Toshiba's One-Minute-Recharge Li-ion Batteries 413
TheGuano writes "No idea if this is related to Altair's six-minute-charge Li-ions,, but Toshiba has just announced a similar Li-ion that recharges to 80% capacity in one minute, while losing only 1% total capacity after 1000 cycles. It's set to debut in 2006 for use in hybrid cars (my current Toshiba Satellite doesn't get very far on battery power, but it's a beautiful shade of blue), but 'should' make its way to other, hopefully smaller devices eventually."
Nice but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nice but... (Score:3, Funny)
Wireless? (Score:5, Funny)
That's fine, but how about my nutty idea? Imagine a service where music could be transmitted wirelessly, and you could have a receiving device even smaller than an iPod to listen to the music with. I wonder if anyone would or could ever invent something like this?
Re:Wireless? (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah but it'd probably go the way the internet: First it'd be a nice public service but eventually they'd start filling it with adverts :-)
Re:Wireless? (Score:3, Insightful)
It was Funny. It was also Insightful, but only because it was Funny in an Ironic way. Unfortunately it was too Subtle for some people to realize it was meant to be a joke, prompting several Clueless posts who have taken the liberty of explaining the punch line to the joke's author, mistaking his Insightfulness for their own. I
Re:Wireless? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wireless? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Nice but... (Score:2)
Re:Nice but... (Score:4, Funny)
Different recharging techniques. (Score:5, Informative)
From the New Scientist article: From the press release by Toshiba: It would be futile for Toshiba to try to mimic Altair, since the New Scientist article also states:
Re:Different recharging techniques. (Score:3, Insightful)
sigh heard round the world (Score:3, Funny)
Re:sigh heard round the world (Score:5, Funny)
Huh why?
Oh wait a minute... you mean when they get caught out in the rain.. don't you?
Re:sigh heard round the world (Score:2)
Re:sigh heard round the world (Score:2, Funny)
women sigh round the world heavily, while dreaming of AA size waterproof versions.
My wife is waiting for the D size batteries. She likes 'em big and strong.
Re:sigh heard round the world (Score:5, Funny)
Re:sigh heard round the world (Score:4, Funny)
Re:sigh heard round the world (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a beta tester... (Score:5, Funny)
Altair's == Toshiba's? (Score:4, Interesting)
Fantastic for travelers (Score:5, Insightful)
There go the circuit breakers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:There go the circuit breakers (Score:4, Funny)
Re:There go the circuit breakers (Score:5, Informative)
If I wanted (or were able) to charge this battery in one minute, it would require 468 amps at 7.4V, or 28.86A at 120V. Charge it in two minutes (ignoring all system losses and heat issues) and you've solved the 120V issue. You're still trying to push 234A at 7.4V, though, which would be a problem. At 10 minutes charge time, especially if you were able to integrate the charger with the battery pack, I can see how it might be feasible.
Re:There go the circuit breakers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There go the circuit breakers (Score:2)
The breaker for the electric range hookup in my kitchen is rated 40A @240V. That ought to be just enough to handle my 65W iBook's needs.
I bet the 6-minute claim the other manufacturer put forth was accounting for a 15A 120V circuit.
This technology is either vapor or stolen from space aliens.
not stolen - licensed from space aliens (Score:4, Funny)
Re:There go the circuit breakers (Score:2, Interesting)
That would be 1200W to recharge, about what a vacuum cleaner uses.
Re:Fantastic for travelers (Score:2)
I can see it now -- microwave antennas on the back of your laptop, phone, etc. to geta free boost from the omnipresent TSA. "It's OK officer, I don't mind you taking a nice long look at the X-Ray..."
Ah... but, here's the catch: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ah... but, here's the catch: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ah... but, here's the catch: (Score:2, Informative)
The new battery can quickly store energy produced by locomotives and automobiles.
So, they intend to use these in large scale applications. I wonder how that would work out on a train that has to climb a long grade, then decend for miles. On the decent, the batteries charge up quickly, then the power is available for the next upgrade.
I can see where they would want to show these batteries off in cars and trains [japan-guide.com] before bringing them to our favorite Toshiba Laptop.
Concerning lapto
Re:Ah... but, here's the catch: (Score:5, Funny)
ah yes. we call them capicitors. what a crazy hitech world this is!
Battery Tech: Good and Bad (Score:2, Funny)
The Good: Efficient transportation, long lasting mobile electronic devices, and of course light sabers.
The Bad: People get totally freaked out when the engine on a hybrid car shuts down as the electric kicks in. That silence is just plain wrong, the engine should stay running. Oh, that and a lot of my clients are oil companies.
