Nanotech Battery Claims to Solve Electric Car Woes

rbgrn writes "A123 Systems claims to have invented a Lithium Ion battery that not only can discharge at very high rates of current but can be recharged very quickly without damage to the cells or overheating. From their website: 'A unique feature of A123Systems' M1 cells is their ability to charge to high capacity in 5 minutes or less. That's a significant improvement over traditional Li Ion, which typically requires more than 90 minutes to reach a similar level of charge.' Using this technology, General Motors has announced a plug-in hybrid SUV and Venture Vehicles is developing a fully electric 3 wheel vehicle. Politics aside, the main technological hurdle to mass adoption of electric cars has been a fuel station replacement when driving distances beyond a single charge worth of range. Will we finally be seeing high current recharge stations in the next decade?"

conservation of energy

[tomstdenis]

While i'm all for new tech, let's take a second to re-examine this. We're going to take electricity and power our cars... ok but this has to come from somewhere right? And it isn't like we're going to generate it on the spot. So we're going to put MORE strain on the existing power grid to power these recharge stations.

The power itself is made from something, usually not nuclear because "oh noes it's unsafe!" [note the sarcasm] but instead things like coal. So now we're gonna have to burn more coal (which pollutes more than nuclear) to power this. Keeping in mind the entire process is lossy.

I'm all for electric cars, but we'll need a lot more than a good battery to make it practical.

Tom

Probably not

[Flying pig]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for this particular development. But the sort of power you are looking at to charge batteries at that rate is enormous. Figure it out. If you have a battery that can, say, deliver 50KW for one hour, then to charge it in five minutes will require to deliver about 20% more than you get out (conversion efficiency) or a charge rate of 720KW. That's nearly 1000 horsepower in Library of Congress units. You aren't going to be passing that through a handy, easy to use electrical circuit any time soon.

On the other hand, overnight charging of the batteries (when power stations have spare capacity) is an extremely good idea, and indeed the dual hybrid concept good at good write up last year.

So my suggestion is: Yes, this is a really good idea, yes it is progress in terms of better flexibility of power supplies, yes it goes some way to resolve the problem that you cannot easily store electrical power by allowing it to be stored in a big distributed network of vehicles - but ten years is for too soon for it to take over as a technology.

The progressively replacement of gasoline engines by Diesel in Europe has been going on for over 20 years now, and that's probably a realistic timeframe. 20 years to get market penetration of battery vehicles, and then, only if renewable fuels turn out to be a failure, the progressive development of very high power charging stations.

Re:conservation of energy

[dretay]

I believe the problem with nuclear power has a lot more to do with disposal and storage than with the safety of the reactor. Plus if the CO2 emissions are centralized at power stations rather than spread across the entire country (as is the case with cars) emission reduction techniques will probably be a lot easier.

High current recharge stations?

[bogaboga]

"...Will we finally be seeing high current recharge stations in the next decade?..."

Personally, I doubt that will ever happen in USA and here's why:

Huge influential oil companies like EXXON-MOBIL made profits of close to US$90 million per day in profits last year. Racking in almost US$33 Billion for the year. Now, who in their right mind can allow such a revenue stream to get suffocated by so called new technology?

I am of the opinion that we'll begin seeing this in "more pragmatic" Europe than here in these United States.

Cost?

[NorbrookC]

While this is interesting, I have to wonder about the cost of these batteries. I've seen many of these stories before, about some wonderful electric vehicle that's going to replace the gas-burner real soon. Except that the batteries needed cost more than any vehicle currently on the road. But it'll be practical "as soon as we get the costs down!"

I'll get excited when someone announces a reasonably priced, high-density, quick recharge battery. Until then, I'm going to regard it as yet another prototype - an interesting idea, but one of many.

Re:conservation of energy

[soft_guy]

I think you raise some valid concerns, but still this is a step in the right direction. Plus, improved battery tech is always welcome for many uses.

Re:conservation of energy

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>Finally, if you want to make your power plant cleaner at some point in the future it is a bit easier than retrofitting a large number of cars.

Also, the power plant is not sitting in traffic on the street next to sidewalks and apartments full of people. Even if the only benefit were to relocate pollution, even if none of the other advantages existed, there'd still be a benefit.

Re:$1.50 a mile? WTF

[Sparr0]

Insulate the fucker. 1kW is more than I use to keep my entire apartment heated (an 800W space heater with a thermostat, plus a fan). Try 100W or less to heat a space the size of a car, assuming you put a little extra money into some decent glass (insulating the non-glass parts is trivial).

