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Company Builds Fast Charging Station For Electric Cars
thecarchik writes "Japanese based JFE Engineering has released its ultra-fast charge station. Designed to comply with the CHAdeMo standard developed by Tokyo Electric Power Company, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Toyota, the system is capable of charging a 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev from empty to 50% full in just three minutes. Even just three minutes plugged into the fast-charge station was enough to enable a standard 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev to travel a further 50 miles before further charging was required."
This thing is putting nearly a quarter megawatt (240kw) drain on the power grid during use.
I wonder if it has some sort of means of load smoothing and a limited duty cycle, or if it's going to need its own substation.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
I have never owned or even driven one save for a golf cart. My experience with the golf cart leaves me doubt as to whether an electric car can deliver enough torque to climb steep inclines.
Heck, what happens when you are stuck in snow all the while, the spinning of wheels eating away at your juice? Scary, isn't it?
...there are no queues.
more over, electric cars require materials for the batteries that are commodities. I expect these materials will become the new oil. It would be better to invest in technology to figure out a way to make a hydrogen car viable.
they lack the range to be useful outside of a commuter scenario
And that scenario only makes up, what, about 80% of the passenger car miles driven in North America?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
The burning of oil is non-reversable. Once used it is gone for good. Batteries may degrade with use but the original material is still there and available for reconditioning.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The way to make a hydrogen car viable is to take your nth generation series hybrid car and replace the engine/generator with a hydrogen fuel cell. Once you are mainly using electricity off the grid, you only need to refill your gas tank occasionally, since you are only doing it every now and again, going to a hydrogen dispensary is less of an issue, even if there isn't one right around the corner. As hydrogen/electric cars become more palatable, hydrogen fuelling plants become more common, eventually you don't need as big of a battery to get between them.
A migration path is key. series hybrid cars let companies experiment with different supplimental energy sources without producing vehicles completely dependent on some external infrastructure.
Heck, I'd like to see a 'standard' for pluggable electric generators in series hybrid cars, pull out the diesel engine, replace it with a hydrogen fuel cell, or a bigger battery pack, or just leave it out and have a pure electric car.
http://notanumber.net/
So you can go over 900 miles with your car. So? How often do people do 900 mile commutes in a day? Rarely. Electric cars aren't just ready for prime time. They're ready for the end of cheap, easy oil (whose time has come, if you didn't notice how we now have to go 1+ miles under the surface of the ocean to get it).
From the Chevy Volt wiki page:
With fully charged batteries, enough electrical energy will be stored to power the Volt up to 40 miles (64 km). This distance is capable of satisfying the daily commute for 75% of Americans, whose commute is on average 33 miles (53 km).
Your 900 mile one-way range? Useless. An electric vehicle's ability to use any power source that can be turned into electricity (be it wind, nuclear, solar, coal, etc)? Priceless.
And depending on where you live, that nighttime power would be dirt cheap. I pay $0.01/KwH between midnight and 5am in the Chicago suburbs for power from ComEd (time of day metering; power is nuclear from Byron generating facility).
Hydrogen will always lose out, because it's simply an energy store and not an energy source. Anyplace we can get hydrogen from? No. We have to convert natural gas to hydrogen (might as well run vehicles on natural gas) or crack H20 into hydrogen with electricity (which is horribly inefficient). Electricity is the end game.
Storing hydrogen is a chore to say the least, and that's without thinking about what makes a fuel cell. Call it prejudice but when I imagine the future of the car I don't see a hydrogen IC engine in the spotlight; electric motors are so much better.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
So you can go over 900 miles with your car. Thats over 9000 decimiles.
God spoke to me.
Sorry to burst your little bubble, but bio fuels derived from crops take more energy to produce than you get out of them (not to mention taking up already scarce land needed for food production), as do hydrogen/oxygen mixtures obtained through electrolysis of water. Anyone with a basic knowledge of science can tell you that.
But how many miles to the hoghead does he get?
Have you looked the the food commodity prices lately? Even with the large gains seen today, the prices are still below the cost of production. If land for food was as scarce as you claim, should that food not be worth more than it costs to produce?
That is so wrong on so many levels. I think my head may explode.
