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500 Miles on a 5-Minute Recharge?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sure-just-get-in-the-electric-missile-launcher dept.

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."

107 of 854 comments (clear)

  1. Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid? by Catamaran · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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.

    --
    Test 1 2 3 4
  2. I*V=P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

    Current and voltage?

    1. Re:I*V=P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:I*V=P by Webmoth · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
    3. Re:I*V=P by pclminion · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  3. How much electricity? by Phreakiture · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    www.wavefront-av.com
    1. Re:How much electricity? by bobdapunk · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:How much electricity? by misleb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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

      --
      "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
    3. Re:How much electricity? by Phreakiture · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      www.wavefront-av.com
    4. Re:How much electricity? by russ1337 · · Score: 4, Funny
      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...?
    5. Re:How much electricity? by jconley · · Score: 5, Funny

      At what cost per kWh does it require 1.21 gigawatts?

  4. Great Scott! by krell · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    Where were you when the voynix came?
  5. 1.2 Megawatts by Stone+Rhino · · Score: 5, Interesting

    $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?

    --


    Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
    1. Re:1.2 Megawatts by aleksiel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:1.2 Megawatts by mark-t · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    3. Re:1.2 Megawatts by Golias · · Score: 5, Insightful

      $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."

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

    4. Re:1.2 Megawatts by OwnedByTwoCats · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:1.2 Megawatts by Cid+Highwind · · Score: 2, Funny

      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.

      --
      0 1 - just my two bits
    6. Re:1.2 Megawatts by Gabrill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
    7. Re:1.2 Megawatts by gurps_npc · · Score: 2, Interesting
      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.

      --
      excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    8. Re:1.2 Megawatts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      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.

    9. Re:1.2 Megawatts by ltbarcly · · Score: 3, Interesting

      (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?

    10. Re:1.2 Megawatts by Golias · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

    11. Re:1.2 Megawatts by Phat_Tony · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
    12. Re:1.2 Megawatts by Ucklak · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.

      --
      if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
    13. Re:1.2 Megawatts by KDR_11k · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It gets worse than that.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  6. Hate to see this car in an accident by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  7. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by Golias · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --

    Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  8. shocking news by User+956 · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
    1. Re:shocking news by EMeta · · Score: 2, Funny

      No! It's revolting!

    2. Re:shocking news by Isotopian · · Score: 5, Funny

      Why is there always such resistance to this?

      --

      It's poetry with a beat behind it! And guns! They're like beatniks with automatic weapons.

    3. Re:shocking news by sklib · · Score: 5, Funny

      Many people just don't have the capacity.

      --
      -S
    4. Re:shocking news by SeaFox · · Score: 4, Funny
      This is simply shocking news.

      That comment was truly the joule of this entire discussion!

    5. Re:shocking news by onthefenceman · · Score: 4, Funny

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

      --
      Have you seen my stapler?
    6. Re:shocking news by p0tat03 · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    7. Re:shocking news by bakes · · Score: 4, Funny

      Enough already! Ohm my god!

      --
      Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
  9. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by wcb4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    --
    I reject your reality ... and substitute my own.
  10. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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
    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  11. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by Dr.+Eggman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Demented But Determined.
  12. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by Catamaran · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, but a lot less than a battery.

    --
    Test 1 2 3 4
  13. I'd like to see the charging cable... by Doctor+Memory · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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!

    --
    Just junk food for thought...
  14. Just don't let Sony make them by davidwr · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  15. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by coyote-san · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
  16. You need 4000 Amp line by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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!

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  17. Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge by Pink+Tinkletini · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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."

    --
    And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
    1. Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge by schnikies79 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Gone!
    2. Re:Unlimited Miles on a 1-Minute Recharge by Scrameustache · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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!

      --

      You can't take the sky from me...

  18. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by soft_guy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
  19. That's all well and fine, but by pair-a-noyd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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..

