But 1, 10 or 100 secs out of 1 hour of racing are not ridiculous numbers for "racing pit stop" work times.
10 seconds is an order of magnitude less power than you stated. 100 seconds is two orders of magnitude less power than you stated.
You deliberately skewed the numbers by choosing only one second to do the charge in. Hence my point, that if you're going to deliberately skew the numbers, you might as well go all the way.
As for arcing, lightning is mere arcing. It's just typically hundreds of megawatts and does blow stuff up from time to time.
No, the average power of a lightning strike is about 1 terawatt, and the only primary "explosions" it ever does are flash boiling which -- if in a very confined space -- can fracture what is confining them.
If the car stores enough energy to run at full power - 200 kilowatts for one hour
1) Kilowatts is energy, not power.
2) If you meant kilowatt hours, driving doesn't work that way. Even in racing, you never use your engine at 100% full power 100% of the time. In a race like this, you're not even going to be close to that. The energy this car expends accelerating to speed will be 2/3rds recovered on braking, as in the Tesla Roadster. The rest of your losses are aero and rolling -- primarily aero. Apart from the standard CdA issues, aero losses in this car will be conditional on how much downforce they design for and what sort of speeds they're dealing with.
And a one second charge? Heck, if you really want to create ridiculous numbers, require that they charge in 0.001 seconds!;)
and hoping they don't blow up in the process
"Blow up"? Give me a break. These things aren't made out of explosives. Heck, supercapacitors generally aren't flammable at all, and your non-cobalt-based li-ions are certainly less flammable than gasoline. The worst thing you risk during a pack change is arcing -- but unless you're an idiot, you have breakers on your pack that get closed before swap and opened after.
Even racing supercars don't come close to running at 100% throttle nonstop -- and when they do slow down for turns, regen puts power back into the pack. Li-ion regen in the Roadster, for example, is around 65-70% efficient if I recall the numbers correctly. So you only lose 30-35% of the energy expended on an accel/decel cycle; the rest of your losses are primarily aero and rolling. Aero, which should be the primary loss mechanism, will depend heavily on how much downforce there is.
I agree, though, in that it's probably not practical for the race unless the pit stops are long.
What would you call "an industrial scale"? I've been reading over market research on electric vehicle forecasts for a business, and they're all over the board. However, it's safe to say that almost everyone is calling for them to be in at least "sizable" numbers by 2015. The most extreme forecast I've come across is Wintergreen's, which is, if I recall the numbers correctly, 32.7 million shipped by 2015. I find that number a bit hard to believe, but on the other hand, when there's perhaps three dozen marques planning to build them in 5 to 6 figure quantities per year within the next few years, some of the lower-end figures are equally hard to believe as well. I tend to favor an 8 million shipped by 2015 scenario.
Still a fairly small percentage of global sales, but a relevant number.
How much is "a bit longer"? Several pre-production cars have already demonstrated 10 minute charging, while BYD claims it on the production F3DM. If you have a really crazy cooling system and, say, a 250kW Aerovironment PosiCharge charger or 300kW Norvik MinitCharge charger, you should be able to do ~5 minutes per ~120 miles.
The hideous Eliica already exists and blows it away, the Wrightspeed X1 toasts it at least on accel (and the economy-canceled production model, the SR-71, was expected to be able to beat a Bugatti Veyron in 0-60), while Shelby Supercars is working on the Ultimate Aero EV which should blow them all away.
They could have 100 trillion in annual revenue, but if by spending that patent money on another quarter programmer's salary they could get more of a return on investment, then it'd still be a stupid decision to pursue the patent.
Indeed, it's all about preventing *commercial* competitors. VCs and angels want to know, "Why should I give you, who have no track record, money to develop and market this product instead of your established competitors who would have a higher chance of success and don't need to build a business from scratch?" It's almost impossible to start a non brick-and-mortar company that requires significant capitalization these days without IP to back it up.
So if your VCs wanted you to torture puppies to death before they'd give you money, would the "chorus of boos" have any effect on your actions?