Re:Battery Tech: Good and Bad (Score:4, Interesting)
That silence is just great (Score:2)
Imagine how much quieter cities are going to be at rush hour once a significant fraction of cars are hybrids.
Re:That silence is just great (Score:2)
Cities? I live in North Dakota you insensitive clod!
Re:Battery Tech: Good and Bad (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Battery Tech: Good and Bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, kind of like IE users get freaked out the first time they use FireFox and experience browsing without pop-up ads.
I drive an '05 Prius. I love the fact that the engine cuts off so much. A small fraction of people who ride with me think it's weird at first, but they get used to it after 5 minutes. Most people think it's the coolest thing ever.
Re:Battery Tech: Good and Bad (Score:3, Informative)
The Good: Efficient transportation,
are you nuts?
I recently bought a car that was designed in the 1980's that regularly get's more gas mileage than a honda Insight.
It's a Geo Metro with a 955cc engine. After adding low rolling resistance tires and adjusting steering camber to 0 (just like the honda) I get on average 58mpg. I have yet to see an insight with that high of an average. (I know of 5 owners of them,
So how much heat do these give off? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So how much heat do these give off? (Score:2)
Re:So how much heat do these give off? (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes me question the scaling the article implied for hybrid cars. The "one minute" charge timeframe is very much depending on having a power source capable of delivering that much energy to the battery. Hybrid batteries are many times the size of standard car batteries. That's a lot of power to deliver in a minute.
TW
Re:So how much heat do these give off? (Score:2)
Re:So how much heat do these give off? (Score:2, Insightful)
Less you are going down a hill you can't reap more energy from regen braking than you put into it... and wind resistence means constant input to the system you will never see back from regen. However this will make regen systems more effective since you would not need to further complicated the system with large banks of capacitors to absorb the high energy output of hard braking.
Makes times in between refuling farther apart as well.
Re:So how much heat do these give off? (Score:5, Informative)
The real benefit here is from having a battery that is very efficient at absorbing energy in a situation where energy comes inconsistantly in intermittent intervels.
See, hybried cars charge the car battries when
1) The gas engine is running at such a situation where part of the power is used to run the car and part of it to charge it.
2) When the car is breaking.
So, when both situations occur isn'ty all that predictable and depends on the drivers driving style, meaning that the battery cannot get it's charge in a slow and steady stream but in occasional big gulps.
The problem with the big gulp today is that if the gulp is big enough and the battery can't take it, energy is going to waste. So this new battery solves that problem by giving the battery the ability to drink up energy faster then the car can generate it.
And if the reverse is true and the battery can discharge as fast, imagine what it can do for acceleration.
It is my hope (Score:5, Interesting)
Chevy is mad, but may still make out. (Score:2)
With that said, the hywire may be able to use this in place of a fuel cell arrangement.
Re:It is my hope (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem wasn't that it takes hours to recharge. The problem was energy density: electric cars used conventional lead-acid or NiCAD batteries which were terribly heavy, relative to the amount of energy they stored. This greatly reduced vehicle range, because so much energy was expended carrying the heavy batteries. Adding batteries helped little, because that increased the weight of the batteries still further.
An example of these problems was the GM EV1, which had a range of ~40 miles in an underpowered subcompact. The problem was energy density: the EV1 devoted ~90% of its energy to carrying its own batteries.
Car manufacturers (like GM) considered using Lithium-Ion batteries, but were deterred by two facts: LiIon batteries are very expensive, and they need to be replaced every few years because they lose the ability to hold a charge. Replacing expensive batteries every 2 years or so made the vehicle costs skyrocket.
A LiIon battery that can be recharged many thousands of times, and that can be recharged in a few minutes, solves all of these problems. An EV can be built with a range >100 miles and an acceptable cost. Even long distances could be tolerated if you don't mind stopping every 100 miles or so for a brief recharge.
This potentially wouldn't even require a hybrid. Straight electric seems achievable.
interesting? More like fiction (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem wasn't that it takes hours to recharge. The problem was energy density
No, it was both. People want a car that they can take on vacation, easily refueling ever once in a while. While refueling every 50 miles isn't ideal, people would live with that if it only took a minute and was cheap. You shouldn't be sitting still for longer than that anyway for health reasons. However nobody is willing to wait hours for a recharge.
The problem was energy density: the EV1 devoted ~90% of its energy
Re:It is my hope (Score:4, Interesting)
How many cycles before the batteries start losing capacity? If a battery has a 3000 cycle life (call it 8 years of daily recharges, more than enough life since most people will have replaced the car by then), but starts losing capacity after 750 recharges (2 years), that's not good. If the range is only 100 miles at 100% capacity and the battery is down to 80% capacity after two years, range has been significantly shortened.
