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Electric Car Goes 375 Miles On One 6-Minute Charge
thecarchik writes with this quote from AllCarsElectric:
"We all know that battery packs are the weakest link in electric vehicles. Not only are they heavy and expensive, but they take a long time to recharge and on average can only provide around 100 miles per charge. A German-based company has changed all that with a new vehicle capable of driving up to 375 miles at moderate highway speeds. ... It doesn't end there. The company responsible for the battery pack, DBM Energy, claims a battery pack efficiency of 97 percent and a recharge time of around 6 minutes when charged from a direct current source. Unlike the small Daihatsu which was heavily modified by a team in Japan earlier this year that achieved a massive 623 miles on a charge at around 27 mph, the Audi A2 modified by DBM Energy was able to achieve its 375 miles range at an average speed of 55 mph."
slight? that is more than range than my Mazda 3 gets out of a tank. So figure the energy density of around 10 US gallons of gasoline....
That is a lot of energy to put into a battery in a very short amount of time.
I want a lot more info.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What does the charging station use? Is it ultracapacitors?
Also, last time I checked both Germany, Japan and pretty much the rest of the planet used the metric system, so:
Oh, come on, now you're being unfair. It's not the rest of the planet, Liberia and Myanmar are also yet to adopt the metric system. Sheesh.
Excellent calculations, but based on an almost certainly flawed assumption of 2kW cruising power. 10-20kW is more likely, based on typical electric car requirements. So... you'd need roughly a megawatt of power available for charging. That's the peak draw of a relatively large office building.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
It's a lithium-polymer battery dubbed "Hummingbird", and it's already in-use in warehouse forklifts. There's more info at dbm-energy.com and lekker-mobil.com (both in German). Still pretty light on details though.
I'd post the link to the FAQ directly, but Slashdot still won't let me paste the URL (yep, Chrome user), and it's way too long to type by hand.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
No, because you normally don't pit-stop at home for 6 minutes at a time. At home you would charge it at night, likely from a 220v source like your dryer and stove use. What the fast charge is for is to also enable the car to make long trips by having special chargers at gas stations.
From what I've been able to dig up, the battery pack holds about 115 kWh.
In any case, your typical EV these days goes about 4 kWh/mile, which matches up nicely with their 375 mile trip.
So if you want to fill the car with 100 kWh in 6 minutes, you'd need about 1000 kW (ignoring charging losses).
Your typical house in the USA has 240V service with a main panel size ranging between 100A-200A - or 24-48 kW. There is no way you're charging this battery in a short amount of time at home unless you use some sort of buffer.
Your typical EV today uses a Level 2 J1772 EVSE - of which the J1772 specification will handle up to 240V AC at 80A or 19 kW. But the first mass produced EVs on the market (the Leaf/Volt) will only be able to charge at 3.3 kW or so using that standard.
The Tesla Roadster can charge at up to 19 kW, but still uses a slightly different plug (Tesla came before the J1772 standard, but existing Roadsters are expected to be converted over).
"Gas" stations to sustain Level 3 charging (meaning anything that spits out high current DC) are currently being deployed with chargers that will push out a max of 50 kW or so. The Leaf will be the first car to use those chargers and can charge it's 24 kW pack to 80% in 20-30 minutes.
I suspect that some sort of local battery buffer will be needed in most locations to support 1000 kW chargers - or you'll need to be very close to electrical substations and transmission lines.
Now to totally suck the humour out of that post:
Call it 1GW output for a reasonably sized nuclear plant. A reasonable estimate for the efficiency of an electric car (according to Wikipedia) is about 15kWh/100km; after converting to more usable units, the 600km capacity means the battery holds 324MJ. A 6 minute charge time gives a 900kW transfer rate, or about 1,100 users per nuclear power station.
Translated from this page: http://adacemobility.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/das-wunder-von-berlin/#more-744
"Technical Data Audi A2 DBM *
* Subject
Empty weight (including driver) 1260 kg
Perm. Total weight 1600 kg
Battery lithium-iron-polymer (260 Ah/380 V) cell voltage of 3.8 volts
Battery weight about 300 kg
Charging time about 4 hours due to mains phase current in the household (380)
battery requires 6 minutes (future solution)
Life time 2500 charge cycles (without loss of capacity)
= Service life target: 500,000 km
Top speed 160 km / h
5-speed sequential gearbox (race gear: shifting without the clutch)
E-motor 300 Nm torque"
So, the 6 minute charge is future/theoretical limits of the battery. The actual time is 4 hours; which is still very impressive.
Sincerely, Neil
Currently hooked on AMP
It takes 4-6 hours to use up that energy, though -- assuming you're constantly driving. That gives you far more users per power station -- just a peak capacity of 1100.
A reasonable estimate for the efficiency of an electric car (according to Wikipedia) is about 15kWh/100km; after converting to more usable units, the 600km capacity means the battery holds 324MJ. A 6 minute charge time gives a 900kW transfer rate
900,000 watts eh? That makes me wonder just how practical this would be outside of the lab. You'd need a really high voltage or a really thick cable to transfer that much wattage into an automobile. The American Wire Gauge only goes up to OOOO according to this table. A OOOO conductor is 0.46" thick. Even that insanely heavy cable only goes up to 300 amps. You'd need 3,000 volts to deliver your 900kW on such a cable.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
0000 is usually represented as 4/0, and spoken as "four aught". Can't say I've ever seen it written out as four zeros before, for that matter. In open air, for short cycles, I'd think it would handle 500A or so, though.
Anyway, there is wire bigger than 4/0, but it uses a different system. 1000 MCM is good for around a thousand amps IIRC (though this is unrelated to it being '1000' MCM - It just means it is 1000 thousand circular mils) [again, probably more in open air and intermittent duty]
But I'm thinking the GP made a false assumption with the 900kW thought - the summary says this is based on an Audi A2, which is *teeny*. Considerably smaller than a VW golf, and the body is (almost?) entirely aluminium.
Sent from my PDP-11
2500 cycles before degradation according to their youtube video.
So... 30kW at 60MPH is the claim.
The second generation Honda Insight has a drag coefficient of 0.25, a frontal area of approximately 26 square feet, a curb weight of up to 2,730 pounds.
From those specs: Power to maintain 60MPH is 13.9 HP - 10kW.
Your math is off by a factor of at least 3 right out of the gate.
=Smidge=