New Material Transforms Car Bodies Into Batteries

MikeChino writes "As battery manufacturers race to produce more efficient lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, some scientists are looking to make the cars themselves a power source. Researchers are currently developing a new auto body material that can store and release electrical energy like a battery. Once perfected, scientists hope the substance will replace standard car bodies, making vehicles up to 15 percent lighter and significantly extending the range of electric vehicles."

Comments

Good

[2names]

I really hope we get this electric car thing figured out soon because I am just about sick of following smoke belching vehicles every day.

Re:Good

[maxume]

You just need to learn how to be a leader.

Re:Good

[Jeng]

Even once they do perfect the electric car I would imagine there is no getting rid of the internal combustion engine.

Diesel powered vehicles will slowly turn to bio-diesel options and gasoline powered engines will slowly turn to ethanol power.

Electric is good for basic commuting where the route will be basically the same day after day, it is not good for if you do not know how far you will drive a day. Although the long recharge time is part of it, the main part is that you do not want to buy more battery than you are going to be using since the battery will be one of the most expensive parts of the car.

A larger gas tank costs almost nothing. The infrastructure is already in place for bio-diesel and ethanol and most cars can be converted. Electric cars will fill a niche, and that is all.

Re:Good

[Rei]

I really hope we get this electric car thing figured out soon because I am just about sick of following smoke belching vehicles every day.

The tech is here. Modern batteries can rapid charge in minutes (given adequate cooling) and yield hundreds of miles of range. The issue is cost. For most EVs, battery packs are generally limited in size by price, not volume or weight. And not just battery cost that's the problem; quality AC drivetrains are expensive as heck right now. You can't even use a lot of mass-produced accessories with EVs if the conventional accessory requires a gasoline engine to be running. The good news is that it's all about volume. Your typical LFP or manganese li-ion pack combined with an AC drivetrain uses almost no rare or expensive raw materials. You have lithium salts ($4-8/kg), phosphoric acid (in the case of LFP), iron powder, a porous plastic membrane, graphite, etc in the battery pack; your motor optimally uses copper windings, but can also use aluminum; the inverter also uses copper or aluminum, plus things like silicon carbide for thyristors; etc. The expenses are primarily the huge amounts of labor and capital costs per unit because of very low volumes and because of the lack of production process refinement.

BTW, the article summary is wrong (and partly the article, too). What they're talking about is not a battery; it's a capacitor. Which means that even if the whole body is made of the stuff, it's not going to be enough energy capacity for reasonable range. Plus, you have to consider how it'll change your vehicle's weight, structural strength, etc. There is always a cost-benefit analysis to consider.

Still, it could potentially be useful for making less-critical structural elements (say, the bellypan) to use for buffering (rather than energy storage).

Re:Good

[Rei]

Biofuels are not a long-term solution. Corn ethanol is over two orders of magnitude more land-intensive than solar thermal. Algae is just under one order of magnitude more land intensive. Plus, biofuel creation requires water, fertilizer, processing, etc. And the combination of needing "lots of water" and "lots of sun" can be rather mutually exclusive, as the sunniest places in the country are desert. Solar thermal is closed loop.

If your goal is to turn solar energy into propulsion, pure electric is the way to go.

Although the long recharge time is part of it

That's what rapid charging is for.

the main part is that you do not want to buy more battery than you are going to be using since the battery will be one of the most expensive parts of the car.

Indeed, the real issue is price. But that will fall significantly with mass production. And the operating cost advantage will remain, so eventually, even if sticker shock remains an issue for prospective buyers, seeing a lease price that's significantly cheaper than a gasoline car's lease plus the cost of gasoline that month should eventually drive the point home.

Furthermore, the main point to oversized gas tanks is to make it so that you don't have to fill up too often in your daily lives. Filling up is, after all, a pain; who wants to drive out of their way to pay for the privilege of pumping carcinogens in the middle of a blizzard? One of your average EV driver's favorite benefits is the fact that you start each day with a full charge. You don't even have to think about it in your daily life. The only time range comes into play is when you take long trips. But what's the point of having 700-800 miles on a long trip? Dear god, if you drive 700-800 miles without stopping to rest or eat, please don't do it when I'm on the road!

Lastly: In 1989, a new top of the line battery hit the market: the nickel metal hydride cell. It boasted 45Wh/kg energy density. Today, just over two decades later, commercially available li-ion cells boast up to 220 Wh/kg -- almost five times higher -- plus an order of magnitude higher power density. This trend shows no signs of slowing down; rather, it appears to be accelerating. So take that into account when talking about range for the future.

Re:Good

[Architect_sasyr]

A larger gas tank costs almost nothing. The infrastructure is already in place for bio-diesel and ethanol and most cars can be converted. Electric cars will fill a niche, and that is all.

Grazing costs almost nothing. The infrastructure is already in place for pasture and oats, and most horses can pull a cart just fine. The aw-toe-mo-beel will fill a nice, and that is all.

Sometimes, for no reason at all (!!), some things just become huge. The car was reliant on reliable and obtainable fuel, and roads, and the world dealt with them just fine - I don't see why, when the option becomes viable and enough of the group-think follows it, electric cars will not follow the way of their predecessors.

Re:Good

[TwiztidK]

I really hope we get this electric car thing figured out soon because I am just about sick of following smoke belching vehicles every day.

The electrical components of my gas burning vehicle shorted and caused the rest of the vehicle to be consumed by flames in a very smokey manner, certainly smokier than other car I've observed. As the electric parts of the car were responsible for said fire, it seems resonable that electric cars will burst into flames more often than gas burning cars. Therefore, it can be logically deduced that electric cars will result in much more smoke than the fossil fueled alternatives.

Re:Good

[Sir_Lewk]

Modern batteries can rapid charge in minutes (given adequate cooling) and yield hundreds of miles of range.

There is also the issue of having an electrical grid that can handle that. Charging a battery in minutes with enough power to get you hundreds of miles takes a non-trivial amount of power, no matter how good your battery is.

Re:Good

[Rei]

There is also the issue of having an electrical grid that can handle that. Charging a battery in minutes with enough power to get you hundreds of miles takes a non-trivial amount of power, no matter how good your battery is.

You don't draw it from the grid. You draw it from a battery bank. The battery bank is in turn trickle-charged from the grid.

And in case anyone's curious, yes, they do make extremely high power chargers. TARDEC got one last year that does 800kW. I don't know how much that one cost, but ones in the ~250kW range are typically ~$125k-ish (and about the size of a vending machine). That may sound like a lot, but then again, a gas station generally costs $1-2m to build, and you have to pay for tear-down at end of life (tearing down a charger is a net gain, from scrap). Plus, expect prices to fall over time.

Chargers that big generally require that their connectors or even their cables be cooled. Which makes me wonder when we'll see the next logical step in that evolution -- having the charger provide coolant for the battery pack instead of the EV providing it. After all, why make the EV haul around a powerful cooling system when your charger already has one and is already bringing coolant all the way to the vehicle? All the vehicle should need is a connector for the coolant and ducting for it to travel through. If you use something like supercritical CO2 as a coolant, you won't even have to worry about coolant contamination or residual coolant being left over in the system.

The current fast-charging pseudo-standard, TESCO, doesn't do that, though. But in the future, I expect we'll ultimately see it.

Re:Good

[mweather]

Electric is good for basic commuting where the route will be basically the same day after day, it is not good for if you do not know how far you will drive a day. Although the long recharge time is part of it, the main part is that you do not want to buy more battery than you are going to be using since the battery will be one of the most expensive parts of the car.

Why not just make the batteries swappable at service stations? Then the only range that matters is the distance to the next service station.

Re:Good

[c6gunner]

As the electric parts of the car were responsible for said fire, it seems resonable that electric cars will burst into flames more often than gas burning cars. Therefore, it can be logically deduced that electric cars will result in much more smoke than the fossil fueled alternatives.

In what universe?

My microwave oven leaked and caused me to be exposed to some radiation. As the microwave oven was responsible for the radiation, it seems reasonable that houses with microwave ovens will release more radiation than houses with thermonuclear reactors. Therefore, it can be logically deduced that we should all use nuclear reactors to cook dinner. Ipso facto, etc, etc.

Look on the bright side: your train of logic has done an amazing job of demonstrating the "garbage, in garbage out" principle.

Re:Good

[Khashishi]

too abusable

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Algae is just under one order of magnitude more land intensive.

Algae grow in water, you fucking moron.

Re:Good

[vlm]

You don't draw it from the grid. You draw it from a battery bank. The battery bank is in turn trickle-charged from the grid.

The problem is, a typical gas nozzle runs about a megawatt. Theres 20 of them at my local quickie-mart or whatever its called. Sometimes all are in use. Often half are in use. Even in the middle of the night at least one is in use. "Trickle Charge" is still going to be a couple megawatts, and in an area without that kind of service.

I admit the whole "fast charging" thing is pretty bogus. The furthest I've ever driven in one day was 500 miles and it was a torturous living hell. I dream of having a car that can't do that, so I have the perfectly socially acceptable excuse that my car simply can not go 500 miles per day. What a darn shame I'll be unable to sit in my car for 8 hours. Drat. Boo F-ing Hoo Hoo.

Re:Good

[Jeng]

Why not just make the batteries swappable at service stations?

Too many variables. How much charge is in the current battery, how much wear and tear are in the battery you just got versus what you just gave, what happens when you get a partial dud, how many batteries can be swapped out a day, the physical labor of swapping batteries, what do you charge/how do you come to the cost and how does that make you competitive with your competition.

I thought it would be a smart idea to change out the electrolyte instead of the whole battery, but it wasn't actually all that smart either.

Re:Good

[obarthelemy]

You're overlooking 2 things:

1- for daily commutes, you start each day with a full battery, which is more convenient than having to do regular trips to the service station.

2- for longer trips, batteries could be swappable, making longer trips possible with not much more pain than currently. that means
2a- coming up with an easy and standard way to do it (government regulation may be helpful, if it can prevent market fragmentation), and
2b- re-thinking ownership, because people will be leery of swapping their brand new battery for someone else's clunker. A yearly battery lease may be the way to go. It would alleviate the battery price problem, too.

Re:Good

[Jeng]

Corn ethanol is over two orders of magnitude more land-intensive than solar thermal.