Also, a range of 100 miles is still very small. 200 miles is really the sweet spot (that's about where the worst gas guzzlers are at today), but to be really fair that measurement should be in terms of end-of-warranty battery state. If the warranty is 4 years and the battery has degraded to 65%, I still want 200 miles. That means the car needs to do better than 300 miles when new.
100 miles on a new battery is fair for a commuter car in an urban area. However, that's not enough for most people* to replace their existing car. Keep in mind that if you misjudge your remaining charge, you can't just dump a can of gas in the tank and make it to the next stop.
* By "people", I'm really referring to "Americans, or other folks that live in an expansive country where a typical commute may be 30-40 miles round-trip, and vacation spots may be a couple hours away". Your 100 mile electric car would not be able to get you from LA to Vegas on a single charge, and good luck finding a place to recharge in the long, empty expanses of desert.
Re:It is my hope (Score:3, Informative)
Ok now I want my T-zero with these batteries in it.
Re:It is my hope (Score:3, Informative)
Complaining that it haven't happened yet is ridiculous.
Re:It is my hope (Score:2)
Cost would still be an issue with the new cells; using the batteries as an APU would be much more cost effective. (If cost goes down, maybe there would be a chance for an all-electric.) It seems like the real key is to get the auto manufacturers to have a viable electric drivetrain, which could take advantage of technology advances in fuel cells or batteries.
Re:It is my hope (Score:5, Interesting)
Auto credit card payment... Have it stick up to the bottom of your car.
Nice power density too (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the recharge times that is an amazing amount of energy for PDAs, cameras and the like. However, if you're going to scale up that system for cars, you are going to have a hellishly dangerous amount of current flowing in order to get a charge in a minute (or time similar to a gas station) so they better figure out some good safety systems if they want to go to market with this for pure electic cars rather than the hybrids they're planning for in 2006. However, they might not need the one minute charge if they use the charge at home system the some electric car designs. You could charge to full in an hour or get enough of a charge at the supermarket or other store to make short hops without a problem.
--
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Or try a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. [freegamingsystems.com] (you only need 4 referrals)
Wired article as proof [wired.com]
Re:Nice power density too (Score:2)
My guess is that this super-rapid charging will not be maxed out at a "filling station", but rather during something like regenerative breaking. Having a battery that can suck up current that fast would allow for much greater reclamation of kinetic energy into chemical-potential energy than is currently possible in hybrid/electric cars. Any energy that isn't absorbe
Density Compares Badly to AA NiMH (Score:2)
It may be better than lead-acid, so it might be ok for transportation (and differences in memory effect are important), a
Re:Nice power density too (Score:4, Insightful)
Could also have an onsight Generator capable of zapping a couple of cars at a time running from the gas tanks with a smaller assitent battery bank absorbing idle time from the generators and distributing more power when more cars are being refuled simultaneously. Also big incentive to add solar cells to the gas stations once they get cheap enough.
Either should avoide needed new super duty power lines to carry massive. In either case utilities have to then start producing that power we used to get by harnessing gas in an ICE.
If this is for real it is a world changer. And electric car could be a serious alternative to an ICE and the infrastructure is much easier to implement than hydrogen. Then if we make the leap to fusion we can use that to power the utilities and eliminate fossil fule burning altogether. Would still be utilizing them for plastics though.
Hybrid cars? (Score:2, Funny)
Hybrid car charging is going to be exciting (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe this technology will allow the battery size to be reduced in hybrids. That would definitely cut some cost out of hybrids and make them more pocket friendly.
holy flux capacitor!! (Score:2)
if you could live with 1 tenth the horse power and 1 tenth the run time then that is 20,000 watt power source to recharge.
ha! this is ludicrous. I must be making a mistake or electric auto
Re:holy flux capacitor!! (Score:2)
And interim system would
This is cool because it helps efficiency (Score:5, Interesting)
Stomp hard on the brakes in a Prius, and the battery can't absorb current fast enough to deal with the power surge. Mechanical brakes come into play. Energy that could have been recycled turns into heat in the mechanical brakes.
A super-fast charging battery could eliminate any need for mechanical brakes except as safety backups.