It's cheap because not many people are charging their electric cars at night. That will change real fast, and the same grid that can't handle everyone running their air conditioner will collapse under the load.
Trust me, you won't see fully electric cars replacing gasoline until we develop cold fusion. Just google how many Joules you get in a pound of gasoline versus a pound of anything else. The technology simply does not exist and will not for a long time. The stuff you see now is just small incremental improvements. Oh and you math geeks, figure out how many pounds of coal was burned to charge that battery halfway.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Designed to comply with the CHAdeMo standard...the system is capable of charging a 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev from empty to 50% full in just three minutes. Even just three minutes plugged in...enable[d] a standard 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev to travel a further 50 miles before further charging was required."
Good job being.... very redundant? I supposed you'll want some kind of gold star or something...
Speaking of education, guess what time it is? That's right, it's Mathdot Time!.
Usually around this time I whip out my trusty calculator (and before those mod-point-endowed HP-calculator /.-ers down-mod me into oblivion, yes, "RPN FTW!"), but in this case I think we can just use the power of our brains. Just try not to think too hard or you might hurt your brain.
And...it's a story problem!
If samzenpus can charge his 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev from empty to 50% full in just three minutes, and if three minutes plugged in...enable[s] his standard 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev to travel a further 50 miles, what is the range of his vehicle?
100 miles? That's it?
Okay, yeah, apparently electric cars are kind of screwed...
coding is life
Let me pick some choice headlines:
IMF Survey: Biofuel Demand Pushes Up Food Prices
World Bank Chief: Biofuels Boosting Food Prices : NPR
The biofuel factor in rising food prices | Green Tech - CNET News
The Tortilla Effect: Biofuel and food prices
Just because you don't see the price at Walmart going up significantly, doesn't mean elsewhere the price for food isn't going up.
We have to convert natural gas to hydrogen (might as well run vehicles on natural gas) or crack H20 into hydrogen with electricity (which is horribly inefficient).
There is always option (c): find another, more efficient way to produce hydrogen (e.g. bioengineered bacteria, or something). I still wouldn't necessarily bet on hydrogen, but it's not impossible that someone might come up with something practical.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Electric vehicles will become widely available starting in 2011. The current Administration supports a goal of one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. A previous PNNL study showed that America’s existing power grid could meet the needs of about 70 percent of all U.S. light-duty vehicles if battery charging was managed to avoid new peaks in electricity demand.
http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=365
I'm not that worried. There is plenty of nighttime generating capacity.
If a) creating it was practical, b) storing it was practical (instead of vessels that need to hold it at tens of thousands of PSI) and c) it was cheaper than electric vehicles, it would be possible. I don't see those things happening though.
see subject. Coming soon. (disclaimer: 2010 Dollars).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I think that, on some level, owning a car actually represents a certain measure of personal freedom to many individuals in our society: specifically, the freedom to be able to go to and fro, wherever one wants, and whenever they want. I think that this association is made subconsciously even if they don't actually exercise that liberty. To that end, I believe that people's problem with the range of EV's is less of an issue of actually needing a really large range on a daily basis and more an issue of having the freedom to drive almost anywhere they might want to on a spur of the moment, if they should so choose.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Even three minutes is a long time to spend actually at the charger, and as another poster noted that produces a hell of a load on the electrical grid which limits the practicality of deployment for further speed improvements in charging.
I saw an article a bit ago doing the math about how many cars can move through a electric equivalent of a gas station, and something like 10x more gasoline powered cars are able to fuel up FULLY over the course of an hour. And of course if you are only charging for 50 miles station congestion will only be worse.
Purely electric cars are simply not a practical thing, and really don't mesh well with how people like to use cars in America.
That's why I think the alternative fuel of choice will (and should) be Hydrogen. People (consumers and stations and providers) already know how to deal with liquids, it's just an adaptation of existing infrastructure.
Yes it's bloody hard to store and expensive to produce right now. But imagine how much less so it would be (especially production) if the same amount of money were being poured into R&D around Hydrogen cars as we see being poured into electric and solar power.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree completely. As with most issues, it's a matter of separating the emotional part from the practical part.
100 miles? That's it?
