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

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.

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?

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!