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."

Comments

How long does it last?

[rossdee]

How many charge-discharge cycles will this battery last, and how expensive is it?

Re:How long does it last?

[mail2345]

Don't forget the recharger, which might be expensive or inefficient.
The manufacturing process could also pose a problem, it might require plenty of energy and/or release waste.

Re:How long does it last?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people struggle with this? To provide the charging current needed to charge in 6 minutes, all you need is a charging station that is topped up by the grid but uses a large battery (of batteries). The peak current to charge the car is taken care off by the batteries and the average daily usage at the station is supplied by the grid.

Similarly, you could have a small charging station at home that consists of a battery similar to what is in the car and a trickle top up system that take 24 hours or more to charge off the low current house supply.

No rocket (or nuclear) science needed!

Re:How long does it last?

[MoonBuggy]

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.

Re:How long does it last?

[MoonBuggy]

This is, however, trading reliance on oil as a fuel source for reliance on lithium as a storage medium. Admittedly that's more conducive to recycling, but while I'm no expert on batteries, I'm pretty sure it's not trivial to turn a dead, degraded cell into a shiny new one.

It's a shame we haven't managed to get particularly far with hydrogen as a storage medium - it can be produced straight from fossil fuels to ease the transition, and then produced directly from water once we get the power generation infrastructure up to scratch. No reliance on a non-renewable power source or storage medium.

Re:How long does it last?

[ls671]

Then, sadly, you would waste energy through heat dissipation twice instead of once.

Re:How long does it last?

[blueg3]

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.

Re:How long does it last?

[Shakrai]

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.

Re:How long does it last?

[blueg3]

A charging station sees enough short cycles that they might as well use a bank of capacitors instead.

Re:How long does it last?

[interval1066]

According to the article these batteries power warehouse equipment (forklifts, presumably) for up to 30 hours on a charge, and have been in use for years. Ok, so they've been kept a secret for all this time?

Re:How long does it last?

[camperdave]

Why do people struggle with this? To provide the charging current needed to charge in 6 minutes, all you need is a charging station that is topped up by the grid but uses a large battery (of batteries).

Nevertheless, you'd still need wires the size of train rails to get that much power transferred in that short of time without melting.

Re:How long does it last?

[jamesh]

This is, however, trading reliance on oil as a fuel source for reliance on lithium as a storage medium. Admittedly that's more conducive to recycling, but while I'm no expert on batteries, I'm pretty sure it's not trivial to turn a dead, degraded cell into a shiny new one.

It's a shame we haven't managed to get particularly far with hydrogen as a storage medium - it can be produced straight from fossil fuels to ease the transition, and then produced directly from water once we get the power generation infrastructure up to scratch. No reliance on a non-renewable power source or storage medium.

Doesn't have to be batteries. Flywheel storage would be a perfect solution to this problem - replace the underground fuel tanks with a flywheel storage bunker and spin it up when there is energy to spare.

Re:How long does it last?

[Jeremi]

It's incredibly expensive to build your own personal nuclear power plant just to be able to charge your car in six minutes!

True... but it's totally worth it.

Re:How long does it last?

[mirix]

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.

Re:How long does it last?

[Jeremi]

[Hydrogen has] No reliance on a non-renewable power source or storage medium.

You're definitely going to need a storage medium for your hydrogen, or it won't be your hydrogen for very long. That means either a very large, very heavy high-pressure container, or some sort of chemical that bonds to the hydrogen until it is needed.

As far as "reliance on a non-renewable power source" goes, you can use your electricity (non-renewable or otherwise) to charge a battery, or to make and compress hydrogen gas. Barring a scientific breakthrough, charging the battery is much more efficient.

Re:How long does it last?

[mysidia]

This is, however, trading reliance on oil as a fuel source for reliance on lithium as a storage medium.

Technically... I think oil is just a storage medium as well the only real fuel source is the sun. Oil = storage medium for energy from the sun created by the decay of organic plant/animal materials over millions of years.

I suppose the advantage of lithium is, the lithium isn't really destroyed or combusted in the process of using the stored total energy; there's no gaseous release from the battery itself.

Instead the battery degrades when the cell itself becomes damaged, usually by the electrodes/plates corroding over time, or by things crystallizing on the electrodes.

Re:How long does it last?

[amorsen]

You can't economically bring 1MW to each home at this point, and when the car is at home you rarely care whether it charges in 6 minutes or 6 hours. You are probably enjoying that it can charge at home at all, because most people don't have a petrol station in their garage. At home you slow-charge, at the "petrol" station you fast charge. There will be a limited number of fast charge stations, just like there is a limited number of pumps today.

Re:How long does it last?

