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Considering that Tesla has the only production electric vehicle with a battery other than a lead-acid battery, that is a pretty bold statement to make

Correction: only production electric vehicle on the road; virtually all automakers are working on making at least one commercial electric vehicle (i.e., not just a concept), for sale within the next couple years. I could list about three dozen models for you. And they're essentially all li-ion, and none of them (except Tesla and their partners) are using laptop cells. It's virtually all phosphates and manganates. And even that refined statement is not really true. BYD and a number of electric motorcycle and freight truck companies are already on the road with li-ion vehicles. Again, not using laptop cells.

My point is that the safe charging of an electrical power storage device that is to absorb well over 25 kilowatt-hours of energy in less than 4 minutes is hardly a trivial application

Trivial? No. Doable? Absolutely. Doable en masse? Absolutely.

Assuming this is a 220 Volt circuit

It's not. This is level 3 charging, which is DC, variable voltage which tracks the pack's optimal charging voltage (for li-ion EVs, generally in the 300-500V range). Supply is generally 3-phase 480V.

Comments about having access to a neighborhood power sub-station seem very appropriate when viewed from this perspective.

Neighborhood? What are you talking about? Why would you ever put one of these in a house?

To safely recharge an automotive battery, it takes time.

Wrong. Rapid charging has been used in various demo programs (for example, Hawaii had one) for over a decade. It's perfectly safe, so long as you have a proper charger, connector, and vehicle design. There are all sorts of safety features used -- anti-arcing connectors, electrodes that remain non-live until the data pins have confirmed a secure connection, a steady ramp-up, safe break-away cables, instant termination on any sign of a short or damage to the sheath, etc.

I certainly think extreme skepticism is very much in order here and the burden of proof that this is a safe procedure is something that would have to be furnished by the group asserting that this is a safe process

And I'm informing you that this is nothing new. It may be the first time *you* have heard about this, but this is a technology that has been being developed for decades and is already in commercial use in a number of major warehouses for rapid charging of forklifts.

Any time electrical energy on this magnitude is being switched at a power sub-station or for something like an electrified train, it happens in either a place with a locked door or behind a chain link fence with barbed wire on top and at least a ten foot perimeter from any potential on-looker from even being close to that equipment.

Want to see what a real-world rapid charger looks like? Here. Ooh, scary!

And you expect me to believe that you would let a two year old hang out in a car where electrical connections to a vehicle are being connected within inches of that kid's car seat with those same voltages and power ratings?

And you expect me to believe that you would let a two year old hang out in a car where toxic, explosive gasoline-air fume mixtuers are being forced from a tank by inflowing gasoline within inches of that kid's car seat where any static spark could (and does) set them off?

Oh, right -- "the devil you're used to," and all of that.

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, 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.

The myth of poor battery reliability in hybrids is not bourne out by the real-world experience of hybrid taxis around the world. Specifically, the fact taxis have travelled 240,000 or even 300,000 miles with no major problems with the batteries or any other component of the hybrid system.

"Car"

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Not a car (no passenger capacity)

Not a car (no drive shaft--in-hub electric motor)

Not a car (doesn't corner for crap)

A good idea, and it is being tried.

Whats better than a hybrid?
Building a better hybrid.

In particular a plugin hybrid electric vehicle.
Or in this case a prius with a bigger battery.
(Although a fully electric car, with the bare minimum for a gasoline generator is more ideal)

This study found that in regions where electricity comes primarily from natural gas, a plugin hybrid puts up 3x less CO2 emmisions.
And in the least green region of the United States powered almost entirely by coal.
They found that the CO2 emmisions per mile were practically idential to a normal hybrid.
http://www.aceee.org/pubs/t061.htm

Whats more, we could replace 84% of the US fleet of cars with electric, and not need to build even 1 new power plant by leveraging downtime grid usage. (More fuel use, but no new infrastructure needed)
http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/2006/12/plu gin_nation_g.html

Whats more, by having the distributed battery network stabalize the grid capacity.
We could actually make the grid far more reliable than it is today.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/17930/
http://news.com.com/2100-11392_3-6174672.html

And there's some pretty sexy electric cars on the way.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/electriccars.png

_

Cool part about all this?
You can get electricity from the grid at a cost similar to 50 cents a gallon.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/plugins

And it's the perfect, "flexible fuel", since electricity can come from practically anything.
Unlike Ethanol for instance, which might be even worse than gasoline in pollution.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/ethanol2
http://www.greyfalcon.net/ethanol3
And biodiesel, which could potentially make Indonesia/Malaysia put up more CO2 than China.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/biofuel

Best part about this from an environmental perspective, is that combines two big problems into one.
So all you have to do is green the grid, to green everything.

And that can readily be provided by printable solar panels
http://www.greyfalcon.net/pv

And geothermal using inexpensive super powered electric drilling motors
http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=1206
http://www.rasertech.com/media/movies/html/well_to _wheels.html
http://www.insidegreentech.com/node/1088

The Danish have done it: http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=1071 They take cow-dung and take the methane out of it. Why not use a platinum catalyst to catalyze methane's decomposition? Semipermiable membranes could be used to extract the hydrogen with particulate platinum. Sounds feasible to me, considering they can power towns off of the methane produced by cow crap.

All that aside, an Otto or Diesel engine using biofuels, modern engine management and state of the art emission control equipment (catalysators) are already extremely benign on the environment compared to the average car in say the '70s.


I was waiting for the sales pitch of a Prius. It does use an Atkinson cycle engine. It's valve timing is even more effecient that the Otto cycle. Here is a link.

http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=857

From the link "Compared to the Otto cycle, where the intake valve is closed near bottom-dead-center, the Atkinson cycle does not close the intake valve at BDC, but leaves it open as the piston rises on the compression stroke. What this means is that some of the air/fuel charge is pushed back out and into the intake manifold and is used in other cylinders. This reduces the volume of the air/fuel mixture that(TM)s compressed and combusted without severely restricting the throttle opening. Restricting throttle opening results in large pumping losses and greatly reduced efficiency. This method of reducing power output without incurring large pumping losses makes the Prius engine much more efficient than a conventional Otto cycle engine under most operating conditions.

The engineers at Toyota did a good job.

Tell me, please! What did you do to get xorg-x11 to work? My system was crippled after an upgrade from FC1->FC2. By upgrade, I mean choosing upgrade when, upon running anaconda, the installer presents you with two choices:1) Upgrade or 2) New Install The lost functionality was reminiscent of a move from RH8 to RH9. The upgrade failed in that case also, and it seemed to be related to the X server as with the current situation. To paraphrase a saying, "It is okay to trust, just don't trust untrustworthy distributions."

The TastyWiki is a Wiki recipe site.