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MIT Electric Car May Outperform Rival Gas Models
alphadogg writes "Inside a plain-looking garage on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's campus, undergraduate Radu Gogoana and his team of fellow students are working on a project that could rival what major automobile manufacturers are doing. The team's goal is to build an all-electric car with similar performance capabilities of gasoline-only counterparts, which includes a top speed of about 161 kph, a family sedan capacity, a range of about 320 kilometers and the ability to recharge in about 10 minutes. They hope to complete the project, which they chronicle on their blog, by the third quarter of 2010. Each member of MIT's Electric Vehicle Team works almost 100 hours a week on the project they call elEVen. 'Right now the thing that differentiates us is that we're exploring rapid recharge,' Gogoana said during an interview. He said that many of today's electric vehicles take between two to 12 hours to recharge and he doesn't know of any commercially available, rapidly recharging vehicles."
Go M.I.T.
I don't see a single stat there that 'outperforms' a 1994 Honda Civic - in fact it falls short on every aspect. Don't get me wrong, those specs would make the car great on paper, and I am totally behind electric powered cars, I just hate it when headlines lie.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Will they have the same problems as the Ipods? Exploding?
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
How much will it cost?
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This doesn't sound feasible. Back of the envelope:
Lets say 20hp average power required.
That's 15kilowatts.
At 100kph (62mph), 3.2 hours for 320kilometers.
48 kilowatt hours.
Lets say it's a 96 volts dc system. That's 500 amp/hours.
500 amp/hours charged in 10 minutes is 3000 amps, assuming 100% efficiency.
And these are the conservative numbers!
Even if all the other tech were there, how are they going to move 3000 amps into a car?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I'm sure the smart folks have already considered this option for "fast charging", but why not have a big capacitor that stays plugged into your wall at home and builds charge slowly, but when you connect it to your car, it can very rapidly transfer the charge to your own capacitor. You'd basically be off-loading the slow-charge step to a place that doesn't move around anyway.
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all-electric car with similar performance capabilities of gasoline-only counterparts
Look, it's just not possible. The energy density for batteries is simply so far away from what you get with an internal combustion engine, that it's not funny.
Look, I'm not saying that electric cars aren't useful, more efficient, more enviro-friendly, whatever.
But you aren't going to get performance similar to a gas vehicle until there are revolutionary breakthroughs in battery technology.
To me, outperform means that it will need to:
1) Hit fewer pedestrians and cyclists
2) Be drivable while drunk
3) Not result in massive traffic jams
4) Not require huge ugly parking lots and parking garages.
5) Be cheap enough so that normal people, instead of rich douchebags, can afford it
6) Require fewer tax subsidies.
7) Allow the user to get some exercise instead of getting progressively fatter.
Gentoo Sucks
To be superior to a gasoline car, it should have more than half the range of a gasoline powered car, I should think. Most gasoline cars are sized to have about 400 miles range, which works out nicely given our average highway speed of 60--70 mph and our typical need to eat interval of five or six hours, with a 12% reserve for miscalculations.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Interesting stuff. I wasn't aware Nanophosphate batteries were already in production. I wonder what the capacities are though. Zinc foil and carbon doesn't seem like it'd hold that much charge.
Don't get me wrong, this is all cool stuff. One day relatively soon, I bet these things will be the norm.
But we need to stop with the hyperbolic comparisons to current cars. Apples and oranges. Any comparisons should be made to other types of experimental work along these lines.
And 'gas' stations will remain practical.
(3) Combine/Use (1) and (2) A home power storage device that draws power 24/7 til full and then delivers that power to the car in a spatter of minutes?
What I want to know is...how can they create a battery strong enough to power a car for that distance/speed that be charged in 10 minutes but the battery in my cell phone and Blackberry still take no less than 45m.
You do if you want to do science, or be part of the global economy, or just not be an ignorant american. (I happen to me an american and in the science field)
Isn't a slow charge better for the battery? We might be able to use 3 for an extra charge during the day, but it would probably be a good idea to keep the trickle charge option.
make an electric car that performs like a gas powered car. It only costs 20 times what gas powered car would've cost by parts alone. According TFA, the battery array alone cost 80k, but those are commercial battery packs, not research battery packs. The difference being, it'd be very very difficult to drive the price point down to under 100k. And make such cars marketable.
