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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."
How many charge-discharge cycles will this battery last, and how expensive is it?
The science may be there but something tells me that other interests will prevent this from going anywhere.
The science probably isn't there, so the Great Petroleum Conspiracy can probably sleep well tonight. What they're describing doesn't violate any laws of physics per se, but the amount of power transferred in the time they're claiming is highly suspicious. The waste heat alone would be enormous unless their secret is room-temperature superconductors, in which case the electric car market is small potatoes, and someone is going to get a Nobel for this.
I'm not going to call bullshit on this story, but I will note that the article makes extraordinary claims without providing the requisite extraordinary evidence. At this point, it's just another startup making unsubstantiated claims. I hope it's true, but I am definitely not holding my breath.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I don't know anyone with a gasoline pump at their house either.
It is a mystery how people are able to drive cars without running out of fuel.
No, the engineering is what they are doing now with their prototype. The fact that a tangible prototype exists suggests that the brunt of the core engineering has already been completed, barring any rework on the design that might be required for mass-manufacture.
What is required now, is getting a greenlight from investors, regulators, and safety orgs.
Like most things, the actual design and core science happens much faster than the beaurocracy can actually handle. That is where most projects end up dieing on the vine-- the beaurocratic side, not the engineering side.
If the car takes 3 HP (2 kW) to drive at highway speed
HA! You are an order of magnitude too low. Otherwise we'd all be installing 50cc moped motors into our cars. I think 30-40 HP is what it takes to overcome air resistance, rolling resistance, and the incline of the terrain when that comes along.
As others mentioned, the article is short on facts. I can drive 300 miles at 55 mph (average) and spend 0 kWh, as long as the road is downhill all the way, or if I use a sail. That fact alone is worthless.
I don't know anyone with a 150kW electrical service to their house.
My house has 200A, 240V service (2 phases 120V each, 180 degrees off.) The maximum power is, therefore, 48 kW. The car will need 1.5 MW power source to charge in 6 minutes, and the battery would have to hold 150 kWh, or 540 MJ, equivalent to 1/8 ton of TNT or to 3 gallons of gasoline.
The planet doesn't give a damn. It's us who are fucked.
The core engineering require to build a proof-of-concept prototype is a small fraction of the engineering work necessary to put it into readily-available, commercial products.
Which brings up something I have been wondering for awhile: Are all these hybrids and electric a dead end that we shouldn't be pursuing? As we know most power in the USA is NOT generated by nuclear, but by various fossil fuels, from nasty coal to NG. Now has anyone sat down and actually figured out what kind of pollution trade off we are talking about, from the creation of the machine to its recycling or destruction, along with power required and pollution created by its generation, for even changing out a city the size of Chicago with electrics/hybrids?
If we are gonna be handing out tax breaks and other incentives to try to get people to use these things it might be wise to do the math in case people actually do switch in decent numbers, especially since there are other techs like Bio Diesel and Hydrogen that don't require the electrical generation and infrastructure. Maybe someone has, but I sure ain't found it, just some that kinda sorta figure what a single vehicle would cost (and many find they don't pay for themselves compared to highly efficient ICE vehicles like Diesel compacts) when the real question should be if we start switching large numbers over what kind of pollution are we talking here, including any needed upgrades to electrical infrastructure as well as its generation and the cost of the batteries.
Don't get me wrong, not really "for or against" any of these techs, I've just seen how we tend to be short sighted and not see the bigger picture and want to know if that is the case here. Just look at how many adopted those cheapo gas sippers like citation in the late 70s/early 80s to end up with streets full of smoke monsters trailing parts behind them until they mercifully died. It looked like a good idea at the time but I bet when you figure in the smog, the amount of oil those things burned/leaked after a year or two, and finally the cost to upkeep and dispose of them, we probably came out behind. It would be a shame if with all these competing techs we ended up picking one that just passed the buck from the consumer cranking the pollution to the power plants.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.