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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."
I emailed the on-duty editor (regarding this being a dupe), like any good little /. subscriber. Unfortunately my e-mail bounced pretty much immediately. Normally I would resist the temptation to join in the /. circle-jerk that is shouting "OMG DUPE DUPE DUPE!!" but I wanted someone (ScuttleMonkey, etc) to note that the 'daddypants' email link is bouncing. ..ScuttleMonkey, if you want the full error, feel free to let me know where to e-mail it.
( ERROR: Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... Line 126 )
On a sidenote, what seems odd to me is that not only is this a dupe that is currently visible on the index of slashdot, but that the article summary is almost identical to the earlier submission, and is even from the same submitter. Insert Matrix deja-vu quote here.
Mods, try to be on the lookout for copy and paste karma whores (man, plagiarism annoys me). Unfortunately with 700+ comments on the last discussion, this may not be easy, haha.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
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.
well... I thought it was an interesting article when I posted it the first (and only) time yesterday... However, I had nothing to do with the encore!!!... This is only the 2nd story I've ever submitted, and the only one to ever get accepted... (albeit twice)..
220V * 30amp = 6,600 watts * 5 minutes = 0.55 kilowatt hours. You're only a few orders of magnitude off from "$9 worth of electricity", specifically 52 kWhs for EEStor's product. To charge 52 kWhs in 5 minutes, you'd need to be chugging through ~600 kW of power, or about 2.7 kiloamps at 220V.
Bye, bye wall plug.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I meant to write this the first time the article appeared :-) I had originally thought that it wasn't going to work out; but getting to the end, it turned out they did. Oh well - now I've done it, you might be interested... for your viewing pleasure...
Supposition: 500 miles on a 5 minute charge, with $9 worth of electricity.
$9 worth of electricity = 100kWh
100kWh = 360 megajoules
500 miles = 804 kilometres
Force = Energy / distance
= 360e6 / 804e3
= 447 Newtons
(of course the above is only the average force available for that journey)
F_drag = 1/2 * Drag_Coefficient * Cross_Section * AirDensity * Velocity^2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_coefficient gives Drag as around 0.3 for an average car. Cross-section is probably about 3 square metres.
F_drag = 0.5 * 0.3 * 3 * 1.29 * v^2
= 0.581 v^2
55 mph = 24 m/s
F_drag_55 = 334 Newtons
Which is well within the average 447 available; and gives scope for losses. So; it turns out it's not crazy to suggest you can get 500 miles on $9 worth of electricity.
I wonder how far my house would travel a month...
Carpe Daemon
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/01
A breif run down:
-S
It is said that a child learns wisdom from the parent,
but the truly wise parent learns joy from the child
Here's some hard data: these things are low voltage devices. E.g., Maxwell's data says 2.7V for theirs. They also have crap power density: 3-5 Wh/kg. (Yes, I didn't miss a "k" there.) They may have high capacity, but Q = C*V, so low voltage still puts a limit on it.
So if you want to store about 90 kWh in a bank of those, you'd need anywhwere between 18,000 and 30,000 kg worth of ultra-capacitors. Yes, between 18 and 30 metric _tons_. Not quite a commuter car, you know? I'll also go on a limb and say that buying whole tons of them will cost a pretty penny.
Also, transferring 90 kWh in 5 minutes means 1080kW power. More that 1 MW. So, yeah, I don't think your average power socket can do that. At 2.7V that means 400,000 A, too.
So, basically, it's just snake oil. It ranks up there with the promises to make energy out of water by changing the orbits of electrons in hydrogen. Some fraudster figured that he can get tens of millions of dollars VC to pretend to make such a thing. And given the IQ of some VC these days, they probably will too.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...now that you've explained how many gallons of electricity it is, could also please give us the equivalent Libraries of Congress of electricity? It seems useful somehow. ;-)
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
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.