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Group Demonstrates 3,000 Km Electric Car Battery
Jabrwock (985861) writes 'One of the biggest limitations on lithium battery-powered electric cars has been their range. Last year Israeli-based Phinergy introduced an "aluminum-air" battery. Today, partnering with Alcoa Canada, they announced a demo of the battery, which is charged up at Alcoa's aluminum smelter in Quebec. The plant uses hydro-electric power to charge up the battery, which would then need a tap-water refill every few months, and a swap (ideally at a local dealership) every 3,000km, since it cannot be recharged as simply as Lithium. The battery is meant to boost the range of standard electric cars, which would still use the Lithium batteries for short-range trips. The battery would add about 100 kg to an existing Tesla car's battery weight.'
I wonder whether anyone will remember doing this sort of maintenance (filling the tap water part) without some sort of big warning or display somewhere.
Why don't they get honest and say "Smelting aluminium at 960 degrees".
With an automatic swap system on gas stations, it might provide an instant refuelling, something impossible with fixed lithium batteries currently. Possibly it might make sense to standarise such a swapping machine, and a respective battery compartment, before multiple standards arise -- one machine for a hydrogen cell, aluminium battery etc.
Well, the technology is getting better, but it's still not there. And why does tiny little war torn israel always seem to have cutting edge technology but we can't make OR EVEN BUY the technology here in the U.S.?
This is great for public transport. Changing units every 3000 Km is non-issue there. Vehicles are in the garage over night anyway...
839*929
Classic first-world problems... God forbid you should ever have to look after a horse, dude.
At 3000km, that's shorter than even a severe-duty oil change interval. One long trip and it's done. Seriously, say I wanted to drive from Dallas to Las Vegas; the battery lasts just long enough to get me there in one shot. Sure, the rechargable pack lasts long enough for the short drives once I'm there, but the return trip is going to suck with the repeated stops for recharging, especially with the lack of SuperCharger stations along the way. So by the end of 2015 I'll be able to make it, according to Tesla, but what do I do until then? I suppose if I can afford a Model S I'm probably affluent enough to pick up a plane ticket instead?
This "battery swap" is going to be nowhere near cheap, and we're talking about adding 220lbs to an already relatively porky sedan. I think I like my chances with next-gen rechargables better than this.
Damn. Yeah, good point. Shame really, 'cos them Israeli boffins have been working so hard on it and now they've got to just stop and do something else 'cos your commute is too long. You know, I bet they're kicking themselves for not asking you about your commute first 'cos they could've saved themselves the bother!
PAH! 3000km! 3000 schkilometers I say! Not to menschion we don't even have any kilometers in the US anyway.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
and needs swapping and "charging" in a factory sounds very much like a non-rechargeable battery.
With that concept, you could very easily have electric cars powered with a very large number of alcaline batteries, and "charging stations" in which you change the alcaline batteries.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
100 kg? Do you know the weight of an V6 ICE engine? Transmission? 4x4 systems? 100 kg is not that much...
They are both correct, since the assumption is that you do not remove the existing battery, you just temporarily add the AI battery.
Unsigh!
No... a 50 km commute could easily be handled by your lithium battery. So you would need zero of these per year of that's all that you were doing. This is a range extender - a way to shut up all those people who keep complaining that the 300 mile range of the Model S is just unacceptable. You don't even need a Model S though, you'd do just fine in a Leaf.
You just named 3 things an electric car isn't going to have.
I bet a lot of potential EV owners are put off range anxiety - that idea that every once in a while they'll have to do a really long trip and they can't because the battery won't take them far enough and will take hours to recharge. Probably the rest of the time they only need the battery power to do 30-100 miles between charges. If cars carried less batteries then they'd cost less, weigh less and be more efficient too. The backup might last some people years before it was fully used up but its there if they need it.