I assure you that my company, Puppy Waterboards, LLC, does care about your concerns about our patent, "Method and apparatus for puppy euthanasia utilizing superheated corkscrews", and will direct them to the appropriate staff.
There are many ways to get money. Some of them are right, and some of them are wrong. People with consciences know there's a difference.
On a more serious note, you don't even know what my patent is about, and yet you're positive it's "wrong". People with consciences try to find out the facts before they criticize.
Irrelevant. Whether you're a big company or not, you can't afford to waste money on frivolous things. You have to balance your expenditures versus what else you could be doing with that money.
The amazing part is that IBM is wasting this kind of money applying for a patent that has no chance of standing up in court, if they're even dumb enough to grant it in the first place. I'm in the process of applying for a software patent myself (I know, summon the chorus of boos; but having it could be the difference between being able to raise VC and not being able to raise VC for my starting business; loans, too, are often secured against your IP). These things don't come cheap -- mostly in terms of legal costs. As in a $5k retainer, $5-10k total for a single patent, more if it takes multiple patents to ensure sufficient protection, and if you want international protection, it can go up to $100k or so. Also, from discussions with my attorney, it's really hard to get away with the "bloody obvious" software patents anymore after all of the blowback from things like the Amazon 1-click patent.
I'm surprised they'd waste the money trying. Perhaps their legal department didn't have enough work to do but they didn't want to cut staff.
Different species of parrot will mate. And dogs will mate with wolves or other canids.
I think the author's argument was perfectly reasonable -- I've made the exact same argument myself over on EvCforum years back. Dogs should be considered what is known as a "ring species". The classic example of a ring species is the Larus gulls. The British L. argentatus can breed with the North American L. smithsonianus, which can breed with the east Siberian L. vegae, which can breed with the central Siberian L. vegae birulai, which can breed with the west siberian L. heuglini, which can breed with the Scandinavian L. fuscus. But the birds in Scandinavia can't breed with the birds in Britain.
Ostensibly, ring species are rare, but scientists keep seem to be discovering that more and more species are, in fact, ring species, so I have to question how rare it really is. My Yellow-Headed Amazon parrot is part of a complex that could in some cases be described as a ring species, but is in general more of a taxonomic headache, shaped more like an interconnected mesh rather than a ring.
It cun fur my inffurmeshun be-a menshuned thet neeezeer zeese-a is oor hes beee members in sumeune-a ooff zee essuceeeshuns thet ere-a coorrent in zee oobjecteefe-a, zee cuoort ooff eppeel types in a pressoore-a messege-a.
Effter inffurmeshun ebuoot thet zee nooly zee ooccoopeeed cuoort ooff eppeel joodge-a in Purete-a Bey ierleeer beee member in seme-a cupyreeght essuceeeshun thet it jäfsunklegede-a zee deestrict cuoort joodge-a, zee Preseedent, zee Cuoort ooff Eppeel ves reqooested yesterdey tu ixemeene-a unless unuzeer ooffff zee cuoort's depertments shuoold deceede-a jäfsffrågun.
Zee cuoort ooff eppeel veell nut set in teeme-a veet Purete-a Bey beffure-a jäfsffrågun is deceeded. Ebuoot Nurström vuoold be-a essessed es jäfeeg cun zee oobjecteefe-a be-a resoobmeetted tu zee deestrict cuoort und zee joodgement tu be-a turn up.
Seferel ooff zee sentenced puretes' deffence-a levyers esserts thet Nurström beee jäfeeg, emung oozeer theeng thruoogh thet he-a is member in seferel essuceeeshuns veet cunnecshun tu cupyreeght. Zee fuoor ves sentenced tu a yeer's preesun und tu peyeeng demege-a lefel oon 30 meelliuns sek. Bork Bork Bork!
My best translation:
New judges in Pirate Bay
Court of appeal replaces the newly the occupied judge in Pirate Bay. The question about the district court been jävig is decided now of three judges from another department.
It can for my information be mentioned that neither these is or has been members in someone of the associations that are current in the objective, the court of appeal types in a pressure message.