[AGMW]

Ok, let's say those figures are correct. Now let's assume that the average nuke plant has about 25% of it's output used for other means - a conservative estimate. That means we're down to 825 cars. ...

That means we're down to 825 cars for any given 6 minute period. There are 240 such "6 minute periods" per day, so if everyone with one of these cars religiously (fully) charged the muthers every day there'd be capacity for approx 200000 cars (198000 actually, but we're using wet finger math(s) so please forgive the rounding up). We could easily halve that number and still be happy with 100000 EV's in a city!

Let's now assume that those 825 people don't drive 375 miles every day, so don't have to have their 6 minutes in the sun every day. My daily commute was somewhere in the region of 60 miles (30 each way), suggesting that those car owners may only be charging up once a week? (as per my Electric MGF friend) ... so could we have 500000 EV's now? :-)

Let's also assume that whilst it is possible to charge in 6 mins it can also be done overnight and there may be some cost-benefit and/or battery life benefit for doing so ...

If we also factor in the concepts bandied about where such EVs are left connected to the grid and the grid can request power to be fed back into the grid to smooth out demand spikes (with suitable payments to the EV owner, and the proviso that the vehicle will retain an owner specified charge sufficient to drive it - though with the 6 min quick charge that might be less of a problem anyway!) ...

Re:How long does it last?

[jabuzz]

At 20USD per kg lithium can be extracted from sea water in a near inexhaustible amount 230 billion tonnes

Re:How long does it last?

[AGMW]

Ok, let's say those figures are correct. Now let's assume that the average nuke plant has about 25% of it's output used for other means - a conservative estimate. That means we're down to 825 cars. ...

Er, no. It means were down to 825 cars in any given 6 minute period. It is usual to find 240 such 6 minute periods in any (Earth) day thereby allowing for approx 200000 such EV charge events (198000, but as we're using wet finger math(s) please excuse me if I round up at this point). I would suggest we could comfortably halve that number and be ecstatic about 100000 EV's driving around a city! Hell, 50K EV's would be brilliant!

What's the average commute I wonder? I furthest I ever had to commute was about 60 miles (30 each way) so I'd have to charge one of these suckers up (less than!) once a week if it was my car, and the same for my Electric MGF friend too. We could probably assume that most people's commute (or 'daily drive' for the non-workers) is (considerably) less than 375 miles anyway. If we plump for once a week we can multiply up the (already halved!) 100000 accordingly ... 500000 EV's. Hell, even if we go for 50000 a day that's still capacity for 250000 a week!

Also, the article says the vehicle can be charged in 6 minutes but it doesn't say it has to be - what's the betting there'd be a cost benefit (and maybe battery life benefit) from charging more slowly, like in 6 to 8 hours overnight, for example.

If you finally factor in the ideas about keeping such EVs which are not currently in use attached to the grid and allowing the grid to request power back to smooth out power use spikes (with suitable payments to the EV owner, and the proviso that the owner can specify a minimum level on the vehicle in case they need to drive it - but if it only takes 6 mins to charge it that becomes less of an issue!) we could see the Max Load requirement for a city actually be lowered because the city grid can pull power from the EVs that are not in use (have hookups at places of work and other car parks maybe too?)!

That it seems too good to be true is another issue, but it sounds bloody good to me!

Re:How long does it last?

[somersault]

More expensive and inefficient than drilling for oil, refining it, and sending trucks around the country to fuel stations?

Presumably most people (ie the ones who aren't millionaires) wouldn't bother with a high powered recharge station at home, at least not for the first few years, so the recharging stations will get a lot of use to offset whatever waste that was incurred while making them. Combine that with nuclear and especially renewable energy and I'd think things get a whole lot more efficient overall (even if the renewable sources themselves aren't very efficient, they're basically "free").

Re:How long does it last?

[John Meacham]

It is quite trivial actually, the lithium isn't consumed, deposits develop and the (cheap) electrolytes degrade, it is a simple (relatively) chemical/mechanical process to clean the lithium and rebuild the cell. Not something you do in place, but every 5 years or so you get your battery exchanged. Less work than replacing your tires or shocks. And since you arn't buying any more expensive lithium, it probably won't be that much. Lithium is certainly a fully recyclable resource. And it is a whole lot cheaper than the Palladium that is the best bet for hydrogen storage at the moment.

Re:How long does it last?

[timholman]

Why do people struggle with this? To provide the charging current needed to charge in 6 minutes, all you need is a charging station that is topped up by the grid but uses a large battery (of batteries). The peak current to charge the car is taken care off by the batteries and the average daily usage at the station is supplied by the grid.

Maybe the reason why people struggle with it is because they actually do the math.

