alphadogg writes "Inside a plain-looking garage on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's campus, undergraduate Radu Gogoana and his team of fellow students are working on a project that could rival what major automobile manufacturers are doing. The team's goal is to build an all-electric car with similar performance capabilities of gasoline-only counterparts, which includes a top speed of about 161 kph, a family sedan capacity, a range of about 320 kilometers and the ability to recharge in about 10 minutes. They hope to complete the project, which they chronicle on their blog, by the third quarter of 2010. Each member of MIT's Electric Vehicle Team works almost 100 hours a week on the project they call elEVen. 'Right now the thing that differentiates us is that we're exploring rapid recharge,' Gogoana said during an interview. He said that many of today's electric vehicles take between two to 12 hours to recharge and he doesn't know of any commercially available, rapidly recharging vehicles."
I don't see a single stat there that 'outperforms' a 1994 Honda Civic - in fact it falls short on every aspect. Don't get me wrong, those specs would make the car great on paper, and I am totally behind electric powered cars, I just hate it when headlines lie.
No not really. A 5-seat Lupo 3L gets 88mpg on the highway. The new VW 2-seater arriving after Christmas gets 250mpg on the highway.
Show me an electric car that can exceed that? It doesn't exist. In fact the best EV ever made (GM EV1) is no better than a Prius (~50mpg) according to greenercars.org and falls short of an Insight (66mpg).
No not really. A 5-seat Lupo 3L gets 88mpg on the highway. The new VW 2-seater arriving after Christmas gets 250mpg on the highway.
Show me an electric car that can exceed that? It doesn't exist. In fact the best EV ever made (GM EV1) is no better than a Prius (~50mpg) according to greenercars.org and falls short of an Insight (66mpg).
You must be from Europe. Here across the pond, we get excited about 32 mpg. Silly, isn't it.
It's not a division by zero error, because electric cars are not perpetual motion machines. When the EPA or similar organizations compare EVs to regular cars, the electricity used by the car during the efficiency test is converted to the equivalent gallons of gasoline burned, and the EV is given an "MPG" rating. Therefore no #DIV0 error.
Bottom Line: ACEEE.org found the GM EV1 is no better than a ~50mpg Prius or Civic.
* Quiet Cars
* Less pollution localized around vehicles (i.e. less of that highway diesel marinade)
* Lower maintenance cars - rotate the tires & change the wiper fluid
* Less points of failure compared to a combustion engine
* Lighter Weight = Less Impact/Damage on roads
Primarily on the fact that while a 1994 Honda Civic exists, the MIT Electric car that the page describes doesn't even exist yet. Not even in the "We're heading to the track to start testing" phase. Hell, not even to the "Lets turn the key and make sure the lights work" phase.
They just finished tearing apart the donor car a week ago. So far all they have is an over weight drive train, a single power cell package prototype, and a whole lot of pipe dreams.
This story is something that belongs in The Onion...
"Local Farm Boy Dreams Up Revolutionary New Automobile" While no details on how he is going to overcome any of the significant obstacles in his way, we are excited that he has in fact been dreaming and has some ideas. Local organizations have donated some amount of parts for him to start working with, and his father has loaned him a welder.
Hard to say what similar performance capability would be. I mean, they could compare it to my '70 Impala with 460 ci engine; 9 MPG, top speed past 140 MPH, and has trunk big enough for 14 full size suit cases or a dead horse (MotorTrend review quote). Or are they comparing it to my 2002 Chevy Tracker; 29 MPG, top speed 100 MPH and an carry 5 suitcases?
While a 200-mile range is low, what's the big deal? After driving 200 miles, I'm ready for a break. And for normal, in town driving, the car would recharge every night, so you could go months without visiting a "filling station." Can't do that in a gas or diesel car. Sounds like a pretty good trade off to me.
No. In fact the biggest improvement of this car appears to be the nanophosphate battery. It doesn't use the chemicals inside traditional li-ions that become heated when overcharged (lithium particles start leaking across to the anode).
The team's goal is to build an all-electric car with similar performance capabilities of gasoline-only counterparts, which includes a top speed of about 161 kph, a family sedan capacity, a range of about 320 kilometers and the ability to recharge in about 10 minutes. They hope to complete the project, which they chronicle on their blog, by the third quarter of 2010
Mcm is an abbreviation for 1000 circular mils (How the fuck they came up with that abbreviation, I have no idea), and a circular mil is the area of a circle 1/1000th of an inch (a mil) in diameter.
