Company Builds Fast Charging Station For Electric Cars 359
thecarchik writes "Japanese based JFE Engineering has released its ultra-fast charge station. Designed to comply with the CHAdeMo standard developed by Tokyo Electric Power Company, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Toyota, the system is capable of charging a 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev from empty to 50% full in just three minutes. Even just three minutes plugged into the fast-charge station was enough to enable a standard 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev to travel a further 50 miles before further charging was required."
Some quick math says... (Score:5, Interesting)
This thing is putting nearly a quarter megawatt (240kw) drain on the power grid during use.
I wonder if it has some sort of means of load smoothing and a limited duty cycle, or if it's going to need its own substation.
Re:Some quick math says... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be inclined to stand back before switching the power on. And I don't think I would leave the kids in the car during the charging operation.
Re:Some quick math says... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would be inclined to stand back before switching the power on. And I don't think I would leave the kids in the car during the charging operation.
But you're happy to have your kids in a car while you fill it up with 50 liters of some toxic and highly flammable liquid or even gas.
Re:Some quick math says... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be inclined to stand back before switching the power on. And I don't think I would leave the kids in the car during the charging operation.
But you're happy to have your kids in a car while you fill it up with 50 liters of some toxic and highly flammable liquid or even gas.
You don't have to heat the fuel tank to do that.
Re:Some quick math says... (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't have to heat the fuel tank to do that.
True. But instead, you're venting HIGHLY flammable AND explosive gasses out of the tank and back down the hose into the station's tank. Most people don't know about that. (liquid gas by itself is NOT explosive, it's merely flammable - gas vapor OTOH is highly explosive, which is why we use it for fuel) When you're pushing 15 gallons into the tank, there's a reason there's not a whoosh of gas vapor out around the nozzle from the displacement occurring.
They do that of course (1) as a safety measure and (2) to save a buck or two in the long run, as that vapor goes back to the storage tank (instead of sucking in air to replace the lost gas) and some of that will condense back into gas for them to sell.
Know what happens when there's a problem with the vapor backflow? Nothing. Well, maybe a kaBOOM but what I mean is there's no safety on it. Know what happens when the temps get too high or current inrush spikes? The fast charge system halts the fill. So you see, it's actually safer than a gas quick fill. There's a computer carefully watching many aspects of the charge all the time.
The gas station really is already giving you a quick-fill, by bending the safety of the system a bit. Don't you hate it when you happen to use a pump somewhere on a road trip that's really SLOW? I remember having to wait 10 minutes for a fill once, in the dead of winter on a road trip. I waited inside, and when I got outside it had JUST finished... AND had just started gushing fuel all over the ground because the full-shutoff failed. (probably the pump and the shutoff were both having issues with the cold, it was well below zero, and it was diesel fuel)
Also after watching the video you will notice he waited for a FULL charge. They slow down the rate when it gets closer to full. The article states 50% charge in 3 minutes, and yet it took him over 10 to get 100% charge, so the remaining 50% requires 7 more minutes. Probably a higher ratio than that even, as he said he didn't get it fully discharged. Looks like they're probably taking the conservative side of safe on this still.
Re:Some quick math says... (Score:4, Informative)
noting that most electrical storage devices that work in this manner have had run-away discharges and other problems that have caused burns with even something as simple as a laptop recharger.
Misconception: "All batteries are the same".
Reality: Different battery chemistries have *very* different properties. Excepting Tesla and their partners, the types of batteries you find in EVs are *not* the same type you find in laptops. They're a chemistry chosen specifically for dramatically greater stability and longer life (at the cost of some energy density). And even in Tesla's case, they put *way* more safety measures into their batteries than you find in a laptop pack. Each cell is kept inside of a "can" to prevent failures from propagating to other cells, for example.
In catastrophic failures, traditional li-ion/li-po cells burn vigorously [youtube.com], while phosphate cells smoke and manganate cells do nothing [youtube.com] (as a general rule).
Re:Some quick math says... (Score:4, Interesting)
When you charge a battery, you are ALSO doing an energy conversion from electrical to chemical. That's much more hazardous.
Defend your assertion that storing energy in chemical bonds is more dangerous than forcing combustible fuel-air vapors from a gas tank by injecting more gasoline.
