Panasonic's Oxyride vehicle breaks 65mph on AA batteries

Sure, watching a wee remote controlled, all electric vehicle hit nearly 200 miles-per-hour is quite impressive, but moving a vehicle large enough to stuff a moderately sized human into with just AA cells is, well, world record worthy. Reportedly, the newly revamped Oxyride managed to maintain an average speed of just over 65mph and hit a top speed of 75.8mph, all while being powered by 192 AA batteries. Unsurprisingly, the promotional stunt rocketed Panasonic into the Guinness Book of World Records for speed attained with a vehicle solely driven by dry-cell AA batteries, but we still wouldn't look at purchasing 192 batteries (each way) as an efficient method of powering your commuter car.

[Via AkihabaraNews]

[MikeG @ Aug 6th 2007 2:33PM]

"large enough to stuff a moderately sized human into"
You realise that guy is asian right?

[Bob7k @ Aug 6th 2007 2:42PM]

i dont think there is enough remotes in the house to harvest that many AA batteries...

[rip @ Aug 6th 2007 3:16PM]

Which means what? That he isn't a fatass like 60% of Americans are?

[MikeG @ Aug 7th 2007 8:37PM]

That asians, especially chinese people are very small.

[gshb @ Aug 6th 2007 2:43PM]

ah the joys of costco's family size pack AA batteries

[steve @ Aug 6th 2007 2:45PM]

"we still wouldn't look at purchasing 192 batteries (each way) as an efficient method of powering your commuter car."

What about some rechargeable AA's? you can get a 4 pack for around 10 bucks, and since it would take 48 of those 4 packs, you're only spending 480 bucks. That sounds pretty reasonable to me. And I think those things are good for some 3000 charges, so considering if you have to charge each way, and you only make one drive per day, you're looking at about 4 years worth of use.

That's also going to give you 495 Amp hours to burn as well per charge.

[Chuckles McGee @ Aug 6th 2007 5:21PM]

Rechargeable or not, there are simply logistically more appealing, yet still readily available sources for powering ones car than 192 AA batteries, such as lithium polymer batteries, or if we prefer to stick to our off-the-shelf alkaline-fetish, a few dozen D batteries.

[tekdroid @ Aug 6th 2007 11:03PM]

most Ni-MH (and Li-Ion) rechargeables have a useful life of around 500 charges. Some lower-mAH rechargeables have a claimed life of "up to" 1,000 charge cycles. 3,000 I've never seen.

[Camperton @ Aug 6th 2007 2:49PM]

Oxyride?

[mike @ Aug 6th 2007 4:47PM]

Yes... It clears pimples while riding.

[eqsf @ Aug 6th 2007 2:49PM]

this actually isn't all that impressive. of course you can get as much power as you want by shoving more batteries in there.

let's say a rechargeable Ni-MH AA battery can source upto 4 amps or so without overheating *too* much (Ni-MH can source much higher currents at a time than an alkaline AA), and is 1.5V, so 8 of them in series can source 2 amps at 12V. now put 24 of these strings of 8 in parallels and you have 96 amps at 12V, which i don't doubt could be used to propel a tiny thing at 200 mph.

[Zeus the God @ Aug 6th 2007 3:08PM]

That tiny thing was using sub-C Nickel Metal Hydride cells. Not AAs.

[Spanky @ Aug 6th 2007 3:14PM]

rechargeable batteries are not 1.5v but 1.2v

[morcheeba @ Aug 6th 2007 5:53PM]

Yep, NiMH batteries can provide a lot more peak power than typical dry cells (which is good for this application), but typically not not as much total energy.

Here's the best oxyride datasheet I could find: http://industrial.panasonic.com/www-data/pdf/AAC4000/AAC4000CE3.pdf
They only show performance at a max of 1A, but from the charts it looks like the internal impedance is 0.2 ohms. This would (ideally) lead to a peak power of 8.5 Amps at 0.85v, or 7.2 Watts per cell. Multiply by 192 cells, and that's 1387 watts -- a typical hair dryer, or 1.8 hp. At that peak power, the batteries will be dissipating the same amount of hairdryer-like heat & that might degrade performance, so this is an optimistic estimate. The datasheet says the batteries will produce 1.35W for an hour (260W total, or 0.35hp), but what's the fun in running for a whole hour?

