500 Miles on a 5-Minute Recharge?

ctroutwi writes "In the wake of rising gasoline costs there have been plenty of alternatives seen on the horizon. Including Hybrids, Biofuels, fuel cells and battery powered all electric cars. CNN has recently posted a story about a company (EEStor) that plans on offering UltraCapacitor storage products. The claim being that you charge the ultracapacitor in 5 minutes, with approximately $9 of electricity and then drive 500 miles."

Comments

Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid?

[Catamaran]

I'm not sure about these long distance claims, you would probably need a huge capacitor, but it doesn't matter because really we don't need to go such long distances on a single charge.

How about a system in which cars connect to electric lines along the highways, like they use for electric busses and trollies, and use ultra-capacitors to get from the highway to your home? The capacitors could charge while you are on the highway, and then you would only need enough charge to go 5-10 miles.

I*V=P

[Anonymous Coward]

" The claim being that you charge the ultracapacitor in 5 minutes, with approximately $9 of electricity and then drive 500 miles.""

Current and voltage?

Re:I*V=P

[Anonymous Coward]

At 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, $9.00 is 90 kilowatt-hours, or a little over a million watts in five minutes.

This is what happens when you have a faith-based scientific curriculum in public high schools. The populace becomes vulnerable to all kinds of interesting scams.

Re:I*V=P

[i kan reed]

I'm going to have to say that actually doesn't matter, since most power stations charge based on the kilowatt-hour, which is a measurement of energy. Energy is something we can deal with equally on both sides of the system(generation and usage) pretty close to equivelantly. The voltage/wattage/resistance really doesn't matter, as we have a multitude of devices for changing between those various values.

Re:I*V=P

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure just don't expect that kind of recharge speed at home. That's an order of magnitude more power than the a normal house supply can handle. So expect a couple hours charge time, more if you plan on having any other appliances turned on in your house.

Re:I*V=P

[Webmoth]

Let's expand the math for a little bit. First, let's assume a national (USA) average of $0.09/kWh, as that makes the math a little easier. Nine bucks divided by 9 cents per kilowatt-hour equals 100 kilowatt-hours. 100 kilowatt-hours of energy dispensed over five minutes represents a power draw of 1200 kilowatts, or 1.2 megawatts, roughly one one-hundredth the capacity of the now-decomissioned Trojan Nuclear Power Plant near Porland, Oregon. Divide that by the standard US voltage of 240V AC, and you have a current draw of 5000 amps.

That requires some fat-ass wires.

As most homes in the US have a 200A electrical service, this represents the power draw of approximately 25 homes loaded to capacity. Further considering that the National Electrical Code requires that continuous load of a circuit be 20% less than the rating of the circuit (typical peak load would therefore be 160A), and that average peak load will probably be closer to 100A, this battery will represent to the electrical system a load equal to 30-50 homes!

I guess it's time for everyone to build nuclear power plants in their back yards.

Re:I*V=P

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if you could charge the car using a lightning rod? LOL. All you have to do is a rain dance. A million watts. Wow. If you're using 220V, you'd only need about 5,000 amps! yikes. Hot damn. Obviously you are not charging this from home! If you say something reasonable like, let's keep this at 100 amps, you'd need 10,800 volts! Please see the wiki about high voltage DC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC#History_of_HVDC_ transmission :-) Personally, I don't see why we don't just drive up to a gas station and swap batteries with them. (Or other energy storage devices.) They could sit on the shelf all day charging.

Re:I*V=P

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it does matter. Do you want a 1-million-volt, 1-amp power line running to your house? Or a 10,000-ampere, 100-volt one?

Um, OK, I see your point... it doesn't matter, because either way, it ain't gonna happen.

Re:I*V=P

[pclminion]

Current and voltage?

You can figure it out if you're willing to make educated guesses.

Assuming 6.2 cents per kilowatt-hour (price in my state), $9 of power is about 145 kilowatt-hours. This energy is delivered in 5 minutes according to the article. 145 KWh / 5 minutes = 1.74 megawatts AVERAGE charging power.

But that's AVERAGE. Because this is a capacitor (albeit an "ultra" one), it charges in an exponential fashion. The peak charging power during the first few seconds of charging is going to be SIGNIFICANTLY higher than 1.74 megawatts. How MUCH higher depends on the impedance of the charging system.

The real value missing here is capacitance. If we knew that, we could work out peak charging currents for given fixed charging voltages, or vice versa. According to Wiki, the "largest capacitance" of an ultra capacitor is 2.6 kilofarads. Using this as a reasonable but arbitrary number, we can set the total energy equal to CV^2 / 2 and figure out the charge voltage: 633 volts.

Okay, so we have a capacitance of 2.6 kilofarads, a charging voltage of 633 volts, and a charging time of 5 minutes. Further, we have to assume some percentage charge on the capacitor -- it never reaches 100% charge because it charges exponentially, so let's say it charges to 99%. We can use that to figure out the impedance of the charging system using the equation for a charging capacitor: 1-exp(-t/RC)=0.99. Let t = 5 minutes, C = 2.6 kilofarads, and we get a charging impedance (value of R) of 0.06 ohms.

Whoo! Now you can compute the peak charging power (at the very beginning of the charge cycle), which is V^2/R = about 6.5 megawatts. That's 10550 amps. And some of that power is lost as heat in the (very large) wires you'll need to do this -- what fraction of the total is lost as heat is left as an exercise for the reader ;-) But suffice it to say, that heat loss will be at a MAXIMUM when the wire resistance is equal to half the charging impedance, so it implies that the resistance of the wire has to be a lot less than 0.03 ohms.

Feel free to work through it using your own numbers pulled from your own butt, if you want.

Re:I*V=P

[Anonymous Coward]

But at 10KV, its only 120 Amps. and at 16 KV, it's 75 Amps. For that you need 3-guage AWG wire, which is aboutthe size of the cables on your 12V car battery.

16KV is the voltabe used on the top of the power poles in most Neighborhoods in the US, and the wire is about 3-guage, I think. (0.2 inch diameter.) A buried 16KV cable for this amperage is about one inch in diameter. A buried cable has approximately the correct amount of protection (electrical and mechanical) for the "filling station" application.

On the other hand, 16KV is damn dangerous. Engineering the filling station and the car to be safe will be an interesting proposition.

Re:I*V=P

[aussie_a]

In that case it sounds like an overnight charge. After all, does anyone really drive 500 miles in a day? Although such cars will need to be hybrids so they can switch to petrol for the once every blue moon long trip, for most people for most daily usage, they sound perfect. Or does the $9 increase if you take longer to recharge (I can't imagine why, but I thought I'd ask)?

Re:I*V=P

[skelly33]

Funny you should mention that bit about 145Kwh as the first thing I was interested in when I saw this article was just how much energy it can actually store up. I started searching around for info on this "stealth company" (what a pain!) and came up with an interesting piece from bacn in January on The Energy Blog where in their sleuthing they determined the thing holds 52Kwh and weighs 400lbs.

Now call me crazy, but when run a quick transformation of 52Kwh to horsepower I'm only seeing just under 70 horsepower. So... 70 horsepower for an hour, or 140 horsepower for 30 minutes? Obviously either:

* It's more than the 52Kwh mentioned in the link above, or
* This thing won't remotely make a four-passenger sedan drive like a Ferrari

Just interesting...

Re:I*V=P

[random coward]

Hey dont forget the magnet field caused by those 10550 amps, also dont forget the forces caused by the magnetic field on the current in the lines. That would have to be some seriously re-inforced connection spot to keep it from being ripped from the car. I wonder what this would do to someone with a pacemaker nearby?

Re:I*V=P

[SeXy_Red]

Divide that by the standard US voltage of 240V AC, and you have a current draw of 5000 amps.
The standard US voltage is 120V AC, that gives a 10,000 amp current.

Re:I*V=P

[Suidae]

Hey dont forget the magnet field caused by those 10550 amps, I wonder what this would do to someone with a pacemaker nearby?

It would probably be something like that scene in the old Dune movie.

Re:I*V=P

[Anonymous Coward]

Do today's statins need a giant gas tank to pump their gas or do they have a central distribution system? If you guessed the former, you'll be right!

A "electric recharge station" or ERS for short, doesn't need to transfer all the power from X rated (as opposed to XXX rated) power lines. They just need to charge the cap ASAP. Where from? Well, the ERS may have their own bank of giant caps sitting there so if 10 people pull up, they have power to top up these caps. When the customers leave, the ERS can continue to suckle the power from regular lines at a prescribed rate.

You see, when you are a large power user like the hypothetical ERS, the power is not in kWh/month, it is in A/h your draw. More importantly, the peak Amps. So, the station would want to keep their average current from the mains nice and steady for months on end and keep the power stored in a giant array of caps.

In today's stations these are called undegraound gas tanks. In the ERS, they could be the giant caps of tomorrow.

Hope this fixes the problem of "OMFG!!! 10000A melting my nukular plant!!!" Because in reality, it is very workable. Much more than the giant caps in the cars! Fix that, and the ERS problem is already solved.

Re:I*V=P

[locofungus]

Once the thing is charged, the losses are (approximately) zero when you use that power.

So you are going to get about 4x the performance you would get from an equivalent petrol engine.

50kWh is going to give something like the equivalent of a smallish European petrol engined car.

If this has regenerative braking it's likely to do far better in stop-start traffic and will probably perform worse on fast clear roads where most of the losses are down to air drag.

I'd like to see how this could work for urban cycling. I have a 4km commute through central London and have 25 independent sets of traffic lights. Assuming a peak speed of 10m/s and I get stopped at 10 of the sets of lights I'm losing something like 80kJ braking to a stop for the red lights. (and that's twice a day, every day. It's no wonder cyclists don't like stopping for red lights)

Tim.

Re:I*V=P

[gaber1187]

I think to be more precise you mean 5000amp-hours*. Which means you would draw 5000 amps in one hour--or about 5000/3600 amps=1.4 amps--which obviously can't be right, so the assumption about the amount of energy being used based on the cost is wrong. They give actual numbers for the ultracapacitor on other pages--doing a bit of math (shown below) I estimated the current requirement to be about 35 amps and the voltage that that ultracap uses to be around 20 volts. I was reading another page that had much more detail and it said that the ultracapacitor they were using provided 52 kilowatt-hours of energy for a 400 pound battery. Or a ratio of 285 Watt-hrs/kg--which is huge. The BoostCap 2600 has a number like 5.2 Watt-hrs/kg. So this is a big breakthru if its real. Gasoline by the way has a energy density of 14,000 Watt-hrs/kg. So my bet is still going to be on hybrids--just in the future, hybrids will get like 500 miles per gallon when using a bank of ultracaps. So here's a summary of what I've found out about the eestors ultracaps. So the dielectric they are using in the ultracap is apparently Barium Titanate (see the patent for how they make it). I've done some research on BaTiO3 (for making some sensors) and its pretty awesome stuff. There is another similar compound BaSrTiO3 (barium strontium titanate). Both of which can have dielectric permittivities (a.k.a. dielectric constant) up to around 6000 (Brandmayr et al. in US technical report in 1965) at room temp. Yes, 6000, while most materials have around 1-10 and some are maybe up to 100--but 6000 is huge. People have been looking at that material for about 60 years now as a possible high energy density storage solution--however, its not been until the last few years that people have figured out how to make it reliably--because its highly dependent on grain size--make the ceramic at the wrong temperature and it will have a poor dielectric permittivity. In order to create a good sized capacitor that has a huge surface area, you need to put the ceramic material into a resin of some sort so you can coat it onto a thin film and roll it up and let it get hard. When you mix the ceramic into a resin, usually that makes the dielectric permittivity go down a ton--but if you mix them with other materials--not exactly sure what they did, but if you mix in the right stuff, you can get a decent dielectric permittivity. So how did they get such a high capacitance? If you look at the parallel plate equation, you will notice that the only non-linear term is the gap term--the distance between the plates. So you really have to work on getting the charges really really really close to each other (effectively that gap must be less than a micron, so maybe 100 nanometers). Problem with that is, then you can't go to high voltages--because if you do, you get extremely high fields (aka the breakdown field of the material)--(voltage/gap=electric field) and your capacitor arcs and dies if you use too high a voltage. Notice that with the Ultra Capacitors out there on the market that have like 2600 Farads as their capacitance, they have a very low voltage they run at--2.7 volts for instance. The problem with running at only 2.7 volts is that energy storage is a function of the equation: U=1/2*C*V^2 --notice that V is squared!! So if you could increase the voltage just a bit you could really increase the energy--which is I'm sure what they did. So a BoostCap 2600 that uses 2.7 volts which has a capacitance of 2600 Farads would have an energy storage of 9.5 kilojoules, or about 2.6 watt-hours. These guys are claiming 52 kilowatt-hours! Which is about 20,000 times higher than what BoostCap can do. Ok so how do they do that? Well, of course they have to have a huge capacitor first, second, higher voltage. So lets look at those variables, maybe they can explain it. The BoostCap 2600 weighs 480 grams--half a kilogram. So 400 pounds would give you 363 BoostCap 2600s. So thats a capacitance increase of 363. So now we need to increase the voltage by how much: so 20,000/363=55, so we need V^2 to be 55

Re:I*V=P

[Anonymous Coward]

Not an expert on cars, but I'd have to imagine that your ~100HP generic passenger sedan (I think that's about right) is probably using only a fraction of that HP when cruising down the highway. I don't know what fraction exactly, so maybe it does need to be quite a bit bigger than 52kWh to drive for 500 miles. But just keep in mind that you're not redlining your car constantly.

Re:I*V=P

[gaber1187]

Whoa, so I made a big mistake there--624kilowatts, not watts... so it'd take 31.2 kiloAmps to charge at 220V--whoa not 31.2 amps! thought something seemed too good to be true...

so obviously this would need to be charged at a higher voltage... I saw the comment that others made regarding the cap using 3500V and 31Farads... that doesn't make a ton of sense to me because people will not like using such high voltages--so you will have to use a transformer to step it down to about 50V--or a ratio of 70:1--which makes me think that the core losses would be significant.

How much electricity?

[Phreakiture]

I'll say the same thing here that I said on tribe.net when this came up.... How much electricity is "$9 worth"? Is that at 4 cents per kWh, or 25 cents per kWh? Electricity is found at both thos prices, and every price in between, in different places in the US, and I want to know how much electricity this car uses, not how much it costs some undefined person at some undefined location.

Re:How much electricity?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of service will allow you to suck down $9 worth of electricity in 5 minutes?

Re:How much electricity?

[dakryx]

Well considering the journalist who wrote the article is based out of San Francisco, I would assume its based off the cost per kilowatt hour in San Francisco.

Re:How much electricity?

[Phreakiture]

Well considering the journalist who wrote the article is based out of San Francisco, I would assume its based off the cost per kilowatt hour in San Francisco.

That's not much.

Re:How much electricity?

[bobdapunk]

The majority of people reading this article will not bother to look up the current kWh price and then determine the overall cost of 'filling' the device. So I think it is completely reasonable to state an example of how much it costs for a full charge to demonstrate the price savings (although I too would like to know the overall capacity and discharge rate). One just hopes the company is not using the lowest kWh price possible to sensationalize the price savings.

Re:How much electricity?

[CrazyTalk]

Then you, sir, are in the minority. Most people (i.e. the general public) can better relate to how much it is going to cost them to drive 500 miles than how many kWh this represents. Presumably (if they were honest) they used some form of average of residential electricity rates - if not, they prolly used the cheapest rate they could find.

Re:How much electricity?

[misleb]

Most likely the journalist was just repeating the claim from the manufacturer who found the cheapest electricity available and based hte claim on that. It would indeed be nice to know how much electricity this capacitor holds.

-matthew

Re:How much electricity?

[Phreakiture]

What kind of service will allow you to suck down $9 worth of electricity in 5 minutes?

Good point. Let me slap some math on it.

At $0.25/kWh, $9 is 36kWh. You would have to pass 432kW of power. At 120, 240, 480 and 600 volts, this would be a current of 3600A, 1800A, 900A and 720A, respectively.

At $0.04/kWh, it is much worse. At that price, $9 buys 225kWh, which, to pass in 5 minutes, requires a power of 2.7MW. At the same voltages as above, this would be 22.5kA, 11.25kA, 5.63kA and 4.5kA, respectively.

Hell, even at 13.2kV, this would be a fairly big current, somewhere between 32 and 205 Amps.

I'll take the slower charge, thank you very much.

Re:How much electricity?

[carpeweb]

My guess would be more cynical: the cheapest documentable price, which allows them to claim the lowest "price" ($9); and the five-minute fill-up for the required capacity is just a plug-in (ok, pun intended). They can ignore the feasibility of "pumping" that much electricity in such a short time because no such "filling stations" yet exist. Ain't marketing fun?

Re:How much electricity?

[russ1337]

At $0.25/kWh, $9 is 36kWh. You would have to pass 432kW of power. At 120, 240, 480 and 600 volts, this would be a current of 3600A, 1800A, 900A and 720A, respectively.

So, you're saying there wont be a USB charging adaptor...?

Re:How much electricity?

[jconley]

At what cost per kWh does it require 1.21 gigawatts?

Re:How much electricity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its pronounced jigawatts you insensitive clod.

Re:How much electricity?

[xs650]

Slapping some math on it from the other direction.

It takes about 25 hp to move an econo car sized sedan down the road at 60 mph. 25 hp = 18.7 kW. Assuming 90% combined system efficiencey for the controller, motor and drivetrain (I'm being generous), that's a power requirement of 20.8 kW.

At an average speed of 60 mph it will take 8.3 hours to go 500 miles.

8.3 hr x 20.8 kW = 173 kWh. That falls within the estimates you generated with your methodology.

Re:How much electricity?

[pla]

Then you, sir, are in the minority.

While true, I don't consider that a very happy thought...


Most people (i.e. the general public) can better relate to how much it is going to cost them to drive 500 miles than how many kWh this represents.

Though I agree with you, using dollars as a metric here amounts to "useless" at best, and more likely "outright deceptive". The very fact that it leaves us some room to speculate about how they arrived at that number aught to send up great big red flags in every reader's minds - But sadly, it won't. Most non-Slashdotters will merrily go about their day, longing for a $9 fillup for their car but otherwise not even wondering these same points.


Presumably (if they were honest)

And there you have the biggest red flag of all - Even if the rest of the accounting doesn't push the laws of physics to the breaking point, you still have to trust an unknown (or worse in this case - a PR department, a group known for their skill at lying without breaking the law) entity to have acted in good faith in coming up with those numbers.

Thanks, but I'll keep my credibility card snugly in my wallet until I see one in action that gets the specified dollars-per-mile.

Re:How much electricity?

[Gadgetfreak]

That's exactly the problem. People in general are a lot more aware of energy usage, but they still aren't educated enough, or motivated enough to become more educated about it. The proof is an every day example: MPG is *NOT* a measure of automobile efficiency... it's a measure of economy. But people still call their car "efficient" or "inefficient" without having a clue of what their real efficiency is. I realize the EPA in the US has standardized tests for determining MPG, so at least the ratings are comparable even if the numbers are meaningless. But people can understand "miles per gallon" so they feel like they really know something.

In the US, we also have an "EnergyGuide" on appliances, which approximates how much your appliance will cost you per year to operate. This is a 3-variable equation: Inherent efficiency/capability of the appliance * utility costs * amount you use the appliance = total cost. But people seem to not want to think... so the EnergyGuide assumes 2 out of 3 variables, and quotes a dollar cost that is pretty much entirely irrelevant. It could be orders of magnitude off, depending on the user. But you have to pay attention and understand this to figure it out out. But people understand "dollars per month" so they feel like they really know something.

In the struggle to dumb down information enough so that people can relate to it, there have been many gross assumptions made. But people can only relate, they still don't really understand what they're dealing with... and until the average Joe comprehends basic energy concepts, someone else is going to have to do the thinking for them.

The next time I hear someone complain that "It costs me $50 to fill my gas tank!" I'm gonna smack 'em. People need to learn that a "tankful of gas" is not a universal unit of measurement, and has no basis for comparison to almost anyone else.

Re:How much electricity?

[AlHunt]

>I'll say the same thing here that I said on tribe.net when this came up.... How much electricity >is "$9 worth"?

It's 100,000,000 jigawatts, but you need the upgraded blender to handle it all.

Al

Re:How much electricity?

[RingDev]

If you assume that that 500m trip is made "cruising" on a rather efficient DC system, you could probably run about .3kWh/mile. At .3kWh/m for 500 miles you would need 150kWh worth of energy. That would put you at about 16.7 cents ($0.167) per kWh.

150kWh puts you at 1.8MW in 5 minutes. Which would be 7.5kA @ 240V or 3kA @ 600V. I'm going to take a guess that your average house hold wiring isn't going to like that kind of draw.

-Rick

Re:How much electricity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do moderators pass out insightful karma on pure specuation these days? Does no one have to actually look anything up or can we pretty much just say whatever the fuck we want without checking?

Re:How much electricity?

[Rayder]

More like 2.3 cents per KWh, my car engine (Peugeot HDi) generates about 60 Kw/hour driving at 120 km/hour (75.5 milles/hour) so a 500 mile trip could be about 500 / 74.5 = 6.62 hours at 60 Kw/hour is 397 Kw used, if for such energy you pay $9, you pay $9 / 231 Kw = 2.27 cents per Kw.
This numbers are an extrapolation of my current diesel engine, maybe electric engines performs better that gas engines, and they can do more with less energy, I just don't know it.

Re:How much electricity?

[ameline]

> So, you're saying there wont be a USB charging adaptor...?

Not after you push 1000 amps through it.

Re:How much electricity?

[CrazyTalk]

Until the average Joe understands basic energy concepts? Ummm, that will be never, as is the case with just about anything remotely complicated. It will always be necessary to "Dumb things down". The best we can hope for is that it is done in a responsible manner and is not misleading. Detailed information should be available the curious/savvy, as well.

Oh, and for all practical purposes (to the general populous) a "Tankful of Gas" IS a universal of measurement. Just like doing the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs!

Re:How much electricity?

[zcsteele]

To pass that 173 kWh in 5 minutes works out to 2.076 MW. At 120 V, this requires 17.3 kA.

You try & I'll watch.

Re:How much electricity?

[Tower]

>People need to learn that a "tankful of gas" is not a universal unit of measurement, and has no basis for comparison to almost anyone else.

How so? I thought that I could directly compare the 12 gallon (gasoline) tank in my 1994 VW Jetta with the 40 gallon (diesel) tank on a 1983 Chevy Suburban? At least, I could get the same mileage, as long as the Jetta was inside the Suburban...

Re:How much electricity?

[misleb]

"Diese Seite wird momentan überarbeitet."

Re:How much electricity?

[RAMMS EIN]

``At that price, $9 buys 225kWh, which, to pass in 5 minutes, requires a power of 2.7MW.''

I think that's about what my P4 uses.

(Actually, I don't have a P4; I have a VIA Nehemia, exactly for that reason)

Re:How much electricity?

[istartedi]

So, you're saying there wont be a USB charging adaptor...?

They tried.

Re:How much electricity?

[yusing]

How much is that in empty beer cans and stale lettuce?

Re:How much electricity?

[yusing]

1 coulomb is 1 ampere for 1 second. (At 120 volts) 3600 amperes for 5 minutes is 3600*300= 1,080,000 coulombs. "A capacitor has a value of one farad when one coulomb of stored charge causes a potential difference of one volt across its terminals." The Wikipedia "supercapacitor" article shows a 2600F Maxwell capacitor. It would take 415 of them to store a million coulombs at one volt. The Maxwell Ucap weighs 0.46kg; 415 of them would weigh 191kg.

Re:How much electricity?

[smchris]

And we thought fuel pump fires were bad.

A short in one of those power lines would probably make a good, old Texas electrocution look like slow roast.

Re:How much electricity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, of course you wouldn't suck it straight down off the AC supply.

The charging station would employ local storage and replenish this from the AC supply in between customers (and overnight). So all the _very_ high current activity would take place between the local storage and the vehicle.

Of course, the electrical distribution infrastructure would still need to be beefed up to support the increased energy drain.

Re:How much electricity?

[Phreakiture]

This numbers are an extrapolation of my current diesel engine, maybe electric engines performs better that gas engines, and they can do more with less energy, I just don't know it.

They can.

Electric motor efficiency (skipping externalities) approaches 95%; 90% is not at all unreasonable. Heat engines of various types top out at 33% in most cases, with internal combustion engines at the bottom of the heap, typically around 20% (though 33% is not unheard of in ideal conditions - cars are, by definition, not ideal conditions).

On a sode note, you can sometimes gain some efficiency by using waste heat from one heat engine to drive another heat engine. Combined-cycle power plants work on this priniciple, using waste heat from a gas-turbine engine to generate steam for a steam turbine. These systems hit 50-55% efficiency. This efficiency, plus the fuel-agnostic nature of the power grid (including the ability to use renewables), is where the real promise for electric cars lies.

Re:How much electricity?

[elrous0]

Or the house standing around it.

And you think you feel nervous standing at the pump NOW just because someone is smoking nearby.

-Eric

Re:How much electricity?

[BKX]

More math for you then. First, realize that most houses in the US receive 100A 220V split phase power. Most gas stations receive house level power because it is more that they need and cheaper to install. Knocking a few dollars off when building a gas station is important to them because they tear down gas stations every ten years or so, during the tank replacement, usually because the tanks are partially under the building. Most smaller commercial buildings (up to the size of decent restaurant or even strip mall) receive 250A 120V/208V 3-phase power, which gives a voltage of 240V across all three phases. At maximum draw, assuming 100% efficiency and 100% dedication to charging batteries, that 250A 240V feed you would get a maximum of 40 charges per day, assuming the 0.25 $/kWh figure was accurate or 6.4 charges per day assuming the 0.04 $/kWh figure was accurate. Holy shit.

Now, knowing something about power, I'm sure they would go up to a higher service level to help cover it, but how much can we go? Would they switch to 315V/600V power at 1000A to get 67.2-420 charges per day? And how are the power coompanies going to keep up? No city's grid right now could handle that kind of load, or even anything close to it.

Furthermore, do you have any idea how thick the cable would have to be to transmit power at 1000A? Were talking like 0000 AWG here. We'd have to go back to full-service and start weight training our gas station attendants.

Anywho, I'm not dissing this as a possible alternative fuel technology. Actually, I think it would be great, but I don't think that these ultracapacitors are very feasible. I think that having a battery recharge/exchange program would be much more efficient. It'd be kind of like the propane exchanges we have now.

Great Scott!

[krell]

As long as you get the ultrafluxcapacitor car going at 88 mph, you can go anywhen... ahem anywhere.

Re:Great Scott!

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming that you can feed 1.twenty-one gigawatts directly into it.

Re:Great Scott!

[Anonymous Coward]

You misspelled "jigawatts" :(.

Re:Great Scott!

[Pad-Lok]

And you, sir, misspelled Jigowats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_capacitor#.22Jig owatt.22

Re:Great Scott!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mispronounced "giga".

1.2 Megawatts

[Stone Rhino]

$9 of electricity is about 100 KWh at national average rates. Passing that in 9 minutes gives you an average rate of 1.2 megawatts. What the hell knid of household has the circuit to handle that?

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[aleksiel]

what kind of a home has a gasoline pump? i'd imagine there would be special places along the roads that you plug into, just like how it works now.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Stone Rhino]

er, 5 minutes. The calculation I did on 5 minutes.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[User 956]

Passing that in 9 minutes gives you an average rate of 1.2 megawatts. What the hell knid of household has the circuit to handle that?

Well, possibly Doc Brown's house, for one. And then there's the town hall....

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[rblum]

It's clearly 1.21 Gigawatts. Your math must be off ;)

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[mark-t]

If this were real, which I currently highly doubt, the idea would be that you wouldn't charge it at home, you'd go to charging stations and charge there. If it only took 5 minutes to recharge, the time is not a problem as it's a similar amount of time to fill up with gasoline anyways.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[AKAImBatman]

He means "5 minutes". And he's correct.

100 kWhs == 3,600,000 joules

3,600,000 joules / (5 * 60) = 1,200,000 joules/per second

1,200,000 joules/per second == 1.2 mW

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

100,000Wh / 240 volts = 416.6 Ah. That's... quite a bit... Keeping in mind you do that in 9 minutes instead of an hour and you can see how much juice you'd be drawing!

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Golias]

$9 of electricity is about 100 KWh at national average rates. Passing that in 9 minutes gives you an average rate of 1.2 megawatts. What the hell knid of household has the circuit to handle that?

I would be terrified to even stand near such a fueling station, let alone use one or install it in my home.

Imagine the mortal dread of having your 1.2 megawatt car running low on power during a rainstorm.

For all it's potential energy, at least liquid gasoline is relatively stable and safe. Gasoline car crashes generally only cause explosions in the movies. Unless it's an old Ford Pinto, or a truck being tested on NBC's "Dateline."

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Tackhead]

> $9 of electricity is about 100 KWh at national average rates. Passing that in 9 minutes gives you an average rate of 1.2 megawatts. What the hell knid of household has the circuit to handle that?

The kind of household that has a petroleum distillate conductor wrapped around a thick rubber insulator. Fuel is stored in an underground tank. There are probably a few places like that within a mile or two.

An electric fueling station would probably require a similar-diameter conductor around a thick rubber insulator (to handle the thousands of amperes of current), with a pebble-bed reactor in the same underground storage space as a gas station's underground fuel tank.

Now, the only question is how to secure several hundred thousand independently owned and operated pebble-bed reactors from being dug up by contractors... but that's a human problem, not an engineering problem :)

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

1.2 mW - EASY!!! only 1.2 milliWatts.

I think you meant 1.2 MWatts.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Raven_Stark]

At least it is not 1.21 gigawatts:-)

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[OwnedByTwoCats]

200 amp service * 220 volts (hot-to-hot) = 44,000 watts.

Recharging 100,000 watt-hours in 5 minutes = 1,200,000 watts.

So the answer is, collectively, the mains feeding 27 households.

I'll let someone more familiar with the NEC spec how thick the conductors have to be.

I doubt that the company will be able to fulfill their claims.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[AKAImBatman]

Yes, thank you for correcting my typo. :)

BTW, Slashdot ate one of my links. Here it is again, in case you want to verify it through Google's calculator:

100 kilowatt hours = 360 000 000 joules

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[TheRaven64]

At 110V, you'd need about a 10MA supply. You'd probably want to run something like this at a much higher voltage (several MV, I would imagine). I suspect such a car would have two sockets on it. One would take something like a standard kettle lead and would take several hours to charge. Figuring at 8 hours for a full charge, that works out to 12.5MW, which is 'only' 100A or so. This would be for slow trickle-charging overnight or while parked. The other would be for fast-charging, and would require a much, much thicker cable which would only be available at filling stations.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Best ID Ever!]

From what I've read, the idea is that you can charge it at home, over a much longer period of time, but you use the charging station when you don't have that option (say if you're on a long road trip or don't have the time).

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[CmdrPorno]

Exactly! Most new homes have 200-amp service, and you can't use all of that for recharging. A large aircon unit might have a 60-amp circuit, and an electric dryer is usually on a 30-amp circuit.

I'm just guessing here, but I'd say that the five-minute top-off would only occur near a power station, and that a full recharge at home would be an overnight affair. OTOH, a lot of businesses and industries have high-amperage, three-phase service at their buildings, so there's the possibility of a quick recharge at someone's place of work.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[systems_joe]

Passing that in 9 minutes gives you an average rate of 1.2 megawatts. What the hell knid of household has the circuit to handle that?

Clearly each car will have to come with two ultracapacitors. The one that stays at the house can take its time recharging; a 10-hour recharge time using 20 amps at 240 volts is not unreasonable. The stationary ultracapacitor could recharge the mobile ultracapacitor quickly using thousands of amps, and not even make the lights in the house flicker.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[vandon]

You could wrap the charge cable around a duct a few times, slap a fan on the end and cook a roast while your at it.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[steveo777]

Well, I suppose when you see a couple nuke cooling towers with a big green "BP" printed on the side or a large yellow shell, then you know you can fill up. Better put it on auto-drive if you don't want your brains scrabling. I'd imaging that the medium that 1.2 Megawatts has a bit of a an electro-magnetic field to it. May just interfere with your iPod's playback.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Cid Highwind]

Taking that one step farther... The maximum current a circuit using 0000AWG copper wire (11.5mm diameter, the largest I can find specs for online) should carry is 380 amps. That means you have to run the charger at about 3200 volts to deliver 1.2MW of power. I think this would be the end of self-serve fueling, the first driver who shorts a 380A 3.2kV capacitor charger with part of their body is going to become a very messy warning to others.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Malc]

What does "hot-to-hot" mean?

I guess from your comment that it must be standard in N. America to have 200A delivered to a house.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[brunes69]

Most modern houses constructed today have 200A panels, but houses older than 10-15 years (that don't have electric heat) often have 150A. 25-30 years old and you start hitting a lot of the 100A panels.

You can find the rare house that still has an 85A panel too. Never seen less than that for a main panel though myself.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[ddt]

Assuming the tech isn't vapor, there would have to be a second "ultra-cap" you plug into your wall and leave there, that builds up a charge slowly, so that when you slink up to it with your car, you can recharge quickly.

Ever seen a capacitor explode, btw? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8nT97CrgcU

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Gabrill]

Just because they CAN be charged in 5 minutes doesn't mean they HAVE to be charged in 5 minutes. An overnite maintenence charge would probably eliminate the need for service stations for 95% of driving.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[gurps_npc]

Gasoline is not inherently safe, it is safe because of how we build the system. Things like auto-deactivate gaspumps.

Similarly, if we build an electrical infrastructure, we would make it safe.

Not that hard to do. Drive into an enclosed area, with multiple ben franklin rods, close the door, plug the car in. and let it power up. Disconnect, open the doors, drive out.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[HuckleCom]

The clever man will have 2 or 3 of these 1.2megawatt capacitors in his trunk for emergencies or to help pretty girls. The problem is the 'spare' ultracap will cost how much? probably up in the thousand/s range? .... later that night, a storm knocked out the power in Bobtown. Not to fear!

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[alienzed]

As many have said, a system is only as safe as you build it. Besides, you could probably make the fueling station ungrounded making electrocution all but impossible. Besides, gasoline is no safer.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[coinreturn]

Figuring at 8 hours for a full charge, that works out to 12.5MW, which is 'only' 100A or so. This would be for slow trickle-charging overnight or while parked.

I guess I'll have to recalibrate; I've always considered 100A to be more of a raging torrent than a trickle.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that hard to do. Drive into an enclosed area, with multiple ben franklin rods, close the door, plug the car in. and let it power up. Disconnect, open the doors, drive out to a fertility clinic, to see if you will ever be able to produce sperm again.

There. Fixed it for you, Dr. Frankenstein.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[aleksiel]

they could use a plutonium-powered nuclear reactor. or a lightning rod.... or a Mr. Fusion home energy generator...

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

What you *really* have to worry about is the adoption period we have ahead of us when *both* types of cars are on the road at the same time.

freeway pileup + ultrapacitor caused arc + ruptured gas tank = nightmare for search and rescue.

Anybody here know how to make such a huge capacitor safe under emergency conditions?

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[djtack]

Maybe of interest to you: Google calculator also understands many units, allowing you to do the calculation directly: http://www.google.com/search?q=100+KWh+/+5+minutes

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[TheRaven64]

Yes, it's a lot. It's less than an order of magnitude more power than a UK mains supply will happily deliver, however (13A at 230V gives 2.99MW; 12.5MW is only 7 times this). Of course, unless you drive for over seven hours a day (500 miles divided by 70 miles per hour, which is the maximum speed limit here) then you won't need a full charge every day. If you only drive 70 miles a day, then you can trickle-charge it in 8-hours without taxing a domestic supply. If you charge it at work as well as at home then you can lower the power requirements even more.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[mspohr]

Most people spend more than 5 minutes at home so they can charge at a more liesurely pace that is compatible with their home utility service.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[ltbarcly]

(1.3 * (10 ** 8) joules * 16 * .25) / ((12 000 volts) * 60 amperes) = 12.037037 minutes

That is to say:

(energy in 1 gallon of gasoline * 16 gallons * efficiency of most cars) / ('reasonable' voltage * 'reasonable' amperage) = 12 minutes.

That is to say:

You could fill your tank without being rediculous at all, although at much higher energy levels than you would have at your house. At your house you could safely draw:

1.3 * 10**8 joules * 16 * .25 / (220volts * 60amps) = 10.9427609 hours

if you had a special outlet installed in your garage. (this is about the same as a big AC unit) and so you could recharge each night.

Moving things around we get:
(((220 volts) * 60 amperes) * (10.94 hours) * (.11 U.S. dollars)) / (1 000 * (watt * hour)) = 15.88488 U.S. dollars

So you could recharge this thing for about 15 dollars a night, assuming you completely discharge it. Since you can reasonably charge it yourself you can either buy electricity cheaply near a power plant or if you are the only one around with one of these cars you can just charge it yourself. Good deal, safe buy.

This assumes 100% efficiency, so scale it up by 1/efficiency to get a more accurate number. As long as efficiency is more than about 40% it is cheaper than gasoline. And of course it pollutes less (or at worse if you have coal it pollutes somewhere else, which is better for 99% of people, who don't live next to an old coal plant).

Finally, the complexity of an electric car is much much much less than a gasoline car. No exhaust, no belts, no cooling system (except for the electric ac), no transmission really, no power steering or brake fluids, no oil, etc etc.

A washing machine and an electrical generator are about equivilent in complexity to an electic car and a gas powered car respectively. With an electric car you can expect to repair it every few years for about 400 dollars a pop, just like a washing machine breaks every few years for about 60 dollars a pop ($5 if you repair it yourself, or about $30 for the electric car). Electrical generators are complicated and break down all the time, and are expensive to buy and maintain, just like gas cars.

Plus electric cars will be much lighter, as much as 40%. That directly leads to efficiency. Plus with no engine, instead of wasted space you get an extra trunk, or the car company can redesign the car drastically (assuming batteries/whatever are arranged along the floor of the car for optimal low center of gravity).

Finally, the only limit to the HP of an electric car is the size of the motor(s), and so you could have anywhere between 200 and 800 HP in a standard car.

Where do I sign up?

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Schlemphfer]

>I would be terrified to even stand near such a fueling station, let alone use one or install it in my home.

And you would be terrified to even stand near a gasoline fueling station, if you've ever personally witnessed the entire fueling platform engulfed in twelve foot flames. I saw that once when driving through Alabama on the Interstate. And, having seen that, I'd be more than happy to take my chances with electric power.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Golias]

Gasoline, in liquid form, is not explosive, nor does it burn all that fast. That's why gasoline fires take so damn long to extinguish.

It only becomes a powerful explosive in vapor form. Cars force tiny trickles of it at a time into vapor with carberators or fuel injections systems. Otherwise, the stuff is just as safe to be around as pretty much any flamable liquid, including vodka, paint thinner, lamp oil, etc.

The kind of wattage we are talking about to charge these cars, however, is the sort of thing utility companies typically put barbed-wire fences around to keep people the fuck away from it.

Maybe you could rig up a system where I park my car on a conveyer belt, and go inside the station for a nice cup of coffee while it is pulled into a fully-automated charging station and then rolled out to be boarded when it's done.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Tmack]

~s/messy/crispy/

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Ucklak]

2 things come to mind.

A) You'd have a trickle charge device at home
B) You'd get some sort of storage system like solar houses and geo thermal houses have to pass on stored electricity.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[el_gordo101]

Worse, imagine a 15 mph fender-bender that shorts one of these suckers out. I wouldn't want to the fireman that has to use the jaws of life on one of these vehicles after a wreck...

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Golias]

And you would be terrified to even stand near a gasoline fueling station, if you've ever personally witnessed the entire fueling platform engulfed in twelve foot flames.

And you would be terrified of tiny little dogs, if you witnessed your brother getting his face torn off by one when you were a young child. What's your point again?

Gas fires are nasty (although incredibly rare), but at 1.2 megawatts, we are not talking about the "funny" electrocution like what happened to that kid in Jurassic Park when he was climbing the electric fence. We are talking about the kind where you become a relatively low-impedence fuse for a very, very brief moment.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[thrillseeker]

you could probably make the fueling station ungrounded making electrocution all but impossible

The last thing I would want to do is depart an area that is ungrounded, i.e. allowed to float at any given voltage, and transition suddenly back to the voltage level of the earth.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[ahodgson]

The more you do these kinds of calculations, the more you realize how truly difficult it is going to be to replace the enormous free energy in oil.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Tehrasha]

My house has several lightning rods. :)

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[ralmin]

The multiplier kilo should really be a lowercase k. You can simplify that URL even further by removing the www. and the spaces, and using the singular of minute: http://google.com/search?q=100kWh/5minute

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Golias]

I wouldn't want to the fireman that has to use the jaws of life on one of these vehicles after a wreck...