It's a step in the right direction.
For my driving habits this would nearly work* and I would only have a couple of reservations. Early adopters normally put up with a bit of pain to help spur a technology along. If this car would be available at a competitive price point I might actually buy one knowing that it is a stepping stone to what people really envision being offered in an electronic car.
* This car wouldn't have worked for 3 trips, that I can think of, in the last 2 years.
Sorry to burst your little bubble, but bio fuels derived from crops take more energy to produce than you get out of them
Are you including solar inputs or not? If you're only counting man introduced energy sources such as electricity, fossil fuels, and such, then the answer is actually 'it depends'.
The study that said that ethanol wasn't energy positive was rather pessimistic, and assumed inefficient plants. Newer designs are more efficient and flip back to the positive side.
Just, well, not enough to justify the amount of land it'd take, which is why I support the ideas for cellulosic ethanol and the fuels made from algae grown in trays filled with seawater out in the desert.
Well, that and saving the ethanol, biodiesel, and biogasoline for uses that suit them, not short trips to work or the mall - use an EV for that.
I don't read AC A human right
This source also has some more technical details, like charging current, how much current the charging station will draw from the grid (20kW), that the charging station has twin batteries with different properties, that car makers need to adopt new battery types for it to work:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20100621/183598/
I, for one, refuse to buy an electric vehicle until it has a range of 1000 miles on a single charge, and can be fully recharged in under 30 seconds. Anything less is completely impractical. I also want 12 cup holders. When they achieve this performance level, I will find another rediculous excuse not to buy one.
And I will continue to insist on my god given right to mis-spell rediculous.
Oil loses out on the same basis... the only difference is that with oil, all the energy that went into making it was done for us over the course of many millions of years. The problem, however, is that we are consuming that energy far faster than we can replenish it. Using hydrogen as a fuel, you create water vapor, which in turn you can extract hydrogen from later. It's not remotely free to do this, of course, but at least the resource is immediately available instead of having to wait millions of years for it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Split the battery bank into two and charge them in 90s.
Nullius in verba
I am talking about the actual trade of food commodities, not the price you see at the grocery store. Corn, for example, costs approximately $4.50 per bushel to produce (from the field to the grain elevator). Right now, the best I can do on the sale of a bushel of corn is $3.65. Based on current market bids, a farmer in my region will lose almost a dollar on every bushel produced.
If food is even nearing scarcity, why is nobody willing to pay at least a fair market value for the food? The laws of supply and demand seem to indicate that we have an incredible amount of food that we have no idea what to do with. Biofuels at least find a home for all of that excess crop that is going to be grown anyway.
Watch from 1:15 to 1:56, avoid idiot blithering.
Food in the United States is all heavily subsidized. This comes in various forms, such as subsidies for corn, soybeans, sugar, cotton etc. We also have relatively cheap gasoline. In some cases, agribusiness gets paid to not grow certain crops so as to not alter the price too much. It's one of the reasons why we are today an obese nation - food is cheap and plentiful in our country. Were we to take away the subsidies, we would have the ability to spend our money elsewhere, or not, but prices at the supermarket would increase.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Hydrogen will always lose out, because it's simply an energy store and not an energy source. Anyplace we can get hydrogen from? No. We have to convert natural gas to hydrogen (might as well run vehicles on natural gas) or crack H20 into hydrogen with electricity (which is horribly inefficient). Electricity is the end game.
If electric cars were the best solution (or energy efficiency was the only concern), we would be exclusively burn oil in more efficient power plants, and using that to charge batteries in cars... rather than converting crude to gasoline to fill up.
the Toyota Fuel Cell vehicle gets 420 miles per tank of compressed hydrogen... sounds like they have the storage problem in hand. I agree that combustion hydrogen seems unlikely, but I still have high hopes for FCVs.
Some charger manufacturers claim amazingly short charge times of 30 minutes or less. With well-balanced cells and operating at moderate room temperatures, nickel-cadmium batteries designed for fast charging can indeed be charged in a very short time. This is done by simply dumping in a high charge current during the first 70% of the charge cycle.