If something goes wrong, in the best case you kill your battery (excess heat), and in the worst case it blows up sending shrapnel everywhere
Name a single modern electric car that *either* of these have happened to. There were thousands on the roads in the late '90s/early '00s, and there's now thousands of Tesla Roadsters. Heck, point me to a single case of a phosphate or a manganate cell exploding under *any* circumstances. These things are used for power tools, RC planes, etc now, you know.
The sort of abuse these cells can take is just absurd. Have you seen A123's latest cells? Check them out. [endless-sphere.com] They're pumping 300A into 15Ah cells and they're barely getting warm from it. These sort of cells can be discharged down to zero, ran under extreme temperatures, and all sorts of other stuff, no problem.
Re:Some quick math says... (Score:5, Informative)
350*70=24.5 kW, not 240
Re:Some quick math says... (Score:5, Informative)
...16kWh battery pack of the Mitsubishi i-Miev...
...charging a 2011 Mistubishi i-Miev from empty to 50% full in just three minutes
50% of 16kWh is 28800000J. 28800000J divided by 180 seconds (3 minutes) is 160000 J/s, or 160kW.
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The article says it's only 62.5KW per charging station.
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Presumably this is going to be something that would be installed in a commercial business where the recharging station would be something that would justify the expense and infrastructure access for industrial power consumption. The research is also being done in Japan, where issues of getting the raw infrastructure necessary for this to happen are not really a problem either as long as you have the money (again, not in short supply for business purposes in Japan).
I've used as much as a megawatt for indust
Re:Some quick math says... (Score:4, Informative)
But for retail locations and gas stations, the 62.5 kW power requirements of each charger should not be impossible to accommodate in all but the remotest of locations.
In addition, even the remotest location can accommodate it: just install a generator burning gas (I'm kidding but only half-kidding: remote locations in which you can currently refill your tank will have petrol and a generator will consume less per kWh generated than the car's petrol engine...be it only because it doesn't need to change gears/etc).
Re:Some quick math says... (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmm. Kind of like a Chevy Volt.
I just did some quick Googling, and 62.5kW worth of dedicated genset is around $13k to $25k for generating equipment alone. So, to pick a number, it might cost a remote service station $80k to install a single generator-backed rapid charge station (including installation, signage, fancy Toyota-approved hardware, profit, etc).
It wouldn't take a huge amount of regular demand for such a thing to be practical, but I'd think that $80k would still a pretty big chunk of money for such a remote place, which brings up a pretty big catch-22: There won't be demand until facilities exist, and facilities won't exist until there is demand.
Re:Some quick math says... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Some quick math says... (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe they could use twice as many capacitors at half the size to get 100% efficiency. Assuming they use the good half.
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Re:Some quick math says... (Score:4, Funny)
Let me complete your sentence:
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I assume you're referring to the famous two capacitor problem, where charging an empty capacitor from a charged capacitor will always lead to 50% energy loss, once steady state is reached. The trick is that in order to reach steady state there must be loss in the system. The inefficiency applies if you use only a resistance (e.g. of wiring and a relay/switch/mosfet/whatever) to limit the current into the capacitor. If on the other hand an inductance is used to limit current then efficiency can be close t
Cold fusion (Score:2)
Trust me, you won't see fully electric cars replacing gasoline until we develop cold fusion. Just google how many Joules you get in a pound of gasoline versus a pound of anything else. The technology simply does not exist and will not for a long time. The stuff you see now is just small incremental improvements. Oh and you math geeks, figure out how many pounds of coal was burned to charge that battery halfway.
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Oh and you math geeks, figure out how many pounds of coal was burned to charge that battery halfway.
How about none? I'm not a huge fan of nuclear power, but guess what runs the grid in much of Japan?
Re:Cold fusion (Score:5, Informative)
It makes perfect sense in the 1970s and may do again - electricity available if there is a naval blockade by China. Expensive, high maintainance, awkward waste problems but ultimately it works in that situation. That's the sort of niche nuclear advocates should be arguing for and improving to turn it from the expensive alternative energy everyone hates into a commercial reality.
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Electric engines are roughly 3-4 times as efficient as gasoline ones. So you get 3-4 times the effective energy density out of batteries.
More importantly you don't need that much energy, almost all car rides are short and electricity can be recharged at home unlike gasoline.
Oh and you math geeks, figure out how many pounds of coal was burned to charge that battery halfway.
Less pollution wise than you'd get from gasoline, someone did look into it. Natural gas is a lot better, and used in quite a few places, but even coal beats out gasoline engines.
