Enter the performance age in electric cars!

[Joe 1320]

I've been following battery technology closely, the new lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries rock. Now this technology is making it's way into the auto industry. One of the battery packs for my F-22 Raptor is about the size of 8 AA batteries and will handle a 60 amp continuous discharge.

Now imagine 6,831 lithium-ion battery cells about the size of a AA battery.

There is a new sports car on the market folks! A little roadster that scoots to 60 in 4 seconds, tops out at over 130 mph and has a cruising range of 250 miles. All in 100% electric power. For most situations, especially the daily driver when you aren't driving long distances in one shot, this is the ideal car. No more stopping at gas stations, just plug her in and recharge. You would still have to have a second vehicle for driving extended distances as a 3 hr. recharge just isn't quite as fast as a regular fill up on fuel. I gotta get me one. Then...... let the mods begin.

http://autos.msn.com/as/minishow/art...2&s=Pebble2006

[Jeff_in_Atl]

Finally a realistic electric car. Not some weird looking non practical shoe box.

[Dave Vince]

Pretty neat. The price needs to come down for a car of this type to become more popular. What happens when the batteries start to deplete, or age. I am sure as with other type rechargeable batteries the performance suffers. What happens when the batteries are no longer useable the price to replace must be huge, probably 1/3-1/2 the cost of the car.

[Roger in Kensington]

Interesting. Do you know how many kilowatt-hours it takes for a full recharge?

[Black97]

Nice toy. Here are some more pics and info. http://www.teslamotors.com

You would have to make a CD with some engine reving noises if you wanted to race somebody at the light.

[Joe 1320]

Nice toy. Here are some more pics and info. http://www.teslamotors.com

You would have to make a CD with some engine reving noises if you wanted to race somebody at the light.

Nah.... that's the beauty of the whole thing. Imagine sitting there, dead silent and immediatly launch to warp speed with just a whisper from the powertrain, all you hear is all four tires frantically grabbing at the pavement. The other guy doesn't know what hit him. Very stealthy. It won't attract as much attention every time you hit the throttle.

[Dave Vince]

Batteries

The day may come when batteries can be recharged in a few minutes. We used to race radio controlled cars and the Ni-Cad batteries could be recharged in about 10 minutes. (Factory suggestion was 2 hours.) This was a high current charge that made the batteries warm but they survived. We experimented with charging 2 - 8.4 volt packs in series for drag racing purposes and it worked at about the same speed.

[Crazy Canuk]

NEC is doing alot of research in batteries, in college a couple years back in my robotics class we talked about the largest limit on moble tech and it's batteries, both weight and charge life are big issues that need to realy be addressed b4 moble tech (and electronic cars) can realy take off into some radical directions.

heres a link so some info on the NEC quick charge battery

http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1081297848.html

they are makeing thin ones and more to. The president of the company where I work bought a german electrical car call the TWIKE it looks like one of those peddle bikes that you sit into low to the gound and it can move quite quick when it needs to, not flashy like that car though

[Joe 1320]

The day may come when batteries can be recharged in a few minutes. We used to race radio controlled cars and the Ni-Cad batteries could be recharged in about 10 minutes. (Factory suggestion was 2 hours.) This was a high current charge that made the batteries warm but they survived. We experimented with charging 2 - 8.4 volt packs in series for drag racing purposes and it worked at about the same speed.

I've done that with airplane batteries too, It does shorten their lifespan.

[Roger in Kensington]

Joe, curiousity is just overwhelming me: Do you know how many watts (or kilowatts) the batteries of this electric car hold at full charge? Alternately, do you know how many amps it draws when charging at a standard house current of 120 volts (or at 220 volts) and how long it takes to charge at those voltages (assuming the batteries are completely discharged)?

[Dave Vince]

Yes we did kill alot of batteries with the quick charges. If you did it for a half hour they did last longer. 15 - 20 years ago when my sons were younger we were racing RC cars and the batteries had to be pretty fresh to be competitive at the upper levels. We raced, local, regional and national.
I understand that they have gotten these little 1/10th scale electric cars up over 100 mph on high speed ovals. I don't know how the motors stay together at those speeds. At the 1/10 scale drags some of the cars were going 1.7 -1.8 seconds for 132'. That would beat most drag cars for that distance.
Still a major leap in battery tech is needed to make the battery car useful. I think the day will come when this will happen. The recharge is the big problem. If you could get 300 miles on a charge and recharge in 10 minutes there would be a move to battery powered cars.

[Joe 1320]

Still a major leap in battery tech is needed to make the battery car useful. I think the day will come when this will happen. The recharge is the big problem. If you could get 300 miles on a charge and recharge in 10 minutes there would be a move to battery powered cars.

Battery technology has grown in leaps and bounds. Lithium polymer batteries are charged and discharged differently than regular batteries. They require a low voltage cutoff to prevent toasting the battery. Each lithium cell has an advertised voltage of 3.7 volts. Once charged their output is roughly 4.2 volts. The batteries will discharge like a regular battery but a voltage cutoff of roughly 3 volts shuts off the high drain accessories to prevent battery damage. Sounds odd, but there is more useable power over the long haul this way. The only real downside is that there is a chance of thermal runaway, a lithium battery can catch fire and burn quite violently if damaged, improperly charged or discharged at a higher rate than it's designed for.