Converting that to metric, that gives us wire 18mm in diameter, which would be a bit smaller than 8/0 AWG.
Holy cow, that is dangerous. The recharge time and the pollution of the batteries really kill the electric car. Most people will not be able to afford two cars. Anyone have any info on progress for a hydrogen powered car?
It's not a mispronunciation. The "jiga-" pronunciation was the one formally promoted in the US from the late 50s to the 80s. It is still, in fact, a correct but unusual pronunciation in English.
It comes from the Greek "gigas" (not bothering with unicode here), and if you've ever heard a gamma spoken in native Greek, both "jiga" and "giga" are off, but "jiga-" is a little closer. Think of ordering a gyro.
Watch the video. He explains that they are hooked up straight to the MIT power plant, and are thus able to dump huge amounts of power ("20 homes" worth) into the thing. They're pushing the envelope on the rapid recharge stuff.
The batteries can take that kind of current, it is just that it wrecks there long-term life span. Simply put, you can charge a battery almost as fast as you can discharge it. 3000 Amps at 96 V may sound like a lot to your average residential home owner, but in the scheme of things, it isn't that much power. It is only 300 kW of power. Most factories have multi-megawatt substations. With 200 A, 240 V residential services (heating usage), it is only about 6 residential homes. The total transformer capaci
In order to rapidly recharge those batteries, they'll need 350 kilowatts. "That's enough power to blow the fuses on 20 residential homes at once... so we'll be hooking up directly to MIT's power plant to get that kind of power," Gogoana said.
Their idea is to give you two options: (1) rapid recharge in 10 minutes at a suitable power plant, or (2) overnight recharge at home.
This is a great idea because consumers can buy it and use option #2 while more and more electric-vehicle charging stations are built as the tech becomes more mainstream. A good bridge solution.
Have you ever swapped a propane tank at a gas station? The replacement tank is usually dirty, beat up, and not actually filled to capacity. I gave up doing that a long time ago and just pay a little extra to take my tank in to be refilled. I would never consider just swapping out something as expensive as the batteries in an electric car at a gas station.
To me, outperform means that it will need to: 1) Hit fewer pedestrians and cyclists 2) Be drivable while drunk 3) Not result in massive traffic jams 4) Not require huge ugly parking lots and parking garages. 5) Be cheap enough so that normal people, instead of rich douchebags, can afford it 6) Require fewer tax subsidies. 7) Allow the user to get some exercise instead of getting progressively fatter.
A nice wish list, but most of it has nothing to do with the problem they're trying to solve: making electric vehicles as practical as gas-burning ones are today.
#1-3 could be solved by cars that drive themselves. #4 would involve a shift toward car-sharing or public transportation.
#5 and #6 are valid requirements that amount to the same thing: it should be cheap enough to win in the market. But I think it's reasonable to make it work, first, then worry about making it cheaper.
To be superior to a gasoline car, it should have more than half the range of a gasoline powered car, I should think. Most gasoline cars are sized to have about 400 miles range, which works out nicely given our average highway speed of 60--70 mph and our typical need to eat interval of five or six hours, with a 12% reserve for miscalculations.
Gogoana placed the cost of the project, excluding labor, at around $200,000, but much of the materials were donated and the Electric Vehicle Team isn't paid. The batteries alone hold a price tag of about $80,000, but Gogoana said that as more batteries and cars are produced, cost should be driven down.
Don't get me wrong, this is all cool stuff. One day relatively soon, I bet these things will be the norm.
But we need to stop with the hyperbolic comparisons to current cars. Apples and oranges. Any comparisons should be made to other types of experimental work along these lines.
Each team member works almost 100 hours per week without pay? Suddenly my work schedule doesn't seem so bad. I'm guessing that most of them are taking a full load of classes as well. This sort of dedication must be the reason MIT has such a good reputation.
That's more or less typical for a research assistant in some PhD programs. Grad students are worked to the bone. The upshot for these students, at least, is they'll be able to write their own ticket once they get out of school.
In order to rapidly recharge those batteries, they'll need 350 kilowatts. "That's enough power to blow the fuses on 20 residential homes at once... so we'll be hooking up directly to MIT's power plant to get that kind of power," Gogoana said.