Re:Cold fusion (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, but who wants to buy a car that only gets 100 miles, then needs to be recharged every 50 miles? This might be a good second or third car, but it's not that practical as your main vehicle, and the fact that an electric vehicle must be charged nightly limits it to only being useful to homes with garages.
This is why SUVs have been so popular in the US despite their poor gas mileage. You can fit 5 to 7 adults comfortably and still have room for luggage.
Electric cars will fail, and series hybrids like the Chevy Volt will succeed. [wikipedia.org] When the batteries run low a gas generator keeps the batteries charged enough to power the vehicle. This is brilliant: I get my electric car for my short daily commutes, but I still have gas for those rare times when I need to drive hundreds of miles in a day. I have the best of both worlds with no sacrifices.
Also series hybrids means we can finally use turbines: gas turbines are the most efficient engine. [wikipedia.org] While a gasoline engine is only 20-30% efficient, [wikipedia.org] a gas turbine is over 80% efficient. [wikipedia.org] In 1999 GM made a EV1 Series hybrid using a turbine generator. The vehicle achieved up to 100mpg while charging the battery [wikipedia.org] using 90s technology and a 220 lbs turbine (modern turbines are much smaller [wikipedia.org])
In ten years when series hybrids become the norm we'll look at vehicles like the Prius the same way Prius owners look at SUV owners today.
Re:Cold fusion (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine they're also very efficient at annoying the neighbors with the noise.
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Sure, but who wants to buy a car that only gets 100 miles, then needs to be recharged every 50 miles?
I do! My work is located ~15miles from my home and I could charge the car (for free!) all day while I'm working. A car which could go ~100 miles would cover almost all my personal transportation needs (not only to and from work), and if I would need to go longer I could rent or borrow another car (or take a bus / cab).
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A better way to put it, Would you be willing to take a 3~5minute break every 3hours of driving? To help the environment? I think that is a fairly minor lifestyle change at this point.
Another point is that ther
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There are more people in NYC metro area (NYC, northern new Jersey, eastern CT) then there are in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Idaho, and Alaska combined....
Microturbines and Hybrids (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed, hybrids are far more practical, but it seems that you are misrepresenting the promise of microturbines. From the wikipedia article:
Typical microturbine efficiencies are 25 to 35%. When in a combined heat and power cogeneration system, efficiencies of greater than 80% are commonly achieved.
In automotive applications, the waste heat goes unused; so the efficiency will be in the 25 to 35% range.
Another promising option for hybrids is the OPOC engine [ecomotors.com], which is a simple, efficient, and clean 2-stroke engine. It is a very interesting design, with a number of other advantages as well.
When coupled with a capacitor/flywheel/etc. to allow for regenerative braking and acceleration, the requirements for the power source in a hybrid are actually very minimal. This allows for the creation of an extremely efficient vehicle, and as far as energy density goes, you can't do much better than hydrocarbons.
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Sure... currently. I wouldn't get this as my main vehicle. But an electric is perfect for my commuting vehicle. Especially if I can convince my employer to offer charging in our parking garage.
Also, you need to think a little more long-term. If electrics start to become popular with the commuter c
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Re:Cold fusion (Score:4, Insightful)
Whereas 90% of journeys have 1 adult and no luggage.
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Sure, but who wants to buy a car that only gets 100 miles, then needs to be recharged every 50 miles? This might be a good second or third car, but it's not that practical as your main vehicle, and the fact that an electric vehicle must be charged nightly limits it to only being useful to homes with garages.
Me! I want one. I've never commuted more than 30 miles a day round-trip, and currently I commute 4 miles to work, my wife commutes 6 miles to work, and the vast majority of our trips in a commuter vehicle would be 30 miles. Even the big days would be 50 miles, taking the kids to events, driving myself to teach (I run a fife and drum corps) 1/2 way around our city, or driving to/from our datacenter to play hands/feet is only 32 miles round-trip.
That said... to avoid owning a dedicated trip-to-grandma's-veh
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Electric cars will fail, and series hybrids like the Chevy Volt will succeed. [wikipedia.org] When the batteries run low a gas generator keeps the batteries charged enough to power the vehicle. This is brilliant: I get my electric car for my short daily commutes, but I still have gas for those rare times when I need to drive hundreds of miles in a day. I have the best of both worlds with no sacrifices..