Start making them out of non-conductive plastic composites, I guess?

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Phat_Tony]

Enough power to kill you is enough power to kill you. If you're dead anyway, who cares if you've just had a heart attack and otherwise appear untouched, or if you've been converted entirely to plasma and been atomized? There's enough power to kill you all over the place.

Even if you have some irrational fear of strong power, many commercial buildings have three-phase 440 volt power running through low-gauge wire on high-amp breakers- the kind of power they'll need for charging these cars. But people rarely get fried, and I've never heard someone complaining about how dangerous it is before.

It's quite simple, and we've known for a long time, how to make electrical connections that are very safe. Ones where there's no exposed conductor a person can touch. And our electrical insulators are very good. I doubt it would take much engineering to make an electrical charging process significantly safer than our current gasoline fueling process, which still results in a few fires at pumps every year, mostly caused by static electricity shocks when someone's finishing fueling.

Yes, gasoline fueling also could be much safer with better design, but the old system got grandfathered in and the accidents are infrequent enough that there was never a serious push for a new standard. Since we get to design electric-car charging standards from scratch now, we have to opportunity to make them extra fail-safe, with really good connectors, double insulation plus shielding, ground-fault interrupters, etc.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[TheUnknownCoder]

Hot-to-hot means the voltage between the 2 phases. The voltage between a phase and neutral is usually 110V. When each phase is shifted by 180 degrees (think about the sine wave) the peak difference between p1 and p2 is 220, because one wave is at the +110 and the other is at -110. Read more.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[cosinezero]

You'll be OK with a foil hat...

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Ucklak]

Ha!

What would car crashes look like in the movies in the future with these cars?

A blinding light, a loud "BZZZZZT!", and a mess of welded metal with organic matter fused to it.
Of course the good guys would be able to cut themselves out or break away and the bad guys would have their limbs and face in various places of the ex-vehicle.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[libre lover]

An electric fueling station would probably require a similar-diameter conductor around a thick rubber insulator (to handle the thousands of amperes of current), with a pebble-bed reactor in the same underground storage space as a gas station's underground fuel tank.

Or perhaps just a bank of the same capacitors in the underground storage space as those in the vehicles being charged.

If these capacitors are for real and their failure mode can be made roughly comparable to a ruptured gas tank then the so-called "hydrogen economy" is obsolete before it even gets off the ground.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[JCMay]

Somebody a few comments back mentioned something on the order of 500A.

I just happen to have my 2005 NEC in front of me. Article 310, Conductors for General Wiring, has several tables that are of interest. Allowing for only 60 degree C operation (don't want to burn the people moving these cables :), we'd need a copper wire of at least 500 kcmil to handle the current (Table 310.17, Allowable Ampacities of Single-Insulated Conductors rated 0 Through 2000 Volts in Free Air Based On Ambient Air Temperatures of 30 degrees C).

That's a very big cable, about an inch in diameter and about a pound and a half per foot (That's for THHN wire). Remember, you'd need TWO of them in the hookup to complete the circuit.

Another problem would be ensuring proper terminations. That kind of power transfer does not work with poor terminations. The wires would have to be carefully bonded to the car, or the ohmic losses would destroy the terminals or even cause an explosion.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[drooling-dog]

If you're dead anyway, who cares if you've just had a heart attack and otherwise appear untouched, or if you've been converted entirely to plasma and been atomized? There's enough power to kill you all over the place.

I'm surprised that the Bush administration hasn't recruited you for a plum job at the Consumer Product Safety Commission yet. You have been making your political contributions, haven't you?

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Ex-MislTech]

by hot-to-hot I believe he means in 220v house voltage it is
two 110 volt circuits that are 180 degrees out of phase
when viewed on a oscilliscope.

They get the 220 volts by one phase being +110v at the exact
same time the other phase is -110v.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[KDR_11k]

It gets worse than that.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[The Warlock]

Maybe you could rig up a system where I park my car on a conveyer belt, and go inside the station for a nice cup of coffee while it is pulled into a fully-automated charging station and then rolled out to be boarded when it's done.

That actually sounds like it might work.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[flyingfsck]

A house with a slowly charging ultracapacitor in the garage, used to quickly charge the ultracapacitor in the car.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[meatspray]

Not a problem, you just throw a step down in the car and carge the car with 2.4MV at .5mA :P

"Please hook up the conductor and step away from the car."

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[TheDreadSlashdotterD]

As if we'll ever need them.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

make the fueling station ungrounded making electrocution all but impossible.

You're trolling, right?

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[idontgno]

We are talking about the kind where you become a relatively low-impedence fuse for a very, very brief moment.

The human body: A large 1/2 watt 100-ohm resistor that fails very messily.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[QRDeNameland]

what kind of a home has a gasoline pump? i'd imagine there would be special places along the roads that you plug into, just like how it works now.

One thing I haven't seen addressed here is whether or not this technology could be alternatively chargeable from a standard 110 or 220 outlet. If it could be (and I don't see any reason why it couldn't), that greatly reduces the infrastructure needed to implement this. If people could charge their cars off of regular outlets at home and work, then the need for the 5 minute recharge would only be for those cases when you need to drive over 500 miles at a stretch or in instances where one forgets or is unable to recharge during the vehicle's downtime.

I think the technical ability to able to recharge in 5 minutes could be a great boon to electric car technology, but unless it has to be done that way, I think most consumers would opt to charge at home and work. This would be especially true if there is a premium on high capacity recharging, as I would assume there would be.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[ChrisMaple]

An electric space heater is 1 kW; most modern houses have circuit breakers and wiring for 100 to 200 Amps - 11.5 to 23 kW. 1.2 MW is only 50 times the top of that range: a lot, but not enough to give a reasonable person the heebie-jeebies.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[dfsmith]

You plug it into the super-ultra-capacitor (which is charged at 1kW).

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[pexatus]

$9 of electricity is about 100 KWh at national average rates. Passing that in 9 minutes gives you an average rate of 1.2 megawatts. What the hell knid of household has the circuit to handle that?

You could buy a device (e.g. another capacitor) that would sit in your garage and trickle charge all day over your existing power lines. Then the device quick-charges your battery when you plug it in to your car over thicker cable.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[houghi]

Perhaps they can use the internet tubes. My ADSL does 6Mega things.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[ksheff]

mechanics and emergency personnel would just love these too.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[It's all Krista's Fa]

You're going to tear open metal hinges and frame members with a plastic crowbar?

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[ksheff]

A 100-200A breaker would be the main switch for the entire house, so you're basically talking about enough juice for a neighborhood.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[ksheff]

a farm.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[fname]

I think the conversion is a little easier... 100 kWhs/(5/60)= 1.2 MW

Also, since this is at a filling station, I imagine they'd be charging premium prices, at least double the standard rate. So more like 600 kW.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Technician]

I'd imaging that the medium that 1.2 Megawatts has a bit of a an electro-magnetic field to it. May just interfere with your iPod's playback.

Coax eliminates that problem. The magnetic field from the current in the center conductor exactly matches the magnetic field in the outer conductor with a net result of zero field remaining outside the outer conductor.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Malc]

Hmmm, can two-phase 220V be used for devices from countries that have 220V single-phase power? Assuming frequency is not an issue.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[jonniesmokes]

Yep. This has been the biggest orgy of energy in world history. I think, from reading all these Peak Oil sites that the hangover is just a few years away - or maybe even starting now.

From a physics point of view, its not the actual energy that's the problem. Its energy on demand. Everyone keeps coming up with creative ideas, but I don't see any way better than to just reduce our energy usage and become more efficient. I think american's could probably use 1/10th the amount of energy and still have most of the quality of life they have. It'd be a strenuous transition, but we'd loose some weight and probably get healthier too.

Too bad the oil and coal companies are doing the same thing the cigarette companies did; trying to convince us all just to keep on buying that black toxic waste only to burn it up in our otherwise clean skies. And people are complicent in the act. You can only feel so sorry for a smoker who gets lung cancer, and you can only feel so sorry for people who burn up natural resources and destroy their own future.

There are those who fire back at me with a whine, "But I live in the burbs and I *have* to drive 50 miles to work". I usually smile and explain that I thought we lived in a free country where you decided where you live and work. I don't advocate a totalitarian goverment dictating to people how to live their lives, but sometimes it seems that Americans decline any responsibility for their actions and the results of those actions.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

If they could make these "ultra" capacitors cheaply enough, why not just swap them out each time you visit the "pump"? It would be like a battery but easier (though don't drop it).

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[pimpimpim]

The actual most practical solution I read here on slashdot some time ago was the idea of standardized battery packs. You just go to a 'gas station', exchange your empty pack with a new one, and on you go again. There is already a network of stations at hand, so not much of a problem there. The only problem might be is that there will be a time were gas and battery packs will be sold at the same time, and gas+high voltage electricity probably don't mix too well.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Orange Crush]

As many have said, a system is only as safe as you build it. Besides, you could probably make the fueling station ungrounded making electrocution all but impossible. Besides, gasoline is no safer.

Even if the station was completely ungrounded, you, your car, the parts your standing on, etc. are all going to be considerably less charged than the "pump" so you can still get a potentially lethal shock at those power levels. i.e. a door knob isn't very well grounded, but you can discharge static and shock yourself to one pretty easily.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[/dev/trash]

That's GIGGA watt

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[doesnothingwell]

"a lot, but not enough to give a reasonable person the heebie-jeebies."

Lets see theres the energy of 1200 or so 1000watt space heaters in a large metal coffin/oven incase of rapid failure. And for real shits and giggles look up "arc flash", a kind of electric incendairy bomb.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Hidyman]

The thing about gasoline is that is is very volitile.
What that means is that at normal temperatures (like the ones humans can live in) gasoline evaporates VERY fast.
So, in theory, liquid gasoline is safe, in practice, well ...

On the other hand, I have put out cigarettes in gas cans full of gas.
Luckily, the flash point of gas is lower that the heat of a burning cigarette. (usually)

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not conveyer the capacitors? Design cars such that a compartment can be opened and swapped out. Yours goes behind the fence to get charged and is later put into someone else's car. Actually, with such a system, you could charge a car in minutes no matter what kind of storage it used, ordinary batteries, fuel cells, etc.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

you just pwned hiM!

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[jeffstar]

You can't run 1.2 MW on coaxial cable though can you? Really I don't know if coax that hefty exists. Even big microwave towers cell sites don't run 1.2 MW through their antennas.

To get 1.2 MW of Power flowing into your car you are going to either need a 1000A at 12kV or 100A at 120kV.

Either way you are going to have a pretty meaty conductor or one that is insulated to hell.

The slow night charge (when electricity is cheaper) will be a good option

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Dion]

Dude, didn't you read the comments they we are talking 2700000 Watts for a 5 minute charge, even if you have 8 hours to charge your car it's still 337000 Watts.

If you charge the car on 3 phases of 400 volts then you still need to pull 280A on each phase, for 8 hours, the largest plugs I've seen were rated at 127A.

Multiply that by a normal appartment building and the current copper prices will seem like a bargin once the current infrastructure has melted away and needs to be replaced.

There is very little that can replace oil and ICE for power density and even safety.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Dion]

Are you saying that 13A*230V = 2990000W?

I think you are off by around 1000.

You can pull about 3kW on a normal outlet.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

How inert is gasoline if you crash into it with a 1.2 Megawatt spark?

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Yonzie]

Gasoline, in liquid form, is not explosive, nor does it burn all that fast.

Wrong. Gasoline, in liquid form, is not explosive, nor can it burn at all.
Gasoline, in vaporized form, burns very well and extremely fast under strict limits. AFAIR it is between 8-12% vapour (don't quote me on that).

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Yonzie]

On the other hand, I have put out cigarettes in gas cans full of gas. Luckily, the flash point of gas is lower that the heat of a burning cigarette. (usually)

First, you must be pretty fucking stupid to do that.
Second, the flash point of gasoline is -38 degrees Celsius (or -36 degrees Fahrenheit). Do you think your cigarette burns at -40 degrees?!?

The real reason you are still alive is that gasoline can only burn at a very specific mixture of (AFAIR) between 8-12% vapour to air. If you exit this narrow mix, it will not burn.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[jamesh]

Enough power to kill you is enough power to kill you. If you're dead anyway, who cares if you've just had a heart attack and otherwise appear untouched, or if you've been converted entirely to plasma and been atomized? There's enough power to kill you all over the place.

If you get hit with enough power to stop or corrupt your heart beat, you stand a good chance of being revived if it happens in the presence of someone who knows anything about CPR. If you've been vapourized then the outlook isn't so good...

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[jamesh]

I think most of the electric cars these days use inductive chargers. No exposed contacts, so rain shouldn't be much of a problem.

Such a system could be abused of course but you'd have to defeat lots of safety interlocks to do it.

As for your comment on gasoline explosions, it doesn't happen all the time like in the movies but it does happen (today AEST in fact). That could be LPG though...

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

According to hollywood, if you so much as get a scratch on the paintwork of a US-built car it will explode in a huge fireball.

I can't see volvo or saab encouraging the swedish film industry to portray their cars like that :-)

Hmm, thinking about swedish movies, Saabs must have lovemaking on the hood (bonnet) as a design requirement...

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[Ex-MislTech]

Some items you can use 2 phase or single phase, ie. a heater that has no fan.

The best way to know the power situation around the world is a list
like this one, I'd verify its accuracy elsewhere, but it gives you
a good idea of what to expect, and the different connectors.

http://www.kropla.com/electric2.htm

Some places sell universal adaptors too, some auto detect.

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[vipw]

And good luck finding a service station the other 5% of the time. I think that if electric cars gain popularity, service stations will lose first profitability and secondly quantity.

If they're selling something to only 5% of the previous market, how can there be a viable business model?

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[mfrank]

An LED (Light Emitting Dude).

Re:1.2 Megawatts

[gurps_npc]

This should be marked as off topic. I know everything you wrote, did not deny it, but it is irrelevant. You just put it down to argue with my PERSPECTIVE.

Gasoline is NOT "a safe product". Neither is vodka, paint thinner, lamp oil, propane, the radioactive particle in most smoke detectors (If you swallow it will kill you), ciggarettes, lead-acid car batteries, etc. etc.

The kind of wattage we are talking about here can easily and simply be made safe. You listed something yourself. I am sorry if I did not take the extra minutes to put in the few MINOR extra details you put in.

Please don't insult my answer then say "While you are totally wrong, here is how I would do exactly what you said we could and I said could not be done."

Hate to see this car in an accident

[Nom du Keyboard]

Hate to see the short that could occur if this car was in the wrong kind of accident.

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that any worse than having a big tank of volatile liquid in your car?

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[nizo]

I always felt the same way about batteries: not sure I would want to get splashed with a trunkfull of battery acid when I get in an accident.

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to see the short that could occur if this car was in the wrong kind of accident.

It's not like you ever see cars turn into fireballs today. (And I'm not talking movies.)

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[PitaBred]

You'd rather get splashed with a trunkfull of highly flammable hydrocarbons?

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[ZorinLynx]

Actually, yes. Battery acid will burn your skin right away; gasoline will not unless something else ignites it.

Of course I suppose if the ignition happens, you will be more fucked than you would have been with the battery acid (provided none of it got in your eyes)

Oww...

-Z

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[jizziknight]

No. Cars only explode in Hollywood. Chances are, if there was a short, it'd be grounded pretty quick. Which isn't to say that something bad couldn't happen, it'd just be one of those "freak accidents". Just like your car exploding (hell, even catching on fire) is a "freak accident".

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[Anonymous Coward]

At least the family will save on the cremation bill.

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[Zaatxe]

Hate to see the short that could occur if this car was in the wrong kind of accident.

You are more likely to die from the trauma in the case of an accident. Or from the explosion, if you have an american car (I saw them exploding in the movies, I swear!). Anyway, the same way cars have safety devices (like controlled deformation, gas interruption system, air bags, safety belts, etc), I'm sure the auto makers will have a good idea to keep the capacitors safe.

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[vertinox]

Hate to see the short that could occur if this car was in the wrong kind of accident.

This is just like the argument that Hydrogen cars are more dangerous than gasoline cars.

If they can contain liquid with the explosive equivalent of dynamite, then I think they can contain this.

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[PitaBred]

My point was that in neither case is it terribly likely for that to happen. Battery acid would be worse, but that's why they encase them so well. For the most part.

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[Hex4def6]

This is just like the argument that Hydrogen cars are more dangerous than gasoline cars.

If they can contain liquid with the explosive equivalent of dynamite, then I think they can contain this.

Wrong.

Lets think about another analogy: Would you rather hold a cup of gasoline and light it, or a cup of dynamite and light it? How quickly the energy can be released it much more important than the amount of energy per volume (within reason).

Gasoline can burn nicely when it gets out of the tank. This mythic supercapacitor that they're talking about os the equiviliant of the dynamite; the speed at which it can release energy is orders of magnitude quicker.

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[evilviper]

Battery acid will burn your skin right away;

Yes, if you don't wash the acid off your skin within a couple days, that might pose a bit of a problem...

gasoline will not unless something else ignites it.

Cars are very hot. You only need a small bit of the gasoline fumes to waft down to the catalytic converter, or to the exhaust header, and you're in big trouble. Hell, even a little spark of static electricity will do it.

Besides, the event which caused the gasoline to spray all over you is more than likely to have other, much nastier effects than a minor chemical burn.

Re:Hate to see this car in an accident

[JumperCable]

On the plus side, any accident involving one of these vehicles will automatically clear the road. No more traffic jams!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Golias]

How about a system in which cars connect to electric lines along the highways, like they use for electric busses and trollies, and use ultra-capacitors to get from the highway to your home?

Behold the future.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Those lines that busses and trollies connect to are an eye-sore and don't make any sense outside of densely populated areas.

shocking news

[User 956]

CNN has recently posted a story about a company (EEStor) that plans on offering UltraCapacitor storage products. The claim being that you charge the ultracapacitor in 5 minutes, with approximately $9 of electricity and then drive 500 miles.

This is simply shocking news.

Re:shocking news

[R34L]

You mean it's shocking that for once "batteries" are included?

Re:shocking news

[EMeta]

No! It's revolting!

Re:shocking news

[Isotopian]

Why is there always such resistance to this?

Re:shocking news

[sklib]

Many people just don't have the capacity.

Re:shocking news

[SeaFox]

This is simply shocking news.

That comment was truly the joule of this entire discussion!

Re:shocking news

[onthefenceman]

CNN has always kept us up-to-date on current events...

Re:shocking news

[p0tat03]

Great joke. We should induct you into the Comedy Hall of Fame.

Re:shocking news

[YellowFellow]

My buddy Joules does.

Re:shocking news

[Anonymous Coward]

Wa Wa Watt!?!?!

Re:shocking news

[Anonymous Coward]

But it could transform their lives!

Re:shocking news

[bakes]

Enough already! Ohm my god!

Re:shocking news

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it when an interesting discussion is sparked off...

Re:shocking news

[Anonymous Coward]

Watt you complaining about?

Re:shocking news

[Eudial]

Currently there isn't room in the Comedy Hall of Fame.

Re:shocking news

[aug24]

This thread reminded of the Stooges. You must be Mho.

J.

Re:shocking news

[Gnividon]

Yes, it's good they didn't leave us in the dark!

Re:shocking news

[jvl001]

Series-ly, I can't keep up with all these parallel electric circuit jokes!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[wcb4]

I am old enough to remember city streets in places with overhead power lines for this. Its ugly. Why? I get 500 miles on a tank of gas (13.5 gallons and 29 miles to the gallon) so why not just let me pull into a service station, which now takes almost 5 minutes for a full tank, and plug in... charge me $20 for the charge, make the 100% profit ($9 for the elec, $9 profit, 2$ to cover overhead)... I end up better off they end up better off (distribution now done by the existing power lines, no need for trucks) and eventually, when we figure out how to make electricity cleaner (or convert part of of grid to wind or water turbine or whatever) the environment would be better off. Sounds like a win/win/win situtation

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[AKAImBatman]

I'm not sure about these long distance claims, you would probably need a huge capacitor

The whole idea behind an ultracapacitor is that it stores significantly more energy than a regular capacitor.

Linky:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultracapacitors

Wonkapower?

[krell]

"What the hell knid of household has the circuit to handle that?"

The vermicious knids burn up in the atmosphere, so we should not have much to worry about. However, you might want to consider powering your car on Wonka's new energy bar.

Power ?

[Bugmaster]

I'm not sure how this will work. Considering the amount of energy their capacitor must store, and the 5-minute time frame, the power requirements (power is energy over time) must be enormous, far beyound the limits that a household electrical circuit can supply.

Re:Power ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I said the same thing about gasoline, but Texaco came and installed a gasoline pump in my garage for only half a million dollars!

Re:Power ?

[truthsearch]

We don't refuel our gasoline cars at home. Maybe we won't "refuel" our electric cars at home either.

Re:Power ?

[TheRaven64]

As I said elsewhere, I would imagine two chargers being available for the vehicle; a fast charger and a trickle-charger. The trickle-charger would run overnight or while parked for long periods. Many people don't drive more than thirty miles a day, and they could easily trickle-charge this much into their cars overnight. For longer trips, you can stop at a filling station and get a quick zap up to full power.

500 miles works out at a minimum of seven hours of driving at the legal speed limit in the UK, so it seems unlikely that many people will need a complete charge every day. Topping up the charge at home is feasible, even if a complete charge isn't. The real question is whether it will be economically feasible for filling stations to exist for infrequent use. I would imagine that they would have to be fully automated, and partially subsidised by vehicle sales.

Re:Power ?

[misleb]

The advantage to overnight charging would be the price drop. You would save a LOT of money charging at home vs. at a station during the day.

-matthew

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Dr. Eggman]

Highway tolls are outrageous enough, but atleast I can reduce the cost of my trip by buying a more efficient car. If we had to run off highway lines like electric busses (or cars in the Super Mario Bros. movie, blech) We'd all be paying the same (likely extravegant) rate. Then you also have people who actually buy cars/trucks for work like farming, construction, or just a camping trip. I don't think they'd enjoy cars that rely on the Highway supply and ultra-capacitors that only get you from highway to home.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Catamaran]

Yes, but a lot less than a battery.

I'd like to see the charging cable...

[Doctor Memory]

If you're going to push enough electricity to "drive a four-seat sedan like a Ferrari" in five minutes, you're going to have to move several hundred volts at lots of amps. Hope you don't have to stop for a charge in the rain, there's no way I'd want to be around both water and that kind of current!

Re:I'd like to see the charging cable...

[cecille]

For that matter, just recharging the thing in an non-standard location would be a problem. What happens if your car runs out of charge when you're not at a station? Now we can just grab a jerry can of gas and put in enough to get to the next station. How would one go about transporting something to recharge a car like this? I can't really see wanting to walk around with ex a giant battery to recharge your car.

Re:I'd like to see the charging cable...

[tddoog]

I can see a burgeoning market for big ass jumper cables. Just flag down an electric car like your own and fill it up.

Or maybe just patience and a lightning rod.

Re:I'd like to see the charging cable...

[guruevi]

Why is everybody so afraid of water? Water (H2O) is a perfect insulator... I would worry more about the magnetic induction from the wiring passing in/under your car and my manhood/child support next to the fact my Buick's compass would get out of whack everytime I try to get some "charge" and other general problems related to magnetic fields and heaps of iron.

Re:I'd like to see the charging cable...

[rblum]

*Distilled* water is a perfect insulator. Wake me the next time it rains distilled water in your neighborhood.

Re:I'd like to see the charging cable...

[hab136]

Just replace the ultra-capacitor, like propane tanks. Pop out the empty one, put in a full one. Bring the empty one back to the store for credit.

Re:I'd like to see the charging cable...

[CagedBear]

1. Pull over and call AAA
2. They call Bob's Towing and Roadside Recharge Service.
3. Bob shows up with a truck that glows at night, plugs in your car and enjoys some fresh chewing tobaccy while it charges.
4. You pay Bob.
5. Away you go.

Re:I'd like to see the charging cable...

[Anonymous Coward]

rainwater is an insulator. 18 MOhm-pure water has a really high resistance of... well, 18.2 MOhm/cm.

Re:I'd like to see the charging cable...

[misleb]

How about a really long retractable power cord?

Just don't let Sony make them

[davidwr]

Exploding laptop batteries are one thing, but exploding fully-charged ultracapacitors, now you are talking real damage.

Re:Just don't let Sony make them

[Ruie]

Exploding laptop batteries are one thing, but exploding fully-charged ultracapacitors, now you are talking real damage.

EMP ?

Re:Just don't let Sony make them

[Wierdy1024]

new weapon of mass destruction here - brings a new meaning to car bombs - no extra explosives needed.

"contains no hazardous materials whatsoever" ???

[rickkas7]

OK, I'll go along with there possibly not being toxic chemicals in there, but I'm thinking carrying that much of a charge in really big capacitors is anything but entirely harmless should you develop a short circuit. Personally I'd classify the likely flying shards of molten metal "hazardous."

If it sounds too good ...

[moseman]

Maybe they are looking for investors and need to generate (pun intended) some interest.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[coyote-san]

There are places in the west where a 500 mile range would be very useful. I've driven several 100+ sections of interstate, and it's probably an extra 50 miles to the next station beyond that.

How difficult will it be to deliver that much power (for an interstate!) to a remote location? What if that station is down for some reason?

P.S., in the worst cases you learn to fill up at every station. It's not that the distance to the next service station is so long, it's that the road may be blocked (rockslide, avalanche, etc.) just miles from that station and you'll be forced to backtrack.

With no data...

[Sunburnt]

...this comes across as "News for Investors" more than "News for Nerds." Get back to me when the guy can demonstrate a prototype rather than a spiel.

From oil to coal.....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Car owners would still be using the power grid which depends overwhelmingly on coal so you can now exploit your own countrymen! Look on the bright side, you would then be using a U.S. resource.

Eastern Kentucky sits on the Saudi Arabia of coal. It's coal powers the engine that drives this country's electric grid and still it's the poorest place in America. Probably because it's residents overwhelmingly vote for politicians who share their "values" who later sell them out to industry interests.

So on the one hand, I am sad that they're poor and on the other hand that they can be so stupid. Just saying.....

(Disclaimer: I'm a Kentuckian)

Re:From oil to coal.....

[mark-t]

The advantage of electricity remains, even if you are still polluting with your power generation facilities.

It is easier to institute stricter pollution control measures at centralized power generation facilities than it is to implement equivalent levels of pollution control in vehicles all over the country. Even very "dirty" methods of producing such power can always be upgraded over time to be less polluting anyways, or possibly even migrate towards emission free power generation. Also, this migration does not have to be instantaneous either, as an incremental change is often much more economical and practical than a single large change anyways. This sort of upgrading would be completely impractical for individual automobile.

Also, it reduces dependancy on foreign oil.

Re:From oil to coal.....

[Politburo]

Even so, coal mining in its current form is extremely destructive. See here.

Re:From oil to coal.....

[Golias]

Eastern Kentucky sits on the Saudi Arabia of coal.

Only in terms of production, not in terms of capacity.

There is far more coal, which would be far cheaper (and safer) to get at, out West. The only reason coal mining goes on in your state at all is because of pork-barrel politics "protecting" your local industry.

But instead of strip-mining useless desert that nobody ever sees except for during trans-continental flights, we are digging ever deeper death-traps in the Southeast. Your government at work.

Re:From oil to coal.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Also consider that producing energy in a large plant will be far more efficient than producing the same amount of energy in many many small engines.

Re:From oil to coal.....

[plague3106]

Even better, newer (hopefully greener) power stations can be built, without affects any of the cars on the road.

Once again, this goes to show any problem can be solved by adding another layer of abstraction. ;-)

Re:From oil to coal.....

[ScentCone]

Even so, coal mining in its current form is extremely destructive

How about littering every ridgetop and field not within the eyesight of rich eco-lobbyists with giant, bird-slaughtering windmills? Or having people cut down even more rainforest and slurp up even more aquifers to grow crops intended for ethanol? "Destructive" is a relative term.

Re:From oil to coal.....

[sycodon]

Can we say "nucelar"?

On a separate note, it would be a shame to let the lack of "clean" generation of electricity impede the creative use of systems that employ electricity. It would become a chicken or the egg scenario. If someone does come up with a way to store that much power and can take a charge as fast as the story indicates, then you can bet someone will come up with a way to safely deliver that charge.

Re:From oil to coal.....

[mark-t]

That'd be the general idea... And begining by moving to a virtually exclusively or entirely electrical based automobile would provide a fairly strong incentive for such systems to be developed. And at least they can be adopted incrementally, which is usually more practical in big industries than a single large switchover.

Re:From oil to coal.....

[dhartshorn]

Steam turbine power plants waste about 2/3 the energy they consume, regardless of how clean they are or what power source they use. Until we get a lot of use from that waste heat (on the way), we'll want to promote other sources, particularly if we double our electric power consumption due to a switch to electric vehicles.

Re:From oil to coal.....

[SimplyI]

Power generation isn't the only thing which needs to be considered. There's also power storage and conveyance: batteries vs. gas tanks; power lines vs. gas trucks; etc. I think the advantage goes to gas for the time being. To be convinced, I would need a significantly more detailed study on all the aspects of the proposed power system. Though, I guess it doesn't really matter how it's decided if whatever decision is going to be forced by the government. (And, in case you wonder, no, I don't agree that the government should control/regulate business, even in the realm of "public utilities").

You need 4000 Amp line

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

500 miles? Let us say the hybrid has the efficiency similar to Prius, 50 MPG. To go 500 miles you need to store as much energy as there is in 10 gallons of gasoline. 10 gallons of gas, is 37.5 litres of gas, that is 30 Kg of gas.

Energy content of gasoline is 45 MJ/Kg. That means you are storing 1.35e09 Joules of energy. You are charging it in 5 minutes? So dividing by 300 seconds, the Power rating for the charger is 4500000 Watts or 4.5 MW. If you try to charge it from your friendly neighbourhood 110V line, the amp rating for the plug is drum roll please, 40909 Amps

Now think when you are pumping 25 gallons of gas into that Hummer in 3 minutes, you have a 8 MW device in your hands!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Catamaran]

I agree, there will always be a need for long-distance vehicles.

Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Pink Tinkletini]

It's called a MetroCard. Plenty faster, more energy-efficient, and more convenient than a car, and it only costs $76 a month. And you can actually do stuff on your way to work, like read. Try that next time you're stuck in traffic on the so-called "freeway."

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[schnikies79]

try that the next time your in my town. no public transportation.

sorry, but some of us just don't like living in a metro area.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[ElleyKitten]

I wish we had good public transportation here...

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Scrameustache]

It's called a MetroCard. Plenty faster, more energy-efficient, and more convenient than a car, and it only costs $76 a month. And you can actually do stuff on your way to work, like read.

1- Try going 500 miles in a municipal transit system.
2- Some of us get motion sickness, you insensitive clod!

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Matimus]

Not everyone lives in New York City.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Pink Tinkletini]

That's fair, and completely understandable--but if I were consuming a premium of energy to sustain my rural lifestyle, I wouldn't complain about having to pay for all that extra energy. Some people may well find they prefer to live wastefully, but I often wish they'd understand these choices come at a price.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[nizo]

I keep standing by the road here in Albuquerque, waving my MetroCard, but so far it hasn't gotten me to work :-(

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Boston. Or San Francisco. Or Chicago. Or Washington...

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount of smug contained in the parent is disturbing.

Some of use like having that extra freedom; from things like inhaling the smell of BO and urine and listening to crazy people rant for 45 minutes on the way to work.

Your troll-fu is weak.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[XenoRyet]

That'd be great if I worked or lived anywhere near a stop, and my schedule matched theirs.

The point is that public transportation is great for a specific group of cercumstances, and horrible for everything else. If you are really in one of those situations where public transport really is more convinient than a car, then you probably already use it. Not every transportation goal can be accomplished with public transportation. For most people, some sort of personaly controlled transportation is still required.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Pink Tinkletini]

What extra freedom? If you'd chosen to live somewhere that had been built around public transit, you wouldn't need to go off the map to begin with.

Personally, I prefer to be free from the hassles of car ownership and maintenance. I do enjoy driving—but on the open road, not through traffic every day to work. Leave that kind of driving to the experts. I'm happy to sit and get some work done, read the newspaper, or just do the crossword.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Shadow Wrought]

Were you trying to take a left turn?

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[everphilski]

And some of us commute 5 minutes to work in a town of 250,000. Maybe I just got lucky ... I fill up my gas tank once a month.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, Detroit. A shining example of cleanliness, safety and organization.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Rakishi]

What extra freedom? If you'd chosen to live somewhere that had been built around public transit, you wouldn't need to go off the map to begin with.

BS and I've lived in NYC (which from what I've seen has a very good public transit system) for much of my life.

  Wants to go shopping for many things, or buy them at an inexpensive store or buy specialty items? Have fun dragging them back through subways and busses.

Want to buy something large (say a desk)? Hope you enjoy dragging that on a dolly for 10 blocks and down subway stairs (or paying to have it shipped to you).

Want to get somewhere quickly or at night? Hope you find a Taxi (1.5 hours by public transportation vs. 20 minutes by car for some routes).

Is it hot and humid out? Enjoy cooking on your 10 minutes walk to the station, your 5 minute wait in the station for the train and then another 10 minutes when you get off

If you have severe disabilities all of that probably goes up by a few factors, I doubt people with 600lbs (life support + them) of mass would have much fun on public transportation.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[jweller]

My wife takes the metro to work, after she drives 13 miles to get to it. Oh and thats only on the nights she doesn't have class. Seems she (and I) am a bit squeamish about getting off at the Anacostia stop and waiting for a shuttle. Then running out of class, hoping it didn't run over, to catch the last shuttle back to the metro. It's a great system for what it is, but it's just not practical all the time.

Oh and some of us will get quite motion sick trying to read on a metro.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[kfg]

It's called a MetroCard. Plenty faster, more energy-efficient, and more convenient than a car

I can't sleep in my MetroCard; and they won't let me use it from Albany anyway.

KFG

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[plague3106]

If you have severe disabilities all of that probably goes up by a few factors, I doubt people with 600lbs (life support + them) of mass would have much fun on public transportation.

While I agree with your points, the 600 pounder deserves whatever he gets. I have no sympathy for people that can't refuse a donut and walk more than 10 seconds.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[protohiro1]

I live without a car in Denver. The people who need cars live in suburbs designed around them. They should be ok with paying for that priveledge

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[gatesvp]

You've started a good fight, but it's a tough one. A lot of the difficulties with public transportation are rooted deeply in human perception, so your quick comment will not please anybody who owns a car.

So start with the basic truths.

1. A personal vehicle is the most expensive (common) form of transportation.
2. The total cost of a personal vehicle effectively decreases with each additional rider. (say family members)
3. The total cost of public transportation increases with each additional rider (again, family members)
4. Living far away from places is you frequent is increase the transportation expense.
   • With public transportation, this increase usually happens in a small number of small increases (to a limit).
   • With a personal vehicle this increase is generally linear relative to distance travelled.
5. A personal vehicle offers certain benefits for large carriage not offered by public transportation.
6. Other methods of transportation (taxi, car rental) can be substituted for special needs.

So there are many balancing points to this whole equation. A family with 3 kids will generally own a vehicle because of #2, #4 & #5. Even where good transportation access is available, it is reasonable to operate a car paying for 5 metro passes every month.

OTOH, a young couple living together, could not make this justification unless the additional time spent on a bus did not balance the additional cost of owning a car. If my girlfriend and I are living together (at say age 25), then we'd be best to acquire an apartment close to a metro route and close to where we work. As long as one (or both) of us maintain a driver's licence (generally cheap) we can rent cars on odd weekends and take taxis where necessary.

A retired couple who have difficulty walking long distances will be better served by a car.

The truth is it's all lifestyle and decisions. I'll be the first to agree that I have met many 20-somethings who make expensive lifestyle decisions without even understanding what they've done, but it's no reason to wave around "MetroSuperiority".

Personally, I live less than 1/2 mile from all my basic amenities and my local bus stop. As a bachelor with a girlfriend (we both have bus passes), we find that we can bus most places or get together at a good neutral location. When I really need a car, I'll rent one for the weekend, or I'll arrange to cab in emergencies or late nights. Our combined transportation costs are well under $200 / month and it works for us.

People who see my $800 cell phone are suprised that I don't own a car. I just tell them that I can afford the phone expressly because I'm not running a car :)

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[lupine]

Actually according to wikipedia:
Arlington, Texas (pop. 360,000) is the largest city in the United States without public transportation

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he was referring to people with certain types of disability requiring both an electric wheelchair and an O2 tank handy. The wheelchair can be 250 pounds or more, depending on how heavy-duty the model is, the tank's not light either, and then there's the person being carried by this apparatus. 600 pounds is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but they're definitely hauling more mass than most obese people.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Pink Tinkletini]

C'mon. Have some respect for yourself, and for everyone else on this forum. Don't cite Wikipedia as if it were any more reliable than the bathroom wall.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[ChronosWS]

$76 cost to the rider. What is the ACTUAL cost? Most public transportation systems are subsidized by the non-public-transportation-using public, often through things like a gasoline tax or sales tax. Most of the people in favor of public transportation (over the personal automobile) are not bearing (or even cognizant) of the true cost of such services.

I would be interested to see if public transportation riders would happily pay for their chosen mode of transportation if it were not subsidized. Does anyone have a good comparative analysis of the actual costs of public transportation systems?

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Pink Tinkletini]

That's a good point, but don't forget that private automobile use is if anything even more subsidized than mass transit, primarily through enormous amounts of federal funding for highways and local road projects. Add to that the numerous economically-distorting incentives to sprawl—tax breaks on mortgages for single-family homes and laws requiring rural service (e.g. of telecoms and postal delivery) being the two that immediately spring to mind—and it becomes clear that rural, landowning car drivers ought to be shouldering far more of the costs of their lifestyle than they already are.

This is such a truism within the urban studies literature that nobody even bothers to mention it anymore. I'll work on references, will post back tomorrow.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Pink Tinkletini]

So you take a cab, or you rent a vehicle, or you pay to have it shipped. You can afford to do this because you're not sinking money into car insurance, maintenance, or the cost of buying a car in the first place. And because you live and work in a world-class commercial hub, chances are you earn more to begin with, too.

If you have severe disabilities, you'd consider yourself lucky to live within a 20-minute ambulance ride of some of the world's best hospitals with access to top talent and facilities, as you would if you lived on, say, the UWS of Manhattan. There's a reason New York City has one of the longest life expectancies of any city in the nation.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Rakishi]

So you take a cab, or you rent a vehicle, or you pay to have it shipped.

You can afford to do this because you're not sinking money into car insurance, maintenance, or the cost of buying a car in the first place.

Having the weakly groceries shipped sure is cost efficient...
You probably waste so much time without a car (walking places, taking the subway when the car would be just as good) that the savings hardly even out if you had instead worked for that amount of time. Note that your later statement about earning more also goes against your views as if you earn more your time is worth more so owning a car costs less due to how much time it saves you. Of course renting and taxis also cause you to waste time not just money.

And because you live and work in a world-class commercial hub, chances are you earn more to begin with, too.

A lot of people in NYC don't earn that much; many of them probably don't own cars due to the insane costs of doing so in NYC which forces them to not really have an option.

If you have severe disabilities, you'd consider yourself lucky to live within a 20-minute ambulance ride of some of the world's best hospitals with access to top talent and facilities, as you would if you lived on, say, the UWS of Manhattan.

Most people with such disabilities probably die of "stress" as the care they need isn't that difficult. Note that if they had to use public transit (notice that my point was that public transit fails in various cases not that it fails in NYC) they would die much sooner due to the immense stress it would involve.

There's a reason New York City has one of the longest life expectancies of any city in the nation.

So in a discussion about public transportation in general where I cite problems prevalent with it wherever it exists you respond by saying "well in NYC." So in other words your answer is that my problems only have solutions if you live in NYC?

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Rakishi]

Yup and weight depends on the person I guess.
The ones who can't move anything except their chin may weight even more than 600lbs as they need a lot of life support equipment (redundant batteries for breathing equipment, etc.) and usually are overweight (not easy to exercises in such a position).

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[ChronosWS]

Well, I already know that here in Washington State, our gas taxes and auto taxes pay the state's portion of roads - I believe property taxes are not allowed to be used for that purpose, but I could be wrong. Bus systems, of course, directly benefit from the existence of a solid road system, so for the purposes of comparing bus systems to automobile, it probably isn't useful to examine the cost of road maintenance. Here in the Puget Sound, we don't have an alternative mass transit system from buses to speak of. A combination of poor topography and crappy public planning ensure that we probably never will.

