Electric cars: Little juice coupes

Advances in battery tech and environmental concerns are driving renewed interest in battery-powered and plug-in vehicles.
Photos: Automakers race toward electric

The story "Electric cars: Little juice coupes" published March 5, 2007 at 9:19 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

[nebby74]

No more gas cars for me

Wow. I can't wait until these electric vehicles are out in the
market. GM et al, are dragging their feet. I personally won't ever
buy a new car that uses gas--ever again.

Why support such a dirty industry? I think there was a recent
article here on how emissions are even worse than we thought. It
seems like every day there is more news of accelerating climate
change. And all the while... zero emission vehicles have been
possible. Sorry Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota: you all stink.

I've taken the ZeroEmissionPledge.com.

[itworker--2008]

RE: No more gas cars for me

How will you charge these electric cars?

The cars maybe zero emissions, but not the source of the place you charge them with.

You want zero emissions, you'll have to wait for hydrogen fuel cells, and then theres still a cost with those in production...

[dargon19888]

Daffy...

Ok, so let me get this straight.

You want an electric car, but you don't want nuclear power plants, and to generate the electricity needed to power these cars you'll need to burn coal.

Solar and Wind?
They may help, but thats just a drop in the bucket.

Hydrogen? And how do you get Hydrogen? ;-)

Kind of hypocritical.

And then there's the problem of the batteries.
Kind of toxic.
What happens if there's a wreck? Toxic clean up spill?

Don't get me wrong.
I want electric cars.
What I don't want is having a tree hugging populace who doesn't want to face the reality that until fusion is ready, nuclear is going to be a necessity.

[nebby74]

Duck.

Yes of course there are challenges. The grid couldn't support it
(if every car was electric). But that's why the grid needs to be
changed. Power sources can be developed on smaller, localized
levels. It's all about priorites.

The US spends over a billion dollars per week in Iraq. Imagine
how those funds could used instead to rapidly develop a 'new
energy' industry... like (cold) fusion, zero point, and next gen
solar. (Check out <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.newenergymovement.org/" target="_newWindow">http://www.newenergymovement.org/</a>)

The only thing holding us back is our collective will.

[Plug In America]

Daffy

Your comment that solar and wind are but a drop in the bucket is not supported by the facts. A small 2 kW PV system will generate enough power for the average American to drive all year long 12,000 miles). Wind is the fastest growing form of renewable power in the world. It is easy to add renewable power to the grid mix as the EVs are produced. There will be now overnight substitution of internal combustion by electric powered vehicles.

[sparkout]

power sources

you might think obout droping a geo-thermo well in oyur back yard.

first, drop a water well pipe into the ground deep enough to get "hot" water.

second, run this water to a steam engine cyclinder.

third, connect this to a dynamo/generator.

you've got green power. :)

[Hoser McMoose]

Charge time?

One thing that I haven't seen much discussion about is charging time. If we take, as an example, the Tesla Roadster, it seems that it will take a LONG time to charge the car.

The batteries in that care contain 56kWh worth of electricity total. Now Tesla claims that you can get a full charge in "about 3.5 hours". What they don't mention is the kind of juice you need for that:

56 kWh / 3.5 hours = 16kW ~= 140 amps at 115V or 70 amps at 230V.

Now I don't know about the rest of you, but I certainly don't have a 70 amp/230V circuit running to my garage! That's a LOT of juice, even those 4-prong electrical stove jacks are typically on only a 50 amp, 230V circuit!

So even with all that juice we're still talking about a charging time in hours, not minutes. That's all fine and dandy if you're just plugging the thing in overnight while you sleep, but it means that this car is just not going to be an option for any sort of road trips. Even if you cut the engine size in half (reasonable assumption since the Tesla Roadster comes with a ~250hp engine) and assume that there are fill-up stations around with the proper 230V/70amp plugs for you to use, we're still talking almost 2 hours to charge your car, hardly my idea of a good time while on the road!

If you ask me, GM's Volt is a MUCH more practical concept. I only wish they didn't jerk around with ethanol (completely pointless as a fuel when your feed crop is corn) and used a much more efficient diesel (maybe even biodiesel) engine instead. Small and MUCH more affordable batteries for short trips, high-efficiency ICE to charge batteries on longer trips, fills up in a matter of minutes.

[mr3vil]

good point.

