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I expect pit lane performance and safety will be a challenge but entertaining to watch; I wonder if they'll consider some kind of on-track battery swap.
Not so much on the car though, in the pits maybe, they'd still have to swap the battery.
Why?
Assuming a Tesla sized pack of 50kwh (not pushing the chemistry to the slow ends), to charge that in say, 5 mins whilst the car is lapping the circuit you'd need to supply 600kw for that 5 mins. That means fat wires:
At 240v that's 2,500A - Impossible
At 1,000v that's 600A - Hard
At 4,000v that's 150A - Chunky but manageable.
Turn that into a 10-second on-track recharge similar to the old refueling and it's mental!
At 240v that's 75,000A - Impossible
At 1,000v that's 18,000A - Still imposible
At 4,000v that's 4,500A - Nope
At 10,000v that's 1,800A - Nope
At 25,000v that's 720A - Nope
At 50,000v that's 360A - Stand well back
And this assumes that the battery chemistry and charging system can be configured to make this work, e.g. if you were to put all the Tesla cells in series you'd still only have a 25KV pack and the current passing through the cells; 720A - instant Magma
Super capacitor anyone?
Why?
Assuming a Tesla sized pack of 50kwh (not pushing the chemistry to the slow ends), to charge that in say, 5 mins whilst the car is lapping the circuit you'd need to supply 600kw for that 5 mins. That means fat wires:
At 240v that's 2,500A - Impossible
At 1,000v that's 600A - Hard
At 4,000v that's 150A - Chunky but manageable.
Turn that into a 10-second on-track recharge similar to the old refueling and it's mental!
At 240v that's 75,000A - Impossible
At 1,000v that's 18,000A - Still imposible
At 4,000v that's 4,500A - Nope
At 10,000v that's 1,800A - Nope
At 25,000v that's 720A - Nope
At 50,000v that's 360A - Stand well back
And this assumes that the battery chemistry and charging system can be configured to make this work, e.g. if you were to put all the Tesla cells in series you'd still only have a 25KV pack and the current passing through the cells; 720A - instant Magma
Super capacitor anyone?
If the race is under 200 miles, theoretically a super-sized pack could be built (similar to the Model S design, perhaps double- or triple-thick?) that could complete the race without recharge. We're talking heavy vehicle or battery swap. That's the only two possibilities without new battery technology.
This is the type of charge time that AV + AltairNano have shown and an ideal arena in which to push that technology I think.
We've talked about this several times before, but clearly battery swaps (I really want to see this done by the pit crew) and (moderate) fast charging of the spares. I'd really like to see this happen. Of course nay-sayers are concerned the EU with force this on all motor sport.
Yes, for F1 style racing battery swap is a requirement really. For a 24 hour endurance race super-fast charge could work.
I think there are a few very interesting options.
#1 Straight battery swaps in the pits. Have as many batteries as you need. Hopefully a 200 mile race would use 3-6 battery swap pit stops.
#2 Battery swaps in the pits with limited batteries. When you swap the battery, you take the tired one and charge it as fast as you can. If a 200 mile race is about 2 hours long and you swap 5 times then each battery runs on the track for 20 minutes, rotating through 3 batteries would let each one charge for 40 minutes before being put back in the car.
#1 Straight battery swaps in the pits. Have as many batteries as you need. Hopefully a 200 mile race would use 3-6 battery swap pit stops.
#2 Battery swaps in the pits with limited batteries. When you swap the battery, you take the tired one and charge it as fast as you can. If a 200 mile race is about 2 hours long and you swap 5 times then each battery runs on the track for 20 minutes, rotating through 3 batteries would let each one charge for 40 minutes before being put back in the car.
Well I made this reasonable (and redundant for this thread) comment as Doug from Silicon Valley, CA.
I think comments are moderated, so it hasn't shown up yet. But perhaps we can make and vote up reasonable comments and vote down the FUD. Clearly we wouldn't have a race with 8 hour battery charges. I think these kind of comments are just misguided, so perhaps we can educate here. They easily accept the concept of refueling petrol in the pit, but perhaps are unaware of the concept of fast battery swaps.
Report: FIA president Jean Todt interested in new electric F1 series Autoblog
So I'm cautiously optimistic about this, just as long as they do it right and don't set it up to fail.
So I'm cautiously optimistic about this, just as long as they do it right and don't set it up to fail.
Norbert
TSLA will win
Or, for car makers/EV-converters/prototypers who find it difficult to implement battery swapping (they already have enough things to worry about), it would be allowed to swap cars if the same driver continues. For cases where the driver needs to be exchanged, during a single pit stop either the car or the driver can swap, but not both in the same stop. This way, there is a guaranteed and fair continuity for timing and comparison. (Idea comes from the discussion in the TG thread.)
I think the challenges of battery chemistry and charger technology will match the challenges of power transfer. But F1 evolves quickly.
suxxer
ElektroVolt
There is a project for the Le Mans 24h Race. They want to have a quick-swap battery pack (floor-mounted). It's rumored that it's going to be a slide-in / slide-out swap, so they can change the batteries in under 5 mins. At Le Mans the pit stop times are not so important - the car just has to hald for 24h. And assuming that electric cars will have lower break-down rates, the chances of scoring are quite intact.
Not sure if it's this one:
http://www.green-gt.com/index.htm
http://www.evo.co.uk/news/evonews/235804/electric_le_mans_racing_car.html
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