Of course it isn't really an "us vs. them" problem any how, as city dwellers have entirely different desires and requirements from a suburban dweller such as myself. Arguably the suburban lifestyle as it exists in America is antithetical to an efficient mass-transit system, due to population density. On the other hand, it offers the ability for people to actually own a bit of land and not necessarily have neighbors on their walls - a highly desirable trait in my opinion, and something essentially unachievable in an urban setting.

To get back on topic though, the notion of federal subsidies is a tricky one, since it could be argued that we might not be as advanced today if we did not build the interstate highway system, and yet much of that system services locales which cannot possibly hope to ever contribute back as much as they receive.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I heard LA doesn't have anything worthwhile for mass transit either. Minneapolis-St Paul didn't seem to have anything when I was there, but that was a few years ago.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Hidyman]

OK, what if you don't live in a city, or the suburbs. You know, out in the country?

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[potat0man]

The rapid-ride doesn't take the metrocard. Try a student buspass $12 ;-)

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[crankyspice]

I heard LA doesn't have anything worthwhile for mass transit either.

You heard wrong. Today I bicycled (I could have taken the bus, but I prefer to ride) up to the Red Line station at Hollywood and Vine and took the Red Line to 7th and Metro, where I picked up the Blue Line south; picked up the Green Line where it connects and took it to the Redondo Beach terminus. From there it was an easy (flat) ~7 mile bike ride to my office. Going home was almost the reverse, except I took the Red Line to Vermont and Wilshire and walked a block to my old law school, where I'm auditing a patent law course. After class I walked the block back to the Vermont/Wilshire stop and caught the 720 express bus (one of those big jointed double-bus things), which dropped me off about two blocks from my townhouse (I live just north of LACMA West). All of that public transit use was covered under a $3 Metro "day pass."

When I go down to spend weekends with my girlfriend in Orange County, I take the Red Line to Union Station ($1.25) and spend another $4.75 for an adult one-way ticket down to Laguna Niguel / Mission Viejo station; from there it's a nice hilly workout 5 mile bike ride to her house (and there's racks to store bikes on the MetroLink trains; you have to hold your bike on the Metro (not MetroLink) subway trains, and the buses have folding racks on the front that hold two bikes per bus).

For the record, I have a car (German, sports, likes to overheat in traffic, has to tip-toe through half the intersections around here or it'll bottom out, but great fun out in the twisties or anywhere where it can actually be *driven*), a beater of an old SUV, and a motorcycle. But for 80% of my Los Angeles life, a bike and/or public transportation can get me around. And I can even study or catch up on email (Treo) or etc. on the trains.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Alioth]

All the things you talk of are corner cases, though. If you live in a large city like NYC - just how often are you buying items that need a car to get home? How often are you going out to places that aren't easily accessable (walking distance or a quick bus ride)? How many of you are severely disabled with 600 lbs of life support (in which case you aren't going to be driving yourself in the first place)?

Even though I live in a fairly rural area, the times where a car would be utterly indispensible number perhaps one or two _per year_. And that's in a rural area. Everything else is just convenience, because I could manage the same on a bicycle. If I gave up the car altogether, I would save significant amounts of money, even if I paid for my groceries to be delivered. I have a car because it's so extrodinarily convenient. Absolutely necessary? Hardly.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Alioth]

In all large cities I've been to with a metro rail system on dedicated lines (subways, London Underground, Chicago 'L' etc.), taking the metro rail system takes about *half* the time that driving does most of the day because you're not stuck in traffic jams.

If it's time you're worried about, you'll be using grocery store home deliveries anyway because it not only saves you the time getting to and from the grocery store, it also saves you the time of actually shopping.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Cro Magnon]

I know someone who, for all practical purposes, weighs around 500 pounds through no fault of his own. Actually, he weighs around 250, but his electric wheelchair adds another 200+ pounds. It would be fun trying to get THAT on the bus.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Cro Magnon]

What about those of us who live in medium sized cities that don't have rail systems, and crappy bus systems?

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[Anonymous Coward]

Having the weakly groceries shipped sure is cost efficient...

Well tesco.com (UK only) thinks so. They have delivery routes so their refridgerated vehicles deliver several loads in each two hour slot. I guess it gives them the chance to test out solutions to the travelling salesman problem too! The efficiency gains only really start past a certain density of customers though.

Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge

[plague3106]

First, a persons weight does not include something they sit on.

Second, if he weights 250 lbs (which is overweight) it is his fault. Even if he has lost all use of his limbs, he can still reduce his caloric intake so that he loses weight. If he has use of any of his limbs, some kinds of workouts are possible.

Finally, all buses in my city, which has a populate of under one million, are able to load wheelchairs. They can 'kneel' and have a lift for wheelchairs.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[oudzeeman]

the up front cost for infrastructure would be prohibitive

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[soft_guy]

I'm not sure about these long distance claims, you would probably need a huge capacitor, but it doesn't matter because really we don't need to go such long distances on a single charge.
How about a system in which cars connect to electric lines along the highways, like they use for electric busses and trollies, and use ultra-capacitors to get from the highway to your home? The capacitors could charge while you are on the highway, and then you would only need enough charge to go 5-10 miles.

I would find a car that does not have a 300+ mile range to be totally unacceptable. Your idea of having the car be attached to a power line is not very practical because there are not many roads that have these kind of power lines. Also, if you have ever watched the bus driver connect and disconnect a bus from these lines, you would realize that this is not a solution that would work for private cars due to the larger number of cars on the road. It would block traffic in an unacceptable way. The reason why busses run on these kinds of lines is typically because of air pollution - often the buses have to go through tunnels where the exhaust would cause huge problems. Also, busses run in major cities which have a legal requirement to reduce pollution to meet EPA requirements.

Busses go on a few known routes over and over. Private cars have a different requirement - they must go on any road for 300+ miles at a time. They must not block traffic.

If someone has developed a storage system for electricity that allows $9 of electricity to be transferred into the storage unit in 5 minutes - that is a huge advancement over the current technology. It would do a lot to make electric cars practical.

More info

[Anonymous Coward]

More info on ESS, and ultra-capacitors in general.

That's all well and fine, but

[pair-a-noyd]

I'm not expecting to be finding this available for us lowly mortals anytime soon.
So in the meantime I'm building a weedeater bike with parts I get at Curb*mart. Some people call them a "Mow-ped"..
Strap a 21cc weedeater motor on the back of an old bicycle and you can get 400+ miles per gallon. YMMV..
One guy traveled 1,000 mile on 3.5 gallons of gas. I'm going to put a big basket on it and that's how I'll be going to the grocery store. I'll use the car only when it's not feasible to ride the mow-ped, I think I can almost live without the car, maybe only having to resort to it once a month or less.

The mow-ped, built from stuff people throw away is helping to keep stuff out of the landfill, helping to reduce pollution and is a poke in the eye to the uberglobalists that insist we all buy brand new cars every year and constantly fill them up with hyperinflated, over priced gas..

I'm not a good little consumer. I want to keep my money. I'm tired of the fat cat profiteers on Wall Street getting fatter from the sweat of my brow, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
Time to fight back..

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[cmdr_beeftaco]

You go girl, more Gucci and Christal for the rest of us.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Robert1]

I sure hope it never snows/rains in your relatively flat area. That might put a damper on your fat cat profiteers bashing.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Ritchie70]

Driving around on the back of a weed-eater does not reduce polution.

Those things are terrible poluters compared to a modern automobile. I'm at work so I'm not going to go searching for firm citations, but I did google one quote:

A gasoline powered weed eater operated for one hour is even worse [than a lawn mower] as it generates pollution equivalent to driving a car for sixty hours.

(http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/johnson/hort/art icles/mowing_adds_ozone.htm)

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[cryfreedomlove]

I live in a multi-generational household. How does you solution work for moving elders and small children?

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people commute in snow and rain on bicycles =without= motors. Fenders, studded tires and proper clothing make it possible.

And relatively flat? There's something called "exercise", you should try it.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Control Group]

I take it you live somewhere with mild winters.

'Round here (Wisconsin), that mow-ped looks a lot less attractive when it's 10 below with a half inch of compressed snow/ice on the road.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[illumin8]

The mow-ped, built from stuff people throw away is helping to keep stuff out of the landfill, helping to reduce pollution and is a poke in the eye to the uberglobalists that insist we all buy brand new cars every year and constantly fill them up with hyperinflated, over priced gas..

You're kidding right? Reduce pollution? That weed-eater engine is a 2-stroke engine, which puts out much greater pollution than a 4-stroke engine that you find in a car.

TWO STROKE ENGINES

Advantages:
- Two-stroke engines do not have valves, simplifying their construction.
- Two-stroke engines fire once every revolution (four-stroke engines fire once every other revolution). This gives two-stroke engines a significant power boost.
- Two-stroke engines are lighter, and cost less to manufacture.
- Two-stroke engines have the potential for about twice the power in the same size because there are twice as many power strokes per revolution.

Disadvantages:
- Two-stroke engines don't live as long as four-stroke engines. The lack of a dedicated lubrication system means that the parts of a two-stroke engine wear-out faster. Two-stroke engines require a mix of oil in with the gas to lubricate the crankshaft, connecting rod and cylinder walls.
- Two-stroke oil can be expensive. Mixing ratio is about 4 ounces per gallon of gas: burning about a gallon of oil every 1,000 miles.
- Two-stroke engines do not use fuel efficiently, yielding fewer miles per gallon.
- Two-stroke engines produce more pollution.
From:
-- The combustion of the oil in the gas. The oil makes all two-stroke engines smoky to some extent, and a badly worn two-stroke engine can emit more oily smoke.
-- Each time a new mix of air/fuel is loaded into the combustion chamber, part of it leaks out through the exhaust port.

So they may be way less expensive, but they pollute way more than a 4-stroke motor.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Small children can be pulled in Burley trailers. I've seen a severely physically challenged person riding in the front of a specially built bicycle on RAGBRAI, which is a nearly 500 mile, one week bike ride across the state of Iowa.

Just because something requires some effort doesn't make it impossible.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless your weedeater engine is 4-stroke and has a catalytic converter strapped to it, you're probably doing worse to the environment than driving a humvee.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a company that does that here: http://spookytoothcycles.com/

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[crabpeople]

And when the cop pulls you over for having no insurance or plates, or riding on the sidewalk, you'll tell him what exactly?

I would love to take my dirtbike to work. The problem is, it isnt remotely streetlegal.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Rinikusu]

Unless he's riding on the sidewalk or on a highway where "motorized bicycles" are illegal, there shouldn't be a problem. In most states, powered bicycles under 49cc (he states 22cc for his) do not require things like registration, licensing, or insurance. Regular mopeds come to mind. You must still obey the rules of traffic and I'd be very wary of the typical cell-phone-yaking-SUV-driving-moron, but it's certainly doable. I've been considering picking up an old moped for transporation in Los Angeles (it beats my feet), but I'm not sure I'm *that* suicidal yet.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Rich0]

Well, depends on the type of pollution.

If you're talking CO2 it is purely based on how much gas you use - 20gal is 10X 2 gal anyway you slice it.

If you're talking hydrocarbons then yes, on a per-gallon basis the 2-cycle is WAY more polluting. However, if you can get 10X the fuel efficiency it probably is cleaner overall, and there is no reason you can't slap a catalytic converter on it.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[rubies]

This idea is stupid. What's wrong with using the pedals?

WTF is the point of attaching a motor when you've got perfectly good legs? The basket will still fit.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[pair-a-noyd]

Drive to the store in your car and burn a gallon of gas.
I'll drive to the store on the "mow-ped" and burn an OUNCE of gas.

Who dumped more pollution into the air??

Why put a motor on the bike?

1. I'm disabled and peddling a bike for any distance is impossible.
2. I'm not wealthy (see #1) and saving money is very important to me.

This is all made from stuff I picked up from trash piles. This is stuff that would have gone into landfills.
I picked up half a dozen bikes and built one good working bike from the parts. Plus I have a spare parts inventory now. I picked up a dozen or so weedeaters too. I chose the smallest one of the lot so that it would be quiet (I built an improved muffler because I hate noisy machines) and would pollute the least and use the least amount of gas. And at a 40 to 1 mixture ratio the pollution is minimal. I should be able to get 300 to 400 miles per gallon. You'll find no 4 wheel vehicle anywhere that can boast of a remotely similar milage. 300 miles per gallon vs. 30 miles per gallon. You do the math..

As for the other questions raised, yes, winters here are extremely mild, it snows once every 25 years, it's flatter than any place on earth, the nearest hill is 300 miles from here. EVERYTHING here is spread out and there is NO public transportation system, at all. You either drive or you perish.
I have a car and I can drive it to the store in air conditioned comfort but I choose to take a very uncomfortable way of transportation. It's my choice. I don't have to do it, no one is making me do it but I can save money this way and I guarantee you that burning a few tablespoons of gas each week is far less worse than burning several gallons of gas each week..

You'll not convince me otherwise.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Ritchie70]

Based on everything I've read, you put more polution in the air. Modern cars are very, very, very clean - at least, American ones are. A new car has literally thousands of dollars of emission control equipment that makes that happen.

Around here, weed wackers typically are two-cycle engines, so they take an oil-gas mix. The oil burns off directly into polution. By contrast, the hydrocarbons that your car's motor put off are converted by various processes into primarily carbon monoxide and water. That's why you see a stream of water coming out of so many car's tail pipes.

I have no idea where in the world you live. It may be your local vehicles dump tons of polution into the air. But if you're in the US, and you have a modern (say, 1990 or later) car, and it's in fully functioning order, your bike polutes more.

I'm not going to argue that it's all very economical, or that you've kept some stuff out of the landfill. (Although, to be fair, if you'd left it in the alley behind a house in Chicago, it wouldn't have gone in the landfill either - it would have been used, fixed, or sold for scrap.) But don't go around patting yourself on the back for preventing polution. It just isn't so - unless your car is old or a real junker.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[pair-a-noyd]

It must be nice and comfy in your world.
I wouldn't know. I live in the real world.
The car I have is an older car and I can not afford a new car and never will be able to afford a new car.
IF I had the means, I would buy an air car http://www.theaircar.com/ and use solar panels to run the compressor for filling it.

To think that everyone either has a brand new car or should run out and buy one is silly.
I am one of the "have nots" and I struggle to get by on a day to day basis.
Being disabled is not my choice. I would like to be healthy and rich so I could buy nice new things but fate is my enemy in life. I make do. I shop at curbmart. To me it's a luxury to go to walmart and buy new socks for $4 and a new pair of $10 shoes. I bought new shoes last month when my old shoes came apart. I put duct tape on them but that was really too embarassing.

But, back to the main argument. There is no way in hell that burning an ounce of gasoline is making more pollution than burning a gallon of gasoline. To those that profess this "fact", please provide scientific, documented fact, with links, not conjecture.

And if you have such a problem with my plans for transportation, send me some money to buy a new car and some more money to keep the tank filled up, or, STFU... If you can't deal with MY situation then why don't you improve my situation so I don't have to do something that upsets you so badly.

NO offense to anyone but you can't even begin to imagine. Try being disabled for a while then get back with me.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Hidyman]

You are right about the polution, but how about using one of these new capacitors (not an utlracap like the article says) to drive a bike?
Kind of the best of both worlds.
Small mass to drive, and high density energy storage.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, man, chill out. READ what he wrote. You're one of those annoying people that automatically assume that anyone that disagrees with them is insulting their disability in some way. I have no idea how a small debate about the metrics of enviornmental impact turned into what you perceive as a personal insult. Sigh...you're a fool.

He was merely stating that simply comparing the consumption of gasoline is NOT an accurate way of measuring the environmental impact of a engine. Likewise, he was NOT insulting your lack of funds. The natural order of consumerism is that new technology will inevitably be passed down to end users. You may not adopt them immediately, but in time, you'll own what is now considered a "modern" emissions-control car.

And to take you up on your grand challenge: http://www.egr.msu.edu/erl/emiss/emiss.htm

Take a look at the chart, which was lifted from:
Sun, X., Brereton, G. J., Morrison, K.& Patterson, D. J., "Emissions analysis of small utility engines" SAE Paper 952080, SAE Off-Highway and Powerplant Congress, Milwaukee, Sept 1995. (Also printed in the SAE Publication SP-1112 `Design and Emissions of Small Two- and Four-Stroke Engines,' SAE, 1995 and as a featured article in the SAE publication: `Off-Highway Engineering', Jan 1996, and to appear in the SAE Journal of Engines)
Yes, I verified it.

Basically, what it's saying is that your weed-whacking engine, a close equivalent of the "Lawnboy D410 (2 Hp), 2-stroke (untuned)" is putting out 1500 (CO(gr)/kW-hr). Meanwhile, a "modern" engine is generating less than ONE. Even the 1994 California Emissions Regulations (a relatively lax requirement meant more to weed vehicles with malfunctioning emissions control systems) is 400 CO(gr)/kW-hr. So what does that mean? Your precious engine generates almost 4 times more emissions than a car that can just barely pass a 12 year old emissions requirement, and 1000+ times more than a fully modern and functional vehicle. And that's not even taking in consideration the greater kW-hr efficiency of a car's engine over that of a jury-rigged weed-whacker.

At 128 ounes = 1 gallon, I'd say that your "Green Machine" is easily outclassed by anything short of a vehicle that couldn't even legally drive on the road over 10 years ago.

Good game. And thanks for acting like a victim.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Just follow up, your proported 1000 miles on 3.5 gallons of gas is equal to ~290MPG. Compare that to a car with efficiency ~30MPG. The magic number your lawnmower needs is 10 times the emissions of it's modern equivalent, or less. Unfortunately, you fail catastrophically.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[gogopwrrangers]

lol you just got owned by an AC!

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Cederic]

>> NO offense to anyone but you can't even begin to imagine. Try being disabled for a while then get back with me.

Pick whatever transportation mechanism you like. Just don't fucking hide behind disabilities.

I have partial hearing, partial blindness and I need new kneecaps. I'm also far wealthier than my parents were at my age, and far less wealthy than the guy I work for. These facts are not linked.

Incidentally, fit a catalytic converter onto your muffled exhaust and you'll hush up all the people noting the pollution generation of your little two-stroke.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Calinous]

There would be some reasons - once, the catalytic converter would probably be taken from a car. This means several pounds of extra weight. Then, catalytic converters rob power from the engine. Catalytic converters work only after they were heated up. The small engine might not give enough heat fast enough for heating it at nominal working temperature. And finally, unburned oil (and partially burned oil) in the exhaust might clog the converter. In order to fully use a catalytic converter, you'd better have a stoichiometric ratio of air and fuel. Good luck providing that to the junk engine.

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Calinous]

Not burning a small quantity of oil in the fuel-oil mixture can produce more pollution than burning a gallon of gasoline. Those oils are pretty unfriendly to the environment. But anyway, I suppose even the tenth-of gallon of gas you must buy is expensive to you... As for transportation, maybe you could make a tricicle? It sure will use more fuel (it will be bigger), but the added stability might prove advantageous

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT UP!!

Re:That's all well and fine, but

[Ritchie70]

pair-a-noyd,

I have no idea what your situation is. I'm sorry if you're having a rough time of it.

I'm glad that you've found a way to save some money while satisfying your transportation needs.

My only point was that you may not, in fact, be doing the air polution in your area a favor by running your little 2-cycle motor. I don't know what kind of car you have or what kind of condition it is in. If it is old enough, or in sufficiently bad disrepair, the polution situation may be better off with your bike.

I understand (based on some of your comments) that, due to what appears to be a high dedication to and concern with environmental issues, this may be a hard thing for you to accept. It may be just one more thing to wear your down as you go through your day.

But none of this has anything to do with your disability, your income level, your age, gender, race, politics, environmentalism or any other irrelevent demographic information.

This is about basic science and automotive engineering.

I hope the road through life becomes easier for you.

Bullshit!

[CPIMatt]

My bullshit detector is going off. We have a company with no track record, making extravagent claims, about a device that they cannot demonstrate...

Plus the math on this thing is staggering. They are going to deliver $9 worth of electricty in 5 minutes? Or will deliver enough power in five minutes to power an SUV over 500 miles? It has been a while since EE201, can anyone help me out here?

-Matt

Re:Bullshit!

[kaiser423]

Don't be so quick to write it off.

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan05/2777

While I don't think that this company is going to do it, it isn't out of the realm of possibility.

Re:Bullshit!

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Not to mention that this would more quickly be taken up by electronics manufacturers, where it would make more sense to roll these out for something like a cellphone. Bullshit indeed.

Re:Bullshit!

[libre lover]

According to this link "The most obviously interesting thing in the application is that compared to other ultracapacitors, this one has relatively small capacitance (31 Farads) but very high voltage (3500 V)".

No word on the size/weight of this 31F 3500V capacitor.

Re:Bullshit!

[WindBourne]

Yes, and the V.C.'s that are backing this company in a big way are total idiots. Afterall, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers are the idiots that backed such companies as Google, Sun, etc.

Re:Bullshit!

[bucky0]

Also, the charge stored in a capacitor is 1/2 C * V^2. Most capacitors have a large (~in the kF range) capacitance, but a low voltage. Since the voltage here is gigantic AND with the quadratic relationship, they have a lot of energy parked in there.

Re:Bullshit!

[Gnividon]

I can see it working, as long as the 500 miles are all downhill...

News for investing nerds.

[krell]

"...this comes across as "News for Investors" more than "News for Nerds." Get back to me when the guy can demonstrate a prototype rather than a spiel."

After I drained out my PayPal account sending the money to some guy at www.5aveTrek.com who promised to bribe Paramount to keep "Enterprise" on the air, and after nothing came of those checks to companies promising to build giant walking robots or Hally Barry-replica fembots, I need SOME PLACE new to invest my hard-earned nerdbux!

Re:News for investing nerds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Way off topic, but I like the replacement Trek series that is running now. Kirk has a charisma that none of the other captains have.

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Sorry to follow up to my own post. Typos galore. Subject line should read 40,000 Amp. not 4000. And pumping 25 gallons of gas in 3 minuts is 18.75 MegaWatts.

One Reason itll never work

[carlosponti]

Big Oil companies will never allow the market to go to this product. Over the years there have been great products that went no where to help us reduce our dependence on oil. now why didnt they go anywhere? because three reasons. people not wanting to change and big companies knowing that its cheaper to stay with the status quo and lastly Big Oil companies will go broke trying to change to anything that they are not already doing.

Re:One Reason itll never work

[LiquidCoooled]

But the big oil companies have the infrastructure to deliver your roadside energy requirements.
Oil *will* run out eventually and you will start to see more and more alternative filling options at the stations (just like LPG).

Re:One Reason itll never work

[Anonymous Coward]

found @ crytpogon.com as follows, interesting bit of info that tracks - (you can take or leave the masonry)

In Peak Oil? How About Anything Into Oil?, I wrote:

        I'm not saying that a collapse due to energy isn't going to occur, all I'm saying is that if it does, it's by design. They probably found the answer---or, more likely, multiple answers---decades ago. But that's just a conspiracy theory....

The General and the Holy Grail of Energy Storage Devices

An engineer friend of mine commented on the EEstor device, the "Holy Grail" energy storage technology that's about to make pure electric cars viable on a mass scale. He told me that it sounded like a supercapicitor. Now, it's obviously just an insane, tinfoil hat conspiracy theory that this technology is based on U.S. Patent 3288641, issued 29 November 1966 to---wait for it, this is good---STANDARD OIL COMPANY. And where is EEstor headquartered? Get out your best, fake cowboy, George Bush accent and say it with me: Texxxxxshuss!

It was a simple question: Just how closely is Kleiner Perkins---the venture capital firm behind EEstor---connected to Them? Within two minutes of researching this, I'd seen enough:

Colin Powell to join Silicon Valley's Kleiner Perkins

Colin Powell, a 33rd Degree Freemason, a former U.S. Army Four Star General, U.S. Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff happens to go into quiet, semi-retirement working for the venture capital firm responsible for funding the company that is building the "Holy Grail" of energy storage devices, based on technology patented by Standard Oil Company in 1966... In Texas.

Re:One Reason itll never work

[The New Stan Price]

Yes evil Big Oil. What about Big Coal, Big Nuclear, and Big Electric? Are these companies not "Big" enough to compete against "Big Oil" for your business? Your logic is like saying that "Big Burger King" will never let you eat at "Big McDonalds". Oil companies will continue to make money long after automobiles stop using gasoline. Plastics are used everywhere, even in cars that don't run on petrol.

Re:One Reason itll never work

[Boscrossos]

Many of the big oil companies are shifting their focus from oil production to energy production in general (Shell is a well known example). Also, how do you figure that this technology evades oil? A lot of the electricity today is still produced from fossil fuels, including oil.

All this does is shift the delivery from the (many) refilling stations to the (fewer) power plants. I'm thinking the oil companies could gain a lot of money if they didn't have to deliver all that fuel to the filling stations. Might even be making a profit there, if they play their cards right and invest in the enrgy market.

Truly in the wake

[DrWho520]

In the wake of rising gasoline costs

I have seen a marked decrease in gaoline prices during the past month. They have dropped from $0.25-0.35 per gallon, depending upon the station. I have heard rumor prices could hit $1.15 per gallon by Christmas. Which is just in time to inject capital into the economy. While any new development in energy storage/delivery efficiency is welcome, in the near term, gas prices will not be the driving force for the American public to switch to anything radically new.

Re:Truly in the wake

[Anonymous Coward]

Gasoline prices ALWAYS decrease the closer we get to an election year, and then shoot up again afterward. Especially if the President is an oil baron.

Re:Truly in the wake

[k_187]

nah, they'll go back up as soon as the republicans get re-elected. /cynic

Re:Truly in the wake

[Dr. Eggman]

Funny, I'm predicting a very large increase in gasoline prices right about... 12:01am, November 8, 2006.

Re:Truly in the wake

[Scrameustache]

I have heard rumor prices could hit $1.15 per gallon by Christmas.

There's people who expect this price-drop to last past november???

Re:Truly in the wake

[Bohnanza]

I predict US gas prices will continue to drop until November 7th, after which they'll quickly head over $3/gallon again.

Re:Truly in the wake

[daivzhavue]

I thought that it was supposed to be by election day^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Thanksgiving Day.

Re:Truly in the wake

[cmdr_beeftaco]

You don't see the pattern here? The UltraCapacitor(tm) is a month from release and suddenly gas is cheap again? Big Oil is scared out of their mind what these capacitors can do.

Re:Truly in the wake

[oh_my_080980980]

"I have seen a marked decrease in gaoline prices during the past month. They have dropped from $0.25-0.35 per gallon, depending upon the station. I have heard rumor prices could hit $1.15 per gallon by Christmas."

BullShit!

What's your source the Republican National Committee? Gasoline is not going to drop below $2/gallon period. In fact I predict after the general election in November oil prices will go up again.

Why? Simply Oil prices dropped, not because of market forces but do to geopolitical changes. Both the US and Iran softened their stances. Oil prices spiked everytime the US or Iran took a hard stance. That's what drove up prices. Now since neither side is taking a hard line, investors aren't jumpy anymore, prices can come back down.

However, it only takes a hard line message to send the prices up again.

Re:Truly in the wake

[le0p]

While it's true gas prices are indeed dropping, they're still at an unacceptable level. If we see $1.15 (by the way, this is dependent on area, my recently "lowered" gas prices are still above $2.50, so I'm not sure where you're referring to) I will be truly shocked. I remember the days of $.99/gallon (I know, I'm not that old) so getting the prices to $2.00 isn't exactly party worthy in my mind. Still I have to agree with you to some degree, while I think there's a need for a paradigm shift in fuel consumption, the American public has a short (sometimes non-existent) memory and will be downright ecstatic with an 50% price drop in gas; even when the original increase was 150%. The good thing is, the American public is not the entire world. If it doesn't happen here, it can easily happen somewhere else and we'll reap the benefits eventually, or atleast we can hope.

Re:Truly in the wake

[hansamurai]

Yeah, just like how in 2004, gas prices steadily rose in September and October before the election.

http://www.futuresource.com/charts/charts.jsp?s=HU X04&o=&a=D&z=800x550&d=LOW&b=CANDLE&st=

Even posting as a coward doesn't protect you from not checking sources and looking stupid.

Re:Truly in the wake

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict that US gas prices will continue to go down for the next 6.143 weeks and then will rapidly climb again. (The market will bottom on Tuesday, November 7, which curiously coincides with the US elections).

Re:Truly in the wake

[brdweb]

Uh, gas is already under $2 in NJ and parts of VA. And that's just where I've been recently.

Re:Truly in the wake

[grimwell]

The Oil Drum has a good article on gasoline blends and how it affects prices.

Why Prices Fall in the Fall

Winter gasoline blends are phased in as the weather gets cooler. September 15th is the date of the first increase in RVP, and in some areas the allowed RVP eventually increases to 15 psi. This has two implications for gasoline prices every fall. First, as noted, butane is a cheaper blending component than most of the other ingredients. That makes fall and winter gasoline cheaper to produce. But butane is also abundant, so that means that gasoline supplies effectively increase as the RVP requirement increases. Not only that, but this all takes place after summer driving season, when demand typically falls off. These factors normally combine each year to reduce gasoline prices in the fall (even in non-election years). The RVP is stepped back down to summer levels starting in the spring, and this usually causes prices to increase. But lest you think of buying cheap winter gasoline and storing it until spring or summer, remember that it will pressure up as the weather heats up, and the contained butane will start to vaporize out of the mix.

And that's the true tale of why gasoline prices fall back in the fall, and spring forward in the spring.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Control Group]

Yes, but it can charge almost arbitrarily faster than a battery.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[EnderGT]

I'm thinking of a system more like this...

Lithium batteries

[atlasdropperofworlds]

Lithium batteries could already offer this kind of range and recharge time (http://www.a123systems.com/).

This type of power storage would be even better if

• It lasted more cycles than Lithium (ie. > 1,000 at 80% DOD)
• It was lighter than lithium

Also, it will only recharge in 5 minutes if you have sufficient current. At 240V, you'd probably need about 50,000 amps to "fill" the capacitor in a reasonable amount of time to give you a 500 mile range (assuming 15 hp sustained on average for 500 miles).

Re:Lithium batteries

[dheera]

it's probably both... capacitors can go bajillions of cycles without breaking if designed well. there are no chemical reactions.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Politburo]

I am old enough to remember city streets in places with overhead power lines for this.

Uh.. we're all old enough. They still exist. Philly, Seattle, Vancouver, Newark/Jersey City, Houston, Dallas, Baltimore.. there are many others.

Lawn products

[WindBourne]

I wish that lawn products such as trimmers and mowers would be based on a capacitor. You figure that they would last a life time. In addition, the ability to charge these in a just a minute (on a 110) would be so easy that many ppl would jump at it. Rather than cars, this is a good entry point market for these.

Re:Lawn products

[dhartshorn]

I've been using battery powered lawn products for years. My mower is "rated" at 1/2 an acre and my trimmer goes for weeks without recharging.

Re:Lawn products

[WindBourne]

Yeah, battery. I also have a craftman rechargeable lawn mower as well as electric Roybi (with all the parts). I recently replaced the batteries on the mower (after a decade of use). But an ultra capacitor based mower should be able to do a 1/4 to 1/2 acre on a minute or 2 of charge (based on what I have heard about a car). This pack could even be used in electric snowblower. Oddly enough, here on the colorado front range, lawn products contribute something like 1-2% of pollution and emissions. I was surprised at how high, but it makes sense. After all, there is no emission standards on them. The interesting thing is that a fast recharge/no maintenence is a good way to encourage users to move to electric.

Re:Lawn products

[Calinous]

Use an electric one powered from a power socket, with a long power cord. It should be less expensive than an electric one with a supercapacitor. On the other side, your run-off-the-mill power socket in your house could only give you a couple kilowatts, so a one minute charge will give you at most ten minutes work (those things have power in the hundreds of watts range).

Basic Math

[Anonymous Coward]

$9 in electricity in 5 minutes! Woof!

Let's do the math behind that. the national average for electricity is about US$0.12/kWhr. This varies a lot, and the number is a couple of years old, but is likely close enough for us to do some basic math.

$9.00 is about 75 kWhr of electricty. But to do it in 5 minutes is 900kW (900 kW * 1/12 hr = 75kWhr). 900kW at 120 VAC is about 10.5kA (using the old power = v * a * sqrt(2) formula), or 10,500A. You're not going to be able to do that at home any time soon. Most homes are two orders of magnitude less than that (in the 50-200A range).

Clearly, you'll need your own electrical sub-station to get this kind of power. This is enough power to power 100-200 homes per "pump". you're not going to see a 12-pump mega-station like you do with gas in very many places.

I guess I'm going to call bullshit on this. That's just TOO much power in too short a time.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Dr. Eggman]

So would the infrastructure for switching to a hydrogen economy, but we're going to need something in the future. I doubt there are many if any choices that can utilize the current infrastructure.

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[cmdr_beeftaco]

What gauge wire do I use for my 4000 Amp circuit and why can't I find a 4000 Amp circuit breaker at Home Depot. I will tell you why, Big Oil.

Holding a charge

[MobyDisk]

How is this different from a quickly recharging battery?

I thought that capacitors could not hold their charge for very long. So is the idea that your car would remain un-charged, and you would charge it just prior to leaving home?

Re:Holding a charge

[Anonymous Coward]

> I thought that capacitors could not hold their charge for very long.

What makes you think that?

Re:Holding a charge

[Anonymous Coward]

A capacitor stores potential energy in an electrostatic field.
A battery stores potential energy chemically.

Electrolytic capacitors are "leaky", which means its charge dissipates as current flows through the substrate, but other types of capacitors can hold their charge indefinately.

Re:Holding a charge

[spirit of reason]

The problem isn't that capacitors don't hold a charge for long; it's that they have traditionally been unable to hold as much charge as a battery to begin with (per unit mass). Maxwell's best ultracap stores less than 6 Wh/kg, far less than the 180-190 Wh/kg seen in a standard lithium ion battery.

EEstor is claiming to have a capacitor that blows away everything on the market today. And they have been claiming that for at least a year, I think, with no visible updates. I regard them as vaporware right now; I think the more recent strides in lithium ion batteries are more promising. A123 Systems and Altair Nanotechnologies both already have products out that can take a lot of current for recharging. A123 Systems has shown the large safety advantages of their chemistry in some demonstrations as well (see their website http://www.a123systems.com/ for one of the tests).

I think Toshiba and Sanyo were supposed to be coming out with their safer and faster-charging stuff soon too. They all try to use the "nano" buzzword; they're basically just finding chemistries that have smaller particle sizes and faster reaction rates. We'll see if this turns into something more practical for the consumer in vehicles.

Re:Holding a charge

[ChrisMaple]

"but other types of capacitors can hold their charge indefinately."

Not true. Manufacturers of traditional capacitors, if they specify leakage rates at all, won't guarantee more than a few minutes hold time. Typicals are much better, but still aren't something you can depend upon for energy storage. On the other hand, you can't depend upon them not to hold a charge either, a mistake which can be fatal.

Come one

[antifoidulus]

We all know that we are just trying to ignore the real issue here. Lets see where we stand:
1. Oil is in short supply
2. Oil comes from dead Dinosaurs.

So we all know what the solution tot his problem is, but the environmentalist wackos won't let us do it: we need to kill more Dinosaurs! They say they don't exist, but I know that is just junk science. Who is with me? I know at least Turok has got my back.

Re:Come one

[Nonillion]

We all know that we are just trying to ignore the real issue here. Lets see where we stand:
1. Oil is in short supply

Bullshit! Oil is NOT in short supply, only production.

2. Oil comes from dead Dinosaurs.

Bullshit! Oil does NOT come from dead dinosaurs, it distills and pools up from the hodge podge of magma below our feet.

Re:Come one

[ahodgson]

Bullshit! Oil is NOT in short supply, only production.

That's just semantics. Production == current supply. Globa, production hasn't noticeably increased since 2004, despite record high prices. I'd be willing to say that peak oil is either here or very close based on that fact alone.

Re:Come one

[number1scatterbrain]

You must have read "The Deep Biosphere", by the late Thomas Gold. All I want to know is, what kind of women can I get with this car... And don't tell me "The ones that are 500 miles away"...

Re:Come one

[joto]

Bullshit! Oil is NOT in short supply, only production.

Thank you for your insight. Now please explain why the free market can't just produce more oil. Maybe it's got something to do with oil itself being in short supply?

Bullshit! Oil does NOT come from dead dinosaurs, it distills and pools up from the hodge podge of magma below our feet.

Wow. You seem to know things better than the thousands of geophysicists who help the worlds oil companies in finding the oil. Because they seem to think that oil comes from old biomass (mostly trees, not dinosaurs). Of course there are bound to be cranks and crackpots around telling a different story, but I know who I prefer to listen to.

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[Vellmont]

500 miles? Let us say the hybrid has the efficiency similar to Prius, 50 MPG.


Terrible assumption right off the bat. The maximum possible thermodynamic efficiency of a car engine is around 50%. The efficiency of an electric motor is something like 95%. So you're already off by a factor of 2 (probbably more).

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[peacefinder]

"Behold the future."

Ah. A perfect upgrade for the Big Dig!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[balsy2001]

Besides the jokesters, the problem with this is infrastructure. With all of the electricity stored in the car the current roads are still good. Otherwise you get to spend billions and billions to upgrade.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[GfxGeek]

This is genius!!! Who needs wireless networking either? I'm going to string cat5 cable like streamers down every hall of my house.

Taxes?

[nullset]

The price per gallon of gasoline in the US is mostly tax. So if this technology did become useful, then we'd all start having to pay road taxes on our electricity bills...yay. In other words, a direct cost comparison of untaxed electricty versus heavily taxed gasoline makes the electricity look much better than it actually is.

Re:Taxes?

[weisen]

According to the numbers quoted here http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgastaxes.asp, taxes account for a small part of the price of a gallon of gas.

Re:Taxes?

[radl33t]

This claim is not true. According to the EIA, 2005 US gas prices break down as such:

Crude - 53%
Refining/Processing - 19%
State/Federal Taxes - 19%
Distribution - 9%

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analy sis_publications/primer_on_gasoline_prices/html/pe tbro.html

Re:Taxes?

[TheRaven64]

Gasoline is taxed at a far lower rate in the USA than in most of the industrialised world. Petrol in the UK, for example, is about $7/gallon, and it's even higher in other parts of Europe. If a real alternative were available, you could easily put the petrol tax up a lot and subsidise the alternative in order to encourage people to migrate.

Re:Taxes?

[ericspinder]

The price per gallon of gasoline in the US is mostly tax.

Only if by 'most' you mean 19%. However you are correct in realizing that eventually the gasoline taxes would eventually need to be replaced, but I really don't believe that it would be added to electrical cost as it would equate running your air conditioner with driving your car. Most likely it would be a DMV surcharge on miles driven. Of course that would make trucking companies register their trucks in states with the lowest per mile charge, so it would have to be a national standard to avoid that kind of problem. With the current charge at the pump, there is a natural association of were you drive to where your gasoline tax dollars are generated, and I don't believe the tax could not be more accurately charged in any other manner.

Re:Taxes?

[maxume]

Mostly? Not so much. Maybe 40%. But that is pretty low compared to other western nations.

Re:Taxes?

[mypalmike]

The price per gallon of gasoline in the US is mostly tax.

In New York state, where the highest gasoline tax exists in the US, you pay around 50 cents per gallon in state and federal taxes. National average is around 38 cents per gallon.

Re:Taxes?

[AK Marc]

The price per gallon of gasoline in the US is mostly tax.

The last time I paid attention to taxes on gasoline, they were on the order of $0.40 per gallon. Of course, this is back when gas was $1.00 to $1.50 per gallon. People claimed the "half tax" all the time then. When there were some spikes, people still blamed it on the "half tax" number, even though the taxes were fixed per gallon, not percent of sales price as most sales taxes are. So, we'd have a spike to $2.00 with $0.40 tax and people complaining about the "half tax" numbers. So, I'd like to see the current tax rates on fuel. I would be very surprised if the last time I filled up at $3 per gallon I was paying $1.50 in taxes. I'd be surprised if the taxes are above $1 per gallon, and I haven't seen prices under $2 in a while now.

I just did the Google myself. Still about $0.40 per gallon tax. http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analy sis_publications/primer_on_gasoline_prices/html/pe tbro.html
But don't let facts stand in the way of your rant. "Mostly tax" is easily confused with "less than 20% tax."

Re:Taxes?

[Pendersempai]

But one reason the government taxes gasoline so heavily is that the cost of stabilizing oil-rich countries should be internalized into the price of gasoline so that consumers make efficient consumption decisions. Electricity from the grid does not require nearly the same kind of international exertion, so there is every reason to suspect that its tax will be lower.

Re:Taxes?

[spirit of reason]

A portion of the tax may go to road maintenance, sure. But do you know how much of your taxes go to subsidies for oil companies?