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
A lot of articles recently about electric autos. Not a lot of (no) discussion about the electrical generation and delivery infrastructure.
(paragraph)I do not know about Europe, Asia, Africa or South America; but North America doesn't have the electrical generating capacity, nor the 440V lines into the home, necessary to support lighting your room and running your PC, much less any to spare for transportation. Don't believe me? In 1969 the standard delivery into a home was 250V/125V. Today it is 215V/108V. See the difference?
(paragraph)Just another Pig in a Poke people. Move along nothing to see here. (aside) Why does LF/CR not work?
You do if you want to do science, or be part of the global economy, or just not be an ignorant american.
While using metric units may make it a bit easier to communicate with the non-USA parts of the world, not using them certainly doesn't stop anyone from doing science (lots of science was done prior to the invention of the metric system), or from being part of the global economy (I think the USA is a pretty big player), or from learning...
Putting the "anal" back into "analyst"...
100 hours a week? That is a great way to do faulty engineering.
If I knew my car was designed by engineers who worked that much I'd get rid of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
yep. because its SO HARD to make batteries which can be swapped like propane tanks at gas stations instead of spending millions of dollars on a fast charger, power plant and fast charging, long lived, non explosive battery chemistry.
I mean if I can get more torque... this could be fun!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Each team member works almost 100 hours per week without pay? Suddenly my work schedule doesn't seem so bad. I'm guessing that most of them are taking a full load of classes as well. This sort of dedication must be the reason MIT has such a good reputation.
It depends on your market... I work in the oil industry and we do business in barrels. Last time I checked that wasn't an SI unit. Also, the MIT team is likely using metric because they are in science. Had they been in engineering, they'd have used english units. (Disclaimer: I didn't RTFA, so they may have been engineering students after all, in which case MIT is vastly different than my engineering education)
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
If you plan on selling them anywhere BUT the USA you certainly DO need metric units. BTW, how many two liter Coke and Pepsi bottles do you have in your fridge? Rather than sixteen ounce sodas all I see are one liter ones. The only soda that comes in imperial units are twelve ounce cans.
The metric system is slowly gaining traction here. IMO that's a good thing; it cost US manufacturers lots of money to use imperial units when trying to sell elsewhere.
Free Martian Whores!
161 kph = 100 mph, 320 k = 199 miles (~200). Note that it's quite obvious that the original was based on common units, and then converted to metric.
And no, of course that's not remotely competitive performance-wise with almost any car on the road, much less does it out-perform anything. The crappiest Kia would eat that alive. Even my fully-loaded minivan would be able to do *both at once* quite easily. In fact it would go about 400 miles at 100 mph (since I routinely get about 450 miles at about 85 mph, with it loaded to the limit).
Brett
What is the cost to fully recharge an electric car? I could give a crap about 'green' if it's going to cost me more to drive than good old gas. I'd rather pay for gas than have my electric bill go through the roof.
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
In order to rapidly recharge those batteries, they'll need 350 kilowatts. "That's enough power to blow the fuses on 20 residential homes at once ... so we'll be hooking up directly to MIT's power plant to get that kind of power," Gogoana said.
The primary reasons they can get it recharged quickly is using a new battery material (lithium iron-phosphate) and access to MIT's power plant. I know nothing about current grid limits, but I'd imagine we would need infrastructure changes just for a recharging station that supports 10+ vehicles every few miles. Otherwise this is your typical charge overnight on a 220V outlet electric car.
But does it come in hotrod red?
I'm looking for something that will go with my exoskeleton...
Primarily on the fact that while a 1994 Honda Civic exists, the MIT Electric car that the page describes doesn't even exist yet. Not even in the "We're heading to the track to start testing" phase. Hell, not even to the "Lets turn the key and make sure the lights work" phase.
They just finished tearing apart the donor car a week ago. So far all they have is an over weight drive train, a single power cell package prototype, and a whole lot of pipe dreams.
This story is something that belongs in The Onion...
"Local Farm Boy Dreams Up Revolutionary New Automobile"
While no details on how he is going to overcome any of the significant obstacles in his way, we are excited that he has in fact been dreaming and has some ideas. Local organizations have donated some amount of parts for him to start working with, and his father has loaned him a welder.
That's about what we have here.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
A) what infrastructure will be involved in charging a fleet of electric cars?
B) The staggering cost associated with the batteries?
