Israeli Firm Makes Kilomile Claims For Electric Car Battery Tech 247
cylonlover writes with this tantalizing excerpt from GizMag "Israel-based company Phinergy claims to have developed metal-air battery technology that promises to end the range anxiety associated with electric vehicles. The company's battery currently consists of 50 aluminum plates, each providing energy for around 20 miles (32 km) of driving. This adds up to a total potential range of 1,000 miles (1,609 km), with stops required only every couple of hundred miles to refill the system with water."
batteries are not rechargable (Score:5, Interesting)
From TFA (I know, but there were no comments yet ;-):
The company says the aluminum plate anodes in its aluminum-air battery have an energy density of 8 kWh/kg, but the batteries are not rechargeable. Once the energy is expended, the plates, which add up to around 55 pounds (25 kg) per battery, need to be replaced. However, the company points out that aluminum is easily recyclable and that swapping the battery out for a fresh one is quicker than recharging.
That makes it a lot less appealing, I would say...
Re:batteries are not rechargable (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:batteries are not rechargable (Score:5, Interesting)
The article says the battery contains 55 lb of aluminum. The price of aluminum currently fluctuates in the general vicinity of $1 per lb, so we're talking at least $50 in raw materials. Add in other materials, manufacturing costs, and profit, and I'm going to guess a $100 battery is not out of the question. Maybe $75 if we're lucky. That sounds high as a gas replacement initially, but if it truly gets 1,000 miles on the aluminum battery and we compare it to a gas-sipping car (we'll say 50mpg), the gas at $3.50/gal would cost $70 for 1,000 miles. When you consider how few cars in the US get that good of mileage and the ever-climbing price of gas, we are probably somewhere close to a break-even point economically.
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Add in the option of drive-thru refill stations where you part-exchange your battery for a fully charged one and it becomes very interesting.
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Yes, I didn't think to mention that recyclers are buying aluminum around $0.50/lb.
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SI vs. US customary? (Score:2)
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Kilomile = 1000 miles.
megametre = 1000 km.
Last I checked, a kilometre is much shorter than a mile...
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Kilomile = 1000 miles.
megametre = 1000 km.
Last I checked, a kilometre is much shorter than a mile...
And a kiloleague would be even longer ... but the point I assume the GP was making is that it seems stupid to use an SI prefix with an antiquated unit of measurement.
Re:batteries are not rechargable (Score:5, Insightful)
Except these batteries generate electricity by turning aluminium into aluminium oxide. Admittedly it will be nice pure oxide that can go straight back to the electrolytic smelter to be turned back into aluminium. However it cannot be just melted back into aluminium and is more like $300 per tonne.
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The old battery will definitely have good recycling value - so you may discount part of the cost of materials there, as you're normally swapping them out. Just like with a gas cylinder for cooking gas (you only once pay a deposit for the cylinder, after that for the gas only).
What you did not add though, is the cost of the energy that is stored in those batteries. The energy those batteries provide comes from somewhere, and is certainly not free.
Re:batteries are not rechargable (Score:4, Informative)
What you did not add though, is the cost of the energy that is stored in those batteries.
He did: the price of bulk refined aluminium includes the energy cost of the electricity used to refine it.
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Actually you would need a network like Tesla supercharger network for this to really work. As long as you bought the initial battery, you can swap it for only the cost of energy (profit included with a small recycling fee) from the network of power stations.
Problem of that, according to Tesla, is that there is significant technical challenge to swap battery pack in a reliable way and it also limit the design and location of those packs. But then of course, their battery pack has different constraints.
A
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This kind of battery design (assuming it actually works) could be really useful.
The swapping-out part has to be solved (weight will be an issue when handling manually), but that's imho a matter of proper design, and is just a technical issue that can be solved.
The great thing of a battery like this is that the recharge problem is basically solved. No lengthy waits (swap out the batteries - can probably be done in a matter of minutes), no loss of capacity over the years (always a new battery), no massive spi
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Don't forget transport costs. Fuel has to be transported to your local gasstation and it has to carried along in the car itself.
Gasoline weighs roughly 6 lb/gallon (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_a_gallon_of_gasoline_weigh).
