Courtesy of Batteries Digest Web Site
Some very important hurdles in battery technological for electric vehicles have been overcome this year. Technological hurdles even greater than those overcome in the last few years. The technological hurdles that I am talking about here have been the same for quite some time. Efficient use of electrical energy has been at the forefront of EV development largely because of the limitations of battery technology.
The problems with battery technology IN THE PAST were:
Energy Density – The energy able to be stored in batteries was typically far less than that able to be stored in a tank of gasoline. Ranges of 75 miles have been achieved in regular vehicle conversions. That is around 4 gallons of gasoline or less.
PROBLEM SOLVED: Vehicle design can get us ranges in excess of 300 miles per charge and greater if we use vacant body cavities to add more light weight batteries.
Weight – Most batteries were made of lead and acid. They were and are very heavy and therefore required more energy to overcome the added weight.
PROBLEM SOLVED: Advanced batteries and the work done by Firefly have reduced the weight of batteries by at least ½ and much more for Lithium-ion Polymer.
Longevity of a battery pack – Batteries did not have long cycle lives and therefore electric car owners would have been looking into an enormous expense and trouble to replace the batteries at least one time over the life of the automobile if not more times.
PROBLEM SOLVED: Advanced batteries such as NiMH and Lithium-ion Polymer have cycle lives of greater than 10,000 when maintained properly. NiMH batteries have reached range life of greater than 150,000 miles without being replaced in RAV4 EVs.
The last great hurdle has been charge times.
Charge Times – The length of time that it took to charge a battery pack that can go only about 75 miles was about 8 hrs. If you were traveling somewhere and needed to charge up, it was a constant worry you might have to wait up to 8 hours before you could move again and then only for 75 to 100 miles.
PROBLEM SOLVED: Charge times have remained a stubborn problem to solve. That is until the announcement below and anothers like it from Altair Nanotechnology.
Toshiba Markets a Fast Charge Battery
Toshiba announced that it has developed a battery that charges to 80% of its capacity in only one minute and fully in only 6 minutes. (Nikkei Electronics Asia Online)
Toshiba had to make this announcement because a month before a company called Altair Nanotechnologies, Inc. made almost the same announcement. Now Advanced Battery Technology will be producing the Altair battery.
AeroVironment’s PosiCharge system can charge a bank of lead acid batteries in 15 minutes.
With charge times such as these we can now imagine an electric vehicle “gas station” as being something in the near future. We need to spread the word about this technological breakthrough. We need to tell everyone we know that all of the technological objections to electric vehicles have now been overcome. Vehicle design can get us ranges in excess of 300 miles per charge and charging will only take a few minutes for advanced batteries and 15 minutes for lead acid. Say goodbye to the 8 hour charge.
SPREAD THE WORD!!!!