And all those other times when you are not driving 100 miles in a day you are lugging around a heavy and useless generator. That you paid good money for. And when you are driving more than 100 miles a day, you are lugging around huge battery packs that are doing very little good (outside of some regenerative braking and acceleration boost which are negligible on the Interstate at a constant speed.) It sounds to me like the worst of both worlds. I think I would rather have a small all electric car to get me
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Electric engines are roughly 3-4 times as efficient as gasoline ones. So you get 3-4 times the effective energy density out of batteries.
Please explain what you mean. Your premise and conclusion are not related, which makes your statement completely nonsensical.
More importantly you don't need that much energy, almost all car rides are short and electricity can be recharged at home unlike gasoline.
And if that were the issue, we wouldn't even be discussing it. I can already get electric cars that are comple
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If you really, really want to go crazy, then head on over to Argonne Nation Labs and check out this [anl.gov].
Testing has shown that the Tesla roadster is around 250 watt*hours of electricity per mile. The Rav4 EV (which uses a less efficient drive train) is around 300 watt*hours per mile. You can plug this in to the EPA Power Profiler and get CO2 per mile for various areas. But all in all, the real advantage of an electric ca
Re:Some quick math says... (Score:4, Informative)
I wonder if it has some sort of means of load smoothing and a limited duty cycle
Yes, it does. One of the charging stations described itself has a battery, for load smoothing purposes.
That's a win for stations without heavy power available. But busy stations are going to need a high-current feeder, so that can charge one car after another during busy periods.
Still skeptical about all-electric cars (Score:4, Funny)
I have never owned or even driven one save for a golf cart. My experience with the golf cart leaves me doubt as to whether an electric car can deliver enough torque to climb steep inclines.
Heck, what happens when you are stuck in snow all the while, the spinning of wheels eating away at your juice? Scary, isn't it?
Re:Still skeptical about all-electric cars (Score:5, Insightful)
I have never owned or even driven one save for a golf cart. My experience with the golf cart leaves me doubt as to whether an electric car can deliver enough torque to climb steep inclines.
Have you tried a Tesla? I hear they are fast.
Heck, what happens when you are stuck in snow all the while, the spinning of wheels eating away at your juice? Scary, isn't it?
Heck, what happens when you are stuck in snow all the while, the spinning of wheels eating away at your fuel? Scary, isn't it?
Re:Still skeptical about all-electric cars (Score:4, Insightful)
Heck, what happens when you are stuck in snow all the while, the spinning of wheels eating away at your fuel? Scary, isn't it?
When stuck in snow, the need to keep warm and therefore keep the engine running consumes fuel. When you finally run out of gasoline, you can replenish your supply via some container. How the heck do you do that if your primary source of energy if a battery? This is the problem.
Re:Still skeptical about all-electric cars (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Still skeptical about all-electric cars (Score:4, Insightful)
Extreme environments pose challenges for vehicles. There are examples you can point to where EVs may not be appropriate. But say I want to camp in the desert. The nearest petrol station is 1000km away. I could use a bank of photocells to charge my vehicle on site.
And BTW 1000km is quite realistic for remote areas in my country.
Re:Still skeptical about all-electric cars (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no idea about this sort of thing, but I would imagine that electric vehicles would do better in cold weather climates. At least you would not have to keep the motor running because it won't start if you don't...
One factor is that there is less energy lost as heat in an electric vehicle so running a heater will increase power consumption. You might be able to recover some heat from the batteries and motor though. Does anybody know how the heater (if it exists) in the Tesla works?
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The electric heater in the Tesla Roadster is a simple electric space heater type like a home space heater that draws power from the battery system. This includes the "defroster" for the windshield.... so there isn't a "warm up" period to get it to work like is found with an internal combustion engine. There is also an air-conditioner, but that is a simple electric pump with vehicle grade refrigerant... again more like something you would have at your home. To me, it would seem as though the air condition
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This is actually part of why conventional engines are hard to start in cold(in addition to increased lubricant viscosity and any other effects on the fuel and fluids). Your car battery needs to deliver a nontrivial amount of current to the starter motor to get the engine started. A
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Most batteries lose capacity as temperature drops. Lead-acid batteries lose a LOT of their capacity below freezing - tip; if your battery is *nearly* dead and the temp is below freezing, AND your car is not one of those that loses its mind when the battery is taken out, take that cold battery out and bring it inside. An hour at room temperature (assuming you paid the oil bill) will give it a big kick in the pants. You will be amazed, and you will get to the store to buy a new one. Or to work.
