Progress On Electric Cars

Mike sends along a couple of items of interest to those anxiously awaiting the era of production electric vehicles. First, there's the upcoming Aero EV, which Shelby Supercars claims will charge in just 10 minutes and will be able to produce over 1,000 horsepower, powering the vehicle from 0-60 mph in less than 2.5 seconds. Then there's the announcement by Aptera of the first pre-production model of the Aptera 2e, which will have a top speed of 90 mph and go around 100 miles on a charge. This EV also features a strong and aerodynamic body, a lithium-based battery, front-wheel drive, and an improved door design. Release is planned by October of 2009.

Comments

I meant too much water vapor.

[gcnaddict]

Well duh, water vapor should always be in the air, but if suddenly a whole bunch of cars start creating immense amounts of water vapor from hydrogen gas + oxygen... well, that's much more water that's being converted from liquid to gas than by weather alone (or even by cars today).

It's a fact overlooked by many.

Cold climates

[Midnight Thunder]

The big problem with electric cars is energy storage. Lithium batteries are too expensive, take too long to charge, don't have a high enough energy density, and don't last long enough. If the current work on ultracapacitors pans out (and that's a BIG if) electric cars will become a lot more practical for the mass market.

There are certainly issues with current electric cars, but only by having them in the market place in some form will there be any incentive to improve them. Lithium is expensive, but it will come done like anything else.

My concern will electric vehicles is how they will pan out in cold climates, like Scandinavia or Canada. From my experience batteries perform badly in the cold, with apparent charge dropping off until the battery is warmed up. For me this is where the real test of the technology will happen.

Required Reading on the Subject

[Enderandrew]

http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09/ff_agassi?currentPage=all

Re:In fact

[AKAImBatman]

You forgot the airborne, radioactive particles which may be inhaled and cause cancer. Not to mention The Great Smog which killed 12,000 people.

Re:In fact

[geobeck]

...IS much greater than nuclear power deaths (even when including all the uranium mining for weapons).

Hmm, that makes me wonder how total coal-related deaths compare to total nuclear-related deaths including deaths from the development, testing, and use of nuclear weapons. Nukes have only been used in anger twice, and there has probably been an elevated incidence of cancer among early development and testing personnel, but would King Coal still come out ahead?

Re:That's it?

[Rei]

Yep. Batteries don't advance as fast as computers, but they've advanced a heck of a lot faster than anything in the transportation industry. In the past 15 years, battery energy densities have tripled, and power densities even more than that. And they show no signs of slowing down; check out the list of recent li-ion tech breakthroughs that promise 2-4 fold increases in energy density. The odds of every last breakthrough on that list failing to make it to commercialization seems vanishingly small.

Re:That's it?

[WCguru42]

What, no love for the Big 3?

Nope. Let's face it, the Big 3 have spent the past 40 years advertising that bigger is better and not to worry about fuel consumption or consumer safety. They abandoned most of their electric research in the 1990's and now they're playing a terrible game a catch-up. I'm not saying I want the American auto industry to go under but I'm not going to support them until they start making some reliable cars. Currently, if you're looking for a reliable car you look to Japan or Germany, and then Korea, then maybe you move onto the US. It's a shame but no, there is no love for Detroit because they royally screwed up and in a market economy you don't get any free love.

Re:Batteries of any kind don't work well in the co

[evilviper]

Even lead acid batteries struggle in the cold.

No, they don't.

Your only experience with lead-acid batteries is trying to start your car in the morning... yet you consider yourself an expert, and feel qualified to make baseless assertions.

Lead-acid batteries are used in UPSes in open-air telcom buildings, even in the coldest areas.

The fact that cars have trouble starting in the cold is only half due to battery voltages falling in the cold weather... The thickening of oil, and shrinking of cylinders has just as much to do with it. And even then, if you had a battery twice as large, you'd never even notice. It's just that the cheapest (therefore, smallest) battery that will work is used in cars, so you don't have much of a margin to work with in adverse conditions.

An electric car won't have anything like the duty cycle of current car batteries. They will draw relatively small amounts of power when you start moving, and continue the draw as you continue to move. Since the draw is only 1/1000th of the battery capacity, no matter how low the temperature, they will allow the vehicle to operate.

And once the vehicle is in operation, the continual discharge of the batteries will generate a substantial amount of heat, internally. The sheer mass of the lead-acid batteries will keep the normally generated heat from easily escaping, provided they aren't mounted externally, directly in normal airflow.

Getting RID of the heat generated is the real problem with batteries, and that's a manageable issue as well.

Re:That's it?

[MtViewGuy]

I think the primary market will be plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) by 2015, NOT all electric vehicles.

I cite the following reasons:

1) Since the vast majority of commuting is relatively short range, the all-electric range of a PHEV of around 43 to 49 miles (70-80 km) is not such a big issue.

2) With a PHEV, you don't need a big battery pack like you do with an all-electric vehicle.

3) Since PHEVs are an extension of the now-mature hybrid vehicle technology developed by Toyota and Ford, it also means way lower development costs.

Given that today's gasoline engines have very low emissions anyway, a PHEV backed up by a small gasoline engine is what will be common by 2015.