MIT's electric vehicle prototype may be a long way off from being completed, but if we let that stop us from discussing
EVs, we might
never talk about them. The headline ambition of the elEVen project is a full recharge within 10 minutes, which would eliminate somewhere between
four and
ten hours of waiting. Speedwise, the Electric Vehicle Team is aiming for a 100 mph top speed from a 250-horsepower / 187 kilowatt AC induction motor, and a
not unheard of 200-mile cruising range. To achieve their rapid juicing aim, the students will strap 7,905 lithium iron-phosphate cell batteries from
A123Systems to a gutted 2010 Mercury Milan Hybrid body. The batteries' low internal resistance is what makes things possible, but further hurdles, such as finding a sufficiently powerful energy source, would have to be overcome before any sort of widespread use may occur. Video after the break.
[Via
PC World]
posted July 23rd 2009 7:43AM
Please find a solution soon, I was disappointed after watching Top Gear's Tesla review.
"Although Tesla say it will do 200 miles we worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles," continued Clarkson's voiceover.
To fully recharge the batteries on this from a normal 13 amp socket like this takes 16 hours
Didnt anyone watch top gear with the Honda thing? that car was amazing! Why are they building those? these batterie cars are already outdated! cant remeber the name but its driven on by like hydrogen. May sound dangerous but hey, so is gas. DUH!
might wanna try google Honda Hydrogen!
electric cars already make sense. people are just soo unwilling to change.
i drove 145 miles last week, that means i would only have to do 10 hours of recharging. fine with me!
plus no gear changes! no oil changes! or air filters or anything like that!
"electric cars already make sense for some people"
There, fixed that for you
You do know that they faked that experiment right? They didn't expect it to do any better than 55 miles on a charge so they just stopped after that time. They even showed that they still had a charge on the batter afterwards.
After watching the episode of Top Gear where Mr Clarkson reviewed the Tesla, I have come to the following conclusions:
1: Top Gear was paid large sums of cash by oil company's to highlight the vehicles shortcomings as much as possible.
2: The failure of the first vehicle during charging was due to Big Oil 'hit men' who targeted the car with an electromagnetic pulse device, damaging various circuitry and causing the breaking system to fail.
3: James May is obviously in kahoots with the oil company's, promoting a technology for which there isn't even any infrestructure! How utterly rediciouluous.
Yes top gear, a technology that has no infrestructure, can cover a shorter distance between refueling, and needs about 10 miracle breakthroughs before it can become an everyday reality (and is LESS EFFICIENT) definitely makes more scence than something that is usable NOW.
IDIOTS!
Top Gear later admitted that they never ran out of juice with the Tesla, they claimed they just wanted to show what WOULD happen if you ran out of fuel.
Top Gear made the FCX Clarity seem like godsend, I know, but it's not as simple as they put it. Right now the tech is still way too expensive to even be considered viable. Honda has less than 20 Clarities and they are leasing them at ridiculously high prices because they are such expensive cars. Electric cars, on the other hand, are already available and comparitively affordable. Hydrogen has a bunch of other problems that make battery electric vehicles a better solution in every way EXCEPT for recharge time, which will be solved if MIT has their way.
If you really do your research it's easy to see that hydrogen is a dead end for personal transportation, and electric cars are much more promising.
Manny
That unfortunately was the worst and very dubious review of car on Top Gear. Top Gear admitted failings. ( The scent of money affcts us all!! )
To remain on topis Toshiba is producing as we speak Scib batteries which are in theory capable of doing that already. Fast chargin technology is not new. Altairnano ( Phoneix motors, Lightining GT and a project for US Navy.. a battery powered ship.. ) and Toshiba ( the Tailwind bike ) have already commercially delivered such products.
It doesnt take much*, you just need to replace the the cathode ( is were the electricity passes thgough when charging/ discharging,using ) with a material which will let pass the current through without overheating so much to become a small bomb. Both companies above have replaced the cathode with nano materials which will pose no resistance to current hence remaining cool.
Why does Tesla not use it? Well the altairnano battery is thought to be big and heavy while the Toshiba once are probably just damn expensive.
Oops typo fest above... sorry wrote too quickly and no spell check.