The primary reasons they can get it recharged quickly is using a new battery material (lithium iron-phosphate) and access to MIT's power plant. I know nothing about current grid limits, but I'd imagine we would need infrastructure changes just for a recharging station that supports 10+ vehicles every few miles. Otherwise this is your typical charge overnight on a 220V outlet electric car.
Ok, one thing that always bothers me about these electric cars is the seeming ignorance surrounding the simple notion of how to provide climate comfort within the cabin. How far will the electric car go in the winter time in Minnesota with the now electric heater running...or the air conditioner during the hot summer? Are these calculations taken into account when providing "MPG" ratings? Heat is somewhat trivial for internal combustion engines but obviously not for electric...
Its one thing to build a prototype. Its a much bigger challange to produce it. And its a much much bigger challange to produce it while conforming to a myriad of safety regulations (6 airbags, pedestrian safe, etc) get people to buy it without lawyers taking what little profit may be left when it breaks. But yeah, kudos if they get the fast recharge working. Selling out to carmakers would be a better plan than "rivaling" them.
That's exactly right. All too often people tout a new electric vehicle and then compare to existing vehicles. The problem is, all too often its an apples and oranges comparison. All too often people are actually comparing a go-cart, having no safety features with a real car.
On one hand, I'm rooting them to fail because I think that no electric car can both save us from running out of gas *AND* solve all of the other problems inherent to the automobile that are also near the bursting point (like wasting tons of money to make four-lane highways filled with cars carrying only one person).
But, on the other hand, I'm looking forward to disassembling the "fast charging" system you propose to build railguns with the big capacitors.
That's one of the stupidest bloody things I have ever heard. A train is a way safer place to be than a car. Hell, they're not even in the same league!
The reason it takes you more time to get somewhere by train than by car on a (I'm assuming) congested highway isn't because transit sucks, but because transit in your area sucks. I'm guessing the main reason for that is the kind of money wasted on making four-lane highways and not train tracks.
See, this is what fascinates me the most. Even among people who claim to be atheist, cars are a religious thing, afforded faith beyond logic or rational thought that even mystical things are denied.
So, tell me, how was my wife supposed to avoid the driver who was on their cellphone who ran into my car from behind, totaling it? Your argument that you haven't had an accident in 20 years because you are driving carefully has about as much reality as the person who lived to 100 while smoking a pack a day saying that they smoked carefully. It's irrational and a perfect example of how your religious fervor for the Car as your Savior.
Nor was I telling you to get rid of your car. There is not a magical anti-car field preventing you from driving to a train station. Or riding a bike, where you can travel at least four times faster without breaking a sweat.
Mostly, after examining transportation statistics and applying them to my personal habits, I realized that if you avoid driving a car unless forced, you can burn the same amount of gasoline than a hybrid driver. Except that I come out ahead fiscally and actually discovered that I've got more time than before.
Nor do you understand that rail is a more efficient use of space. Four lanes in each direction with the accompanying noise and pollution as compared to a pair of rail lines that can be buried or surrounded by trees or otherwise gotten out of the way.
Nor do you realize that there is not a magical anti-train field preventing them from building a closer rail line. See, the same network effects that make the Internet work better when more people are on it also apply to the trains.
The problem is that there are a lot of people in America who refuse to consider that there might be a more efficient way to run things. Because you may not whisper incantations to it every morning or spend a good hour attending to it every Sunday, but you worship your car with the fervor of the most annoying televangelist.
What I want to know is...how can they create a battery strong enough to power a car for that distance/speed that be charged in 10 minutes but the battery in my cell phone and Blackberry still take no less than 45m.
The batteries in your cell phone and Blackberry are lithium polymer, based on lithium cobalt chemistry. These have the highest energy density of common commercially available batteries, but their safe charging rate is limited to somewhere around 1C -- that is, 1 amp per amp-hour of capacity.
The MIT batteries are lithium iron phosphate. These unfortunately have much lower energy density than lithium cobalt polymer cells (not in the least because there's no polymer version available; the cell are in a metal casing). But they have a high power density and they can take charge rates around 4-5C (for the regular cells; they don't have the specs on the automotive cells on their website). That translates to much shorter charge times.
I'm no expert on these things, but as I understand it the process of power generation in a power plant is fundamentally more efficient than that undertaken in a car. An internal combustion engine is basically inefficient, as it starts and stops combustion thousands of times a second. Also, it's possible to scrub and sequester the output of stationary power plants, but not of a car. So, while running an electric car off non-renewable energy is not exactly ideal, it's better than nothing.