In the second phase of the charge cycle, the charge current must be lowered. The efficiency to absorb charge is progressively reduced as the battery moves to a higher state-of-charge. If the charge current remains too high in the later part of the charge cycle, the excess energy turns into heat and high cell pressure. Eventually, venting will occur, releasing oxygen and hydrogen. Not only do the escaping gases deplete the electrolyte, they are highly flammable!
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The burning of oil is non-reversable. Once used it is gone for good.
Incorrect.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
But range gives diminishing returns. Sure, your car has a 900 mile range. What's your range? Personally I like to take a break every couple of hours. This break can be combined with a refuel.
So, 50-100 miles isn't enough. 200 miles will probably be fine. If I could leave my car at a recharge station and come back to it once it was done, then maybe I'd even be okay with a 30 minute recharge time.
hydrogen car viable.
No. Hydrogen is the worst fuel in the world by energy density. If you are interested in having a fuel-cell based system, though, there is a much better fuel for you. It has been concluded that overall, the electricity->wheels efficiency of hydrogen (after 90 years of research) is 25 percent (batteries are around 80 percent). The overall efficiency of an aluminium fuel cell system with very little technology development is 30 percent. But, the aluminium system costs 100 times less than the hydrogen system. And I'm sure many improvements can be made that could get us up to 60-70 percent efficiency. Aluminium is also made on a giant scale today using renewable (hydro) power. In the future, I'm sure will have wind and solar aluminium smelting.
If you actually want a hydrogen system, the conclusion is that a plug-in biodiesel hybrid is the best way to go. This is because biomass is the best source of hydrogen, and oils are the best way to store it. Fuel cells are just too expensive to compete with diesel generators.
Finally, the material problem for batteries is much worse for fuel cells, which are often platinum infested. While many research and lithium batteries are based on unobtainium that could be a social issue, there are many system that do not depend on the unobtainium. For example, lead acid, nickel iron, and nicad all don't contain unobtainium. I think that in the battery chemistry race, nickel iron (Edision) is the dark horse candidate. Nicad is also a good fast-charging solution.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
If hydrogen will lose out because it's an energy storage system and not a source, so will batteries. We have to think of hydrogen as a battery, not a source of energy. The hydrogen would have to come from the same place electricity came from. There's no theoretical reason a hydrogen fuel cell system can't be as efficient as a battery based system. Of course, this is not true in practice for a variety of reasons. Both batteries and hydrogen are electrical->chemical->electrical. Of course hydrogen is a loser because it is such a low energy density fuel. If you want fuel cells, metals like aluminium, iron and zinc are the "fuels" for the fuel cells.
If you really want to get rid of chemistry (which is not really needed), you have to look at superconducting energy storage.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
The Atom is a ridiculous car. I'd actually like to see a drag race between it and the Tesla Roadster.
Check out the Wrightspeed version (Wrightspeed X1). Basically a tesla-like powerplant in the atom frame... The thing flew by me while I was on a bike ride headed up Kings Mtn in Woodside a while back, had no idea what it was (other than extremely fast and quiet, and a 180MPGE license tag)
Video linky (pops)
Search youtube for more, including a race against a NASCAR stock car, Lamborghini, and others.
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Hydrogen isn't happening. The only reason there's any interest at all in elemental hydrogen as a form of energy storage is that it's a neat trick of chemistry that produces water as a product. But it's so much more convenient to attack those hydrogens to some carbon molecules. The easiest way to do this synthetically is to make methane/natural gas and use that. CNG vehicles are a mature technology that is not significantly more expensive than gasoline.
And of course, long chain hydrocarbons are an even better way to store hydrogen, in a nice compact liquid form like gasoline or diesel.
It's not just about going somewhere on the spur of the moment... it's going there at all. Now that the US no longer has functioning mass transit except in limited corridors, there is frequently no practical alternative to driving. For example, next week my son and I need to travel from Connecticut to West Virginia. Try doing that by train or bus. What makes sense to me is owning an EV for daily use and renting a longer range vehicle when needed. For that to work well for me, I need an EV with about 150-mile range. (An EV would also make sense as the second car for a lot of two-car families.)
