Thanks
Mrs Frankling

I have no idea what you mean with your second sentence, and I don’t think you do, either. Do I go down to Home Depot and buy “a bunch of electricity” in bulk? I put a transformer …. where? And …. why? And this eliminates the need to swap batteries …. why?

Sentence #3 is also gibberish.

Here’s the battery you’re dealing with in a Tesla, which is probably typical of other EVs, that you think you can alter or adapt:

http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/bess_web.jpg

Not shown, I believe, are the special cooling cage to keep the batteries at 35 degrees C (for reliability) and the charge system. Tell me how you would build your ideal system. I’m dying to hear your plan.

You don’t need to swap batteries, you just need a bunch of electricy and the right transformers.

But batteries that you can both charge quickly at stations on the go and charge slowly at home would be a bit more difficult to engineer.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=batteries&id=20570

These numbers verify my past suspicions: a state filled with all-electric cars, as California thinks would be a great thing, would be one whose power grid would immediately collapse. A hybrid vehicle works only because it off-loads the power transfer from the power grid to the gasoline tank of the car, taking advantage of the massive energy storage capabilities of gasoline.

There’s no way this all-electric car stuff is for the masses. It won’t happen in a century, much less decades. Gasoline is a far better method of energy storage and transfer, by at least an order of magnitude.

you get 130 miles on 35kwh, 250 on 70.

they are getting sub 10 minute charge times (told me 8 when i saw them at a conference) using a 480v charger.

no idea what the 70kwh version costs…

no, i actually mean 35kwh.

that is about the power you need to drive a car 250 miles.

here’s the tech:

http://www.b2i.us/profiles/investor/ResLibraryView.asp?BzID=546&ResLibraryID=18376&Category=856

the problem is that they cost $75k each.

do they work as advertised? i don’t know.

can an infrastructure be put together to charge them this quickly, maybe. i’m not really sure.

but i have to believe that if these batteries could be made affordable (a massive if) that solving the charging station problem would be manageable through some determined engineering.

i seriously doubt you could charge that quickly at home with 220v power.

I did a quick calculation for the fudge factor required to optimally place a bank of solar panels that track the sun’s angle. In 24 hours, the sun strikes a 360 degree arc. In a 6-hour period, the sun will move +/-360 degrees * 3/24 = +/- 45 degrees from a vertical (normal) line, which each panel has to track. If you do the math, you find that a panel with dimensions X must be placed SQRT(2) * X to avoid shading any of its neighbors, side-to-side. The other axis distance is a function of the normal inclination of the sun on an annual basis. That calculation is regionally dependent, but it would not be too out of line to assume a maximum tilt of 45 degrees, which yields the same fudge factor. Thus, a panel with an area of X x X needs an area of 2*X^2. So back to our 8100 square miles of panels exercise: you need to double the amount of panel real estate (which still does not count for road access and the like).

Good lord, Morganovich: 35 KWH in 8 minutes? That’s 263 kW/minute. Surely you mean 35 KW for 8 minutes, although that translates into “only” 4.7 KWH. 263 KWH would be 1200 amps @ 220VAC. You’d take down the entire power grid with each charge. This would surely be one very large extension cord required to connect to your garage outlet! Me: “Why are the lights in the house going dim? Do I smell ozone?” Wife: “Not to worry. Morganovich just got home and is recharging his car. Dinner will be delayed until he’s done. That is, unless Jones on the other side also decides to do the same…”

All of this just goes to show that it’s hard to beat gasoline for energy density. Ditto for nuclear. Anything else is simply pie in the sky, and will be so for decades to come.

you’re not thinking about this like a business. no one is going to open a battery exchange. the up front costs are massive just to get all the batteries and to keep them up to grade.

by degrade, i don’t mean all move away to other stations. by degrade i mean they will stop holding a charge and need to be replaced. this is VERY expensive. see my comment above on gas price equivalent of battery amortization.

the batteries in the tesla weigh about 2000 pounds. let’s assume some development can cut that in half (double energy density). 1000 pounds of batteries to be moved for each car? 50 20 pound units? go to the gym and move 50 25 lb plates from one place to another then back again. excited to do that every time you refuel? oh, and do it very carefully, as all would need to be seated and connected properly and secured so they do not move or shift, especially in a crash where the last thing you want is 50 20 pound projectiles… some would break, connections into the car would break, this is a very difficult task. it’s not like putting a bunch of batteries in series into a flashlight. the power management systems are very sophisticated. there is not a system anywhere near existence that could make 50 modular batteries work together like this and discharge evenly. the software to manage the power discharge in the tesla roadster was the big breakthrough. it would never work with batteries of varying quality (number of uses etc).

and 20 pound batteries are incredibly stealable. DRM would never work. one, it will get cracked. two, who is to stop me from just putting it in my car and driving to a station to charge it there? are you proposing to link every station and have them compare battery serial numbers in real time as they unload them to make sure they aren’t accepting bad ones? the logistics of that are mind boggling. 50 times every fueling?

this leads to another issue. if i show up with a nearly worn out cell, will the charger want to take it? don’t they have lots of incentive to just pass it on? the same moral hazard applies to consumers, who, as they don’t own the batteries, will have no incentive to take care of them.

further, using small cells will increase weight and space, not reduce it. so you are likely loading a ton of batteries. 4000 pounds moved per fill up. who takes liability if you drop one or worse damage the contact points in a car? and who is going to load this stuff? and take it in back to be charged etc. the wear and tear from this would far exceed any benefit.

it also prevents people from adopting new, better tech. why would anyone buy new and improved batteries when they are just going to give them up in 250 miles? why would any station offer them when they are just going to go off down the road? maybe there could be a couple of grades, but then you are just jacking up the inventory problem to new levels.