You'll make your point better if you don't bring up the worst possible case. Corn ethanol is only done for political purposes because it makes no economical sense.

Ethanol from cellulose based waste looks promising. Always good when a waste stream can be turned into a productive product.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol#Cellulosic_ethanol

Bio-diesel will probably be bigger than ethanol though.

Re:Good

[mhajicek]

Smoke belching vehicles? How about electric car companies blowing smoke? Electric cars have been vaporware for years; they keep predicting that they'll bring an affordable one to the general market in "a year or two". Wait a year or two and it's "another year or two."

Re:Good

[Rei]

The problem is, a typical gas nozzle runs about a megawatt. Theres 20 of them at my local quickie-mart or whatever its called. Sometimes all are in use. Often half are in use. Even in the middle of the night at least one is in use. "Trickle Charge" is still going to be a couple megawatts, and in an area without that kind of service.

Oh, certainly -- your "gas station" has to be able to "average" the amount of power it feeds out, plus losses -- there's no way around that. Of course, running counter to this is that since the vast majority of charging is done at home (and to a lesser extent, work), you don't actually need that many rapid chargers nationwide. Most of the lower-end rapid chargers (~40kW is sort of the cutoff for what's considered rapid charging) don't typically use battery banks, and these are typically installed just one charger per location to spread the load around (although the charger may have multiple connectors on it; when two EVs are hooked up, each charges at half-rate). There are very few of the higher power rapid chargers out there right now, so it's hard to draw generalizations, but one would expect you'd average several per location to better take advantage of a common battery bank. Probably nothing like the 8-16 pumps at your typical gas station. Gas stations load so many pumps into each location because of the not inconsiderable expense of excavation to install the fuel tanks, plus fuel delivery costs.

While studies suggest little to no need for new macro-scale infrastructure for mass adoption of EVs, there may be some local infrastructure improvements required, esp. if rapid charging for long, daytime EV trips takes off.

Re:Good

[Locke2005]

The good news is that it's all about volume. No, that's the bad news. While normally costs would go down with increased volume, there is a limited supply of Lithium and other elements used in these batteries. Meaning that if we tried to make every car fully electric, the marginal cost of each battery would go up, not down.

I agree, the small amount of energy that could be stored in these panels would only be useful for a hybrid vehicle; it would not appreciably increase the range of a pure electric vehicle.

Re:Good

[maxume]

Cellulosic butanol is way more exciting than cellulosic ethanol.

Re:Good

[Rei]

I mentioned the worst and the best. Do I really need to spell out all of the midpoints?

Cellulosic ethanol is estimated at up to 1,500 gallons/acre/year. At 30mpg, that's 45,000 miles/acre/year.

Ausra's proposed 177MW Carrizo solar thermal plant was to be situated on 640 acres. That's 277kW/acre. Assuming a capacity factor of about 0.3 (clear skies, heliostat), that's about 727,000,000 Wh/acre/year. At 250Wh/mi, that's ~2,900,000 miles/acre/year.

Re:Good

[couchslug]

That would lock in permanent battery form-factors in the infancy of car development where we should not commit ourselves.

Re:Good

[Rei]

Typically tanks of water, you anonymous coward. Exposed to air, your optimal fuel-producing species end up being attacked by predators and diluted by species that produce less (or no) fuel.

Re:Good

[obarthelemy]

Not sure. One could normalize
- connectors (i don't know if cables are workable, or if it must needs be fixed plugs)
- locking mechanism
- management/supervision protocol
- form factor
- accessibility

One such example would be PCI-Express: one slot, 3 form factors (normal, low-profile, mini), plenty of different cards, various options (number of lanes, supplemental power), some leeway outside the norm (dual slot cards)...

Re:Good

[Smooth and Shiny]

He can't lead in a Prius. Seriously... it can barely keep up with itself, let alone other traffic.

Re:Good

[Loconut1389]

You've got a $70,000 Lexus, you pull into the fill up station to pick up the batteries which were just in a demolition derby or a drive by shooting. I don't mean to imply that because you have a more expensive car you deserve better condition batteries, but it is more likely that you treat your batteries well than someone with an older junker. Unless all batteries are picked up by a truck and replaced with charged+inspected before reuse, there is a certain inequality that may leave you stranded when your abused battery dies, ruptures, etc. Personally, I drive a car with a value under $3,000 at the moment, but even then I know I treat my car better than a lot of other people. It's sort of the same reason I don't like propane cylinder exchanges- you get the grimey rusted tanks for your brand new shiny one.

Re:Good

[Rei]

there is a limited supply of Lithium and other elements used in these batteries.

No, there isn't. Not in a practical sense.

Re:Good

[Max Littlemore]

Even once they do perfect the electric car I would imagine there is no getting rid of the internal combustion engine.

Hmmm, I wonder about that. I'm not disputing that combustion is a better method of mobile energy use for long haul, it means you don't need to carry all of the components required to use the energy, but external combustion does make it much easier to burn dirtier fuels completely, meaning less refinement and higher tolerance for varying grades of biofuel.

I have a feeling, just a feeling mind - nothing to back it up, that turbines generating electric power (much like diesel locomotives) would be excellent for trucking, for example.

Re:Good

[hclewk]

You might as well be comparing effectiveness of recycling aluminum cans and mining for new aluminum. Yeah, the mining operation is going to produce more aluminum per square mile, but does that matter?

What really matters is what the resulting cost is. I have no idea which is more cost effective, I just know that you are looking at the wrong thing. Also, I would surmise that it's is much more likely that we will switch to ethanol _and_ electric (i.e. hybrid vehicles) than switch to electric all together.

Re:Good

[Rei]

Smoke belching vehicles? How about electric car companies blowing smoke? Electric cars have been vaporware for years; they keep predicting that they'll bring an affordable one to the general market in "a year or two".

What the heck are you talking about? Who's been saying that, apart from NEV manufacturers?

Re:Good

[musicalmicah]

Biofuels are not a long-term solution. Corn ethanol is over two orders of magnitude more land-intensive than solar thermal. Algae is just under one order of magnitude more land intensive.

I have a hard time parsing sentence construction like this and actually had to look up order of magnitude to confirm that you are saying that corn ethanol uses 100 times more land than solar thermal (for the same output?), while algae uses 10 times more land than its solar counterparts. Is this true or am I misinterpreting you? If so, could you provide a citation, because that's a pretty huge amount.

Re:Good

[Deltaspectre]

Sure your nuclear reactors may get it hot right quick, but they sure don't compare to the hearty taste of food slowly roasted over an electric car!

Re:Good

[Rei]

What really matters is what the resulting cost is.

1) Land use absolutely *does* matter. As does water use, fertilizer use, etc. It matters for wildlife habitat (incl. rainforest), for food production, for algal blooms, for countless things.

2) From a cost perspective, solar thermal wins there, too. EVs are really cheap to run. Even if cellulosic ethanol could manage to sell for the same price as gasoline (and note that 30mpg ethanol is notably better than 30mpg gasoline, in the above calculations) -- say, $3/gal -- it would be 10 cents per mile. Even if you had to pay 20 cents per kWh for the solar thermal (most next-gen solar thermal is predicting less than that), rather than the US national average for electricity of 10 cents per kWh residential (and notably less for industrial power), that would be five cents per mile.

Re:Good

[khallow]

I don't know how the biofuels compare to solar thermal, but I think that probably is the correct gap between corn and algae.

Re:Good

[gyrogeerloose]

Cellulosic butanol is way more exciting than cellulosic ethanol.

Fuckin' A! Whenever anyone even mentions cellulosic butanol I can barely contain my enthusiasm! ;-)

Re:Good

[Fred_A]

There is also the issue of having an electrical grid that can handle that. Charging a battery in minutes with enough power to get you hundreds of miles takes a non-trivial amount of power, no matter how good your battery is.

A simple fix would be to build more roads going downhill instead of blindly following the contour lines.
It would save a lot of power !

Re:Good

[mysidia]

Or get a really loud horn, and use liberally, so the "leader" goes a reasonable speed instead of stopping and blowing smoke at you.

Re:Good

[Skal Tura]

Li-Ion isn't even the best, LiPo can deliver more per Kg, and higher peaks without voltage drop off, thus being the #1 choice for RC models. Altho, they are restrictively expensive, hazardous to handle, can't take temperature variations and only lasts for couple of years.

As for Biofuels: There's methods to use WASTE for making biofuel, they are doing that here in Finland, and sell 85% bio-ethanol, 15% gasoline fuel, made from biowaste. Downside is it's not as energy dense, thus you consume more along with the fact that many gaskets can't use them. The plus-side is that an engine designed for biofuel can have better compression (or higher boost pressure), burns very clean, and smaller engines can be made more powerfull due to the ethanol compression characteristics.

Biofuel made from waste solely is not taxing to the environment, quite the contrary, and does not require extra landmass. Algae based can use waste aswell.

Growing corn etc. for biofuels is the stupidest thing ever. Also, corn is far from the best to use for it. It's just that the corn industry is so large, so much supply, but not enough demand, they have to keep it afloat somehow.

Also, the land mass etc. problems for biofuels is just propaganda. Biofuels can be made in small areas aswell, and when waste is used as the source, there's no problem with it. Besides, water is plenty... This planet is mostly water afterll

Re:Good

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I thought it would be a smart idea to change out the electrolyte instead of the whole battery, but it wasn't actually all that smart either.

Look at Vanadium Redox batteries - where the battery is essentially a fuel cell sized for the power and would stay with the car, while the electrolyte is pumped through it from/to separate storage and the tankage is sized for the energy capacity.

Swapping electrolyte on such a system would be quite practical. (And you could be credited for the state-of-charge of the partially depleted electrolyte you traded in.)

Re:Good

[mysidia]

Uh, we should want them locked in as soon as possible.

New form factors can be developed, as long as they get standardized.

It's car manufacturers that want proprietary formats, so they can charge a boatload for proprietary replacement parts (VS pennies for commodity replacement parts).

It's like saying "Let's not lock-in computer ABIs or processor specs in the infancy of OS development" (today, in 2010)

Better to stick with proprietary OS APIs and proprietary network libraries, so users have to buy software specifically licensed against this computer's spec.

