interesting)
There's not enough lithium carbonate that can be produced at *$5/kg* with *today's non-experiental technology*. Which is, of course, irrelevant to the big picture. With lab tech today, lithium can be produced from seawater (in essentially unlimited quantities) for $22-$32/kg [osti.gov]. And way cheaper than that for other terrestrial sources (such as Western Lithium Corporation's Kings Valley mine in Nevada) -- just not as cheaply as the Argentinian and Bolivian salars.
So? Well, for example, the Nissan Leaf only contains 4kg of lithium. That's about 20kg worth of lithium carbonate. I.e., about $100 worth. Honestly, who gives a rat's arse if that doubles, triples, quadruples, even quintuples? That's not the impediment to li-ion EV costs. The non-automotive li-ions are limited largely by cobalt costs, while the automotive li-ions are limited by capital costs and labor due to their current low-volume production methods. And contrary to popular belief, the battery packs aren't the only thing that's overpriced right now. The motor, inverter, and charger are, too. They're still largely handmade, very small volumes. The Tesla Roadster's drivetrain is descended from AC Propulsion's AC-150, which will run you about $25k today. However, AC Propulsion expects that if they were made in volumes of hundreds of thousands per year, it'd be more like $3500.
Re:It's not news (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially when it's battery technology, which hasn't improved much in... how many decades?
I guess we have to hit every myth in the book on this thread, no?
The best secondary cells on the market in 1989 were the newly introduced Nickel Metal Hydride cells, which, at introduction, boasted 40Wh/kg. Today, the best secondary cells on the market are 200Wh/kg li-ions (which are *way* better than the li-ions from 1999). We're talking a 4.5x increase in energy density and a 10x increase in power density in 20 years.
It's true that for much of the 20th century, battery tech largely stagnated. However, then came along the consumer electronics revolution of the 1980s, and people actually started putting real money into rechargeable batteries. That, combined with our modern understanding of materials and fabrication allowed for a boom in battery technology, which today is about a 10% increase in energy density per year. And that rate is rising, not falling. And EVs will probably make it rise even faster.
Re:It's not news (Score:4, Funny)
If IBM had said "we have batteries that can last 500 miles", and Stanley Kubrick shot videos of the long-range electric car in a Hollywood studio, then it would be like the moon landing.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Right now, it costs me around US$32 to fill up completely the 11 gallon tank on my 1998 Honda Civic HX CVT coupe with 87-octane unleaded.
My guess is that by 2020, a full charge from a commercial charger will probably cost US$20 in 2009 dollars--not bad considering the high cost of a fillup nowadays, especially if you have a bigger car.
Re:It's not news (Score:5, Informative)
In my area, gas is currently $2.50/gallon. Filling up with 10 gallons would be $25, and in a 30mpg vehicle would get you 300 miles. End cost is 8.3 cents a mile.
Meanwhile the Tesla Roadster* has a 53 kWh battery that would cost $5.30 or less in my area to fill up, at home. Could be as low as $2.65 if you make some deals with the power company and have the charger on a circuit they can turn off when electrical demand is high. Per the wiki, it can go 244 miles on that charge. That gives me 2.17 cents per mile.
Basically divide your gas bill by four in order to figure out how much an EV would save you in gas money**.
Right now the difficulty isn't so much the range or lifespan of the battery, it's the COST. If the batteries were 1/10th their current price, we'd be driving EVs today.
*I know it's too expensive, but it's the best known commercial EV.
**Assuming your driving habits are compatible.
Re:It's not news (Score:4, Insightful)
I already pay $8 / gallon, so do most of Europe, and it's WAY to low. There's just no incentive to save fuel.
A recent study on the impact of price on fuel consumption concluded with a recommandation of trippling existing fuel costs (to about $24 / gallon).
If you civilization requires gas prices below $4 / gallon to survive, you should start planning for it's demise. It will not survive, nor should it.
Oil is a finite resource, and it's price will rise faster than the growth of the global economy in the coming years. In addition the cost of repairing the damage caused by burning oil must be included in the price.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The only way price would go that high are if we choose to make them so, through taxes. In Europe, taxes raise the price to $8-9/gal, yet there's still plenty of traffic. Despite what Ost99 says in his follow up, that is an incentive to save fuel - European cars are generally more efficient & smaller than American cars.
