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UK Students Build Electric Car With 248-Mile Range
da_how writes "A group of students and graduates at Imperial College London have built an electric car with a massive range — 248+ miles on a charge at 'reasonable' highway speeds (60 mph). They did this by filling the car to the absolute max with as many lithium iron phosphate batteries as possible — 56 kWh — and designing a very efficient direct drive powertrain, about 90% batteries-to-wheels at highway speeds. The choice of vehicle is an interesting one: it's a converted Radical SR8 — a track racing car with a speed record on the Nurburgring. Not an obvious contender for an endurance vehicle (no windscreen either!) — but then they claim it's lightweight to start with, being constructed of steel space frame and glass fiber. Also, Radical is based in the UK and provided some help and sponsorship. The students plan to drive their 'SRZero' 15,000 miles down the Pan American Highway, beginning July 8 in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and ending up in Tierra Del Fuego three month later. That's about 60 charges."
It's positively electrifying!
Come on, that's puntastic!
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One thing glaringly missing from the article is the cost of the battery pack. On the open market right now, 56kWh of LiFePO4 cells runs a bit over US$120,000.
15,000 miles down the Pan American Highway
They should do a little more research, as I wish them luck getting across the Darien Gap. There IS no highway from Panama to Colombia - they'll have to take the ferry like everyone else.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The Tesla Roadster has a 245 mile range. And basic stuff like bumpers.
The student car looks like it has about a 3 inch ground clearance. If that. That's not going to get very far on anything less than a perfect road. And they want to drive it down from Prudhoe Bay? Right.
That's something called "proof of concept".
What is the 'proof of concept' here? That if you make a bigger fuel tank you'll be able to go further? Sorry, but electric cars have been around for years. You can buy your own from Tesla Motors.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
We all get the concept. What we are waiting for is a practical solution.
Some things really don't need to be proven. Sometimes, you can just apply a bit of simple logic to determine whether an idea is plausible.
Though, maybe I should propose to my boss that we experiment with my salary. If he increases it, I think I'll receive more money. But, just to be sure, we should do a proof of concept thing. Say a 50% bump just to try it out and see if it really works. If that works, we can do a 200% bump and let it run for a few years. If I'm still getting more money 5 years from now, we'll have proven the concept.
down the Pan American Highway, beginning July 8 in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and ending up in Tierra Del Fuego three month later. That's about 60 charges
Heh.....it's also not connected completely (need to take a ferry for part of it), and it is dangerous. For example, on the stretch between Guatemala and El Salvador, you will frequently find highway robbers. And of course, like any highway, there are traffic jams. So....that 60 charges is going to grow. If it can find a place to charge....some of those countries have 110 volt outlets.
But whatever, don't let all this discourage them. I'd love to read their trip report.
Qxe4
In Germany (and probably most of Europe) we use wires hung above the tracks, not a third rail.
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I'm going to go with the mid flight refueling concept here. However, that is a bit awkward for highway driving and we'll need to stream line the process. Stay with me here....
Really, there is enough coverage across the body of the car that we can use this as a wide area positive terminal. It's really straight forward and we don't need to mess around with large complicated tubes. (Tubes are what screwed up the internet. I read it on slashdot.)
We can tie the body directly into a series of high yield capacitors as a quick staging area for the power burst. This array can connect to the charging mechanism that can safely deliver the power to the the lion batteries. (Remember where I said stay with me... keep at it).
For the final piece of the puzzle to really make it work and give it that McDonalds on the free way touch we'll need a large platform vehicle. All along the bed will be tesla coils ready to charge the next vehicle that pulls in. These charging stations can optionally be installed in toll booth or bridge locations as well.
With some simple license plate recognize we can easily bill the charge to the motorist at the end of the month.
Now, we have a practical electrical car design that will also eliminate both the homeless and bug populations.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
So what -does- it prove ? That if you stuff a lightweight car to the top with batteries, then you've got 50Kwh worth of energy, or an amount comparable to the energy in 1.5 gallons of gas. Sure, electric drivetrains are more efficient, so this gives the car the range of perhaps 3 gallons of gas. But at the cost of having no space for storage, and of making the car hundreds of kilos heavier.
If you stuffed a 18-wheeler with batteries, and drove it at 40mph, it'd go a fair distance too, but it wouldn't be terribly useful, the entire point of 18-wheelers is to have space for CARGO.
Not a bad experiment.