After information about that the newly the occupied court of appeal judge in Pirate Bay earlier been member in same copyright association that it jävsanklagade the district court judge, the President, the Court of Appeal was requested yesterday to examine unless another off the court's departments should decide jävsfrågan.
Today came beslutet: The appointed Judge of Appeal Ulrika Ihrfelt, that works on the department that has special direction on copyright and immaterialrättsliga objectives, may not sentence in the question about the district court been jävig.
Instead comes jävsfrågan to be moved to another off the court of appeal's departments and where to be examined o
I don't think it's that awesome. Air batteries (which are nothing new, BTW), tend to suffer from poor cycle lifes, poor power density, and very low efficiency. Often these "breakthroughs" aren't as impressive as they at first sound.
Now, that said, the other recent battery breakthrough -- on the Li-S front -- really does look as impressive as it sounds. I read through the paper on the research the other day as "light reading" at the dentist's office;) Li-S's big problem has long been its really atrocious cycle life. It has great energy density, good power density, and very good efficiency, but the cycle life is a killer. And the variants they tried to improve cycle life really shot the energy density.
The reason it has these cycle life problems is because of how it works: you have sulfur in a carbon matrix (needs a conductive matrix because sulfur is an insulator) on one side of a separator film and metallic lithium on the other. The lithium ions migrate across the membrane and bond with the (insoluble) sulfur cathode to form (insoluble) Li2S; then, when running the cell in the other direction, the Li2S is split and the ions migrate back to the metallic anode. But there are intermediary reaction products -- various lithium polysulfides -- and these *do* tend to be very soluble. So, some of the polysulfides dissolve into the electrolyte, migrate across the membrane, and precipitate out on the other side and are rendered useless.
The new technique is pretty clever. They start by making a form of mesoporous carbon. This is made kind of like aerogel, via nanocasting, and it's covered in really deep pits. They then mill and then heat together the sulfur and carbon. The sulfur, having low surface tension, wicks into all of the pore space, with only a small amount of room left over to account for expansion. They then bake the composite at 155C, which boils all of the sulfur off the surface, leaving it only in the pits. So when the polysulfides form, they have a lot of trouble migrating out of the carbon.
That alone is a big improvement, but they took it a step further. The polysulfides are hydrophobic, so they bonded polyethylene glycol to the exposed surface of the carbon to make it repel the polysulfides. So now they have even more trouble migrating out of the pore space. To show how well they have them trapped, they took a traditional Li-S cathode and used a worst-case electrolyte -- something that loves to dissolve polysulfides. After 30 cycles, 96% of the sulfur was gone. With their cathode in the same worst-case situation, only 26% was lost.
In normal coin cells, their tests showed an initial capacity of around 80% of the theoretical maximum, falling about 15% in the first few cycles and then plateauing, nice and stable. The theoretical maximum for Li-S, if you discount everything but the sulfur, is 2,500Wh/kg (the best li-ion batteries on the market are 200Wh/kg). Now, obviously, you can't discount everything but the sulfur. The sulfur:carbon:lithium ratio, by weight, works out to something like 7:3:2. So, excluding the electrolyte, separator, and casing (which should be small components on large-format prismatic cells), they should get about 950Wh/kg. I imagine in a large format cell, they could probably get 800-850 -- over 4x the best current li-ion. Also, it's quite convenient that all of the raw materials are cheap and have low toxicities.
You do realize that fuel cells are electric vehicles right?
Fuel cell vehicles are traditionally abbreviated FCV, not EV.
Batteries don't have the energy storage capacity
T-Zero (BEV) range: 300mi Tesla Roadster (BEV) range: 240mi Tesla Model S (BEV) range: 160-300mi, depending on pack option Honda FCX Clarity (FCV) range: 240mi Fuel Cell Equinox (FCV) range: 160-200mi
So... you were saying?
or quick refueling capability
Aerovironment has already demonstrated charging the Phoenix SUT pack in under 10 minutes. About a dozen upcoming EVs have sub-30 minute charge options. It takes about 30 minutes to refill the hydrogen tank on a Fuel Cell Equinox.
and battery technology and research is about 150 years old at this point
And wheel technology is nearly 10,000 years old. Does that mean it should stop, too? Or perhaps a more witty retort would be to point out that the first fuel cell was invented by Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1838.