Let's assume the local gas station just around the corner fuels around 200 cars a day over a 16 hour period. It decides to switch over to an all-electric recharging system. Furthermore, let's assume the customers all drive fast charging electric cars that require 1 MW for 6 minutes. Just to make it interesting, let's also assume the charging is completely lossless.

So, that former gas station would need to supply 1E6 * 6 * 60 * 200 joules every day to recharge those vehicles. Over a 24 hour period, it would be pulling 833 kW from the mains to trickle charge the battery array at the station, or 3472 A @ 240 V. A modern nuclear power plant can supply 1.1 GW on a continuous basis, so that means the entire output of that nuclear power plant, if devoted to charging electric vehicles, would be sufficient to supply 1,320 converted gas stations.

Now assuming that the average driver refuels his vehicle once a week, that means that those 1,320 refueling stations are sufficient to service 1.85M electric vehicles. There are estimated to be 251M passenger vehicles in the U.S. alone, so we only need to build 136 modern 1.1 GW nuclear power plants just to keep those vehicles running.

But of course, I assumed lossless energy transport, storage, and charging. Realistically, the entire process may be 50% efficient if we are lucky. So actually we need to build 272 brand new nuclear power plants, and that local converted gas station will be pulling an average of 1.67 MW from the grid.

Now frankly, the total added generation capacity is not that outrageous. The U.S. electric generation capacity is about 750 GW, so adding an extra 300 GW is expensive, but doable. On the other hand, efficiently supplying a continuous average of 1.67 MW of electric power to every gas station in the U.S., including those in remote areas and on remote roads, is a complete pipe dream unless someone comes up with room temperature superconductors.

Electric vehicles will work fine if they are trickle-charged nightly from home mains, and used for short commutes each day. But for long-haul trips, or fast refueling of large numbers of vehicles, nothing is going to replace chemical fuels anytime soon.

Re:How long does it last?

[bobaferret]

2500 cycles before degradation according to their youtube video.

Re:How long does it last?

[tom17]

I wonder if there is a device that would only allow electricity to pass in one direction. If there was, I could envision a small array of these devices set up in a kind of diamond pattern, such that AC going in could end up as DC coming out. Granted, the DC would still have the peaks and troughs of the AC, but maybe that could be 'smoothed' out with some kind of intermediate electricity 'buffer' if there is such a thing.

Interesting.

Re:How long does it last?

[zevans]

Parent is spot on, good summary.

I'll just add that we should also factor in the electricity that is saved in NOT refining and distributing petrol for those 500,000 EVs.

Re:How long does it last?

[Smidge204]

That matters if and only if you expect to recharge your car at home in 6 minutes from nearly depleted to nearly full.

The main mode of operation for electric cars is destination charging: You plug it in when it's sitting unused for extended periods of time. The theoretical 6-minute recharge would require special facilities, but you probably would need to use that option infrequently since the car should be fully charged every time you leave home.
=Smidge=

Re:How long does it last?

[Dcnjoe60]

The article states that it is using the same types of batteries packs that are currently used in electric fork lifts in modern warehouses. As such, they should have a large charge-discharge cycle range and not be terribly expensive as they aren't new technology, but existing technology.

Re:How long does it last?

[zevans]

On the other hand, efficiently supplying a continuous average of 1.67 MW of electric power to every gas station in the U.S., including those in remote areas and on remote roads, is a complete pipe dream unless someone comes up with room temperature superconductors.

There's your answer right there! See also: Ringworld.

Re:How long does it last?

[rufty_tufty]

I know Americans are stereotypically quite large people but how large do you have to be to be too large for an A2???
As for the performance remember that energy consumption of a vehicle will over average terrain be proportional to its wind resistance not its weight.

Bearing that in mind, what kind of use case for a vehicle requires even half the performance demonstrated here? (assuming a larger car would have at most twice the wind resistance) If you're going on long continent crossing journeys the range of the car and time taken to recharge it is greater than how often you should be stopping for a break so that you aren't a hazard to other road users.
And that's assuming that this technology doesn't scale, i.e. that twice as large a car could just have two of these battery packs giving the same recharge time.

Re:How long does it last?

[bberens]

Most will charge overnight because presumably the infrastructure will be upgraded to bill them less money if they charge slowly overnight.

Re:How long does it last?

[CecilPL]

Brilliant. This device you've described would completely rectify the problem!

Re:How long does it last?

[LWATCDR]

Yea that would be cool but...
But the 6 minute recharge time is fiction. That is the "theoretical" maximum at some time in the future. A poster on a site actually did the math.
"Giving them a very efficient 60kWhr for their 375 mile drive, you would need a 600kW feed to recharge that in 6 minutes. Even off a 14.4kV main, that would require a 40A current."