You'd be instantly first on the list of "people to fire when we need to reduce costs" and wouldn't probably reach the fifth year, disproving the concept.
no, recharge times are not really a issue. but you have to realize that you use a electric car differently then a gas powered one.
you charge it at home at night, and its full in the morning, every morning. most people could do a week on a single nights charge.
that one time a year(if that) where you have to go further then the cars range you can always borrow or rent a gas powered car (or even take the train or something)
the one thing holding electric back is purchases price. the lithium batteries are expensive (all the rest is cheaper)
UK Students Build Electric Car With 248-Mile Range
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Submission: UK students build electric car with 264 mile range by da_how (1822480)
264 going once, going twice? Do we have 270???
I guess it doesn't matter, because I bet those girls that would date these students if only they had a car live just one mile further away...
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How many times do we have to hear this argument? In the absolute worst case scenario (a coal grid), EVs beat gas cars in pollution. In a real scenario, with 10+ percent renewable and nuclear, and most natural gas, EVs kill gas cars in pollution. The amount of pollution produced per unit of electricity is also falling.
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Exactly right, batteries are too expensive and you charge everywhere. My money is not on lithium tech. It is on NiCad, NiMH, lead acid and most importantly nickel-iron batteries. Fast charging is bad because it means expensive and brittle batteries as well as extreme loads on the power grid. Think about 1000 kW charging. It just does not work. Meanwhile, we have the solution to range anxiety: a biodiesel generator.
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So after we move away from powering cars using fossil fuels, what do you propose we power them with if not electricity?
I don't mean to troll, and I'm sure it was a fun and great learning experience for the students. In this regard, it is a big success and kudos for the team. But as far as the technology goes, I'm not very impressed. I mean, they took at very light vehicle, filled it up with standard batteries, and made it go. There is no true innovation here, just putting pieces together. And we should not blame them for this. The breakthrough we are all waiting for is in the batteries. Until this happens, all articles about electric vehicles will be along the same lines
As for their plan trip, I hope they have a good maintenance team driving next to them. The Panamerican road is by no means a proving ground or race track. In some parts its asphalt is quite damaged. I'm not saying that it can't be driven, but they are not very suitable for such a tuned vehicle with low clearance.
I wish them best of luck!
Unfortunately, our nations (USA) power grid is sorely in need of an upgrade. I've read numerous times that even with an increase in nuclear, solar, and wind power, the means of distribution is very limited. Second goes for vehicles that will be recharging from said grid.
If there was ever a need to spend stimulus money on a project, it would be our nations infrastructure. Both at the state and federal level. But our politicians decided to fritter away funding in useless "make work" projects that doesn't provide a damn bit of investment.
Too late now to ask for another stimulus. Our nation shot that wad one too many times. Now, we really are stuck using oil for a very long time. At least, until our trillions of debt can get reduced. Fat chance, but I digress.
Life is not for the lazy.
It proves there are lots of people/companies willing to give students money for doing stuff that's rather useless from a scientific and practical viewpoint.
I'd like to see how they handle practical stuff like "air conditioning". If they think that's not important, then that's yet another reason why their car is not important. A college student might put up with 35C or higher temperatures on that "cool trip", most car buyers won't. A 3-4 kilowatt car air conditioner is going to hurt an EV's range a lot more than a fossil fuel powered one.
I'm sure you'd be able to get a "normal car" to travel the same journey for cheaper, faster and in better comfort.
Anyway if the battery costs drop and capacities increase, we'd see more electric cars. To me, Nissan is the one that's doing useful stuff - apparently they've got battery costs down to USD375 per kWh: http://gas2.org/2010/05/05/report-nissan-leafs-battery-costs-a-staggeringly-cheap-375kwh-to-produce/
What Nissan is doing is far more useful than a bunch of students going from Alaska to Argentina. Computer analogy (instead of car analogy ;): the former are like Intel/AMD - actually pushing the tech, the latter are just a bunch of case modders.
MARTA, the public transit light rail in Atlanta uses a 3rd rail.
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With
NiMH batteries
Place for 4 occupants & a trunk for luggage
Crash tested
in 1996...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solectria_Sunrise
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One thing that stands out to me is that the rear spoiler and front splitter would make for a lot of aero drag, especially where the rest of the car is rather likely to be quite aerodynamically slippery looking at it's shape. They've also tackled rolling resistance and drive-train efficiency so any gains in aerodynamics would greatly extend range. At 60mph it's the greatest force acting on this car, and with their steps towards efficiency it is even greater. If they would just ditch the big spoiler and the front splitter, they'll watch their range shoot up. 0.50 to 0.30 cd might account for 40% improvement in a vehicle where rolling resistance has been already addresed.