I agree, the only downside to electric power is the length of time required for a recharge. Even with that, as long as you use the car as an around town daily driver a nightly recharge is all that is required. Just don't try to take it on a cross country excursion. One possible solution is a small fuel driven generator that starts up every time the car is stopped. Regenerative braking, solar panels and other technologies at some point are going to converge and we'll be in business.

[Joe 1320]

Joe, curiousity is just overwhelming me: Do you know how many watts (or kilowatts) the batteries of this electric car hold at full charge? Alternately, do you know how many amps it draws when charging at a standard house current of 120 volts (or at 220 volts) and how long it takes to charge at those voltages (assuming the batteries are completely discharged)?

No, I don't have that data but if you read the above post, you'll see that these batteries never get fully discharged... doing so will damage them.

[Kevin - Blown 95 TA]

Joe, curiousity is just overwhelming me: Do you know how many watts (or kilowatts) the batteries of this electric car hold at full charge? Alternately, do you know how many amps it draws when charging at a standard house current of 120 volts (or at 220 volts) and how long it takes to charge at those voltages (assuming the batteries are completely discharged)?

I'm not sure if this is what Roger is gettin at, but a "quick" charge of a large powerful battery bank is going to require a capable charging system with some nicely sized conductors, even if high voltage (56V or 100V or whatever). The slower the charge, the less the current, less heat, and the smaller the conductors. If you've ever played around with charging a large cap, you know it's basically like a vacuum for electrons aand if it was large enough and there were enough of them going at the same time, it would be quite a current draw on the neighborhood. Even if the batteries were slower charging, if every household was doing it, it would keep the power companies busy, although they would typically be charging in off-peak times.

Whenever you think of energy & power, it's easier to quantify it by remembering it has to come from somewhere. Until we get past conventional energy sources and get fuel cells to work, we are stuck with what we already have in one form or the other. So right now, if we all wanted electric cars, it would mean more coal for the turbines, or firing up more reactors.

One of the guys at work is building an electric car out of an old Sunbeam Tiger and when he's done with it I'll post some pics & stats on it. We'll also do some 0-30 runs or something, cause it's going to be fast in the short accellerations. He could make it ungodly fast depending on how he wires it, but it will be a compromise to get mileage and make it more useful. The car won't be operationsl until sometime next year, but it runs now and all the batteries are mounted. The exterior and interior need quite a bit of work. He already has made an electric scooter that runs off a car battery, and he can go to work and back on that. The oddest thing about the electric scooter is how quiet it is.

[Joe 1320]

I'm not sure if this is what Roger is gettin at, but a "quick" charge of a large powerful battery bank is going to require a capable charging system with some nicely sized conductors, even if high voltage (56V or 100V or whatever). The slower the charge, the less the current, less heat, and the smaller the conductors. If you've ever played around with charging a large cap, you know it's basically like a vacuum for electrons aand if it was large enough and there were enough of them going at the same time, it would be quite a current draw on the neighborhood. Even if the batteries were slower charging, if every household was doing it, it would keep the power companies busy, although they would typically be charging in off-peak times.

Whenever you think of energy & power, it's easier to quantify it by remembering it has to come from somewhere. Until we get past conventional energy sources and get fuel cells to work, we are stuck with what we already have in one form or the other. So right now, if we all wanted electric cars, it would mean more coal for the turbines, or firing up more reactors.

One of the guys at work is building an electric car out of an old Sunbeam Tiger and when he's done with it I'll post some pics & stats on it. We'll also do some 0-30 runs or something, cause it's going to be fast in the short accellerations. He could make it ungodly fast depending on how he wires it, but it will be a compromise to get mileage and make it more useful. The car won't be operationsl until sometime next year, but it runs now and all the batteries are mounted. The exterior and interior need quite a bit of work. He already has made an electric scooter that runs off a car battery, and he can go to work and back on that. The oddest thing about the electric scooter is how quiet it is.

You are right on the money! I suppose one could have an slow charge energy cell that slow charges all day long until full capacity. Then when you get home, plug it in and the enrgy cell charges your batteries at a faster rate than a simple plug in. Once the car's batteries are charged, the unit goes back into the "collection" mode and slowly recharges for the the next day's recharge. Properly done, there wouldn't be anywhere near the short term load on the power grid. And as a side note, electric motors can have insane torque, the 0-60 sprint should be able to eat most anything on the road short of a sport bike. That being said, imagine that kind of torque on a bike. Doubtful you could even hang on.

Now on to another tangent. Until the consumer demands to be free from the gas pumps, the government and those that run the oil industry will blame the consumer for our dependance on oil. Without the general public buying gas at at the pumps, watch who the government blames next. Of course... the general public again, only this time it would be our thirst for electricity. When those in power have stock in fuel consumption, we'll never be rid of our dependancy on petrolium based fuel.