I'm wondering who would really bother with it though. 260 miles from a Tesla battery and 50 minute charge time covers 99% of use cases, and is going to be much more convenient than going to a dealer to have the battery replaced every every 3000 miles.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's an add-on to a pure-electric car to extend the range. The Nissan Leaf, for example, is rated at at least 120km/charge. So, in theory you'd never actually draw on this magic battery for your daily driving. It'd only be if you had longer trips or weren't able to plug in one night, etc.
The average commute in North America is well within the range of a plug-in electric vehicle, and this thing is just icing/insurance. There's going to be outliers, but if we routinely killed ideas because they didn't work for 100% of possible scenarios, we'd still be shivering naked in caves (fur being too darned hot for those in warmer climates...)
Log in or piss off.
Horses are largely self maintaining, throw a bail of hay out or give them a pasture and water you're good most of the time. Of course there's usual vet visits and horse shoes etc. but A horse doesn't need a set of shoes every month. They also have limited range and emissions problems. Also when they truly come to end of life, it takes a lot of effort to clean up the mess.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
OK, sorry, my fault for not carefully RTFA. I did not mention that while my family and I do drive a great deal, almost all of it is within 75km of home. This *plus* a standard battery probably handles my situation, plus the occasional longer road trip, just fine.
Nonaggression works!
I have an antique electric tractor. It's 41 years old and runs great, with almost zero maintenance; it uses about 20 cents worth of electricity to mow an acre of grass. If I replace the motor brushes every 30 years, and periodically wash out and maintain the corrosion-prone battery compartment, it will last forever.
But the achilles heel of these machines is battery maintenance, which consists of watering the big lead acid batteries and properly charging them. There are no mysteries in this process, and no great difficulties - you just have to remember to do it, and the batteries simply will not forgive forgetfulness. Properly cared for batteries can easily last twelve years, but it's very common for people to ruin a $600+ set of batteries in two years or less, simply from a lack of mindfulness. That changes the economics of it, which are heavily front-loaded. If your batteries last ten years, the tractor is much cheaper to own and operate than a gasser, but if you destroy your pack in two years, you waste that huge upfront battery investment and take a financial beating.
The Toyota Prius's NiMH battery packs were designed with this human reality in mind; the intelligent battery management electronics are the key to that car's success. Tesla took it one step further; they not only have intelligent battery management that does not require functioning user brain cells, they also built a high cell count charging system that allows rapid charging without compromising battery capacities.
Depending on humans to do battery maintenance doesn't work, in practice, except in the case of engineering geeks who are not even slightly behaviorally representative of the species as a whole.
All these toxic batteries we are creating?
I wouldn't call a disposable aluminum battery the "cutting edge" of technology.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
When I worked in one inner suburb of a medium-sized city, and lived in another, I commuted about 50km each way, 100km in total, and hence 3000km over the course of a little over a month.
I know it is Slashdot and the summary is misleading about it "adding 100kg over a Tesla battery" but if you actually read the article you would learn that the idea is not to replace the existing Li-ion battery but to have this as well as a reserve. As you point out most people only drive short trips for which a Li-ion battery is well suited. This is just to provide a power for long distance driving.
However, depending on the cost, since this battery is only 100 kg and the current Tesla battery is 500kg you could imagine completely replacing the Li-ion battery with five of these and having a 15,000 km range which would probably do most people for the best part of a year. This would only work if it is cheap to replace compared to the cost of a Li-ion battery which lasts for 100,000 km and costs $30k. So assuming the cost of electricity to recharge the Li-ion palances with the installation costs of the multiple aluminium battery packs you would require, the cost per aluminium battery would need to be $900. The cost of 100 kg of aluminium (which seems to be the principle component) is $180 for 100 kg so this does not rule out such a price.
Sadly the killer for this, and all electric cars, is that assuming an internal combustion car uses 6l/100km of petrol the price of petrol would need to reach $5/litre before it became more expensive than the cost of battery or about a factor 4 higher than it currently is in Canada. Still give it a few more years of declining battery costs and increasing oil prices and we will finally be there!