Words are cheap

[rumblin'rabbit]

Here we go again. Another company solving all of our energy problems, but not telling us how. Can you say Steorn? Genesis World Energy? How about Xogen?

Given that duping a journalist, or one's self, is far easier than actually creating such a device, I shall label this myth "unlikely" until we get some of that - what's that stuff again? - oh yeah, solid evidence.

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[TinyManCan]

You forget that when you burn gas in an ICE, you are only getting 5-10% efficiency. That might even be a high estimate.

When using an efficient electric motor, powered by the internal capacitors, I suspect that you'd be able to see efficiencies of 50% or greater.

So now you only need .45 MW to charge the car. Still an ungodly amount though.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence the "ultra" in the name :)

What goes in, must come out...quickly!

[955301]

Should this become the path the energy comsuming manufacturers take (cars, laptops, tools, etc), anyone who is not familiar with electronics, please tatoo the following thought in your mind for your own sake:

A capacitor can discharge at an equally alarming rate as this charge time suggests. To take a phrase from Mohamar Khadafi in the eighties, you cross this line, you die.

Seriously - discharging a capacitor will kill you instantly without the proper safeguards in place. Get into a choice car-accident where this connection is made and kaboom! It will explode - if you are the connection, you will die.

A tank of gasoline has nothing on a charged capacitor. Just ask any poor fool who has mucked around with the innards of a television set shortly after unplugging it.

Re:What goes in, must come out...quickly!

[houghi]

Explode. LOL. As if that could ever happen. A battery that explodes, man you are funny.

Re:What goes in, must come out...quickly!

[ozbird]

A capacitor can discharge at an equally alarming rate as this charge time suggests.

Yes, but think of the acceleration! :-D
500 miles in five minutes works out at an average speed of Mach 8 - scramjet speeds.

Re:What goes in, must come out...quickly!

[ChrisMaple]

This is why some NiCad batteries have a built-in fuse. Expect the same from high power ultracaps.

Re:What goes in, must come out...quickly!

[God Of Atheism]

I did not muck around inside a television just after unplugging, but I did open a computer psu just after unplugging. I'd used that psu for years, and just discovered that it was faulty after moving and seeing that the electricity would shut itself down (previously I lived in places without an earth-connector in most sockets). I did see the warning labels about not opening it, and thought that they put warning labels on everything, just to be on the safe side. I did not manage to discover anything clearly wrong inside, nor did I get any electricity shock whatsoever. Only later, when I read why they put those warning labels up, did I discover that what I did should have meant instant-death. I guess that the capacitors (or at least some of them) were connected to something outside (essentially earthed), causing them to discharge quickly.

In short I'd rather have people driving around with something like this. Apparently this is a relatively safe storage of very dangerous radioactive materials, so one would not even have to be very worried about material being released by crashes.

Re:What goes in, must come out...quickly!

[Anonymous Coward]

That'd be me. I flew 10 feet across the room, blacked out and couldn't feel my arms when I came to.

Not a good idea.

Still, my Dad told me that when he was a kid he disassembled something with a BIG coil spring in it which narrowly missed his head when it WHANGED past on its way to destroying his shed.

Re:What goes in, must come out...quickly!

[nasor]

But if it can charge in 5 minutes, it can also discharge in 5 minutes - unless there's some sort of system where the fuse is removed during charging and then replaced.

Dell got the contract

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

In a move that the business world, Dell has bought exclusive right to market these "ultra" capacitors. "If it is going to catch fire at the first fender bender, we want our logo on it so that we get some air-play at the six O' clock news", a Dell spokesman claimed.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[rainman_bc]

If we had to run off highway lines like electric busses (or cars in the Super Mario Bros. movie, blech) We'd all be paying the same (likely extravegant) rate.

Hmmm... Here in Vancouver, I see busses all the time get disconnected from over head power lines. The driver has to get out, line up his connection again to the power line, before he can drive away. Traffic in the meantime gets backed up because everyone is waiting for this bus, stuck in the middle of a left turn.

While your idea is good on paper, imagine how utterly crazy it would be if we all had to do that? The sheer logistics of a city with that spec is utterly insane.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[_Swank]

i'm not entirely sure how you get 500 miles at 29 mpg for 13.5 gallons. do you push the last 100 to really increase the mileage?

47 Bullshit-o-watts

[2short]

They have marketing savy to know X kilowatts doesn't mean as much to people as $9, but exactly what kWh to dollar ratio they are using doesn't strike me as the biggest problem with their claims.

They propose to increase the performance of electric cars by several orders of magnitude. They reference technologies that have barely reached the lab demonstration phase, to which they propose to make vaugely described radical improvements, and deliver as a product next year. There is no prototype to be seen. I mean, that really sums it up: They say they'll be selling a car next year, but have no prototype today.

what is it running

[Cartack]

A lawnmower engine? But seriously, doesn't something like this go against the laws of physics?

Re:what is it running

[CrazyTalk]

"In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!" -- Homer Simpson

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[TheRaven64]

It would be trivial to design a system for connecting a car to a power take-off in the road that could be operated by any reasonably competent driver. While driving around populated areas, you could have the car powered directly from the grid (and / or charging), and then switch to an on-board power source for driving elsewhere. For bonus points, you could add support for external control while on external power, and include some traffic routing software in the system; fully automated driving in cities, manual in the countryside.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to add in a city that still has them that's not quite as large as those: Dayton, OH. They snake throughout the entire downtown area. So to the GP, you're not that old (or that cool; stop showing us your e-peen). They will probably still be around by the time you die. Your grandchildren might be able to tell their grandchildren that they "remember city streets in places with overhead power lines" for trollies and buses.

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[mark-t]

Do your calculations take into consideration how much energy is lost as heat? If less wasteful mechanisms of delivering power to an engine are employed, the difference could be a few orders of magnitude.

Not a particularly new idea, but a good one

[anti_analog]

The idea of replacing the batteries in electric and hybrid electric cars is not a new one. BMW was at one point determined to use ultracapacitors in it's hybrids, rather than batteries, because without chemical reactions taking place, the storage of electricity is much more efficient than batteries. BMW has apparently abandoned that in their alliance with DCX and GM on their hybrid system, but since BMW hasn't announced any of their own hybrids, we can't exactly tell yet. I believe also that it would allow greater maximum output from a car, if one were so inclined to let a couple/few hundred kilowatts go to the electric motors.
The problem is that the ultra capacitors haven't been quite ultra enough yet. I'm no expert on capacities of capacitors, but you're limited by size/surface area in the capacitor and 'they' seemed to 500 miles is quite a claim, and unless they have a specific car, it's not a usefully specific claim. And if they do have a vehicle, it's best to make sure it's not a lightweight go kart like an Elise (or the new Tesla car, which is an Elise), as those cars tend to not please typical automotive tastes.
There is still potential out there to make much more effective capacitors. I believe MIT students/professors/people of some sort came up with a Carbon Nano-fiber fuzzy capacitor that multiplied many times the surface area inside a capacitor on which the charge is built up by making the charge holding surface out gagillions of those little fibers. That sounded like a hilariously expensive proposition to me, but perhaps it's not as expensive as my imagination makes it out to be, or it could even inspire others to find similar and less expensive ways to make significant advances in the field of ultracapacitors.
At the very least, companies who make outrageous claims like this one bring awareness to different technologies and methodologies such as capacitors vs. batteries. I'll be interested to see if/when someone brings a capacitor driven car to market, be it these guys, or BMW, or whoever.

Re:Not a particularly new idea, but a good one

[spirit of reason]

In case you're curious, the better ultracapacitors store 5-6 Wh/kg, as opposed to 180-190 Wh/kg for standard Lithium ion cells on the market today.

Re:Not a particularly new idea, but a good one

[Zobeid]

Over on teslamotorsclub.com we did some back-of-envelope calculations and figured two of these EEStor units should fit into the same compartment where the Li-ion pack is currently housed in the Tesla Roadster, and each of them should store slightly more energy than the whole Li-ion pack -- meaning the car's range per charge could be slightly more than 500 miles.

So. . . There's your lightweight go-kart. Except it weighs about 500 pounds more than an Elise -- but it's still a very small two-seater car. How that would translate to a larger, four-door car is open to question.

The 500 mile range is a particularly important milestone to reach, since that's the maximum distance many people (including myself) are inclined to drive during a day. If you can literally drive all day and charge at night (perhaps at a motel?), then the whole "fast charging" issue becomes a non-issue. Nobody cares how long an overnight charge takes as long as it's done overnight.

I want to point out that EEStor have not made any "outrageous claims" at all. They've filed a patent, they've inked a deal with Feel Good Cars. . . And otherwise they've kept very quiet: they don't give interviews, they don't even have a website, and they try to discourage papers from writing about them. All the breathless talk that's been flying about their product is rumor. It's all claims that people have distilled out of the patent or wheedled out of "anonymous insiders" who claim to be in the loop.

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[Big_Breaker]

The recharge stations probably have the equivalent of 4-5 cars worth of super caps on hand to moderate their pull from the grid.

Given the energy and power density claims, I have to think this is a high voltage device. 110 volts is nothing - maybe 4kV? The glass and aluminum oxide materials mentioned are more in line with high voltage as well. Anyway, that would bring the amps in the charger down in a huge way.

I thought of the same issue. Transfering that much energy in 5 minutes sounded too fast. But transfering energy between HV caps can happen very quickly. You are using the inherent power density of caps for recharge. I guess the only issue is that if charging can happen so quickly than an unintended discharge (IE a short) could have the same 5MW power density. That is pretty scary!

BTW Their VC firm is legendary. That alone lends some credibility.

Re:"contains no hazardous materials whatsoever" ??

[kfg]

I misswired a capacitor once. Jeezum Crow! Who knew you could pack that much shredded paper into that tiny, little aluminum can? I was standing there in a manila snow storm, with my ears ringing and my adrenelin pumping, just glad there wasn't enough aluminum involved to make any real shrapnel.

KFG

Just 7 feet diameter cable.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

yeah, I saw another poster did a better job, starting with how much electricity you could buy for 9$ and arrived at 1.2 MW. That gels with the ICE efficiency/Motor efficiency ratio. Still 1.2 MW is nothing to sneeze at. The cable powering your microwave oven, rated at 1.5 KW is probably 0.25 inches thick. Imagine a cable with 800 times the cross sectional area! or 28 times thicker. The damn cable will be 7 feet in diameter!!!

Of course no one would try to carry 1.2 MW at 110 volts.

Re:Just 7 feet diameter cable.

[Anonymous Coward]

er... you mean 7 inches, right?

Re:Just 7 feet diameter cable.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

oops sorry. Should not type too fast. Feeling like an idiot already.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Isotopian]

Sounds like a win/win/win situtation

Yes, well, think of the truckers you insensitive clod!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[wcb4]

I meant to say that I get 500 miles.... faulty fingers, or faulty keyboard, your choice

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Dare nMc]

>system in which cars connect to electric lines along the highways

would work for me, I already wondered how to be a free-loader on the ultra-high voltage powerlines. Just need a flexibile input voltage charger, and some metal filiment fishing line, oh and a good faraday cage for the driver. just shoot a arrow/kite over the existing power line trailing the wire, ground just enough to charge, when your done you ground your end of the line, and poof one lightning bolt evaporates the charging line.

now this is extreamly wastefull if your paying the electric bill, but if your cost is just a $0.50 kite, and $1 per 100' of fishing line...

...to nuclear, wind, and hydro.

[KingSkippus]

Yeah, but just because a lot of our energy is produced by coal doesn't mean that a lot of it can't be produced any other way.

That's the beauty of taking the power needed for moving vehicles away from internal combustion engines and concentrating it at the power plants. Then you can take those many, many fewer power plants and concentrate on making them more clean and efficient instead of all of the millions of vehicles on the roads.

Still, the article's claim is pegging my BS meter something fierce. I'll believe it when I see it.

Scientific American - dead tree version

[Flying pig]

The current issue is about future energy technologies and their feasabilities. Not to give the game away too much but don't hold your breath waiting for any advanced electrical transportation system any time soon. Rechargeable hybrids look interesting, but in the short term nothing seems to beat a modern Diesel running on some sort of biofuel.

However, I have a simple solution to charging an ultracapacitor at ridiculous rates. You just need a very small nuclear explosion tailored to dump its EMP into suitable coils. I can just foresee the day when you drive up to the gas station, then stand behind the thirty feet of concrete while two lumps of plutonium are pushed together repeatedly by a variation on the nodding-head oil well pump, thus creating repeated EMP and charging your car. No greenhouse gases!

I don't think that's accurate....

[Hap76]

National Geographic did an article on this about 2-3 years ago - at $1.40/gal somewhere arount 30% of the price of a gallon (at that time about $0.40) was tax - since I don't think gas taxes have been raised much since, I would have to figure that the actuall tax rate on gas is about 20% of so - still highly taxed relative to most items, but not "most".

Of course, since much of the gas tax goes to road maintenance, the road maintenance money will have come from somewhere - either a general electricity tax, a tax on electricity service stations, or a monitor on cars to calculate tax/distance, so the point of your comment is still valid. Sorry.

Re:I don't think that's accurate....

[ChrisMaple]

Most of the wear on roads comes from heavy vehicles, not passenger cars or even SUVs. A tax based on the actual cost of road maintenance would really hammer trucks.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Catbeller]

And the Gulf War and the Iraq invasion/occupation cost how much?

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[EaglemanBSA]

Actually, typical efficiencies for an ICE (for a really efficient one) are in the neighbourhood of 25-28%. Typical efficiencies for a permanent-magnet DC motor are around 78-80% in their nominal operating range. That being said, a hybrid doesn't run on its electric motor on the highway. It runs purely on its gasoline motor, which is why hybrids lose out on highway mileage. They shine in the city because you no longer idle, and electric motors are better for acceleration (their max torque is at zero speed, when you need it, as opposed to their ICE bretheren). You can't compare the two. In all reality, chances are a maximum amp rating was used to calculate how long it would take to put a certain charge in the car, and extrapolated from there, but who knows how much energy that was. Bottom line, nobody has the numbers. In any case, electric vehicles will win out in the years to come.

Ok, 1 more time...

[Majik Sheff]

Let's do the math on a 5 minute charge of a 26oo Farad capacitor at 48 volts:

2600 farad * 48 volts = 124800 coulombs
124800 coulombs / 5 minutes = 416 amps
416 amps * 48 volts = 19968 watts

20 kilowatts per car? assuming 5 cars at a time at the "pump", where are gas stations going to get 100 kilowatts of continuous power? This is of course assuming zero loss in the conversion from line voltage to 48 volts DC.

Re:Ok, 1 more time...

[fjf33]

Just have a bank of the same capacitors under the station that get charged slower over time. Then the stations is always drawing a much smaller amount. You may still run out of juice and be able to do only a car every 30 minutes or so. But then again that happens from time to time here in Florida before or after a hurricane when everyone saps the underground tanks dry.

Re:Ok, 1 more time...

[spirit of reason]

You could conceivably store a large amount of energy (take a good portion of the excess from off peak hours) in a SMES or batteries. Then, it could dump charge and recharge as demand came and went.

Re:Ok, 1 more time...

[aXis100]

It's even worse than that...

The battery patent actually mentions something like 3500V and 50kWH or so. Charging 50kWH in 5 minutes would require a 600kW power source!

Using a slower charging battery as a buffer, this would still require 2kW of continuous power for each car that would be charged each day. For several hundred customers a day this is a shitload of power.

Hurray!

[g0dsp33d]

Brown outs for everyone! Now you can get stuck in the sweltering heat of your dark room because the grid can't handle air conditioners and cars!

Re:Hurray!

[spirit of reason]

Yeah... so of course if we change where we get our energy, we're going to need to update the infrastructure. It's not something that can happen instantly. Thankfully, consumers are pretty conservative about this type of thing, so who cares?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[calgar99]

I always thought that capacitors could deliver a decent sizeable amount of energy, but that the problem was more that it would want to do so quickly. Wouldn't that mean that if 500 miles per top-off was even correct, that those 500 miles would have to be driven immediately (e.g., no topping off the night before a long drive)?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[nizo]

Actually I can get 500mpg for nothing, as long as I am driving downhill the whole way. Though my right foot does get kinda sore from all that braking.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[mpathetiq]

You still got 500 miles? Wha? 29 * 13.5 = 391.5

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

I meant to say that I get 500 miles

That is what you said. Did you mean to say 400 BOTH times? :-)

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[SuperBanana]

To go 500 miles you need to store as much energy as there is in 10 gallons of gasoline.

Not true. You're forgetting that electric vehicles are substantially more efficient, even after motor/controller/charging losses. The Prius isn't an accurate benchmark, because no matter what the environmentalists say, it's still an internal combustion engine powered vehicle that wastes more than 3/4 of its gas on producing heat, not propulsion.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[michrech]

I meant to say that I get 500 miles.... faulty fingers, or faulty keyboard, your choice

You meant to say 500 miles? Errr. Not only did you say 500 miles in the first place, but stating it twice still doesn't make the math work for you.

500 divided by 13.5 is 37.037~ MPG. I think you meant you get closer to 400 miles on your 13.5 gallon tank (Just like my car does).

These posts are ridiculous

[brunes69]

I think this would be the end of self-serve fueling, the first driver who shorts a 380A 3.2kV capacitor charger with part of their body is going to become a very messy warning to others.

Why is it whenever people start talking about electric refil stations everyone on slashdot becomes a blithering idiot?

If you're icturing some joker waving around a huge metal conductor, you're crazy. It is perfectly simple to design a connector that would insulate this connection in such a way that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for the operator to electrocute himself with it unless they did it on purpose (I am envisioning a system whereby the entire plug is covered in a thick insulator that is retracted as the connection is inserted into the vehicle.

Seriously, gasoline is much more dangerous, especially the way most pumps are designe dnow where you can just shoot gas all over the ground if you want!!!

Re:These posts are ridiculous

[AndersOSU]

Hey three of my best friends just died in a freak gasoline fight accident, you insensitive clod.

Re:These posts are ridiculous

[z0idberg]

It is perfectly simple to design a connector that would insulate this connection in such a way that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for the operator to electrocute himself

I think you are underestimating the ingenuity of the average idiot.
Very, very difficult? yes. Impossible? no.

This does not compute

[klaun]

This story does not seem to make sense based on some back of the envelope calculations. If we assume they are talking about capacitors, which they don't seem to state in the article, they'd need a tremendously heavy one to store the energy.

Based on the Wikipedia energy density figures, an assumption they have a capacitor that has ten times the energy density of a supercapacitor, and the idea that an electric motor will be 5 times as efficient as an internal combustion engine, it turns out that you'd need 176 times the mass of capacitor as gasoline to run this car. If we use a weight of gas of 6.25 pounds, the capacitor weight for the vehicle will be 1100 pounds for each gallon of gas you would have needed.

Obviously, many of my assumptions could be off. They may have come up with a non-battery electric storage device that is many, many times the energy density of an existing super capacitor. However, it would seem the underlying technical advances necessary for such electricity storage would have had a lot of other applications that were lower hanging fruit than a car.

Re:This does not compute

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but remember that now you get rid of that IC engine, most of the transmission, exhaust, fuel tank, etc. So a lot of that weight is recovered. Most alternative powered vehicles could only be feasible with this tradeoff!!

Fast-charge or...

[phorm]

But I'm assuming that would just be for a fast-charge. You could do a slower top up say, over a few hours, and possibly pull that off with local current.

For the fast charge, special stations (just like gas stations) could have the appropriate wiring, and of course the fast-charge connections would probably have to be kept safe from any water and/or personal contact.

So if you're taking a trip over the limit (500 miles or whatever, likely varies with terrain) you'll have to stop at a station for a quick fill, and probably pay more for it. If you're parking the car overnight at home, you can probably just plug it into the your house power on a less-intensive charging scheme.

What I wonder about is the dissipation of power in the capacitor. They do lose power over time, so if you charge up on a Tuesday how much loss will you suffer if you don't drive until the weekend?

Re:Fast-charge or...

[jonboy_MT]

Most comments seem to be concerned with the feasibility of the 5 minute recharge. Why not consider the possibility of ubiquitous filling stations that have a more reasonable power supply but would take longer to do a complete recharge.
Think about the possibility of filling stations at restaurants where you would be away from you car for about one hour. The electrical charge could just be added to your dinner bill.
Or maybe movie theaters where you would be away from your car for 2-3 hours. Same deal.
Or maybe parking garages where you would leave your car for any number of hours. Pay for parking and a recharge.
Just because the 5 minute recharge is unlikely, don't dismiss the entire ultra-capacitor scenario as a replacement for gasoline powered vehicles.

better get 2

[Anonymous Coward]

i hope you can afford 2 of them...one to charge slowly at your house, from which you recharge the capacitor in the car in only 5 minutes...

our electrical grid in the US can't keep up with hot summer days when everyone turns on the AC. wait until they all come home at rushhour and plug in to get their 5 minute charge. rolling blackouts every evening between 4 and 7PM.

we're almost there, but still not quite ready for anything but petroleum....

Re:"contains no hazardous materials whatsoever" ??

[Gabrill]

Personally I'd classify the likely flying shards of molten metal "hazardous."

Just to be nitpicky, they would be droplets until they cooled back down. Droplets that drip along your skin and leave a blackened trail dead flesh. Sleep on that.

solar and super capacitor

[openright]

In california, with near year round sun, solar is a great untapped resource.

Combine efficient solar panels with efficent capacitors, and you have a good way to power your car, or your google wifi laptop.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Sarisar]

You know you're gonna get in trouble for sticking duct take on the power line to make it disconnect just so you can watch the driver have to put it back on...

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[jeffshoaf]

I don't know about your location, but where I live, there's very few "reasonbly competent" drivers.

Not so sure about that

[phorm]

It's not just a matter of how much energy there is stored in the gasoline, it's also about efficiency. I seem to remember reading that electric engines are somewhat more efficient than gas, and it would probably be easier to start/stop an electric engine for mixed traffic and lights (no warming up period for combustion reactions, etc).

There's also the consideration that you could do the normal electric car thing (pull power off the braking, etc) in addition to the regular charging schedule.

Re:Not so sure about that

[Ex-MislTech]

Also in line with the recharge braking, think photovoltaic roof/hood/trunk.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[47Ronin]

According to Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH, 17th) the cost is about $11.5 million/hour in Iraq.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[hab136]

How difficult will it be to deliver that much power (for an interstate!) to a remote location? What if that station is down for some reason?

Solar panels at the station could help its electric usage immensely (and its dependance on the grid).

For that matter, covering the top of the car with solar panels would extend its range. My car sits in the sun all day while I'm at work. It would be great if it was recharging while doing so.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Ucklak]

If it squeezes the oil companies out, expect it to die.

If you can avoid oil companies refueling stations, they will fight tooth and nail to keep you hooked on their product.
Although there will be a need for refueling(recharging) stations, 100% of these car owners won't be using them except on long distance trips.

Later on, I can see the marketing department selling the idea of 'cleaner' electricity to recharge your cars with different grades of 'filtered' electricity, kind of liike bottled water today.

Lots of energy...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Sounds like that little box holds lots of energy... I wonder what happens when it gets smashed to bits in an accident...?

How to get full charge in 5 min

[Anonymous Coward]

First, I don't see anything in tfa that says it's a capacitor. Poster making assumptions?

And how do they give you a full charge in 5 min without violating physics or causing lots of explosions? See, you drive up to the electricity station, and they measure the charge left in your battery... then replace it with a fresh one, and you pay for a full charge minus whatever you had left in the old one.

Re:How to get full charge in 5 min

[speculatrix]

I think your idea is really key - you LEASE the battery from the energy company, and when you get to an energy station you can simply swap the non-full "battery" for a full one. It avoids recharge times, and means too that the often complex optimised charging circuitry can be made best use of.

Re:How to get full charge in 5 min

[WCVanHorne]

Somebody should mod up the parent. Providing such a battery/capacitor is feasible in the first place, charging it at the ridiculous rates calculated is a non issue. Standardize the pac and connectors and swap for a full one (or multiples if you have a large/extended range vehicle, you could even carry a spare for long trips). The fillup is just the swap time (ie. seconds) and the "filling station" can either slow charge a rotating stock or actually have them delivered/removed by truck just like gasoline is now. This also provides the advantage of charging during off peak hours and leveling the load on generation capacity. In other words we don't need as many more plants to handle peak demand and during off peak hours stations and centralized charging depots (perhaps right by the generating stations to avoid transmission losses) can dump the energy in to the standardized charge pacs. As a bonus these pacs could be used/stockpiled for emergency electical supply residentially or commercially.

Re:How to get full charge in 5 min

[speculatrix]

also, by making the energy pac removeable and standardized, they can become commodity items and thus

the useful life of your vehicle is extended because it doesn't become uneconomic to replace the pack

advanced in energy storage mean you get to upgrade

it's worth an upfront investment into making the packs recyclable by design

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

"Though my right foot does get kinda sore from all that braking."

And this is why people need to know how to drive a manual!

On a serious note, continuous braking on downhill grades is a good way to overheat your brake system and remove your ability to brake. Downshifting to a lower gear and allowing your engine to keep you slow alleviates those problems and also lets your brake lights actually tell the guy behind you something related to you slowing down... not trying to maintain constant speed.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[speculatrix]

... but will they be just as explosive as LiIon batteries? I don't want to accept a cheap substitute that just goes "phut", I want a proper bang and a flash!

Ultracapacitor?

[bronzey214]

Is that next to the flux capacitor?

Leased Batteries and swap

[Anonymous Coward]

I've thought about a possible solution for electric cars. You lease the batteries from a common supplier, and each gas station has a stock of fully-charged batteries on the shelves. When you pull into the station, you pay $10 (or something) to swap your discharged battery for a fully-charged one. Bingo - fully electric cars, with a 5-minute "refueling" time. You could of course charge batteries yourself overnight if you chose to. Whatcha think?

Re:Leased Batteries and swap

[spickus]

Only if they credit me for the charge remaining in the battery. Without this you could never top off for a long trip.

Re:Leased Batteries and swap

[Cartack]

Why only "energy/gas stations" why can't 7/11 fit this kind of business into thier model....

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Ucklak]

I had a Mitsubishi Eclipse that did get 500+ (524 was the furthest I've been on a single tank) per tank as long as it was highway.
City was 350+. I'd guage the refil by the trip meter over the fuel level most of the time.
The manual stated that when the fuel light comes on, you have about 2 gallons left. Longest I've been in the city was a little over 90 miles after the light was on. Wouldn't dare try it on the highway and always fueled it within 30 miles. That 524 might have been a 30+ mile highway.

That car lasted me for 200,000 miles.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[CrudPuppy]

has anyone done the math here??

$9 is a huge amount of electricity in term of charge. passing that through a line in 5 minutes is gonna take one HUGE ass line, and is gonna pose huge dangers.

just my $0.02

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Gospodin]

Yes, well, think of the truckers you insensitive clod!

That's OK, we'll release wave after wave of unemployed-tanker-trucker-eating leopards if that becomes a problem.

Does this really make sense?

[sarcasticfrench]

So, according to this, electric cars can go a lot further than they could before. But the big problem is still there: the electricity doesn't just come out of nowhere. It has to be generated, and at the moment ~70% of elecricity generation comes from fossile fueles. If there where refueling stations that where entirely solar powered, then this would make some sense. But if the electricity was just coming from the local energy company, it makes no more sense than just using good old gasoline.

Re:Does this really make sense?

[east coast]

But if the electricity was just coming from the local energy company, it makes no more sense than just using good old gasoline.

Actually, it does.

First it gives us an alternative that can be used grid-wide. The current problem with alternate fuel vehicles is that they area pain if you don't live by a fueling station. This is also the greatness behind e85 adoption; the vehicles can run on an existing fuel or an alternative fuel if available.

Second, a power plant is much better regulated than an auto. They have the technology and the know-how to produce energy on a much cleaner level than your cars engine can. While we're still burning fossil fuels the emissions from a power planet are less than that of a car for the same energy output. Not to mention that at least some of the power coming from the grid has a chance of being produced from a green source. Unless you got something going on that I'm not aware of there isn't a commercially produced vehicle that has the ability to produce it's own power from a green source.

Third, I would question if this is even the same energy input. While I'm certainly not an expert, the simple laws of thermodynamics teaches that combustion engines create energy (by burning fossil fuels) that are given off as heat and not used in the system. I'd like to think that this system will have less "waste energy" and in this way cut down on over all energy consumption.

Finally, and I've gone on this rant before, please forgive me... There is no immediate "catch all" solution to fossil fuels. It's going to be a slow migration and not every solution is going to be 100% (or even 10%) greener than what we have on hand today. I'm sorry, but flying cars that run on water are not going to happen overnight. Unless the consumer buys into doing "a little bit" better for the environment and fossil fuel consumption the auto manufacturers aren't going to have the incentive to do the type of R&D it's going to take to make a serious switch from fossil fuels. That's the hard facts; preach renewable resources all you want but unless you're willing to put your money down and buy the technology you're not doing any good. Everyone keeps claiming that manufacturers have no interest in moving from oil but from all the pissings and moanings I've seen going on it's the public that has no interest because they want 100% fulfillment with absolutely no inconvenience. This simply is not going to happen.

Re:Does this really make sense?

[Jameson Burt]

I read that all our energy needs would be met by 900,000 windmills,
each the size of the Statue of Liberty.
Such devices would be a boon to what has been a nation declining in
engineers (no more than Japan or even Korea),
so long as we didn't import most everything involved.

The boon to using electricity is that the underlying energy generator
isn't fixed to oil or hydroelectric.

not household, standard biz

[rubycodez]

The needed thickness only depends on the voltage. Anyway, why talk about households, no big deal for a businesses to have 6000A service at 480VAC.

Re:not household, standard biz

[Ex-MislTech]

House wire gauge thickness for a dryer is different than for room outlets,
this is based on current not voltage.

If you look at the gauge on your car battery cables you will also see it,
and for the main lines running from the meter to the panel.

Re:not household, standard biz

[redcane]

The wire gauge is determined by the current. The current is determined by the voltage (for a given power draw). So the gauge of the wires depends on the voltage!!!

Re:not household, standard biz

[Ex-MislTech]

The voltage going to your dryer is 110volt phase1, and 110volt phase2.

Together they make 220v 2 phase power, the NEC(national electric code)
requires higher gauge wire the more power you draw in a house and the
voltage remains the same.

Current is the determining factor.

If you don't believe me, post on the electricians newsgroups and ask,
or pickup a copy of the NEC, I have the pdf if you want me to email it
to you to prove it.

think you

[kurtis25]

There are a few things to consider... I live in an apartment, does that mean I cannot buy on of these. I just don't see the Lord of my land allowing me to string an extension cord out my window and to whatever parking spot I'm in that day. That is also not to mention the power drop over an extension cord. Although seeing the neighbors annoying kid trip could be fun. Something would need to be done for us and those college types. All new car techs are going to come with a site setup fee (hydrogen, dumb power lines in the road idea, cars which drive of the power of my self worth) something needs added for all of these. I think electric comes at the smallest set up price (no I haven't calculated anything), I can use some existing equipment, it's based on an established industry (Enron aside), it wouldn't rely on public funding; yes it would use some public funds (grants, tax abatements, etc) but it's not like redoing all the roads. Power grids and houses will adapt to this. They adapted to personal technology. You cannot walk into an older house turn all your computer equipment on, your short wave radio and microwave dinner all at the same time. In a newer house you can do it all from one plug. I'm sure

This company is backed by the best VC firm

[Hangtime]

"EEStor is backed by VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and the company's founders are engineers Richard Weir and Carl Nelson."

This should at least some credence to the company. They did invest in Amazon.com, Intuit, Google, Genomic Health.

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Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[cp.tar]

From what my father told me of the trollies they used to have in Ljubljana, Slovenia, they only needed electricity to get going; the rest of the momentum was taken care of by a fly-wheel, just enough to cover the distance between the stops.

Anyway, he said those trollies could survive without electricity until they stopped; then they'd need it to start again.

Mind you, I might be wrong; that was when he was a kid.

Warning!

[Rob T Firefly]

Warning: Do not operate this vehicle if you are under the influence of alcohol, or unprepared to deal with improper advances from your own mother.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Catamaran]

I've seen that too, it's very annoying for everyone. But if the vehicle had a backup power source, i.e. ultracapacitor, then it could at the very least get out of the middle of the road.

Which way is up?

[ZonkerWilliam]

Okay even if they have increased the energy density of an ultra-capacitor to allow a vehicle to travel 500 miles (based on a 15 Kw engine), and can charge in a few minutes (~1.4 Megawatts). How long does the charge last? typical capacitors do not hold their charge indefenitely. What happens if there is a short? I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a vehicle if it discharges ~1.4 Megawatts of electricity in a few seconds. Finaly what happens if you over charge it? capacitors can easily be damaged due over charging.

Just some questions I would ask before I bought a vehicle that used these ultra-capacitors.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[ahodgson]

Solar panels at the station could help its electric usage immensely (and its dependance on the grid).

Solar panels at the station might offset it's own electricity usage and keep the coffee warm, but it would need a nuclear reactor in the back yard (or at least a small hydro dam) to noticeably impact it's ability to recharge cars. Solar panels aren't some magic power generation system. Not that much sunlight falls on any particular building.

You Sir, are a Moran

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess, you've never in your life delt with power distribution systems have you?

Do you have even the slighest idea what the NEC has to say about moving around this kind of power?

Why don't you head over the the Line-Men's forum ( http://www.line-man.com/forums/index.php?showforum =32 ) and share your wisdom there?

Re:You Sir, are a Moran

[Ex-MislTech]

Moron, not Moran...

http://www.onelook.com/?w=moron&ls=a

And safe power systems are viable, but not cheap.

The problem with most of a capitalist society is it
thinks cheap first.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[hswerdfe]

Toronto, Vancouver, San Fransisco

Gas prices are not the boogeyman

[Old Man Kensey]

le0p wrote:

While it's true gas prices are indeed dropping, they're still at an unacceptable level. If we see $1.15 (by the way, this is dependent on area, my recently "lowered" gas prices are still above $2.50, so I'm not sure where you're referring to) I will be truly shocked.

In my area (DC/Baltimore metro) prices have recently dropped from well over $3.00/gal to about $2.20/$2.30 depending on where you buy. I took a trip to see friends this weekend in Northern VA and saw it for $2.15 at several places near their home.

I remember the days of $.99/gallon (I know, I'm not that old) so getting the prices to $2.00 isn't exactly party worthy in my mind.

Have a look at US gasoline prices adjusted for inflation sometime. With minor variation from month to month, the graph is nearly flat. I remember the days of $0.89/$0.99 a gallon too -- they were 13 years ago, and that was at the cheapest gas station in town in an area where gas was (still is, as of last time I was home) much cheaper than elsewhere. Gas going up from $0.99 to $2.00 in 13 years is not that big a deal.

Incidentally I've been seeing articles for a couple of months now that gas was way over what the market should be seeing in economic terms, and was due for a big downward correction (kind of like the housing market some places). I haven't seen predictions of $1.15/gallon averages (and that would be way below where it ought to be economically), but I have seen predictions of $2.00 a gallon around December and that seems reasonable from the current perspective in late September.

Still I have to agree with you to some degree, while I think there's a need for a paradigm shift in fuel consumption, the American public has a short (sometimes non-existent) memory and will be downright ecstatic with an 50% price drop in gas; even when the original increase was 150%.

(100 + 150) * 0.5 = 125, so yes, such a trend line would be perfectly reasonable over a time period of a few years.

Re:Gas prices are not the boogeyman

[le0p]

Have a look at US gasoline prices adjusted for inflation sometime. With minor variation from month to month, the graph is nearly flat. I remember the days of $0.89/$0.99 a gallon too -- they were 13 years ago, and that was at the cheapest gas station in town in an area where gas was (still is, as of last time I was home) much cheaper than elsewhere. Gas going up from $0.99 to $2.00 in 13 years is not that big a deal.

How much has minimum wage increased in that time? I'd say it's a pretty big deal. Not everyone in this country has disposable income. Did the increase in gas prices affect me? Not much more than an annoyance. Do I know people that struggled seriously to afford to drive to work this year and pay their monthly expenses? Yep.

(100 + 150) * 0.5 = 125, so yes, such a trend line would be perfectly reasonable over a time period of a few years.

I should have payed more attention to the math but it was meant more as a visual example. The increase was more like 250% in my area, and I'd expect no more than a 30% drop before the next increase of probably another 250%. It's just going to keep going up. While I know inflation has something to do with it, it is outpacing the cost of living increases in my opinion.

Re:Gas prices are not the boogeyman

[plague3106]

I remember the days of $0.89/$0.99 a gallon too -- they were 13 years ag

Huh? I remember $0.99 / gallon in 1999... only 7 years ago. I remember because I was in my third year of college at the time, and was happy gas was so cheap on my college budget..

Re:Gas prices are not the boogeyman

[Old Man Kensey]

I didn't mention real income because it's not just gas that has gone up; everything has gone up, even things whose cost is only indirectly (if at all) affected by the price of gas, like health care. Even if you don't have a car, it's still harder to get by as a minimum wage earner than it was 10 years ago. Compared to other things gas is not that far out of the trend line. It's just something we're confronted by the price of everywhere we go, so everybody has an idea what gas costs, even people who don't drive.

Re:Gas prices are not the boogeyman

[Old Man Kensey]

I remember $0.99 / gallon in 1999... only 7 years ago. I remember because I was in my third year of college at the time, and was happy gas was so cheap on my college budget.

My experience may be skewed by the fact that in 1994 I left home to go to college and the gas prices in Charlottesville, VA were appreciably higher than back home at any given time. But I'm pretty sure gas was over $1.00 back in my hometown within a year or two of me leaving home; your experience obviously differed. The more interesting question is to compare gas prices where you went to college then, and now. Any idea what that looks like? I'd expect that if it was that cheap there in 1999 when I was paying well over a dollar in central VA, it's still pretty cheap now.

Re:Gas prices are not the boogeyman

[plague3106]

Price were about the same in both Rochester, NY (where I went to college) and my hometown of Philly. Don't know what gas prices in either are at the moment, but you should be able to figure it out if you want.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[orielbean]

It certainly fits into the existing models we've built for transportation.

However, the question is this - is it more efficient to burn the gasoline/fuel to create the electricity to use the electricity to run the cars, or to just continue refining internal combustion engines. It might be the case that the current state of electrical engines are just not as powerful as the gasoline ones, and to get an equivalent amount of work from the electrical engine requires more gas to be burned at the plant level for generation, thus negating environmental or fuel supply benefits.

But - I am not a electrical engineer, so I am not sure. I sure do hear a lot about the problem of using juice from the plants vs making each car more efficient.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Catamaran]

Otherwise you get to spend billions and billions to upgrade.

As a tax-and-spend liberal, I view that as a feature.

Wow, makes compressed hydrogen look safe!

[CFD339]

So 5 minutes at something like a megawatt of current.

OUCH! Who's gonna plug that sucker in? The charge radiating from the line would be dangerous to stand next to, and enough to light a fluorescent bulb!

Then, what happens if that huge capacitor you're sitting on gets in a car wreck? As a firefighter, do I have to find a way to discharge it somewhere (safely?) before I can cut you out of this deathtrap?

Where does all the power go if this thing cracks?

Besides, the switch for the 220v, 20amp line on a household circuit is half the size of a closed fist. That's a max of something like 4 kilowatts. A 110v 20amp plug is about 1/4 that size, and about 2 kilowatts capacity (I'm measuring capacity through the simple expedient of the fact the some engineer somewhere came up with these plugs -- not any kind of valid engineering). Scale that up in a linear way and I have to plug something 250 times the size of a dryer plug into my car. Hope I can carry it.

Re:Wow, makes compressed hydrogen look safe!

[MadMidnightBomber]

So 5 minutes at something like a megawatt of current.

As opposed to a kilogram, or a metre of current perhaps? Watts are power, amps are current.

Re:Wow, makes compressed hydrogen look safe!

[vtcodger]

***Then, what happens if that huge capacitor you're sitting on gets in a car wreck? As a firefighter, do I have to find a way to discharge it somewhere (safely?) before I can cut you out of this deathtrap?***

You've got it wrong. If the capacitor goes, the car and it's payload will be scattered fairly evenly over several acres. All you firefighters will have to do is put out the burning asphalt pavement and extinguish any secondary blazes. Technology is making your job easier every day.

Re:Wow, makes compressed hydrogen look safe!

[ChrisMaple]

A large portion of the size of the switch is insulation and safety margin; the same goes for the plug. Any switch in the car is likely to be electronic, and does not have the same size constraints as a mechanical switch. Cannon/ITT sells a 1kV, 950 amp connector that's 2" in diameter (that's for one wire.) It's only good for 500 mating cycles, so it would have to be beefed up substantially for service station use. Figure two connectors each 3" in diameter. Also figure extraordinary efforts to keep those connectors clean and dry.