Remember cell phones in the early 90s? Those gigantic bricks? Mostly made up of the battery? That's how much battery tech has advanced in the past 15-20 years -- a 4x increase in energy density and a 10x increase in power density. And it shows no signs of slowing down -- quite the opposite, it seems to be speeding up.
FCVs, versus modern BEVs, have equivalent range, slower recharge times, 10x the unsubsidized cost, 3x the environmental damage, 3-20x the unsubsidized fuelling cost, 1/2 the lifespan, and more maintenance. How would you not call that "lapped"?
1) Who is "they"? NiMH are currently used in hybrids, but it's a dying tech. Almost no upcoming EVs propose to use it, and it's even starting to be phased out of hybrids on the high-end. 2) Myth.
The 95WattHr LiPo battery used in the Apple 17" PowerBook Pro notebook
What's next, are you going to compare watch batteries? You'll get EV prices in the millions if you do that.
Sorry, but battery packs don't work that way, with linear scaling from small units. The 16kWh Volt pack costs about $7-8k. The Th!nk City's pack, too, is about $0.50/Wh. The Roadster is made using $0.35/Wh cells.
However Li-Su (aka Sion batteries)
The chemical symbol for sulfur is S, not Su. And Li-S are largely still a laboratory technology..
Li-Tit has the best overall stats so far being the lowest cost, highest yield, highest density, and after 500 charge cycles runs about 1% depleted range.
Again, why are you making up your names for them? Titanium is "Ti", not "Tit", and it's not really a lithium-titanium cell anyway. And their cycle life is way better than 500 charge cycles, and they have *poor* energy density (only high power density).
Li-titanate battery production in mass scale is expected to come online in 2011
No, they're already made today -- AltairNano, EnerDel, and Toshiba all make them. Where are you getting this stuff?
Also, we're not using batteries as buffers anymore. High output capaceters are the answer there.
All of the FCVs rented out to customers to date that have any buffer at all use batteries, not capacitors.
These are relatively cheap and extremely liught weight
Wrong. They're both expensive (per watt hour) and extremely heavy (per watt hour). Right now even the best ones on the market have less than half the energy density of lead-acid, and even CNT supercaps are theorized to top out at about 150Wh/kg.
Again, where on Earth are you getting this from? You're wrong on virtually everything you wrote.
Slashdot Mirror
But 1, 10 or 100 secs out of 1 hour of racing are not ridiculous numbers for "racing pit stop" work times.
10 seconds is an order of magnitude less power than you stated.
100 seconds is two orders of magnitude less power than you stated.
You deliberately skewed the numbers by choosing only one second to do the charge in. Hence my point, that if you're going to deliberately skew the numbers, you might as well go all the way.
As for arcing, lightning is mere arcing. It's just typically hundreds of megawatts and does blow stuff up from time to time.
No, the average power of a lightning strike is about 1 terawatt, and the only primary "explosions" it ever does are flash boiling which -- if in a very confined space -- can fracture what is confining them.
I shuold porffraed beter. :P
If the car stores enough energy to run at full power - 200 kilowatts for one hour
1) Kilowatts is energy, not power.
2) If you meant kilowatt hours, driving doesn't work that way. Even in racing, you never use your engine at 100% full power 100% of the time. In a race like this, you're not even going to be close to that. The energy this car expends accelerating to speed will be 2/3rds recovered on braking, as in the Tesla Roadster. The rest of your losses are aero and rolling -- primarily aero. Apart from the standard CdA issues, aero losses in this car will be conditional on how much downforce they design for and what sort of speeds they're dealing with.