Re:This is cool because it helps efficiency (Score:2)
Re:This is cool because it helps efficiency (Score:3, Informative)
The braking force exerted by a motor/generator is proportional to the load on it. Many diesel-electric locomotives brake by shunting the drive motors into a dynamic braking grid (actually a humongous resistor) which provides resistive loading on the motor/generators. In the case of
Re:This is cool because it helps efficiency (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that your electrical system would burst into flames if you did a 60-0 MPH panic stop.
k=.5*m*v^2=.5*1000*26.82^2=359656.2 joules spread this out over 4 seconds and you get about 90,000 watts!
If you were using a battery voltage of 100V, you would still need a battery system that could handle 900 amps of current. If you were using 0000 gauage wire, which is 0.46" in diameter, you'd be running 3X the reccommend current for that wire guage. So even if your motors and your batteries could handle the current (which they can't), just your wiring itself would probably end up weighing as much as a set of normal, mechanical brakes.
It would be neat if all that energy could be recovered, but I expect mechanical brakes are going to be around for quite some time. Of course if you did build a car that could do this, and it ever broke, the electrical system in the car could provide enough current to weld itself together (and a half dozen other cars...simulatneously).
Re:This is cool because it helps efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
Large bus bars, and multiple 00 or 000 guage wires can easily handle that much current with high temperature insulation. The common tables of ampacity for stationary use are very conservative, and you must take into account the assumptions of those tables.
Then, my understanding is that most hybrid and electrical cars use more like 250-400 volt battery systems, so current handling would only need to be in the 225 to 360 ampere range.
Probably you would want actually to stop from 60MPH in about 3.5 seconds, and also you would not likely need to dissipate all the energy as generated electricity. In any case the engineering is not as difficult as it might seem, and with good enough bumpers and airbags, who needs brakes anyway?
Re:This is cool because it helps efficiency (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason for the "standard" wire sizes given in electrical code is that they are designed to be stuck in insulation, and conduit and other places where they can't dissipate heat.
However in this case first or all you are only running current for 4 seconds! So they hardly have time to heat up much, and second you can easily put some cooling fins on them.
You don't need anywhere near as much wire as you might think.
(i.e. if it's safe to run 15 amps in
Re:This is cool because it helps efficiency (Score:2)
It's like speakers and (unpowered) microphones.
but not backwards! (Score:3, Informative)
Yes motors and generators are essentially the same thing. However a generator is not a motor spinning backwards. A generator is a motor that is being spun by an external power source.
Connect a motor to a powersource and it will start to turn. Connect the output shaft to an input that is powered (a turbine for example), and the motor will try generate power. However the motor is still turning the same direction, it is just being driving faster than the electrical input would make it go, so it is putti
fuel cells (Score:2, Interesting)
Im sure we will use the lessons from hybrids and new battery design in the future of fuel cell vehicles, but I suspect that hybrids are only a step on the way to better cars.
One minute? (Score:3, Interesting)
Mine's better (Score:5, Funny)
6 minute batteries (Score:4, Insightful)
Though I may have to throw them out if they come up with 1 Minute Abs.
Seriously though, you still have to pump in the energy you want to get out later. For a car this is a LOT of energy. I'd do the calculations if I were more clever. Without distributed power generation (think fuel cells) it may be hard to get that much juice in one spot without frying someone.
You'd have to bump up the voltage to keep the wires from being too thick to be managed by a single person. Then you have to worry about shocks (rain anyone?) and fumes (presumably there would be filling stations in/near gas pumps for legacy support). Also, some batteries vent hydrogen. not sure if these do though.
Re:6 minute batteries (Score:2, Funny)
Talk about some amps (Score:2, Interesting)
What about the remaining 20%? (Score:2)
Re:What about the remaining 20%? (Score:2, Informative)
Short Answer: No
lithium batteries can take a fast charge, up to a point, after that most chargers (or is it the internal circuitry) will switch to a slower charge rate.
this is done to avoid thermal runaway = disaster.
with good cooling, most rechargeables can handle a very high recharge rate (Cx2 or Cx4) till around 75% capacity, but you'll need to slow charge 'em to reach 100%
Re:What about the remaining 20%? (Score:3, Informative)
I know with my aircraft, we use LiPoly batteries and it's a real curse to sit there and watch your batteries race to 60~70% charge in 30 minutes only to then sit back for another hour waiting for the rest
Paul.
Should (Score:2)
Funny, the word should doesn't appear anywhere in article. Who do you suppose said it?
Smaller Devices will benefit regardless (Score:5, Insightful)
For Americans, would you rather have these batteries make it more quickly to your MP3 players and laptops, or have 2010 gas prices only rise to say $4.50 instead of $5.75 a gallon?