Don't get me wrong what these guys are doing is great, but ~270 miles range is not terribly impressive considering that's what a stock Tesla has achieved.
Ditching the wing and splitter could have yielded them 20-40% improved range at open road speed, at the small expense of the race car look. It would take a few minutes with a spanner to remove, and to put back on for parking up for a photo shoot with the local press. I hope this is what they do. Some further work with some duct tape or some more ambitious aero mods with some coroplast http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/aerocivic-how-drop-your-cd-0-31-0-a-290.html ecomodder* style and they could have squeezed out more efficiency. The very best road vehicles approach 0.15 Cd, this would have given them a shot at 500 miles range. Lower the speed a little and they may have gone 600mi / 1000km.
I can't find Radcial SR8's aero stats anywhere but I know such track day specials have a fair bit of down force by design, so a drag coefficient above 0.50 is not uncommon. This is largely the result of the wings, air damn, and underbody design. High down force set up might be over 0.70 or more. To compare, a SUV is about 0.40, a good sedan 0.32, and a Toyota Prius 0.27, Aptera is about 0.17 these vehicles are not even designed not to generate lift let alone downforce.
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After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Charcoal? ;^) Non-fossil and renewable!!!
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So?
The cars won't appear there overnight. They'll be bought gradually, and be mostly charged at night, when the grid has spare capacity. As the load grows, the places with least spare capacity left will be upgraded first. You don't have to do an "overhaul the entire US" project. And why would it need a stimulus? If people are spending more on electricity, that's where the funding for the infrastructure should come from.
I'm glad you are not impressed, as this car works less well than your homebrew electric car, but it's impressive enough.
FTA, the engineering was getting a 90% efficiency on the power transfer from battery to wheel on the highway. That it gets almost the range of a commercial effort with cash...
What is the 'proof of concept' here?
90% efficient drive train and student built. Perhaps by the time the elementary school kids are building them the auto makers will finally be too ashamed to claim it just can't be done.
I'm not. Hydrogen is a poor electrochemical reagent, and has extremely low energy density leading to massive storage problems (best way to store hydrogen is gasoline). A far, far better idea is that of the aluminium economy. Al-air fuel cells are 100 times cheaper than hydrogen cells, and just as efficient. Aluminium smelting just as efficient as water electrolysis while being performed on a large scale. So with no tech development, Al > H2.
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One gallon of gasoline has 115000 BTU of usable energy. One KWH has 3413 BTU of usable energy. Thus one gallon of gasoline has 33.69KWH of energy. Therefore the 56KWH battery pack has 1.6 gallons of gasoline and can push the vehicle at 60MPH for 248 miles. That means the two engine EV car gets 155 MPG. Oh damn you're right, who'd ever want to drive something that gets 155 MPG at highway speeds! What a worthless hunk of junk! I'd rather go drive in my gas powered car that gets 150mph on the highway ... oh wait, they don't make one of those.
Now tell me which car are you driving that gets you 248 miles on 3 gallons of gasoline. Because I want to buy one. That would mean my car could go more than 1500miles on a tank of gas. I know, I get about 300. Why I could go anywhere in the US one one tank of gas (18 US Gal), from where I live, for $48 in my car at $3/g ($72 @ $4), or on a trip to New Orleans and back (I spent $350 in gas on my last trip there).
This car's battery pack is equal to about 12 gallons of gas in my car. Sure there are cars out now that are about double what I get, making it about 6-8 gallons best case scenario for gas. Your 3 gallon estimate is just bunk.
Lastly, a full tank of gasoline is about 150-200 kilos. So you have some valid points. Batteries are definitely heaver and they don't weigh any less when discharged, not like an empty gas tank. However gasoline has greater volume than batteries, and gas engines also take up more volume. Also, the electric motors are about 500 kilos less in weight than gas engine. So they added weight in batteries and reduced weight in engine. This car as a gas powered with a full tank would be heavier than the electric version, and about the same empty. So this race car has room for two passengers, and not much else. A lot like a corvette. Sure they used a high tech frame and lightweight body, but they could have made a custom bodyshell that had room for cargo, like the corvette. The batteries are about 3x heavier than gas and of about equal volume.
My source on those energy numbers came from those dummies over at Oak Ridge so they probably haven't got a clue about energy.