And a one second charge? Heck, if you really want to create ridiculous numbers, require that they charge in 0.001 seconds! ;)
and hoping they don't blow up in the process
"Blow up"? Give me a break. These things aren't made out of explosives. Heck, supercapacitors generally aren't flammable at all, and your non-cobalt-based li-ions are certainly less flammable than gasoline. The worst thing you risk during a pack change is arcing -- but unless you're an idiot, you have breakers on your pack that get closed before swap and opened after.
Even racing supercars don't come close to running at 100% throttle nonstop -- and when they do slow down for turns, regen puts power back into the pack. Li-ion regen in the Roadster, for example, is around 65-70% efficient if I recall the numbers correctly. So you only lose 30-35% of the energy expended on an accel/decel cycle; the rest of your losses are primarily aero and rolling. Aero, which should be the primary loss mechanism, will depend heavily on how much downforce there is.
I agree, though, in that it's probably not practical for the race unless the pit stops are long.
And this whole thing is probably busy work to keep them from surfing porn in their down time.
Which is exactly what I was suggesting when I wrote, "Perhaps their legal department didn't have enough work to do but they didn't want to cut staff."
What would you call "an industrial scale"? I've been reading over market research on electric vehicle forecasts for a business, and they're all over the board. However, it's safe to say that almost everyone is calling for them to be in at least "sizable" numbers by 2015. The most extreme forecast I've come across is Wintergreen's, which is, if I recall the numbers correctly, 32.7 million shipped by 2015. I find that number a bit hard to believe, but on the other hand, when there's perhaps three dozen marques planning to build them in 5 to 6 figure quantities per year within the next few years, some of the lower-end figures are equally hard to believe as well. I tend to favor an 8 million shipped by 2015 scenario.
Still a fairly small percentage of global sales, but a relevant number.
Ummm ... doesn't the Tesla Roadster do it in sub 4 and its a consumer vehicle ... just a thought
Yeah -- the standard Roadster does 0-60 in 3.9 seconds, and the Sport version 3.7 seconds.
How much is "a bit longer"? Several pre-production cars have already demonstrated 10 minute charging, while BYD claims it on the production F3DM. If you have a really crazy cooling system and, say, a 250kW Aerovironment PosiCharge charger or 300kW Norvik MinitCharge charger, you should be able to do ~5 minutes per ~120 miles.
The hideous Eliica already exists and blows it away, the Wrightspeed X1 toasts it at least on accel (and the economy-canceled production model, the SR-71, was expected to be able to beat a Bugatti Veyron in 0-60), while Shelby Supercars is working on the Ultimate Aero EV which should blow them all away.
They could have 100 trillion in annual revenue, but if by spending that patent money on another quarter programmer's salary they could get more of a return on investment, then it'd still be a stupid decision to pursue the patent.
Indeed, it's all about preventing *commercial* competitors. VCs and angels want to know, "Why should I give you, who have no track record, money to develop and market this product instead of your established competitors who would have a higher chance of success and don't need to build a business from scratch?" It's almost impossible to start a non brick-and-mortar company that requires significant capitalization these days without IP to back it up.
So if your VCs wanted you to torture puppies to death before they'd give you money, would the "chorus of boos" have any effect on your actions?
I assure you that my company, Puppy Waterboards, LLC, does care about your concerns about our patent, "Method and apparatus for puppy euthanasia utilizing superheated corkscrews", and will direct them to the appropriate staff.
There are many ways to get money. Some of them are right, and some of them are wrong. People with consciences know there's a difference.
On a more serious note, you don't even know what my patent is about, and yet you're positive it's "wrong". People with consciences try to find out the facts before they criticize.
It doesn't matter if they don't have to pay a retainer; they still have to pay them.
Irrelevant. Whether you're a big company or not, you can't afford to waste money on frivolous things. You have to balance your expenditures versus what else you could be doing with that money.
The amazing part is that IBM is wasting this kind of money applying for a patent that has no chance of standing up in court, if they're even dumb enough to grant it in the first place. I'm in the process of applying for a software patent myself (I know, summon the chorus of boos; but having it could be the difference between being able to raise VC and not being able to raise VC for my starting business; loans, too, are often secured against your IP). These things don't come cheap -- mostly in terms of legal costs. As in a $5k retainer, $5-10k total for a single patent, more if it takes multiple patents to ensure sufficient protection, and if you want international protection, it can go up to $100k or so. Also, from discussions with my attorney, it's really hard to get away with the "bloody obvious" software patents anymore after all of the blowback from things like the Amazon 1-click patent.