I also think it's often hard for Europeans to get their head around how much more Americans drive - not only are there almost twice as many cars here per capita, but each one gets driven t
ZOMG NOT $4 PER GALLON!!!!!11ONE (Score:5, Interesting)
All the more reason to switch to electric cars and renewable+nuclear and conserve what fossil fuels are left. The planes really need the dinosaur juice.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that while an incremental increase over time in the cost of gas will be dealt with and adapted to by the populace.
Wholesale drastic increases like what you're proposing, have ENORMOUSLY destructive consequences.
It's like "Field of Dreams". If you build it they will come. It IS sadistic to destroy the transportation infrastructure you have by pricing it out of everyones reach when the replacement technology IS NOT READY!!
If the endeavour highlighted in this article is successful, then no mat
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the nice things about EVs is design flexibility. GM puts them down the center tunnel in a T-shape. Aptera puts them under the seats. Tesla puts them right over the rear wheels. Mitsubishi puts them under the floor. You can basically put them wherever you have spare space that's ideal for your weight distribution to ensure a good ride, rollover resistance, wheel traction, aerodynamics, style, and so forth.
It's also one of the downsides to conversions -- they can't take advantage of this flexibili
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a misconception about opportunity charging, and something that a lot of people don't get. If it takes an hour to fully full your pack, if you have an "oh damn, I shouldn't have driven 90mph down the interstate on the way here and now don't have enough charge to get home!" moment, that doesn't mean you have to sit around for an hour. That means you have to sit around for the 10-15 minutes until you get enough charge to get you home. You don't have to grab a full charge every time you plug in.
The s
Re: (Score:3)
Ok, so that covers the case of "o, I forgot to charge". But what about the "really long road trip" case?
Any of the following:
Without any new tech or infrastructure:
1. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle
2. Range-extending trailer, such as the Long Ranger, which can be:
2a: Owned
2b: Rented
2c: Part of a range-extending trailer sharing co-op, like car co-ops
3. Second car
4. Rent a car (for only a couple times a year, that's not much).
5. Drive to the train station or airport, then take the train or airplane.
With new i
2 Years (Score:2)
People
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people don't need 150 mile/200 Km range, and can start the switch petrol --> electric right away. I also don't see much need for a hybrid if you have 300-mile/500 Km electric cars. especially if there are battery-switch stations. You have also to realize that electricity costs less per mile/Km than petrol.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that everyone seems to think "Oh, I'll switch to electric, because petrol is so heavily taxed" but you're forgetting that once everyone switches to electric, they're going to have to find another tax to pay for all the road funds... which I predict will be a tax on either electricity or directly on your vehicle. Plus, cars containing a battery and electric motors are pretty much always going to have a significant cost premium over those running on internal combustion.
That's not saying we won'
Re: (Score:2)
Re:2 Years (Score:5, Insightful)
People will drive their cars and people will eventually switch but 2 years is MUCH too soon to think that we can start tearing down gas stations.
I expect that I'll still be driving the same car in five years, at which time it will be 30 years old.
Would I drive a new car if I could afford it? Possibly. Would it benefit me financially to do so? Probably not.
I've done some reasonably major repairs in the last couple of years - a reconditioned cylinder head, a wheel bearing, the distributor - but I've still spent far less in higher fuel consumption and those repairs than I'd have spent in interest on a loan and lost in depreciation on a newer vehicle.
Yeah, it'd be nice to have a lower carbon footprint from a more fuel-efficient hybrid. It'd be even nicer to have a slightly lower carbon footprint from an all-electric vehicle (we use brown coal for most of our electricity in my corner of Australia), and even better once our Illustrious Leaders convince the Great Unwashed to let us go nuclear. Trouble is, for all intents and purposes we're a single-income household (one adult is a disability pensioner - car, diesel spill, lamp post) with two kids and all the expenses that go with that. If it's a choice between environmental righteousness and actually maintaining a functional household, the household wins. Even on purely financial terms, without using my family as a rationalisation, keeping my old car going wins.
Re:2 Years (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod parent up please! This point is often skimmed over or simply ignored by those people who insist on a shiny new car every 3 years. Instead you hear them claim "It's low emissions, much better for the environment" or "I've gone for a smaller engine to be eco-friendly". The stark fact is that the cost to the environment of actually producing the new car is staggering.