And so hardware manufacturers can make a boatload selling the only OS that will work with their hardware, or selling the only hardware that will work with their OS (rather)

E.g. HPUX good, Linux bad.

Ultrix/NonStop OS good, VxWorks bad.

Mac OS good, DOS bad.

AIX good, BSD bad.

OSF/1 good, SysV bad.

NeXTSTEP good, Windows bad.

iPhone OS good, ChromeOS bad.

Atari DOS good, BeOS bad.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

That could backfire. I usually slow down if some asshole is riding my tail and beeping me.

Then again, I make it a point to take good care of my car, so I'm not the smoke-belching car driver that GP is talking about. They might behave differently..

Re:Good

[Ihmhi]

Why not just make the batteries swappable at service stations? Then the only range that matters is the distance to the next service station.

For the same reason that you can't take a piston from one engine and put it into another as easily. (Pedants stand down, I'm sure there's many cases where you can do this.) Automakers will muck it up with all of their proprietary shit and make the whole thing into a huge clusterfuck.

A standardized charging port is probably more likely than a standardized battery.

Re:Good

[Tekfactory]

Unless the batteries are the size of Blue Rhino 20# Propane tank with the same kind of standardization and reconditioning, no thanks.

Until the batteries get that power dense, better order up a Japanese powersuit for every service station to change the batteries.

And unless its full service at every station everywhere, it has to be something my wife can change out by herself on her own car, and not just something environmentalists and gadget geeks feel comfortable with. Like people who don't feel comfortable using jumper cables suddenly being ok disconnecting/reconnecting the leads on a 220v electrical system in the rain.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear god, if you drive 700-800 miles without stopping to rest or eat, please don't do it when I'm on the road!

I'm sure some semi-truck drivers have done it. For us regular drivers, who stop and rest after 350 miles, will the car be recharged in 12 hours? That depends on how standardized, and available charging is. The average motel today probably would bill extra, if it were even possible (big parking lots, no outlets, etc.) or if unattended charging was allowed.

But, I'm not trying to be a kill-joy. I'd love to have an electric car or motorcycle with a range of between 40 and 80 miles. I'm an electronics engineer, so I'd even have fun building my own solar and wind power to charge it.

On that note, I've recently done some comparisons between rechargeable batteries and capacitors.
To summarize: batteries win with normal approaches (low cost and complexity), but high voltage capacitors have the best performance and greater usable energy capacity. Technically capacitors should outlast batteries. And, in theory, a high voltage capacitor is simpler to build than either a supercap or battery, so the cost could be lower in mass production.

I used the SI unit Joules, instead of Wh, because it's easier to visually compare numbers greater than 1, as opposed to using enginnering notation for milli, micro, nano, and pico.
The following information doesn't take into account usable energy, because that's dependent on how the things are used. A capacitor will outperform a battery in high current usage. Capacitors can also be totally discharged to 0V without being damaged and batteries cannot (most battery Ah ratings take that into account).

Convert Watt-hours to Watt-seconds (Joules)
E=W*3600

Convert battery to Joules
The product of voltage V, amp hours Ah and 60 squared, is Joules E (watts per second)
E=V*A*3600

Convert capacitor to Joules
Half of Farads multiplied by the square of Voltage
E=0.5*F*V^2

Fun math:
One Kilowatt Hour is 3.6MJ (3,600,000J, 1000Wh*3600)
A single AA NiMH is 10.4KJ (10,368J)
A L-ion 3.7V 4Ah is 53.28KJ (53,280J)
A 16V, 100F capacitor is 12.8KJ (12,800J)
A 12V 40Ah battery is 1.728MJ (1,728,000J) (Two 12V 40Ah batteries are nearly 1KWh, 3.456MJ)
A (real) 6.5KV, 9500uF capacitor is 200.7KJ (200,700J) ~ a 1x1x2 foot sized industrial capacitor
A (theoretical) 26KV, 9500uF capacitor is 3.2MJ (3,200,000J)
A (theoretical) 300KV, 1000uF capacitor is 90MJ (90,000,000J, 25KWh)

All the capacitors are physically bulkier than batteries, typically twice the size or worse for a given amount of Joules.

Recently pulled from wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_(electricity)
Secondary Battery Chemistries
NiCd 1.2V 0.14 MJ/Kg
Lead Acid 2.1V 0.14 MJ/Kg (0.1232 MJ/Kg, found for real battery)
NiMH 1.2V 0.36 MJ/Kg
NiZn 1.6V 0.36 MJ/Kg
L-ion 3.6V 0.46 MJ/Kg (0.635 MJ/Kg, found for real battery)
*Zinc-Air 1.55 1.35-1.65 MJ/Kg
(*electrical or mechanical recharging is possible)

Aluminum-Air is similar to Zinc-Air, but I don't much have information on it.

Interesting bit of information about capacitors (as battery substitutes)
A 1V, 2F capacitor is 1J (Linear)
A 2V, 1F capacitor is 2J (Exponential)
A 1V, 10F capacitor is 5J (L)
A 1V, 20F capacitor is 10J (L)
A 10V, 1F capacitor is 50J (E)
A 20V, 1F capacitor is 200J (E)
High voltage capacitors are capable of storing more energy than high farad capacitors. Because an increase in voltage is an exponential increase in energy, and an increase in farads is a linear increase in energy.
Supercaps are safer to work near, cheaper, and physically smaller (but heavier) than high voltage capacitors. Unless I'm mistaken, the highest voltage capacitor type is a vacuum capacitor (vacuum is the dielectric) hence it being potentially more lightweight than any other type of capacitor.

Re:Good

[Low Ranked Craig]

But what's the point of having 700-800 miles on a long trip? Dear god, if you drive 700-800 miles without stopping to rest or eat, please don't do it when I'm on the road!

A lot of people drive long distances. I'd have no problem with a 200 mile range except for the fact that every 200 miles I'd need to stop for 4 hours to recharge, turning that 6 hour 400 mile trip into a 10 hour trip.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for mentioning solar thermal energy instead of photovoltaics.

One other solution that has not been considered is the use of solar thermal energy to synthesize gasoline and diesel fuel from carbon dioxide. Sandia is working on it with their "CR5 thermochemical engine". It's estimated at 150,000 gallons/acre/year of REAL, drop in replacement GASOLINE - not ethanol, not diesel. At 24 MPG (U.S. average), 3,600,000 miles/acre/year. It is clear that thermochemical engines will beat biofuels in efficiency.

Of course, the real question is cost and rare element usage. No one likes to talk about that.

Re:Good

[Rakshasa Taisab]

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15464481

We have computers that can keep track of those variables, and what lacks then is just a business model. And the one that is being invested heavily in (above link) is that of renting the batteries, while owning the car.

Swapping out the batteries is faster (according to the live tests) than filling your tank. You won't get any duds as they will likely be caught during charging at the station, and even if it were to happen you can just exchange it later. (It's rented, after all)

Re:Good

[ScrewMaster]

This trend shows no signs of slowing down; rather, it appears to be accelerating. So take that into account when talking about range for the future.

All good points, but you gloss over the whole issue of "rapid charging". Dumping the energy equivalent of a 20 gallon tank of gasoline (roughly the same as 2000 sticks of dynamite) into a compact mobile storage system in a matter of minutes is a non-trivial engineering effort. It's an active process: chemical changes are occurring, thermal losses are being dissipated, whereas filling a tank is rather passive in comparison and inherently safer. We'll have to reduce I^R losses considerably before that happens anyway. Face it, a liquid-fueled system make a hell of a lot of sense from a distribution perspective: the only question is whether that liquid needs to be gasoline. And, frankly, I'd rather be sitting astride a tank of relatively safe fossil fuel than I would a couple hundred kilowatt/hours of battery pack. Those things are not safe, and cannot really ever be made safe, and the lower the internal resistance the more dangerous they become when damaged.

Furthermore, the existing power grid in the U.S. is not in any shape for a nation of pure electric vehicles. It simply was not designed for that purpose ... hell, we can barely handle all our air conditioners. Fact is, we have neither the generating nor distribution capacity, and such a buildout would be hideously expensive at this point. Maybe if we hadn't spent a couple trillion dollars on Iraq, and another trillion or so in bailout funds we could pull it off, but I doubt it's in the cards now.

Re:Good

[PitaBred]

And then there are some of us who actually like that kind of driving. I could drive across the US pretty much straight (with requisite rest-stops and such) and love every minute of it.

Re:Good

[Eclipse-now]

No no no! These are not real objections when the company sells you the car, but maintains ownership of the battery! "Physical labor" of swapping batteries? Are you serious? Don't tell me you haven't seen the Better Place battery swap automated station? http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/13/video-better-places-automated-electric-vehicle-battery-switch/

It sounds like you need to spend some time here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place Just like in the "olden days" the King's messenger didn't wait overnight for the horses to rest & recharge their 'batteries', but swapped them out, Better Place has come up with the battery standards that are so good Tokyo is trialling TAXIS out on this Battery-swap system, and they'll NEVER get a chance to just sit still and charge for 8 hours! I can't believe there are slashdotters that don't know about Better Place, especially when HSBC just invested $350 million in Better Place and the CEO is all over "The Economist" podcast. They're coming to San Francisco, Hawaii, Tokyo, Canberra... and at a price / km at about half the price of oil, it's simply going to CHANGE THE WORLD people!

Re:Good

[crispytwo]

All we need are two brushes on the bottom, and a slot to put the car in

voilà, no batteries needed!

woot!

Re:Good

[that this is not und]

Also, a sweeping mechanism on the front of each vehicle to push the charred bodies of the various electrocuted life forms off to the side of the road.

Re:Good

[zmollusc]

Hahahahahahaha!
The station will fit a dud and when you take it back they will say you broke/swapped/messed with it and make a claim against your battery insurance (you surely won't be putting down a deposit to cover the $20,000 the battery is worth) for a new battery, plus their time changing it again, plus admin, plus storage. Oh and your policy will have an excess fee so you pay the first $1000 out of your own pocket.

Re:Good

[fgouget]

But what's the point of having 700-800 miles on a long trip? Dear god, if you drive 700-800 miles without stopping to rest or eat, please don't do it when I'm on the road!

A lot of people drive long distances.