I suspect e
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How the heck do you do that if your primary source of energy if a battery?
You could plug the car in... or carry around a spare container of electricity (aka a battery), or a generator and some gasoline, I suppose.
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Heck, what happens when you are stuck in snow all the while, the spinning of wheels eating away at your juice? Scary, isn't it?
Not really. Spinning of wheels implies low friction and seeing as you're not actually moving anywhere (dammit), power used to spin those wheels is actually pretty minimal compared to normal driving.
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Proper gearing will give you all the torque you need to get up any incline with even the tiniest motor. The question is how fast you'll be climbing.
A properly sized motor will provide all the hill climbing performance you could ever want and the limitation becomes range, as limited by battery capacity.
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Besides, unlike the petrol engines, an electrical engine has it's maximum torque at 0 rpm - this is why a properly-sized electrical car will beat pants-down any thermal-engine drag racer.
As another bonus - higher power electric motors also tend to be more efficient. I say 'tend' because there's still lots of factors, but on average a 100hp motor of the same design as a 50hp version will be a few percentage points more efficient.
Non-all inclusive list of advantages of Electric motors over IC engines:
* Engines are rated in MAX horsepower, motors in sustained horsepower
**heat is normally their limiting factor. You can drive a heavy duty motor at something like 4X it's rating for a few second
Re:Still skeptical about all-electric cars (Score:5, Informative)
And regarding the snow? Yea, electric cars do just fine there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH_mSJC21f8 [youtube.com]
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The Atom is a ridiculous [youtube.com] car. I'd actually like to see a drag race between it and the Tesla Roadster.
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Just curious: what is the Tesla like in the cold? Does it use battery power for heating? Is it still comfortable?
Re:Still skeptical about all-electric cars (Score:5, Insightful)
My experience with the golf cart leaves me doubt as to whether an electric car can deliver enough torque to climb steep inclines.
Er, what? When dealing with electric motors, you have much more torque than a comparable gas motor.
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My experience with golf carts is that they're great for inclines. You can park them on a hill and start it right up. It wasn't the fastest thing in the world and when it started losing speed it felt like I might not make it, but the torque just pulled it up and over.
And greatest thing about electric motors is that you don't need to spin your wheels. You can apply full torque at 0 rpm and pull yourself out of being stuck.
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Electric motors, though, can put out some seriously mean torque at low speed. In fact, dealing with the amount of current they draw as they approach stall is one of the important design considerations in using them.
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Similarly, I had an old half-broken gas-powered ATV that just couldn't reach highway speeds. I don't see why people like this "gas" thing so much, it clearly doesn't have enough oomph to do anything serious.
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How about the parts of America where there is precious little snow and hardly any hills? Well if you look around there now all you'll see is Arab fueled gas guzzlers. America has a huge problem from relying on foreign fuel and an even bigger problem caused by shipping so much of its currency out of the country, you remember the economy, scary isn't it? Worst of all is this problem has been know about since the early '70's and little has been done except for making it worse. Now if you live in Vermont or Den
The Dept of Redundancy would like to have a word.. (Score:2)
Designed to comply with the CHAdeMo standard...the system is capable of charging a 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev from empty to 50% full in just three minutes. Even just three minutes plugged in...enable[d] a standard 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev to travel a further 50 miles before further charging was required."
Good job being.... very redundant? I supposed you'll want some kind of gold star or something...
Speaking of education, guess what time it is? That's right, it's Mathdot Time!.
Usually around this time I whip out my trusty calculator (and before those mod-point-endowed HP-calculator /.-ers down-mod me into oblivion, yes, "RPN FTW!"), but in this case I think we can just use the power of our brains. Just try not to think too hard or you might hurt your brain.
And...it's a story problem!
If samzenpus can charge his 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev from empty to 50% full in just three minutes, and if three minutes plugged in...enable[s] his standard 2011 Mitsubishi i-Miev to travel a further 50 miles, what is the range of his vehicle?
100 miles? That's it?
Okay
Free Car Charge with $50 Grocery Purchase (Score:2)
see subject. Coming soon. (disclaimer: 2010 Dollars).
Still too slow, Hydrogen is endgame (Score:3, Insightful)
Even three minutes is a long time to spend actually at the charger, and as another poster noted that produces a hell of a load on the electrical grid which limits the practicality of deployment for further speed improvements in charging.