Outperform? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Outperform? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No not really. A 5-seat Lupo 3L gets 88mpg on the highway. The new VW 2-seater arriving after Christmas gets 250mpg on the highway.
Show me an electric car that can exceed that? It doesn't exist. In fact the best EV ever made (GM EV1) is no better than a Prius (~50mpg) according to greenercars.org and falls short of an Insight (66mpg).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No not really. A 5-seat Lupo 3L gets 88mpg on the highway. The new VW 2-seater arriving after Christmas gets 250mpg on the highway.
Show me an electric car that can exceed that? It doesn't exist. In fact the best EV ever made (GM EV1) is no better than a Prius (~50mpg) according to greenercars.org and falls short of an Insight (66mpg).
You must be from Europe. Here across the pond, we get excited about 32 mpg. Silly, isn't it.
Re:Outperform? (Score:5, Informative)
Dear Anonymous coward #1 and #2:
It's not a division by zero error, because electric cars are not perpetual motion machines. When the EPA or similar organizations compare EVs to regular cars, the electricity used by the car during the efficiency test is converted to the equivalent gallons of gasoline burned, and the EV is given an "MPG" rating. Therefore no #DIV0 error.
Bottom Line: ACEEE.org found the GM EV1 is no better than a ~50mpg Prius or Civic.
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Re:Outperform? (Score:4, Insightful)
But with EVs there's still the benefits of:
* Quiet Cars
* Less pollution localized around vehicles (i.e. less of that highway diesel marinade)
* Lower maintenance cars - rotate the tires & change the wiper fluid
* Less points of failure compared to a combustion engine
* Lighter Weight = Less Impact/Damage on roads
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Re:Outperform? (Score:4, Insightful)
BTW, your a jerk.
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Re:Outperform? (Score:4, Informative)
Not much, only about 7% [wikipedia.org].
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MIT car FAILS to outperform... (Score:5, Insightful)
Primarily on the fact that while a 1994 Honda Civic exists, the MIT Electric car that the page describes doesn't even exist yet. Not even in the "We're heading to the track to start testing" phase. Hell, not even to the "Lets turn the key and make sure the lights work" phase.
They just finished tearing apart the donor car a week ago. So far all they have is an over weight drive train, a single power cell package prototype, and a whole lot of pipe dreams.
This story is something that belongs in The Onion...
"Local Farm Boy Dreams Up Revolutionary New Automobile"
While no details on how he is going to overcome any of the significant obstacles in his way, we are excited that he has in fact been dreaming and has some ideas. Local organizations have donated some amount of parts for him to start working with, and his father has loaned him a welder.
That's about what we have here.
-Rick
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hard to say what similar performance capability would be. I mean, they could compare it to my '70 Impala with 460 ci engine; 9 MPG, top speed past 140 MPH, and has trunk big enough for 14 full size suit cases or a dead horse (MotorTrend review quote). Or are they comparing it to my 2002 Chevy Tracker; 29 MPG, top speed 100 MPH and an carry 5 suitcases?
Re:Outperform? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Battery Issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Will they have the same problems as the Ipods? Exploding?
Re:Battery Issues (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No. In fact the biggest improvement of this car appears to be the nanophosphate battery. It doesn't use the chemicals inside traditional li-ions that become heated when overcharged (lithium particles start leaking across to the anode).
but... (Score:4, Insightful)
How much will it cost?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
from TFA the batteries alone are 80k and require 1000A at 356 volts for the 'rapid charge'. That is 356 kW.
Re:but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Add in the "10 minute recharge" and you get 356/6 KWh = 59.3KWh
Parent
Physics? (Score:4, Insightful)
This doesn't sound feasible. Back of the envelope:
Lets say 20hp average power required.
That's 15kilowatts.
At 100kph (62mph), 3.2 hours for 320kilometers.
48 kilowatt hours.
Lets say it's a 96 volts dc system. That's 500 amp/hours.
500 amp/hours charged in 10 minutes is 3000 amps, assuming 100% efficiency.
And these are the conservative numbers!
Even if all the other tech were there, how are they going to move 3000 amps into a car?