Yes. And if there is more than one driver there is no need to stop for more than 30 seconds every two hours.

I'd have no problem with a 200 mile range except for the fact that every 200 miles I'd need to stop for 4 hours to recharge, turning that 6 hour 400 mile trip into a 10 hour trip.

That's why we need rapid recharge, not necessarily to full capacity as long as it lets you drive for another two hours. Then this turns your 6 hours trip into a 6 hours 15 minutes one which is not too bad. Even in the worst case where it means you need to recharge twice, it just turns into 6 hours and a half.

There's also the battery leasing and swap option where you'd only need to make one 45 seconds stop to swap the battery.

Re:Good

[fgouget]

Furthermore, the existing power grid in the U.S. is not in any shape for a nation of pure electric vehicles. It simply was not designed for that purpose ... hell, we can barely handle all our air conditioners. Fact is, we have neither the generating nor distribution capacity, and such a buildout would be hideously expensive at this point.

<sarcasm>
And then there's all those lunatics that ask that we lay pipes in the ground to distribute drinking water! Fact is, we have neither the pumping nor distribution capacity, and such a buildout would be hideously expensive at this point. Who would finance it? The people don't have the money for it. It would have to be the government which means more taxes thus killing our already troubled economy. All that because the lazy bums don't want to go to the nearest well!
</sarcasm>

Sorry, couldn't resist pointing out nations have already successfully tackled daunting engineering challenges long long ago and succeeded despite their inferior knowledge and technology. Maybe our civilization truly is going downhill.

Re:Good

[TheRaven64]

Note, however, that the land just needs to be somewhere where there is sunlight, it does not need to be good farmland. There is lots of desert space in the middle of the USA that would be ideal for algae farms but terrible for farming conventional crops.

Re:Good

[Alarindris]

The furthest I've ever driven in one day was 500 miles and it was a torturous living hell.

Not everyone has such a low tolerance for driving. That really isn't far at all. I've driven to Florida from Wisconsin many times, and if I only drove 8 hours a day, that's a 6 day round trip just driving. Get a buddy to split it 12 and 12, and if you are tired you can bitch about it while drinking a corona on the beach when ya get there :D

Re:Good

[RockDoctor]

I really hope we get this electric car thing figured out soon because I am just about sick of following smoke belching vehicles every day.

Pedal faster ; overtake them, then sit in the correct position in your lane so that they've got to do a full overtaking manoeuvre if they want to pass you. Then get ahead of them again. Eventually, they'll get fed up of spending 10 or 20% of their income on a car that travels at the speed of a bike and get a bike too.

Re:Good

[mcgrew]

Furthermore, the existing power grid in the U.S. is not in any shape for a nation of pure electric vehicles. It simply was not designed for that purpose ... hell, we can barely handle all our air conditioners.

That depends on your power company. Here in Springfield the city-owned power company produces excess energy that it sells to neighboring private-sector power companies at a tidy profit. No brownouts here!

Re:Good

[Jesus_666]

They're not going to change the world until they come to Preston Candover, Visselhövede and Cudzynovice. It's a bit like 3G - while it works just fine in the big cities it start being much less useful once you get thirty kilometers out and the infrastructure just isn't there.

That's the advantage of home-charged electric vehicles: The infrastructure is pretty much already in place. You don't have to hope that some corporation will decide to expand to your area sometime within the next twenty years.

Re:Good

[mcgrew]

The furthest I've ever driven in one day was 500 miles and it was a torturous living hell.

If you're driving a clunker that has seats that were uncomfortable when it was new then yes, it would be hell. My car's seats are very comfortable, the 300 mile trip to my daughter's is no problem at all. But I'd hate to make the trip in some of the cars I've owned.

When I buy a car, here are the things I look for:

1. Comfortable seats
2. Cruise control
3. Good heat/AC
4. Great stereo

That's all you need to turn that helltrip into a pleasure cruise. Of course, I also want good handling, acceleration, and braking.

Re:Good

[mweather]

Too many variables. How much charge is in the current battery, how much wear and tear are in the battery you just got versus what you just gave, what happens when you get a partial dud, how many batteries can be swapped out a day, the physical labor of swapping batteries, what do you charge/how do you come to the cost and how does that make you competitive with your competition.

The gas stations don't seem to have a problem swapping propane tanks, which have similar problems. The only real problem is labor, which can be solved with simple robots. Drive to the swap spot, park, and the robot lines up with the markings on the battery under the car, removes it, spirits it away, returns with a fresh, fully charged battery, and installs it. Nothing you don't see a million times a say in any factory in America.

Re:Good

[Rei]

And where do you get the water to produce the algae in the desert? Even when you use enclosed tanks, some of the water still ends up as fuel, and some gets wasted in the fuel production process.

Re:Good

[Rei]

Their numbers are clearly wrong. You're not going to get greater "thermochemical" efficiency than electricity generation efficiency (esp. the way they're doing it -- you have thermolysis losses, CO2-splitting losses, and then Fischer-Tropsch losses). Also, and gasoline engines turn gasoline into motion with less than a quarter the average efficiency as EVs turn electricity into motion. So.... Ref for your numbers, please? I wouldn't be surprised if I could guess what's wrong with those numbers, too. I bet they're assuming that they get all of the energy from the sunlight hitting a given amount of land, when in reality, solar plants of any type are mostly empty space (because of shadowing at times other than noon, plus roads, etc). They might also be using an unreasonable capacity factor.

Re:Good

[Rei]

Yes -- orders of magnitude are used to indicate an approximate sense of scale when you're dealing with an exponential distribution. "Over 2 orders of magnitude": that means "approximately over 100 times as much"

I do calculations to show it relative to cellulosic ethanol (which is much better than corn ethanol) elsewhere in this thread, if you're interested. No need for me to repeat them here. Plants are very inefficient converters of solar energy to fuel, and electric motors are much more efficient converters of electricity to motion than internal combustion engines are at converting fuel to motion.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Aluminum-air batteries right now are about 4.68 MJ/kg. The theoretical energy density limit of aluminum is 30 MJ/kg. Zinc's limit 5 MJ/kg. Aluminum-air is not rechargeable, but refuelable, kindof like a fuel-cell. The aluminum-air fuel cell is 1000 times cheaper than the hydrogen fuel cell.

It's not exponential, it's energy = 1/2*C*V^2. The voltage is limited by the breakdown voltage. Silica and teflon are the highest breakdown voltages I've seen.

Re:Good

[Eclipse-now]

Except that you can ALSO charge your Better Place compatible electric car at home, and at the shops, and at work. When they go into an area they try to make a standard charging infrastructure around the city, where ALL shops with Better Place charging points are fed into your smart-GPS device. (But "Doh!" all the slashdot users say, they chose microsoft to write the software!)

Let me state up front that for many, many reasons I think society is better of heading towards New Urbanism... both for sociological, psychological, resource efficiency and energy efficiency reasons. We could be happier, healthier, live in cleaner cities and maybe even work less hours and yet still have the same, if not better levels of comfort.

However, it seems the 2 main problems with EV's have been solved. Those 2 problems were:
1. No one wants to buy an expensive new battery every few years as the car battery runs down. (Although battery life technology increases all the time).
2. No one wants to have to stop and charge for 8 hours on the occasions they need to drive more than 160km.

This is solved with the "Better Place" battery swap system! The irony here is I actually think a "Better Place" is a car-free, or extremely "car-disciplined" town plan like New Urbanism is a much better place to live.

Better Place have developed a new international EV car standard and are inviting all car companies to join up or be left behind. Renault-Nissan have already joined up, and will be producing the first cheap mass produced electric car ever.

They sell you the car, but they own the battery.

Then for most suburban driving you'll just charge whenever the car is still. (Which works out on average about 22 hours a day!) You'll charge at home, at work, at the shops. (Better Place installs EV charge points everywhere when they "do" a city).

The CEO Shai Agassi gave a presentation at his TED talk.
Shai Agassi's bold plan for electric cars, Video on TED.com

Better Place is coming to taxis in Tokyo, a trial in Canberra, San Francisco, massive deployment in Israel (which will probably be the first country off oil for domestic car use), Hawaii, Denmark, and other places.

Shai's Australian talk basically said that on a per km basis, electricity will charge your car at about $0.80 cents a litre oil equivalent distance. Fuel in Australia costs around $1.20 to $1.30 a litre. Imagine how fast people are going to want these cars when they realise how convenient and cheap they are now, let alone when peak oil hits.

However.... there are a whole bunch of other peaks coming, including peaks in various rare earths and metals used in car production, which is why I prefer the lower embodied energy solutions of New Urbanism and walkable cities.

Even the Australian Senate found for "more walkable" cities... and yet realised this could be difficult.

"Increasing walking, cycling and public transport use in cities is a worthwhile goal for a number of reasons, regardless of predictions about the oil future. If there is a long term rise in the price of oil, it will be all the more necessary."

However we should not underestimate the difficulties involved. Vast areas of post World War 2 suburbia have been designed on the assumption that most travel would be by car, and with the aim of making this easier. The effect has been to make travel in any other way more difficult, as activity centres disperse to sites distant from the public transport network, and the environment for pedestrians and cyclists is degraded by traffic. In these areas existing public transport routes do not serve many travel needs, and existing services mostly function as welfare for people without cars, with a very low proportion of total trips

Re:Good

[Agripa]

Too many variables. How much charge is in the current battery, how much wear and tear are in the battery you just got versus what you just gave, what happens when you get a partial dud, how many batteries can be swapped out a day, the physical labor of swapping batteries, what do you charge/how do you come to the cost and how does that make you competitive with your competition.

Does the battery EULA allow it to be used in your car? Does the station even carry the battery necessary for your car after 3 years?

Re:Good

[Rei]

That post is funny because few people have even heard about cellulosic butanol, so the concept of a person being excited by it is humorous!

Re:Good

[Agripa]

Unless I'm mistaken, the highest voltage capacitor type is a vacuum capacitor (vacuum is the dielectric) hence it being potentially more lightweight than any other type of capacitor.

Adding a dielectric to a vacuum capacitor both increases the capacitance and the maximum voltage. A good example of the former is replacing an air capacitor (air and vacuum have almost the same dielectric constant) with a teflon dielectric capacitor because the lower volume reduces the effect and number of cosmic ray events in sensitive circuits. Vacuum capacitors are usually used where the lowest loss and tuning is required like in high power RF amplifiers.