C)The energy needed to produce said batteries. Where does that come from?
D) Supporters say that it lessens the cost to drive, but just as surely as electric cars come to market the energy or distance travelled in them will be taxed.
E) Carrying around combustible fuel may not be smart, but what about the jaws of life on a high voltage vehicle? Sounds nasty and dangerous, or even worse a two car accident involving an electric car and a gas burner. Sounds like a bonfire to me.
Maybe a better route to travel is utilizing hybrids that burn fuels like bio-butanol + cellulosic ethanol blends, or even diesels, or other synthetic or algal biofuels. I hope their research comes to fruition, however the green washing of everything is getting old. On one hand they want us to turn the thermostat up in the summer, down in the winter. Turn appliances off, and not build any nuclear plants, while on the other hand the tell us that electric cars are the answer yet to charge a fleet say of 100 million electric cars would be an immense load on the system.
Don't get me wrong, maybe one day the math will work out, and it is a good thing researchers all over the place are bringing a host of alternatives to near-term market place. I just hope we never put all of our eggs in one basket again.
Have you ever swapped a propane tank at a gas station? The replacement tank is usually dirty, beat up, and not actually filled to capacity. I gave up doing that a long time ago and just pay a little extra to take my tank in to be refilled. I would never consider just swapping out something as expensive as the batteries in an electric car at a gas station.
Not using metric won't stop you from doing science, but to publish the editor will make you put any numerical result in proper metric units. A modern biochemistry paper that instead of using the standard mg/mL reported protein quantities in grains per dram would be heavily covered in WTF sauce, and might be rejected outright.
It's ironic, but my brother, who doesn't have a license, brought up an excellent point about cars: If you're anywhere a car with a 320km/day range would be useful, you probably don't need a car.
If you live in a larger city, mass transit, taxi service, and walking can help you to get pretty much anywhere you want to be, and for a lot less than the tens of thousands of dollars these crippled vehicles cost. It's not until you leave the cities and need to travel for a number of hours that a cars utility becomes inescapably more convenient, and at that point electric vehicles aren't practical.
Unfortunately, it's not likely we'll see charging stations, because they're not economical to run. Gasoline is something companies can charge for from the ground up and make a fortune. By contrast, people won't allow themselves to pay very much for electrical service.
That's ignoring too that a reasonably fuel-efficient vehicle travelling the speed limit on the highway can travel about 700km on a tank of gas, so you'd have to stop twice as often as well as spending 8-12 hours at each stop.
It's been a long time.
I live in the Midwest. 200 miles won't get me from Chicago to Detroit without re-charging. My 2002 Ford Focus has a cruising range of, conservatively, 320-350 miles, based on a 13 gallon tank and 27-30 mpg highway. That's not even close to parity. My other concern, and it involves all electric vehicles, is this: even at 10 minutes for a full charge, that's longer than it takes to refill my gas tank. This means a correspondingly low throughput at gas stations or the new equivalent. Has anyone addressed this looming logistical problem?
No statement is true, not even this one.
Why not just provide a rapid swap? You pull up to the station. A big hulky man with a hoist opens your battery hatch, removes your battery, and delivers one that is fully charged. Then they charge the old battery overnight. . There, I've beaten your charging record. Where's my sandwich?
I don't believe the 10 min charge. TFA says it uses 8000 A123 cells. You charge an A123 at (lets round off to) 3V and lets assume a 2AH rating. Unless the laws of thermodynamics have been violated, it takes at least 2AH in for 2AH out, so lets assume a perfect battery and say we're somehow able to charge these suckers at 6 X 2A. So, 8000 X 3 X 12 = 288KVA, which is fairly preposterous amount of power. I could be off by a factor or 2 or 3 on my assumption for the AH capacity of the A123 though.
If we downsize the charging current to 1/10C or 0.2A. OK, 8000*3*0.2 is 4800 VA. Basically a jumbo dryer outlet, which is easy in a new house.
I think the 10 min charging claim means, "enough charge to make it down the street to the next electrical outlet."
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I see what you're saying and don't disagree, but I think there's a better solution that's already being tested: swapping out batteries (the article is old, but it outlines the idea better than other links I found). Why charge your car when you can keep one battery at home on the charge and swap it out with the one in your car? As long as the battery is easily accessible and replaceable, it would should be faster than 10 minutes. I don't see any advantage to fast charging besides not having to get your hands dirty, which may be taken care of by the robots anyway.
working on a project that could rival what major automobile manufacturers are doing.