Also, congrats to the GP, 30 years with one vehicle is impressive.
Prius shaped (Score:2)
I predict the electric car produced with this battery will look like a Prius, since it has an excellent coefficient of drag, so good, Honda chose to copy it for the new insight.
Re: (Score:2)
have you seen the new Tesla model S ? http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/tesla-motors-model-s-platform-electric-minivan-crossover-suv-van-doe.php [treehugger.com] Now, that's what I call a sleek car.
Look like a fad? (Score:2, Insightful)
It IS a fad...
My 1984 Mercedes 190 goes 600 miles on a tank (Score:2)
...so what's this "the 300-mile range of gasoline powered cars" garbage?...
My 1977 Fiat is upwards of a 400-mile range with a tiny 12 gallon tank...(heh just pre-empting the Fiat haters...)and that's without pushing it or towing it :)
Pass this on to the editors ... (Score:2)
AskOxford: Commonly Confused Words [askoxford.com]. I suspect most people will discover that they regularly make at least one of the mistakes in that list; I certainly did.
Prius (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I consider myself to be green, and i concur whole-heartedly. A green person just doesn't buy a car, and if he/she does : he/she doesn't use it very much, and keeps that car for 20+ years.
Re: (Score:2)
Could someone please summarize? (Score:5, Funny)
I was too distracted by "Whose Who" to absorb much after that. Of course, most of it was after that.
Combination of range *AND* charge time. (Score:3, Informative)
In order to replace the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine,) charge time needs to drop to less than 10 minutes. With recharging stations nearly as common as gas stations.
Batteries aren't going to do that. Supercapacitors will. (Or some yet-to-be-invented technology.)
Re:Combination of range *AND* charge time. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Then you have issues of logistics
There are hardly any logistics involved, as you don't ship batteries around, you just recharge them for the next user.
what if someone figures out how to doctor the meter,
Then they get sued by the company that owns the batteries. The car owner doesn't own the battery, he just leases it and pays for the power he uses. Has the benefits of the electric cars getting much cheaper.
Ifs (Score:5, Insightful)
and the cost of the battery allows the car to be similarly priced to a gasoline car, and the charging time is reasonably short so when you run out you are not carless for 8 hours or something, and the infrastructure is in place to charge the car on the road,
then I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make the Toyota Prius look like a fad.
There, fixed that for you
500 Mile Range=Revolutionary (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:500 Mile Range=Revolutionary (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe at some point in the future I'll have a house with a proper garage, but until then, I'll be stuck with gasoline.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well I wish them luck (Score:4, Insightful)
It's NOT the next step, it;s a later one, our next step is efficincy improvements to gas engines, followed by a massive investment in grid expansion to support those electrci cars.
It's also only going to happen for about 30% of the people in the world, since the rest have nowhere to plug-in said electreic car... even with a milti-trillion dollar investment in wind power, and 15-20 trillion in grid overhaul over 30 years, you;re still not going to change the fact that charging at the power station down the street on a fast-charge rig is going to cost twice what charging at home would, and since charging at home is only 50% cheaper per mile driven (in energy terms only, not accounting for the premium price on the car), it will be impossible for people without garrages to break even on the massive price difference of a $10K battery pack vs a petrol car.
Chemical energy storage? Yea, it's called HYDROCARBON. Screw batteries, screw off-peak power storage, use the electricity to MAKE gasoline, using waste CO2 as input into RWGS process engines. It;s technology used since WWII, and with modern changes to catalysts, heat exchangers, recouperators, and more, it can now be done for about $3 a gallon... 100% clean gas (no sulfer wastes) and it;s carbon nuetral, and available today. Stop screwing around with technologies that can be monopolized, start using something we have today that works, and lets people keep using current cars, current mechanics, current fuel infrastducture, and in 30-40 years when the grid and the battery industry are ready, we'll start with the electrci cars.
More bad news for your electricity bill (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you realize how inefficient car engines are? (Score:5, Insightful)
What will happen on the demand side of electricity when electric cars become common? Could it be that demand will quickly outgrow supply? What, oh what, will a KWH cost then? DIE, ELECTRIC CAR, DIE
I don't think you understand how utterly inefficient a car engine is at converting gasoline into movement.