Re:Wow, makes compressed hydrogen look safe!

[rts008]

LOL! The Self Cleaning Accident Site Technology (TM)

What will they think of next?

But it should be a boon (boom?) for the glaziers, a few of these going off around the neighborhood is bound to break a few windows.

Re:Wow, makes compressed hydrogen look safe!

[Anonymous Coward]

If the capacitor goes, the car and it's payload will be scattered fairly evenly over several acres.
Yes, something like that. 52kWh is about 100 lbs of TNT

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[mrops]

Cool, I am going to put a turbine on the top of my car and charge the capacitor with all the wind when I drive my car.

Off to patent it now.

#$% #$%^%^ those damn europeans, not allowing me to patent it, saying I can't patent perpetual motion devices.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[jacksonj04]

Hang on a second... $9 worth of electricity is quite a lot in terms of kWh. Last time I checked my basic physics, to shift that in 5 minutes needs a damn huge current. I for one am not keen on letting Joe Public wave high current charging equipment around.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Nutria]

Yes, well, think of the truckers you insensitive clod!

Seriously though, there's always more stuff to be hauled around.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[cayenne8]

Actually....I can't think of a city I've ever lived in that does not have overhead power lines.....

I'd guess if a city has everything underground, it must have been a recently built one....

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[soft_guy]

It would be trivial to design a system for connecting a car to a power take-off in the road that could be operated by any reasonably competent driver

You think the bus drivers are incompetent? I assure you that they are as good as anyone else is going to be about attaching and detaching from the power line. Still, they have to stop the bus, get out, attach it, get back in, and drive off. Now, imaging every driver doing this. I'm imagining a giant traffic jam.

As for "populated areas", very little of the driving I do is in such areas. Take Seattle for example, there are a few streets downtown that use this type of system. 90% of the driving that occurs on the bus routes doesn't even have this.

If you have to rely on a solution such as this, you might as well forget it because it isn't going to fly.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Kamots]

We've already got this around where I live. Reliant (and maybe others) will sell you electricity generated almost entirely from clean sources.

Or are you talking about cleaner in terms of spikes and such?

Plug and play

[bigattichouse]

You pull the cap and replace it with a full one... like gas cyclindars.. @home? Just have a cap running on trickle all night.

Invalid assumptions

[Rhys]

Your starting assumptions are off-base. An internal combustion engine and associated stuff (battery, gas, gearing, all that good stuff) are HEAVY. Electric motors are "heavy", sure, but nothing like a petrol-product engine. All it would take is for their capacitor to be small and/or low-density and your 50 MPG assumption may be looking a wee bit low.

Look at any of the world's super-fast railways: France's TGV, or Japan's Bullet Train. They are both electric trains, powered by overhead lines. No heavy batteries, gas, or any of that. Now how heavy the claimed device is we don't know. If it is lightweight however, you can see where your math would be way off.

Silly People

[flitty]

No, nobody would want that power shot into their homes, that kind of electricity could really hurt someone, I agree with the people, this would work like gas stations. However, i think most people would be ok if this car charged for 500 miles in 10-15 minutes, cutting the electricity needed in half/third to go 500 miles. This would cause the landlines to be safer (relatively). It could charge 80% in 5 minutes still (I would think). However, I doubt this is a true device we'll see anytime soon, this is the next "OMg! ths car runz on th3 waterZ!1!" video to circulate the net. It will be vapor like Atom Chip Computers and many of the other too good to be true devices. Show me a prototype, show me the charging and how it works, and i'll be on board. (I would like to see a prototype so if it does exist, and then disappears, we can hunt down the oil companies.)

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[plague3106]

Cost didn't stop us from putting power and phone lines everywhere though.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[cayenne8]

"On a serious note, continuous braking on downhill grades is a good way to overheat your brake system and remove your ability to brake. Downshifting to a lower gear and allowing your engine to keep you slow alleviates those problems"

I dunno...I'd much rather replace my brakes than my transmission.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[AKAImBatman]

... but will they be just as explosive as LiIon batteries?

Probably moreso. Carrying around 187 megajoules (pulled from 52kWh given by a Google link) in a compact, 400 pound container is guaranteed to be dangerous. Charging it at a rate of ~600 kilowatts for 5 minutes does nothing to reduce that problem.

Sounds like something new for the Mythbusters to blow up^W^W - I mean, investigate. ;)

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[Smin0]

There is the mitigating factor though that the engine is likely to be a lot higher efficiency, running straight off electricity, rather than having to burn fuel to release thermal energy and then using the expansion of gases to drive the piston, so less thermal energy should be wasted, so it may not be quite as high as that if you use the effective energy in 30kg of petrol.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[ijakings]

"But then we are stuck with the leapords" i hear you proclaim, NO, we put fricking laserbeams on their frickin heads and send them into Afganistan, If Bin laden isnt already dead, he soon will be!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[jmorris42]

> $9 is a huge amount of electricity in term of charge. passing that through a line in 5 minutes
> is gonna take one HUGE ass line..

Worse. Imagine a 'gas station' of the future with a dozen 'pumps' hammering away. Imagine the electrical feeder line that will be needed going into the station. Now imagine a city, where 'gas stations' are usually on at least one, perhaps two corners of any major intersection. Now imagine one out on a lonely stretch of Interstate. All hammering away at the electrical grid by the Gigawatt/hour. Where do we get all that additional electricity? With all the major upgrading of infrastructure, increase in power station fuel costs, etc. required I wouldn't expect electric rates to remain constant, that $9 will become $50 by the time it moves from early adopter status to mainstream.... and any remaining savings on the gas bill will be more than offset by the higher electric bill.

If we start a major program of building nuke plants NOW we might be able to get ahead of the demand curve but we will still be looking at a major upgrade of the distribution grid. Everybody will have a megavolt line running through their neighborhood.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Catamaran]

Which is one of the reasons why I like them for the on-the-road charging scheme that I outlined. The other reason being that they are much less toxic than batteries.

Bullshit on you...

[everphilski]

... gas is already under $2.15 and steadily falling in Huntsville, AL. It was $2.25 last week. I bet we see sub-$2.00 in a month.

And oil prices are not the only price driver on gas prices...

Not true at all

[Smeagel]

First of all, power plants are a LOT more efficient at converting fossil fuels into energy than a cars combustion engine is. Think 500+% more efficient. Meaning if the electricity didn't have any overhead (which it would), you'd have to burn 1/5th the gas to get the same distance. That being the case, the energy that right now costs us $3 (gallon of gas) equivalent would be 60 cents, and that's if they're paying the ridiculous consumer taxes (which they wouldn't be), and not taking significantly lower demand into consideration in price per gallon.

On top of that, by moving all cars over to electricity, you then have the option of SLOWLY changing the power backbone from fossil fuels to whatever you like (nuclear or solar).

Lastly, don't group all fossil fuels together. Some fossil fuels (gasoline) take wars to keep the black-blood pipelines flowing. Others (coal) are dug in vast quantities out of kentucky and west virginia and will not only benefit our economy significantly more, but will remove our dependency on the middle east.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[KDR_11k]

I think he's talking about "100 octane electicity".

Wow, a whole month!

[raygundan]

My apologies for the sarcasm. Even with this months' drop, prices for gas are going up. There are, of course, shorter-term anomalies in both directions-- like when it was $0.79/gallon during the early 90s, or when it was almost $4/gallon right after some hurricane crushed a major supply channel for the US.

Yes, it's down this month. But that doesn't mean much for the overall trend.

not below $2?

[DaEMoN128]

I saw a station at 1.99 today, another one 1.97 about half a mile from there. I guess you are wrong. I have no clue where you are, and that may be a very accurate statement where you are at. I am in Virginia, and I have been seeing prices below two dollars a gallon for about 4 days now. Granted, most are still 2.1x right now, but they are still dropping.

Re:not below $2?

[Com2Kid]

I saw a station at 1.99 today, another one 1.97 about half a mile from there. I guess you are wrong. I have no clue where you are, and that may be a very accurate statement where you are at. I am in Virginia, and I have been seeing prices below two dollars a gallon for about 4 days now. Granted, most are still 2.1x right now, but they are still dropping.

How pissy, it is still around 2.99 where I live...

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[badboy_tw2002]

Some of the fastest cars in the world are electric - mind you they don't have a 500 mpg range :) There's nothing to say that an electric car can't have the performance of a gasoline one. As for combustion engines, the economies of scale make plant generation much more efficient (and cleaner) than local under-the-hood transformation as far as fuel->raw power. Plus, once you have such a system up and running, its far easier to switch just the plant to something else (wind, solar, hydro, fusion) than to give everyone a mini-clean power source (solar car, Mr. Fusion).

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[tylernt]

we're going to need something in the future

You mean, something like biodiesel? "Biodiesel functions in current diesel engines ... Biodiesel can be distributed using today's infrastructure, and its use and production are increasing rapidly. ... a gallon of biodiesel produces the effective energy of 2.25 gallons of ethanol"

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[eric76]

It might be easier to just electrify the roadways themselves.

That would take care of hitchhikers and wild animals, too.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[dr_springfield]

My improvement: an integrated lightening rod for free fill-ups!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Brickwall]

$9 at $0.10/kwH = 90 kwH. 90 kwH = 90k VAH (volt-amps). High voltage mains (such as power your stove at home) in the US and Canada are 220 V. So, current would be 90,000/220 = 409 amps, and it would take one hour to charge the battery.

5 minutes = 1/12 of an hour. So required current to transfer that much energy in five minutes would be 4909 amps.

Of course, the recharging stations might be very high voltage. High voltage transmission lines are routinely 110 kV and up. At 500 kV, transferring the current might only take 11 minutes. Don't know that I'd want to play around with voltages like that!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[AlHunt]

>I'm not sure about these long distance claims, you would probably need a huge capacitor, but it >doesn't matter because really we don't need to go such long distances on a single charge.

"huge capacitor" is a little sobering. I've seen small capacitors that popped and did damage to the area around them. Hope we get a fail safe or a large sheet of steel ...

Al

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[KDR_11k]

However, the question is this - is it more efficient to burn the gasoline/fuel to create the electricity to use the electricity to run the cars, or to just continue refining internal combustion engines.

Well, I certainly don't want those nuclear reactors to get built into vehicles that crash by the thousand every day. And mounting a 50 metre windmill on a car strikes me as impractical when you're going through a tunnel.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[killjoe]

We can soon add iran to that cost. That one is going to be even more expensive.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[networkBoy]

Imagine the electrical feeder line that will be needed going into the station.
You mean that single 20 ga wire?

The size of conductor is relative (via inverse square law) only to the current passed through the wire, not the total power.

This simply means that the car will have a step down converter immediately prior to the cap (likely integrated in the motor controller).
Likewise the power pump station will have a mini substation getting transmission voltage and stepping it down to something around the distribution voltage range (maybe even lower).

-nB

Yes I know the 20Ga is a bit silly, immagine the size of the insulator you would need if it was carring useful ammounts of power :-)

Less fluff in an older Business Week article

[Ritchie70]

From the BW article:

According to a May, 2004 edition of Utility Federal Technology Opportunities, an obscure trade newsletter, EEStor claims to make a battery at half the cost per kilowatt-hour and one-tenth the weight of lead-acid batteries. Specifically, the product weighs 400 pounds and delivers 52 kilowatt-hours. (For battery geeks: "The technology is basically a parallel plate capacitor with barium titanate as the dielectric," UFTO says.) No hazardous or dangerous materials are used in manufacturing the ceramic-based unit, which means it qualifies as what Silicon Valley types call "cleantech."

Business Week link

I don't pretend to understand the "battery geek" stuff, but I bet someone here does...

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[KDR_11k]

At that capacity it's going to be a big bang, lotsa smoke and flying debries. Fun for the whole family!

terrified!

[Stoertebeker]

I would be terrified to stand next to a fueling station that dispenses a highly flammable, poisonous and carcinogenic liquid at a rate of several gallons per minute!

Attach ultracapacitors to your domestic supply

[Colin Smith]

A box of capacitors in the garage. Trickle charge them over 24 hours at about one kW, discharge them into the car when you park.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[nuklearfusion]

However, the question is this - is it more efficient to burn the gasoline/fuel to create the electricity to use the electricity to run the cars, or to just continue refining internal combustion engines. It might be the case that the current state of electrical engines are just not as powerful as the gasoline ones, and to get an equivalent amount of work from the electrical engine requires more gas to be burned at the plant level for generation, thus negating environmental or fuel supply benefits.

internal combustion engines are thermodynamically inefficient compared to generation from powerplants. IIRC, the thermodynamic efficiencies (work out/energy in) of car engines compared to coal power plants are about 20% and 40 % respectively. electric moters can achieve as much as 90%.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Armando_Mcgillicutty]

But it would really suck the first time a car broke down or crashed and the passengers couldn't get out of the card.

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[angel'o'sphere]

You forget that a gasolien car has an efficenty of about 20% and a electric car aof about 90%.

So divide your numbers by 4 on the elctrricity side and you get: 1.2 MW. Of course you would not charge it ona 110 volts line but on a 230 volts line, like in europe. (oO ... that was a joke, but I guess you get the basic idea)

angel'o'sphere

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Rei]

Assume 10 cents per kWh. $9=90kWh. 90 kWh in 5 minutes means 1.08MW. As for how wide of a wire you'd need to carry that, it depends on the voltage and how it's cooled. If this is a high-voltage application, it's not unrealistic.

As for how to get that kind of energy to your house, which doesn't have suitable wiring, you don't have to. You could fuel at fuelling stations. You could have it fuel slower at your house. You could have your house have a capacitor buried underground, and have power from that drained quickly into the car, but be charged slowly by the house for the rest of the time. Etc.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[cayenne8]

"So would the infrastructure for switching to a hydrogen economy, but we're going to need something in the future."

Well, while it is true the US really needs to get off the dependance from islamic petroleum....I'd heard somewhere recently that the experts speculate we have enough oil in the earth to go another 140+ years.

While I'd like to live forever, I kinda doubt I will...so, I'll be long dead before we run out....so, I'm not too terribly worried.

I like driving fast cars, and will continue to enjoy so till I'm too old to drive....

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[GeffDE]

Heya Yogi! Doing that would in no way ruin your transmission. They are designed for that kind of usage, unlike braking systems. So, IMHO, its better to not replace anything than replace brakes.

Fear of Technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheesh -- why so much fear of technology?

This is an engineer's dream! These are new technologies that need smart thinkers to solve the hard problems!

Is it only cool to crap on anything new/different? That's sad.

Doesn't *anyone* want to change the world? To innovate something new?!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[orielbean]

They built a concept car powered by nuclear fuel back in the 50's...

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[naoursla]

The station could have a bank of super-capacitors that are trickle charged throughout the day and then quickly discharge to power a vehicle.

Although this does put a limit on how many cars such a station could power in a day.

You could have such a system at home too.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[cayenne8]

"We can soon add iran to that cost. That one is going to be even more expensive."

I dunno...I think at that point, we nuke the whole area...turn the sand to glass, send them all to their 22 virgins, and start all over.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[vijayiyer]

I'd rather replace my transmission than me, when my brakes overheat and I crash at full speed.

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[plague3106]

Not all the thermal energy is wasted, at least not here in Vermont in the winter. Its used to heat my car. How will an electric car be heated in the winter? It takes quite a bit of juice to run electric heaters..

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[a_ghostwheel]

Later on, I can see the marketing department selling the idea of 'cleaner' electricity to recharge your cars with different grades of 'filtered' electricity, kind of liike bottled water today.

When I lived in Sacramento in 97-99, there was an option to pay extra to have electricity "generated from green sources" (wind/solar/etc). I pretty sure that idea still very much alive and not only in CA.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[StarfishOne]

Or, as another alternative, swap some kind of battery-pack, assuming they would be very light and able to store a lot of energy.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[naoursla]

Put a capacitor in your home and charge it up at night. Transfer the power to your car in five minutes from your trickle charge capacitor.

Although this still doesn't address the safety issues.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[cayenne8]

"I'd rather replace my transmission than me, when my brakes overheat and I crash at full speed."

Ya'll must run some cheap or shoddy brakes. I've never had that problem...and I've lived in some VERY hilly country, with very steep inclines.

I never had to replace my brakes anymore than most normal people.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[orielbean]

Thanks for the explanation! I was not sure of the trade-offs there. I guess the next questions would be re : transmission and storage losses for the plants and "gas" stations.

And the cost of keeping up your ultracap or battery - IIRC those materials are pretty darn toxic and have disposal issues too. Not as much as nuke waste of course, but another environmental impact to be aware of. Anybody hear about the toxic dump off the Ivory Coast? Those poor buggers are getting a real tough deal over there.

Both factually and legally INCORRECT

[hellfire]

The majority of gas is NOT tax. There are a lot of pieces fo the cost of gas but tax is somewhere between 25-35% of the total cost of gas.

Secondly, the tax on gas is tied directly to gas. That's what the law says. There's nothing tying it directly to driving. I pay tax on gas if mowing the lawn, running a generator, etc etc. If this were the case, I'd have to pay tax for riding my bike.

The outlandish nature of your comments makes me suspect you work for the energy companies.

Re:Both factually and legally INCORRECT

[nullset]

> The outlandish nature of your comments makes me suspect you work for the energy companies.

Haha. That's funny. My wife does work for a power plant, but that's neither here nor there.

My main point was just that comparing electricity ("500 miles on $9 worth of electricity") to gas prices
directly isn't a valid comparison.

Some people just don't understand that good storytelling involves exaggeration..... :)

Re:Both factually and legally INCORRECT

[hellfire]

It wasn't taken as a good exaggerated story. Just a tip but if you want it to be taken as such, you need to use a tone that doesn't sound authoritative.

Re:Both factually and legally INCORRECT

[spinfire]

Your first statement is true but your second isn't.

You can purchase "off road" fuel which does not have tax added. This is definitely true for diesel fuel. Off road fuel is dyed red. In rural areas you can also see it marketed as "ag fuel" or "agriculture fuel" because tractors that do not drive on public roads don't need to pay road taxes. Of course, if you get caught running the stuff on road you're in big trouble - and in fact big rig trucks do get inspected at weigh stations for the red fuel. Usually for gasoline the deal is that you can get a tax refund for gasoline used off-road.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[johnw]

Yes, 37 MPG is pretty feeble.

I get about 400 miles out of my 7 gallon tank. Our big car gets about 700 miles out of its 15 gallon tank.

Perhaps you need to upgrade your engine technology?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Rei]

There are other solutions. There are "third rail" type systems in which power is only transferred when the "train" is on the rail, thus preventing the usual safety risks of having an exposed, electrified rail. There are "contact-free" options as well, although I don't know how well the economics would work out (for example, short-distance microwave transmission)

Heck, while we're in fantasyland, lets throw in interstates with coils of wire buried in them, and vehicles with retractable halbach arrays mounted to their undercarriages. Side coils could keep you going straight, and autoconvoying could be computer-managed. No more traffic, incredible speeds on open roads, no more need to drive, great system efficiency, no more parking problems (your vehicle can drive off and park, then come back when you page it), automatic pickup and delivery, integrated public and private transportation, and all sorts of other benefits.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[warsql]

And the war on drugs cost how much? And bottled water costs how much? And the relevance is ... ?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Catamaran]

That's a big question right now. However, wind, solar, tidal, etc. power are either at or very close to being cost-competetive with fossil fuel power. I am assuming that the trend will continue, so eventually there will be no fossil fuel electricity and hence no negative impact from electric powered vehicles.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

that's easy. you have a system that only allows current to pass after it's been authenticated. isn't it about time we have "smart pumps"? (think EV1) The pump could also keep track of your cost of driving and such.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Touvan]

Most of us seem perfectly willing to play around with all that flamable liquid right now. ;-) With appropriate safety precautions in place, I don't see why this couldn't be just as easy and safe as filling up with gasoline.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[jmorris42]

> > Imagine the electrical feeder line that will be needed going into the station.
> You mean that single 20 ga wire?

No. Power is Volts X Amps (X power factor if we are using AC but lets keep it simple, K?) Wire guage sets a practical limit to Amps and Volts is limited as well by other physical limits. Recharging in 5 minutes needs megawatt hours of energy delivered in minutes. Doing that means a crapload of both volts and amps.

> Likewise the power pump station will have a mini substation getting transmission voltage and stepping
> it down to something around the distribution voltage range (maybe even lower).

No, a largish filling station will need a major substation. And the cable going into your car will be a big thick cable; a pair of large fairly rigid conductor with several redundant layers of insulation over them, probably with sensors buried in the insulation to shut the system down at the first hint of a weak spot.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[dthomas731]

Its not the volts that kill you its the amps!

Want a job?

[douglips]

Hi! I'm from NASA, and we're hiring for our next Mars mission. Want a job?

Re:Want a job?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Dont have mod points. or will give you a funny pt. Anyway how did you know I am a rocket scientist?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[ChrisMaple]

Remote station consists of gas tank, generator, and energy storage device (flywheel or ultracapacitor). Disadvantage: high capital cost compared to normal gas station. Advantage: no requirement for extra-high capacity power lines.

One downside is you need more electric plants.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

One downside is you need more electric plants.

Worked it out once, assuming then-prevalant estimates of HP requirements for cars: You need about ten times as much generation for recharging one household car as you need for the household itself (and a two-income family will typically have two cars and two daily commutes, while a one-income family also needs to shop). That's a LOT of extra electric plants and distribution wiring.

That was a few years back. Tech has improved somewhat (as has other aspects of the utility environment), so a new estimate is needed.

But there are limits to how little power you can spend to carry a car full of people and their cargo down the road at reasonable speeds, or up a mountain.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[iluvcapra]

If we're talking manual transmission, you're only wearing the clutch when you're in the transition state between engaged and disengaged- all the wear on your clutch happens when the clutch and flywheel aren't moving at the same speed. As long as you don't ride the clutch, and you are rolling at a speed that is sane for your gear/RPM, you won't hurt anything, and it does improve brake life.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Dr. Eggman]

True, Biodiesel can use current infrastructure, but it's still petroleum based. I strongly support biodiesel but only as a stop-gap measure, one to aid in the transition away from petroleum. Ofcourse, I doubt anyone thinks Oil powers will just roll over and let the biggest petroleum consumer in the world switch off. that's where Biodiesel would be handy, we can produce biodiesel to stave off the big effects of a big petroleum embargo, hopefully long enough to compete upgrades to a more perminent system.

Rising gas prices

[Shawn is an Asshole]

The bastards raised the price of gas -$0.60 since June!

(it was around 2.89 then and was 2.29 this morning, the cheapest I've seen in a long time)

Solution is simple

[CrazyJim1]

Have 2 Capacitors. One in your car, and one you swap in from home that's on the charger.

Re:Solution is simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Your solution is "hey, have you thought of rechargeable batteries?". just, wow.

The real problem....

[RedHat Rocky]

Anyone remember those rolling blackouts? Why were they happening again?

Now imagine a power grid that must supply HUGE amounts of current in short, unpredictable burst. Imagine trying to balance power production back at the power plant.

This "technology" is obviously way too optimistic to have wide spread use.

Re:The real problem....

[mlippert]

Except that as the article implied at one point, the "refueling" stations would store the power in large local ultracapacitors, so there wouldn't be short unpredictable burst requirements but a relatively constant demand.

A previous article also suggested that you have a stationary ultra-capacitor at home that charges slowly (perhaps in 10 hours) which can be used to recharge the ultracapacitor in your car in 5 minutes. That would probably help even out the power demand more so than it is today, because this recharging can be done overnight when there is less other demand.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[CastrTroy]

I know that Ontario has at least 1 supplier of Green Power

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Rei]

You refer to the Ford Nucleon. It was designed, but not built. Unlike this monstrosity, which was partially completed.

500 miles on a 5-minute recharge

[number1scatterbrain]

I would like to have a car that would go 500 miles in 5 minutes for $9.00. Ideally, it would be powered by Arabs.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[ChrisMaple]

I've never seen a bumper-car driver lose his connection to the grid. The technology for connecting electric city busses needs to be improved.

Information From The Patent

[loose electron]

OK -

The patent applied
and received is US Patent: 7,033,406

Feel free to yank the patent off the USPTO web site.

Issue Date: April 25, 2006
(Hopefuly they are not 24 days late.)

Unit described in the patent:

Weight = 336 pounds
Capacitance = 31 Farads
Peak Voltage on the capacitors = 3500 V
Energy stored = 52 KwH
Size of Unit = 1 cubic foot (its in there read the fine print)

The patent also describes an energy distribution system that includes "fuel stations" that use the same capacitor storage, and charges capacitors at the fuel station during graveyard shift. (double conversion losses, but that can be argued, and there are MUCH better ways to do this)

The "ultra fast charging" as per the marketing/media blurbs are commented on in the patent, "if sufficient cooling for the charging and wire interconnect is avaialble...." so the guy writing the patent was aware of the issues with the resistive losses in the system.

The capacitince structures are a ceramic technology, using special dielectrics. A lot of content there on the chemistry and fabrication technology.

Not sure if this is vaporware or the "next big thing" - we shall see.

Jerry

Re:Information From The Patent

[loose electron]

Gobs more information on wht they have is here:

http://www.rexresearch.com/weir/weir.htm

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[HTH NE1]

I for one am not keen on letting Joe Public wave high current charging equipment around.

So, there will still be no "pumping" your electricity in New Jersey and Oregon?

Re:"contains no hazardous materials whatsoever" ??

[Anonymous Coward]

"Flying Shards of Molten Metal". Can I use that as the name of my band?

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[gardyloo]

What gauge wire do I use for my 4000 Amp circuit and why can't I find a 4000 Amp circuit breaker at Home Depot. I will tell you why, Big Oil.

    The day *you* are able to waltz into a Home Depot and buy a 4000A circuit breaker and have no one bat an eye is the day I get the fuck out of the country.

You're right. The criminal industry will suffer.

[NRAdude]

If a man gets caught using or 'booby-trapping" a device powered by either of these power sources for malicious purposes, in one series he could be charged with Assault while in another he would just be "battery."

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[elcid73]

Doc Brown my be able to help you out with getting your car fitted like that.

Gas + engine = 15-20% efficiency

[LanMan04]

Don't forget that only 15-20% of the energy stored in gasoline is converted to mechanical energy to drive the car. The other 80-85% of energy is waste heat.

According to the Wikipedia article on Ultracapacitors>, they have a cycle efficiency of 95%.

I don't want to work that into your calculations, but it amount of energy needed to drive a car X miles is far less that what is contained in a tank of gas that will drive you X miles.

Re:Gas + engine = 15-20% efficiency

[ChrisMaple]

The typical automotive Otto cycle engine in production today is nearer to 25% efficient, and Diesels about 35% (numbers vary widely with whom you choose to believe.) As much as 1/3 of that is lost in the transmission and tires. The Ultracapacitor system is still going to have to deal with those losses, and electric motors aren't 100% efficient either.

Re:Gas + engine = 15-20% efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

First, electric motors can vary their torque by varying the current. Therefore you don't have gearing / transmission losses. The problem is that starting up from a dead stop requires a lot of torque (high current). On a standard battery this quick discharge quickly affects how many times you can recharge it before it degrades. Ultracapacitors fix that shortcoming.

See:
http://www.afstrinity.com/

Second, since you are discharging a battery or capacitor to accelerate, you can charge the battery while slowing down. This is known as regenerative braking. Most current autos, with the exception of hybrids like the Prius, do not use this. Meaning: all of the braking energy is lost as heat.

Finally, another lossy area is in the pistons and driveshaft. In gas/diesel powered vehicles, you are using an explosion to drive a linear force (the pistons) and converting it into a rotational one. The Mazda RX series uses a rotary engine to avoid this problem, which also allows very high rpms, but its combustion chamber is subject to wear and needs relatively frequent maintenance. Electric vehicles also push their power directly into rotational force but don't suffer from the internal combustion issues.

So in a nutshell, yes there will be heat losses - 1st law of thermodynamics yada yada. But an electric engine will always be far more efficient than an internal combustion engine.

Re:Gas + engine = 15-20% efficiency

[JonathanR]

Those efficiencies you quote are peak efficiencies, attained at one particular speed-load point. The real-world averages are much, much lower.

Re:Gas + engine = 15-20% efficiency

[KonoWatakushi]

This is only part of the story. A gas engine has no means to recover energy lost while braking, so an enormous amount of it is simply wasted.

A capacitor is capable of recovering nearly all of this energy. As such, much less energy will be used than with a gas or battery (only) powered vehicle. City driving, and the typical commute will require very little energy by comparison.

Moreover, the total energy required for such typical daily activities is small enough that you would be able to charge your vehicle at home during the night. The high charge rate which is causing so much concern, is really only necessary for very long trips.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Rei]

Yes, all of those evil oil companies and their conspiracies. Hmm, what method will they use to keep *this* new technology down? Lets do multiple choice:

1. Buyout
2. Arson
3. Murder
4. Corrupt politicians
5. Illuminati
6. Aliens

Changing the infrastructure of a country would require many decades -- longer than the lifespan on a lot of the equipment that oil companies run. Not to mention that there are oil and natural gas fired power plants galore, industries that run off of them, heating oil, plastics, medicines, hydraulic fluids, lubricants, and tons of other uses for petroleum. The only thing that's a threat to the oil companies is something that will *immediately* alter the world. Heck, some of the world's biggest investors in solar are Shell and BP. If our energy sources move in a different direction, they'll move in that direction as well.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[FuzzyDaddy]

I'm not sure about these long distance claims

They are bogus. Energy storage per Kg is much lower at this point for ultracapacitors than it is for batteries - so any claims of more mileage from them over batteries is VERY suspect.

This isn't to say they aren't very useful in automotive applications - they're very good at storing and releasing energy very quickly and efficiently (much more so than batteries). But that's a different figure of merit.

Ha HA, it's a Farkism MORAN

[Anonymous Coward]

WIYF, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fark

And you sir, are also a HV illiterate.

BTW, when did Maxwell's eqn's become a capitalist conspiracy?

That tin foil won't doesn't do you any good now sucka.

MAXWELL IS OUR BIATCH!

Re:Ha HA, it's a Farkism MORAN

[Ex-MislTech]

And you sir, are also a HV illiterate.

I worked on 86Kv lines for a Klystron based radar transmiter,
and I did "read" the tech specs, the manuals, and worked on the
cabinet under power and lived.

If I had made ONE mistake, I would not have lived.

This tends to make me believe that at a minimum I know high
voltage well enough to make it work, and to stay alive.

86Kv is some pretty serious voltage, but be aware the conductor
itself was no bigger than a battery cable in your car, the
insulation was MUCH thicker, and of higher grade material.

The charging cable from the tripler to the tube in a monitor
carries often over 30,000 volts, yet the actually wire gauge
is small.

These ppl that keep spouting gauge is determined by voltage
are barking out their backside and have not worked with
real world equipment.

I have done so for DECADES.

Nightmare of a tow-truck driver....

[einnar2000]

Can you imagine working for a towing company with these cars on the road?

"I'm sorry ma'am, we're not allowed to give jump starts in the rain."

Anything gets wet, and you could have a lot of dead tow truck drivers. Your average mechanic would have to learn a whole new trade that many of them would have difficulty learning part of, much less all of it. How many of the components would be 'sealed'? By sealed, I mean 'not authorized to even open, return to manufacturer.'

I remember when run-flat inflaters were the latest fad. Problem with them was, the gas wasn't inert, it was flammable. You got a puncture, and the poor slob that tried to rasp the puncture out and seal it caused sparks between the rasp and the steel-belts in the tire. A couple people died on a simple tire filler, and now we're talking massive amounts of electricity..

Sorry, I like the idea of biodiesel better. The "death vs cool" ratio is much higher.

The real importance of mass produced U.C.'s

[Baldrson]

People think mass produced ultracapacitors revolutionizing car transportation is the real imortance here but they're mistaken. The real importance is that there will be thousands of garage tinkerers trying their hand at various techniques to produce fusion energy. They will probably come up with ideas more workable than the Tokamak (although that isn't saying much by itself).

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[jdray]

I think he meant overhead lines for buses, trolleys, etc.

Car designers intentionally created fragile cars.

[NRAdude]

An old man always remenisced of the age when he was younger and owned such a car that had bumper technology as nothing more than primitive affordable steel-plating bolted on the front and rear of the body. Any car that had a similarly equipped bumber would be symetrically obstructed from causing any damage to the already-thick steel chassis and shell. The "bumper-car" known at fair exposition grounds should be heeded. All automobiles should be constructed with a bumper standard; giving heed to the verry low-riding "pleasure craft" to have a more symettrical bumpter-height, and medium-sized automobiles to have two symetrical bumpers for those lower-riding as well as their class, and the larger craft to scale downwards.

It is shameful the shell that covers the motorist and his guests or passengers/property is worth more than most modern artisanry. Let's just try to prevent colliding automobiles at a popular damage site at the bumper, not at the caboose or seats of the helmsman or operator/driver.

AA, AAA, C, D

[DigitalRaptor]

You'll know the energy density of ultracapacitors has ripened when there is a real market for AA, AAA, C, and D ultracapacitors that are drop-in replacements for normal batteries and offer the same duration.

The benefit of ultracapacitors is that you can recharge them VERY fast. For instance, charging several AAA batteries could take as little as a few seconds, and can be done 500,000+ times with no affect on the battery (no memory, no decrease in power, etc).

Personally I can't wait, but we aren't there yet. MIT is making good progress using carbon nano-tubes, however.

Re:AA, AAA, C, D

[MtViewGuy]

I think once we get ultracapacitor technology to work decently well and with high safety it could be very useful for devices like iPods, PDA's, and cellphones. Imagine charging the batteries in under 15 minutes and the batteries run several times longer than standard NiMH or Li-On batteries on a single charge; an iPod nano using such a battery could run maybe over 100 hours before needing another recharge, and you only need to keep it plugged into the USB port for around 30 minutes to fully charge the battery pack.

Re:AA, AAA, C, D

[DigitalRaptor]

Add to that the fact the battery would be cheaper to manufacture, and not contain hazardous materials.

Current batteries are attrocious for the environment and efficiency. A battery takes approximately 2,000 times more energy to manufacture and charge than you get back out of them...

0.05% efficiency isn't anything to brag about!

Re:AA, AAA, C, D

[dan42]

A big challenge for simply swapping these for a battery is the voltage vs. discharge curve for capacitors - it is very steep compared to lithium and NiMH, so without internal (boost) regulation, replacement cells would appear dead well before the energy was completely discharged.

Re:AA, AAA, C, D

[Ginger Unicorn]

whatever happened to A and B size batteries? I've never seen them.

Re:AA, AAA, C, D

[MtViewGuy]

I can understand your concern, but I'm sure portable device manufacturers that adopt ultracapacitor batteries will use totally new internal circuitry for better compatibility with this energy storage device.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[KDN]

Worse. Imagine a 'gas station' of the future with a dozen 'pumps' hammering away. Imagine the electrical feeder line that will be needed going into the station.

To lower the surge on the feed to the "gas" station, you could use homo static (?) generators. These are huge flywheels tied to a motor generator. You spin up the flywheel at a rate that the power grid can handle, and then when someone comes in for a charge you just suck it off the flywheel. I recall these generators being developed for something else, but its been a few years so I don't recall what it was for. (Laser fusion?).

However, I would be a bit more skeptical of this until I see real evidence repeated by others. Remember cold fusion?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[amliebsch]

So would the infrastructure for switching to a hydrogen economy

Would it really? Is there any real reason we couldn't use the massive natural gas infrastructure already in place?

Swappable batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not make the batteries swappable .. that'd be even faster. Back up into a battery exchange station and they automatically/robotically remove the battery and securely seal the new one in. They take your battery and charge it up over time and give it to a different customer. When the battery passes a certain number of uses they junk it.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[246o1]

"While I'd like to live forever, I kinda doubt I will...so, I'll be long dead before we run out....so, I'm not too terribly worried."

There's a word for attitudes like that, and it's 'antisocial.' Other applicable words include 'selfish,' 'self-centered,' and 'asshole.' Just because something won't affect you doesn't mean it won't affect *people*. If all you care about is the effect on yourself, then I assume you support things like slavery, rape, genocide, etc. (as long as they aren't happening to you) if they result in cheaper clothes and diamonds for you. Or maybe you DO have an ethical obligation to worry about the overuse of our natural resources?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Doctor Memory]

You could have such a system at home too.

Or more likely, you'd have one per neighborhood (buried under the cul-de-sac, maybe). Since you only need to use it for five minutes, access contention shouldn't be an issue. Size it to charge 2-3 cars at a shot and you should have sufficient capacity (assuming say a 4-hour recharge cycle). Maybe even use it as a "neighborhood UPS": if the main grid goes down, everybody switches to the capacitor. Most power outages in my area are under an hour, an ultracapacitor should be able to power several suburban houses for that long -- unless it's summer and everyone has the A/C running, which is when the power usually goes out...

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[michrech]

Perhaps you need to upgrade your engine technology?

Perhaps you need to learn how to read? He specifically stated he gets 29mpg and, with a 13.5 gallon tank, went 500 miles. The math is flawed. He was either being an idiot OR (what I prefer to believe) he was mitaken -- twice.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[rhaas]

I just drove 450 miles in my Prius and then put $16 of gas into it. The next generation Prius that's supposed to come out in 2007 or 2008 is supposed to get 94 EPA-estimated miles per gallon vs. 55 for the current generation. At that point the price difference per mile is marginal, and I don't have to worry about losing power to dielectric absorption while the car is not in use.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Dr. Eggman]

Well, I heard somewhere recently that the experts speculate we have already passed the worldwide peak oil production. Of course, its all speculation, even The Hubbert peak theory is elastic. Although I've never heard as high as 140+ years... It's not just about getting off the middle east's oil, Saudia Arabia is only our #3 source, after Canada and Mexico, its also about self sufficiency.

Then there's the question of when oil will no longer be economical. Simply by nature of economics we'll search out the more economic options as oil becomes uneconomical. Problem is, it takes time to switch like that, we'd need to be in transition when it becomes uneconomic or we'll suffer huge setbacks in economics terms.

Of course, no arguement for getting off oil would be complete without mentioning the environment and some shrill cries to "Think of the children, won't someone please think of the children." Its sad to hear someone say "It won't happen in my life time, so why should I care if their's change?" I prefer to think that an economical, self sufficient, clean(er) life style for my (or atleast other's) children is a goal worth working for. After all, isn't that, a better life for myself and my children, the American Dream?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[arminw]

....has anyone done the math here??....

Yes!

For a small car it takes about 170kwh to go 500 miles on average. That means If there were 12 electrical "gas pumps" to charge 12 such ultra capacitor cars in 5 minutes, it would take a power line that could carry 24 million watts of electricity to service ONE such station!

To put the impracticality of this hare-brained scheme another way: If that fully charged capacitor shorts and dumps all its energy suddenly, a blast like that made by about 350 pounds of dynamite would occur. Of course capacitors, unlike Microsoft Windows, never fail catastrophically!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

> homo static (?) generators.

Homeostatic. And most people just call it "flywheel power". Lots of datacenters use flywheels for a clean power signal. They don't hold nearly enough charge to use it as a real battery, unless you had an awesomely huge heavy wheel, at which point you're talking about something pretty dangerous and expensive to maintain.

Yes, Yes

[wonkavader]

Cars going far cheap, less emissions (moved to the power plant, and off the road). Great, yes. Fine.

But what about powering my LAPTOP with this? Finally, I'd be able to play games on the thing for the whole FLIGHT!

What about powering portable computers?

[HiThere]

Realistically, I don't believe that supercapacitors will be powering cars next year. We'll see them in portable computers first. (And electric drills and flashlights and...)

OTOH, I keep hearing wonderful things about them...and keep expecting them to show up SOMEWHERE!!! soon.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Marxist Hacker 42]

No, a largish filling station will need a major substation. And the cable going into your car will be a big thick cable; a pair of large fairly rigid conductor with several redundant layers of insulation over them, probably with sensors buried in the insulation to shut the system down at the first hint of a weak spot.

I've got a pair of jumper cables that *almost* fit that description.....probably far too naroow though.

But you're shifting power generation there bub.

[Chas]

The electricity has to be generated somewhere. And if it's a coal/oil-fired plant doing it, all you're doing is shifting production out of the car and into a central point. (Essentially the same argument applies for emissions as well. Also, how many cars pump radioactive byproducts into the atmosphere without any regulation from the NRC?)

With your ass-pull percentage of 20% on the car.

How efficient is a coal/oil power plant?

How much is lost in transmission and stepping conversion? You're trying to compare two completely different end products. It's like comparing an abacus to a TI-89 calculator. Sure, they achieve roughly the same end, but only on a very simplistic level.

Re:But you're shifting power generation there bub.