Writing a wishlist / daydream of specifications, for a car built by hand using the most expensive labor available, that cost more to make than it could possibly sell for?
All the need is a bankrupty and they'll be right up there with GM!
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
My brother and cousin both are engineers working at refineries. Both say the standard way engineers at their two companies solve problems is first, convert everything to metric, do the calculation, then convert back to imperial units. Even with the added two steps, they're faster and less likely to make a mistake.
Not to mention that batteries powerful enough to move a car are probably a tad bit heavier than propane tanks.
Great to see the little uni guys giving the big buck oil barons and car manufacturers a run for their money! Ooh I love the underdog coming good.
100% Mortgage
You probably wouldn't own the batteries; you'd just be sort of leasing them. This would also have the effect of substantially reducing the up-front cost of electric cars and relieving end-users of the need to worry about battery life cycle issues.
As far as the weight goes, there are companies working on fully automated battery changing robots.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
The problem isn't going to be in building electric charging stations - but in the distribution grid required to deliver the power levels needed for rapid recharge.
Are they inventing new technology GM & Tesla don't have or are they using a capacitor instead of a battery? If the latter, why aren't GM & Tesla doing that?
Does nobody else find the mixture of undergraduates, sleep deprivation and huge amounts of electricity troublesome. Time to move well off-campus.
Nullius in verba
I have some 360 ML Coca-cola at home, in glass bottles. Is made with cane sugar and not HFCS. Yum!
I drank what? -- Socrates
Personally, I don't mind the idea of not having an extra $5,000 battery with high voltage levels that I'm expected to swap.
Except for that pesky transition period, when they have hundreds of Kwh's of power flowing, in the same general area as extremely flamable vapors, that can be ignited by a spark.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
The problem isn't as insurmountable as you'd think....
I recently had the privilege of visiting JET (the world's biggest experimental fusion reactor), and that thing sucks **HUGE** amounts of power. When you get there, you can see the massive high-tension power lines leading into the place.
Because the required power draw is so insane, they have two huge flywheel batteries which they charge gradually, and they discharge the flywheels as needed. Still, the place is located near a power station, and they're not allowed to draw power during peak periods.
Maybe all they'd need to do in your local gas station (besides getting a huge power supply), is replace the underground tanks with flywheel storage systems. Trickle charge the flywheels continually thoughout the day to even out the load on the power grid.
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the ability to recharge in about 10 minutes
Woot! I can't wait until electric Formula 1! This will make pit stops so much less stressful!
You just got troll'd!
I've always envisioned the battery swap to be done by some kind of robotic system. Since the consumers don't handle the batteries, they don't left out in the backyard in the elements or kicked around.
I also imagined the batteries to have onboard instrumentation. This would tell a number of things: the amount of energy the battery is capable of delivering in its current condition; whether the battery had been in a collision; whether it is time to recycle. If a consumer gets a battery that underperforms then a computer network would issue a credit on behalf of the station that swapped it in for any energy he paid for but did not receive.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
For current battery tech it is. In the future it may be a negligible difference.
However, rapid charge will be necessary for long consumer trips.
Alternatively, cars/trucks owned by massive corporations will have the option of implementing a battery swap infrastructure. This is also an alternative for consumers, but brings up problems (you would need to be leasing the batteries).
MPG(miles per gallon) or MPC(miles per charge) is not the issue. EPA tests car in city and on highway. MPC of EVs will have to equal or out perform that of the model counter part in MPG. Remember, even EVs use fuel when not in motion just like gas autos. For EVs to work, they will have to be rechargable in the same or near same time has it takes to fill a 13-17 gallon gas tank.
EV cars will not work if they require overnight charging or charging at work or some other nonsense. And by work I mean function as a full replacement of the gas equilivent.
Just looking at the range, still not practical. 320k? That's not even 200 miles. My oldest 4 door sedan does twice that, with an 8cyl motor at 70-80 mph at or over 20 highway mpg (Crown Vic) with A/C going on hills. Loaded with kids and luggage.
I paid 4 thousand for it over 10 years ago, it has probably 200,000 miles on it.
Impress me with your similar performance and price point, oh wunderkinds from MIT.
Didn't think so.