Basically, you could build gasoline power plant and run electric cars off the output. You'd power more cars and reduce kWh cost.
BTW: Oil is non-renewable, which means demand is guaranteed to outgrow supply.
Whose-Who? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know to whom it belongs, but traditionally the directorty of notable identities is known as Who's Who [wikipedia.org].
685... (Score:2)
... miles on a tank of diesel every two weeks.
That is what I get now and I would want more from advanced technology.
(yes it is a FIAT)
No thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
If they can make such dense batteries, I'd rather have 50 mile range with 1/6 the battery weight / cost. No use dragging around excess batteries all the time.
Re: (Score:2)
No use dragging around excess batteries all the time.
Isn't it faster to charge a larger battery to partial capacity than a smaller one to full? Could make a difference to your routine, especially if you opt for a small battery and therefore end up charging it more often.
Re:No thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Last time I checked, the Volt's gasoline engine was not part of the powertrain, but used as a generator to keep the batteries going after the charge gets low. It is only directly moving on the electric motor subsystem.
Strap your Buick to the backyard windmill.... (Score:5, Interesting)
We can have batteries that are good for 10000 miles per charge and charge in 5 minutes, and that truly would be great, but that is not enough to make electric cars a mainstream technology. The real questions is, where will the energy come from? What energy source will be used to generate all of that additional electricity that our power grids will require? In North America we already have important segments of the power grid that are under supplied during peak load. Rolling blackouts are occasionally experienced. There is no capacity in the system for this.
The original poster states, "Within two years, they promise to have a new kind of battery technology in place for the 500-mile electric car. If that happens, then I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make the Toyota Prius look like a fad."
This is simply impossible... without first figuring out how to generate huge amounts of additional cheap electricity.
Oil is an incredible substance. It is abundant ( which is why we can use rediculous amounts of it ) and very energy dense.
Creating a better battery is and exercise in developing an energy storage solution. We are talking about a battery with a high enough energy density to take us 500 miles on a charge. Thats nice but not nearly a game changer. This addresses the "energy density" problem, but not the bigger "energy supply" problem. In order to have a "mass exodus from gasoline", we have to find another source of cheap abundant energy first.
To get us all into electric cars we would need to generate much more electricity. We could:
- burn more natural gas or coal. In North America we burn copious amounts of that already to generate electricity. But then again,I'll stick with my gasoline engine if its going to come to that. As a bonus, in this case it is more wasteful to power our electric cars this way. We would be better of fueling our cars directly with natural gas. We would save the energy lost converting to electricity. Coal....could be complicated.
- pepper the world with renewable energy generation projects. I sure hope we do this. I'm pretty sure we will, but it will take time and a very large investment. Germany is WAY ahead of everyone else on this and still, they only hope to realize a goal of 45 percent renewable energy in Germany's total energy mix by 2050, and they don't think that will be possible without major conservation efforts. So, don't strap your buick to the backyard windmill just yet.
- innovate - find new power sources. I hope we do this too. Although the next big breakthrough could happen tomorrow, this will probably also take a lot of time and money.
Oil is an incredible substance. It is very abundant ( which is why we can use rediculous amounts of it ) and very energy dense. Replacing it will be a big challenge.
By the way, we already have an energy storage soltion that has a far greater energy density that of gasoline....hydrogen. Hydrogen is just like a battery. It is an energy storage medium (a very good one too) but not a source of energy. There is no freely available source hydrogen. Like electricity, we have to create it using some other source of energy.
How to generate huge amounts of cheap electricity: (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear.
Comparatively cheap per megawatt, and per megawatt, the most enviromentally friendly power source we've yet discovered.
Nuclear is most expensive per MW (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How to generate huge amounts of cheap electrici (Score:5, Informative)
At least in SyFy books. In real life however the actual evidence points to a net energy deficit when the entire fuel cycle is taken into account. But for some reason as soon as someone says something good about nuclear power on slashdot they instantly get modded up. I simply don't understand why there is a collective drop in IQ when the available scientific *evidence* and an examination of the legal and political constructs demonstrate statements like these are complete fantasy. So lets examine them;
Operative word "Comparatively", but what about some institutional assesments?
