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Charge in 5 minutes, Drive 500 miles?
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 Ultra-Capacitor storage products. The claim being that you charge the ultra-capacitor in 5 minutes, with approximately 9$ (~$.45 a gallon) of electricity and then drive 500 miles."
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
End of Line.
Of course, they could use larger versions of the capacitors at the fueling station to store a "charge" of 52 kWhs. 52kWhs * 3.6 MJoules = 187.2 MJ. The vehicle gets pulled into a stall, the driver gets out, large copper or gold rods drop from the ceiling into sockets which are directly connected to the capacitor. You have a bank of capacitors which switch on in succession, ramping up current (this minimizes switching problems, since 2700A is not fun to switch) with some type of diode in the middle to prevent back flow. In 5 minutes, the car is charged. Meanwhile the capacitors are recharging from mains current. Green light comes on, next car comes in. To make it work, you'd need something a little beefier than a 220 home circuit, possibly a 12.5kV line which is pretty common in commercial areas. You could probably do at least one car at a time, more if you could increase the charging capacitor capacity (which would be fully charged overnight or during off-peak times).
As far as costs, of course the cost of electricity is going to go up for everyone. However, with transmission lines, you build them (once) and then the power keeps coming. So after the initial investment, you are going to save money over gas. Gas has to be brought in by truck, which costs money in labor and fuel and truck insurance, etc. Then you have pump maintenance, etc which is no longer necessary. On the other end you have a regional distributor who takes a cut, a refiner who takes a cut, a global distributer who takes a cut of the crude oil, and then a producer who takes a cut. Not to mention the people doing the transporting between each of these middle-men.
With electric, you are going to cut out a lot of middle men. The utility, if fossil powered, will buy in large bulk quanities that will be delivered to one location, probably by ship. So, just by moving energy by transmission line we are cutting back on the total energy use required by the country. It's all a big chain reaction.
I hope they can make this thing work.
Cool! Amazing Toys.