Something none of you guys mentioned. Try driving any car like they drove the Tesla and the range will drop dramatically, even in a gas car. They once tried it on Top Gear with some super cars and they got between 2-5mpg when they normally can get ~10-15mpg driven conservatively. That's 10-50% of the normal range. Track driving really brings down range/efficiency. It's not like they did a real range test in everyday mixed driving. Most owners seem to be able to get 200+ miles in mixed driving when in range mode (where the battery is nearly fully charged) and at least 150 miles in the default standard mode (which is from 90-10% SOC so about 80% charged). The 245-220 mile EPA range estimate is ideal range with very little highway driving, only way to match or top it is to primarily drive in the city.
MIT get to work on all the kewl stuff...I wish i could go there..it is nice to know that a whopping 89% of the students are on some sort of scholarship (MIT website)
For undergrad? Scholarship grant is part of your financial aid, if you qualify (unless you have some external scholarship).
This is true for anyone who is admitted, and is the case for a lot of private universities in the US.
It is, however, as you can see... quite a sausage fest.
Right you are.. the girls would prob say..the odd are good but the goods are odd..in getting a guy :P
MIT is actually around 50/50 male-female. Regardless, there are *a lot* of other colleges around there, Harvard one way, BU the other.
I'm sitting at MIT right now, and there are plenty of females around. As a side note, that electric bike parked next to me last week, and I've seen the porsche being driven around. They are both very impressive.
@Bird :)
Here is the link I got that figure from. http://web.mit.edu/sfs/financial_aid/index.html
This technology is not new. People have been using A123 cells in remote controlled cars, airplanes and helicopters for years now and recharging them in under 10 minutes. They are very good cells in terms of reliability, high current and safety, but do not have as much capacity as some other forms.
Yes, A123's LiFe batteries are quite popular as an alternative to the normal LiPo (lithium-polymer) batteries usually found in RC. LiFe's can be charged much quicker (LiPo's are limited to 1C charging, which means at least 1 hour) and are more durable (LiPo's are very fragile in comparison, much like a soft candy bar) looking a lot like a large cardboard C cell battery. They're also capable of being recharged quite a bit more often.
However, there are two things that make them not so popular: price and availability. For price, they can be as dear as $10-$20 per cell (1 cell=3.6V, 2000mAh.... think how much nearly 8,000 would cost... at least $80k). For availability, I don't know if the situation has changed, but traditionally the normal (and cheapest) way to get them was to buy a certain DeWalt battery pack and cannibalize the cells inside. I wonder how they got a hold of so many... but it would be impractical to mass produce.
They also need a special charger or circuit to properly charge. A NiMh or LiPo charger won't cut it. To charge ~8000 cells, each at 2AH 3.6V, in 1 hour, you'd need ~50kW(most appliances use less than 1kW), or at 110V US power, ~500 amps... . To do it in 10 minutes... ugh. You'd need a *huge* wire. Wire attached to clock tower during electrical storm, anyone? Then every time we charge our cars, we'd travel back to the future.
So, it's a nice science project, but it won't practical for a long time to come.
@solmar
Not really. You just need a high power dc power supply. The technology is already there: http://magna-power.com/mtoverview.html
Why do people like Adam feel qualified to comment?
@craig
Do you have anything positive to contribute?
The best technology if it proves to be viable for mass production is EEStors hybrid battery/ultracapacitor system. Apparently, they claim their technology is/can:
* Non-explosive and non-toxic
* 5X increase in energy storage per volume (energy density) compared to Lith-Ion.
* No degradation from charge/discharge cycles
* 4-6 minute charge time for a 336 pound (152 kg), 2005 cubic inch (33 L), 52 kilowatt hour (187 MJ), 31 farad, 3500 volt unit, assuming sufficient cooling of the cables.
* For a 52 kWh unit, an initial production price of $3,200, falling to $2,100 with mass production is projected.
* The equipped with a built in Buck-boost converter (DC-DC voltage converter) to provide the proper input/output voltage
* A self-discharge rate of 0.1% per month
Let's say that gas stations did invest in an high voltage system (since paying a few grand just for your car's charger isn't going to go well with home-owners), you'd still have a lot of hurdles to get past before this kind of thing becomes practical. First, 10 minutes is actually quite a long time for a gas station fill up (normally less than 5 minutes), and I can envision long lines to get your charge. Second, to get specs similar to today's normal cars, you'd need about this many batteries, which means around $80k for the batteries alone. Add electronics, motor, and other unnecessary stuff, like the chassis and steering wheel, would put the cost well over $100k.. and this is for performance about equal to compacts that normally cost $20k-$30k. Not very economical, and that's assuming that the batteries could be produced in this quantity.