When I worked in one inner suburb of a medium-sized city, and lived in another, I commuted about 50km each way, 100km in total, and hence 3000km over the course of a little over a month. Commutes 3-4 times that long are not unheard of in larger cities. But for me, would have meant a battery swap about 10 times a year. I don't know how long the swap should take, but I do know I would not have time to visit a dealer - the closest being about a half hour away - anywhere near that frequently, even if it were a short and painless process.
They aren't talking about this battery being the primary power source, but supplementing the lithium batteries to extend the range. While the lithium batteries can be recharged, these batteries are consumed in the process and have to be reprocessed. So, If your lithium batteries get you 95km each day, then you would only use 5km from the aluminum battery.
You sure about that? I mean, Having to stop at the "electric station" not even once a week seems like a pretty good deal in your situation. Of course it depends on the cost and duration of the battery change.
This isn't meant to replace that, it's meant to augment it. Most of the time, the 260 mile range is fine. Sometimes, it isn't, and this gives you an emergency reserve. In normal use, you'll never use it, but if you're planning a long trip and don't manage to get to a charging station anywhere in the middle then you're not going to be stuck miles from civilisation with an empty battery.
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Wasn't there some professor who had mostly perfected a fuel cell based on some kind of aluminum cycle?
Wrong. It is 1600km for the battery fitted to the car in question, it is 3000km for 100kg of battery. They did not specify the size of battery fitted to the car that had it's range extended by 1600km but a bit of mathematics suggests around 54kg. Your reading comprehension is really rather poor.
For starters: I am not all that impressed. They're dressing this up as 'rechargable', when in fact it is emphatically not so, this is a 'primary' battery, not a rechargable 'secondary' battery, and 'recharging' it in this context is just new-speak for 'recycling' it.
OK, let's put that aside for a moment. The real questions are:
1) What is the estimated, large-scale, ultimate carbon footprint of using this battery technology? Is it better or worse than Li+ technologies? If it's about the same or worse then maybe we'd better think twice about this.
2) What is the estimated ongoing cost to the end-user/consumer assuming it became the standard for electric vehicles and as such proliferated throughout the market? If the cost every few months (or sooner, for heavy drivers of their vehicles) is excessive then it's just not practical from a fiscal point of view.
3) For both the above, assume that the technology would be, generously enough, licensed immediately (or at least soon) to 3rd party companies, or better yet (perfect world) made open-source and/or royalty-free (because the creators/backers are such humanitarians, LOL) for the betterment of all mankind.
4) Now that #3 has got the rose-colored-glasses perspective out of the way, let's assume they're greedy bastards who aggressively enforce any patents they have on the technology, and only allow companies that pay licensing fees/royalties to recycle the battery packs, vehicle owners are only allowed to get swaps at 'authorized facilities', etc., and the cost naturally is passed along to the consumer.
Needless to say I'm somewhat leery of technology like this. Part of me wants to say it sounds like a step backwards. Here's another question:
5) How much aluminum is lost (percentage estimate?) per cycle of this type of battery? Questions 1 through 4 aside, is it really long-term practical from a technical standpoint, or is it wasteful of raw materials, turning aluminum into a non-usable waste product?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
What if an electric car would have a space for this battery and a driver would only install this type of battery when going on a long drive (i.e., supplement the existing Li battery infrastructure instead of replacing it)??? That way you would have the best of both worlds, quick charging lithium batteries for short trips and alum. battery for long trips. Yes, the downside is more space reserved for batteries instead of cargo, but I think I would be willing to work with that... I can easily see installing this battery right before a long trip and returning it after the trip is finished.