Re:Physics? (Score:5, Informative)
TFA says it is a 356 volt system that charges at 1000 amps.
a 500mcm aluminum conductor should move 1000A just fine.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Mcm is an abbreviation for 1000 circular mils (How the fuck they came up with that abbreviation, I have no idea), and a circular mil is the area of a circle 1/1000th of an inch (a mil) in diameter.
Converting that to metric, that gives us wire 18mm in diameter, which would be a bit smaller than 8/0 AWG.
Re:Physics? (Score:4, Funny)
That's either millicentimeters or a McMeter. In both cases, I'm confused.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Physics? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Physics? (Score:5, Funny)
That will be especially useful when the car travels back to the 1950's.
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Re:Physics? (Score:5, Funny)
No, no, no, no, no. This sucker's electrical. But I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.
- Dr. Emmett Brown
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Re:Physics? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a mispronunciation. The "jiga-" pronunciation was the one formally promoted in the US from the late 50s to the 80s. It is still, in fact, a correct but unusual pronunciation in English.
It comes from the Greek "gigas" (not bothering with unicode here), and if you've ever heard a gamma spoken in native Greek, both "jiga" and "giga" are off, but "jiga-" is a little closer. Think of ordering a gyro.
Parent
Re:Physics? (Score:5, Informative)
Watch the video. He explains that they are hooked up straight to the MIT power plant, and are thus able to dump huge amounts of power ("20 homes" worth) into the thing. They're pushing the envelope on the rapid recharge stuff.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The batteries can take that kind of current, it is just that it wrecks there long-term life span. Simply put, you can charge a battery almost as fast as you can discharge it. 3000 Amps at 96 V may sound like a lot to your average residential home owner, but in the scheme of things, it isn't that much power. It is only 300 kW of power. Most factories have multi-megawatt substations. With 200 A, 240 V residential services (heating usage), it is only about 6 residential homes. The total transformer capaci
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
With a forklift?
Good bridge solution (Score:5, Informative)
Their idea is to give you two options: (1) rapid recharge in 10 minutes at a suitable power plant, or (2) overnight recharge at home.
This is a great idea because consumers can buy it and use option #2 while more and more electric-vehicle charging stations are built as the tech becomes more mainstream. A good bridge solution.
Good luck team.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever swapped a propane tank at a gas station? The replacement tank is usually dirty, beat up, and not actually filled to capacity. I gave up doing that a long time ago and just pay a little extra to take my tank in to be refilled. I would never consider just swapping out something as expensive as the batteries in an electric car at a gas station.
Outperform? (Score:3, Insightful)
To me, outperform means that it will need to:
1) Hit fewer pedestrians and cyclists
2) Be drivable while drunk
3) Not result in massive traffic jams
4) Not require huge ugly parking lots and parking garages.
5) Be cheap enough so that normal people, instead of rich douchebags, can afford it
6) Require fewer tax subsidies.
7) Allow the user to get some exercise instead of getting progressively fatter.
Re:Outperform? (Score:5, Funny)
Aha! A bicycle!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A nice wish list, but most of it has nothing to do with the problem they're trying to solve: making electric vehicles as practical as gas-burning ones are today.
#1-3 could be solved by cars that drive themselves. #4 would involve a shift toward car-sharing or public transportation.
#5 and #6 are valid requirements that amount to the same thing: it should be cheap enough to win in the market. But I think it's reasonable to make it work, first, then worry about making it cheaper.
#7 is really not their problem.
320 *km*?! (Score:5, Insightful)
To be superior to a gasoline car, it should have more than half the range of a gasoline powered car, I should think. Most gasoline cars are sized to have about 400 miles range, which works out nicely given our average highway speed of 60--70 mph and our typical need to eat interval of five or six hours, with a 12% reserve for miscalculations.
Competitive, huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, this is all cool stuff. One day relatively soon, I bet these things will be the norm.
But we need to stop with the hyperbolic comparisons to current cars. Apples and oranges. Any comparisons should be made to other types of experimental work along these lines.
Dedication (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's more or less typical for a research assistant in some PhD programs. Grad students are worked to the bone. The upshot for these students, at least, is they'll be able to write their own ticket once they get out of school.
Recharge in 10 minutes? (Score:3, Interesting)
In order to rapidly recharge those batteries, they'll need 350 kilowatts. "That's enough power to blow the fuses on 20 residential homes at once ... so we'll be hooking up directly to MIT's power plant to get that kind of power," Gogoana said.