A capacitor's voltage is limited by both the dielectric and imperfections in the dielectric. Voids in the dielectric will allow ionization which damages the dielectric and causes failure. That is why oil or another fluid is used to surround the plates and dielectric in high voltage capacitors.

Re:Good

[Rei]

You are actually getting %50 sunlight to hydrogen efficiency at a 0.3 capacity factor with those engines

That sounds about right.

The Mobil M syngas to gasoline (also called methanol to gasoline), is %86 percent energy efficient

That sounds about right as well. And then there's the difference in electricity/gasoline to kinetic energy efficiency for the vehicles themselves.

1kW/m^2 * 1 acre * 1 year = 127,706,349 megajoules.

As I mentioned in my last post, it doesn't work that way. Take a look at what solar farms actually look like up close. Notice all the empty space on the grounds? You have to space them out or they'll shadow each other at any point other than noon and you will have spent a lot of money on hardware that's being used suboptimally. There's also roads and other wasted land. So if you're calculating based on solar input, you need to multiply not just by capacity factor, but a spacing factor as well. Or, conversely, if you want to assume full shadowing, you can't just use the numbers from an existing solar thermal plant; you'll need to calculate that one from 1kW/m^2 as well.

Probably the easiest way is just to compare the efficiencies. Solar thermal plants will generally get you somewhere between 30% and 50% generation efficiency, depending on the tech used (the latter case being the high temperature molten salt plants). Electric motors + inverters will generally get you somewhere in the range of 85-90% average efficiency. Li-ion packs are very efficient (96-99%). Transmission in the US averages 92.8% efficiency. I'm not sure what sort of distribution losses you'd have for your fuel -- I'd wager somewhere along the order of 5-10%. Gasoline engines operate in the mid-30s percent efficiency in peak conditions, but only average about 20% in typical driving conditions. So, putting it all together, you get 23-41% system efficiency vs. ~8% system efficiency. So overall, the gasoline comes off a bit better in the calculations than my first impression, but obviously it's not going to beat out just using electricity.

Still, there is potential if they can do it affordably. That's a heck of a lot more land efficient than biofuels, even algae, and probably cheaper than algae too (the tankage requirements kill it for algae). Still, the hardware costs seem bound to be a lot higher than for solar thermal electricity costs, just judging from a manufacturing complexity perspective.

Also, Rei, are you an energy researcher or something??? You make a lot of really good comments here on /. about energy.

I work in the EV industry, so it's part of my job to stay on top of various battery and fuel technologies. :) My company develops software to provide accurate range calculation to vehicles (including terrain, weather forecasts, etc). While we launched it for EVs since they have particular need for it, it can work with any kind of powertrain, present or future (unless the laws of physics up and change on us!), so I need to stay on top of things. Also, my father works in the oil industry (he's actually the CEO of one of the US's largest refiners), so I get diverse perspectives.

Re:Good

[Rei]

High school? I never would have guessed. And usually it's glaringly obvious. :)

That's cool that you work in the EV industry. That must be some accurate software to include weather forecasts in vehicle range.

Oh, it has to be! :) Weather -- in particular, temperature -- plays a very large role in EV range. For example, as Lutz recently noted, while he had been getting 40+ miles on his Volt in city driving warmer weather, during Michigan's recent cold snap, it got only 28 miles. We download and parse NWS forecasts (GFS MOS MAV, GFS MOS MEX), then interpolate between them (both geographically and temporally).

It's a neat field :)

I'm a homeschool highschool student who reads about these matters for fun. I experiment, unsuccessfully, with attempts to build batteries.

I'm curious as to what exactly you mean by this. Are you building battery packs or individual cells? If battery packs, what kind of cells are you using? And if building cells, what chemistry? I'm curious how high-tech you're going -- I assume somewhere between "potato battery" and "lithium ion" ;).

Have you heard of LISICON membranes? They're really neat. They let you use an aqueous electrolyte on one side and an organic on the other while still allowing lithium ions to cross. Plus, they're resistant to dendrite damage if you use a metallic lithium anode (when metallic lithium plates, it tends to form dendrites which can pierce traditional membranes). LISICON membranes are used in Li-air and nickel-lithium cells.

Lithium-sulfur cathodes are also pretty cool. A team from the University of Waterloo had a really clever approach to . They wicked molten sulfur into the pores of mesoporous carbon, then functionalized the surface with polyethylene glycol. This keeps the lithium polysulfides, which tend to be soluble and escape the cathode, trapped inside the pores (they're hydrophobic). They got some really amazing results. The paper is "A highly ordered nanostructured carbon-sulphur cathode for lithium-sulphur batteries". Again, like with li-air and nickel-lithium, probably a wee bit outside of one's capability to build at home -- but still neat. :)

One of the craziest concepts I've run into is that of a "digital quantum battery" (actually capacitor). The paper is a bit dense, but basically, the idea is to print an array of nanoscale vacuum-tube capacitors (lithographically, like with computer chips). When you get that small, quantum effects help keep current from arcing, so they can run them up to huge voltages (by capacitor standards, at least). The electric fields can be made so intense that you can put so much mechanical strain on the electrodes that one needs to be made out of a carbon nanotube for optimal performance. :) And of course, it'd be all nontoxic and have pretty much limitless cycle life.

Modern battery research is pretty fascinating. While the odds of any one tech panning out are low, the odds of every battery tech not panning out are almost nil. Did you know that some of the li-ion batteries starting to hit the market now have silicon anodes instead of graphite? This is brand new, as of January. So forget everything you ever heard about the maximum theoretical energy density for li-ion batteries. Silicon ups it significantly; it can hold as much as 10 times more lithium in the anode.

Even if you're just building battery packs, rather than individual cells, there's a lot that can be done there. I've been tempted myself to mess around with that. In my "ideal" charging setup, cells are separated by a corrugated aluminum foil that acts as a heat sink, with forced air being able to be blown through the channels for cooling. For extreme rapid charging, I'd have the charger itself provide coolant, with the charger cable being actively cooled by the coolant it provides to the vehicle. Coolant would be supercritical CO2, due to its low viscosity

Re:Good

[LeadSongDog]

Grazing costs almost nothing. The infrastructure is already in place for pasture and oats, and most horses can pull a cart just fine. The aw-toe-mo-beel will fill a nice, and that is all.

Wait until grazers have to pay for their methane emissions and see how things change...

Re:Good

[Rei]

Is this software used for fleet management? It seems like EV fleet owners would be your main customers.

We're actually marketing to a variety of prospects. I can't go into details, unfortunately.

Is it mainly the temperature effect on the batteries, or something else?

Early on, there's a temperature effect on the batteries. As they warm up, it decreases. There's also the need to run the heater, which is often a power hog. And lastly, there's the normal effects of cold weather, such as increased rolling losses.

The first battery I experimented with was the boron-air battery. The idea was that if we could deposit boron from aqueous solution of boric acid, we could build a very high energy density battery. Unfortunately, all that was produced was hydrogen gas when I hooked it to a power supply. I tried different metals (copper, zinc, aluminum, etc), but all produced hydrogen - so I kind of gave up.

Hmm... never heard of a boron-air battery. I recall one team working on a vanadium-boron-air battery, but it was a primary cell and thus couldn't be recharged. Were you trying to create a new chemistry?

Currently, I am experimenting with iron-air batteries. Search and you will find some old papers. I also might try and Edison NiFe some time.

I haven't read too much about iron-air, but NiFe is interesting if only for its extremely long life. Jay Leno's Baker Electric still runs on its original NiFe batteries. :) Just be careful when working with nickel, as it's toxic.

The LISICON membranes are quite neat, but how resistant are they to "clogging"?

Seems that's always a problem with "air batteries" (one of the many very big challenges standing in their way, IMHO -- also price per watt and efficiency tend to be poor). But it shouldn't be a problem with nickel-lithium. For nickel-lithium, you use a traditional NiMH cathode in contact with an aqueous electrolyte, a lithium metal anode in contact with an organic electrolyte, and the membrane separating the two. I'd have to dig up the paper to be sure, but I seem to recall that they expected an energy density in the ~500Wh/kg range.

What do you think of ZEBRA batteries?

If lithium-ion hadn't come around, I think most EV makers would be using ZEBRAs with an ultracapacitor buffer. Energy density is pretty good, they're nontoxic, reasonably cheap, efficient and have good cycle life -- but they have awful power density and have to be kept hot. An ultracapacitor with could not only buffer power demands, but also potentially store enough energy for heating the pack back up if the car has to be stored for a while. Still, those heat requirements do make the engineering a lot more challenging and waste energy. I think you'd have to let the user choose, when they park, whether they want a full shutdown or want the battery to remain heated (but thus draining power).

Either way, we've got li-ion now, so we don't need to worry about that. :) ZEBRAs will continue to find use in specialized applications (I've heard of their production recently for use to add regenerative braking to trains), but I don't expect to see them in many (if any) mainstream EVs.

The problem is that li-ion is currently very expensive, and not very durable.

Ah, but that depends on the chemistry :) And how you treat the cells plays a huge role, too. If you don't carefully load balance and climate-control the cells, and you use ones with a cobalt-based cathode, you'll be lucky to get more than a couple years out of them (i.e., laptops, cell phones, etc). But even the cobalt-based li-ions can last 5-7 years if you baby them -- extensive cooling, esp. during charge, and meticulous load balancing, with a configuration tolerant of cell failures. Tesla has an interesting approach. They assemble cells in parallel in "bricks" (69 cells to a brick), then assemble the bricks in series into "sheets" (9 bricks to a sheet), then assembl

Re:Good

[Deliveranc3]

Agreed, the solution is obviously to swap out the batteries at fueling stations. Everything else is capitalist individualist crap.

In fact that's what this article is talking about, it's talking about the problem with battery WEIGHT. A real problem, batteries have low energy storage per unit of weight as well as per unit of volume. By using the body of the car as the battery you get the ability to swap this external battery while also replacing some of the heavy safety equipment on the car with something that's dual purpose.

I'm tired of saying this, the fucking bumpers are going to be the batteries.