That is if you only run on the new battery type but that not the plan, only use it for long trips and use the lithium as normal which would be fine for your commute
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
how about a 100kg passenger, a lot of adult males are near that weight
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
and how much would it cost you to fill your petrol tank using the same mileage over 3 weeks? but then again, it would be best if you actually read the article.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
consider yourself brain dead. rtfa and then comprehend
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Since it can't be recharged, it seems like it's going to be more problematic than the idea of swapping a partially depleted rechargeable battery for a fresh one. Electric cars already cost more than gasoline automobiles, and if it's more than a few hundred dollars to swap anyways, it will *always* be cheaper to just use gasoline.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The really compelling part is that electricity stored in aluminium can be transported without any energy loss. Alumina can be found in most of the world, so if you have local access to cheap power you can create aluminium there, be it in Iceland or the Saharan desert. Then you can fill up a freighter with it and go nice and slow across the atlantic ocean and deliver it in the US or China.
I met these people last year and they talked about filling up a supertanker with Aluminium in Norway or Iceland and then having it connect to the US power grid and deliver electricity.
read the fucking article then you'll find out
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
These batteries shift the need for gasoline to the power grid. But most utility companies are pretty lazy and I wonder if we develop great electric cars in quantities whether the power lines will start to glow like the wires in my toaster. We can hope that power companies are investing in far more robust systems. Oddly this car issue may actually save the power companies as charging all these electric cars may mean that less people self supply all of their homes electric needs. A home with three electric cars all wanting to charge up at the same time is unlikely to do well on solar panels on the roof.
Mod parent informative, insightful, and interesting.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
No, the 3000km is assuming that you are using the aluminum air battery in addition to the normal lithium battery."
So you're saying you would not trade in wasting 1 minutes stopping for gas every couple of days for a single 1/2 hour visit to a battery swap place once a month? You would come out ahead in the scenario.
I take it you never raised horses?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes, but they would have less range and be heavier.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Siiiiigh. From TFA:
May I suggest that next time, if you're a bit confused, you RTFA before jumping straight into the comments and loudly proclaiming how much you don't get it.
Why use them as range extenders. Why not just pack enough in to do a year of driving the recycle the filling and put in new plates? If it costs less than about $1500 to do most people would be fine with it.
Actually for a time I did have a couple of hay burners, groomed/washed them regularly and did all the feeding / vet things and had the horseshoe guy come around every 2 to three months. The hay guy every month and damn mice always in it and what always goes in, comes out. I didn't raise them per say, we bought them when one was three the other five. It's like having a swimming pool though, a lot more maintenance than actual usage; they spent most of the time running around the five acres we had. And the analogy of a Boat, bust out another thousand, pales in comparison to a hay burner. Also I don't think a car ever bit me, literally speaking.
I did have pause one time to observe a rancher down the road who had to deal with a dead horse one time, good thing he had a lot of acreage and a backhoe. Come to think of it he did the same thing for dead cows.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
when did the Tesla start getting 1400 km from it's lithium batters? Seems to me that would be kind of a big deal on it's own.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is a hybrid system, with the Lithium-Ion battery being used for daily commutes and the Aluminum-Air battery only kicking for long distances. The regular range of an electric car like the Nissan Leaf is 135km, which covers most daily commutes, including yours. If you were only using the car for commuting and regularly charged the Li-Ion battery, the Al-air battery should in theory last indefinitely.
The Aluminum-Air battery will only be drained for those long-distance trips which exceed the range of the Li-Ion battery, and only then for the segments of the trip where the Li-Ion battery wasn't charged. Hence their claim that one ought to be able to extend the 3000km life-cycle of the Al-Air battery over at least 2 years.
Converting Aluminium Oxide to Aluminium is energy intensive, but it does not contribute to greenhouse gasses. The power for the smelter is supplied by hydro dams.
Regarding renting for long trips. I see this suggestion quite often, but in the big picture, its not really as good a solution as it might sound.
I have rented a van occasionally for family trips. It is a real pain in the ass. Not just going through the motions of finding a decent deal that is not too far from home, but there is the extra trip to pick up the vehicle, or schedule them to pick up/drop off well in advance. Drop off can also be an inconvenience that requires another person to transport you or the vehicle.