Indeed, hybrids are far more practical, but it seems that you are misrepresenting the promise of microturbines. From the wikipedia article:
Typical microturbine efficiencies are 25 to 35%. When in a combined heat and power cogeneration system, efficiencies of greater than 80% are commonly achieved.
In automotive applications, the waste heat goes unused; so the efficiency will be in the 25 to 35% range.
Another promising option for hybrids is the OPOC engine, which is a simple, efficient, and clean 2-stroke engine. It is a very interesting design, with a number of other advantages as well.
When coupled with a capacitor/flywheel/etc. to allow for regenerative braking and acceleration, the requirements for the power source in a hybrid are actually very minimal. This allows for the creation of an extremely efficient vehicle, and as far as energy density goes, you can't do much better than hydrocarbons.
I suggest storing the hydrogen around long carbon chains. It's been done for a very long time. :)
Library of Congresses is that?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Which, unless you're regularly making 450+ mile trips, is pretty irrelevant.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
As Springsteen said, is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
My car gets 40 rods to the hogs head, and that's the way I likes it!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
The world has moved on, the 1970s and 1980s happened and experience in a few places showed fast breeders are a very expensive dead end.
There are now better ideas in nuclear power and the problem fast breeders set out to solve - scarcity of high grade fuel - turns out not to be a problem anymore since newer designs are less fussy about fuel. Some things like accelerated thorium (a very different sort of breeder reactor) hold the potential to take depleted fuel from other reactors and use that without any incredibly expensive reprocessing.
Waste is of course a problem, but the answer is to deal with it instead of the childish attitude from salesfolk of pretending it isn't a problem. No other industry has to pretend that it is "clean".
All this is going to take serious R&D work instead of the pathetic begging for a handout we've seen from the US nuclear industry that is twenty years behind South Africa. The US nuclear industry probably spends more per year on PR than the entire South African development program that produced the majority of what became the new pebble bed reactors in China.
The French experience to an extent can be called putting all of your eggs in one basket, as seen from having rolling shutdowns to fix a problem in all plants of the same design. Sometimes it pays off, and sometimes it doesn't - the answer (in hindsight) may be to get more of a mature design before you build a lot of them.
And exactly what charges your batteries ?
Hint : probably electricity from a coal-fired lower plant.
That's a stupid argument because the solution is obvious: use wind, hydro, solar or nuclear energy to charge the vehicle.
For gasoline engines, no clean solution exists at all.
while true;do echo -e -n "\033[s\n\033[u\134_\033[B";done
Given today's technology, I can well imagine that an electric-only car with its fairly limited range won't suit everyone - but it will suit some people. I have a short commute. An electric car would be perfect for me. What I want to see is diversity in propulsion systems. A one-solution fits all model is probably unrealistic. Gasoline doesn't fit my requirements as well as an all-electric car for example. There are a very wide variety of vehicles from trucks through 2-seat sports cars. Why not endorse a wide variety of propulsion systems too?
With all the problems caused by oil politics and oil pollution, I would really, really like an all-electric car. Then we can work on renewable energy sources and the oil stain on so many lives will become a distant memory.
So let's have hydrogen fuel cells, series hybrids, pure electric and even pure gasoline cars (when the need arises). Then let consumers choose with their wallets what works for them.
It's only a free country if you have choices.
I hope it's more of a riff than a rant...
1) Driven an electric...
I have: in the 90's I drove the Dodge electric minivan. It was EERIE. And very cool. Also driven many Cushman carts, and I can't help but think if 1940's tech can operate so well, why are we still having problems? (Yes, no heater at -20, but they do scoot through the outdoors at that temp as long as their spend 90% of their time indoors. So why can't we make a car that'll reverse that 90:10 ratio?)
2) Range
Get OVER it people. 100 miles is FINE. This is a daily-driver. Stop thinking that you're gonna load the fambly and belongings on it and make like the Clampetts. You want to go 500 miles to Chicago? You have choices: Bus, Plane, Train (mass transit) or some kind of carpool with like-minded in a fuel-burner. There's a pizza-delivery shop that runs 70's vintage electric cars, and as far as I know, they do so in the winter. (Galactic Pizza) All short-range, out of a garage, and a nightmare for scaling, but it's a START!