I saw an article a bit ago doing the math about how many cars can move through a electric equivalent of a gas station, and something like 10x more gasoline powered cars are able to fuel up FULLY over the course of an hour. And of course if you are only charging for 50 miles station congestion will only be worse.
Purely electric cars are simply not a practical thing, and really don't mesh well with how people like to use cars in America.
That's why I think the alternative fuel of choice will (and should) be Hydrogen. People (consumers and stations and providers) already know how to deal with liquids, it's just an adaptation of existing infrastructure.
Yes it's bloody hard to store and expensive to produce right now. But imagine how much less so it would be (especially production) if the same amount of money were being poured into R&D around Hydrogen cars as we see being poured into electric and solar power.
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That's why I think the alternative fuel of choice will (and should) be Hydrogen. People (consumers and stations and providers) already know how to deal with liquids, it's just an adaptation of existing infrastructure.
Hydrogen is only liquid at temperatures below -250C - I doubt there are many consumers and stations and providers that have any experience with cryo temperature liquids...
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That's why there's an alternative proposition to use replaceable battery packs. Pull the car in to the station and a mechanical device removes the tamper-resistant-and-registered bank of batteries from the car. Then it lifts a charged pack in. This also means the owners don't have to spend
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So who will be taking old battery packs out of circulation then? Who pays for replacing them, and how?
You could just be buying and selling battery packs every time you refill. Over time, as a pack degrades, it becomes less valuable until eventually it's not usable by anyone who drives farther than the grocery store, and then not even them. At that point, the pack is being bought and sold for little more than its scrap value, so either the filling station or the vehicle owner may choose to scrap it.
The value of a battery pack has four components:
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But all of that is mitigated by the fact that you can charge at home.
For the daily commute with an electric, most people wouldn't even have to stop at a gas (electricity?) station.
If you imaging only 10% of the people would be using the station to recharge, then the usage would be pretty similar to that of the current gas stations.
The weekends could be worse, though.
Some sources says it's not CHAdeMO compliant (Score:4, Informative)
This source also has some more technical details, like charging current, how much current the charging station will draw from the grid (20kW), that the charging station has twin batteries with different properties, that car makers need to adopt new battery types for it to work:
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20100621/183598/ [nikkeibp.co.jp]
Not good enough! (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, refuse to buy an electric vehicle until it has a range of 1000 miles on a single charge, and can be fully recharged in under 30 seconds. Anything less is completely impractical. I also want 12 cup holders. When they achieve this performance level, I will find another rediculous excuse not to buy one.
And I will continue to insist on my god given right to mis-spell rediculous.
So put two Chademo sockets on it (Score:2)
Video instructions (Score:2)
Watch from 1:15 to 1:56, avoid idiot blithering.
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Re:I'll wave when I drive past you ... (Score:4, Interesting)
The burning of oil is non-reversable. Once used it is gone for good. Batteries may degrade with use but the original material is still there and available for reconditioning.
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The burning of oil is non-reversable. Once used it is gone for good.
Incorrect [dotyenergy.com].
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And exactly what charges your batteries ?
Hint : probably electricity from a coal-fired lower plant.
That's a stupid argument because the solution is obvious: use wind, hydro, solar or nuclear energy to charge the vehicle.
For gasoline engines, no clean solution exists at all.
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The way to make a hydrogen car viable is to take your nth generation series hybrid car and replace the engine/generator with a hydrogen fuel cell. Once you are mainly using electricity off the grid, you only need to refill your gas tank occasionally, since you are only doing it every now and again, going to a hydrogen dispensary is less of an issue, even if there isn't one right around the corner. As hydrogen/electric cars become more palatable, hydrogen fuelling plants become more common, eventually you do
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We have to convert natural gas to hydrogen (might as well run vehicles on natural gas) or crack H20 into hydrogen with electricity (which is horribly inefficient).
There is always option (c): find another, more efficient way to produce hydrogen (e.g. bioengineered bacteria, or something). I still wouldn't necessarily bet on hydrogen, but it's not impossible that someone might come up with something practical.
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Holy Carp... (Score:2)
That is so wrong on so many levels. I think my head may explode.
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I'm sorry, but really, hydrocarbons are not a liquid form of hydrogen, and cars are not powered on hydrogen now. Those things are just wrong!
Your post I find amusing, as it posit a world with abundant hydrogen, looking for a way to make it useful!