I'm surprised they'd waste the money trying. Perhaps their legal department didn't have enough work to do but they didn't want to cut staff.
Different species of parrot will mate. And dogs will mate with wolves or other canids.
I think the author's argument was perfectly reasonable -- I've made the exact same argument myself over on EvCforum years back. Dogs should be considered what is known as a "ring species". The classic example of a ring species is the Larus gulls. The British L. argentatus can breed with the North American L. smithsonianus, which can breed with the east Siberian L. vegae, which can breed with the central Siberian L. vegae birulai, which can breed with the west siberian L. heuglini, which can breed with the Scandinavian L. fuscus. But the birds in Scandinavia can't breed with the birds in Britain.
Ostensibly, ring species are rare, but scientists keep seem to be discovering that more and more species are, in fact, ring species, so I have to question how rare it really is. My Yellow-Headed Amazon parrot is part of a complex that could in some cases be described as a ring species, but is in general more of a taxonomic headache, shaped more like an interconnected mesh rather than a ring.
They're not. The original article linked in the slashdot summary reads:
Noo joodges in Purete-a Bey
Cuoort ooff eppeel repleces zee nooly zee ooccoopeeed joodge-a in Purete-a Bey. Zee qooesshun ebuoot zee deestrict cuoort beee jäfeeg is deceeded noo ooff three-a joodges frum unuzeer depertment.
It cun fur my inffurmeshun be-a menshuned thet neeezeer zeese-a is oor hes beee members in sumeune-a ooff zee essuceeeshuns thet ere-a coorrent in zee oobjecteefe-a, zee cuoort ooff eppeel types in a pressoore-a messege-a.
Effter inffurmeshun ebuoot thet zee nooly zee ooccoopeeed cuoort ooff eppeel joodge-a in Purete-a Bey ierleeer beee member in seme-a cupyreeght essuceeeshun thet it jäfsunklegede-a zee deestrict cuoort joodge-a, zee Preseedent, zee Cuoort ooff Eppeel ves reqooested yesterdey tu ixemeene-a unless unuzeer ooffff zee cuoort's depertments shuoold deceede-a jäfsffrågun.
Tudey ceme-a beslootet: Zee eppueented Joodge-a ooff Eppeel Ulreeka Ihrffelt, thet vurks oon zee depertment thet hes speceeel durecshun oon cupyreeght und immetereeelrättsleega oobjecteefes, mey nut sentence-a in zee qooesshun ebuoot zee deestrict cuoort beee jäfeeg.
Insteed cumes jäfsffrågun tu be-a mufed tu unuzeer ooffff zee cuoort ooff eppeel's depertments und vhere-a tu be-a ixemeened ooff zee depertment's muneger, zee Heed ooff Deefisiun, zee Cuoort ooff Eppeel Unders tu ichu elung veet zee Joodges ooff Eppeel Chreestina Jecubssun und Ulreeka Beergrehn.
"Zee reesuns fur thees is pert's thet jäfsffrågun shuoold be-a ixemeened ooff oozeer joodges thun zeey thet letter cun tu sentence-a in zee oobjecteefe-a, pert's thet it, veet regerd fur cunteeened in jäfs-infändneengee, beee essessed es epprupreeete-a thet jäfsffrågun is deceeded oon a depertment thet dues nut hefe-a speceeelinriktning oon cupyreeght, zee cuoort ooff eppeel types in zee pressoore-a messege-a.
Jäfsffrågun veell be-a treeted veet preeurity. Zee Preseedent, zee Cuoort ooff Eppeel Fredreek Versäll cuoonts veet thet deceesiuns cun tu cume-a veethin sume-a mexeemoom veeks", Svedeesh Noos Egency stetes.