We'll make specialized variations for those willing to pay for the range. (Deliveries, patrols, whatever: usually fleets.) You need the range? Turn in your personal car, for a time-share rental of a fleet.
3) But...But...But...
"If I get stuck in the snow in my electric, I could freeze to death..."
Yes, and you might be UNABLE to out run a T-Rex.
STOP with the conspiracy (or movie plot) thinking. We can ALL come up with a hundred reasons, threats, dangers wherein {the novel tech} will horribly fail. This same logic has been applied to resist all kinds of change, and it makes no sense. YES, there are problems, but they're LESS than the problems we're having with {the old tech}.
Don't put your head in the sand, but stop looking for imaginary dangers. These "counter examples" are not even close to whatever the REAL "killer problems" are with {the novel tech}.
CONCLUSION:
Hydrocarbons are FEEDSTOCKS, not fuels. They were historically needed as fuels, but now our point-source problem is killing us. How long can a steamship go burning it's wood furnishings and fittings? We should look back on this period with a wry smile and think of how Ethanol should've illustrated this foolishness: Burning food for fuel is a loser's bet.
We may use hydrogen as the storage-medium (we're really good at thermal conversion on a mass-produced scale); maybe batteries (we're pretty good at chemical conversion and distro on a mass-production scale); maybe fuel-cells (we're learning FAST); maybe ultra-caps (first responders deal with dangerous fuels all the time, KERS has been de-fanged); flywheels; hamsters, bitten by radioactive spiders, to have electric muscles. WHATEVER, but we need to start thinking "electric economy."
Mass transit is the wave of the future. Social travel with your fellow man is all there is to it. Who wants to compare the biggest possible SimCity WITH and WITHOUT mass-transit? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?
I'm astounded that the Slashdot community isn't leading the charge on this. Come on, fellow early adopters, let's get this rock rolling up the hill! This time for SURE!
Why not fill a box with batteries any/or capacitors?
-----
Consider that the average person parks their car all night; an overnight charge from the 20A outlet in the garage would be plenty for said average person.
But.... But... But, what if they need a quick charge?
Well, my friend, that's why you fill the charger itself with a supply of batteries and capacitors, which it charges and maintains while the vehicle is not charging.
When you need a quick charge, you plug in as normal, then hold down the QUICK CHARGE button as you turn on the charger. Then, the charger uses its internal power storage, supplemented by the house current, to provide a quick charge. After this process completes, the charger allows its batteries to cool, then begins recharging them.
See? It's not that hard. 3 modes, really:
Charge/maintain internal batteries.
Charge/maintain external batteries.
Charge/maintain both internal and external batteries.
Would a system like this work at a "refueling" station? No, they'd need high-draw setups like discussed in this article. This is the quick-charger we'd all have in our garage.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It is a mistaken notion that what you put into your tank is a energy source as opposed to an energy storage system. Gasoline and Diesel fuel, as well as most other "energy sources" have to be processed, refined, and extracted through various means as well in order to get them to whatever it is that you need that energy. Gasoline certainly doesn't come out of the ground in a form that is useful to stick inside of the tank ready for you to use.
I do agree, however, that hydrogen is in particular a tough nut to crack precisely for the same reasons it makes a very useful fuel: As an energy storage system, hydrogen compresses very well and contains pound for pound more energy than most other energy storage systems. The raw components can be found in numerous places, but all of those have the hydrogen already attached to other elements in some manner that makes it an endothermic process to extract the hydrogen.
One highly efficient hydrogen generation process that I've seen is to dump water down a geothermal vent and have the water hit magma at a high enough temperature that it disassociates the hydrogen from the oxygen. The "steam" comes up in a form that is not only useful for its thermal properties, but as the hydrogen is already "cracked" from the oxygen, it can be shunted off to some storage tanks for later use or for external processes.
There are other useful applications for cracking hydrogen, including through genetic engineering (using plants that produce hydrogen as a by-product of photosynthesis.... yes it happens) and using solar cells to generate hydrogen. Again, this is applying the principle of using hydrogen as a storage medium and leveraging its ability to be stored in something that is easier to build than a huge battery.