And I'll believe EEStor's claims when they can actually produce something concrete. It would be nice, if true, and a welcome change from $80k batteries per car. It could also go the same way as cold fusion.
my biggest gripe is... this dude SOUNDS american... so why the hell use kilometers/hour??!?!
or should i say kilometres
>=p
Because he's more "worldly" than he is American? C'mon, you guys are way overdue to switch to metric....
Maybe because US, Liberia and Myanmar are the only countries not using the metric system officially yet. I wonder how Americans got this far.
The rest of the world uses metric. The car is probably metric. The only holdouts in this country were the heavy industries and the car companies. Maybe this is a good time for the US to go metric...
ok ok ok...
but... he didnt say "saloon"
*GIGGLES
hahah its early =)
@Peter
I dont know what your experience has been, but as a US engineer, everything I work in is in metric. The problem isnt industries, its the general public who think its "unamerican" to go metric or are just too lazy to learn the metric system.
I work for a co that makes big heavy yellow things and we've been metric for years.
metric?......that's alien technology, right.
Alternatively, use swappable batteries, such as those from Better Place. No waiting, and batteries are re-charged from sunlight.
that's a lot of white people
Yeah, science is like that.
@therealmusashi
Uh, no....college is like that.
Yeah, come to think of it, they're both like that! Good catch.
It seems that what is really holding them back is the power source to charge the car, not the battery technology. So I don't understand why, for a home unit, they don't just build a giant capacitor that can quickly supply the power to charge the car, then that capacitor gets charged after they charge the car.
But then again, if you are charging at home; chances are you don't need to have it charged in 10 minutes. So maybe instead, what they should develop is like the electricity equivalent of a gas station. A gas station that receives power from high-voltage 3-phase power lines (much like factories and large buildings). Then this electric station would be able to supply the power necessary to charge cars in 10 minutes.
And to recharge large batteries fast, you have very high power requirements.
They didn't say anything about that.
Didn't say anything about that? Did you watch the video? They talked about how they needed more power than any home could provide and how they were going to use MIT's powerplant because otherwise they wouldn't have enough power.
Where major automotive manufacturers have failed, university students will come to the rescue! (hopefully) =)
"Maybe this is a good time for the US to go metric..."
Or maybe this is a good time for the rest of the world to get off it already. We might as well say maybe it's time for the rest of the world to switch to speaking English.
Not quite. English is actually a rather convoluted and illogical language...kindof like imperial measurements. The argument for ditching imperial measurement systems is not just about standardization, but also about using a system that is more logical and efficient. As a Canadian who works with clients on both sides of the border, I've had to do engineering work in both systems. Even our universities teach both because they anticipate that we'll be working with older structures (civil engineering) that predate the metric switch-over as well working with American counterparts. I'm comfortable with both metric and imperial, but things just move faster with metric calculations.
Yes, you're right, it's clearly so much better/easier to do all our distance math in 12's, 3's, and 5280's. 10's, 100's and 1000's are just crazy numbers to use. After all, it's not like we've had any major incidences with these units *cought* Mars lander *cough*
So, did you all catch that these are the batteries Charles stole to make the LOLrio Kart? Like, the same batteries, from that room there.
Since you a big top gear fan, you should also remember they drove a ferrari in a similar fashion and it got 1.9mpg. Considering the teslas battery pack is the equivalent of less than 2 gallons, id consider the 55 mile range pretty impressive. Also they estimated 55. When they were pushing the car to charge, it still had juice. Basically, they faked it.
Do the batteries need replacing and what happens to the old ones if they do or when the car is wrecked?
Eventually the batteries will need replacing, but it won't be for a long time, about 2000 cycles for some newer cells.
If the car is wrecked or the batteries no longer hold a charge they can be recycled into brand new batteries.
yeah, so 2000 cycles, at 1 cycle a day. 2000/365 = 5 1/2 years!!
Since batteries are so expensive i'd rather not have to take out a loan every five years in addition to paying for the expensive 50,000 car!!!
It might be better to think in terms of mileage. So in that sense you might say about 150 miles per charge X 2000 charges and you get 300,000 miles until you need to replace the batteries. That seems like a pretty reasonable amount I think.