Wow 40A at 14.4 kv.......
So that would take about a 3" cable and the rectifier you describe would be an impressive beast to say the least.
  So what we are talking about isn't that far removed from a set of jumper cables for a nuclear aircraft carrier or the Starship Enterprise.

Re:How long does it last?

[boristdog]

2500 X 200 miles per charge (average) = 500,000 mile lifetime.

Fairly respectable, I'd say. I have yet to make a car last 500,000 miles. Maybe they could make it so you could swap your old battery pack with only 1000 charge cycles on it (200,000 miles) to your new car, thus lowering the cost of a new car.

Re:How long does it last?

[timholman]

YOur math seems finelyou assumption are way off.

Why o you think 50% would be lucky? modern power line loss is around 7%.

7% is the power line loss. Then you need AC-to-DC conversion of the power, and a current control regulator that can handle thousands of amperes of current. That's probably another 10% loss. Then (unfortunately), the recharging of the battery itself generates significant amounts of heat within the battery, as does the discharging process. (Ever noticed how hot your lithium laptop battery gets?) Assuming that you had 100 kW of waste heat during that 1 MW fast recharge, you'd cook the battery, the car, and the occupants inside it unless you provide some means of refrigeration of the battery during charging, adding to even more loss.

It all adds up. You can quibble over the exact numbers, but the energy loss will be significant throughout the entire charging / usage cycle.

Refueling average would be closer to 10 days.

Okay, so assuming perfectly lossless recharging and a refueling cycle of 10 days instead of 7, we're still talking about 600 kW delivered on a continuous basis to every refueling station in the U.S. That's 2500 A @ 240 V, and that's a best case calculation. Of course, there's no way you're going to shove that much current through a 240 V power line - the I^2R losses would ruin you. So instead, you'd need a 10 kV high-voltage transmission line to each and every station, to drop the current to 60 A. How practical do you think that would be?

And what would be wrong with building 136 Modern nuclear power plants?

Why wouldn't they build 1.8GW plants instead of 1GW?

And considering Gen IV plants can yield 3 times that with the same amount of material, It's not really a problem.

From my viewpoint, there's absolutely nothing wrong with building that many nuclear power plants. I only wish we had started 20 or 30 years ago. I'm as pro-nuke as you can get, but even I can't see adding that much nuclear capacity over the next 20 years. Too many people will fight it.

But my point remains. We are not going to replace chemical fuels anytime soon. Electric cars will have their place, and I for one would love an affordable plug-in hybrid. But there's simply no way that we will switch over to an all-electric vehicle fleet anytime soon. You cannot argue away the numbers, or the laws of physics.

Re:How long does it last?

[amorsen]

Please hand in your geek card. Or at least learn the difference between power (in W) and energy (in J or Wh).

When can I buy one?

[fractoid]

It's wonderful to see these new claimed technologies, I just wish they'd actually make some of them available to the public sometimes.

Re:When can I buy one?

[wierd_w]

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.

Re:When can I buy one?

[Kenja]

Fall 2011 for around 27,000$ after tax break. Or so says Mitsubishi.

Re:When can I buy one?

[blueg3]

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.

Re:When can I buy one?

[cgenman]

Designing a one-off prototype by hand is far easier than designing a full fabrication and manufacturing process that can quickly and reliably create multi-thousand dollar vehicles en-masse.

Further, there are a lot of engineering challenges potentially left to come... we know how fast it can charge, and we know how far it can drive. They haven't mentioned how long the battery actually lasts as a battery, possibly because they're facing an engineering hurdle. A truism of batteries is that the faster you charge, the shorter the lifespan of the battery. Lots of non-trivial engineering will also go into making it not explode or cover the passenger compartment in toxic chemicals upon impact.

The sexy engineering may be done. But there is a lot of engineering left to do. Heck, the turnaround time on creating and manufacturing a new Simpsons doll is about a year. Something as big as a car is inherently going to take time.

Too good to be true

[oldhack]

Somebody in the know prove me wrong.

Re:Too good to be true

[vegiVamp]

I can't actually prove you wrong, but I would still like to point out that traveling through the air to other continents was also thought to be impossible, a hundred years ago.

Power required to charge?

[Sir_Lewk]

Is it really that hard for tech reporters to slip in enough meaningful numbers to give us a full picture of what they are supposedly reporting about? Sure it might only take 6 minutes, but what kind of power was it drawing during those 6 minutes? Will the average house have a connection large enough to actually charge it that fast? Will it be practical to build "gas" stations that can charge several cars like this in a reasonable amount of time?

Re:Power required to charge?