The problem with hydrogen in an automobile is that it is a very corrosive gas, particularly when it gets to a state where it reaches combustion temperatures. This can be compensated for, but it does require vehicles built for that purpose.
It turns out that Palladium is an excellent material for storing Hydrogen (one of the reasons it is used for "cold fusion") and there are other storage systems that seem to work reasonably well too. The major problem is that the supply chains and the distribution systems don't exist for hydrogen, and no strongly compelling reason to switch to hydrogen when other energy distribution systems are already in place.
In terms of safety issues, it turns out that hydrogen is much safer than gasoline for similar quantities of energy. There are also only two kinds of compounds that are produced with hydrogen when it burns with oxygen: water and hydrogen peroxide. Some Nitrogen compounds can form in an internal combustion engine (mainly ammonia) , but those are also relatively simple to work with as well. So there are some advantages to hydrogen vehicles, particularly if you want to maintain an internal combustion engine distribution system but want to avoid the pollutants caused by burning hydrocarbons.
About 2835.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Only if you use an idiotic feedstock like corn. Sugarcane or sugar beets give a positive return.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
A stop at the gas station requires you to drive to the gas station, sit around useless, handle cash or credit card or debit card transaction, and expose yourself to the risk of giant sugary caffienated fountain soda.
Hydrogen the worst fule in the world by energy density? Hardly. Why else is it used as a fuel source for rockets going into orbit? The Hydrogen/Oxygen reaction actually gives one of the highest ISP ratios of nearly any kind of rocket fuel available, and is the primary fuel component for the Space Shuttle, being used in the SSMEs. That big orange tank on the bottom of the orbiter is mostly filled with hydrogen. Still, not everybody needs to use hydrogen even in that kind of application. Furthermore, it also requires cryogenic fuel storage as the hydrogen used in rockets tends to be liquid hydrogen in order to compress the fuel to be useful.
In terms of automotive fuel storage, there may be a point to hydrogen being more of a problem for energy densities in terms of watts per m^3. It becomes an issue due to the fact that the storage device generally weighs much more than the fuel itself. So in terms of practical fuels for an automobile, it might have a lower energy density than other fuels and energy storage devices.
BTW, in terms of battery technologies, one of the most promising that seems to be a real kicker is a Zinc-ion battery If this researcher is to be believed (and there is some serious money getting thrown at this researcher to make it happen), it promises to have over ten times the energy storage as Lithium-ion batteries. That could be monumental in terms of making electric vehicles practical and conceivably gives something like the Tesla Model S over a thousand miles of driving range on a single charge. If that happens, the need for these recharging stations is pretty much thrown out the window at least for remote and isolated locations far from major population centers.
What, as compared to the zero seconds it takes to fill up with gas?
Since I fill up when about half empty, I'm usually actually filling a tank only for a minute or two.
And as noted, when done I am full - not ready to go for a day and need another recharge.
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It will probably rely on some sort of capacitor-based local storage, so it'll always be drawing power from the grid, but at a steady pace awaiting the next charge.
So you pull into a station, and have to wait 20 minutes until the next "pump" is ready.
That fast charging sure is awesome!
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Except that charging/discharging times are not linear. Google "RC constant".
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Many families already rent a vehicle when driving out of state. Rental of that second vehicle would be more cost effective and efficient than purchasing the second vehicle, if it's only used one or two weekends per month. As a bonus, you're always driving a new-ish car, of the latest model, and it can change based on the needs of that special event! SUV for a family road trip, sporty coupe for a weekend getaway with the missus, the possibilities are endless, and much better than driving a 13-mpg Suburban 24/7 just in case you have to immediately leave work to drive 1800 miles for a surprise vacation to Yellowstone where you'll have to offroad to get to your cabin.
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And that scenario only makes up, what, about 80% of the passenger car miles driven in North America?
How do you define a commuter run?
Does it include a side trip to the loading dock at Sears?
Picking up your kids on the way home from school? The first demands cargo space, the second passenger space.
On thing is clear:
The commute is not optional.
Buffalo NY this week has been wilting with temperatures in the mid-90s - and humidity to match. Come winter and conditions can turn artic.
If the I-190 bridges over Grand Island close, your run home north from Buffalo has effectively doubled. Not good if you have already burned through the better part of that 50 mile quickie charge-up.