Look, experiments are great to shape technology, but please, call it what it is. Decent theoretical research that has some potential practical engineering applications as other systems are developed. Now get off my lawn.
Considering the combustion engine is over 100 years old and highly refined by market demand over that time, it's not surprising. What is surprising is that they are making leaps like this with an electric car in what is arguably a technology that is still in it's infancy (not the electric motor itself, but rather the underlying technology for charging, and efficiency in a compact size).
The summary indicated it could rival what other manufacturers are doing in the field, not rival a combustion vehicle. Poor wording in the summary perhaps but it appears to me they were referring to what other auto makers were doing with electric cars with the end goal to produce something with 'similar performance capabilities' of a combustion variant. The summary is accurate as far as that goes.
The Model-T Ford got about 200 mile range from a tank of gas and about 20-25 mpg @ 35 miles per hour. It appears the majority of the refinement on combustion engines has been in power, and speed where an electric automobile has to do the opposite and concentrate more on range.
Sounds great OPECS and big oils very worst nightmare. No need to pay thousands of dollars for gas. But what I don't understand is that the average car weighs somewhere around 4,000 pounds. When the vehicles moving how come that energy cannot be used to generate the power to recharge the battery itself? Maybe the battery companies are funding MIT's project and need some way of generating some dinero of this thing? Somebody has to get some money somehow.
Yes, it's a party trick, but it's a demonstration of the sort of thing that might be possible if you decided to invest in serious charging station infrastructure. (Such a charging station would need major energy storage of some kind, just like your neighborhood gas station has big underground gasoline storage tanks.)
From an engineering economy POV, it's almost certainly better to swap batteries at a battery-swap station than it is to build infrastructure to support 10-minute charge times. But the latter is a lot more fun to play with.
Ridiculous recharging specs!
365 volts at 1000 amps is about ten times the available power at the average house. In order to carry this off you'd need a major upgrade of the wires going to each house, plus some interlocks so only 10% of the houses can be charging at any time.
The charging rate of 365 kilowatts, assuming a battery of 90% charging efficiency, means the battery needs 36.5 kilowatts of cooling while charging. That's one HUGE fan, or a complex liquid cooling loop.
We don't know the temperature coefficient of the cells they are considering. If their temperature coefficient goes the wrong way, you can't charge the cells in their series configuration. Just one weak cell in a string and it would tend to run away thermally and wreck at least its string, or worse.
It's sad to see students at a major university being so clueless about basic energy equations.
Ok, one thing that always bothers me about these electric cars is the seeming ignorance surrounding the simple notion of how to provide climate comfort within the cabin. How far will the electric car go in the winter time in Minnesota with the now electric heater running...or the air conditioner during the hot summer? Are these calculations taken into account when providing "MPG" ratings? Heat is somewhat trivial for internal combustion engines but obviously not for electric...
The power grid experienced widespread outages today after 6pm when many people got home from work and plugged in their cars. Electricity costs continue to rise and coal plant operators say they expect to expand capacity to meet power needs.
It's not just theory.... here is an article about just such a robotic system, including a video demonstrating it operating.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
After recharging, the battery glows white from the heat, and therefore you need Tokamak-style magnetic heat shields on the inside.
On the plus side, you don't need to turn on your headlights anymore.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Why not have swappable batteries and have stations change them out for a fee, like they do with propane tanks?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Get a horse!
You probably wouldn't own the batteries; you'd just be sort of leasing them.
Wouldn't that mean that in the event of an accident where the batteries are damaged/destroyed I would not only have to pay to fix my car (or get a new one if the old one is not worth it) but would also have to pay somebody for the batteries possibly including some penalty for destroying them.
That is going to increase the cost of insurance "a bit".
"Highly recommend the physics for future presidents lectures. He works it out quite clearly. Gasoline, harmful as it is, is about 6 cents per kilowatt. An electric car is about $6 per kilowatt."
Now I appreciate the reference to some good educational materials, and the intent of the OP to try to make an informative comparison. I just wish that s/he didn't fail so epically at interpreting / presenting remotely sensible information derived from the lectures that they're referencing.
"gasoline is harmful and costs X / kW"
"an electric car costs Y / kW".