[NixieBunny]

I agree. A couple numbers go a long ways towards allowing the user to make sense of the gizmo at hand.

A range of 375 miles at 55 mph is seven hours of driving at speed. Six minutes is 0.1 hours. So they have to feed at least 70 times as much power into the battery as the car consumes to hold 55 mph. If the car takes 3 HP (2 kW) to drive at highway speed, then they have to feed 150 kW through that thin charging cable.

I don't know anyone with a 150kW electrical service to their house. Do you?

Re:Power required to charge?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know anyone with a 150kW electrical service to their house. Do you?

Dr. Frankenstein already solved that problem with lightning rods :)
Next!!

Re:Power required to charge?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Power required to charge?

[mpoulton]

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.

Re:Power required to charge?

[tftp]

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.

Re:Power required to charge?

[wierd_w]

It is possible that the charger "Cheats" too--

It might contain a very large capacitor array that allows for the boost charging speed, at the expense of the recharger itself requireing several more minutes, to even several hours to "recover" afterward. (That is to say, the charger itself is a glorified high-voltage regulator attached to a very large ultracapacitor bank. The rapid discharge rate required by the battery's charging station would neccessitate such a solution if 150kw service was unavailable/inpractical. When the battery pack is attached, the capcacitor bank discharges to fill the battery, but then the capacitor array has a required recharging period before it can be used again; a process which could occur while the driver is on the road.)

Such a "cheating" solution would pose a significant risk should a short occur inside the charger though.

Re:Power required to charge?

[Spoke]

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.

Re:Power required to charge?

[moderatorrater]

The 6 minute charging time is only really necessary for long road trips. Long charging times don't keep people from charging at their home, it keeps them from taking their car long distances. The "gas" stations to charge the car in 6 minutes would have massive power requirements, but it's not impossible or even all that improbable that they could provide it. Then, at home, you have a normal charger that you plug in at night that charges it over a few hours.

Re:Power required to charge?

[NIK282000]

3 HP is a pretty conservative number for maintaining highway speeds but it illustrates the point very well. To charge in 6 minutes using (euro) household voltage you would have to pump 625amps into it. The cable required for that (by electrical code) would be 2cm in diameter x2 conductors. Not something your average non-superman can lift and bend.

To get the current down to a manageable level and the cable to a reasonable (3awg) size, you would have to put the voltage up to 1500votls (100amps). That leaves you with the electrical equivalent of a loaded gun. A very high potential for ark flash or instant BBQ users. They are going to have to come out with a seriously safe/automated charging station for these cars which is more then likely to offset any savings of owning the car in the first place.

Re:Power required to charge?

[DeadboltX]

I don't know anyone with a 150kW electrical service to their house. Do you

I don't know anyone with a 10,000 gallon tank of gas under their house either
It is perfectly conceivable for a "gas station" (charging station) to get a hookup large enough to service 12 cars simultaneously.

6 minutes is not a long time to wait at a gas station, and I presume you don't have to wait for the battery to be drained before you charge it.

Re:Power required to charge?

[robot256]

74kwh in 6 minutes is 740 kilowatts. They said specifically that this could be achieved with a "DC current source", so they clearly aren't talking about a standard 220V outlet. More likely, to actually achieve this you'd need a large capacitor as suggested by a post above. 74kwh supercapacitors are damned expensive, so I doubt if anyone would put one in their house.

What would be practical, though, is for a bank of supercapacitors to be located at a gas station. There could be six, eight, or however many different capacitors, and when you pull up to the "electricity pump" it would connect you to one of the charged ones. Then the capacitor would go back to charging from a ~30kw mains circuit (for about 3 hours). If all the capacitors were drained, a big red light would turn on at the pump and you would have to wait for one of them to finish charging (or get a partial charge).

Even if the gas station *did* have a 1 megawatt feed line, this kind of huge instantaneous load spike would not be nice to the electrical grid, so capacitors would be the preferred method of implementation. The gas stations could even wire them up to feed power back to the grid if it needed stabilization, or it would be the one place you could charge your phone when a storm knocks out the neighborhood.

Re:Power required to charge?

[sjames]

I would imagine the home charger will take somewhat longer, but then you're home.

The fast charge would be for a charging station when you're out and about and don't really want to wait an hour or two.

Re:Power required to charge?

[espiesp]

No more of a risk than the giant battery pack with wheels you'd be driving around at 70mpg...

Re:Power required to charge?

[F34nor]

Once you are there hot swapping the packs with a life becomes the way to go with even lead acid. People are so focused on perfection here that they miss the opportunity for just better.

Re:Power required to charge?