Standard and Poor's assessment of the Nuclear industry's financial viability "the industry's legacy of cost growth, technological problems, cumbersome political and regulatory oversight, and the newer risks brought about by competition and terrorism keep credit risk too high for even federal legislation that provides loan guarantees to overcome"
an assessment supported by Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs "even with an explicit tax on carbon-based power generation, new nuclear power plants cannot be economical without government subsidies"
The breakdown of U.S energy research and development reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to SUSTAINABLE energy sources. In addition to what I mentioned above you can add the 2005 U.S energy bill which provided another $13 billion dollars worth of subsidies, revocation of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA) which was put into law in 1935 to stop a re-occurrence of the 1929 stock market crash. The Price-Anderson Act to underwrite the Nuclear industry with $600 Billion of Taxpayer money and closer to a trillion if you factor the huge amount of land you are going to lose in the event of an actual accident.
Half a billion dollars worth of subsidies for procuring companies (i.e oil companies) proposing "pre-approved" reactor designs, even if they don't build it, and a 1.8 cent per kilowatt hour tax credit if they do. The reality is if the Nuclear power industry was forced to cover it's own liability and fund itself it would cease to exist. I could go on and on but the bottom line is how can America, of all countries, continue to justify this form of corporate welfare?
Ok, lets look at radioactive isotope emissions only. Over the entire industrial process radioactive isotope emissions are inevitable. Here are the *authorised* effluents not the accidents.
Mine tailing: radioactive mine tailings from open cut mining where ever it has occurred, radon 220, radium 226, thorium etc.
Enrichment: U-238 or DU. Used as weapon projectile, is pyrophoric and burns into a radioactive powder. Groundwater contamination from leaking Hexafluoride tanks [wikipedia.org]
Reactor facility: tritium, iodine 131, xenon 141, 143, 144, cerium 141, 143, 144, tritium, tritium and tritium AND Noble Gasses Which Decay Into More Dangerous Daughter Products (Xenon 137, Krypton 90, rubidium 90, strontium 90, Xenon 135, xenon 133, krypton 85, Argon 39). Of course no epidemiological studies have been performed on the noble gas venting which are released hourly from *all* Nuclear reactors. (did I mention tritium) 4000 gallons of primary coolant water PER DAY containing plutonium 238,239,241, technetium 99, iodine 129, carbon 14 and *ahem* tritium which is highly mutagenic once it's in the foodchain.
Reactor decommissioning: cobalt 60, iron 55, nickel 63.
Radioactive Waste: Plutonium, Strontium 90, Iodine 131, Cesium 137 and on and on
Re:How to generate huge amounts of cheap electrici (Score:5, Informative)
This is how far I read because if you seriously think Nuclear power ends up in an energy deficit you are either completely ignorant about the subject, your sources are rubbish, or you are deliberately lieing ( or possibly a combination of the three ).
To give a slight idea of just how much energy is released in a nuclear reactor, the main limit of a reactor's power rating is how high temperatures the construction materials and cooling system can cope with. The reaction itself is limited only by the temperature at which the ceramic fuel rods and steel cladding melts, and at any time the fuel present in a large reactor contains more energy than entire countries consume in a year. If that is not enough to convince you, consider that the energy bound in chemical molecules like gas or petroleum is measured in electron volt, while the energy released in a fission reaction is hundreds of millions of electron volt.
Or put another way, one atom of uranium when fissioned will release an amount of energy equivalent to hundreds of millions of molecules of conventional fuel. Even if you take the fuel that has the highest chemical energy/weight ratio there is ( hydrogen ) it still releases only 1.53eV per atomic weight unit, while uranium fission is closer to a million eV per atomic weight unit.
For nuclear power to end up on an energy deficit the energy needed to extract, refine, burn and dispose it would have to be hundreds of millions times larger ( per atom counted ) than the energy needed to extract and refine conventional fuels. Now I accept that handling, mining, burning and disposing uranium and the waste products may be more involved than say coal. I'll even let you say 100 times more energy intensive, or heck why not say 10.000 times just for the hell of it, lets even assume coal is used 100% efficiently, and that only 1% of uranium is burned. You would still have THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE to account for.