Zee cuoort ooff eppeel veell nut set in teeme-a veet Purete-a Bey beffure-a jäfsffrågun is deceeded. Ebuoot Nurström vuoold be-a essessed es jäfeeg cun zee oobjecteefe-a be-a resoobmeetted tu zee deestrict cuoort und zee joodgement tu be-a turn up.
Seferel ooff zee sentenced puretes' deffence-a levyers esserts thet Nurström beee jäfeeg, emung oozeer theeng thruoogh thet he-a is member in seferel essuceeeshuns veet cunnecshun tu cupyreeght. Zee fuoor ves sentenced tu a yeer's preesun und tu peyeeng demege-a lefel oon 30 meelliuns sek. Bork Bork Bork!
My best translation:
New judges in Pirate Bay
Court of appeal replaces the newly the occupied judge in Pirate Bay. The question about the district court been jävig is decided now of three judges from another department.
It can for my information be mentioned that neither these is or has been members in someone of the associations that are current in the objective, the court of appeal types in a pressure message.
After information about that the newly the occupied court of appeal judge in Pirate Bay earlier been member in same copyright association that it jävsanklagade the district court judge, the President, the Court of Appeal was requested yesterday to examine unless another off the court's departments should decide jävsfrågan.
Today came beslutet: The appointed Judge of Appeal Ulrika Ihrfelt, that works on the department that has special direction on copyright and immaterialrättsliga objectives, may not sentence in the question about the district court been jävig.
Instead comes jävsfrågan to be moved to another off the court of appeal's departments and where to be examined o
I don't think it's that awesome. Air batteries (which are nothing new, BTW), tend to suffer from poor cycle lifes, poor power density, and very low efficiency. Often these "breakthroughs" aren't as impressive as they at first sound.
Now, that said, the other recent battery breakthrough -- on the Li-S front -- really does look as impressive as it sounds. I read through the paper on the research the other day as "light reading" at the dentist's office ;) Li-S's big problem has long been its really atrocious cycle life. It has great energy density, good power density, and very good efficiency, but the cycle life is a killer. And the variants they tried to improve cycle life really shot the energy density.
The reason it has these cycle life problems is because of how it works: you have sulfur in a carbon matrix (needs a conductive matrix because sulfur is an insulator) on one side of a separator film and metallic lithium on the other. The lithium ions migrate across the membrane and bond with the (insoluble) sulfur cathode to form (insoluble) Li2S; then, when running the cell in the other direction, the Li2S is split and the ions migrate back to the metallic anode. But there are intermediary reaction products -- various lithium polysulfides -- and these *do* tend to be very soluble. So, some of the polysulfides dissolve into the electrolyte, migrate across the membrane, and precipitate out on the other side and are rendered useless.
The new technique is pretty clever. They start by making a form of mesoporous carbon. This is made kind of like aerogel, via nanocasting, and it's covered in really deep pits. They then mill and then heat together the sulfur and carbon. The sulfur, having low surface tension, wicks into all of the pore space, with only a small amount of room left over to account for expansion. They then bake the composite at 155C, which boils all of the sulfur off the surface, leaving it only in the pits. So when the polysulfides form, they have a lot of trouble migrating out of the carbon.
That alone is a big improvement, but they took it a step further. The polysulfides are hydrophobic, so they bonded polyethylene glycol to the exposed surface of the carbon to make it repel the polysulfides. So now they have even more trouble migrating out of the pore space. To show how well they have them trapped, they took a traditional Li-S cathode and used a worst-case electrolyte -- something that loves to dissolve polysulfides. After 30 cycles, 96% of the sulfur was gone. With their cathode in the same worst-case situation, only 26% was lost.
In normal coin cells, their tests showed an initial capacity of around 80% of the theoretical maximum, falling about 15% in the first few cycles and then plateauing, nice and stable. The theoretical maximum for Li-S, if you discount everything but the sulfur, is 2,500Wh/kg (the best li-ion batteries on the market are 200Wh/kg). Now, obviously, you can't discount everything but the sulfur. The sulfur:carbon:lithium ratio, by weight, works out to something like 7:3:2. So, excluding the electrolyte, separator, and casing (which should be small components on large-format prismatic cells), they should get about 950Wh/kg. I imagine in a large format cell, they could probably get 800-850 -- over 4x the best current li-ion. Also, it's quite convenient that all of the raw materials are cheap and have low toxicities.