[GTMoogle]

Between 36% and 40%*. Anyway, the discussion wasn't about pollution but the ammount of power being stored in this capacitor. Which happens to be around a third less than the ammount of power stored in the tank of fuel that would get you equivalent mileage.

Try the decaf.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_pla nt

Re:But you're shifting power generation there bub.

[Dark_MadMax666]

Well duh do not use coal/oil plants. Use something like fast breeder reactors and use full fuel cycle (instead of burying it in yuccah mountain).

  But yeah.. -I know not gonna happen. Because current corporate lobbies do not exactly benefit from clean and ubiquitous energy .

Re:But you're shifting power generation there bub.

[Chas]

And I ask again, how much fossil fuel was burned to produce that power?

Re:But you're shifting power generation there bub.

[Chas]

Well, that and the anti-nuclear crowd has the general populace absolutely TERRIFIED of nuclear energy. To most people, you say "reactor" and they automatically think of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Never mind that a coal plant has a higher radiation output into the environment than most properly running reactor sites.

Re:But you're shifting power generation there bub.

[GTMoogle]

normal car: avg 22% [1]
new car: max 30% [1]

fossil fuel power plant: up to 40% [2]
transmission loss: 7.2% [3]
ideal loss in charging a capacitor is 0% [4]
electric motor efficiency: 90% (commonly quoted, too lazy to find good reference right now)
final total: (40*(1-.072)*(0.9) = 33.4%

How much fuel? A bit less. Also less weight to carry. Also power that comes from solar, wind, or nukes.

5 minutes of google searching: priceless

--------
1. http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transport ation_statistics/2005/html/table_04_23.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_pla nt
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transm ission#Losses
4. http://www.smpstech.com/charge.htm#SOLVABILITY

Re:But you're shifting power generation there bub.

[angel'o'sphere]

Never mind that a coal plant has a higher radiation output into the environment than most properly running reactor sites. Thats an urban legend, coal plants have no radioactive output / waste at all. At least not in europe, no idea what trash you burn in your country.

angel'o'sphere

Sweet, more brownouts!

[r_jensen11]

It's as if our electric grid can handle year-round demand. Bring on a drastic increase in demand of electricity!

Sorry, but until we get ITER up and running, this thing is never going to fly.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Portland, OR's MAX system is entirely this way. The only part of it I hate is when I stop off my train at the destination and the spark gap causes my bluetooth headset to retrain to a new frequency.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[kimgkimg]

"1.2 Gigawatts! Great scott!"

You worry too much

[WindBourne]

Gasoline must have more energy than the capacitor do to the inefficiency of the ICE (in fact, more than 4x based on earlier posts). That means for the same auto, that gas has 4x more energy to release than this capacitor. 25 years ago, I was an EMT and DID see an auto that did explode. Surprisingly, the passenger survived it (I am not convinced that it was, necessarily, a good thing; I only hope that he had at lease somewhat of life or better if he survived what was to follow). These days, I do not hear of cars exploding except in Iraq. Basically, cars were designed to withstand crashes and leaks. There will most likely be some issues in these early cars, but the problem will be solved. A good example is that if the airbag blows, cut all power from the capacitor. If they are sealed in a metal/plastic tank, then no conduction. There all sorts of ways to make it safe.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[budgenator]

we have enough computers and saftey technology to keep Joe Public from doing too much stupid stuff right now; besides I'd rather have him handle that much electricity than I would having him handle gasoline. Actually Jane public is worst, she can plug in the gas nozzle, go in side her car to answer the cell, get out sliding her nylon panties accross the plastic seat generating 150 KV of static electricity and return to the gas nozzle without touching anything metal except the fuel nozzle!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[painQuin]

Jigga what?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Gilmoure]

I only drink Fat Free Water. I expect my electricity to be the same. It should be free range electricity and not contain any animal products or extracts!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Well, I certainly don't want those nuclear reactors to get built into vehicles that crash by the thousand every day.

As opposed to the fuel air bombs that are built into current vehicles that crash by the thousand every day.

Oddly enough, a nuclear reactor is a hell of a lot safer from an environmental standpoint than gasoline is. A small core of radioactivity doesn't go boom, it just get VERY hot and VERY radioactive. Gasoline in a river would do more damage.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[ml10422]

Ooh. Ooh. Can they make it so that the car picks up Power Pellets that are lying in the road?!

Hicktown - Mudding in Corn Fields?

[neonprimetime]

How about a system in which cars connect to electric lines along the highways

My entire hick town wouldn't buy into this "cars on rails" philosophy. How are you going to be able to go mudding in a Corn Field?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[arminw]

......those materials are pretty darn toxic and have disposal issues too....

Since you brought up the issue of safety, here is another one:

If that fully charged capacitor shorts and dumps all its energy suddenly, a blast like that made by about 350 pounds of dynamite would occur. Here we have the newest terrorist weapon. Set the car in a likely spot and short out its capacitor. Ka-booom!

Great -- All you need now is...

[bratwiz]

Terrific!! All you need now is a system like the one used in those hand-charged flashlights. 500 miles is plenty of time to charge it back up again. And you could get the kids to do it.

"Hey you two!!! Sit down back there-- Shut up and keep cranking!"

"But Da-a-a-a-a-d!"

"I'm warning you... Don't make me stop this car... ('cause we'll probably never get it started again!)"

Or, imagine your reaction on the ladies as you whiz by in your new BMW JAKOV 3000... top down, wind breezing through your hair-- ear-to-ear grin as you're cruising down the road, uh, "charging your car"... oh wait-- hey, wait! that's not the charging handle... ... of course for the no-lifers out there, this could be the perfect cover... nobody ever need know... you can always say you were just "Topping it off"

And how about this-- put a coil and magnet under the back seat... that way you can drive your girl out to lover's point and have fun re-charging the car for the ride home...

There's all kinds of possibilities here!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[triffid_98]

I for one welcome our new rascal electric scooter 500 mile endurance driving overlords...

I've seen that too, it's very annoying for everyone. But if the vehicle had a backup power source, i.e. ultracapacitor, then it could at the very least get out of the middle of the road.

Link to some actual facts

[Anonymous Coward]

For some actual facts see: http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/01/ eestor_ultracap.html They answer a lot of the questions raised. Also,Kleiner Perkins a respected venture capital company has invested in them, so they are not complete quacks.

Lets look at a gasoline fillup:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I've timed pumps: they take about 10 seconds per galon, or feed about 6 gal/minute.

Lets use 124,000 BTU for a galon of gas. (Web searches give numbers from 123k to 125k.)

That's about 44.64 MILLION BTU/hr.

A watt is about 3.41 BTU/hr, so we're talking 130 Megawatts.

But that's heat. A gas engine is in the ballpark of 20-25% efficient turning it into HP, while electric is in the 80s to 90s, so divide by four. Now we're talking about 3 1/4 Megawatts to charge an electric car of the same range, weight, and profile at the same rate.

We'll assume we can neglect redesigns for better airodynamics, weight, tires, etc. since they could be applied equally to gas and electrics. We'll assume that the storage system plus engine/transmission is about a wash (i.e. the weight of the batteries/ultracapaictor bank at least cancels the weight advantage of a motor vs. an engine). And we'll assume we're talking about highway range rather than stop-and-go traffic, so regenerative braking doesn't enter the equation.

Let's take Sacremento CA's Ranco Seco and Diablo Canyon nuclear plants as "one nuclear plant" capacity. (Rancho Seco is located inland so it could presumably be cloned anywhere there's enough spare water to feed cooling towers.) Rancho Seco is 918,000 kW running flat out, and the two Diablo Canyon units are 1,084,000 and 1,106,000, so call a nuclear plant 1,000,000 kW max.

That says one nuclear plant unit can simultaneously drive only 306 "electric gas pumps". Utility electricity has to be generated as it's used and come rush hour the stations will often be "filling" on all pumps. At about 10 pumps per station that's only about 30 "electric gas stations" per nuclear plant. Say fifty if it takes about three minutes to fill and two minutes to pay.

A prof at University of Detroit Mercy counted the number of gas stations in the US in 2002 at 170,018. Presume they average about 4 pumps each (or would if they didn't need to stock multiple octanes of electricity B-) ). That's about 1,360 new nuclear plants to feed 'em.

Re:Lets look at a gasoline fillup:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

A watt is about 3.41 BTU/hr, so we're talking 130 Megawatts.

Typo: 13 Megawatts (of heat). (Number is right in the next calculation.)

= = = =

I note that another poster, working from the article's $9 worth of juice in 5 min got 1.2 Megawatts. Converting that to a 3 minute charge makes it 2 Megawatts. Moderately close to my 3.25.

I read this as the supercapacitor guys estimating better efficiency for their electric car so they don't have to quote $14.60 for the fillup. B-)

Re:Lets look at a gasoline fillup:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Now that I look at it: They're claiming 500 mile range. Typical range for a 5min gas fillup is in the 250 mile ballpark.

So IMHO they're seriously puffing somewhere. (Probably by assuming regenerative braking and quoting city stop-and-go range, not cross-country or freeway commute.)

So figure it's really $29.20 to "juice up". (But you can get by with the same number of nuke plants and fewer "pumps" active at a time, presuming the drastically lower "gas price" doesn't lead to increased driving.)

Re:Lets look at a gasoline fillup:

[Anonymous Coward]

s". Utility electricity has to be generated as it's used and come rush hour the stations will often be "filling" on all pumps.



Err... the station would undoubtedly have a bank of these capacitors continuously charging 24 hours a day in order to avoid running out at peak times, just as a conventional station has a storage tank for gasoline, rather than a direct pipeline all the way to the refinery sized for the peak demand.

Think first, then post.

Thanks.

Re:Lets look at a gasoline fillup:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Err... the station would undoubtedly have a bank of these capacitors continuously charging 24 hours a day in order to avoid running out at peak times, just as a conventional station has a storage tank for gasoline, rather than a direct pipeline all the way to the refinery sized for the peak demand.

Unlikely.

It wouldn't do them a lot of good: During rush hour they'd be running at capacity for hours. The storage required would be tremendous: A ten-"pump" station would require storage equivalent to the storage systems of 60 cars for each hour they had to buffer. For just a 4-hour "rush hour" you're talking 78 megawatt hours.

The capital cost would be prohibitive. Further: It would make one "juice station" comparable to a peaking power plant suitable for a small city, rather than an instalation you can put in on any street corner.

Then they would burn a LOT of power to the inefficiencies of charging one capacitor from another, which would raise the cost of the power - and the amount of power generated. It would also be dissipated as thermal pollution at the "juice station" site. A ten pump station with only 10% loss would be dumping almost two megawatts of heat during that time. Call it about a fifth of the heat you'd get if you went to an ordinary gas station, put a candle on the ground, started a pump, and left it pumping gasoline into the burning pool continuously for hours at a time.

Then, with supercapacitors, there's the issue of catastrophic sudden discharge. This would make such an instalation the equivalent of a fuel-air explosive bomb containing about three tons of gasoline for the fuel.

No, I don't think that's a viable solution.

Re:Lets look at a gasoline fillup:

[AJWM]

That says one nuclear plant unit can simultaneously drive only 306 "electric gas pumps".

That's a fairly significant assumption when propagated through the rest of your analysis.

It's a very rare gas station (usually the one with the lowest price in town) that is operating at full capacity 24/7.

You also need to consider the overall reduction in "pump" demand if people can recharge overnight at home.

That's about 1,360 new nuclear plants to feed 'em.

You mean reactors. A plant can have multiple -- as you point out with Canyon Diablo. The CANDU reactors near Toronto put out somewhat about 600 (Pickering) and 900 (Darlington) MWe each, but Pickering has 8 and Darlington 4 reactors. And the actual number required would be less.

And those reactors (or equivalents) would eliminate the need for how many billions of barrels of oil and the consequent political ramificaitions?

Assume a 42-gal barrel of oil makes 42 gal of gasoline (it doesn't, more like about 20 gallons plus diesel, kerosene, and other stuff), your number of reactors putting out 1 GW each for a year is equivalent to 7.8 trillion (7,805 billion) barrels of oil. This compares with current (2005) consumption of 8,004 billion barrels/year, of which 4,822 billion is imported. Given that not all that oil is used as gasoline, your reactor numbers are somewhat high (perhaps double), so call it 650 reactors to replace all gasoline use, or about 390 to replace all gasoline from imported oil. This compares to 103 power reactors currently operating in the US. 400 reactors -- say, 100 plants -- to totally wean the US off of foreign oil? Sounds like a deal.

Re:Lets look at a gasoline fillup:

[ArtStone]

Do you think if we rapidly built 1,360 (or 650 or 390) new nuclear reactors and bring them online in 10 years - that this would have an effect on the price of uranium ore (and the related assumptions about how much electricity $9 would buy)? Would China also do the same?

Who would be the OPEC of uranium? Where are the easiest to mine and process proven reserves? Are those countries politically stable?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/printable_inform ation_papers/inf75print.htm

Welcome to your new Australian overlords

Should we look again at breeder reactors?

Will environmentalists get on board to permit nuclear power plant construction to resume?

Not really making a point here with the questions - just encouraging rational discussion before we commit to a government mandated "5 year" program.

Re:Lets look at a gasoline fillup:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

It's a very rare gas station (usually the one with the lowest price in town) that is operating at full capacity 24/7.

This is the power grid. There is no storage. 24/7 doesn't matter. Peak matters. We're not talking enough generation to power the cars with slow charges. We're talking enough generation to replace the current number of gas pumps with an equivalent (though smaller) number of "juice pumps" to do the same job.

You also need to consider the overall reduction in "pump" demand if people can recharge overnight at home.

No I don't, since the exercise was to see what would happen in the case of simply replacing gasoline filling stations with electric ones.

Charging at home overnight would certainly reduce the number of plants needed by spreading the load over more time. Maybe cut it in half. It also allows the use of more of the off-peak capacity of the existing plants, further improving the situation on the generation side.

Unfortunately, it would multiply the required capacity of the residential grid by a factor of several. This would require a far bigger distribution buildout than just running primary wires to "juice station" locations (which are also mainly located adjacent to existing rights-of-way).

That's about 1,360 new nuclear plants to feed 'em.

You mean reactors. A plant can have multiple -- as you point out with Canyon Diablo.

Yep. Call it new nuclear reactor UNITS. Maybe half as many nuke PLANTS. Maybe a quarter as many if you average 4 units per plant, which you might if you decided to build out for such a load. (Density of plants is limited by cooling resources.)

And those reactors (or equivalents) would eliminate the need for how many billions of barrels of oil and the consequent political ramificaitions?

No question.

In fact, stationary plants are so much more efficient than automobile engines carried with the car they power that even burning the oil in them and accepting the transmission and storage losses would be an improvement.

Re:Lets look at a gasoline fillup:

[AJWM]

Do you think if we rapidly built 1,360 (or 650 or 390) new nuclear reactors and bring them online in 10 years - that this would have an effect on the price of uranium ore (and the related assumptions about how much electricity $9 would buy)?

Undoubtedly, but that's an enormous 'if'. The assumption underlying that demand is that we convert all gas-using automobiles to supercapacitor (or equivalent electric storage) electric automobiles over that same 10 year period. Ain't gonna happen, for multiple reasons.

Should we look again at breeder reactors?

Yes. Plenty of thorium around. We could process coal ash, for starters... (Half joking. There are no doubt better thorium ores, but the fission energy in the thorium in coal is greater than the oxidation energy in the coal's carbon. Dirty stuff, coal.)

Will environmentalists get on board to permit nuclear power plant construction to resume?

At least a few of them are coming around to the idea. It's much easier to handle nuclear waste than carbon dioxide, given the relative volumes for the same energy output.

Whoa, bitchin!

[Kaktrot]

From TFA:

That's a slight premium over the cost of the gas engine and the other parts the device would replace -- the gas tank, exhaust system, and drivetrain.

That's some high-tech shit, if it can get around without a drivetrain. Like a shuttlecraft or something.

Re:Whoa, bitchin!

[cr0sh]

Think PWM hubmotors. Yeah, technically still a drivetrain, but when most people think of a drivetrain (including mechanics), they think of transmission, CV-joints (FWD) or driveshaft/differential (RWD)...

Re:Whoa, bitchin!

[Dun Malg]

Think PWM hubmotors. Yeah, technically still a drivetrain, but when most people think of a drivetrain (including mechanics), they think of transmission, CV-joints (FWD) or driveshaft/differential (RWD)...

Hubmotors are a great theory, but a mediocre reality. The additional sprung weight of the wheels makes for an unpleasant ride on all but the smoothest surfaces. Unless they can get something together with pixie dust superconducting motors that magically don't weigh any more than a regular tire/wheel, they're better off doing it the normal way.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Something tells me he gets 29mpg each time he has time while driving to check the meter, when he's stuck in traffic with nothing else to do.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[milimetric]

I'm sure others have pointed out, lol, but 13.5 * 29 = 391.5
That's pretty far from 500 and that's when you end up on Red. That'll probably take you around 350 miles before you refuel. With Electricity there's always the option of a crank to get you a couple more miles (or is that dumb).

Re:Car designers intentionally created fragile car

[OnlineAlias]

Not only will this not work for pure physical reasons, but the concept has already been accounted for and surpassed. There are already uniform bumper height standards, and the impact energy dissipation has been addressed with crumple zones, airbags and seatbelts. This is just another case of one assuming that people don't know what they are doing because one has failed to investigate what they actually are doing...

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[ChrisMaple]

To answer your questions, for 4000 amperes you need to parallel about 12 "0000 gauge" wires and allow room for air circulation between them. If you are only going to use them for 5 minutes at a time, you can probably reduce that a little because it takes time to heat up the wires. You can't get 4000 amp breakers at Home Depot because HD isn't seeing any demand for them.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[trentblase]

Power is Volts X Amps

Right...

Recharging in 5 minutes needs megawatt hours of energy delivered in minutes.

Right...

Doing that means a crapload of both volts and amps.

Wrong... see item 1. You can trade off volts for amps and vice versa. 1 Megawatt hour delivered in 1 minute means 60 Megawatts. You can achieve this with 60 MV at 1A, 1V at 60MA or anything in between. If you use a high voltage, you minimize current and therefore minimize transmission losses. Which means you can use smaller wire. As the GP said, you'd need a lot of insulation around a wire at 60MV

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[Ex-MislTech]

If you have to have a water cooled radiator to keep the engine from
burning up, your wasting a lot of energy in the form of heat.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[On Lawn]

If we only had a source for 1.21 gigawatts that could charge the system while driving...

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[trentblase]

Just stick a lightning rod into your flux capacitor and drive by the local clock tower.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, I think household 220V is typically capable of about 60A, not 409A.. So more like 7 hours, no?

It's not convenient to ($$$) oil companies

[aleKsei]

So you'll have to wait.

Besides, for a few years there has been a cleaner, cheaper option to internal combustion engines:

http://www.theaircar.com/

Urban legends say the oil companies even threatened the guy who invented this air powered engine.
Not really surprising to me!.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[pinkuff]

Somebody explain, plz

A sedan has an engine power of around 200kW; to travel 500 miles, say it takes 10 hours, so total energy consumed = 200 x 10 = 2000 kWh.

If the capacitor loads in 5 mins, it means the charger pumps said 2000 kWh in 1/12 of an hour, for a power of 2000 x 12 = 24MW; now most houses in Europe have 3kW energy pipes, so it looks like the filling station packs some serious punch... hmmmmm

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Pete LaGrange]

Has anyone calculated how much bio-diesel it would take to fuel the nation's transportation needs? Would there be any "bio" left to eat?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[oudzeeman]

that didn't happen over night. For me to replaced my gasoline burning vehicle with an overhead power highway/capacitor design, I would need to be able to drive anywhere I want. That would include rural roads that only see a few dozen (or less) cars per hour. You are talking something that could cost trillions.

Lightning Storm

[dwarfsoft]

Charge it up in a lightning storm. 1.21JW should be enough to keep it powered and give it time-travelling ability.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[ScrewMaster]

On the other hand, a gallon (U.S., I believe) of gasoline is the energy-equivalent of roughly one hundred sticks of dynamite.

The filling station will probably be, itself, a bank of ultracaps. They'll continually top off from a high-tension line and dump charge really, really fast into each vehicle that comes in.

Of course, none of this really matters at the moment since no nation on Earth has a power grid capable of supporting a significant number of electric vehicles. Certainly not here in the U.S. Adding a few million electric vehicles into the mix would bring our power system to its knees.

No, only 4KW

[Fzz]

You charge the spare 100KWh supercapacitor you have at home over 24 hours. That takes about 4KW. Then when you want to charge your car, you discharge the spare capacitor. Better use a pretty high voltage for the interconnect though. Also even at 95% efficiency, things are going to get pretty warm. But probably not impossible.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[naoursla]

That's a good idea. It would probably be owned by the power company who would also use it to offset the difference between peak/min power usage.

Actually, that is probably a more likely use than in cars. I've heard that one of the difficulties in power generations is the difficulty in storing power generated at one time so it can be used at another time.

I've also heard that you can sell power back to the power company by supply electicity to the grid. The power company is required to pay you for the power you supply. A household could use one of the capacitors to store energy during the night when power is cheap and put it back on the grid in the morning and evening peak usage times.

Although, the idea that they have to buy it back might be an urban legend.

if you nuke iran...

[Anonymous Coward]

..heavy, like the armageddon fundamentalist neocons want along with their zionazi drinking buddies, then the chinese and japan are going to be quite annoyed with you destroying one of their most critical energy sources plus subjecting them to the humongous dirty radioactive clouds that float over them a few days later, and then continue for weeks.

Not sure how macho and tough guy you are over in genocide estates where you live, but I am not looking forward to having both china and japan and possibly quite a few more nations seriously annoyed with us.

And BTW, the first bomb dropped on Iran, there goes their oil, and also venezuela's oil, he has already made that quite clear. No more invading other nations or bye bye oil to the US. Black and white, no compromise, and they don't care if they have to shufle around to sell it for awhile. You can then kiss less than ten (I would guess closer to $20 judging by past increases per dollar rise in per barrel prices)dollars a gallon gas goodbye for a long time then, probably forever, and no, mexico and canada can't "pick up the slack" and for that matter it would be beyond saudi arabia to do it either. There is no magic "overnight add 25-30% to the entire oil stack infrastructure" fairy at walmart to fall back on, it doesn't exist.

The bad part is, you'll probably get your blood lust wish. Maybe soon, too. Just remember to stick to your guns when standing in the soup kitchen lines and keep saying it was a good idea to pull off that genocide and energy-cide bit.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[plastik55]

IN Seattle this morning, the bus I was on tried to pass another bus that was using the same electric, um, bus. Whoops, both of them got stuck in the street needing repairs.

Standard bumbper heights?

[NRAdude]

This is just another case of one assuming that people don't know what they are doing because one has failed to investigate what they actually are doing...

I don't appreciate your assumption that my opinion is based on an assumption. You should appeal my opinion when your data and theory and statistic have disqualified Murphy's Law. I thrive on ruling over the minority incidents that so-happen to be the majority of all catastrophe. Who has not profitted from the Safety Certification corporations, and show me one that is not a conflict of interest?

Just because there is a standard, doesn't mean it is adhered after private sale to the craft. Once it leaves the door, all those certificatinos are empty promises when tried through the fire; maybe if someone survives, they can address them as they are on a tort claim: commercial speach that ended at the dealer. How many lowered or raised vessels have you seen, and thereby the bumpers are mis-alligned? All the wrecks I've ever encountered and witnessed thereafter have all been the victim of those "crumple zones" buckling in the wrong way to cause one to raise above the next, and even without all the hope in standards there is always somthing unusual occurring.

I've researched the technical specifications and have found them to be nothing more than the propaganda of a Safety-Certification corporations profitting from advertising and increasin the value of a vessel for participating in their "tests."

Re:Standard bumbper heights?

[sdriver]

After reading your posts in this thread I have found you to be a retard. :)

Re:Standard bumbper heights?

[MrNaz]

What do you expect from a guy with NRA in his name?

Re:Standard bumbper heights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically, you're right about the misaligned bumpers being dangerous, but why can't you say it without sounding like you're shaking a cane at the young'uns?

Re:Standard bumbper heights?

[Pentavirate]

After being rear-ended on I-5 in San Diego, the crumple zone in the rear of my car saved my kids from any harm. The trunk was completely destroyed, yet the rear passenger seat where my 2 toddlers were sitting in car seats was completely unchanged. I have to assume that there's a little more to it all than "propaganda of a Safety-Certification coporations profitting from advertising and increasin (sic) the value of a vessel for participating in their 'tests.'"

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[mazarin5]

just my $0.02

Pfft. That will barely get you to the store.

Solvable problem

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>Worse, imagine a 15 mph fender-bender that shorts one of these suckers out. I wouldn't want to the fireman that has to use the jaws of life on one of these vehicles after a wreck...

Use the same set of solutions the Prius uses. Run the drive wiring in conduit through places that usually survive crashes, and have the main switch default to disconnected unless the computer is alive and can account for all the current. Toyota's training booklet for emergency responders about the Prius talks more about chemical spills from the battery than about electrical hazards.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't replace where the energy comes from, it just replaces how it's transported and stored. The oil would no doubt just end up generating the electricity that powers the car.

Microave lasers?

[DanielMarkham]

How about recharging these uber-cars of the future with microwave lasers? With flat terrain, and the right setup, you could recharge while you drove down the road. It might elminate fuel stops completely.

Although I wouldn't want to be a bird in such a scenario, it sure would look cool, especially at night with the microwaves frying the dust in the air.

Of course, we could just charge the car by using the braking system as a generator, like the hybrid do! Then we wouldn't need to stop anywhere to fuel.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[killjoe]

Although the idea of nuking brown people is better then viagra for republitards I suspect that even most of the republitards realize that nuking an entire country the size of Iran will have serious consequences for the entire world. Sure you get a massive hard on thinking about all those dead a-rabs and you fuck the hell of out of your wife or GF but that radiation will eventually come around to the US. It will also effect china. Then your wallmart will be empty and then how will you supply your GF with fake silver jewelry?

In the mean time you can get hard thinking about dead iranians, lebanese or palestenians. No shortage of dead a-rabs around to keep your dick hard.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Arakkis]

I dunno, but I'm going to hold out for a "Mr Fusion"...

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Tharkban]

you havn't played bumper cars where I have then. :)

Different problems

[homer_ca]

Gasoline and other liquid fuels have high energy density and are easy to store, but they need relatively heavy and bulky engines to convert heat to mechanical energy. In comparison to the engine, the fuel tank is a much smaller part of vehicle weight.

In an electric car, the relationship is reversed. The electric motor and power controller are relatively small, and the batteries are big and heavy because they have low energy density, even the most advanced lithium ion cells. When the EV1 first came out with lead-acid batteries, it was said that approx. 1000 lbs of batteries equalled the energy in one gallon of gasoline. It's easy to add more power but hard to add more fuel capacity.

As far as efficiency. The engineering challenge is that the engine needs to run over a wide range of power outputs. A car might have an engine with 200 peak hp, but it might need 50 hp to accelerate in normal city driving and only 20 hp to cruise at speed (these are all rough ballpark figures). Because of this, automobile engines will always be less efficient than stationary engines which run in a much narrower range of power outputs. Hybrids help by reducing the peak power requirements of the engine and getting extra power for acceleration from the electric drive. I think even with the energy losses from transmission and recharging, an electric car is still more efficient.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[caseih]

Except that we simply don't have the generating or distribution capacity to handle wide-spread electric vehicles. So we can't just use existing power lines, unfortunately. And in the short-term, one study in Canada showed that converting an entire province to electric cars would increase air pollution dramatically because of the reliance on coal-fire electrical plants (of which many more would have to be built). Now ideally, you can clean up electrical generation facilities more easily than individual cars.

Someone on slashdot once calculated the total number of megawatts we'd need to generate and deliver to power electric cars if everyone had them, and it was staggering, far beyond our current capacity (no pun intended).

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[AvitarX]

Hydrogen (H2) is really small.
It is about 1/3rd the size of natural has (CH2).

Existing infastructure would leak a lot, causing a disasterous effect on the O-zone layer and a lot of $$$$s wasted.

Power vs. energy

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>The problem is that the ultra capacitors haven't been quite ultra enough yet.

Up to now the advantage of ultracapacitors over batteries has been power density, not energy density. Power == energy / time. Getting energy in and out quickly in modest quantities is wonderful for cars: you can keep up with the spectacular pulse of energy from a panic stop (do the math, you'll be amazed) and power a quick acceleration to freeway speeds. But they've not stored as much energy as a battery so far. You can get a farad cheap, but they've been limited to low voltages (e.g. 3.6) and energy storage is linear in capacitance but quadratic in voltage.

If these people are storing as much total energy as a battery pack they've made a breakthrough.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[dfries]

Do you think 4909 amps at 220V would be enough? And parents put plastic covers over the little 15 amp power plugs in their homes.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[x2A]

Next on slashdot?

"Alan was on the other side of the parking lot from his car. I was elsewhere. He yelled out, I ambled towards the parking lot in my own good time, and then I heard 'Fire! Real fire! Call the fire brigade, now!' and I speeded up a bit. From Alan subsequently, I gather there was an explosion and flying pieces of car, and a fireball, and a couple of fires started where (presumably) boiling capacitor landed, and one fragment smashed an SUV windscreen. And then there was smoke and smell (there is still smell) and smoke alarm wailing and firemen and sirens and paramedics (happily unneeded) and police and a man with a notebook asking questions for the fire report.'"

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[dhartshorn]

As with all problems, you need to look beyond the obvious. Refilling millions of electric vehicles at one time could be a problem. Distribute them across time and you have a much different (and presumably much smaller) problem. Recharge yours at night in your home and you may have no problem at all (other than laughing and dancing your way to the bank as your transportation costs plummet). Add a spin-the-meter-backward solar electric system and you could start feeling very green, even if you do throw away all your aluminum pop cans.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Technician]

High voltage mains (such as power your stove at home) in the US and Canada are 220 V. So, current would be 90,000/220 = 409 amps, and it would take one hour to charge the battery

You forgot to mention the typical home service panel is for 200 Amp service. Full load on the panel with the entire rest of the house in the dark would still take over 2 hours to charge. It would take even longer if you still used some power in the house for things like doing the laundry, running a few lights and heating water.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Dr. Eggman]

According to Wikipedia:

"The estimated transportation fuel and home heating oil used in the United States is about 230 billion US gallons (0.87 km) (Briggs, 2004). Waste vegetable oil and animal fats would not be enough to meet this demand. In the United States, estimated production of vegetable oil for all uses is about 24 billion pounds (11 million tons) or 3 billion US gallons (0.011 km), and estimated production of animal fat is 12 billion pounds (5.3 million tons). (Van Gerpen, 2004)

Biodiesel feedstock plants utilize photosynthesis to convert solar energy into chemical energy. The stored chemical energy is released when it is burned, therefore plants can offer a sustainable oil source for biodiesel production. Most of the carbon dioxide emitted when burning biodiesel is simply recycling that which was absorbed during plant growth, so the net production of greenhouse gasses is small and CO2 zero.

Feedstock yield efficiency per acre affects the feasibility of ramping up production to the huge industrial levels required to power a signifcant percentage of national or world vehicles."


But it also points out: "The highest yield feedstock for biodiesel is algae, which can produce 250 times the amount per acre as soybeans."

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[x2A]

"With Electricity there's always the option of a crank to get you a couple more miles"

Nah, if you were using a crank you'd be better off just connecting it straight to the wheels through some gears, as then you're not losing energy during the kinetic -> electric -> kinetic conversions.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Rich0]

What ratio would you propose? 1000A at a mere 60KV (many industrial sites use 30KV distribution lines - strung out with 2' long insulators)? You'd need a monster cable and a 2' air gap around it. You probably can't go much over 1-2KV in practice (I'm no expert, but if 30KV towers have huge insulators to ensure an air gap you can't go anywhere near that), so now you're talking 10KA - that is a LOT of current. You'd need very low resistance to avoid melting the cable.

60 Megawatts is the kind of power that is transmitted over towers. There is no easy way to transmit that kind of power unless you have superconductors.

Agreed that you can trade-off volts for amps - but any way you slice it you have a big problem at those power levels.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[dfries]

If we are lucky said capacitor and the much hyped cheap plastic/polymer/solar cells will become available at the same time. That way you can have a set of capacitors in the home that the new plastic solar cells on your roof charges all day and in turn charges your car when you get home at night. If the solar cells don't materialize I would just have to ask what politician would stand in the way of building a few more power plants to support the new cars. Just say the magic words, stop terrorism by not buying their oil. Then again the middle east is used to getting our money, how does anyone expect to be more stable if we suddenly stop buying oil?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[windsurfer619]

Why is there all this talk about "lines going to your car" and safety? "Pumps" probably won't actually be pumping anything, but rather probably swapping out these capacitors, to keep it safe for the consumer. Not only will that eliminate the problem of having a 2 foot wire needed for that "5 minute recharge" because they could spend longer charging a capasitor, but it would also allow "fuel pumps" to stockpile capacitors for peak fueling times, reducing the need for massive infrastucture changes, or at least reducing those changes.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Thomas Henden]

>Sounds like a win/win/win situtation

Not for the oil industry...

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but most people do not drive around utilizing the full power output of their engine. Once up to speed, the power needed to maintain that speed is significantly lower, probably around 1/10th that depending on aerodynamics, tire resistance, bearings, etc.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[dhartshorn]

A much smaller electric engine and shorter range. The Tesla car has a 185kW motor and it's a Ferrari killer. Reasonable range is more like 300 miles at far less than full power. IIRC, the Porsche 924 was supposed to maintain 55mph with 15HP (11kW in a direct conversion, presuming they meant 15hp at the wheel). If power requirements are 20% greater because of your lead foot and 20% greater because of some math error I just made, you're still at 16kW sustained. Driving 5 hours then requires 80kWH, not 2,000kWH, and only 0.96MW. That's about 400amps at 2400 volts for 5 minutes, still nothing to sneeze at. A little inefficiency in the system could easily melt the asphalt beneath your feet. Better not wear Crocs.

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Tesla_Motor s%2C_Inc.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[timeOday]

For a small car it takes about 170kwh to go 500 miles on average. That means If there were 12 electrical "gas pumps" to charge 12 such ultra capacitor cars in 5 minutes, it would take a power line that could carry 24 million watts of electricity to service ONE such station!

The gasoline equivalent to what you're proposing is that you pull up to the pump, the gas station calls for a tanker truck, it comes and fills up your car. Pretty impractical. Except that, of course, the gas station has its own tanks to even things out - just as electricity stations surely would. The average influx of energy to the "gas" station would be no different than today.

If that fully charged capacitor shorts and dumps all its energy suddenly, a blast like that made by about 350 pounds of dynamite would occur.

The only relevant comparison is to thousands of gallons of gasoline hauling down the highway at 70 mph in the back of a tanker truck. After that everything else looks much safer.

That isn't all you pay, though...

[Hap76]

1) This assumes that you live in one of the places with an actual public transit system, such as NYC, Chicago, DC, or Boston. If you live in subway distance in any of those spots, you are going to pay substantially more in rent, food, and perhaps taxes than the average person. If you live in DC, or NYC, the likelihood of affordable housing within range is between slim and none - either you are driving to a park-and-ride terminal (negating that cost advantage) or you are taking trains/buses, etc. to get to the subway terminals (which significantly increase the time required). PT is better environmentally (as is city living), but its economic advantage (or rather the economic advantage when you live in a place that has PT that doesn't suck) is questionable.

2) It takes me (I live in OH) about 20 min. to get to work driving. If I took the bus, it would take 20 min. to walk to the stop, about 30 min. to get to the drop point, and 10 min. to walk to work, or about three times the time each way. I can only read for the middle part, so most of the time is wasted, and if the weather sucks, my walks are going to suck, though I will probably be healthier (less weight) from all the walking. I still need a car here to get other places (shopping, etc.), and the time I would spend (2 h/d, about 1/2 of which is useful, if that) is time that I can't spend on other things - for people with kids, the costs are higher because they are likely to have less free time in the first place. In most places (CA excepted), the time required for traveling by PT is significantly greater than traveling by car, even factoring the potential use of time on PT, and since cars are necessary anyway here, the cost differences don't help PT either.

The changes needed to make PT the dominant transportation in the US are substantial, and require substantial changes (population shifts) and costs (housing losses/costs). In most places in the US, PT is unviable (the low densities because land and gas are cheaper further out) and takes too much time for most people to use by choice.

Re:That isn't all you pay, though...

[Pink Tinkletini]

...NYC, Chicago, DC, or Boston. If you live in subway distance in any of those spots, you are going to pay substantially more in rent, food, and perhaps taxes...

If I moved back to suburban Ohio (yes, I grew up in the Buckeye State!) I'd probably have to eat a substantial salary hit, and I'd also have to pay much more in transportation costs than I do currently—insurance, maintenance, ownership, time lost behind the wheel when I could be doing something else, all that. I'm not sure where the economic advantage lies. As you say, it's questionable.

The changes needed to make [mass transit] the dominant transportation in the US are substantial, and require substantial changes (population shifts) and costs (housing losses/costs).

I have a feeling that as all of us are made to shoulder the true cost of our energy consumption and other lifestyle habits in the not-too-distant future, we're going to see exactly those changes. Hopefully the process will be gradual enough to avoid serious pain, but ultimately, yeah, I do believe we'll see a shift from the suburbs back into the cities.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Dolohov]

Actually, I've seen a fully-charged ultracapacitor explode: it's not really that impressive. Dangerous as hell, but that's because of the chemicals involved. But the explosion itself was neatly contained by a plexiglass housing.

Remember...

[daddypj]

That scene in Demolition Man? The villain jams his stolen shock baton into the "capacitance gel" of the police car? Let's hope this capacitor is contained well!

Formula Hybrid

[Dolohov]

Using ultracaps for hybrid cars is nothing new. Dartmouth's Formula Hybrid team built two race cars based on them last spring. (I helped build, and got to drive, one of them)

On our main track day, we had a cap explode. Nothing major, but it did spray toxic chemicals all over the inside of the enclosure. After talking to the manufacturer, we were informed that this is actually really common. (Which is a no-brainer to anyone who knows the failure curve) Maybe these people are pre-stressing their caps to weed out the ones with flaws. But given that Sony couldn't manage to do that with production-run batteries...

The other thing is that it took a lot longer to charge than these people are talking. We had a heavy-duty lab power supply, running off a generator, and it took a considerable amount of time to charge up to the 300V we needed. And I know you're saying, "Well, that's for a race car" but these things are so light, that you'd need a lot more juice to run a tiny Toyota-size two-seater than we needed for this.

What crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't exactly have a rural lifestyle, but I live in a smaller non-metro area, where public transportation is spotty at best. Let me tell you something, I do all the driving I need and want in my area for less than a tank of gas a month. Why? Because I don't have to drive across some massive town(or use the big power hungry subway or busses), because across town isn't that far. You people living in big cities consume massive amounts of energy and I find it laughable that you would try to spin it like you're living some kind of conservation lifestyle.

You want to claim a non-wasteful lifestyle, move your ass to a smaller town where you don't need to go long distances every day. Move to an area where you can setup alternative energy sources on your own property, like solar and wind. Move to an area where you aren't going to be eating out every day, thus producing more garbage to shove in the land fill. It don't matter if you take the metro and live in a big city, that's an extremely resource intensive lifestyle. Those thousands of street lights, business lights, massive traffic signal infrastructure, etc... aren't powered by pixie dust.

Re:What crap.

[Pink Tinkletini]

Sorry, the facts aren't on your side. From a cursory Google search:

"By the most significant measures, New York is the greenest community in the United States, and one of the greenest cities in the world... The average Manhattanite consumes gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn't matched since the mid-nineteen-twenties, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T... New York City is more populous than all but eleven states; if it were granted statehood, it would rank 51st in per-capita energy use."

"Tall buildings have much less exposed exterior surface per square foot of interior space than smaller buildings do, and that means they present relatively less of themselves to the elements, and their small roofs absorb less heat from the sun during cooling season and radiate less heat from inside during heating season. (The beneficial effects are greater still in Manhattan, where one building often directly abuts another.)"

"Bruce Fowle, a founder of Fox & Fowle, told me, 'The Condé Nast Building contains 1.6 million square feet of floor space, and it sits on one acre of land. If you divided it into 48 one-story suburban office buildings, each averaging 33,000 square feet, and spread those one-story buildings around the countryside, and then added parking and some green space around each one, you'd end up consuming at least a 150 acres of land. And then you'd have to provide infrastructure, the highways and everything else.' Like many other buildings in Manhattan, 4 Times Square doesn't even have a parking lot, because the vast majority of the six thousand people who work inside it don't need one."