[Shark]

Might be tricky riding in a car with one moving part... Unless you plan to go in through a permanently open window like the Dukes of Hazard... And drive exclusively in a straight line while suffering every bump in the road.

Re:Power required to charge?

[blueg3]

I think the most disturbing thing to come out of your comment is that I hadn't realised that 1 pound of gasoline has the same energy as 10 pounds of TNT. That doesn't seem right.

Re:Power required to charge?

[Snowblindeye]

A range of 375 miles at 55 mph is seven hours of driving at speed

According to this German article the car was driving 130km/h, which is more like 80 mph. Which makes this even more impressive.

Re:Power required to charge?

[NixieBunny]

Yeah, I don't have one of those at my house. but I can conceive of a fuel tank that could fill a car's gas tank in one go. This car, assuming that it really can absorb 150 kW, will need a charging station with a few megawatts of electrical service. It's not something that the average person can wrap their heads around.

I guess the point is that gasoline packs an awful lot of energy into a small space, and replacing it with electricity requires changing the way we think about electricity.

Re:Power required to charge?

[hairyfeet]

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.

Re:Power required to charge?

[froggymana]

We all know that a lightning strike provides *exactly* 1.21 jiggawatts (or gigawatts). Didn't you guys pay attention during Back to the Future?

Re:Power required to charge?

[PseudonymousBraveguy]

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.

I've driven more than 130 kph (80 mph) in a car that barely HAD 40 HP. I don't know how much horse powers you need to keep a Hummer running at 55 mph, but driving a Audi A2 (which is a pretty small car) at that speed will take much less. The most energy efficient A2 produced was rated at below 4 l/100km (i.e. about 80 mpg).

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.

The car was driven from Munich to Berlin. So it was no hypothetical value, but a real drive on a real road. Munich is about 520m, and Berlin at abut 100m, so you gain 420m of potential energy over the course of 600 km, which is basically nothing.

Regarding the charging current requirement: The (german) sources I've read all talk about a 20 Minute recharge time, not a 6 minute time. Additionally in Europe, you usually get 2 phases 230V each. Combined, the involved current seems to be a lot more realistic, even if still a bit steep. Unfortunately, I didn't find any hard data on the capacity and energy density of the battery, so a lot of the calculations has to remain guessworks

Re:Power required to charge?

[somersault]

I think it's better to get the electrical infrastructure in place and worry about reducing pollution and the power stations. It's probably much easier to increase efficiency there than it is on a per vehicle basis. Obviously you have to factor in manufacturing and recycling of batteries for each vehicle, but since the overall car designs are simpler etc then they'll require less maintenance which will reduce a lot of unecessary parts transport etc.. though that would probably be bad for the economy! Lots of factors.

What kind of direct current source?

[Petersko]

"when charged from a direct current source"

Am I gonna need 2000 amp breakers for the garage?

Re:What kind of direct current source?

[zippthorne]

Only if you don't have 10 kV outlets...

Re:What kind of direct current source?

[timeOday]

Am I gonna need 2000 amp breakers for the garage?

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.

Re:What kind of direct current source?

[espiesp]

Not for quick charging. You MUST have the electrical equivalent to a gasoline storage tank in order to supply it quickly enough. A big bank of batteries/capacitors.

Yes, you will likely be able to plug in at the local shopping mall and grocery store, maybe even plug into the parking meter! But for a road trip, you use up your 'tank' and want to fill it up quickly. The grid can not support that now or likely ever. Thus, the need for the 'gas station' with the 6-min charge capability (at a drastically increased cost of electricity over a home fillup to pay for the infrastructure.)

Charging station?

[Yvan256]

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:

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 160 km per charge. A German-based company has changed all that with a new vehicle capable of driving up to 600 km 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 1000 km on a charge at around 43 km/h, the Audi A2 modified by DBM Energy was able to achieve its 600 km range at an average speed of 88 km/h.

Re:Charging station?

[srjh]

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.

Re:Well - let's hope!

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:Until I can buy one it doesnt exist

[Angst Badger]

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.

Re:Finally looking practical...

[oliverthered]

is that cost to the planet or cost to your wallet?

More info

[Namarrgon]

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.

House Battery Swapping

[Doc Ruby]

battery pack efficiency of 97 percent and a recharge time of around 6 minutes when charged from a direct current source

Solar photovoltaic and fuel cells generate direct current. Usually they go through an inverter, that loses 10-25% of the energy (as heat, and burns out the part for replacement about every 5 years). A battery like this would mean keeping that energy without losing it. Leaving a battery charging at home while driving the car around, then swapping it into the car when the car returns home - or reverse the positions for batteries charging at work or at whatever daytime destination. That battery can also power household devices, like the many devices that really consume DC, which waste power running from wall current into rectifiers.

