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Nanotech Battery Claims to Solve Electric Car Woes
rbgrn writes "A123 Systems claims to have invented a Lithium Ion battery that not only can discharge at very high rates of current but can be recharged very quickly without damage to the cells or overheating. From their website: 'A unique feature of A123Systems' M1 cells is their ability to charge to high capacity in 5 minutes or less. That's a significant improvement over traditional Li Ion, which typically requires more than 90 minutes to reach a similar level of charge.' Using this technology, General Motors has announced a plug-in hybrid SUV and Venture Vehicles is developing a fully electric 3 wheel vehicle. Politics aside, the main technological hurdle to mass adoption of electric cars has been a fuel station replacement when driving distances beyond a single charge worth of range. Will we finally be seeing high current recharge stations in the next decade?"
All of the schemes for a high capacity, fast charging battery paired with fast charging stations suffer from the chicken and egg problem. The car buyers won't buy cars until there are lots of stations to stop at, and the service station owners won't convert revenue generating gas pumps to chargers until there are lots of cars that need them.
The solution is to build hybrids with fast charging batteries. Then car buyers can invest without fear of getting stranded. Once a large fleet is on the roads, service stations will start to convert.
BTW, this all asumes that TFA and similar techs are not vaporware.
This has been discussed many times in different circles. Even with coal power plants, the amount of pollution created by electric cars is less than gasoline cars. For one, pollution needs to be controlled in a few centralized sources, and with the proper equipment, which modern plants are required to have, coal power plants emit less pollution than the gasoline and diesel vehicles it could replace. Also, the efficiency of electric cars is higher than internal combustion powered cars, even taking into account the line losses. It is not unusual for batteries to reach 90% efficiency, and electric motors also are able to get into the high 80's and 90's in efficiency. Plus, there's much less drive train with electric, often requiring no transmission, or like the Tesla, a 2 gear transmission. Many power plants are at least 40% efficient, which is much better than what an ICE is capable of. And when power comes from sources like hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, solar or even natural gas, the pollution is significantly reduced or eliminated. Also, most people would be charging their cars at night, where there is often a vast surplus of electricity since power plants can't just shut down for the night, and hence it is a lot cheaper.
Batteries also have come a long way and are fairly efficient for storage. It's much better than, say, hydrogen powered cars.
The main drawback right now for electric cars is the cost, and even so they remain popular. I know a couple of people at Tesla Motors and they have already sold out their allotment of cars for the first two years, and these are going for $100K each. It sounds like they will be coming out with a 5 passenger vehicle at around $50K around 2009. With the rapid rate of battery evolution I expect they will become more and more affordable.
One final note, the cost per mile for an electric vehicle is much less than gasoline, even without the large deductions EV owners can typically make. Last I looked, it worked out to something around $1.50/mile even with the very high cost of electricity where I live (where I often pay over $0.20/kwh).
The solution I see for our energy needs is to not only continue to invest in solar and wind, but to also build nuclear breeder reactors and nuclear power generation. The breeder reactors will significantly increase the amount of nuclear fuel available and eliminate much of the nuclear waste which they want to bury in Nevada. And modern nuclear power plants are far safer than the ones of the past. Solar and wind alone will not solve our energy needs though they will help. Hydroelectric is mostly tapped out, though there's still a lot of room for geothermal.
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These A123 cells are already in production and use. They are standard in the DeWalt 36V industrial battery pack. Most of the model airplane guys find it cheaper to ebay these and pull 'em apart for the cells than to buy them individually from A123.
They do perform extremely well, with about 2/3 the energy density of Li-Po, but with the dis/charge abilities of a good Ni-Cd. They are also supposed to have a very good service life, over 1000 complete charge cycles. At about 1/2 the price of Li-Po's I'm looking at picking some up for an upcoming EV project.
http://www.a123systems.com/html/home.html
http://www.a123racing.com/
My EV project:
http://www.easyracers.com/pod/
Gabe
Another feature is that it is a passively safe design; meltdowns simply aren't possible. Anyways, the interviews in the external links of that wikipedia article are very interesting and informative.