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http://www.google.com/search?q=hydrocarbon+fuel+cell [google.com]
What's needed:
1) Cheap enough source of energy (maybe newer nuclear or wind or thermal solar).
2) Cheap source of CO2 (CO2 tends to occur in higher concentrations in water).
3) Efficient way to get H2
4) Cost effective hydrocarbon fuel cells that work efficiently, reliably, and can last a long enough time in the harsh environment of a car.
5) Cost effective filters that can tolerate and filter out common undesirable impurities in the fuel, in order to protect
Re:I'll wave when I drive past you ... (Score:5, Insightful)
they lack the range to be useful outside of a commuter scenario
And that scenario only makes up, what, about 80% of the passenger car miles driven in North America?
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So you can go over 900 miles with your car. So? How often do people do 900 mile commutes in a day? Rarely. Electric cars aren't just ready for prime time. They're ready for the end of cheap, easy oil (whose time has come, if you didn't notice how we now have to go 1+ miles under the surface of the ocean to get it).
From the Chevy Volt wiki page:
With fully charged batteries, enough electrical energy will be stored to power the Volt up to 40 miles (64 km). This distance is capable of satisfying the daily commute for 75% of Americans, whose commute is on average 33 miles (53 km).
Your 900 mile one-way range? Useless. An electric vehicle's abi
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It's cheap because not many people are charging their electric cars at night. That will change real fast, and the same grid that can't handle everyone running their air conditioner will collapse under the load.
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Electric vehicles will become widely available starting in 2011. The current Administration supports a goal of one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. A previous PNNL study showed that America’s existing power grid could meet the needs of about 70 percent of all U.S. light-duty vehicles if battery charging was managed to avoid new peaks in electricity demand.
http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=365 [pnl.gov]
I'm not that worried. There is plenty of nighttime generating capacity.
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Have you looked the the food commodity prices lately? Even with the large gains seen today, the prices are still below the cost of production. If land for food was as scarce as you claim, should that food not be worth more than it costs to produce?
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Let me pick some choice headlines:
IMF Survey: Biofuel Demand Pushes Up Food Prices
World Bank Chief: Biofuels Boosting Food Prices : NPR
The biofuel factor in rising food prices | Green Tech - CNET News
The Tortilla Effect: Biofuel and food prices
Just because you don't see the price at Walmart going up significantly, doesn't mean elsewhere the price for food isn't going up.
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I am talking about the actual trade of food commodities, not the price you see at the grocery store. Corn, for example, costs approximately $4.50 per bushel to produce (from the field to the grain elevator). Right now, the best I can do on the sale of a bushel of corn is $3.65. Based on current market bids, a farmer in my region will lose almost a dollar on every bushel produced.
If food is even nearing scarcity, why is nobody willing to pay at least a fair market value for the food? The laws of supply and d
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Food in the United States is all heavily subsidized. This comes in various forms, such as subsidies for corn, soybeans, sugar, cotton etc. We also have relatively cheap gasoline. In some cases, agribusiness gets paid to not grow certain crops so as to not alter the price too much. It's one of the reasons why we are today an obese nation - food is cheap and plentiful in our country. Were we to take away the subsidies, we would have the ability to spend our money elsewhere, or not, but prices at the supe
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Sorry to burst your little bubble, but bio fuels derived from crops take more energy to produce than you get out of them
Are you including solar inputs or not? If you're only counting man introduced energy sources such as electricity, fossil fuels, and such, then the answer is actually 'it depends'.
The study that said that ethanol wasn't energy positive was rather pessimistic, and assumed inefficient plants. Newer designs are more efficient and flip back to the positive side.
Just, well, not enough to justify the amount of land it'd take, which is why I support the ideas for cellulosic ethanol and the fuels made from algae g
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Some charger manufacturers claim amazingly short charge times of 30 minutes or less. With well-balanced cells and operating at moderate room temperatures, nickel-cadmium batteries designed for fast charging can indeed be charged in a very short time. This is done by simply dumping in a high charge current during the first 70% of the charge cycle.
In the second phase of the charge cycle, the charge current must be lowered. The efficiency to absorb charge is progressively reduced as the battery moves to a higher state-of-charge. If the charge current remains too high in the later part of the charge cycle, the excess energy turns into heat and high cell pressure. Eventually, venting will occur, releasing oxygen and hydrogen. Not only do the escaping gases deplete the electrolyte, they are highly flammable!