This kind of device could improve not only transit energy, but also residential (and commercial sites that reverse the locations).

Infrastructure

[Palmsie]

I understand why increasing electronic car's battery life is important but when the second generation of cars were coming out of Ford, no one was complaining about larger gas tanks. They built infrastructure to compensate for the lack of a 200 gallon tank and the complaint, "well how am I supposed to drive across the state on one tank!? You mean I have to wait, fill it, and pump it myself!?" No, they built infrastructure. When battery life is about equal to gasoline cars, build infrastructure to support them. One suggestion at a TED talk was a station that replaces empty batteries with new charged ones. Imagine a car wash that you drive into, pay for your new battery, the machine lifts up the hood, pops out the empty or half-full cell and pops in a new one. But wait, that's MY battery, how do I know if I'm getting a good battery? Well how do you know you're getting gasoline and not apple juice? You set standards, charge limits and you pay by some standardized metric (gallons of oil to X in electric batteries). This creates new jobs for mechanics and technicians to build these stations, replaces gasoline cars with environmentally friendly electronic cells, and practically eliminates the "range anxiety" problem. Once you can travel a few hundred miles on a charge, it won't be a problem because you can pull over to a station and pay for a full cell. If you want to wait, you can drive home and plug in your car for a few hours. Infrastructure support is the answer, not the ultimate electronic battery. It doesn't need to exist for this technology to work (that isn't to say that the technology doesn't need to improve, of course it does).

stolen from the comments of TFA

[wealthychef]

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

Re:Finally looking practical...

[shaitand]

The planet doesn't give a damn. It's us who are fucked.

Rubbish

[goombah99]

To propel a honda shaped car at around 60 Mph takes 30KW of power to overcome wind resistance. It does not matter how efficient the storage and conversion is. that is the baseline set by drag. inefficiency just adds more. and anything with less wind drag than a honda shaped car would be like riding in a tubular suppository; ie pointless.

So.. to go 375 miles at 60 miles per hour will take over 6 hours. 6 hours = 360 minutes. 360/ 6 = 60. 60 * 30KW = 1.8 Mega watts.

So physics says the if you want to charge a car to go 375 miles and the car has the same drag as a honda then it takes 1.8 megawatts if you want to charge it in 6 minutes. that's the minimum. bad batteries and motors require more.

My feeling is that delivering that much wattage would probably melt it unless there was some serious cooling going on. Lets suppse that half the power goes into heat. To remove heat takes-- typically-- about an equal number of watts to the heat you want to remove. This varies by altitude and humidity but it's a good ball park.

SO add atleast another 50% to that ignoring the storage efficiency.

Re:Rubbish

[Vegemeister]

Why the hell do you presume 50% efficiency? That's absolutely atrocious. We can get 85% from ATX switchmode supplies, and those are so under spec'ed that the current folk wisdom recommends supplies rated at twice what any sensible single-socket pc consumes, not to mention the economies of scale.

Furthermore, your estimate of the amount of power needed to remove the heat is incredibly pessimistic. Think of all the pad mount transformers around large buildings. Those are 800-2000 kVA, and every single one I've seen has been passively cooled. Thermal management in large-scale power electronics systems is not a new problem, and is a well-developed industry in itself. The only place heat dissipation might be a concern is in the batteries themselves. This is, of course, the storage efficiency: the one consideration you decided to neglect!

Considering the charging problem, the obvious approach is to charge in series and discharge in parallel. Assuming a single drive motor, a plurality of prismatic Li-ion cells could be connected in 3*N stacks of 400 Volts or so (600V IGBTs). Each phase of the motor could then be driven by N phase legs (like a class B amplifier) with their outputs combined in parallel. Current sharing is insured in the short term by high-frequency chokes, and in the long term by using current-mode control in the phase legs. The current-sharing ratio could also be actively controlled to ensure equal discharge of the batteries.

Alternatively, a two-stage approach is used, in which the several battery segments feed separate phases of a polyphase boost converter, supplying a regulated bus voltage to a traditional voltage source three phase inverter. This provides more fine-grained control of the battery charge state and the advantages of a tested design, at the expense of efficiency and a substantially greater component count.

For charging, the battery pack itself would consist of prismatic cells with large contacts on opposite faces. Spaces between the cells would allow charging electrodes to be inserted. These electrodes would consist of brass plates sandwiching a piece of foam to provide contact pressure. Said plates could incorporate coolant channels through which heat could be removed from the cells.