Really it is hard to grasp the energy released in nuclear reactions. A few kilograms would be enough to turn an entire city to ash, a couple of metric tonnes correspond to entire nations' annual energy consumption. Even though most reactors today only burn about 5% of it the amount much power you can tap from it is limited only by how much energy the cooling system can safely transport away, and the energy content is enough that a reactor can run for years without refueling.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The part where it is chemically equivalent to hydrogen and hence rapidly dissolves and disperses in water, quickly being diluted to lower than background levels. In addition the very low energy of the beta radiation it emits, it's tendency to be ejected with urine or sweat if ingested ( as opposed to staying in the body ) the short half-life, the minuscule amount produced, and the lack of any major pathway into
I kind of believe it's not far off (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I kind of believe it's not far off (Score:4, Interesting)
Anything would make the Prius look like a fad. (Score:4, Funny)
> I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make
> the Toyota Prius look like a fad.
It was.
Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The battery pack doesn't have to charge that fast. And a normal petrol tank is also a bomb.
Re: (Score:2)
A bomb? Hardly- getting the right fuel-air mixture for an explosion (rather than a fire) is a 1 in a million chance.
Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:5, Informative)
And a normal petrol tank is also a bomb.
Gasoline is only explosive under very specific circumstances. That's why cars have exotic hardware like carburettors and multi port fuel injection systems - to get the exact mix of gasoline and air that will ignite with the biggest bang.
Gasoline BURNS quite readily, but except for an initial "whoosh", it's not particularly explosive. In a sealed container it won't burn at all.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:4, Funny)
I would like to subscribe to his newsletter.
Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:4, Funny)
Great - now they're going to outlaw beer bottles!
Maybe they'll outlaw clothing, too, to eliminate rags.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:4, Insightful)
No matter what the range is, there is always someone who needs to go a little further. If the battery range is 1000 miles then this author is likely to whine that he wants to go 1200 miles.
Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The car/battery needn't be useful for everyone in every circumstance to sell well, just useful enough for enough people to buy it. I can't go 600 miles in a day on my bicycle, but I still use it daily.
I live in Great Britain, so the furthest I could drive without meeting water is 837 miles [google.co.uk] (and the only people doing that trip are cyclists, it's a traditional route for obvious reasons). The furthest I've ever driven in one go is ~400 miles from ~Birmingham to the Scottish Highlands. If I'm travelling alone, a train is my preferred way to go (because of comfort and cost), with more people the car gets less comfortable but cheaper.
In continental Europe water doesn't get in the way, but still most people won't drive much more than 500 miles at a time for a bi-annual holiday.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You see, they have these nifty things called "car rental agencies." I predict that if small electrics become common, there will be a great opportunity for companies to rent larger trucks & gas-powered cars for people that only need them every few months to haul stuff around or go on a trip.
Your savings on gas would more than pay for the occasionally necessary rental.
cue knee jerk fear-speak from big pertroleum (Score:3, Informative)
Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:5, Interesting)
But you don't need 3 MW of power to move a car. Half the reason it uses so much energy is that A. two-thirds to three-quarters of the energy input is wasted (mostly in the form of heat), and B. another huge chunk of it is wasted lugging around that insanely heavy engine block and all the crap that it requires. You can easily get equivalent amounts of torque from an electric car that uses much, much, much less energy than a gasoline-powered car.
Gasoline contains 121 MJ per gallon, but by the time you factor in the efficiency, you're getting closer to 25-35 MJ per gallon, which is only about 8.3 kWh. With a 15 amp circuit at full capacity, every 5 hours charging is equivalent to a gallon of gas (approximately). As long as you don't *average* more than 60 miles per day, charging overnight is likely to be sufficient. And that's assuming a 110VAC charger. Most electric car chargers, AFAIK, are at 220VAC with a 30 amp circuit or larger, so it would only take two nights (or all day one day and night) to charge up a battery with a 500 mile range, give or take.
Sadly, it's not necessarily cheaper. At my current PG&E rate, even after accounting for the engine efficiency, gasoline is at a dead tie with what I paid at the pump on Monday---literally within tenths of a cent per gallon. If I could buy an engine that was 100% efficient, it would cost a fourth as much money to run a gasoline-powered generator as it does to buy power from PG&E, and that's at full retail gas prices. There's a fun stat for you, as though I needed any more proof that PG&E is screwing me.