Stupid engineers, evolving things instead of starting fresh.

Re:Good

[crispytwo]

That's a great idea! Could solve the "deer jumped in front of me" issue in one thawump!

Can't Wait.

[cohensh]

I can imagine it would make a multi-car pile up quite exciting. Just another effort to make real life more like a Michael Bay movie.

Re:Can't Wait.

[Adriax]

Accidents will be bad, but it will also cut down on the number of ricers out there. Darwin at work, lets see those lil shits drill mout holes into the charged capacitor that is their car's body.
They'll get a lovely blue light. Blue-white actually, and only for the split second that the rest of their lives entail.

Re:Can't Wait.

[zero_out]

Ricers? As in: asian-made vehicles? I don't get it.

Re:Can't Wait.

[Adriax]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ricer

Re:Can't Wait.

[zero_out]

Thank you for the insight. I will have to save that site for future use. Google didn't give me that definition with "define: ricer".

Re:Can't Wait.

[MechaStreisand]

You can tell google to define things for you by telling it "define: thing"? Neat, I didn't know that.

Allready there

[jvillain]

I thought my rusting chebby was acting like a battery.

The new material? DiHydrogen Monoxide

[Anonymous Coward]

Step 1: Fill the cars with DiHydrogen Monoxide
Step 2: Hoist the car several meters in the air
Step 3: Place a paddlewheel connected to generator underneath
Step 4: Open the car door
Step 5: ...
Step 6: Profit.

Another wonderful fantasy

[Whuffo]

According to TFA their plan is to make the body panels act as one plate of a huge capacitor. I can't even begin to list all the technical flaws in their proposal; just reading it made my head hurt. They really should run their promotional pieces past a real engineer before spreading them all over the net.

Re:Another wonderful fantasy

[wizardforce]

Nonsense.

Re:Another wonderful fantasy

[PetiePooo]

Mod parent up. From the short, non-technical video blurb, it sounds like a capacitor, not a battery.

Puncture a lead-acid battery, and you've got an acid spill. Puncture a charged capacitor, and you've got fireworks!

Re:Another wonderful fantasy

[hesaigo999ca]

Can you imagine someone tries to grab a hold of the door handle while he is standing in the rain,
and somehow wires got crossed (its a toyota),.....oh the irony of it all.

"If you can't fight them, give them electrifying"

Re:Another wonderful fantasy

[jollyreaper]

According to TFA their plan is to make the body panels act as one plate of a huge capacitor. I can't even begin to list all the technical flaws in their proposal; just reading it made my head hurt. They really should run their promotional pieces past a real engineer before spreading them all over the net.

I have visions of car crashes involving brilliant blue flashes and passengers exploding from the sudden discharge of electricity. Then again, we're already driving around in steel coffins filled with gallons of explosively flammable liquid so there's not much left to lose.

Re:Another wonderful fantasy

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that despite what hollywood would have you believe, gasoline is not actually explosive unless it is vaporized (which it will do at room temperature, but the gasoline would have to be spread out in order for enough to vaporize in order to explode)

A capacitor holding enough electricity to power a car getting shorted would certainly create a nice explosion though.

Re:Another wonderful fantasy

[LenE]

Not only that, but the use of carbon fiber for the plates brings other hazards with galvanic corrosion and much difficulty in preventing shorts. CF is really good at destroying metal fasteners. Throw it in a wet environment like a wheel well, roof or hood, and the problems erupt in very little time.

This is a funding trial balloon. You can imagine lots of uses for something when you make a small swatch hooked up to alligator clips in the lab, but the practicalities of implementing this "technology" in the real world will never be solved. At least without more funding. This university is not interested in making body panels out of this material. They want someone with money to come by and fund their research for access, so they can make body panel capacitors.

-- Len

Re:Another wonderful fantasy

[BikeHelmet]

I have visions of car crashes involving brilliant blue flashes and passengers exploding from the sudden discharge of electricity. Then again, we're already driving around in steel coffins filled with gallons of explosively flammable liquid so there's not much left to lose.

No sense adding more danger. Getting hit is already bad enough.

Ever poked around in a digital camera before? (wearing gloves) I watched as one of my parents prodded a cap with a screwdriver. Only 330V, but quite the spark! Ka-bang! The screwdriver has a black mark where it touched.

Re:Another wonderful fantasy

[lennier]

Then again, we're already driving around in steel coffins filled with gallons of explosively flammable liquid so there's not much left to lose.

And that's just the coffee.

Problem with that

[gr8_phk]

Car batteries want to be 200 to 300 volts. This is achieved by stringing a bunch of cells together in series. If body panel or structural member is a cell, connecting in series will be difficult if not impossible. If parts were made from layers of material (i.e. cells in series within a body panel) then you've got this relatively thin 300V battery on the outside of the car waiting to make contact with stuff in a crash. Normally batteries are kept inside a strong box with a relay to disconnect from the outside when the car is off or in a crash. They try to protect the battery from damage too, by putting it down the middle, or between the rear wheels. Unless you're Tesla, this sounds like an infeasible ideal.

Re:Problem with that

[wizardforce]

The typical car battery is 12 volts with 6 cells linked in series with ~2 volt drop for each. Hardly the 200-300 volts that you're thinking are required. Even if a 200-300 voltage potential was required, you could take a low voltage source, convert to AC and step up the voltage with a transformer. Not that big of a deal.

Re:Problem with that

[NeoSkandranon]

I think even Mr. Tesla would have had trouble with this really...

Re:Problem with that

[DoofusOfDeath]

Car batteries want to be 200 to 300 volts. This is achieved by stringing a bunch of cells together in series. If body panel or structural member is a cell, connecting in series will be difficult if not impossible.

Great, even more incentive for tailgaiters...

Re:Problem with that

[NeoSkandranon]

The typical car's starter battery isn't. The traction battery in a hybrid is, and I'm guessing so is the battery pack in a full electric.

Re:Problem with that

[nacturation]

Car batteries want to be 200 to 300 volts.

Car batteries don't like being anthropomorphized.

Re:Problem with that

[Xiterion]

...you could take a low voltage source, convert to AC and step up the voltage with a transformer. Not that big of a deal.

While that is doable, it's not trivial. Even at 95% conversion efficiency that's a nontrivial amount of waste power to get rid of. Transformers also get kinda chunky with increasing power throughput requirements.

Re:Problem with that

[vlm]

Hardly the 200-300 volts that you're thinking are required.

He's anthropomorphizing it when he writes "Car batteries want to be 200 to 300 volts".

Real engineers know you can gin up a set of equations to optimize an overall system. Not surprisingly, an electric cars optimum voltage and current end up suspiciously nearby, yet somewhat below, industrial heavy equipment and diesel electric traction motors of the same power rating. Lower it a bit because the power levels are a bit lower (plenty of 3000 HP locomotives, not many 3000 HP electric cars... yet). Also lower it a bit because insulation requirements are a bit stricter for morons. Lower it a bit for temperature derating, run the car in death valley, etc. Also lower it a bit for battery reliability, plates shorting, vibration etc. You end up in the 300ish volt range for "car power levels"

Similarly, your average electric motorcycle should be happy around 60 volts. Which is suspiciously close to where they seem to be.

Re:Problem with that

[cmiller173]

Car batteries don't like being anthropomorphized.

They hate it when you do that.

Re:Problem with that

[Cyberax]

Transformers? That's sooooo 1900-s.

We're using IGBTs now - they are much lighter and reliable.

Re:Problem with that

[that this is not und]

There's still an inductor in there. A relatively hefty one, if you're talking about a more than trivial power output.

Re:The new material? DiHydrogen Monoxide

[dfsmith]

Are you crazy? Dihydrogen monoxide kills over 4000 people a year in the US alone!

So this is how it starts.

[nicknamenotavailable]

First
"New Material Transforms Car Bodies Into Batteries"

After that
"Body Heat Energy Generation"

Then we're all turned into batteries and the Matrix begins

Re:So this is how it starts.

[Adriax]

So the machines are going to create huge farms of vat grown cars suspended in oil filled pods, with their onboard computers wired into a reality simulator, so they can harvest their energy?

Sounds like a Cars and Matrix crossover. Somewhere, someone in making a Neo/Mater slashfic.

In other news person electrocuted in fender bender

[Fallen Kell]

I can see the headlines now. People being electrocuted when involved in an accident which causes a "short" over the car frame...

Anyone else see this as potentially dangerous?

[Saishuuheiki]

Not to be overly simplistic, but wouldn't this be dangerous?

If you get into an accident with batteries in the car, you're fine as long as the battery doesn't hit you as it's destroyed. If your entire car is a battery, what is to stop it from electrocuting you when metal contorts in a weird way to cause you to be part of a short-circuit? Not to mention implications when you have to extract someone from a wrecked car

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[RobVB]

Lighter doesn't necessarily mean it'll me more dangerous. It all has to do with how well the material absorbs energy. Example: this recent article. Besides, don't forget about airbags, which weigh next to nothing.

Also, heavier vehicles do more damage to whatever they hit. A Honda Civic smashing into a wall is one thing, but I wouldn't want to be in a Honda Civic that gets hit by a Hummer.

Re:The new material? DiHydrogen Monoxide

[nicknamenotavailable]

Are you crazy? Dihydrogen monoxide kills over 4000 people a year in the US alone!

Replace the 'dihydrogen monoxide' with 'hydroxyethane'.
It might not improve things, but it seems like more fun.

Slashdot does it again!

[TimHunter]

Once again, in less than 30 minutes the Slashdot crowd finds multiple fatal flaws in the results of years of work by highly-trained educated people. And frequently without even bothering to RTFA! Is there nothing we can't do?

NOBODY expects the Slashdot Community! The chief weapon of the Slashdot Community is presumption...presumption and arrogance...arrogance and presumption.... Our *two* weapons are presumption and arrogance...and cynicism.... Our *three* weapons are presumption, arrogance, and cynicism...and an overweening sense of entitlement.... Our *four*...no.... *Amongst* our weapons... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as arrogance, presumption...I'll come in again.

Re:Slashdot does it again!

[Monkeedude1212]

Is there nothing we can't do?

Find a date for Valentines day?

Re:Slashdot does it again!

[Anonymous Coward]

This year it's February 14.