Re:Rubbish

[jabuzz]

Except they used a modified Audi A2, I would expect because it has a very low drag figure and being made of Aluminium is very light. In fact I would not be surprised if they did not use the 3l variant that has extra drag reducing features to allow a l.2l diesel variant to achieve 100km with less than 3l of fuel. The first production car to do so I believe. Shame Audi stopped production really.

Re:Rubbish

[zevans]

I thought it was common knowledge that a bolt of lightning provides 1.21 Gigawatts.

All you need to do is capture that lightning and instantaneously use it to charge the battery bank.

And as a bonus, we won't need roads where we are going!

Re:Rubbish

[Smidge204]

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=

More Details

[cowtamer]

(Stolen from a comment in: http://www.allcarselectric.com/blog/1050863_electric-car-drives-375-miles-at-55-mph-recharges-in-6-minutes )

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"

Not from the USA

[Required Snark]

Note that there are no USA companies, or technologies mentioned anywhere. It's already too late: the USA has lost it's technical edge, and it won't be coming back any time soon. Japan, Europeans, China and India are investing in basic technology. In the US the way to make money is high frequency trading and patent lawsuits. Who needs to invest in anything with a long rate of return, even if that is where future profits will come from?

Just look at the mental state of the people who plan to "take back their country". The Tea Party morons deny global warming. http://www.newser.com/story/103446/among-tea-party-widespread-global-warming-doubt.html

The Conservapedia thinks that Relativity is a liberal plot: http://newsdesk.org/2010/08/conservapedia-calls-theory-of-relativity-a-liberal-conspiracy/

In its “Counterexamples to Relativity” website, Conservapedia says, “The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.”

The Texas Board of Education (take that title with a grain of salt) is putting Christian thought into text books, including trying to teach creationism http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/09/24/texas-state-board-of-education-confirms-irony-is-dead/

The forces of stupidity have a lot of practical power, and they are using (abusing) it. The net result will reduce the USA to a third world country. Most of the people reading this post will live to see it happen. Well, the USA had a good thing going for a while, at leas from 1945 to 2000 or so.

Re:Not from the USA

[pedestrian crossing]

Note that there are no USA companies, or technologies mentioned anywhere.

Look no further than the first 75% of the comments on this article. It's not just our technological edge, it's the incredibly skeptical attitude to EVs (and pretty much everything else on the alternative energy front) that you see. Nothing but naysayers as far as the eye can see.

Instead of picking apart every solution because it isn't perfect (which apparently is the prevailing US thinking), the Germans know that even if you come up with a 10% solution, you only need to come up with 10 of them.

What we've lost is our ability to look at anything in the long-term. Short-term thinking is what is holding the US back...

Re:I'm skeptical

[sbryant]

For some reason, the fact that it's German gives me a little more credulity -- but not enough.

How about the fact that they charged up the Audi A2 once (not in 6 minutes though), and then drove 600km (375 miles) from München to Berlin? More info here: http://www.lekker-mobil.com/ (the site is in German).

The summary title is misleading. Just because the battery can be charged in 6 minutes from a suitable DC source, doesn't mean that anybody actually has that sort of kit about, or even that the car will have a suitable connector. I'm guessing you can charge it fully in less than 2 hours from a standard 32A 400V 3-phase AC supply - these are quite common in Germany, and the picture showing them charging the car looks like it has one of those.

The most interesting thing about this battery is not the mad charge time from some über-Goliath capacitor, it's the size/weight and efficiency of the thing.

-- Steve

Re:Don't charge but swap

[snspdaarf]

Because the rest of us, with brand new cars and brand new batteries, don't want some nasty half-dead battery pack when we swap. Why does swapping keep coming up?

(now, there's an opening for you!)

The vehicles uses 8-1 kWh, HP is irrelevant.

[celtic_hackr]

According to this German article and another German article. The engine uses between 8-15 kWh in normal use.

The trip was 605 kM (377+ miles) at 130 kM/h (81 MPH) or 90kM/h (56 MPH). The 130 in one article seems wrong, and a commenter posted a correction. So, likely it was 90 kM/h.

At the end of the trip the battery pack still had a 18% charge, but the inventors say the range is 600 kM (

So charging to 97% in six minutes required a 79% charge or 90kWh or about 0.9 MW in 6 minutes.

You could drive it for more than 375 miles on a single charge, depending on how deeply you want to drain the battery. Still, who wants to drive more than 7 hours a day. Now if you had just three available stations. you'd be able to drive then entire North-South distance of the US (in 29 hours - I've done it in 21). With seven stations, you'd be able to drive across the US (in 56 hrs ). 377 miles on a "tank" is fairly standard. that's about the range in my cars. There are certainly better ranged cars. The one thing the article breezes over, is that over 55 MPH, you'd likely see polynomially decreasing range.