The primary reasons they can get it recharged quickly is using a new battery material (lithium iron-phosphate) and access to MIT's power plant. I know nothing about current grid limits, but I'd imagine we would need infrastructure changes just for a recharging station that supports 10+ vehicles every few miles. Otherwise this is your typical charge overnight on a 220V outlet electric car.
How far in the winter... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Its one thing to build a prototype. Its a much bigger challange to produce it. And its a much much bigger challange to produce it while conforming to a myriad of safety regulations (6 airbags, pedestrian safe, etc) get people to buy it without lawyers taking what little profit may be left when it breaks. But yeah, kudos if they get the fast recharge working. Selling out to carmakers would be a better plan than "rivaling" them.
Re:I didn't graduate from MIT; however (Score:4, Insightful)
That's exactly right. All too often people tout a new electric vehicle and then compare to existing vehicles. The problem is, all too often its an apples and oranges comparison. All too often people are actually comparing a go-cart, having no safety features with a real car.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
On one hand, I'm rooting them to fail because I think that no electric car can both save us from running out of gas *AND* solve all of the other problems inherent to the automobile that are also near the bursting point (like wasting tons of money to make four-lane highways filled with cars carrying only one person).
But, on the other hand, I'm looking forward to disassembling the "fast charging" system you propose to build railguns with the big capacitors.
Re:Offload the capacitor? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one of the stupidest bloody things I have ever heard. A train is a way safer place to be than a car. Hell, they're not even in the same league!
The reason it takes you more time to get somewhere by train than by car on a (I'm assuming) congested highway isn't because transit sucks, but because transit in your area sucks. I'm guessing the main reason for that is the kind of money wasted on making four-lane highways and not train tracks.
Parent
Re:Offload the capacitor? (Score:5, Insightful)
See, this is what fascinates me the most. Even among people who claim to be atheist, cars are a religious thing, afforded faith beyond logic or rational thought that even mystical things are denied.
So, tell me, how was my wife supposed to avoid the driver who was on their cellphone who ran into my car from behind, totaling it? Your argument that you haven't had an accident in 20 years because you are driving carefully has about as much reality as the person who lived to 100 while smoking a pack a day saying that they smoked carefully. It's irrational and a perfect example of how your religious fervor for the Car as your Savior.
Nor was I telling you to get rid of your car. There is not a magical anti-car field preventing you from driving to a train station. Or riding a bike, where you can travel at least four times faster without breaking a sweat.
Mostly, after examining transportation statistics and applying them to my personal habits, I realized that if you avoid driving a car unless forced, you can burn the same amount of gasoline than a hybrid driver. Except that I come out ahead fiscally and actually discovered that I've got more time than before.
Nor do you understand that rail is a more efficient use of space. Four lanes in each direction with the accompanying noise and pollution as compared to a pair of rail lines that can be buried or surrounded by trees or otherwise gotten out of the way.
Nor do you realize that there is not a magical anti-train field preventing them from building a closer rail line. See, the same network effects that make the Internet work better when more people are on it also apply to the trains.
The problem is that there are a lot of people in America who refuse to consider that there might be a more efficient way to run things. Because you may not whisper incantations to it every morning or spend a good hour attending to it every Sunday, but you worship your car with the fervor of the most annoying televangelist.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A capacitor that large would have a number of problems:
* It would be, monumentally, more expensive than the, already expensive, battery pack in the car.
* Since capacitors don't have, even close, to the same power density as a battery, it would take up a massive amount of space.e
* It would discharge way too fast for even the most advanced battery to handle (giving you the exact opposite problem as what you started with).
* The ultra-fast discharge would vaporize even the largest normal connector you could
Re:What I want to know is... (Score:5, Informative)
The batteries in your cell phone and Blackberry are lithium polymer, based on lithium cobalt chemistry. These have the highest energy density of common commercially available batteries, but their safe charging rate is limited to somewhere around 1C -- that is, 1 amp per amp-hour of capacity.
The MIT batteries are lithium iron phosphate. These unfortunately have much lower energy density than lithium cobalt polymer cells (not in the least because there's no polymer version available; the cell are in a metal casing). But they have a high power density and they can take charge rates around 4-5C (for the regular cells; they don't have the specs on the automotive cells on their website). That translates to much shorter charge times.
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Re:It's impossible. (Score:4, Informative)
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