Ok, so #1 problem -- you're comparing the cost of *gasoline itself*, not *a gasoline powered car* with the cost of an *electric car*. Huh? Maybe comparing the cost of one kind of CAR with another kind of CAR would make sense. Maybe comparing the cost of a QUANTITY of gasoline with an equivalent QUANTITY of electric ENERGY (in which comparison, by the way, electricity to recharge an EV is FAR cheaper than the equivalent amount of gasoline according to most current pricing/valuations) would also make sense. As it stands, however, your comparison is worse than apples versus bowling balls, and just makes no sense.
Problem #2 -- a WATT is a UNIT OF POWER. A KILO-Watt is 1000 Watts. Power = Energy/time. Neither gasoline nor an EV battery contains "power". Power has no particular cost, since it is just the rate of something happening, not the actual amount of something you're consuming. A JOULE is the SI unit of ENERGY, and it is equal to a Watt * Second, or the energy of 1 watt power for 1 second. A kilowatt hour = 1000 watts * 1 hour = 1000 watts * 3600 seconds = 3.6 megajoules.
You pay for ENERGY, it is a quantity of something that you consume. A given battery or a given EV with its batteries contains a given amount of ENERGY when it is charged. ENERGY is what you're paying for to your electric utility, and is what the dials on your electricity meter are counting / metering. Domestic electric energy rates might be $0.10/kWh, or some multiple of that depending on where you are. Gasoline has an energy content too in kilojoules, and so does food in Joules or kilocalories, since those are units of energy. The energy released by gasoline or by food is calculated by the quantity of heat released by burning a quantity of the fuel/food with air. Comparing the energy cost of gasoline vs the energy cost of electricity to charge an EV is a problematic issue, since no gasoline burning engine / car extracts more than a fraction of the potential chemical energy of a gallon of gasoline and converts it to useful engine delivered mechanical energy. So you're inflating the cost effectiveness of gas powered vehicles by a large margin to look at the cost / theoretical energy (unachievable) of gasoline vs. the cost / actually usable electrical energy for an EV. It would literally be equivalently useful to compare the miles/cupcake cost of moving a person. The cost and efficiency would depend a lot (mostly) on the vehicle (person) efficiency and whether they're walking, running, jogging, bicycling, whatever. A M-1 tank gets less MPG than a volkswagon, and a Humvee H2 something else again. The cost/mileage value of "1 gallon of gas" is a pretty useless comparison if you do not consider the vehicle efficiency, cost, operating environment, et. al.
Also the production, acquisition, transportation, storage, combustion of gasoline has significant ecological / environmental / geopolitical / economic / health / sustainability costs which are not fully accounted for in its market cost. Now you could meaningfully compare the cost of a given EV car with a given gasoline car with a similar driving range, cargo capacity, et. al. and you'd generally find that the EV itself is more expensive in sticker price for a given size vehicle and has a smaller driving range before refueling. On the one hand, internal combustion engines are complex, costly, heavy, and break down frequently after several years of use. On the other hand, large battery packs are
They do the battery swap without robots in Nepal.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/nepal-literally-cleans-the-air-with-green-vehicles/66036-2-6.html
http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/66036/nepal-literally-cleans-the-air-with-green-vehicles.html
But their electric vehicles look rather different too ;).
It's a normal car converted to electric. Including a single electric motor and other associated crap (differential, gears, chain drive).
You need 2 or 4 motors connected straight to each wheel.
While an electric vehicle doesn't have to idle, in many places you want to keep air-conditioning or heating on.
:).
I believe the early electric/hybrid vehicles had crappy air-conditioning or they ran out of juice really quickly when you had it on
The MIT team said range of 320km. Is that with airconditioning on or off?
Apparently the Prius needs 2-5 kilowatts to power its airconditioning. 3 hours of air conditioning at full blast (hot day) = 15kWh ( 3 hours at 100kph = 300km),
The MIT team's proposed car battery stores about 60kWh. So that 15kWh is going to affect their range a lot more, compared to a vehicle with a 400-600kWh tank.
If you can exchange batteries simply and fast, you don't need rapid recharge.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
The main issue with this is then you're locked into a particular type of battery. It has to be a standard size, shape, weight, in order to fit into all cars. This might stop you from making changes to the battery which may increase the performance.
Electricity is pretty much standard across the board, if you can get manufacturers to agree on AC/DC, the voltage and the plug design. Of course, you still have the issue with greedy manufacturers who don't like standardising, but you're not "locked in" as much as you would be with standard batteries.