"Thinking of freeways and strip malls as 'urban' phenomena obscures the ecologically monumental difference between Phoenix and Manhattan, and fortifies the perception that population density is an environmental ill. It also prevents most people from recognizing that R.M.I.'s famous headquarters-which sits on an isolated parcel more than a hundred and eighty miles from the nearest significant public transit system-is sprawl."

As it happens, these quotes are all picked from the article "New York Is the Greenest City in America," which I highly recommend you read.

We all damn well know...

[SilverBlade2k]

We all damn well know that this will never be mentioned again. Why? The inventors will most likely sell out to Big Oil, and they will in turn bury this technology because no customers, equal no profit.

Everyone is missing the biggest point...

[YellowFellow]

Now we can smoke when we're "refueling" our cars.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Vancorps]

Arizona is the same way, along with Vermont. In AZ you can also donate money to help others pay for their electric bill. Poor families can qualify for electricity grants which SRP manages. I've never been on the receiving end of it but I think it's nice that the option exists.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[eonlabs]

How much would it cost to construct your energy rails...
How about power them with high voltage so there's little power loss
How about covering the lawsuits for the first jackass to get electricuted while going on an on-ramp
What about replacement costs. Trains and trolleys carry how many trains an hour. Now replace the wear from that with the wear of hundreds of cars

What I'm interested in is how they electrically isolate the caps so that over 1-3 weeks, the cap doesn't leak energy on its own, or possibly short and burst, trashing the car when someone shorts the terminals.
The no batt-acid approach is a great idea, but the heat dissapated from charging enough to drive a car on in five minutes is a frightening propisition.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Vancorps]

Considering the billions in government subsidies given to Shell and to a lesser extent BP I'm not sure you're right on this. There has been heavy investment in alternatives for almost 20 years and they've yet to be behind any release of new technology. Instead you find smaller shops creating the technology using private funding.

It's the same way with the telcos. All the government money and they won't do a thing until the little guy comes out with a fancy new technology which forces them to act which usually requires even more subsidies.

I'll agree that the oil companies aren't as insidious as a lot of people would lead us to believe but they certainly aren't doing as much as they could.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[yusing]

Take a look at the UCap in the Wikipedia article. It stores 2600 FARADS. A medium sized capacitor in electronics might store 100 MICRO farads. Yeah ... this is a lot higher capacity. They're for sale, which suggests that they (unlike some laptops) don't blow up.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[arminw]

.....The average influx of energy to the "gas" station would be no different than today.......

How much energy a gas pump hose delivers in 5 minutes is very impressive. To do that with electricity is just not practical.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Your car isn't producing 200kW CONITINUOSLY! Also, one of the fundamental targets for EV is to use the motors to generate electricity under braking situations, which your conventional 200kW fuel vehicle cannot do.

Great!!

[djcondor]

So now, with the increased load on our power stations, they'll either divert the oil refining toward oil fired power plants and/or we'll start dumping a whole lot more coal into our coal fired plants, spewing out all kinds of wonderful things. Until we develop cleaner methods of power generation, all we do is shift the pollution to being generated somewhere else.

It's all about nuclear, kids. It's the cleanest, most efficient, least environmentally damaging power source we have. If people would get over 3-mile island (which was a SUCCESS story of our failsafe systems, btw) and chernobyl (which was a shitty russian reactor) they might just figure out that nuclear power is actually safer overall, than oil or coal fired plants.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Martin Blank]

It depends on where you are. In California, you can usually sell it back insofar as your meter reverses direction, but the electric companies are not usually required to pay you for more than a reset to the prior month's value, and so you end up with zero usage cost but still have to pay connection fees.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[smackt4rd]

Hmm, from the wikipedia article it says the power/rate ratio of the ultracaps is about 10% of lithium ion batteries. So basically your ultracaps will weigh 10x more than equivalent batteries. I can't see how they think they'll get 500miles on something like that when normal electric vehicles can only go 100miles or so on normal batteries.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Martin Blank]

But the explosion itself was neatly contained by a plexiglass housing.

Where's the fun in that?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[arminw]

....Actually, I've seen a fully-charged ultracapacitor explode: it's not really that impressive.......

How much total energy was stored in that capacitor you saw blow up? The amount of energy in a tank full of fuel is quite large. Suddenly releasing it will make for a devastating explosion. The Oklahoma Federal Building was essentially destroyed by the energy from fuel in a quantity which was about what a normal semi-truck might carry. The fuel was caused to burn very rapidly (explode) by adding an oxidizer. An ultra capacitor would have to store a similar quantity of energy.

Capacitors in general, including ultra capacitors have a very low impedance and can therefore deliver their stored energy extremely rapidly to any load including a dead short. That's why they use large capacitor banks to power monster lasers, such as they have at Livermore National Laboratories. Driving a car with one of these inside would be like having 350-550lbs of dynamite rattling around in the trunk. A normal car gas tank may also explode under the right conditions, but if it does, it will not wipe out the better part of a city block.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[mpkirby5]

See the patent

It says that the devices stores 52.2kWh of energy. Seems like it packs a pretty big punch. Mike

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[ScrewMaster]

Actually, the Middle East has continually sabotaged every effort the United States has made to try and curb its energy use, or develop other fuel technologies. After the wholly-synthetic "energy crisis" of the seventies, smaller, fuel-efficient cars starting becoming extremely popular. OPEC and other non-aligned petroleum-producing countries saw this, and dropped the price of crude to the point where Honda Accords and Chevy Chevettes no longer made economic sense. So, the world can bitch about America being "addicted to petroleum", but certain Middle Eastern countries saw dollar signs and did everything possible to prevent America from weaning itself off their product.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Martin Blank]

Your headset may switch to a new pattern, but Bluetooth uses frequency hopping along the 2.4GHz spectrum. You may be confusing it with how 802.11b and later work, using channels on specific frequencies. (OK, technically, he's correct in some manner, as the frequency may well change, but I don't think that's what he meant.)

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

or park your conventional car and set off an m-80 in the gas tank... Thats about 4GJ (gigaJoules) (30 gal tank) and the electric car issssss ~324 MJ...

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[ScrewMaster]

Not really. The power system in the U.S. is remarkably fragile, as a number of recent, rather catastrophic failures have indicated. You have to size a power grid for the peak loads that it will experience: untold millions of air conditioners and refrigerators beating back the summer heat, for example. There currently isn't enough reserve capacity to handle a massive buildout of electric vehicles ... if such were to occur, there would have to be a simultaneous buildout of new power plants and distribution capacity to match. Just bringing a new coal-fired plant online can take ten years or more, and nukes, because of various regulatory burdens, take even longer. In any event, it would cost billions and take decades, and I can't see it happening in the near future, not when America is on the verge of economic collapse anyway. No, cars and trucks will be chemically powered for some time to come: we just need to find something better to burn.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Well, I'm not sure what happens exactly internally. All I know is when the spark gap above the train goes off (and boy- one of these days I've got to look up the power requirements of a Max, that's some big blue spark) the sound cuts off just like the initial buffering when I turn the headset on. Switch to a new pattern, switch to a new frequency, the effect is the same: silence in the headset until negotiation with the host is finished.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[dfries]

Darn them, is the Middle East the ones behind the recent price drops at the pump? I want my electric car (and full house photo cell shingles).

I'll believe it when I see it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll believe it when I see it, not before.

Once again we see claims to product that has yet to materialize. Am I a disbeliever no. Am I sceptical, yes.

Show me a company that has product, is shipping that product and has product incorporated in vehicles (in this case) that can be tested for verification of claims.

Until that happens I'd prefer to not have my time wasted with "any day now" prognostication.

Flammable!

[Anonymous Coward]

I drive a diesel car. Biodiesel (even petrodiesel) isn't even flammable. You guys with your flammable fuels scare me.

Whenever I go in a tunnel or bridge or ferry at it has a big sign saying "max 10 gal flammable liquids!", I always wonder if I could get all the other cars banned for having 12 gallons of gasoline.

No flammable fuels, unless you're driving a Chevy Subdivision. That's OK.

Re:Flammable!

[Murphy Murph]

My Zippo is currently filled with diesel, and strikes just fine.
We must have different takes on "flammable."

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

If the capacitor loads in 5 mins, it means the charger pumps said 2000 kWh in 1/12 of an hour, for a power of 2000 x 12 = 24MW;

That's just a baby as far as power plants go.

A major grid-connected plant can produce 3-13 gigawatts of power.

Yes, you'll need some honkin' bus bars. A rough rule of thumb is 10 amps/square mm (you can get a lot more if you can do something like active water cooling). If you're running this thing at 1000 V, you'll need 24,000 amps, or 2,400 square mm of conductor cross section. Square root gives a cross section of ~50 mm on a side, or about 2 inches.

That's quite a 'trode, but it seems doable. This is a back of the envelope calculation, of course. You'd definitely want to have a competent EE do a careful design on something like this, but it doesn't seem too unreasonable.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to take a page out of nature's (or Zeus') book: lightning bolts! Low on charge? Just ring up the nearest statio, send them your GPS info and ZAP!

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[augustz]

Here a phase of a 500kv transmission line arcing at perhaps 100 amps.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Uun3ooPaNFU

Fun to watch. Also I'm curious of the weight on this size capacitor? Powering a car 500 miles is gonna take a fair bit of energy.

The General and the Holy Grail of Energy Storage

[irishkev]

Colin Powell... a former U.S. Army Four Star General, U.S. Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff happens to go into quiet, semi-retirement working for the venture capital firm responsible for funding the company that is building the "Holy Grail" of energy storage devices, based on technology patented by Standard Oil Company in 1966...

Tell me another one:

http://cryptogon.com/2006_09_17_blogarchive.html#1 15906089199373074

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Dun Malg]

Put a capacitor in your home and charge it up at night. Transfer the power to your car in five minutes from your trickle charge capacitor. Although this still doesn't address the safety issues.

There's no safe way to transfer 90kwH of electricity in 5 minutes without enormous expense. If you "split it down the middle" you're still looking at over 1000 volts at 1000 amps, which means a copper cable the size of your arm carrying voltage that'll jump out through an insulation fault and KILL you if the humidity is high.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Dolohov]

The individual capacitors were only charged to about 2.5 V, which I understand is typical for ultracaps. (The whole bank was in series, for a total of 270V) I'm afraid I don't recall the wattage on them, though.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone less lazy than me want to calculate what the Magnetic force will be on the lines at 5kamps? That much current and the force wont be trivial. The magnetic field might even be enough to wipe your Ipod for you as well as your credit cards. This is the real problem that keeps me from trying to make an electric car. Now Imagine your an early adopter and the DEA decided to raid you because of the sustained spike in night time electricy usuage. Must be plant grow lights that causing the electricity usage.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[LinuxGeek]

Someone's math is a little off. Around here, $9 of juice is 50KW/hr or a 600KW charge rate for the 5 minute span described. With a 7200v feed line (fairly common power line), we are talking around 85A after figuring in some conversion loss. I would figure a longer 10 or 15 minute charge time would make for a more consumer friendly product and could easily be incorporated into existing business models, like McDonalds for instance. Go in with your family for a quick lunch and charge your car at the same time.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Most electricity is generated from coal, nuclear, or hydro.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Ucklak]

That was my unmentioned point.

I'm not into conspiracy stories but removing the convenience stores would put a hurt on them.
I'm not talking about the petroleum in the ground, it's the nickel and dimes they get off the impulse items as well in corporate stores and/or franchisees.

Exxon isn't likely to put up a charging station. It would be a franchisee opening up another location or adding a charging station without prior approval with a "ask for forgiveness not permission" attitude.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[GreyPoopon]

You can achieve this with 60 MV at 1A, 1V at 60MA or anything in between. If you use a high voltage, you minimize current and therefore minimize transmission losses.

At 60 MV, you're likely to have arcing between the transmission line and almost every conductive object on the block.

Dangerous? You Bet

[dilute]

If you can charge this sucker with that much energy in five minutes, just IMAGINE what would happen if you were short it out. If you've ever shorted a plain old electrolytic capacitor with a screwdriver (a classic high school science stunt), you should understand. This is several orders of magnitude more powerful. With a capacitor like this, the entire screwdriver would instantly zap into a bright flash of light (hope you weren't holding it) - without even seriously discharging the capacitor. Really shorting it out would be like blowing up an entire tank of gas instantaneously. I think power supplies like this would have fearsome military uses, actually. I don't even want to say what comes to mind.

Which bus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it the 49 going up Harvard ave? It seems like they have more electric bus cockups on that hill than the whole rest of the city combined.

Excellent

[Quantam]

For those who aren't satisfied by being instantly killed by accidental capacitor discharge, now you can be instantly barbequed, too!

Yeah...Riiiiight

[IHC Navistar]

Does that include powering up the A/C at full blast, stereo, power windows, and all of the auxiliary systems while carrying 15,000 lbs. uphill at 55 miles per hour? I think not. I hate it when every single innnovation gets branded as something that will be as much a breakthrough to the automotive industry as the oven has been to the baking industry.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Hidyman]

Actually the components of a capacitor are pretty eco-frienly (especailly compared to current lead-acid betteries).
The Ultra-Caps they are referring to use carbon nanotubes to increase the surface area a thousand fold.

Sure you do, but

[grahamsz]

When i'm stuck in traffic, which is thankfully very rare, the vast vast majority of vehicles have only a single occupant.

I'm psyched that they are finally building lots of stores and resturants near enough to me that I can bike there, should save some more gas and burn a few extra pounds.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Hidyman]

Ah, but they OTHER article says that they will be able to do it.
The link to UltraCaps wiki entry are misleading.
This is supposed to be new technology.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Hidyman]

Actually bio-diesel in NOT petroleum based.
It is vegetable oil.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Hidyman]

These aren't really ultracaps, they are a new technology.
MIT is working on a nanotube cap, that is supposed to increase the surface area of a capacitor by 1000 times.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[skids]

>> Recharging in 5 minutes needs megawatt hours of energy delivered in minutes.

> Right...

Actually not. A tank of gas contains signifigantly less power than a single megawatt hour, and that's not even factoring in heat waste. BTW, the EEstor cap's max voltage is in the range of 4KV, for reference. Since there's no real use in tapping it below say 1KV, we're only talking in the hundreds of amps range here.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[skids]

Who needs to full charge in 5 minutes at home? Just park it in the garage and let it trickle overnight.

The 5 minute fill up would be for on-the-road at a specially equipped station, obviously. But if you really wanted 5 minute home recharges the solution would be again obviously to have another capacitor in the garage that trickle charges while you are out.

Oh my sweet sandab.

[NRAdude]

After reading your posts in this thread I have found you to be a retard. :)

You have rightly judged me to your undisclosed law. And upon this truth I shall build your church, and know you as father of it; because a father that chooses to know whomever is retarded is the father of the retards for same-sake of idle pleasure. Hallow are thy words; scratched from off the pecker of a Hen at the crack of the morning corn. Thy will be done on your Slashdot post as is in your House: For you are the Father of it.

Re:Oh my sweet sandab.

[MrNaz]

Wow, a religous nut with NRA in his name. Who'd have thunk it?

Re:Oh my sweet sandab.

[operagost]

Obviously, you're no genius as reading his sig seems to indicate that NRA doesn't stand for "National Rifle Association."

I won't go into your twisted ideas regarding ties between gun owners and the "religious right."

Re:Oh my sweet sandab.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, a religous nut with NRA in his name. Who'd have thunk it?

Wow, a stupid fucking hippie who feels the need to climb on his dullwitted political hobbyhorse regardless of the nominal subject under discussion. Who'd have thunk it?

Go eat your granola, moonbat.

Re:Oh my sweet sandab.

[MrNaz]

Holy crap! Dude, I'm usually against the use of Vallium, but you really need some.

Re:Oh my sweet sandab.

[MrNaz]

I see that jokes are lost on you. If you don't possess the required grains of salt, what on Earth are you doing reading Slashdot?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[arminw]

....The individual capacitors were only charged to about 2.5 V, which I understand is typical for ultracaps. (The whole bank was in series, for a total of 270V)......

The amount of energy stored in a capacitor goes up with the square of the voltage and linearly with the capacitance. The capacitance in turn is related to the internal area of the capacitance elements. The stored energy is generally measured in Joules. Putting capacitors in series is difficult and if not done precisely right, will cause one of them to short because it gets too much voltage. This can start a cascade effect where the entire bank can quickly blow out, like a set of falling dominoes.

A set of ultra-capacitors with the same energy storage and size as one of the infamos Sony laptop batteries we read about recently, would discharge its energy many times faster than the chemical reaction of the battery in case of a short and likely kill the owner in a spectacular blast. Charged capacitors are very dangerous devices, if they store significant amounts of energy.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[ShimmyShimmy]

is gonna take one HUGE ass line, and is gonna pose huge dangers.

Good point. Now, imagine a line capable of delivering upwards of 10 GALLONS of gasoline per minute (keep in mind, this is ~100 MegaJoules/gallon), without a calculator on hand, we're looking at about 15 MegaWatts of potential energy being pumped into your car. Now, imagine several of these monstrous 15 MegaWatt 'Energy Pumps' in every tow, perhaps one every couple blocks. Hm.... seems that we did that about 50 years ago. Yes, they are potentially dangrous. But, with modern control systems, and a (semi-)intelligent person ready to immediately cut fuel to the pumps in light of a customer smoking a cigarette during fueling, we have managed to create an impressively safe system of these.

How could we do it without superconductors? F*cked if I know, but there's probably a way. Why not do it with semiconductors? Ever hear of an MRI? They're pretty common these days in hospitals, etc. Why not gas stations? Yes it's a considerable overhead cost, but there's a large potential benefit coming out of it. I do not see this problem as much of a roadblock. Sure there are logistics, but I would consider these trivial compared to simple market inertia (ie, how do you make customers 'feel like' buying one). I vote possible and feasible.

Interesting Antitheft Possibilities

[schwit1]

Electrifying certain interior components to taser levels if the car is not entered properly.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[DDLKermit007]

I'm more intrested however in the, "almost arbitrarily faster" release of energy they can provide. Can't wait to see one in a car go off like the Litum Sony batteries.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[crossmr]

and what happens if it gets knocked out and you're in the middle of nowhere? FUCK.
that is what happens.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

For the most part I agree with you, but you did forget one thing: the peak loads are extremely high, which means there's tons of extra capacity at night and other times when loads are not at their peaks.

This capacitor technology can be used to collect energy at night and other times to dump out at peak times when it's needed most. You could then do the same thing in your car on a smaller scale. Have a bank of caps that sits there charging all night (or whenever the power company says it's cheapest), ready to dump the power into your car when you need it. Or maybe just swap out the empty caps from your car for the freshly charged ones in your garage.

dom

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[arminw]

....Adding a few million electric vehicles into the mix would bring our power system to its knees.......

This would only be true if everybody wanted to charge their car in 5 minutes from fully dead to fully charged. If the average daily drive is about 50 miles and the time to charge is over night (8-10hrs) the average house and the grid could carry that amount of power. Use at night is down anyway, so this would even out the daily grid load fluctuations. Recharging on a long trip would still be problematic however. Making a hybrid with a bio-diesel engine would solve that problem. After about 200 miles the engine would start and keep the capacitor storage system at that level. Around town the engine would never run.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[wrfelts]

To actually pull this off in a (relatively) safe manner, you would have to:

1. use a small bank of ultra-capacitors at the house/station that fills itself up over a more reasonable time (preferably off-peak)
2. use a bank of ultra-capacitors (not 1 big one) in the car
3. use a bank of smaller, more managable cables, bundled in such a way as to reduce magnetics and single short catastrophe
4. develop a standardized end-point connector assembly that:
   • basically prevents flow unless fully locked
   • contacts not reachable unless locked into a receptical
   • setup so that dunkning the end in a water bucket can't short it out

It will take some engineering, but it is not impossible.

Also, adding a little PV, wind, or other to the mix wouldn't hurt things any.

Ack

[grishknash]

The problem isn't the energy to power cars. The problem IS the car. Its an 19th century tech that should have died years ago. Its hugely inefficient. The only reason it continues to success is for convenience. Poor reason to piss the planet away.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[umasef]

It doesn't matter most power is made from fossil fuel. We need a better source.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[arminw]

.....There currently isn't enough reserve capacity to handle a massive buildout of electric vehicles ......

Not really true, if the charging is done at off peak times. Take a look at the California electric load curve and you can see how much extra power could be available to charge cars.

http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html

Most cars don't drive more than maybe 50-60 miles in a day and could easily be re-charged over night with a 10-15KW charger. An electric stove outlet would provide enough current for such a charging device. If there are enough such chargers, the curve would be flat or even reverse, shifting the peaks to the night time hours.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps we could use ultra-caps to buffer our home/office electric usage to minimize peak demand requirements.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[jdray]

Dunno about power requirements, but here's a wikipedia page on the Siemens trains they use. The first ones were Bombardier, evidently. Here's a page on the MAX. The things you find about your home town...

88 MPH

[shoolz]

To recharge, simply travel 88 MPH and hit a wire running from the nearest clock tower.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[soft_guy]

I've never seen a bumper-car driver lose his connection to the grid.

Bumper cars do not operate on roads - only on a small special-purpose surface. They maintain connection because there is a special floor and a low ceiling. Plus, bumper cars require constant attention and troubleshooting from an operator.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[alienw]

It's actually impossible. $9 is about 90 kWh, or about 1080 kW for 5 minutes. This would require a continuous current of 10,000 amps at 110V. Most houses are wired for about 300A; this is enough capacity to power about 30 houses. The only place where you could get that much capacity would be a power substation.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[AJWM]

A sedan has an engine power of around 200kW;

Yes, at max RPM.

to travel 500 miles, say it takes 10 hours,

If your're running full throttle, probably more like 4 hours. Your mileage may vary ;-)

so total energy consumed = 200 x 10 = 2000 kWh.

Or 800 kWh. Of course that's with about 6 times the drag (125 MPH vs 50 MPH), which dominates at high speed. So call it 125 kWh to do the trip in 10 hours at 50 MPH, and 1.5 MW to recharge in 5 minutes.

Except that electric motors are a lot more efficient than internal combustion engines (about 90% vs 30%) so it would only take an electric about 42 kWh to do that trip, and 500 kW for 5 min to recharge.

Still a serious amount of energy, but more than an order of magnitude less than your initial estimate.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[JAFSlashdotter]

Just because it CAN be done in 5 (or even 15) minutes doesn't mean it HAS to be. If they made it take different voltages depending on the desired speed of charge (rapid, high-voltage charge at the filling station; slow, lower voltage charge overnight at home in your garage), most people would probably never go to a filling station again, except when on a long trip. And for a long trip, I'd appreciate a 5-30 minute break every 500 miles. More people ought to take one now. When away from home, motels, hotels, and overnight parking lots could fill up your "tank" over a few hours for a fee (plug in, swipe your card, walk away). If done over 8 hours, the requirement are much lower. The benefit of the capacitor over a batttery is that you have the flexibility to recharge it in a short span of time (and also discharge it quickly too*), but you don't HAVE to. If I had one, 90% of the time it would be topped off at home every night. The average commute is something like 12 miles. I know there are some crazies that commute 100mi each way to work, with a 500 mile range, even they could round-trip and recharge overnight at home.

With most people recharging at home, recharge stations exist only as convenience stores. So the convenience store has a high-voltage hook up, and a few road-warrior types plug in while they stop and get coffee -- for the convenience of a rapid charge, they pay 4x what it costs at home ($36 is still less than I pay now for 500mi). The demand for that is lower than for gas, so you don't need to redesign the grid to handle dozen of cars simultaneously hooking up for rapid recharge.

Some things that stop me from having an electric car now are that 1) the range is limited (~60-100 miles), 2) when you get to the end of that range, you're looking at a relatively long recharge, 3) the batteries perform even worse when cold, 4) lack of availability. Capacitors won't help #4, but do help the rest.

* Speaking of rapid discharge... what happens to these capacitors in an accident?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[rtb61]

I think you just a little confused between electrical energy distribution and electrical energy generation. I dare say that all current western electrical systems could handle the load, they would just need to increase their electrical energy generation system.

There should also be a reduction in cost in the distribution system because you are increasing the amount of product being sold over the same system. The current cost of energy generation would be the same if you had one or ten power plants. Electric cars are the new reality, the auto manufacturers investments in oil companies will just have to bite the bullet. If they don't, then foreign auto manufacturers with out oil investments will gain an enormous advantage.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[AJWM]

For a small car it takes about 170kwh to go 500 miles on average.

I assume you're talking input power (ie, gasoline equivalent), not power output as motion (vs wasted as heat, noise, etc). In which case you need to take the ~90% efficiency of electric motors vs the ~30% efficiency of internal combustion engines into account. That drops the instantaneous demand in your hypothetical station to 8 MW right there.

That means If there were 12 electrical "gas pumps" to charge 12 such ultra capacitor cars in 5 minutes, it would take a power line that could carry 24 million watts of electricity to service ONE such station!

How often do you see a station with 12 cars filling up simultaneously? Most stations can only handle four or six at peak -- and they're rarely at peak. (Interstate stops can typically handle a few more, certainly.) And even at peak, the time between "fills" is not the bare minimum 5 minutes. The car has to move up to the charging outlet, park, connect up, charge, disconnect, pay for it somewhere in there, and drive off. Figure a few minutes for non-charging activity, which the station can be using to charge up its local storage from the grid.

5 MW should handle peak load at a very large recharge station. Much less than that (a few hundred kW) could handle a typical neighborhood station with local storage -- and in practise the demand on those would be lower because of folks recharging at home.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[KDR_11k]

They're for sale, which suggests that they (unlike some laptops) don't blow up.

So is sulphuric acid.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[TapeCutter]

When I was a kid (during the 60's) I "discovered" that you could charge a small cap with a battery and make a spark, the bigger the cap the more satisfying the spark was. I was delighted when I found a large cap on someone's junk pile, it was about 6" long and 2" in diameter and was in a metal case. It quickly drained all my batteries so I wired it up to a houshold plug with some screws and a piece of wood and pluged it into a 240v/10amp household socket (Australia) and flicked the switch. There was a loud bang and silver paper confetti filled the room.

Heat generated in charging.

[Goonie]

OK, the amount of energy stored in these babies is about 187 megajoules, and the volume is 27 litres. Assuming, say, 5% of that isn't stored and is released as heat in the charging process, you've got about 9.35 kilowatt hours worth of energy released as heat, in five minutes. So, that capacitor, to take a rough guess, would be the equivalent of a 112-kilowatt resistive heater.

They'd better have a pretty chunky cooling system if they want to charge the thing that fast. Anybody know how much thermal energy an internal combustion engine's water cooling system has to dispose of, as a basis for comparison? (remember, a lot of the excess thermal energy in an ICE goes out the exhaust pipe).

Re:Heat generated in charging.

[loose electron]

Frankly people are fixated on the charging time which is a waste of time.

That to me was some clueless marketing type doing the math without thinking.

If you can get the storage-leakage-capacitance-volume-weight issues solved, the rest is easy. (read the patent, I did the homework to find the damn thing) Trickle charge at home and make the device modular, so they can be "swapped out" on the road.All easily done.

Re:Heat generated in charging.

[SteveAstro]

You're ignoring the thermal mass of the capacitor -if its high, the cell will absorb your heat pulse with only a modest change in temperature.

Steve

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[dhartshorn]

Sorry, but you missed the point entirely. We have plenty of off-peak generation and distribution capacity, regardless of what peak demand is. We also have no particular need to do full scale charging on any particular day. Most miles are driven by commuters. If your commute is like mine, that's about 30 miles a day, round trip. Topping off every night would require very little power. In addition, I suggested that we would want to expand distributed power production, which wouldn't require grid improvements (local distribution lines aren't the problem you mentioned). Finally, none of this will occur overnight, giving us plent of time to react to problems as they arise. That said, I'd grab one in a minute if it were available.

Tell me another one.

[edunbar93]

CNN has recently posted a story about a company (EEStor) that plans on offering UltraCapacitor storage products

Uh huh. And I plan on building flying brooms that will whisk us around by magic alone. No fuel or flying license needed! Who wants to lend me money to persue this goal?

Do the math

[Cramer]

$9 worth of power at the national average $0.10kWh is 90kWh's... over a 5 minute period, that's 1080kW. Yes. One. F'ing. Megawatt.

Please correct my insanity.

Re:Get your cable here!

[Technician]

To get 1.2 MW of Power flowing into your car you are going to either need a 1000A at 12kV or 100A at 120kV.

Check the table. 640 ampers at 35KV should handle it at 22 MW. There are a few smaller sizes in the catalog listed in the table.

http://www.okonite.com/Product_Catalog/section2/sh eet17.html

Re:Math error..

[Technician]

Sorry, it would be 9.6 Megawatts capacity. I must have hit a wrong button on the calculator.

Explosions are the problem

[Cafe Alpha]

I heard about this YEARS ago from a scientist. The problem is that the device is brittle and if you crack it, it discharges all of its energy internally, exploding like TNT.

Even if it wasn't ceramic, the danger of an explosion would still be too great.

This is similar to the reason we don't have plutonium powered devices. I remember tests on the security container for a plutonium power source that could run a artificial heart for years without recharging... It passed all tests (train wreck, building collapse etc.) except being shot with a high powered rifle at close range. But even back in the 80s, the risk of what a terrorist could do with a dirty bomb was considered too great.

Just for heat

[Cafe Alpha]

By the way, the plutonium thing was just a permanently warm stick to drive a heat powered device. It didn't get anywhere near criticality.

Wisdom follows, pay attention!

[Anonymous Coward]

Informative: 5+

Ultracapacitors do not exist. The military has long given up on this topic. if there were ultracapacitors, battle tanks would no longer use gunpowder cannons and metal armour, but rather laser cannons, railguns and electromagnetic armour. This was heavily experimented with in the 1970s and the project collapsed because unsurmountable theoretical limits were found by calculations on capacitor capabilities.

The elctromagnetic armour is ingenious idea, the armour of the tank consistts of parallel thin metal sheets, connected to a huge capacitor. When a projectile hits it, the plates are shorted and the tremendus burst of current melts or explodes the impactor. Last year britons held a pubic demonstration of this armour with a modified prototype APC. It repelled RPGs like a charm, got hit 25 times and was still working at the end. However, more than half of its interior was filled by capacitors to store enough electricity.

If the military has no ultracapacitors, then no commercial entity can have it. If any capitalist really had it, the military would classify it top secret and take over the tech.

So stop dreaming and start recognizing companies who try to sell you waporware like gamma-ray thunderstorms, water-powered engines and other perpeetum mobile style junk so often advertised on /.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuke Nuke Nuke, Does it ever occur to anyone that we need heavy water to make the nuke reactors work then we need someplace to store the waste and then you have the steam issues too warming up the environment.
The power is not quite ready for mainstream.

Track cars are fun for kids now just try to tell a 16 year old he can not control his/her car to go where they want too or an 80 year old man/woman who want to go on a Sunday drive the can not drive were they want.
You'll have to come up with better than that for it to be adopted.

The 500 Mile per charge is a step in the right direction but We need a ZPM to get the power and soon.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Nickuss]

I reckon if you can get 500 miles ... 800 k's to a charge, people would be "filling up" less frequently, thus reducing the demand on refill stations. There is also the fact that the majority of drivers would have in place a system that can slow charge overnight at home.

If this technology is legit, we'd be saying goodbye to oil a little quicker. Hooray for that.

Uh huh.. and unlimited waiting on a Sunday?

[seanvaandering]

It's called a MetroCard. Plenty faster, more energy-efficient, and more convenient than a car

Yeah, and I'd like to get to work on time and not look like the loser who doesn't have a car. I'm sure there are other great reasons too, but take a look around - the majority of society doesn't agree with your views.

Re:Uh huh.. and unlimited waiting on a Sunday?

[moosesocks]

When I worked in NYC, all of my coworkers commuted via mass transit. I'm pretty sure the CEO did as well.

I think the "loser" in that situation would have been the fool paying $35 for gas, and waiting for hours in traffic every day. Massive traffic jams might get mentioned breifly on the local news -- train delays however, are front page news.

When I worked in my hometown, I was never discriminated against for biking to work. My coworkers were grateful to have an extra parking spot, and routinely offered me rides during incliment weather.

Weight of the capacitor

[jackhererUK]

According to the linked wikipedia article current ultracapacitors have an energy to weight ratio of about 3-5w.h/kg. That means to store 1 kw/h of electricity the cap would way 200kg. Using the $0.10 per kw/h then $9 = 90kw/h, so using current technology the capacitor would way 18000kg or 18 tonnes. These capacitors must be some kind of quantumn leap forward in order to store that kind of energy and not weigh as much as two fully loaded busses and be the size of a house. Either that or they are just more vaporware

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[N Monkey]

To actually pull this off in a (relatively) safe manner, you would have to:

      1. use a small bank of ultra-capacitors at the house/station that fills itself up over a more reasonable time (preferably off-peak)
      2. use a bank of ultra-capacitors (not 1 big one) in the car
      3. use a bank of smaller, more managable cables, bundled in such a way as to reduce magnetics and single short catastrophe
      4. develop a standardized end-point connector assembly that:

Or alternatively, why not have a standard cartridge for the capacitors so that all you do at the 'filling' station is swap a (partially) discharged unit for a fully charged one? The station could (pardon the pun) charge you for the difference between the energy levels in the returned unit and the supplied one.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Alioth]

A quick back of the envelope calculation - if you used domestic household electricity in the UK (which uses 240 volts for the normal supply at your socket), the power draw of just over 1 megawatt(!!!) would require a current of 4500 amps. In the United States, where the household supply is only 120 volts, it would require 9000 amps.

My house main breaker is only 40 amps.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[PeterAT]

I'm not going to dispute the overall energy noted by the parent poster but I think you will find that the demand will be spread throught the day. No one will be drawing power from the grid at the same level that they are charging the car. I imagine that each station would have it's own huge bank of capacitors and draw a constant, steady current from the grid. This would probably even have a weighting toward night time charging. This would enable heavier running of power stations at night to cover increased demand in the short term.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Alioth]

You might not have noticed, but oil companies no longer call themselves oil companies: they call themselves ENERGY companies. They aren't wedded to oil - they will deal with any kind of energy product.

It's also a sign that the oil is running out when the oil companies stop calling themselves oil companies, and start calling themselves energy companies.

Yeah... Right.

[NerveGas]

$9 of electricity in 5 minutes. Where I live, at 10 cents per KWH, that makes for 90 KWH. That much energy delivered in 5 minutes means a rate of about one megawatt. That means that a half-dozen of these cars could tap out an entire power plant.

Even if you've stored the energy up in another capacitor over time to provide the recharge, it still sounds a little unpractical. Let's say that it's storing at 1000 volts - you'd still need to deliver about 1,000 amps, which would require a conductor about as big as your arm.

Buying Energy: Gasoline vs. Electricity

[AJ Mexico]

What you are really buying is energy. So, how does electricity compare with gasoline? At December 2005 rates, I'm paying about 9.5 cents per KWH after all taxes and fuel charges. Gasoline was $2.79 per gallon (including all taxes). At these prices, gasoline is still a little bit cheaper per unit of energy than electricity.

2.8 cents/KBTU (electric) vs. 2.2 cents/KBTU (gasoline)

So, since $9 buys only about 3 gallons of gas, what this guy is saying is that his electric car gets the equivalent of over 155 miles/gallon. This is a very dubious claim. Since gasoline is cheaper than electricity, if he'll just power it with gasoline instead, it will be even cheaper!

Re:Buying Energy: Gasoline vs. Electricity

[ambrosen]

Electric motors are well over twice as efficient as internal combustion engines, so it's not so unbelievable. Especially with regenerative braking, etc.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Alioth]

Your expectations of solar cells are several orders of magnitude too high.

I'm doing some experimentations with a solar panel - the panel itself is about one metre long and just under half a metre wide. Pictures here: http://www.alioth.net/pics/SolarProject/SolarProje ct.html . The panel is made up of monocrystalline cells - the most efficient kind being manufactured in any quantity.

The panel is nominally 80 watts peak. That's 80 watts if the sun is shining with no atmospheric haze perpendicular to the panel - i.e. a 50 mile visibility day with the panel perfectly angled into the sun. Your car roof is probably only three times the size of this - so you'd be generating only 240 watts in the very best case. This amount of power is so trivial in the context of electric cars, it wouldn't even put a noticable charge on your car.

Worse than that, it's unlikely that you will be getting peak power out of the panels for more than 30 minutes a day even if you live in the desert. Even a very thin layer of cirrus cloud or just a poor visibility day cuts the power output of the panel by more than half. Even being 30 degrees off perpendicular to the sun cuts the output by more than half. On the brightest day, at 4pm, the panel only produces 30% of rated output unless you can tilt it directly into the sun. On a bright cloudy day (where there's still enough sunlight getting through to cast shadows) the panel produces less than 10% of rated power. On an overcast day with no sharp shadows being cast, the most I've seen the panel make is around 5% of rated power.

This Article is Pie-in-the-Sky Lunacy

[Anonymous Coward]

unbelievable that /. panders to this sort of nonsense...

what is going on at /.?

i think /. is trolling

has there been a changeover in editorial control over the last year or so?

What about my hair?

[pointbeing]

I'd prefer my hair not stand on end when I refueled (or got into) my car.

As stated many times in this thread, the infrastructure required to deliver that kind of power to an automotive ultracapacitor would be scary as fuck, with the magnetic field ripping pacemakers out of people's chests and stuff like that.

Want 500 mile capacity? Trickle charge. Folks don't need to drive more than 500 miles a day anyway ;-)

Now imagine that it's just snake oil

[Moraelin]

The energy density in W*h/kg for the best ultracapacitors is about 10 times lower than for a battery. Which in turn was crappy enough to make gasoline remain the better option. Among other things, because these are very low voltage devices. They may come in 2600 Farrad versions, but they also top at 2.7 volt. (Both values taken straight off Maxwell Technologies site, for their biggest ultracapacitor.) So the stored charge is, basically, crap.

So basically take all the hideous weight/Watt-hour problems of an electrical car and multiply them by 10. By now you're spending most of the energy into just moving the batteries/capacitors around. Basically think driving a pickup truck full of batteries/capacitors, just to haul yourself to work and back. Whee.

So basically I smell yet another fraudster hyping something they can't possibly deliver. But it sounds high-tech, revolutionary, etc, and some idiot will give them tens of millions VC to pretend they're working on it.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Skal Tura]

It's not the voltage which kills you, it's the ampers running thru you. Voltage causes the "zap" and "tingling" to be felt, but
ampers are the which burns.
Altho, high voltage CAN "jump start" your heart, but it doesn't burn you. Thus, you are more likely to survive.

Now, that suggests higher voltage would be safer... Think again, 10kV per 1cm leap.
So 110kv needs 10cm around it without anything which can lead to ground.

Correct me if i'm wrong...

No brake fluid?

[jamesh]

Finally, the complexity of an electric car is much much much less than a gasoline car. No exhaust, no belts, no cooling system (except for the electric ac), no transmission really, no power steering or brake fluids, no oil, etc etc.

Regenerative braking goes a long way to stopping a car, but unless you have an in-hub motor in each of the four wheels, you will still need a way of controlling the braking to each wheel. You can't brake with just the front or back wheels, and you need per-wheel control for ABS and stability control to work. Maybe there is another way around this without using fluids but at the end of the day when you blow a major fuse and all the electronics are dead, adequate pressure on the brake pedal will stop a car with a hydraulic brake system.

I don't know enough about power steering systems but would a hydraulic fluid really not be required there either?

But on the whole, an electric car really is a lot simpler. There are more electronics and a lot more sensors in an ICE management system than an electric motor controller. An electric car needs to switch much higher currents, but that's a solved problem.

Re:No brake fluid?

[profplump]

If you have electric brakes, which are already in use on commercial vehicles, and which are similar in design to air brakes (but more reliable, simplier, and cheaper), the failure mode is "brake", thanks to the wonder of springs. This isn't exactly a complicated problem.

Re:No brake fluid?

[jamesh]

the failure mode is "brake", thanks to the wonder of springs

That's a scary thought for a car on a slippery surface. A 4 wheel lockup would give you no turning ability at all. A single wheel failure could be disasterous! At least a hydraulic system gives you manual braking as a failure mode, even if you have to push really hard on the pedal.

I'm sure smarter people than me have thought about this though, and have solutions to those problems and more... maybe wikipedia can enlighten me :)

Re:No brake fluid?

[profplump]

This sort of system has been in use for 100+ years in vehicles with air brakes (trains and road vehciles). There are certainly cases where it would be bad -- any time you're moving fast, when the pavement is slippery, etc. -- but if you're moving more slowly it wouldn't be such a big deal, and overall it's still probably better than just having no brakes.

Moreover, a single wheel failure (hard brake lock) in a vehcile with ABS shouldn't result in a total loss of control. Once the locked wheel begins to slide the other 3 working brakes should be able to provide braking power sufficient to keep the vehicle moving mostly forward, and even to respond to some steering input. A 4-wheel failure (as happens in current air brake systems) would be much, much worse.