Those may be minor inconveniences in certain terms, but the real problem is finding the vehicle I need when its a holiday or other 'peak' travel time. At many rental agencies, you can't even get a car if you try last minute and it is a peak period And at these times the rental price can be a lot higher than normal. If more and more people need cars for long trips, then it is going to become even more expensive and more difficult to get the car you need when you need it.
Add the simple fact that people generally feel more comfortable in their own car and the "just rent one' suggestion just doesn't seem like a good solution for the mass market.
May I suggest that next time, if you're a bit confused, you RTFA before jumping straight into the comments and loudly proclaiming how much you don't get it.
I'm sorry, I must have the wrong website. Could you please direct me to slashdot?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Sounds like a disposable battery and a horribly energy inefficient way to extend the range.
Moving batteries back to the manufacturer when discharged and probable an insane amount of energy to reuse.
For 100 KG I'd rather add a small engine / generator.
The Ford 3-cylindar ecoboost weighs around 100KG. Add to that space for fuel (another 25kg for 10 gallons, not including the gas tank which'd be 10kg even if plastic, plus all the cooling, plumbing, exhaust, intake, transmission cost and weights, driveshaft connectivity problems, and physical space constraints that a gas engine and fuel system would bring, and you're far better off with the replaceable range extending battery.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
When I worked in one inner suburb of a medium-sized city, and lived in another, I commuted about 50km each way, 100km in total, and hence 3000km over the course of a little over a month. Commutes 3-4 times that long are not unheard of in larger cities. But for me, would have meant a battery swap about 10 times a year. I don't know how long the swap should take, but I do know I would not have time to visit a dealer - the closest being about a half hour away - anywhere near that frequently, even if it were a short and painless process.
On the other hand, you don't have to make the twice a week stop at the gas station.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Technically it's rechargeable since the only input is electricity. The fact that it's not rechargeable *at home* doesn't change that.
The power for the smelter is supplied by hydro dams.
Is this for a newly constructed dam? Is there water available that would otherwise NOT be used to generate electricity?
Or is it that every kwh used for this would have instead been 'sold' on the open market and used for things like displacing coal/ng burning elsewhere? Because I find the latter possibility the most likely.
I don't read AC A human right
I lived and worked in Ottawa (Canada) for five years without owning a car. I rented a car fairly frequently on weekends, and when needed I rented a pickup truck, cargo van, cube van, etc.
It worked really well. I took the bike or bus to work and to downtown most of the time. When I needed a vehicle, I rented one. My rental costs were *far* less than it would have cost to license a vehicle and pay insurance on it, much less buying/leasing one.
Now I've got two kids and live in the prairies. Public transit sucks, so I own a smallish car. But I've still rented a van for a long trip with relatives.
I still consider it rechargeable due to the fact the the main input in remanufacturing is electricity, and that there are basically no toxic chemicals released during the remanufacturing process.
The fact that it can't be recharged *at home* doesn't change the fact that to a first approximation you put in electricity and get back a charged battery.
What point is there in calling this a "first-world problem"? Of course it's a first-world problem, the first world is the only place with enough overkill wealth to consider these impractical baubels like electric luxury cars with batteries that get melted down and rebuilt from scratch every 1800 miles. And are used going back and forth to Starbucks, while you whine about the injustice in the world caused by the 1%ers.
The video is from a year ago. The demo uses a bigger and newer version of the battery.
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
Or build it into a trailer that you can tow behind you on a long trip with all your gear.
If I've done my numbers right, it should be 20 cents per mile for the cost of the bulk aluminum (assuming the entire 100kg is aluminum, which obviously isn't so). But that's a lot of aluminum/alumina to be shipping around in relatively small packages (even palletloads of batteries are small compared to bulk metals), and I suspect replacing the battery isn't as simple as dumping the alumina in the smelter and putting in fresh aluminum, so there's a lot of unknowns here.
It sounds like the cost is probably high and it's only meant for backup solution, but the one killer application I can think of would be the upcoming Formula-E http://www.fiaformulae.com/ races. There's no need to pit if you have enough power to run the entire race with one of these.