Thank you, thank you.

Re:Slashdot does it again!

[Jeng]

You remember the story about someone wanting to power a car off of hydrogen that is produced by burning magnesium in water?

Some ideas are just so stupid that they are put on the main page for us to poop on them.

Why is this one stupid?

Cost is first, this is built on top of carbon fiber which is already pretty damn expensive without also turning it into a battery. Yea, one day they may bring the cost down, but it is not in the reasonable future.

Kaboom is second. Its not just about energy storage, its about where you store the energy. With electric powered cars and petrol powered cars the energy is stored in a safe spot in the car, the body of the car is about as unsafe as you can get.

Re:Slashdot does it again!

[rdavidson3]

I don't understand... can you provide a car analogy for me?

Re:Slashdot does it again!

[Locke2005]

As an engineer, it is my JOB to think of reasons why something might not work, not to blindly accept the claims of scientists desperate to receive continued funding. I'm skeptical of claims about the Moller SkyCar too; "smart" people have been working on that for over 30 years. That doesn't mean it is not a scam.

Re:Slashdot does it again!

[cvtan]

I have been one of those highly-trained educated people and I can tell you this type of announcement is most likely 100% true and 150% BS (simultaneously!). The scientific part will be true, but there is NO appreciation of what it takes to get something into production in a real product. These stories are released to 1) increase the stature of the researchers in the scientific community (which helps them get funding and therefore keep their job) and 2) seduce VC groups because these days almost every professor is the CEO of a start-up. {At the last conference I attended (ISSCC) I think I was the only person I ran into that wasn't the president of something.} As proof of this I offer the huge number of web sites that advertise a neato product without showing any way to buy anything. So, just how is it that you are the "world leader in CMOS imaging", but have no sensors to sell? Hmmm... PS: You lived in a box by the side of the road? You were lucky!!

Re:Slashdot does it again!

[gr8_phk]

Actually, I write traction motor control software for a living. I'm a little more qualified to talk about electric vehicle tech than some Ph.D. trying to get grant money. The funny thing about slashdot is that it's a mix of total morons and highly competent people. In this instance, it doesn't take much competence to see the flaws.

Re:Slashdot does it again!

[TubeSteak]

Cost is first, this is built on top of carbon fiber which is already pretty damn expensive without also turning it into a battery. Yea, one day they may bring the cost down, but it is not in the reasonable future.

TFA is a summary 3 links removed from the original (and vastly more informative) press release:
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_5-2-2010-10-26-39

The researchers say that the composite material that they are developing, which is made of carbon fibres and a polymer resin, will store and discharge large amounts of energy much more quickly than conventional batteries. In addition, the material does not use chemical processes, making it quicker to recharge than conventional batteries. Furthermore, this recharging process causes little degradation in the composite material, because it does not involve a chemical reaction, whereas conventional batteries degrade over time.
...
...The team will improve the material's mechanical properties by growing carbon nanotubes on the surface of the carbon fibres, which should also increase the surface area of the material, which would improve its capacity to store more energy.

They are also planning to investigate the most effective method for manufacturing the composite material at an industrial level.

The 3-year European Union funded project includes researchers from...

So in 3 years we'll find out whether or not this technology is going to be plausibly brought down to the consumer level.

On the other hand,

[snspdaarf]

It will cut down on the number of dogs pissing on your tires.

Link to original article

[chinmay7]

Why do I have to click through two blogs with fluff to reach the original article on PhysOrg? - http://www.physorg.com/news184585514.html

I can only imagine...

[E. Edward Grey]

ME: Can you help me out here? I scraped a concrete barrier while trying to park my car.
REPAIR SHOP: Sure we can. That will be seven thousand dollars.

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[nine-times]

Also, heavier vehicles do more damage to whatever they hit. A Honda Civic smashing into a wall is one thing, but I wouldn't want to be in a Honda Civic that gets hit by a Hummer.

One thing to consider is that, if we ever got regular passenger vehicles to be substantially lighter, then we could pass additional safety regulations for vehicles above a certain weight. There are going to have to be trucks on the road, and so we have to account for that, but there's no real reason why Hummers can't be made subject to additional rules as to when and where you can drive them, if not made illegal for street use altogether.

Lighter vehicles don't necessarily mean less safety. A lot of the danger from car crashes comes not from speed alone, but by the massive amount of momentum of an extremely heavy machine going very fast. If all of our vehicles were much lighter, then we'd all be much safer.

neat idea

[wizardforce]

The idea is a very interesting one and the problem isn't so much the risk of electrical shock (done correctly there isn't one) but the cost of the material and the ease to which the material can be replaced if it ever fails. With normal car batteries, replacing them is easy. Just unhook the +/-
from the battery and lift it out. With the car body acting as a battery, if something fails, the entire material must be removed. This sounds to me to be fairly expensive as well as having to replace the material which its self may have a fairly significant cost. Over time that will be less the case but the problem of replacing a faulty "battery" remains.

Re:neat idea

[DoofusOfDeath]

With normal car batteries, replacing them is easy. Just unhook the +/-

I know what the "+" and "-" leads do, but "/" ? Is that the "spin" lead or something?

Re:neat idea

[Locke2005]

I'm not worried about electrical shock as much as the first fender-bender to ding one of the panels turning it into an arc welder. This is also a step backwards from unibody construction; any components designed for storing energy would have to be made from easily replaceable panels.

Re:neat idea

[mhajicek]

I would say there is a real and present danger of shock when your battery is you vehicle skin. I've seen a lot of cars with puncture damage. Puncturing such a charged sheet, be it battery or capacitor, would result in rapid, high-amperage discharge. This would cause melting and vaporization of the material, releasing toxic vapors and probably starting the whole vehicle on fire. Adjacent panels, when exposed to the radiant heat and spattering molten metal, would have a high likelihood of melting their insulating layers and shorting as well. I don't really want to be sitting inside a 100 kilowatt-hour battery when it self-discharges over a matter of seconds.

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[RavenChild]

Something else to consider would be the effect of a crash on the "external battery". TFA doesn't address this and if the substance isn't stable you might get a small version of a punctured Li-Ion. (Small fires on/around the vehicle are not good after a crash)

Might be a tech to watch but with the "still pretty far from commercialization" problem I don't expect to see this anytime soon.

premature discharge

[jimbolauski]

The problem I can't even fathom how to solve is the premature discharge problem, imagine the insulator being worn by vibration between the two panels or an accident. To make it safe the panels would need to be divided into cells that have 1 V max, how the hell do you divide up a solid panel into so many small pieces cheaply.

Re:premature discharge

[Locke2005]

The problem I can't even fathom how to solve is the premature discharge problem. Thanks... I feel better now knowing that I'm not the only one that experiences "premature discharge" now and then... is there a support group for this?

Yes, I too believe the first minor fender-bender would likely short the whole system out. Even if you managed to never hit anything, normal mechanical fatigue would eventually break down your insulation. I've seen capacitors literally explode when they short out (it vaporizes the dielectric); I'd hate to see what these panels do.

REAL link to original article

[argent]

Physorg is a tarpit. Here's the REAL original article.

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_5-2-2010-10-26-39

Re:In other news person electrocuted in fender ben

[kehren77]

I vote we make that a feature. Seriously, screw car alarms. I want my car to electrocute potential thieves (annoying neighbor kids, etc....).

Re:The new material? DiHydrogen Monoxide

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, DiHydrogen Monoxide is used by the Oil Companies, the Coal Companies, and the Tobacco Companies. And Big Pharma!

It's a capcitor!

[reg106]

The device is a capacitor that can also support mechanical load. The first hint is that they call it energy storage, but never actually call it a battery (though it may "replace a battery"). In the linked video, they are using a custom device (indicated by the Imperial College in the upper left), that is also labeled as capacitor charge-discharge indicator. The storage device appears to be two sheets of carbon fiber mesh held together with a "multifunctional resin", i.e. a nonconductive material with a high dielectric constant that is also capable of supporting a large mechanical load (or rather, binding to the carbon fiber so that it supports a large mechanical load, i.e. a composite). The idea of using ultracapacitors to replace batteries has been around for a long while. Ultracapactiors usually use esoteric materials and have problems with leakage over long periods of time, but have met with success in some applications. The military has funded a lot of research for ultracapacitors to replace batteries for the electronics on missiles, an ideal application since missiles potentially sit on the shelf for years, and then need to function precisely for a very short period of time. (the cap would be charged as part of the launch procedure.)

In the example mentioned in the video (GPS case made of the material), I'm not sure why it would reduce wiring, since the capacitor would still need to be charged, just as if it were being fed by the cars electrical system. I suspect there are some real advances in the work, but the interesting features don't come through in this video for public consumption.

Re:It's a capcitor!

[vlm]

Ultracapactiors usually use esoteric materials and have problems with leakage over long periods of time,

Yeah, what he said, also immense internal resistance compared to say, a camera flash cap, or a nicad battery.

A farad is a wonderful thing to have... unless it has ten ohms of internal resistance.

Re:It's a capcitor!

[Agripa]

The military has funded a lot of research for ultracapacitors to replace batteries for the electronics on missiles, an ideal application since missiles potentially sit on the shelf for years, and then need to function precisely for a very short period of time. (the cap would be charged as part of the launch procedure.)

Primary batteries with an indefinite shelf life already exist in the from of reserve batteries. Flooded cell secondary batteries also have an indefinite shelf life if the electrolyte is separate from the cells. Flooded cell lead-acid, nickel-iron, and nickel-cadmium are usually stored and shipped that way.

For a lot of applications, minimum battery size is limited by power density instead of energy density so high energy density capacitors could have an advantage in size and weight. A significant disadvantage however is their voltage discharge curve which both complicates power conditioning and limits usable energy and power.

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[Rei]

If Hummer would be willing to release their full crash test results breakdown, that'd be easier to evaluate.

Really, it's not that simple. All you can say is that the Civic will *decelerate faster* than the Hummer. But then again, you can say the same thing about a Hummer hitting a bus. No matter what size vehicle you are on the road, unless you're a bus or a semi, there are much heavier vehicles out there than you. Which means that you need to be able to withstand sudden deceleration.