Re:conservation of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, where the nuclear material is packed into dense solid wastes that can be disposed of carefully instead of farted into the atmosphere.

Re:conservation of energy

[Clockwork Apple]

Dude, if I could get safe gasoline piped into my house then I would be happy to use a hose to get it all the way out to my car. Consider the convenience of fueling up without waiting in line for the pump, without worry that some asshole on a celphone will run you over when you walk in to pay, without waiting in line while some dickhead screws with writing a paper check to pay for his one pack of smokes, without getting short changed by the clerk or involved in a hold up.

Shit man I can think of lots of reasons dragging a hose or cable to the curb is better than always having to go to a public service station. The fact that you already have an electric bill just sweetens the deal.

C.

Re:conservation of energy

[HiThere]

So the question becomes "How much range does this electric car have?" (If the batteries are good enough, then on-site storage DOES become an option, at least as a hefty ballast load.)

I wonder how much charge a tanker-truck sized truck could carry as cargo? This might actually be cheaper than maintaining lines if the losses were lower than line loss. (Don't know how to figure that?) (And depending on how expensive the batteries were.)

Also, the obvious way to go, if one can work out the mechanics, is to charge the vehicles by swapping batteries. It might not be the best...but also it might. This would, however, require:
a) standardization of size, shape, and connections, and
b) a meter built into the battery which would display how many watt-hours it was storing.
This probably won't happen because any economic benefit would probably be marginal, and also because getting companies to agree on a standard is...dubious.

Re:Or The Station Can Refuel Overnight As Well

[DumbSwede]

Of course you if you had fueling stations you wouldn't rely on just tapping the grid in real time, you'll install big batteries to charge continuously. Then you only need scale up your batteries and electrical service as business scales upward. You know, like how they store Gas in the ground to fuel your car instead of materialize it instantly when you fill up.

Yes they'll be additional efficiency losses, but initially these stations will only have to service a few people that normally get their charge at either end of a commute. Once demand really takes off we'll think of something else more efficient.

Interchangeable batteries

[sorak]

This may be a noob question, but why can't electric cars run on a system (especially now), where gas stations become changing stations, like what is often done with propane? We show up, replace an existing battery (which would have to be made easier to replace, I admit), with a freshly charged battery and pay the station for the service.

Re:You Don't Need to Replace Gas Pumps

[matt21811]

A 12 hour charge is the same as a full tank of fuel.

You can insert sarcastic comments here about how it always takes me a full tank of fuel to get to the cinema or go to work or drive to the shops.

In reality the cinema is often less than 20kms away (,mine is only 2kms), which is takes less than a movie to re-charge. This means the grandparents suggestion is totally suitable.

Nuclear power... Disposing the waste

[Firethorn]

Yeah, my idea's pretty simple:

It's called recycling. The rods, which are classified as 'waste' right now, are actually 90+% recyclable into new fuel rods. This is even without going into technologies like breeders and fast reactors.

The problem with recycling is that the rods, fresh from the reactor, are so radioactive any measures taken with them are expensive. My solution: Let them sit in the reactor pond/onsite storage for 40-60 years, at which point they're less than 1% as radioactive as when they came out, making recycling them much less a pain in the butt. This does many things, including vastly reducing the amount of uranium we need to mine(reducing pollution on that end), and leaving you with high-level waste that's more radioactive, but decays faster. So you store it for a number of years before vitrifying it, so there's a whole lot less radiation to weaken the glass substrate.

Still, I have some concerns that this battery will turn out to be vaporware in the end. It's too revolutionary for me to not be cautious about it. I'd be happier with a GM press release. Of cour

Re:conservation of energy

[putaro]

Oh, and marking it in some sort of universal language so that in the event civilization collapses and we revert to a new stone age some hapless hunter gatherer doesn't try to eat it.

Who cares? We should spend billions of dollars in order to ensure that one poor hunter gatherer far in the future doesn't go digging around in one location? The damage we're doing to the environment by burning fossil fuels far outweighs the possible hazard to anybody from a nuclear dump. There's lots of ways to make yourself dead if you go digging around in something.

Re:The grid IS more efficient

[number11]

The better that I was talking about is that when you brain fart and run out of gas

Nowdays most cars have gas gauges. I think VW was the last to get one, and that was in 1962. I think that in all the years since them, I've run out of gas once. Because I was a moron and pushed my luck. If I'd had to pay $100 for a service call, it would have served me right.

You really think we need to have our transport system designed so that people who are being idiots won't be put to any additional expense?