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tonybelding
Active Member
stockey said:
The rumors about the EEStor product sound so amazing, if it lives up to half of them it could revolutionize everything. On the other hand, the more amazing it sounds, the more skeptical I have to feel about it. I'll really believe it when I see it.
Until then, Li-ion batteries are a proven, off-the-shelf technology that can be used to make a great car.
Given who founded the company (EEstor), and one of it's investors ( Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) putting $3 million into the company, I'd say it's not just another hoax.
http://tyler.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/1/19/1715549.html
What worries me is supposedly they have a worldwide exclusive licensing deal with an electric car company from Canada, Feel Good Cars, for cars under 100hp and 1200kg without battery weight). Their ZENN electric car is kind of ugly, "punishment car" comes to mind. I can't believe they couldn't find some decent designers to make it look more appealing. It looks like a slightly modernized version of the Russian car Lada....
But I suppose a larger size family car would need more than 100hp so if this tech proves viable hopefully they won't make any more exclusive worldwide deals, with one of the big automakers :
http://tyler.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/1/19/1715549.html
What worries me is supposedly they have a worldwide exclusive licensing deal with an electric car company from Canada, Feel Good Cars, for cars under 100hp and 1200kg without battery weight). Their ZENN electric car is kind of ugly, "punishment car" comes to mind. I can't believe they couldn't find some decent designers to make it look more appealing. It looks like a slightly modernized version of the Russian car Lada....
But I suppose a larger size family car would need more than 100hp so if this tech proves viable hopefully they won't make any more exclusive worldwide deals, with one of the big automakers :
"100hp and 1200kg without battery weight".
That actualy does not prevent building a family sport sedan powered by supecaps. How much does BMW series 3 weigh? About 1500kg. 1200kg for whole car is not that much. Tesla's sedan using supercaps could actualy ended up weighting less then 1500kg. And 100HP limit is no limit either. To quote tesla: "More powerfull motor is more eficient".
I expect future electric cars to have more power than modern cars but reach lower top-speeds (except special racing models of course). ICEs develop top torque somewhere toward top rpm, at lower rpm they are quite powerless so it is required to use engines with more top power, so they are somewhat usable also at lower rpm. Eletric motors develop top torque at 0 rpm, so fitting ultra powerfull motors for everyday driving is not needed.
But then comes efficiency. More powerfull motor will give you a better range. So, electric cars will end up having quite powerful motors, have very good acceleration, but will generaly not reach that skyhigh over triple-highway-limit speeds. Which is not a bad thing.
That actualy does not prevent building a family sport sedan powered by supecaps. How much does BMW series 3 weigh? About 1500kg. 1200kg for whole car is not that much. Tesla's sedan using supercaps could actualy ended up weighting less then 1500kg. And 100HP limit is no limit either. To quote tesla: "More powerfull motor is more eficient".
I expect future electric cars to have more power than modern cars but reach lower top-speeds (except special racing models of course). ICEs develop top torque somewhere toward top rpm, at lower rpm they are quite powerless so it is required to use engines with more top power, so they are somewhat usable also at lower rpm. Eletric motors develop top torque at 0 rpm, so fitting ultra powerfull motors for everyday driving is not needed.
But then comes efficiency. More powerfull motor will give you a better range. So, electric cars will end up having quite powerful motors, have very good acceleration, but will generaly not reach that skyhigh over triple-highway-limit speeds. Which is not a bad thing.
Forgot Europositron, that is supposed to hit the market in 2007-2008, for comparison the EV 1 uses 736kg batteries giving max. range 145 km without recharge. A battery of 60 kg made with Europositron technology allows EV 1 max. range 870 km without recharge.
More info here http://www.europositron.com
More info here http://www.europositron.com
That is Alluminium batery, but they do not even have a prototype yet, only papers and words.
And then they promise marketable products in 2007. No way, maybe in 2010.
And then they promise marketable products in 2007. No way, maybe in 2010.
stockey said:
This battery technology does appear to be a significant advancement over what Tesla is currently using, I guess we'll see how the results of their prototyping go. I did note that there is an expectation that there will be a recharge limit of 3000 cycles. This should allow the batteries to last quite a bit longer as well, but nowhere near as long as the supercaps I've also been reading about. Maxwell technology appears to already have the supercaps available, but perhaps not in the energy density of the theoretical EEstor version.
I could see gas stations, in the future, adapting by adding electrical connections for electric cars. The cost however is a lot more than most people suspect. First of all, to charge a battery in the five minute time frame some have allocated would take a very large electrical wire. I calculated 2500A for 5 minutes to completely recharge 50kWh of batteries. The largest wire, rated 600V and below, in the NEC only goes up to about 700-800A. You also need to consider single phase to ground faults. If there is a fault on the system do you have a circuit breaker or other protection device to prevent the surge from destoying your battery pack or producing a dangerous arcing fault. A switchboard would need to be installed to have the appropriate protection gear inside to prevent dangers from a fault.
One possibility is to up the voltage to a 4160V feed. This would greatly reduce your wire size, however, it will cause many other problems. First being that the Tesla Roadster currently has a transformer/AC-DC converter to get the voltage from 120/240VAC to the operating voltage of the battery pack. If the supply voltage was raised to 4160VAC you would need a much larger transformer adding weight and taking up valuable space. This also creates a hazard for normal users. Dealing with high voltage equipment is much more dangerous than dealing with low voltage equipment.
Currently no electric vehicle is setup to support a quick charge infrastructure, even if the Toshiba batteries were installed. The only way I can see quick charge working is from parallel feeds. This would require future electric cars to need multiple connections, 10 or so should do the trick. Each connection would charge a portion of the battery pack and eliminate the complications with trying to charge the whole pack from one source. You would still need a panelboard/switchboard to protect each connection but 10 small circuit breakers probably would be comparable in cost to one very large circuit breaker. That's most of my thoughts on the subject.
One possibility is to up the voltage to a 4160V feed. This would greatly reduce your wire size, however, it will cause many other problems. First being that the Tesla Roadster currently has a transformer/AC-DC converter to get the voltage from 120/240VAC to the operating voltage of the battery pack. If the supply voltage was raised to 4160VAC you would need a much larger transformer adding weight and taking up valuable space. This also creates a hazard for normal users. Dealing with high voltage equipment is much more dangerous than dealing with low voltage equipment.
Currently no electric vehicle is setup to support a quick charge infrastructure, even if the Toshiba batteries were installed. The only way I can see quick charge working is from parallel feeds. This would require future electric cars to need multiple connections, 10 or so should do the trick. Each connection would charge a portion of the battery pack and eliminate the complications with trying to charge the whole pack from one source. You would still need a panelboard/switchboard to protect each connection but 10 small circuit breakers probably would be comparable in cost to one very large circuit breaker. That's most of my thoughts on the subject.
I think Feel Good will have a new model to put the EESTOR batteries in for 2008 sale that looks better. I'd hope so in any case, they'd be foolish to throw away the opportunity.
Quick charging is going to take some engineering, but it's not a huge road block. The military standards in place would already go a long way toward safe and fast recharging.
Quick charging is going to take some engineering, but it's not a huge road block. The military standards in place would already go a long way toward safe and fast recharging.
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