  20. Bullshit! by CPIMatt · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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

  21. Re:You need 4000 Amp line by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  22. One Reason itll never work by carlosponti · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  23. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by EnderGT · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  24. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by Politburo · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  25. Lawn products by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  26. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by Dr.+Eggman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Demented But Determined.
  27. Re:You need 4000 Amp line by cmdr_beeftaco · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.

  28. Re:From oil to coal..... by mark-t · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  29. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by GfxGeek · · Score: 2

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

  30. What goes in, must come out...quickly! by 955301 · · Score: 3, Informative


    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.

    --
    You are checking your backups, aren't you?
  31. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by rainman_bc · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
  32. 47 Bullshit-o-watts by 2short · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  33. Not a particularly new idea, but a good one by anti_analog · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    you cannot dodge the quad laser. jumping is useless.
    1. Re:Not a particularly new idea, but a good one by spirit+of+reason · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

  34. Re:From oil to coal..... by Golias · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --

    Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  35. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by Dare+nMc · · Score: 2, Funny

    >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...

  36. Re:You need 4000 Amp line by SuperBanana · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
  37. Re:Taxes? by ericspinder · · Score: 2, Informative
    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.
    --
    The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
  38. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by CrudPuppy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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

    --
    A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
  39. Re:These posts are ridiculous by AndersOSU · · Score: 3, Funny

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

  40. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by orielbean · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  41. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by jmorris42 · · Score: 4, Informative

    > $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.

    --
    Democrat delenda est
  42. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by KDR_11k · · Score: 2, Funny

    I think he's talking about "100 octane electicity".

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  43. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by eric76 · · Score: 2, Funny

    It might be easier to just electrify the roadways themselves.

    That would take care of hitchhikers and wild animals, too.

  44. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by Brickwall · · Score: 4, Informative
    $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!

    --
    What was once true, is no longer so
  45. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by KDR_11k · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  46. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by networkBoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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 :-)

    --
    whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  47. terrified! by Stoertebeker · · Score: 2, Funny

    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!

  48. Re:You need 4000 Amp line by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  49. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by naoursla · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  50. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by naoursla · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  51. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by jmorris42 · · Score: 2, Informative

    > > 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.

    --
    Democrat delenda est
  52. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by Rei · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You refer to the Ford Nucleon. It was designed, but not built. Unlike this monstrosity, which was partially completed.

    --
    "Is Donald Trump a racist? I'll let you decide 'Yes' for yourself."
  53. Information From The Patent by loose+electron · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

    --
    www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
  54. Gas + engine = 15-20% efficiency by LanMan04 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    With the first link, the chain is forged.
  55. Nightmare of a tow-truck driver.... by einnar2000 · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  56. AA, AAA, C, D by DigitalRaptor · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
  57. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by rhaas · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  58. You worry too much by WindBourne · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  59. Hicktown - Mudding in Corn Fields? by neonprimetime · · Score: 2, Funny

    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?

  60. Great -- All you need now is... by bratwiz · · Score: 2, Funny


    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!

  61. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by trentblase · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just stick a lightning rod into your flux capacitor and drive by the local clock tower.

  62. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by mazarin5 · · Score: 4, Funny
    just my $0.02

    Pfft. That will barely get you to the store.

    --
    Fnord.
  63. Power vs. energy by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >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.

  64. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by x2A · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.'"

    --
    The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
  65. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by dhartshorn · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  66. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by Rich0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  67. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by windsurfer619 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  68. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by dhartshorn · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  69. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by timeOday · · Score: 2, Insightful
    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.
  70. Formula Hybrid by Dolohov · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  71. Great!! by djcondor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

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    Now with more sodium!!
  72. Re:Standard bumbper heights? by sdriver · · Score: 2

    After reading your posts in this thread I have found you to be a retard. :)

  73. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by JAFSlashdotter · · Score: 2, Interesting
    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?

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    We apologize for the preceding message. All those responsible have been sacked.
  74. Tell me another one. by edunbar93 · · Score: 2, Funny

    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?

    --
    "No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
  75. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by N+Monkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  76. Re:Ultra-capacitors for a different type of hybrid by bluephone · · Score: 2, Funny

    "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.

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    jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]