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
and this would actually have the effect of decreasing the load on the power grid, resulting in the burning of less fuel (at least until the demand caught up with them)
the issue with this solution, however, is that if the demand increases too much you can find yourself at a charging station unable to fill up, it's much easier to keep a petrol tank filled.
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
I'll eat my hair product if they pull it off. I'll also take the optional "flying electric car" package and 2 personal rocket packs, thanks.
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
At refineries, working on reactions, yes... Chemistry tends to be a mostly SI field. I agree that metric units aid in reaction calcs, but I work on the products after they leave the refineries, and all pipe sizes, pressures, pump capacities, storage volumes, etc are all english units, and probably are in many places in the world.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Have a look at the Tesla roadster and sedan.
There are several unaddressed issues. Can the thing be manufactured in quantity and for less than the cost of a traditional gas-powered car? What's the plan for the power distribution network and who is going to control it? Right now, there's nothing stopping you from buying gas from anyone you want and nothing stopping you from having your own tank. In other words, this is all well and good for urban uses but country folk will have a lot of trouble with this. And then there's the issue of what if one's transportation needs go beyond needing to carry one's heavy ass around the block to get coffee? Some of us haul heavy loads and drive off-road. Of course, one could argue that there's a deeper conspiracy element to electric cars and the lack of distribution and that is the desire of some environmentalists to contain the human population to the cities. And then there's the entire trucking industry. Electric vehicles have yet to deal with heavy transport.
Electric cars of the future will not carry and do not need the energy equivalent of 10 gallons of gasoline. The tesla roadster has a range of 240 miles which is provided by a 53kwh battery pack. The car that MIT is building has a range of 200 miles so their battery pack is probably 45-48kwh. Since one gallon of gas is 35kwh and because efficient battery management systems rarely fully deplete the battery that means that an electric car with this type of range only needs the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gas for a fast recharge. So you are off by a factor of 10 in your calculations.
The current tesla roadster can be fully charged in 3.5 hours using a 220V/70A, their next car, the model S will support 440V charging in order to significantly improve charging times - but we are sill talking hours for a full charge. Despite the long charging times this level of performance will probably be good enough for most people most of the time given the average daily commute of 20-40 miles.
You are correct that what MIT is trying to do will be a huge energy draw that cannot be supported by current residential electric services. They are connecting directly to their campus power plant which will never be possible for your average consumer.
We have the best government that money can buy.
I have a design that meets every one of these specifications on paper. It is a zeppelin though, not a car.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I've yet to meet a rental car that can't make LA to Modesto (a route I've been inclined to take regulary), nonstop-- which is about 540KM. Back to the drawing board guys, your still a good 200KM short of the mark.
Most all these arguments are as moot as the MIT project. Tesla Motors already has commercial production vehicles on the road that exceed the performance and fuel specifications of most gasoline and many other electric vehicles.
Tesla is also working on quick charge solutions like capacitor based charging stations and even in car storage.
I don't fault these guys for their little project and PERHAPS something useful will come of it. But, the real world work has already been done, it's just a matter of ramping up production to the point that it becomes affordable. We have not yet seen the economies of scale tip in the average consumers favor.
Tesla Motors
Do they realize how burdening a 10 min charge time would be to the power grid?
From an engineering economy POV, it's almost certainly better to swap batteries at a battery-swap station than it is to build infrastructure to support 10-minute charge times. But the latter is a lot more fun to play with.
As someone who takes care of and maintains their vehicle, I would NOT be interested in any "battery-swap" solution that did not give me new batteries for my old ones.
Think about it, if you keep your car stored in a garage, out of the sun, less heat, definitely better for the batteries. As contrasted by the person living in the desert, no garage, all that dust, vehicle always in the sun, interior temperatures reaching 100 - 140 degrees, depending on location in the summer. No, I do not want their battery.
And if the battery pack lasts 10 years, that is the minimum amount of time I keep cars these days, 10 years, 5 years of payments if new, no payments if bought used (better IMO) and 5 years no payments.
I would hate for "everyman" to be working with 14kv electrical lines. Particularly up here in the north where they spread salt on the roads in the winter, which then gets all over the car. 14kv + salty water all over the car and ground = lots of accidents waiting to happen. Plus how do you make sure that the sizable layer of insulation on these 14kv lines stays in good shape? one crack in the insulation and you have a dead person laying on the ground at your filling station.