ChuckyG
I don't think I'd say horses are easy to use, even if they do tend to fend for themselves. In my experience, if you intend to actually get a horse to do something useful, like carry a rider someplace or pull a wagon, there is a significant level of effort involved and no little risk that the horse might not be willing to cooperate with you reliably. Not to mention that their power output is generally limited to around ONE horsepower which limits the possible tasks you can use them for.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This isn't really a "battery" any more so than gasoline is. Technically, you could recover the waste products from gasoline combustion, and using various chemical processes + energy turn it back into gasoline. But that doesn't mean your gas tank is a battery. Same goes for this thing. It is basically an engine burning aluminum. Traveling 3000 km in a car that gets 50 mpg requires of gasoline, so this has about the same energy density.
Really, no electric car needs more than 100 pounds of this backup battery. That would be more than enough to drive for a full day. In fact, 50 pounds might be enough emergency backup for any real use case -- as described, 50 pounds would give you about 600 km of extra emergency range.
Anyone who wants to drive 12 hours a day for multiple days ought to just rent a gasoline or diesel vehicle. Electric cars are for more normal usage, in which a battery like this gives you emergency flexibility.
Aside from startup price (about double), why not use Optima batteries in the tractor? They require no maintenance and they can survive overcharging, vibration, and produce very little corrosion. Energy density might be lower.
Oh, and on the topic of corrosion, a coating of petroleum jelly over the terminals and cable ends will block corrosion, but not electrical current.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
It's tough to break 1.2k km driven in a day( ~800 miles). If you're getting the first 500 km off the lithium batteries, that's 700 out of the aluminum air battery, then you stop for the night and presumably recharge the lithium. That would make a 3 day trip 1500 off LiIon, 2100 from the aluminum battery, so they're probably counting on a few less miles/day on average.
They're probably counting on a touch more than 1k km/day though.
470 km per day LiIon, 530 Al. 1000 km/day. Reasonable.
I don't read AC A human right
Vroom! Vroom!
(or whatever sound a whisper quiet electric Tesla makes while it screams down Highway 1 at 200 kph)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You better hope that they have a regular battery in there and use the primary cell (yes, it's not recharging) as a range extender for those few trips that exceed the secondary cell capacity.
In this case, it'll be slightly better than those cars like the BMW and Volt that are primarily electric but tow a gas generator with them to offer extended range operations. This one keeps the existing simple low-maintenance electric drivetrain without having to add all the gas engine support components to the car.
Well that's exactly what TFA says:
car runs on the lithium battery.
when doing short trips like comuting between home and work ( typical everyday trips are 50 km according to TFA ) you simply run of the battery and recharge it at home/at work.
when doing long road trip, instead of stoping at a fast charging station, the alumium kicks in and is used to top the regular lithium battery.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I believe they actually have audio kits to make your electric car make "vroom" noises, for those who can't bear to be without the nostalgic sounds...
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
I call it the credit card minimum payment syndrome. If you charge people $1500 all at once, they'll freak out over it. But if you spread it out over time to $40/week (e.g. gas for your car), they're ok with it. Even though over a year that ends up being more expensive. It's how the credit card companies make money off of people who don't pay their bill in full every month.
I like the idea of going smaller, not bigger. Small enough to make them easily replaceable by the average person -- say, 5 kg. Assuming 100 kg gives you 3000 km, and assuming the weight scales linearly, then 5 kg would be 150 km. That would roughly double the range of something like a Nissan LEAF, for negligible cost (beyond the cost of the Al battery). Provide slots for four of them, and arrange to sell the batteries through fuel stations, and you could use an EV in exactly the same way you'd use a gasoline-powered car. Include a rechargeable batter for very short range trips, and for a place to store power recovered from regenerative braking, and you'd have a car that makes hybrids completely obsolete.