Re:cue exploding battery packs.... (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah right, its going to be REAL PRACTICAL to put 500 mile range into a battery pack. the gasoline nozzle pumps 3 MEGAWATTS of energy into your gas tank in 2 minutes. try to get a battery pack to recharge that fast or hold that much energy and what you have is a BOMB (literally, a coupla sticks of dynamite)..
However, you cannot fill up the gas tank at home. That is one of the killer features of the battery: no more annoying visits to the gas station, just plug it in when you get home. No more fiddling around with plastic gloves/wait for your fingers to stop smelling of diesel.
And seriously, driving more than 800km in a day is a long stretch.
But I do not really believe that range will be the range on a motorway for a holiday-packed car :)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
*sigh*
I wasn't commenting on whether the figures were correct, just that the poster was measuring the wrong thing. Joules are a unit of energy, Watts measure the rate of energy. Yes, I know the difference.
The original poster's statement was meaningless. Read it carefully.
Watts, Joules, Volts and Amps are not just interchangable terms which mean 'energy stuff'. If people don't know what they mean, they should stick to Crystal Therapy.
Go ahead mod me 'troll', I don't care. I'm sick of New Age Science masquera
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a few more notes. the 30KW figure for the honda is based on air resistance not engine efficiency. So unless you are prepared to lie flat in a coffin shaped car, your pretty much stuck with the crossection of a Honda as the minimum useful car. Thus there's no way to beat that power demand by more than a small percentage let alone a factor of even 2.
You might suppose then that service stations will instead swap battery packs. But that does not really solve the problem well. At any moment a filling statio
Re:impossible for consumers to operate it. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're making contradictory assumptions. You can't claim that rapid charging is only for long distance trips and then claim that the 99% of commuters on highways will need to use it.
The only people who need a quick recharge are those going more than 500 miles at once with no long stops. If they stop to sleep then that's 10 hours to recharge at a hotel/motel. If they get to their destination same thing. If they stop to eat same thing. If the car isn't driving it can be charging.
With some rare exception even long distance trips are generally less than 500 miles one way and probably even both ways.
It's silly to take a system designed for gasoline and apply it to electric cars with no consideration for the inherent differences. Unlike gasoline electricity is everywhere. Every street, building, house and apartment has a gigantic ever refilling storage tank of it. You don't need to have special locations with giant underground tanks and tanker trunks to deal with it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
With some rare exception even long distance trips are generally less than 500 miles one way and probably even both ways.
I beg to differ. Most long distance trips I do are longer than 500 miles. My mother-in-law lives about 550 miles from my home, my brother about 700 miles from my home, and only my parents are less than 500 miles (400 in fact) away from me. On the other hand: all of them live in Germany, so more than 80 mph cruising speed are not an issue, which easily allows to drive those distances during a day.
For me a car that takes longer than half an hour to recharge is useless for those distances.
For commuting I am us
Re:Batteries are history (Score:4, Funny)
I spend all night charging my mobile phone. Its such a pain, sitting there and waiting for it to finish.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
"Yes dear, the battery in the car is flat, I've just got to wait an hour for it to charge, then I'll be on my way home..."
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"Yes dear, the battery in the car is flat, I've just got to wait an hour for it to charge, then I'll be on my way home..."
Sure, why not? Still better than walking.
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Yea, and when you wake up in the middle of the night and need to take your mobile phone for a 50 mile drive because your server broke down, or you dad had a heart attack, or your kid thought someone was in her house and is scared shitless, or something, you are going to wish you could pull up to a gas pump and fill your mobile phone up in a matter of minutes and not have to worry about it.
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A lot of the time the phone doesn't take all night to charge and it has a usable charge most of the time anyway. Thank about all that time you can save by not going somewhere to fill your car with fuel.
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That's nice and all, but I carry spare batteries and have a cradle charger to charge the batteries without the phone at all.
The point is that regardless of how convenient the charging might be, there will be times when it isn't. Call it Murphy's law or whatever but it's just one of those realities.
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I'm willing to bet that if you venture outside of the city, the outage rates are comparable.