Reality Check

[gx5000]

How long until they're bought out and run to ground ? Last time we had a chance at EV cars, GM bought controlling share of the batterie technology and used their Delco crap. The higher performance batteries never really made it in the cars, just a few got the first line issues. And when GM got out of the EV business, they sold that controlling share to Texaco/Mobile, or was it exxon ? They want us to go Hydrogen and Biodeiesel next. The Electric car won't see the light of day until the Big Oil Profiteers get UberUber Mega Rich... Sad that we let them supplant technology and lie to us... Watch the film "Who killed the Electric car"...and the rest.. Cheers

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[salec]

They have abundant solar energy they can sell to all of us, but we need a microwave power relay satelite network to transfer energy on the global scale.

Now think that at 2.7V and 1750W/kg maximums

[Moraelin]

It gets better. According to Maxwell Technologies, their biggest model tops at 2.7V. So now do the same maths at 2.7V and you'd need over 400000A to charge the damn thing.

And no, you can't have several in series to rise the voltage, because with capacitors that reduces the capacity. So if you have a 2600 Farrad capacitor, two of them in series will only give you 1300.

Now also think that the output power of these things is also limited. According to, say, Honda's graphs, the best they can get out of theirs is about 1750W/kg. Let's say a new and improved model comes which can do 2000 W/kg. (Mostly to work with round numbers.) To charge 90kWh in 5 minutes you need 1080kW, or a bit over 1 MW. At 2kW/kg, you'd need over 500 kg worth of ultracapacitors just to take that.

But even that's not the funniest part. It gets better.

Now also think that the maximum stored energy density for the best ultra-capacitors atm is 3-5Wh/kg. Let's take 5. We want the best of the best here. And we want to store 90kWh there. So 90000/5=18000kg worth of ultra-capacitors. Yup, 18 tons.

Does it smell like a scam yet?

Re:Now think that at 2.7V and 1750W/kg maximums

[Seraphim1982]

It gets better. According to Maxwell Technologies, their biggest model tops at 2.7V. So now do the same maths at 2.7V and you'd need over 400000A to charge the damn thing.

And no, you can't have several in series to rise the voltage, because with capacitors that reduces the capacity. So if you have a 2600 Farrad capacitor, two of them in series will only give you 1300.
I don't follow.
The energy stored in a capacitor is 1/2*C*V*V where C is the capacitor's capacitance, and V is the voltage. If you put two identical capacitors in series you only get 1/2 the capacitance, but you can apply double the voltage to the system. This means that two capacitors in series will store twice the energy of one capacitor.

Re:Now think that at 2.7V and 1750W/kg maximums

[Moraelin]

Duly noted, but it still won't help that much there. The maximum charge speed for one capacitor being 1750 W/kg, you still need about 600 kg of them in parallel to be able to take 1.08 MW as input. (They did say it would charge in 5min.) Series connection won't help you much there, since basically the real limitation is the current there and connecting them series doesn't help with that.

So you have 18000 kg worth of capacitors, and 600kg of them will need to be be in parallel. That means that at most you can have 3 banks in series, which raises your voltage to a whole 2.7 * 3 = 8.1V. So now instead of 400 kA you "only" need 133 kA to charge it. Not that much of an improvement, eh?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[aplusjimages]

The funny thing is when you hook your i-pod up to it, you lose way more power. Can we get these huge capacitors on cell phones, i-pods, laptops, and other portable devices that currently have a really short battery life?

Not listening ...

[Znort]

EEStor is working the capacitor not the refuelling device, yeah right.

So this is how the article should be understood :
"We don't having any money left to keep our project going so we came up with this outrageous but easy to understand figure (9$ for 500miles) to bait investors. Yes, the PR guys are really worth the investment".

Vaporware ...

Znort

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[plague3106]

You miss the point. Some of that heat gets used to heat the inside of my car in the winter. THAT heat is not being wasted at all, it some cases its keeping me from freezing to death.

You also never answer my question; how will electric cars provide heat to the passanger cabin without a serious drain on the battery / cap?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[stan_freedom]

As for the charging process, I suspect the best way to safely accomplish recharging would be by trading out the entire capacitor array. Arrays would be standardized, much the way that propane tanks work for fork lifts. This would allow the arrays to be charged offline in a safer environment.

Theoretically, empty arrays could be transferred to large regional charging sites (adjecent to power plants) and then returned to retail outlets. By changing the arrays instead of charging them, the five minutes could be reduced to less than a minute. Picture a process similar to an automated car wash. You drive up, make your payment, and you roll into a changeout station where arrays are automatically replaced. This would also take care of the problem of wear/age of the arrays. As arrays wear out, they would be replaced by the retailer, who would spread replacement costs across all transactions.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[glesga_kiss]

It's also a sign that the oil is running out when the oil companies stop calling themselves oil companies, and start calling themselves energy companies.

Nah, that's just a sign that they have better PR agencies working for them now. Oil is such a dirty word, "energy" is heaped in synergy and convergence.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[salec]

If it squeezes the oil companies out, expect it to die.

Oil companies are not oil worshiping cults, they are businesses. Their business is energy for transportation. When switch happens, THEY'll be the ones pushing it.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[hey!]

$9 is a huge amount of electricity in term of charge. passing that through a line in 5 minutes is gonna take one HUGE ass line, and is gonna pose huge dangers.

Well, who says there's going to be wires? Why not simply drive up over the power interface and have the massive contact points rise from the floor to "dock" with your car? And if you already have one of those "speed pass" thingies, maybe it automatically deducts the cost. Heck, the thing can add windshield washer fluid, rotate your tires, and hook you up to the state lottery keno system while you wait.

For that matter, maybe five minutes is too much to wait for a charge. So you drive up to the "gas" station, and your car "ejects" your capacitor cartridge like a VCR deck ejecting a cassette.

Your old capacitor cartridge drops onto an underground conveyor where it goes to a robotic charging station where it charges, maybe not in five minutes, but in fifteen, and so you get not 500 miles of typical driving, but, say, 1000. Maybe during peak power driving periods, only five minute/500 mile charges would available to keep the "fresh" stack full. The power for charging the capacitors comes off the grid, but can be supplemented by liquid hydrogen delivered by tanker or pipeline. This liquid hydrogen was piped from power plants into the jacket of superconducting transmission lines to cool the lines, increasing energy delivery capacity for the line, and providing off-peak energy generation storage for wind, tidal and solar generation stations. The hydrogen is either tankered to on site generators, for example car charging stations, or is burned at the pipeline termination and injected into the local power grid to meet peak demand for air conditioning and other uses.

Meanwhile, a stack of freshly charged capacitors is waiting for the consumer at the "gas station". Each capacitor has a microprocessor which estimates, based on past performance, how many amp-hours it can deliver on a full charge and what the leakage rate is. If you have to let your car sit for a long time, or you need to drive a bit farther, you can ante up a bit more for a "high test" unit. You don't even get out of your car, you just roll up to the exhanger, punch in your order, and a minute later you're good to go 500 miles, maybe more.

As units no longer meet the quality criteria, they are shunted off the robotic recharge line to the station's recycle queue, where they are picked up periodically and replaced with fresh units. The initial cost of recycling is borne by the consumer when he buys his vehicle; say it is $2000. Each time a "gas" station sends a unit to the recycler, it is credited $2000. For every unit received from the recyclier, $2000 is paid, plus a small service charge which is passed on to consumers. As cars are wrecked, the cartridges are removed from the car and sent to the recycling plant for testing and rebuilding.

When you get home, you can trickle charge your car overnight from a 220v outlet. Farmers in the energy business can charge their units from wind and ethanol sources they have on site. Maybe they don't even bother shipping the ethanol they produce, maybe they produce it in efficient bioreactors and burn it right away, injecting the electricity onto the local grid. The storage capacity that ethanol would have provided is still there, but the energy is mixed with energy from other sources and stored in everybody's capacitors.

That's the important point: the future of the economy depends on becoming less dependent on petroleum as an energy delivery and storage mechanism, and more on electricity (possibly augmented by hydrogen). We can still burn fossil fuels, but they should be interchangeable with wind, tidal, geothermal, nuclear and solar sources. New energy sources and technologies can be smoothly integrated into the economy without further capital expenses on the distribution and usage side.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it ever occur to anyone that we need heavy water to make the nuke reactors work then we need someplace to store the waste

1) Wrong. Very few reactor designs need heavy water. The only one that comes to mind is the Canadian CANDU design which uses natural uranium. Enriched uranium doesn't need heavy water. Even so, there's no shortage of D2O. It's expensive to extract, but there's plenty of it.
2) Not a problem, despite all the screeching.

Not really a criticism though

[Kadin2048]

Your points are well-taken, but I'm not sure that they're specific to this type of car.

Right now, we consume huge quantities of energy in the form of petroleum products, for transportation. This energy is going to have to be replaced somewhere and somehow, as we move into and beyond the peak oil years.

Some other system that didn't require megawatts of power going out to every individual garage might lessen the expense of the infrastructure rollout, say if you used electricity to produce liquid fuel in centralized refineries, but the generating capacity would be the same or close to it (or more, depending on the end-to-end efficiency of the system).

One way or another, we're going to have to build enough power plants -- of whatever type, personally I suspect they'll be nuclear -- to replace the energy we current extract from oil wells and burn in our cars.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Ucklak]

Thats why the electric car died and why we still have no effective R&D material from the big 'energy' companies that are supposedly putting gobs of money, theirs and ours (grants from the government), into alternative 'energy' sources.
Instead what we get is better oil detection and extraction methods. Fine, but I want my R&D papers that proves other methods. Giving fat paychecks to managers of a supposed R&D project to ensure that X isn't viable isn't how I want my money spent.

It always has been the little guy that has the answer.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/45596/who _killed_the_electric_car.html

E. E. "Doc" Smith, Where Are You?

[Hasai]

Good grief; don't any of these fifth-rate excuses for journalists know basic math? Twenty seconds with a pencil and paper would tell anyone with the brains that God gave a radish that such a short recharge cycle would require a power connection bigger around than the car itself.
:P

talking about insulation, not wire gauge

[rubycodez]

I was speaking of the thickness of insulation, not of the wire. yes, higher current requires higher cross sectional area to dissipate less power. sheesh! But remember the insualation thickness also has to take into account back-EMF for any application, which for higher current on an inductive load goes higher. still, it's about the voltage

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[bartman227]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088763/quotes
[talking about the Time Machine] Marty McFly: [looks through a camcorder] This is uh... This is heavy duty, Doc. This is great. Uh... does it run, like... on regular unleaded gasoline? Dr. Emmett Brown: Unfortunately no, it requires something with a little more kick - plutonium. Marty McFly: Uh... plutonium? Wait. [lowers the camcorder by his side and points to the DeLorean] Marty McFly: Are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear? Dr. Emmett Brown: Hey, hey, hey. Keep rolling. Keep rolling, there. [Marty looks through the camcorder again] Dr. Emmett Brown: No, no, no. This sucker's electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 jigawatts of electricity I need. Marty McFly: Doc, you don't just walk into a store and buy plutonium. Did you rip that off? Dr. Emmett Brown: Shhhhhh. Of course. From a group of Libyan nationalists. They wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and in turn, gave them a shoddy bomb-casing full of used pinball machine parts! Come on! Let's get you a radiation suit. We must prepare to reload.

Power Supplies in Trains

[doghouse41]

I don't think the recharge issue is at all insurmountable.
Look at electic trains - the TGV in Europe has a continuous rating of 3-8MW. They have been running quite happily for well over 20 years. In that light drawing 1-2MW at a filling station for 5 minutes doesn't seem particularly challenging. There are a number of ways aoround the problems that have been raised here: -

1. Use a higher voltage. Railways typically use overhead wires at 25KV. At that voltage 1MW is a very reasonable 40 Amps.
2. Filling stations have their own local banks of Ultracapacitors which are used to store energy before it is used to fill vehicles. This evens out the demand on the grid. If they fill 1000 cars at 100KWhr per day, that is 100MWH, or an average draw of about 4MW. That seems very much in line with the sort of power an electric train might draw.
3. While 25KV and 1000's of Amps might seem scary for anyone used to a domestic supply, I doubt that anyone accustomed to using these in industrial applications would bat an eyelid. I doubt there is any new technology that needs to be developed in this area to make it a reality - possibly some production engineering to make it more cost effective, but no show-stoppers.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[YetAnotherBob]

Sorry, I'm an electrical power engineer. The line into your home is 120/240, but the distribution net is 12470 (7200 V per line, 3 phase, with probably a single 7200 line to each transformer.) Your Amp number is off, high by about 500 times. Still, the 'gas station' mentioned above would need a dedicated line. Probably make sense to run them special as 34.5 KV lines That'd take care of 3 or 4 stations per line. The duct banks are mostly already under the streets. (utilities like to have spares.)

By the way, the underground HV lines are mostly 500 KCM, good for about 500 Amps. Some of the larger ones can be up to 1000 KCM. That's about the largest UG cable size. 34.5 is close to the highest voltage that is put in the ground. Higher than that and it's run overhead.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Start driving down from a reasonably-sized mountain, like Pike's Peak. Stay on the brakes the entire way down. They will fail. You will crash.

Hills != mountains (the latter have very extended sections of in/decline, not a handful of short, steep sections)

And if you're going to try to use it, the contraction is spelled "y'all", you dumb wanna-be redneck.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Macka]

Worse. Imagine a 'gas station' of the future with a dozen 'pumps' hammering away

On the contrary, I don't think the 'gas station' will even exist if cars like this became popular. Not once the supermarket chains get in on the act. Imagine every car parking spot in a supermarket parking lot equipped with a power socket. Or every multi-story car park in every shopping centre. Even your local pub or bar could get in on the act. Gas stations would become a thing of the past because they wouldn't get enough business.

You're Obviously Not In The Business

[YetAnotherBob]

Standard house supply is 120/240 V single phase, but the utility sends power around on 15 KV class lines at 12470V or 13,200V 3 phase. Ovwerhead lines are usually 2/0 bare ACSR, that's aluminum with a steel core for strength (good for about 200 A). About 1.5 CM dia. Undergorund is 500 KCM (good for about 500 A), about 2 inches (10 CM) diameter (wire plus layered insulation). If I were a utility, I'd gaive a 'charging Station' a service that's commercial (480V 3 Phase), which would allow for about 6 times the power for a given amperage that a residence gets. I'd also increase the service size up to around 1200 A. 3000 A is the largest common commercial service size in most areas. (These are US standards. Europeans use 220V 50 HZ for residence)If the demand were large enough, I'd go higher voltage. 5 KV or 12 KV are common for really large industry. Demand charges for this kind of service are going to be significant though. All the 'analysis' I've seen here fails to take that into account. Peak rates are going to be higher than 9 cents per KWH. Bottom line, don't assume that a business has the same limitations that a residence does.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[FuzzyDaddy]

This is a "believe-it-when-I-see-it" thing - it's such a leap of technology (if true), that I'm prone to skepticism until they demonstrate the device.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[salec]

When something doesn't make sense to us, but obviously makes sense to someone who is above us, then we are missing something from our perspective of the things.

I think that in this case it is about the war. The petroleum == war in more then one sense. The wars are fought for it, but even more important, wars are fought ON it.

If you divorce oil from general consumption (individual transportation) and go for optimisations of efficiency, such as extensively using railroads, more efficient or alternative mobile and portable energy sources/reservoirs, then this comodity product starts becoming too expensive (because efficiency of scale) for i.e. military jets (and civil aircraft too!), which can't switch to electric engines, as far as it is known today, or for armoured vehicles, or small naval vessels.

That would hurt military cpapability of any modern army and it would hurt the most the army which is most mechanised and most far reaching.

This possibility certainly scares the living daylights from many of those decisionmakers in high positions. At present, oil is everyone's darling and none would dare to cut it out just to cripple that certain armed forces, because everyone needs it now. In a way, we have a global "balance of fear" that keeps war out of most oil-relying (most developed) countries. It is integrative force of global security system: Everyone plays nice, and we all get our gasoline...

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[ab762]

No, just one stick of dynamite.

But the destructive potential (not pun intended) of a system designed to flash charge that much energy is amusing to contemplate. Add a couple of "good ol' boys" and a few beers, and watch from a safe distance. Low orbit, perhaps!

Thermal mass won't do, AFAICT

[Goonie]

As I mentioned in the previous post, the volume of the device is about 27 litres, and on my previous calculations there's 112,000 joules per second of heat energy to absorb. If the thing was made of water (one of the highest specific heat capacities of common materials), it takes 4.18 joules to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius when the water is at 25 degrees. So assuming a mass of 27 kilograms, the thing is going to generate enough heat to increase its temperature by almost exactly 1 degree per second. Thermal mass isn't going to get you out of trouble; you're going to need to actively conduct that heat elsewhere.

Re:Thermal mass won't do, AFAICT

[loose electron]

Everyone needs to get off of the charging time and the thermals thereof.

It is not important, if they got the capacitor to do the job then you trickle charge overnight, or swap out the capacitor structures.

everyone here is fixated on the amount of time to charge the bllody capacitor

I'm an engineer. I get paid to worry.

[955301]

Clearly gasoline has more energy; however, we're talking discharge. Unless you drink all the gasoline, then light it, you will not transfer all of that energy to your body nearly as fast as a cap' will.

I also bet that the auto you witnessed exploding had a relatively empty tank, since gasoline vapor explodes and liquid just burns. What's more, you refer to "cutting all power from the capacitor". If the capactor has not been discharged, it can kill. No amount of protection will prevent the potential for exposure, since by definition contacts have to be available - even if it's in a airplan black box.

The problem is not energy running from the cap in the planned conduits and the need to cut that, it's the unplanned connections of bend chards of metal from the wreck. Or a choice case-crack.

A television doesn't already possess enough safeguards to prevent people from getting seriously injured from the cap's periodically, and they have been around for a while. Otherwise I might be inclined to believe you.

Yeah, maybe...

[Goonie]

Being able to quick charge *would* be kind of handy. If you have to hot-swap the things, that means you need to engineer them to be easily removable from the chassis, means there would probably have to be industry wide agreement on standard form factors (so you could go to a refilling station and simply swap out an empty module for a full one), and so on. If you can just plug in an electric cable to do it, all those issues go away.

Even so, if they could deliver what they're promising, even without the quick charge, it'd be the biggest thing since the internal combustion engine. Probably bigger, because it'd revolutionise the stationary energy sector as well.

Re:Yeah, maybe...

[loose electron]

having a car that never needed to be refilled with any type of fuel or energy would be great as well

the hot swap problem is a very easy thing to solve

the VC group funding them says something right there.
the voltages on the capacitor dielectric is message #2

ignore the idiot behind the curtain with the 3 minute charge up claim

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh?
He meant he'd rather swap his brake pads out here and there than convert his automatic to a manual.

My CRT isn't sucking a MW is It?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus H freaking Christ on a stick.

How can you compare the HV drive on a CRT with a 1 MW power feeder?

That's only off by a factor of what, Thirty Thousand or so?

A factor of 30,000 couldn't possibly make a difference could it?

Oh, and thanks for telling us that insulation is thicker on HV cable. I don't think that I ever would have figured that out.

I'm glad that you didn't smoke yourself working on 86 KV lines. But let's be serious, as you already pointed out, 86KV is very dangerous. Sure, the clean-up crew will remove the burn mark from the floor where the juice comes out the heal of your boot, and then your supervisor will pull out a roll of tape and lay out a box on the floor to mark the spot. It servers as a reminder to the living. That's the spot where Joe DummyLoad took a hit. Joe's not with us anymore, but we remember him.

So go ahead, live in your dreamy little dream world where every day, 30,000,000 people in the US, roll up to 'filling stations', and hook their cars up to a 1 MW substation.

What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[arminw]

.......I assume you're talking input power ......

No, I was saying that it takes between 300 and 500 watt-hours of real energy delivered to the wheels of a car like a Civic to travel on level ground at 60mph for each mile. Hilly terrain takes more, even with regenerative braking recovering part of the energy when going downhill. 170kwh is on the low end for small cars to go 500 miles.

However, most cars don't go much over 50 miles a day most of the time. That daily energy use can come out of an electric stove sized outlet, overnight in anybody's house. For long distance travel and large vehicles, some kind of fuel driven engine is the only known practical alternative even on the distant horizon. Bio-diesel motors or hydrogen fuel cells should work for this. Both could get us away from fossil fuels and possible man caused global warming troubles.

Capacitors, ultra or otherwise, can accept and deliver their energy very rapidly, explosively in fact. Even a capacitor with enough energy stored to drive a small car only 50 miles could be as dangerous as about 35 pounds of dynamite. Like so much of technology, there are up-sides and downsides.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather suck the internal combustion fumes from my tailpipe and scrub them with my intestines than eat McDonald's every time I need to charge my car.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Doctor Memory]

I've also heard that you can sell power back to the power company by supply electicity to the grid. The power company is required to pay you for the power you supply. A household could use one of the capacitors to store energy during the night when power is cheap and put it back on the grid in the morning and evening peak usage times.

That's an interesting point. I've heard that often the electric companies will "buy" the power, but what they actually do is just dump it to a big resistor, because of the difficulties matching the phase and frequency of the homeowner's power to the rest of the system. However, since they'd have to use a large DC/AC converter anyway, maybe that would mitigate the issues. I don't know enough about the intracacies of large-scale power grid management, but if this technology becomes widespread enough, it might spur the development of the necessary technology (if it doesn't already exist).

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[It's all Krista's Fa]

Up until the time that my dry-chemical rocket takes out your railroad hub or transmission line, at which point, you're back to the automobile.

There are a *lot* of uses for petroleum. And while you may kill of gasoline, killing off diesel will be harder.

My lawn looks like shit

[bxbaser]

and your wasting weed eater motors

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[MountainLogic]

AC power and a polarized cap - bad mix. If you'd rectified the AC you 'd have been in good shape to kill yourself - remember those medical shows where the the doc yells clear and the patient bounces off the table?

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[trentblase]

Yeah, I know it's not very practical. But wouldn't it be cool if you could just arc it directly into your car? Tesla would be proud.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[bluephone]

"Doing that means a crapload of both volts and amps."

Is that crapload US/Imperial or metric/SI? I know the difference between a metric and US crapload is small, but at these levels, that difference compounds. Now, had you measured it in assloads, or the universal shit-ton, then we'd have a total other story.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[radtea]

While your idea is good on paper, imagine how utterly crazy it would be if we all had to do that? The sheer logistics of a city with that spec is utterly insane.

Yeah, I was flying the other day and the plane had to land at every other town to refuel, and we had to change planes five times to get across the continent. No one will ever use air travel for anything practical--the logistics of linking cities by air is utterly insane, because we know that no technology ever improves due to new investment or rethinking of old ways of doing things.

Yours truly, from 1932.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[Rei]

As of 2001, BP produced 15% of the world's output:

http://www.ecoworld.com/home/articles2.cfm?tid=259

I believe that it's more than that now. Shell's goal for 2005 was 10% of the world's output; I don't know if they reached that goal or not. Both are not just producers; they also offer multimillion dollar research grants, and lots of them.

Both BP and Shell are really into the whole solar thing. Both sense a backlash against oil coming due to shortages and/or global warming, and want to have the manufacturing base and intellectual property behind renewables in preparation for the shift. That's another problem with when people talk about oil companies: they treat them as monolithic. They're not. BP and Shell are incredibly different, policy-wise, from, say, Exxon-Mobil, who *still* not only denies global warming, but astroturfs against it.

You're totally missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

So what if distribution is done at 15-35 KV?

That's distribution, we're talking about hooking up a piece of consumer electronics to a 1 MW feeder line.

If you're 'in the business' you're going to know that there's no why in hades that a consumer is going to be allowed to grab a hold of a 35KV feeder line and stick it anywhere.

Go through any check list for energizing a 35KV system -- not exactly the same as pumping gas into your car is it?

What if the 'filling station' supplies 3-phase 480 to the car? That requires 1000A service between your car and the filling station.

What's your procedure for energizing a 1000A, 3-phase 480V service?

Your customer just drove into the filling station. It's winter, it's raining, the car's wet, it's dripping water, maybe they've just salted the roads.

How do you check the customer's equipment?

You're about to energize a 1 MW feeder into a piece of equipment. Not fixed equipment, mobile equipment that's been rattling along the roads for 130,000 miles.

So let's talk about your check list for energizing a 1 MW portable generator -- that's more to the point.

Here are the published EEstor capacitor figures

[Savantissimo]

Good comment - ~4kV on the caps makes it a lot easier.

I'm not really sure why the Slashdot article links to the Wikipedia "Supercapacitor" article - that hasn't had anything useful on EEStor since July 26, when this section with all the important claimed numbers for EEStor's capacitor was removed:

"As of spring 2006, EEStor Inc. claims to have a supercapacitor with a barium titanate dielectric nearing production. The company claims a unit with 31 farads capacitance and an operating voltage of 3.5 kV, capable of storing up to 340 Wh/kg (1232 kJ/kg)and charging or discharging at up to 3.5 kW/kg (52 kWh = 187 MJ and 520 kW - 6 minute charging time - for the 152 kg unit), lifetime of over 1,000,000 discharge cycles and leakage of less than 0.1% per month [[4] US Patent 7,033,406] with a cost of $40-$60 per kWh ($3,200 - $2,100 per unit). [BusinessWeek, 3 September 2005]. The technology is scheduled for third-party verification during the summer of 2006."

(This had links to Barium Titanate Ultra-Capacitor (Richard WEIR / Carl NELSON). That page seems to include copies of essentially all the professional articles on EEStor.)

So the charge rate on a car-size capacitor is 520 kW at 3.5 kV which means the current is a bit under 150 amps. According to American Wire Gauge (AWG) Current limits the necessary diameter for each wire of the pair is between 0.25 - 0.33 inches (5.83 mm - 8.25 mm) depending on the wire length.

The solution to the high peak power demands of an electrical "filling" station is to have a large (MWh -class) Ultracapacitor bank at the station to level the load over the course of a day.

The car range estimate also seems reasonable - the relevant figure is not the full-cycle efficiency (which includes charging losses), but the efficiency based on the energy actually stored in the capacitor. The EV1 had an efficiency on that basis of about 0.18 kWh per mile, so even without adjusting for the lower weight and losses of the capacitor compared to the EV1's batteries, a 52kWh capacitor should have a range of about 290 miles.

***

I think he most interesting things about the EEStor capacitor are not just the energy and power densities but the amazing durability and low cost. If it works as advertised this is going to allow lots of businesses that aren't
practical today such as solar, wind, and tide generation far from the grid - with energy shipped out in boxes. Utilities could use these for load-levelling. With the right setup in the cars, the vast number of cars hooked up to the grid and any given time could itself be the utilities' supply buffer.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[SillySlashdotName]

Not knowing where "around here" is, I suspect it is your math that might be off.

At the national average of $0.09 per KW/hr, $9.00 gives 100 KW/hr of juice. To deliver that in 5 minutes, the rate would have to be 1200 KW/h. That is 1.2 MEGA watts per hour.

On the other hand, that level of power is already being used. The "Superman" roller coaster uses liner induction motors to accelerate to over 100 MPH in under 7 seconds, and uses about 1.2 MW to power the system. Of course, they are running two cars side by side, and I don't know if that 1.2MW is for one or both cars...

But I was thinking, if the technology exists (at the time) for such ultracapacitors, why would the 'service station' not have a bank of capacitors that charge at a lower rate over a much longer time, then discharge on demand to fill the capacitor banks of the vehicle(s)?

"dollumetric energy density" is the big thing yes.

[skids]

...to coin a phrase.

While the new Li-nano-phosphate battery producers are safe from being undersold because they have the power tool, laptop, and other small battery markets to fall back on, if EEStor really does make their price targets and the units prove as reliable as they say, then the vanadium redox battery (vrbpower) and high speed flywheel (beaconpower) manufacturers are going to have to really run their numbers and see if they will be able to match that $/kwh figure, which is about on a par with lead acid batteries. Other than in vehicles, these products which are all just now entering production all compete with lead acid based mainly on reduced maintenance costs -- if they have to compete on price too, well we'll have to see.

Of course beaconpower is way ahead in the certification and tie-in game so they have bought themselves a few years time to bring product prices down, and VRBs could conceivably beat EEstor on cost if the need is for deep energy storage compared to power, as I doubt even EEstor can beat the cost of giant tanks of electrolyte.

Re:shocking news breaks

[freaker_TuC]

you seem to have a powertrip there ...

Re:You need 4000 Amp line

[Slicebo]

Funny, most sentences containing the words "pumping" and "Hummer" are more interesting than what you just wrote.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[InfoVore]

No, a largish filling station will need a major substation."

Instead, how about a substation sized bank of these supercapacitors at the recharge station? Use low demand times to charge the cap bank. Put enough caps in so that the station meets peak seasonal demand. Make the cap banks modular so that supplementary units can be delivered and hot-connected. The supplementary cap banks would be charged at a convenient remote location, say near a power plant.

If you wanted to avoid the trickle charge all together, just size the bank appropriately and have a truck deliver swap banks a few times a week, just like having gas delivered. Cap banks need not be swapped out. The delivery truck could also connect directly to a station. Give it an hour or so to "fill" the station's cap banks off of the truck's banks.

- I.V.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[ultranova]

The current cost of energy generation would be the same if you had one or ten power plants.

As long as all resources needed to run them are available in sufficient quantities, yes. But 10 power plants burn 10 times as much fuel as 1 power plant, and I'm not at all sure that production of coal and oil - and, in the case of nuclear power, disposal of waste - can be scaled by an order of magnitude, not to mention the people needed to run and maintain them.

As soon as those 10 power plants need to start competing from resources, prices start going up.

So many errors, so little time

[YetAnotherBob]

I do know the 'checklist' for 35KV connection, including the high pot test, the connection with bleed-off, 3 layers of insulation, all of it. There is an ANSI standard for that, actually authored by a utility consortium. It's done every day by some people. It's not suggested for home use, but for a business (like a filling station. by the way, for loads that are connected and disconnected often, there are plugs for these voltages. No test needed for just plugging in or parking (the term for plugging in to a known safe dead spot). Large underground transformers have bushings for that, and parking bushings from the manufacturer. They are used with hookstick disconnects.

We don't want people to keep 1000 gallons of potentially explosive gasoline or propane in thier basement either, but EVERY filling station does that. There are safety procedures they have to implement and follow (See NEC [National Electrical Code, NFPA 70, or ANSO C2 (same codde, just different numbers for the different code bodies)] Sections 500 and 501, also 511 and 514 for the electrical items. There are others in the building codes and some others.) If this works, there will be safety procedures for this too. No new discoveries are needed, just infrastructure built out.

You seem to think that you need to build a new connection to the utility each time you want to charge up your car. Do you also think you need to build a new pipeline every time you fill up your tank? (I know the checklist for a pipeline too. It is extensive. That just means I've been involved in the design and testing of both. Yeah, P.E.)

All the consumer will see is a big plug that will not allow a charge until it is in and sealed. Reality is that the present utility set up can handle most of this. There might be a need for some build out, but gradual implementation of the tech would take care of that. The biggest problem is with generation. I'd rather see nukes than more coal or oil fired plants. Those are the only really viable options. At around 100 KW per car, there is a lot of power being used for transportation. It CAN be replaced, but that doesn't mean it will be easy.

No, I don't beleive that we will ever see a 5 minute charge station in a home. Nor should we. They are talking about a commercial facility. We don't put gas stations in residential garages either.

Well, this is slashdot. Home of opinion uncluttered by fact or experience. I shouldn't expect much.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[LinuxGeek]

I was using some real numbers to respond to the "1000A at a mere 60KV" comment of the parent and other posters. They were using some numbers that were way out of range for this application. Yeah, I also think that $0.18 KW/hr is a bit high around here too, but the area is nice.

Crumple zone should be the bumper itself.

[NRAdude]

Greetings and blessings!

My qualifications on this matter is modestly constributed from experience in Demolition Derby performances. As writ in my initial post, the shell ontop the chassis of most automobiles is both more expensive than modern art to repair and unnecessarily molded in such ways as to have dual function to also delicately fold in place on collission. The FIRST modification anyone makes to fortify their automobile for anticipator collissions is modify the bumper; albeit, most bumpers are raised, while some are stuffed (unsportingly) with more steel or reinforcements. My thoughts on the matter would not be aestheitcally pleasing to the motorist whose helmsman is directing the movement of their craft or vessel. Consider a Bumper hydrollically elevated perhaps 12 inches from the bodily chassis and thenceforth certain mechanism developed to provide re-direction for the force of any collissions.

In itself, the interior of an automobile should be remeniscent of a technologically-upgraded victorian-age insanity capsule; well-padded with quality materials, necessary to assume that the focus of all interior aesthetics is certain to the science of preventing chicken or ostritch egg from fracturing at any sudden changes of intertia. My crumple zone is built off a steel oval-rim going about the length of my small-craft, of which there is a constructed mechanical mesh that distributes the imposed force. It's not aesthetically pleasing, however in comparison to a boat then one would think it better (that is, the portion of a boat exposed on the surface, not the portion of a boat that is smoothly-submerged).

Trust me, the solution would be detrimental to the carriage body repair industry and rightly so; automobiles should be as structurally-resilient as the immune-system of the horses they were meant to replace. In this fassion, I have not once bought any carriage or automobile simply to the distrust of their security systems in place of unsound structure. I just don't trust them, and the matter of 'air-bag' placement is a less a science and more a study toddlers enjoyed when experimenting with the cussions of a sofa and couch when they topple them against one-another. I build my own automobile, and treat the common Ways as no less than an expectant demolition arena given the misbehaviours of un-oathed police/COPS/security officers maliciously using their admiralty emergency hailing-signals to court non-emergency matters having caused no tort or malfeasance.

At any rate, the alleged reasons for abandoning sound-structure was to use the vessel itself as the bumper; engauging compression as a means of absorbing shock and inertia. The advertised symptom is improved fuel efficiency, despite advances of Water Electrolysis (HHO gas) and the Joe Cell, which I have found to be efficient down to an ounce of water providing enough HOO gas for combustibles to move a '77 Ford Lincoln (weighty and well-constructed carriage) no less than 100 English miles.

The liberty from another's office tends to bring one in harmony with the limited knowledge of one's burden to study their matter of fact, as is "homebrew" mediums; the free market that thought it was, is all it should be, and found to be restrictive of any profittable gain of laziness. Why burden a perspective automobile purchase with a ratio of cost of Safety Certification that is unbalanced to the value of the chassis and body? Do all cardboard boxes and tin cans rate for a "crush test" that increases their cost of purchase or value 25% as does an automobile or 250% as does the material?

Small Serial and or Parallel battery arrays

[implex]

I would imagine it becomes a design issue for the battery cells themselves. Would they be brick sized and have built in disconnect circuitry? Such that if they detected massive deceleration/impact they would switch to a mode where they were less likely to discharge. If the batteries were all interconnected then a single battery that was physically damaged then the other batteries would disconnect from it to prevent beng damaged themselves. Sounds like a lot of thought would go into the cells so they were aware of their surounding cells and connect in their own optimum arrangement.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[EarthlingN]

I like the idea of renting or owning a trailer-generator for long trips. The road warriors would have an on-board generator (hybrids of today). We could do that *now* with your-choice-of-fuel generators and the existing hydrocarbon pumping stations.

* Accidents? Think of what you could do with a giant capacitor, intentionally! There might be a booming after-market in roof-top rail-guns and lasers. ;)

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[StikyPad]

Well, you could just put meters in the cars and charge based on consumption. You could even do some fancy-pants networking so cars report their usage on a regular basis. But the real problem is practicality. It's difficult enough to keep a static grid working, let alone one with untracked vehicles. You're introducing a LOT of heavy loads which connect/disconnect in a somewhat random manner, not to mention 9 foot poles on top of cars would tend to limit speeds to less than highway. Anywhere that's regularly subjected to heavy wind would be hurting, any any power outage would send traffic grinding to a halt. Imagine trying to escape a hurricane and Oops! the power goes out or a line goes down.

No thanks.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[StikyPad]

that is a huge advancement over the current technology.

The current technology? I'm shocked. I thought by now we could resist puns, but apparently that line is still open. I'm positive that if I had mod points, these kind of posts would have a negative affinity.

Impressive capacitor, but still not enough.

[Animats]

The capacitor bank described in the patent is 31 farads at 3.5KV, storing 52KWh and weighing 336 pounds. That's a truly impressive capacitor bank.

Unfortunately, that's the energy storage equivalent of only a gallon of gasoline.

Electric fire-cracker

[TapeCutter]

"If you'd rectified the AC you 'd have been in good shape to kill yourself"

Maybe, but as a 10yro I didn't think about electrocution or nasty chemicals and fortunately knew even less about diodes than the little I knew about capacitors. After the explosion I realized the shrapnel from the metal container could be a hazard and made a mental note to get a longer lead "next time". After fixing the fuse and cleaning the sticky yellow shit from the ceiling, I started thinking: How am I going to find another "electric fire-cracker"? Another twist of fortune is that my parents found me out.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, that's why my kids were not allowed to play with power points while they were growing up. However, to quote Cat Stevens: "My boy was just like me". My dad gave me a hint when my son was a toddler, he said: "We use a lot less fuse wire since you left home".

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[salec]

Your dry-chemical rocket misses... the point entirely.

Of course the war is the spoiler for energy savings, that was my very conclusion. Besides, controling oil (or steel, for that matter, but steel would be worthless if you didn't have oil) is controling (outcomes of, therefore the probability of outbreaks of) great wars. If there was no single resource to control, the wars would be (and were) even more frequent then today. And that my friends, is why "they" won't let us go "green": "Without a string, the world is mess".

Now, imagine some revolutionary invention that would surpass oil in efficiency and ease of use, say a "Mr. Fusion" portable micro-reactor. In an instant, all military gear is obsolete like cavalry and clear winner is the party which has vehicles and aircrafts that go on new energy source. If there happens to be that some new guys get it first... we'll have yet another painful "new order installation" or, if several countries jump on new bandwagon at same time, series of "championship" wars between arms racers (it happened in past with each tech "age" change). It is a regular nightmare. So, you see, oil companies have nothing to do with it, while OTOH governments and militaries have everything to do with it. It also explains some other "stupid" and "damaging" practices like importing scientists and skilled technicians from all over the world even though locals take severe hits in terms of unemployment and earnings' cuts and consequently country falls behind education-wise. China's human rights records are worrying, but not as much as their science and technology development. You need to constantly attract the best minds of the world (other option is ... well, wasteful).

There is only one way out and unfortunately not a technical or technological one - the world must be pacified, tensions removed, there has to be a working global security system, as well as global political system deemed just by most if not all nations and members of the humanity (and all inteligent and capable species/entities/did_I_forgot_anyone_?), that would channel the interests into peaceful process of accomplishment. Then and only then will we be free to design and deploy proper, optimum solutions to our needs.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[plague3106]

Power lines usually do already follow rural roads though. No one said it could be done overnight either. Go figure out the cost of electrification and adjust for inflation. I bet that is up there as well.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[tehcyder]

The only relevant comparison is to thousands of gallons of gasoline hauling down the highway at 70 mph in the back of a tanker truck.

Yeah, like that would ever happen.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[tehcyder]

I would find a car that does not have a 300+ mile range to be totally unacceptable

Well, my motorbike only does about 120 miles on a tank, and it's no big deal having to stop to stretch my legs and fill up after an hour :-)

Will EEStor embarrass the whole electric industry?

[fubar1024]

The fast charger would require connection to a 2300V primary distribution line. Not a problem for commercial charging stations. But not available for 250 amp lines in houses. So that would take hours. I suppose that's a fair trade off given that I can't already fill up my car with gasoline in my garage. And power is a lot cheaper at night, at least here. Most people would be willing to charge slowly if it meant a lot lower price.

EEStor doesn't operate at constant voltage, in fact capacitors decrease exponentially with discharge, so the switching device to maintain constant output will be very complex. But definitely doable.

I don't know what to think about EEStor. No technology like this currently exists. However, the production methods and materials for manufacturing existed 30 years ago. And layers can now be produced so incredibly thin that they would drastically increase the surface area of the energy storage. If this works, many smart people really missed the boat a long time ago.

I just have my doubts about the whole thing. 400 pound 52 kilowatt-hour system with virtually infinite quick recharge capability for $2,100? Why so initially cheap for such a revolutionary invention? It's almost too good to be true, and the secretive nature of the company doesn't quell any thoughts that they might be blowing some smoke. Movies without reviews are usually bad.

Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid

[KC7JHO]

Electrocution occurs when a small, specific amount of electrical current flows through the heart for 1 to 3 seconds. 0.006-0.2 Amps http://www.codecheck.com/ecution.htm