But let's look at the Hummer/Civic crash. Let's put two vehicles heading toward each other at 30mph, with a completely inelastic collision, and say that the Hummer weighed twice as much as the Civic (both vehicles loaded). The net result is a single mass moving in the direction the Hummer was, at 20mph. The Hummer suffers a net deceleration of 20mph, while the Civic suffers a net deceleration of 40mph.

Now let's look at a Hummer vs. an ultralight vehicle that weighs a quarter as much as the Hummer. Same crash situation. The Hummer suffers a net deceleration of 12mph, while the ultralight suffers a net deceleration of 48mph.

So by making the ultralight half the weight of the Civic, it only decelerates 20% more in the accident than the Civic. Not what you might expect (twice as much). The same thing applies to a Hummer and a bus. The difference in deceleration between a Hummer hitting a bus and a Civic hitting a bus isn't much at all.

Now, what does this deceleration distance mean? That's the 10-million dollar question. What it means varies *dramatically* from vehicle to vehicle. First off, you have the length of your crumple zone. A longer crumple zone means more room to crush when an accident happens. The Hummer, with its steeply raked windshield and relatively short front end, doesn't leave you with all that much. Secondly, you need to look at how resistant the passenger compartment is to penetration. This varies tremendously.

There's one additional issue. Right now we're talking about head-on collisions. But that's not the only type of accident damage. For example, SUVs are famously bad in rollover accidents. Roof crush strength needs to be proportional to the weight of your vehicle, so making your vehicle heavier makes that a lot harder, since you don't want massive pillars holding up the roof (that'd look ugly, and SUVs are all about style).

So what do car accident statistics say? Statistically, last I checked, your odds of survival are best in a mid-sized SUV. The large SUV class actually had a lower survival rate than the mid-sized class did. However, most notably, there was a lot more variation *within* classes than *between* them. That is, to say, the safest cars were a heck of a lot safer than the least safe SUVs.

One final note: most vehicles today are steel-frame construction. But composites completely change the picture. Composite vehicles are both lighter but much better in accidents. Furthermore, they don't irreversibly deform, so there's no getting trapped in the car. This is ultimately the direction the auto industry will go.

The scientists are working with Volvo

[copponex]

Read the article.

Researchers from Imperial College London and their European partners, including Volvo Car Corporation, are developing a prototype material which can store and discharge electrical energy and which is also strong and lightweight enough to be used for car parts.

Now, take your foot out of your mouth, and enjoy the following quote:

"When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities." -David Hume

I'm living proof that slashdot is mostly full of arrogant people who enjoy misinformed and cynical deconstruction above all else.

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[thedonger]

What about two Civics having a head-on collision while the drivers are getting hummers? And which matters more, the speed of the Civics or the speed of the hummers?

Corr:

[Rei]

Just caught a typo:

The net result is a single mass moving in the direction the Hummer was, at 20mph.

That should read, "at 10mph". Also, re-reading your post, you were postulating Hummer vs. Hummer and Civic vs. Civic, not Civic vs. Hummer. Sorry about that. :)

Shocking

[RedTeflon]

Does this mean Im going to shock myself every time I get in the car by grounding it?
Couldn't they just put socks on the car and walk around on the carpet for a while?

Re:The new material? DiHydrogen Monoxide

[Hognoxious]

Dihydrogen monoxide is a gateway drug. Most adults who are addicted to hydroxethane drank DHMO when they were children.

Do I have to throw my car away every 3 years?

[syousef]

Lithium Ion batteries degrade whether used or just stored. Whether it's technically possible or not it must make care manufacturers drool at the thought of cars that only last 3 years.

Re:Do I have to throw my car away every 3 years?

[longbot]

Only if the big 3 get involved. Hell, if you live in a place that salts the roads, you already have to trade it in every 3 years if you drive it in the winter anyway.

Bonus

[HangingChad]

Researchers are currently developing a new auto body material that can store and release electrical energy like a battery.

And it would make the neighbor's dog peeing on my car a pay-per-view moment.

Re:Bonus

[sl149q]

Not quite as unusual as you might think... Google "dog electrocuted street lamp" for 17100 hits...

Quite the hazard in Brooklyn and other places.

Re:Bonus

[517714]

Currently? Currently? Really? God, how I hate puns!

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[TimHunter]

Not disagreeing with you. I just want to expand on this one statement.

No matter what size vehicle you are on the road, unless you're a bus or a semi, there are much heavier vehicles out there than you. Which means that you need to be able to withstand sudden deceleration.

And even if you are a bus or a semi, there's always 1) bridge abutments, and 2) mountainsides. The moral of the story is that there's always something out there with more inertia than you.

Idea...

[denzacar]

Well... I can see that being done.

If we are talking industrial production, that should be no different than making large quantities of PCBs. Only with somewhat simpler design.
Just print the thin layer of the conductor mesh over both sides of the insulator (preferably something foldable like fabric), cut it into shape, cut out the now "open" pieces (easy with an automated optical/electric/magnetic/Chinese system - take your pick) and reconnect where needed, isolate the whole thing on both sides.
There. You have your large, cheap, foldable sheet of capacitive fabric made out of many small pieces in a parallel connection.

You still have the problem of a bunch of big fuckin capacitors roaming the streets just waiting for a fender bender to turn into big balls of lightning.

On a plus side - no one will ever key your brand new paint job.
Or at least it will be easy to identify the perpetrator as he/she will be found right next to the car.

and also..

[greywire]

Lets slap a layer of solar collecting material onto this and grab some more power too.

One thing that occurs to me though. What happens if you get in an accident and the material is compromised? Would there be a potential electrocution issue?

Maybe you could also build security into this.. if you break in, the body zaps you..

Sounds like unobtanium

[Xamusk]

Just hope it's not the "20 million a kilo" one

You don't get it.

[gr8_phk]

You can't do shit with 12 volts. Hybrid cars use at least 150V, and electric cars (which I'm working on at this very moment) will be using 200-400V batteries (depends on the application). Voltage conversion is roughly 90-95 percent efficient, so throw away 10 percent of your range right there. However, we typically convert the high voltage down to run the low power stuff. If you wanted to do a 12V car and wanted to get 100kW you'd need over 8000 Amps DC. And yes, we're running motors around 110kW as traction motors plus or minus 30 percent (I'm not telling). One horsepower = 746 Watts, but I just figure 0.75kW.

BetterPlace

[Cyberax]

BetterPlace (seriously, that's a company name) plans to do exactly this: http://www.betterplace.com/solution/charging/

They're planning to install battery swapping stations in Israel first.

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[karnal]

There's one other issue with a civic vs hummer collision. Bumper height.

The bumper on a hummer in a head on collision with a civic would probably peel the hood back and then finally have the wheels of the hummer actually stop the civic front end.

Then we could go the other way. Let's say a corvette and a hummer. No chance in hell that the bumpers of these two cars would ever meet..... unless you lowered the hummer.

I always wondered why bumper heights aren't enforced on the road. At the very least, it would give the smaller cars a fighting chance. I have been looking into smaller cars (actually the civic is on my short list) and as much as I'd like to save gas, I'd probably end up going with a slightly larger car - just because it "feels" safer. Not because it is.....

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[Rei]

Ugh, don't get me started on bumpers. My (now) wife got into a 5mph accident that caused $3k worth of damage to our car. She hit a jacked up pickup that was still within the legal range; his bumper wasn't even close to ours. His trailer hitch cut right through the hood and engine compartment.

It's unfathomable to me that we mandate bumpers but don't require that they meet up.

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[pclminion]

Uh, the problem is not the lightweight vehicles. The problem is the HEAVY ones.

mod parent up

[chiui]

mod parent up. we need cars to be as light as possible, if there are not special (acknowledged by law) needs.
Else there is a more-mass race which will just get us more energy wasting cars. Or, perhaps, heavier vehicles should be made more secure (-> more deformable) for other vehicles too, so one does not buy an heavy car just to feel more safe against heavier cars.

Megatron is pleased!

[jameskojiro]

As they can round up the autobots (especially that prick bumblebee) and convert them directly into energon cubes!!!!!

Lifespan?

[bkaul01]

OK, so if a traditional battery lasts, on average, 5 years or so, and the exceptionally long-lived one in my car has made it a little over 8, let's be generous and assume a 10-year lifespan for this technology ... then you have to scrap and replace the body of the car?

Prior art

[PPH]

My car has been oxidizing for years.

impact on electrolysis/corrosion

[kimvette]

Hopefully this will reduce, not increase chassis and body corrosion.

Brings up a question...

[Lost Penguin]

How much will it cost to replace that battery?

Re:The new material? DiHydrogen Monoxide

[mcgrew]

Gateway drug? Dude, it's more addictive than heroin. I'm so addicted to DHMO that the withdrawal symptoms are fatal! In fact, going a single day without it would be pure hell!

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[mcgrew]

You, sir, feeling safe in your Escelade, are woefully misinformed. More people die in SUVs per passenger mile than any other type of vehicle, for myriad reasons, mostly because of their weight. The weight and top-heaviness makes them handle like drunken cows, their weight makes them harder to stop, their topheaviness makes them prone to rollovers, they lack crumple zones that increase the impact on the human body, the driver's misinformed perception of personal safety makes them less diligent while driving.

The safest vehicle is a minivan, which usually can hold more passengers than the wasteful and deadly SUV.

If you drive an SUV, your message to the world is "I may be stupid, but at least I'm rich."

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[mcgrew]

On the contrary, a quick google search shows that SUVs are even more deadly to their own passengers than they are to other vehicles. I recounted the resons in an earlier comment, no reason to be redundant.

Crash tests tell little. The best way to survive a crash is to avoid it, and in an SUV avoiding a crash is far harder than any other vehicle.

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[Rei]

You're linking to a book. I'm referring to official US transportation casualty statistics. I can dig them up again if you'd like. SUVs have, on average, have a lower per-passenger-mile fatality rate than cars. But there is a much greater difference between models than between class; the safest cars are far safer than the least safe SUVs.

Re:Lighter is not always a good thing.

[mcgrew]

The US DOT stats were what I was googling for, but my googlefu is weak today. The last I looked, as a class SUVs had more fatalities per passenger mile than any other vehicle, and minivans were the safest.

Myself, I drive a sedan. I don't usually haul more than four passengers at a time.