[Alphi @ Aug 7th 2007 11:33PM]

your talking pure mathematical theory..

in actual fact.. a 2600mah battery will only deliver 2600mah when the current draw is 1 amp.. if you increase that to 4 amps you get far less than 2600mah per battery.

another thing to consider is the fact that when put in Serial configuration Nimh batteries can be forced into reverse polarity if they drain past a certain point while other batteries still have some juice left. so you need to make sure that all batteries have the exact same capacity and are charged at the exact same rate (which is hard to do)

otherwise if you have a large bunch of serially connected and parallel connected AA batteries.. and then you push the vehicle to its absolute limits.. then your likely to kill some of the batteries causing the performance of the ARRAY as a whole to be reduced.

so although it is possible to make anything run of AA batteries (provided you have enough of them) in many cases it is far from practical to do so..

the only real benefit is the cost of AA batteries compared to other sizes like D, and F.

for the price of one D cell Nimh Battery for example you can buy 4 AA batteries which when combined theoretically store more energy.

so really if your thinking of experimenting with battery tech then the AA size is your cheapest option because its the most common.

[Mile @ Aug 6th 2007 2:54PM]

They should have just used 30 D Cells. D's are more powerful, right? Or should I have said 9volts? Whatever, I know not batteries.

[Bob7k @ Aug 6th 2007 5:59PM]

i know enough not to throw them in fires or microwaves, but you got to admit, it looked pretty cool when it exploded

[Zeus the God @ Aug 6th 2007 3:09PM]

Yeah, just yank the Ds out of your "flashlight."

[Preston @ Aug 6th 2007 3:17PM]

Gives new meaning to the song "Throw Some D's".

[Alexander @ Aug 6th 2007 3:56PM]

if your 'flashlight' needs D's then you are sick.

[RedBull Runner @ Aug 6th 2007 10:55PM]

Really? I've got a 4 D cell Maglite sitting in my truck for 2 purposes... Lighting the general area up so i can see, and personal protection. 4 D batteries in an aluminum case... pretty damn heavy. It could seriously put someone out for a while if you hit em right.

[tks @ Aug 6th 2007 3:23PM]

i'd hope the car would do something remarkable with just under 300 volts worth of power...

pathetic.

why can't they design something worth writing home about?

[kyle allen @ Aug 7th 2007 3:06AM]

your right, im sure you have made something way cooler than a full sized car that runs on AAs

[doctord @ Aug 6th 2007 4:16PM]

Hey, Zeus -- get real. Oxyride is a dry-cell technology that is somewhat different from NiMH -- has a higher volatage for one. And the rest of you, wake up and smell the marketing armpit. The company sells dry cell batteries, it's new flagship battery uses what they call oxyride technology, so they aren't really interested in what's the best way to power this thing, they're intersted in the buzz they can get for their batteries so sales will go up.

[strider_mt2k @ Aug 6th 2007 4:48PM]

Should be sponsored by Radio Shack.

[Sean @ Aug 6th 2007 10:24PM]

yeah but can it boot linux?

[Paul @ Aug 6th 2007 11:53PM]

Yes but can it play DOOM?

[Alphi @ Aug 7th 2007 11:35PM]

I made an Ebike battery pack using 300 NIMH AA Cell batteries.
so the idea is quite feasible

But let me tell you.. at that speed the vehicle wouldn't go very far.

I could get my bike to ride for 4 - 5 KMs on a flat surface with 300 batteries.
with a top speed of about 30km/H.

and a vastly shorter distance if I increased the speed.

this is entirely a marketing stunt to sell batteries.


although the vehicle does look cool.. its performance would suffer dramatically if if you lived in a hilly area and would probably only have enough power to get you down to the local shops and back.




Also notice that

[Me!!! @ Aug 10th 2007 2:16PM]

i dont speak miles/h!!!

i guess you mean 120km/h!!!

[Me!!! @ Aug 10th 2007 2:23PM]

i guessed wrong you ppl!!! i cant think mph that's so old!!!
65mph is 104.60736kilometres per hour.