It isn't enough for the electric car to perform well on the test track. It has to perform reliably on the street. It has to cope well with the unexpected.
What about a handcrank like they have on certain radios in Africa? ( http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/05/sonys_handcrank_1.php ) Sure it would take a day's worth of cranking to get enough charge for a mile of driving, but it still could be useful in an emergency.
Does it include a side trip to the loading dock at Sears? Picking up your kids on the way home from school? The first demands cargo space, the second passenger space.
Why would you care, in either case, whether your vehicle runs on gasoline, electricity, diesel, propane, or magic pixie dust?
If the I-190 bridges over Grand Island close, your run home north from Buffalo has effectively doubled. Not good if you have already burned through the better part of that 50 mile quickie charge-up.
Assuming electric vehicle infrastructure has gained some penetration, then if you're driving around in suburban Buffalo you simply find your way to the nearest quickcharge station. What do you do today if your commute home unexpectedly lengthens and you're running close to empty? Park at the side of the road and take a taxi home?
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It's cheap because not many people are charging their electric cars at night. That will change real fast, and the same grid that can't handle everyone running their air conditioner will collapse under the load.
Haha, bet you feel like a prick now.
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The laws of supply and demand seem to indicate that we have an incredible amount of food that we have no idea what to do with.
If the world has such a glut of food, why is starvation so prevalent, even in countries without closed borders?
Your problem is more likely that farmers in other locations can produce corn at much lower prices than you can, which is a good sign you should be looking at other crops.
While I am in Canada, our local yields are well above the US national average. If an above average farm cannot turn a profit, I'm not sure who is supposed to be growing the stuff?
The problem is not limited to corn. At current market prices you might be able to break even on wheat, and maybe even turn a tiny profit on soybeans; though not really enough to cover your time and certainly not enough to reinvest back into the farm for new equipment and other necessities.
With that said, I have discussed at great length on this site the pitfalls of growing corn. I don't think any farmer actually likes growing corn, but it has become a necessary evil. I'm am actually quite curious as to what crop you suggest take its place?
I would like to know the answer to this as well. The USDA is always reporting surpluses on food when they release their reports. If there are countries that are open to receiving those crops, why is it not getting there?
Except that charging/discharging times are not linear. Google "RC constant".
That's what I was concerned about at first, however the article makes statements that connect "50% full" (their words) with an ability to "travel a further 50 miles". If the battery is 50% full and thus can travel 50 miles, it seems logical to assume that a battery at a so-called "100% full" would be able to travel 100 miles.
Sure, one might make the argument that the way that the car can use the first "50%" of the stored charge is more or less efficient than the way in which it can use the second "50% of the stored charge. But at that point I think that one could argue that the original wording of "50% full" was misleading and/or just flat-out wrong.
Of course, that's assuming a battery that can be charged to 100% of its spec'd capacity. Gas tanks don't shrink in size over the lifetime of a car, while batteries tend to lose capacity over time.
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To be fair, when that happens, there will be plenty of infrastructure to support it.
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By volume, which is what matters, it is the worse. In the case of space, mass matters. There is some debate about aluminium fuelled rockets. Research was done on boron hydride fuelled rockets, but it was considered too toxic.
The zinc-ion system you linked to is very interesting. It is basically a zinc-air battery with an ionic liquid electrolyte. I want to do something similar for aluminium air. Zinc air is in general not rechargeable for two reasons. First is that it leads to the destruction of the carefully designed electrode that lets air into the cell. Second is that the zinc changes shape, and this leads to shorting in the battery. The second is trouble for all zinc based batteries. What I want to do is build a zinc-air system, and have robots recycle the burned zinc. This would let us have a zinc economy.
Oh, as for 1000 mile range, that really isn't all that useful, because of the huge amount of electricity required. This means that charging will be slow and most of the battery capacity is not used. It just rots. In a battery electric vehicle, the solution is always to put a little gas (or biofuel) generator in the car. Then give the car a 40 mile range. This means that you're safe from all the myriad of issues that could cause range to be shortened. The best batteries for this are lead-acid batteries, as well as Edison batteries.
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