An average car drives 20 miles/gallon (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_gas_mileage_of_the_average_car)
So gasoline weighs some 0.3 lb/mile.
These batteries weigh 55 lb per 20 miles; 2.75 lb/mile; roughly 9 times more.
Also note that fuel is used up while driving, the
Re:batteries are not rechargable (Score:5, Informative)
Hang on a sec; the *battery* contains 55lb of Al, and the *battery* provides power for 1,000 miles. So, that translates to 0.055 lb/mile, which is significantly smaller than gasoline.
Re:batteries are not rechargable (Score:4, Interesting)
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Your comparison is flawed. You're measuring the weight of 1 gallon of fuel that goes 20 miles to the weight of 50 aluminum plates that weight 55 lbs combined that goes 1000 mil
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sigh
And none of the above note the fact that there is more to the battery than JUST those alum plates. How much is the other plates in there? The electrolyte? The water? Something to hold them together and a box to contain it all? Maybe even some hardware to enable those swaps?
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Another thing to consider is the price of the car itself, though. Even if these batteries end up with a running cost of $2.00/gal equivalent, how much cheaper would an electric car be without the expensive batteries and charging circuitry. An electric motor by itself is going to be a lot cheaper to make (and definitely to maintain) than an ICE.
Even if it's not as cheap to run as a rechargeable electric, it might still be cheaper to own than an ICE-powered car, and actually affordable by the masses.
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Except that in something like a lead battery or catalytic converter the used core is just a mechanically degraded version of the original material, which can be recycled fairly easily. In this case though the aluminum plates are probably electrochemically converted back to an ore-like state. Quite pure, but still requiring the enormous amounts of energy to convert back to a metal which is responsible for much of the expense of aluminum.
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To put some perspective on your point consider that a pre-paid replacement battery set for a Tesla is $12,000 [teslamotors.com] I would say that they have some headway to work with. That figure is what they estimate the price will drop down to in several years, and for insurance purposes the batteries have a listed replacement cost of $30,000.
The real question is how long can these batteries last for like kind performance and life (number of recharge cycles etc)? Once you have that you can perform an apples to apples compari
Re:batteries are not rechargable (Score:5, Interesting)
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Have a rechargeable < 100 KM battery for short everyday commute to and from work, then the long range battery you could buy when planning a > 100 KM trip.
The challenge would be to make them cheap and easy to swap.
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A nice radioisotopic generator to trickle-charge you on your way is the obvious solution!
(As a bonus, what asshole would be dumb enough to cut you off if you have several kilograms of plutonium onboard?)
Re:batteries are not rechargable (Score:4, Informative)
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No moving parts, no maintenance
Let's see you couple that battery directly to a wheel and see how far that gets you moving before you wish you had moving parts between them. I am looking forward to electric cars being more common but blind optimism doesn't help, the fact is you still need an electric motor and batteries have too small a charge, too short a life and too much environmental impact.
You still have maintenance on the electric motor, you still have a motor and you still have toxic emissions albeit they are now suspended until
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The maintenance on an electric motor is a tiny tiny fraction of that on any internal combustion engine.
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The comparison was between using an electric motor that could use two different types of batteries one for short range and one for long range; and an electric motor and for short range with a combustion engine for long range.
So both have an electric motor and all the support work for using that and hence maintenance on that is irrelevant when comparing the two options.
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It could be that this one time use battery is to quell the complaints of people who say "But what if I want to road trip 500 miles into the middle of no-where!
Well, maybe, but now you're just substituting one kind of range anxiety for another. Now instead of worrying about getting stranded, people will be worried about having to replace an expensive aluminum-battery.
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Not for military applications...where silence and long range are paramount...or when the device detonates upon arriving at its destination. Or as a supplemental battery to provide emergency power.
Re:batteries are not rechargable (Score:4, Interesting)
That's ridiculous, given how energy-intensive it is to produce aluminum in the first place, and that if it was widely adopted you'd need a huge supply of ready-to-swap aluminum batteries. My suspicion: this isn't really a "battery", it's just recovering some of the substantial energy in the aluminum metal itself.
