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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"?
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).
--
make install -not war
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.
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
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.