News: The fuel pump of the future, 400-volt electric plug standard to be unveiled today

I just drove from the Bay Area to Salt Lake and back, and I have to do it again in a week.

Tell me, can this thing charge a car capable of towing two bikes and a full load of household goods in less than 5 minutes with a charge capable of carrying it at least half way across the state of Nevada? (I'm being generous, one tank on my Civic will get me all the way across, but I fill up at about a third of a tank for safety.)

No? Then it can fuck off until it can. Electric is fine for in-town, but you need a fast energy source for long distance trips. A plug-in hybrid would be fine with me, electric for in-town (install charging stations in parking lots so you never run on the engine) where most of us do our driving and a gas or diesel motor for power generation for longer trips. Full electric is fine as long as you never want to go more than 100 miles in a day.
 
And where does the electricity come from children?
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Yeah that helps.
 
Blind_Io said:
Tell me, can this thing charge a car capable of towing two bikes and a full load of household goods in less than 5 minutes with a charge capable of carrying it at least half way across the state of Nevada? (I'm being generous, one tank on my Civic will get me all the way across, but I fill up at about a third of a tank for safety.)

No? Then it can fuck off until it can.
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Then you pull into a standard (being developed as we speak) battery swap station that can give you a charged battery faster than your car can fill up with gas, and away you go. They work like propane tanks: most places don't fill YOUR tank...you drop off an empty on, and pick up a full one.

Also, even though we've been over this in every Tesla, and electric car thread:
a) Most electric cars are not made for interstate travel. The couple times you do it? Rent a car. You do it a lot? Then an electric car isn't for you. Most people don't drive across two states on a regular basis. Many? Yes. Most? Hardly. People who work on Antarctica can't have a soft-top convertible. Does that make them pointless?
b) Yes, most power comes from a coal plant. Even as it stands, coal to electricity is more efficient than all the oil and power needed to harvest, transport, refine and deliver fuel from all over the world to millions of vehicles that are burning it. With electric vehicles, the MOMENT a cleaner or more efficient technology is implemented, every vehicle on the grid will benefit. Let's say the local utility just went on-line with 3% of their power coming from geothermal. There. Every electric car will be 3% geo-thermal-fueled the next time it fills up. With the battery swap stations, every time batteries make a leap, every car that stops will get the improved batteries.
 
katwalk said:
And where does the electricity come from children?

Yeah that helps.
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Your power might, my electricity comes from renewables. We have a touch of nuclear too but that's excluded from my price plan. In either case, no coal.

Naturally, in time coal power must also be eliminated, or equipped with CCS, but the decision on what to replace a coal power plant with must be a political one, and that takes time. Every coal plant cannot be replaced with a hydropower station, but there is no place on earth that doesnt have sun and wind. And then there's nuclear power, which can be built almost everywhere.
 
Yes, I brought up the idea of a battery swap ages ago - I think I compared it to the 30-minute engine swap on the Tucker (1948).

Problems with that plan:
Batteries are heavy.
Hybrids take quite a few of them and full-electric cars take even more.
They are buried in the inner workings of the car and not easily accessed

Do you really want to spend 15 minutes of heavy lifting just to fill your tank? Think about how much a car battery weighs. Now think about how much weight will be required to move a car that distance. Add luggage, 4 people and a mountain pass and you would have to stop every 30 minutes to swap batteries.
 
katwalk said:
And where does the electricity come from children?

Yeah that helps.
Click to expand...
Where I live, it comes from these:

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All of these three power stations are located in the town I live in. Norway for instance, is supplied between 95 and 99 % (depending on flow) with hydro-electric power.
 
klankymen said:
yay, more batteries will be mined and shipped around the world to be processed at what cost to the environment?
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as opposed to more oil drilled and shipped around the world to be processed at what cost to the environment ...? :rolleyes:

NecroJoe said:
Then you pull into a standard (being developed as we speak) battery swap station that can give you a charged battery faster than your car can fill up with gas, and away you go
Click to expand...

Good luck getting all the auto manufacturers to agree to a common battery standard. The Europeans might, but I can't see American manufacturers going along with it. Just like every other standard, i.e. TV, cell phones, electricity ... the US always has to be different to everyone else. And how would with work with different sized vehicles? Our hypothetical electric SUV is going to need a lot more batteries than our hypothetical electric city car ...
 
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AiR said:
Ah-hrm....

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/better-place-unveils-battery-swap-station/
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Ok that's cool. Now take an average large city. For instance New York. Where the majority of the population does not have their own parking spot/garage and has to park on the street. I can see charging stations on major streets where you can park on a meter but not so much on little residential streets. So you have to go to a gas station for every refuel basically. Now a station that I fill up at generally has 3-4 cars in it at the same time I come in. Judging by location and observation it would have on average 2 cars every 5 minutes or so. How quickly will it run out of batteries?

Also factor in cost. A gallon of fuel costs roughly $2.50 right now (93 octane) so I pay around $40 for a full tank of gas. Batteries are much more expensive and have a limited life. So even though you are giving them a battery back it has slightly less capacity than when it was new. Also the initial cost of setting up a station with all the machinery and replacement batteries (remember you are going to need a couple of hundred at least) would be prohibitive. To make it worse in low traffic areas it would take a very long time to turn a profit because the number of customers would be pretty low.

Also unlike a normal fueling station you would need to get new batteries as better tech is available/batteries reach the end of their life span. In a regular station you just have a tank that will last for centuries...

Oh and least we forget the differences between batteries. I just bought me anAudi R25 with the brand new electric battery that would give me a range of 700 miles. I run out of juice and go to a station and get swapped with some old ass battery out of a Civic that would only provide enough juice for 20 miles. Station owner is not going to be buying brand new batteries every time that new tech comes out, its too expensive they would have to phase it out slowly.

To make matters even worse if you solve the above issues, electric vehicles are much heavier than gas powered once. Look at the Tesla for instance a standard Exige/Elise will run circles around it.

But wait there is more... Batteries in electric vehicles are VERY electronics dependent, otherwise they will overcharge and at best fail quietly. Electronics use a very dirty manufacturing process that involves alot of chemicals and power (that is not being made in a green way). Having said that, batteries are also EXTREMELY dirty when it comes to both production and disposal and do use petrochemicals for at least part of the manufacturing process.

BEV's just don't make any sense to me unless battery technology progresses far beyond what we have here, so far the tech has been very slow to move.
 
Blind_Io said:
Ok, I have to admit, that's damn spiffy. Looks more expensive than a fuel pump, though.
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I think 1 of those costs 100K. Apparently it costs about $5 million to build a modern 12 pump gas station. The infrastructure has to be rolled out, but in places like Israel it makes a lot of sense (especially considering the potential political advantages). If they can extend the range, or integrate a charging system of some sort on the car (either a motor like the volt or solar panels or something, I'm not the ideas guy ffs), it could have a future. Still, a shame the cars don't sound like F430s.

EDIT: to respond to the post above, the cars the better place is using are designed for a one size fits all battery. They're partnering with nissan and renault on this, with more companies to come (especially if Mazda wants to keep its dominant sales lead in Israel). If the battery design and capacity is standardized, then there's a decent chance it could work.
 
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