That's what all batteries do, electrochemically recover, at a rate more or less matched to the application, the chemical potential energy of what they are filled with. Some are also capable of being driven in reverse, to restore them to their original state. Others depend on electrochemistry that isn't so neatly reversible within the confines of a conveniently sized battery, and have to be broken down for recycling. Aluminum is the latter, unless you are willing to pop an entire aluminum smelter into your battery bay.
Aluminum makes the point particularly obvious because the most cost-effective refining process is very similar indeed to driving an aluminum-air battery in reverse, so the amount of electricity going in is blatantly visible(unlike metals for which non-electrochemical refining processes are preferred).
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Well if the metal is storing the energy, then that makes it an energy storage device doesn't it?
Or are AA alkalines not batteries in your view?
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Among other things, if you move the electrical generating and consumption parts to large-scale nuclear and recycle the aluminum elsewhere, 'pollution' by the car is relocated where it is lessened or easier to manage. Choose some other form of electricity generation if you want, most are probably cleaner than an IC engine.
There is an opportunity here, but I'm suspicious of the recycling thing.
Wake me up when we have a couple other ideas for using relatively plentiful raw materials, and we can justify openin
Re:batteries are not rechargable (Score:4, Informative)
Ever seen a beer can? Aluminum. Producing aluminum from bauxite is energy-intensive, recycling aluminum is not.
Except that the waste product of this battery is aluminium oxide, so you have to reduce it again. It's no different from bauxite in that respect.
Aluminum fuel (Score:2)
Yes, but unlike a beer can in this case the aluminum is probably being converted back to bauxite (or something similar) within the battery as it delivers power, so recycling it will require reinvesting all that energy again. Actually rather ingenious if the efficiencies work out well - aluminum is both energy dense and stable, and the recharging/refining process has already benefited from many decades of industrial scale optimization.
'Refill with water every 200 mi' (Score:2)
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Yeah, when you suddenly require infrastructure, you get problems. We have gas stations. Now we need battery stations? Charging stations are easy enough, parking garages can provide them and they're easy to install--but the electrical power infrastructure itself needs upgrades. Again, we already have gas stations, and those were slow enough to get rolled out (but they rolled out naturally as cars rolled out), so the problems of initial deployment weren't as severe as the problems of changing or, worse, f
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The existing gas stations can easily double as battery stations, too.
Charging stations are much harder because, as you say yourself, the electricity grid is not up to the extra loads (and probably the power plants neither - there is not that much extra generator capacity available).
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Are you saying the infrastructure to distribute WATER will need to be built? That water is not something that is commonly widely distributed already?
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No, he said you need an infrastructure to distribute batteries.
I would contribute that the required quantity of water for any distance is not specified in the article - kinda makes it hard to judge how practical this is. Are we talking coke can or jerry can per 100mi?
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Get a bigger water tank, and automatic refill system. Or maybe I'm thinking too simple now?
Re:'Refill with water every 200 mi' (Score:5, Funny)
Get a bigger water tank, and automatic refill system. Or maybe I'm thinking too simple now?
You're not thinking simple enough. Hint: The driver is sucking down a 64 ounce Big Gulp every two hours...
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Sounds promising (Score:3)
Re:Sounds promising (Score:4, Interesting)
The process of refining bauxite to get aluminum is extremely energy intensive. Other than having a pure oxide to put in, it almost is pointless to bother recycling the "battery".
This is one of the last things I want to see in widespread use, unless we have modern nuclear plants, fusion, or some other next gen energy source, just because turning aluminum oxide back to a usable metal uses so much electricity.
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Recharging any sort of battery is going to be energy-intensive in (approximate, efficiencies will vary by design) proportion to how energy-dense the depleted battery was. Batteries store, they don't create.
One would, of course, hope that the aluminum refining is done in areas with some fuel supply other than mountains of delightfully cheap high-sulfur coal; but no battery-based system is going to work except with massive input of electricity(what would be interesting would be to get some numbers on how the
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Of course building those batteries will need a lot of energy - after all, they're batteries, and should be storing a large amount of energy. That's the energy that was used for driving.