Think of how much that'll add to your electric bill as well. And don't forget that the charger will not be 100% efficient so expect an even higher power draw. And 3.5 hours is acceptable when you plug the car in every night before bed, but you're right about it being useless for road trips. My Diesel pickup's 29 gallon tank doesn't take 5 minutes to fill up when bone dry.

As for Ethanol being pointless? You do realize that most of the corn harvest in this country goes to waste in Commodity Credit storage. And most of that is destined to be processed for Livestock feed. One of the by-products of Ethanol is a high-protein and fat solid that is a very useful ingredient for Livestock feed. There is also research going into processing these solids again into Bio-Diesel as the production of Ethanol leaves the lipids in the corn behind. There's also still ongoing research in perfecting cellulosic ethanol obtained from switchgrass.

[jlfelder]

Charging Time

New Li-ion batteries from A123 and AltairNano are addressing the charging time. The long recharge times of current Li-ion batteries are because of the relatively large size of the negative electrode grains which makes for long diffusion times as the Lithium ions move into the storage cells in the electrode. Push too hard and the Lithium plates out as metal on the surface of the grains and kills the battery.

The new batteries are using nano scale grains which reduce the diffusion paths by a couple orders of magnitude. The result is that they can soak up charge much faster. AltairNano reports that they were able to take a test cell (in all respects other than the negative electode a normal 3.6V Lithium-ion cell) from discharged to over 80% charge in just over a minute! This is not something that you would want to do normally, but it shows that recharge times are becoming a non-issue.

The recharge times for a 36 KWh battery pack from AltairNano for an electric truck (Phoenix Technologies) are being given as 10 minutes with an external charger. Now that will require currents and voltages far greater than anything available at home. My calculations for 36000 Wh of energy in 10 minutes at 440 V is 36000 * 60/10 / 440 = 490 amps. Doubling the voltage to 880 halves the amps, but neither combination is is the stuff of extension cords and wall sockets.

Still it should be possible with lots of safety interlocks and isolated switches to do a recharging station much like a gas station where somebody could recharge an EV with one of these rapid recharge batteries in a time frame comparable to fueling a ICE driven car.

And with the rapid dischage rates comes equally rapid discharge rates. The result is much more power on tap and much more power at low and high temperatures.

In addition to the rapid recharge rates of these new batteries, the electrode material is switched to Lithium Titanium Oxide for the AltairNano battery. I don't remember what it is for the A123 battery. This new matarial doesn't distort when absorbing a Lithium ion and so doesn't have the mechanical cycling that limits current Li-ion batteries to about 500 or so full cycles. AltairNano says that they have developement batteries with over 10000 cycles. If you did a full cycle each day, this would yield over 25 year life.

And the new material isn't reactive to the electrolyte like the graphite in current Li-ion batteries and as such can not suffer a thermal run-away like all those Sony lap-top batteries did.

These changes I think make EVs a whole new ballgame. You can do overnight recharging for around town stuff for 80%-90% of the miles driven and then stop in at rapid recharge stations when doing cross-country drives or if you get caught out while running errands with a low battery. All electrical all the time. No need for on-board ICE back-up at all.

[sparkout]

fast charge systems

Has anyone ever thought of about the 3,000 amp fast charger/boosters on the back of tow trucks. My step father could recharge your batteries in minutes with one of those things. now all you need to do is hook it up to a green power source, and there ya go my friend.

[murali.malladi]

Such cars are already running on Indian Roads.

Innovations and Designs of Electric Cars are not just limited to the Developed Nations or big names like GM ot Honda... Companies and Investors need to look deeper into the Developing nations like India, and you will be surprised to find that Electric cars that can transport 2 Adults and 2 Children are already on roads for over 4 years now.

One such car is the home grown Reva, which can go at over 40 Miles an hour, and similar distance on a single charge. One would find many of these cars running on the streets of India's Silicon Valley.

If the bigger players look at investing such small palyers, they can actually speed up the technology development. Because, innovations are not limited to the advanced labs of the bigger players.. they also happen in the smaller garages of nations like India... we must not forget that the major Software companies like Apple, Infosys etc., were started in similar way.. why should it be any different in the Automobile industry?

[murali.malladi]

And they cost only about $8000 US

And why are they so expensive?
The Electric car Reva, running on Indian Roads cost as low as $8000 US. So the $45000 US tag does not make it any cheap for people to look for alternate fuel vehicles. Look at the Indian Automobile Industry and learn to make Cheaper cars...