As for oil lamps, that's not backwards at all. It's called preparation. You see, those flashlights need batteries and generally will not light up a room for several hours at a time. Those batteries start become scared when 100,000 people start attempting to replace theirs. Anyways, the economics are in favor of the oil lamps and candles. You can get some pretty decent candles that will last 2 or 3 nights at 4 or 5 ho
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I spend all night charging my mobile phone. Its such a pain, sitting there and waiting for it to finish.
What about situations where lack of a quick turn-around might be more of an inconvenience - like taxi fleets, or independent taxi operators? For the fleets it's probably less of an issue, as they'll have quieter times and will probably be able to rotate some of their vehicles out during those, but the smaller operators might have a problem. If you've got a taxi (as in vehicle, rather than drivers) licence and one or a few vehicles, you'll probably want to hire other drivers to keep them on the road as much
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Yeah while the "charge overnight" mode is okay for a personal commuting machine its not so good for commercial vehicles which are on the go a lot of the time. Maybe, as you suggest, different architectures will be used, so there will be less cross over between commercial and domestic applications.
Builders use commercial grade battery powered drills with multiple pluggable battery packs. Construction sites have places for charging tools. Maybe the generally short usage cycles of taxis will suit shorter rang
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how about witching batteries ?
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/better-place-unveils-battery-swap-station/ [nytimes.com]
that's a battery swapping station, like a fuel station, except you don't have to leave the car, and it is faster.
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1986 Taurus 3.0 L V6 with 18 Gallon tank had a real-world highway range of over 500 miles.
Filled up in Phoenix and drive it home to Orange County, CA, then didn't bother to fill for a few days.
300 miles is piss-poor range for a mid-size sedan.
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My Peugeot 405 Estate gets over 600 miles from a tank - over 700 if you're on a long run. Admittedly it doesn't use anything as outmoded as petrol.
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My '96 Toyota T100 regularly gets 325+ miles per tank. But that's 21 gallons worth.
'Though, I'd rather get 325+ on a third of that at the very least.
Piss poor mileage (Score:3, Insightful)
Last Friday/Sat I drove from Bergerac to Calais (both in france) via Reims. Distance covered 1070km on 55litres of Diesel in my 2004 Saab Estate.
I'll leave it to you to do the conversions but 300miles on a tankfull is just silly.
My 1969 Triumph TR6 Motorcycle in touring trim and loaded up with camping gear etc gets easily that distance on a 4 (uk)Gallon tank full.
Progress pah.
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1988 Citroën CX 22TRS, 17 gallon tank, 475 mile range and over 500 if I drive gently. This is a carb=fed contact-breaker ignition 1970s-era engine design, 2.2 litres and 115bhp. I used to get 32mpg for over 500 miles range but something's a little sick under the bonnet.
2008 Mercedes Vito 111 van, around 17 gallon tank, over 500 mile range, 116bhp diesel in a medium-size panel van. Again, about 30mpg.
It's worth noting that these are UK gallons, so 20 US gallons.
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Electric cars don't have much muscle
wrong. TGV: top speed : 574 kph (350 mph). tesla roadster : 3.9 seconds to 60mph/100kph.
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This seems like a troll to me. But maybe not.
I just read this article about this history of the SUV:
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html [gladwell.com]
I wonder if they did a similar study on Prius owners what the feedback would be.
I've been mildly considering a Prius, and my though was: it would be an efficient and responsible purchase (and buying an SUV would be an irresponsible purchase).
I suspect this is what people think. I was following a car the other day with this license frame: "Your SUV Sucks"
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Except the Honda Insight and a number of 1.4 and 1.5 litre diesel engined small cars from Renault and Citroen.
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Wrong. ICEs get better fuel economy in the vicinity of 50 mpg, just before drag becomes a major factor. See e.g. this chart [wikipedia.org].
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Hydrogen holds some promise, but it's questionable right now. It's green to burn (or otherwise use) Hydrogen, just as it's green to use electricity. Both have the same original problem, though... you can't mine or otherwise locate sources of hydrogen anymore than you can do so with electricity. H2 is just a chemical answer for the battery.
Now, what you left out.. the big piece... is how that H2 is converted to electricity. Are you buring it, or feeding a fuel cell? The Fuel Cell is great idea... over 65% ef