But the beauty of it is that it could easily be powered by renewables. A common problem of renewables is the unreliable short-term supply - cloud blocking the sun, wind suddenly increasing or decreasing, but over a longer time (weeks, months) the overall supply tends to be pretty predictable. Charging batteries - the traditio
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The process of refining bauxite to get aluminum is extremely energy intensive. Other than having a pure oxide to put in, it almost is pointless to bother recycling the "battery".
This is one of the last things I want to see in widespread use, unless we have modern nuclear plants, fusion, or some other next gen energy source, just because turning aluminum oxide back to a usable metal uses so much electricity.
Moving cars and people around is energy intensive. Any battery technology is lossy; it's all about storing the electrical energy in chemical form to make it transportable.
You are correct: this is about coal-powered cars until we have some better way to generate electricity.
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unless we have modern nuclear plants, fusion, or some other next gen energy source
Yet, we have those ready for commercialization and now these aluminum batteries. With only the existing nuclear waste from light water reactors and a build out of distributed Integral Fast Reactors, we could run all the vehicles on Earth for the next 90 years - as of today, with existing technology. Branson even wants to fund them.
What's stopping us from being off of fossil fuels for transportation? The same governments th
lol wut? (Score:2)
with stops required only every couple of hundred miles to refill the system with water.
Then the system has a range of a "couple of hundred miles" and not 1000. It has a *charge* for 1000 miles, but the car's range is only as good as your worst stat.
Kilomile? (Score:5, Informative)
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Agreed, it's like only going half way with a spray on tan.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix [wikipedia.org] - see section "Non metric units".
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This will fail (Score:2)
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We don't measure miles in kilos (Score:5, Funny)
bogus until they are actual use (Score:3)
I really, truly hope one of these claims becomes reality one day. I would like a 1000-mile electric car in my garage that costs the same as a petro car.
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very normal for new tech, almost all ideas don't pan out. to extend that something relevant to all the startup-wannabes here on slashdot, making a new software or service is easy, marketing it is extremely hard. so most fail.
Put it on a trailer (Score:3)
several points (Score:2)
2)Price wise, the cost to replace 55 pounds of aluminum is about equal to gas. Maybe a little lower if you get paid back some for the used aluminum. Not much, but at least a small gain economically. Pollution wise it is worth it.
3) Range of a gas car is normally around 300 to 400 miles. (http://solarchargeddriving.com/editors-blog/on-evs-a-phevs/706-whats-your-gasoline-cars-range.html) Range of a car us
Re: Unit of measure confusion (Score:3, Informative)
A kilo is not a unit, it is a prefix meaning 10^3. One kilomile = 1000 miles.
Re: Unit of measure confusion (Score:5, Insightful)
So you are also okay with a decipound, two kiloinches and three millifeet?
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I'm not the original AC, but my short answer is: Yes. Maybe it's related to me being a european, and brought up on the "metric" system. But I don't think I would hesitate for a nanoyear to mix any prefix with any unit.
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See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix [wikipedia.org]
Specifically, see the section entitled Non-Metric Units. It would appear it's uncommon but perfectly valid. Who woulda thunk it?
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Exercise your mental agility. You can do it, and without Python. Trust me, I dunnit before.
Re: Unit of measure confusion (Score:4, Insightful)
And you're not? Surely you use KB, MB, GB, and TB on a regular basis, and they're far greater affronts to uniformity and consistency of prefix usage than any of the examples you've cited, all of which are technically correct despite being non-traditional.
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Electronics manufacturers routinely use milli inch = 1/1000 of inch. I think kilo pound is also common to avoid inconsistent definitions of ton.
Not to be confused with the circular mil (cmil) [wisegeek.com] which is actually a unit of area, and is typically used to indicate the cross-sectional area of conductors in a cable.
Essentially it's the area of a circle whose diameter equals one thousandth of an inch.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled broadcast... :o)
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I dunno, "megatons" are a fairly popular unit of measure (both in "1 million tons mass/weight" and in "million tons of TNT equivalent" senses)
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I dunno, "megatons" are a fairly popular unit of measure (both in "1 million tons mass/weight" and in "million tons of TNT equivalent" senses)
1000kg is a ton(ne), and is metric (but not SI). Megaton means 1,000,000,000kg, or 1 gigagram, 1Gg.