(And for most Europeans figure somewhere around EU 8 or 9 instead of EU 12, even if the Euro rises against the Dollar, as most of your governments have already agreed to discout hybred fuel costs in various ways, but a lot of the cost will still be taxes).
Indirect savings, i.e. from trucked goods costs and smaller winter spikes in heating oil prices would add substantially to that.
$1.25 a gallon difference (or likely more) will pay for lots of older model batteries for all your smaller appliances, and then some.
It's a sticker! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:one minute discharge (Score:2, Informative)
Hopefully that means your 1 hour of charge would net you at least 3 minutes ;)
Re:one minute discharge (Score:2)
Memory? (Score:4, Funny)
Well it's clear they don't have "recharge memory". It's more like "recharge Alzheimer's", i.e. they completely forget how to recharge
Re:one minute discharge (Score:5, Informative)
When can I expect one of these beasts in my iPod!!??
Re:one minute discharge (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:one minute discharge (Score:5, Informative)
NiCd and NiMH cells, on the other hand, last longer, especially if not being charged and discharged a lot.
Re:one minute discharge (Score:3, Informative)
It's not nearly as interesting as you make it sound.
Common forms of abuse (not specific to LiPo cells, however) :
leaving a battery in a hot car, especially in the sun.
discharging a battery completely in 4 minutes, like many R/C car and plane guys do. The battery generally tolerates it, but it won't last long.
charging a battery at 4C (full charge in 15 minutes.) (Some batteries can tolerate hi
Re:one minute discharge (Score:2)
Besides, if the battery's rugged enough to be used in the next generation of hybrid cars, I'd say they've worked out potential heat issues.
chewbacca's flux capacitor (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:chewbacca's flux capacitor (Score:5, Funny)
thats roughly 445 horse-power-hours = 336 kilowatt hours or 1.21 gigajoules. if you push in this much energy in say ten minutes that requires a 2 megawatt power source.
And if you could push that much energy in one second, it'd be 1.21 gigawatts!!
Re:chewbacca's flux capacitor (Score:4, Interesting)
Say 50 horsepower for 30 seconds of output; using your numbers for electrical-to-mechanical efficiency, that's about 26kW to charge in a minute; or about 51 horsepower at 70% alternator efficiency. So you could have a 50 horsepower gasoline engine running flat out at a stoplight charging the battery pack, and have 100 horsepower of initial acceleration for 30 seconds. Not so absurd, eh?
Re:chewbacca's flux capacitor (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, this is exactly the type of battery breakthrough I have been waiting for. I opted to buy a standard Honda Civic because I realised that the battery packs in the current hybrids are likely to wear out as quickly as my laptop's battery and cost considerably more to replace...which makes the option fiscally irresponsible for someone like me (not to mention the performance deficit in the current models). But once this new battery tech hits the hybrids, they can be made to perform better and have the battery pack life more in line with the longetivity of the rest of the vehicle's components...which will mean the technology has matured enough to be mainstream.
Given that they say this tech should be here as soon as NEXT YEAR, I'm excited! There will be no excuse for car makers not to have hybrid models of all shapes and sizes after this.
One more quick item to note...fast charge/dischare hybrid power packs do already exist in a different form. It was setup as sortof a hybrid of hybrid. The power pack was a combination of huge capacitors for the quick power drains and charges, and then normal batterys along side those for sustained moderate charge/discharge (pulling a long hill or caosting down it). This hybrid/hybrid thing was discussed on slashdot before but here is the link for reference: http://www.ecolectrictechnology.com/ [ecolectrictechnology.com]
Re:chewbacca's flux capacitor (Score:5, Informative)
Electric motors bring true 4x4 power to cars. Don't know how that can be done? Look here about Variable Speed Drives http://www.psnh.com/Business/SmallBusiness/Motor.a sp [psnh.com]
Now about recharging, well, true, it will be hell of a lot of current on the battery cells. But that does NOT mean a lot of current in the input. If you want to recharge a 100Ah 24V battery, that's about 24*100=2.4kWh and recharge in 1 minute, you need to provide
ASIDE: Motor effiency is >>95%, not some 70% crap. Even if you have have physical gears, you get >90% efficiency for the entire drive train. http://www.tech-m4.com/eng/tm4transport/moto_centr almotor/ [tech-m4.com]
The answer is high voltage input and it can be done. Especially in the US/Canada where power is distributed at high votage (ie. no need to worry about melting transmission lines).
Anyway, the battery cannot be recharged this way because the wires feeding the battery would melt, although more research in superconductors could fix this problem.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Already something after Li-Ion (Score:2)
Re:Perpetual motion machine (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Perpetual motion machine (Score:5, Funny)