Looking at specific energies, I'm not sure what to think. Assuming 3 mi/kWh, 3000 kg for 1800 mi is 6 kWh, 22 mJ, per kg. That's pretty impressive. Almost two orders of magnitude higher than Li-ion, and very nearly 50% of the specific energy of gasoline! If someone seriously has a battery technology that can approach gasoline that closely... that's huge. Even if battery manufacture isn't particularly efficient, energy-wise, the ability to shift between energy sources may well offset it.
It seems too good to be true... which usually means it is.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Then why did you say they are largely self maintain?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The post I replied to was claiming 1400km a charge from L-Ion and an additional 1600 from this new system.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
because outside of maybe an hour a day, they do maintain themselves. Pastures, water troughs.. It's not hard to imagine that. They'd get along fine without us too.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I wouldn't want one of those, either, no matter how attractive Heinlein made them seem. Dealing with "big energy/business" is always a loss for the consumer. You can mitigate that, a bit, when there's a semblance of competition (5 brands of gasoline/diesel within 1/2 mile of my residence, but only one refinery in SoCal). If I have to buy a replacement aluminum fuel cell every 2 months, they'll impoverish me quickly.
That's typical human nature. Penny wise, pound foolish the saying goes.
Even the Optima batteries, while better than many other batteries, still do not like to be overcharged.
The battery in one of my older cars lasted 10 years, I think because every couple of months I would run a desulfate operation on it with a smart battery charger. I wish they would build that technology in to car charging systems since it only cost pennies and can greatly extend the life.
After I got my Tesla I put the 12v battery in my Prius (an Optima replacement for the OEM when the OEM died) on a battery minder which does this and has proper temperature compensation. I only drove my Prius a couple times a year.
I might add that Tesla has several patents dealing with metal oxide batteries and using them in combination with lithium ion batteries. They already have the automated battery swap technology as well.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Interestingly enough, Tesla already has patents covering this hybrid battery approach. According to this patent it was filed back in 2010.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Given that a Tesla model S, currently the longest ranged production EV, only has ~300 miles of range (480km), I think that's a very unfounded statement. Ergo my point that it's tough to drive that far at once, giving you the opportunity to charge the battery multiple times.
I don't read AC A human right
Every 3000 km you need to change the battery AND every month you need to refill the battery with tap water. Well here is some news:
a) one new battery a year ... and hope delivery infrastructure is in place and not everyone is rushing at the last minute to get it done like say, what happens with snow tires; and
b) tap water isn't free. It makes a noticeable dent in the family utility bill in my area of the country; and finally
c) tap water in -20 C is a challenge. Even my garage is too cold in winter, the water is cut to all external faucets when the temps start dipping to -5 C.
So nice idea but not for the average family.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Perhaps you're new here, but there's a long tradition on slashdot of commenting on an article without having read it (and oftentimes, without having even read the summary, or anything other than the headline). Although, judging from the tone here, maybe the times, they are a-changin'.
In any case, in the context of what's written in the summary, I stand by my original [overrated] statement.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
The irony. I've been advocating for a post-labor society on here for quite some time. But please, wear your rudeness as a badge of honor, and continue to RTFA so that old men like me don't have to.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
That's $200 of raw aluminum. So at least $400 for the battery pack plus $100 to do the swap.
Your most likely looking at $500 for a 1000 mile battery.
So 4x more expensive then gas or standard battery pack. I don't see the oil companies quaking in fear.
Range extending technologies can not be viable if they cost more than an ICE.
It's a non-refillable fuel cell.
It burns/oxidizes aluminum to produce electricity and alumina ore.
Someone talking about the manufacturing process says it uses up/gives off carbon and fluorine -- so maybe we can get teflon, too?
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The truth is, you never do get old enough to know better - Joe Martin
Israeli start-up? check. Spearheaded by guys from software and telecom, with relevant-tech experts at 2nd tier? check. Outlandish claims about EVs? check. Managed to land some big ‘Blue Chip’ money and partnerships? check.
Gee I wonder where I’ve heard this before
I hope it's real I really do.
Murphy was an optimist