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Dont forget the 2 kilo libraries of congres uom: 2 kloc.
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a fuel cell, not a battery.
No, it's a battery, or at least other designs on the same principle are counted as such. 'Primary Cells' that depend on non-reversible(in the context of the battery, reactions are generally reversible under some conditions) electrochemical reactions, including ones that incorporate air to reduce battery weight are true batteries, and quite common. Zinc-air(just distract an old person for a second and yoink their hearing aid, should be one inside) are the ones you see most commonly. There are other potential
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Nope. It is suppressed by "Big Physics". Their "recycle the aluminum" isn't what most people think of recycling. It is reprocessing and it takes huge amounts of electricity.
The electricity cost is one reason places like Iceland and Upper Volta have courted ALCOA and other big aluminum smelters. Cheap electricity costs.
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**woosh***
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Why was this modded down? If he had said the same thing about South Africa while Mandela was in prison, it would be pumped up to +5 immediately. Israel is an apartheid government, with a state religion! We should be boycotting them AND Saudi Arabia.. but such is the power of money...
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omg! They have the audacity to destroy the economy of a group of people whose land they happen to be illegally occupying. Zomg! They have the audacity to decide they like any piece of land being farmed by a Palestinian and illegally raze the land and put up new condos for their "settlers". Zomg^2! They can roll up to any Palestinian occupied farm, park their mobile home, claim harassment and soon have a garrison of Israeli stormtroopers protecting "their" newly settled land. Not to mention the bombing
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Clue time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan [wikipedia.org]
The South Africans claimed that blacks, coloured, Indians, etc., were not their citizens. They were in fact citizens of powerless, discontinuous territories that were basically controlled by South Africa. Since there was no work in these bantustans, the majority of their population commuted through South African checkpoints each day. They also claimed increasing amounts of territory for their own minority, ethnically defined population.
Also, Israel
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Muslims who hold Israeli citizenship have *exactly* the same rights as Jews...
And they frequently have more rights than they would if they were living in a predominantly-Muslim country. I've met a journalist who is Arab and an Israeli citizen, and he much prefers being able to criticize the decisions made by the Israeli government over living in any of the surrounding countries where doing so would get him executed.
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There was a war. About 20 percent of the "palestinians" chose to stay and fight with the Jews. They, and their children, are still living in Israel. Those who voluntarily left were not allowed to return.
.... and then the Government of Israel handed out the land of those who were not allowed to return to Jewish settlers.
That sounds like pretty neat description of ethnic cleansing to me.
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state religion? (Score:3)
His Israel boycott is a triple win (Score:2, Informative)
"You do realize that whenever one of you assholes boycotts some Israeli company, I make sure to buy 2 of whatever they're selling"
That won't work. Firstly he wanted to draw attention to this BDS Israel boycott, and he succeeded, and you helped him. Pro Israeli mod's used their mod points to drive it to -1, but you are at +2 and it flags the comments for others to read. I would never have read his comment if you weren't there flagging it.
Secondly, each time you buy two, you're wasting your money. It's always
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The problem is that Israel does not allow the Palestinians to make anything at all. They have a controlled border, they can't even import concrete to repair the buildings that Israel has blown up.
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No. There are not good reasons to restrict certain things, like concrete or food or medicine. Israel is committing ethnic cleansing and running a ghetto. They are in the wrong, period.
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Depends on the vehicle. the Tesla roadster carries a 53kWh battery and has a 240ish mile range, with the "best" being a 311 mile trip. That's pretty close to 1000 miles on 200kWh.
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If the battery were slung under the vehicle (as an another Israeli firm called Better Place proposes), then it could even be swapped out just by driving the car on to a ramp where a robotic arm extract
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Well, if we use just that battery, I'd agree, but I think any rationally designed electric car will use a combination of heavy duty batteries or fuel cells, supplemented by rechargeable lithium ion batteries, or more likely, high-capacity supercapacitors to handle sudden surges in load and allow for regenerative braking.