That PDF doesn't talk about efficiency at all. Rather, it talks about all the issues and recommendations required to increase efficiency.
"Energy losses in the U.S. T&D system were 7.2% in 1995"
First page, first paragraph.
Hmm. I'm not sure what email address you used, but I didn't get it. My email is meQme@dauQghtersoftirQesias.orQg (remove Qs to despammify)\
No, that stat is for the efficiency of the entire T&D system.
You do realize that fuel cells are electric vehicles right?
Fuel cell vehicles are traditionally abbreviated FCV, not EV.
Batteries don't have the energy storage capacity
T-Zero (BEV) range: 300mi
Tesla Roadster (BEV) range: 240mi
Tesla Model S (BEV) range: 160-300mi, depending on pack option
Honda FCX Clarity (FCV) range: 240mi
Fuel Cell Equinox (FCV) range: 160-200mi
So... you were saying?
or quick refueling capability
Aerovironment has already demonstrated charging the Phoenix SUT pack in under 10 minutes. About a dozen upcoming EVs have sub-30 minute charge options. It takes about 30 minutes to refill the hydrogen tank on a Fuel Cell Equinox.
and battery technology and research is about 150 years old at this point
And wheel technology is nearly 10,000 years old. Does that mean it should stop, too? Or perhaps a more witty retort would be to point out that the first fuel cell was invented by Christian Friedrich Schönbein in 1838.
Remember cell phones in the early 90s? Those gigantic bricks? Mostly made up of the battery? That's how much battery tech has advanced in the past 15-20 years -- a 4x increase in energy density and a 10x increase in power density. And it shows no signs of slowing down -- quite the opposite, it seems to be speeding up.
FCVs, versus modern BEVs, have equivalent range, slower recharge times, 10x the unsubsidized cost, 3x the environmental damage, 3-20x the unsubsidized fuelling cost, 1/2 the lifespan, and more maintenance. How would you not call that "lapped"?
1) Who is "they"? NiMH are currently used in hybrids, but it's a dying tech. Almost no upcoming EVs propose to use it, and it's even starting to be phased out of hybrids on the high-end.
2) Myth.
The 95WattHr LiPo battery used in the Apple 17" PowerBook Pro notebook
What's next, are you going to compare watch batteries? You'll get EV prices in the millions if you do that.
Sorry, but battery packs don't work that way, with linear scaling from small units. The 16kWh Volt pack costs about $7-8k. The Th!nk City's pack, too, is about $0.50/Wh. The Roadster is made using $0.35/Wh cells.
However Li-Su (aka Sion batteries)
The chemical symbol for sulfur is S, not Su. And Li-S are largely still a laboratory technology..
Li-Tit has the best overall stats so far being the lowest cost, highest yield, highest density, and after 500 charge cycles runs about 1% depleted range.
Again, why are you making up your names for them? Titanium is "Ti", not "Tit", and it's not really a lithium-titanium cell anyway. And their cycle life is way better than 500 charge cycles, and they have *poor* energy density (only high power density).
Li-titanate battery production in mass scale is expected to come online in 2011
No, they're already made today -- AltairNano, EnerDel, and Toshiba all make them. Where are you getting this stuff?
Also, we're not using batteries as buffers anymore. High output capaceters are the answer there.
All of the FCVs rented out to customers to date that have any buffer at all use batteries, not capacitors.
These are relatively cheap and extremely liught weight
Wrong. They're both expensive (per watt hour) and extremely heavy (per watt hour). Right now even the best ones on the market have less than half the energy density of lead-acid, and even CNT supercaps are theorized to top out at about 150Wh/kg.
Again, where on Earth are you getting this from? You're wrong on virtually everything you wrote.