Aluminum-Celmet Could Increase Electric Vehicle Range by 300%

I want to know how tripling battery capacity will quadruple, rather than merely triple, range.

 

Regen does not extend range. I does relief when facing losses due to the cycle demand, only.

 

Hey, even triple the range would be a brilliant achievement. a 300 mile Leaf would be excellent, and a 900 mile(!) Model S would just wipe any memory of "range anxiety" clean out of peoples minds.

Sure, a 200kwh+ pack would take kind of a long time to fully recharge charge (62 hours on 16A 230V, 12 hours at 70A), but when would you -ever- empty it? it also allows a big window for V2G, if you're plugged in at work all day and at home all night the load balancing capability of a fleet of these vehicles would be immense. you could dedicate 20kwh of your battery to it and never even notice it. (also serves as a useful emergency "reserve"!). Be cool in a PHV application as well, since bumping up the PHV from 13 miles to 39 miles makes it a lot more attractive.

 

What ever happened to all the hype about super capacitors?
I'm hoping they're not just more hydrogen hype.

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Maybe they are factoring in the decrease in weight-
Lighter BP means more city range??
Of course I doubt the weight difference would increase the range that much
Charlie
PS more likely they mean increase range to 300% of initial not by 300%-which is 4x as you say

 

Honestly press releases from battery companies are a dime a dozen. Last year or even before that I read about one that was supposed to give us 10X the capacity. Until they are in a production capacity I'm not really impressed.

 

Nice catch.

It is done through the miracle of sloppy writing.

 

You could be right. Leaf's battery weights 660 lbs. The weight reduction of 440 lbs is possible with this new tech. That also means smaller battery pack with lighter cooling hardware, etc...

 

I wonder if anyone besides me has noticed that the three overlapping images of the battery material looks like Mickey Mouse ears?

 

But does this extra capacity allow capture of more regen energy that is currently being lost? I doubt it.

More likely, this was from a typical math-impaired reporter.

 

Think how much Leaf would weight if it has 219 miles (73x3) range. The battery alone would weight 1,320 lbs more. The frame and suspension will need to be stronger and bigger to fit all that. You would not get 3x the range by increasing the battery size by 3x.

However, if you increase the battery energy density by 3x, you can fit it in the same space and it will weight the same. Therefore extending the range 3x.

 

But the article is claiming a range of 4x, not 3x.

 

I think the article is trying to say (if it is not a typo) is that 3x higher density battery would reduce battery weight as well as the entire car resulting in higher efficiency (more mile per kWh).

The range gain due to weight loss may be small for a short range EV but if you look at 200+ miles range EV, the benefit becomes more obvious.

 

Lighter? yes. Smaller? unlikely. You still need the the x3 surface.

besides the weight this "new tech" increases the surface, and thus charge/discharge rates, so more energy can be harvested in hard braking.

Agree with previous poster about sloppy writing.

 

The source material is here:
Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. | Press Release (2011) Development of Porous Aluminum ?Aluminum-Celmet?

The manufacturer expects a 1.5x-3x increase in capacity for a given battery volume. It seems promising technologically, but it looks like a much more complicated and expensive process than making more traditional batteries. We'll see if it pans out.

 

You might be confusing hybrids and electrics. An EV is powered entirely by the battery, so with that if you disconnect the traction battery, you ain't moving. The hybrid will capture energy created by the gas ICE, so a bigger battery improves regen range; but with an EV, you can't capture more energy in the battery pack than you already expended from the battery pack in getting the vehicle moving (actually less, due to inefficiencies in the various steps).

I had to think about this a bit, but it comes down to the fact that the average miles/kWh won't change because of a bigger battery. Their range computations are based on a consistent road cycle of some kind (either straight driving around a course with no regen involved at all, or a predictable pattern of regen that would not have better than linear improvement because of more regen range). A battery 3x as large should be the same as using 3 original batteries, just swapping them out as needed. Now you might be able to come up with a test track using hills set up so that it works better on a bigger battery than a smaller one, but that wouldn't be a fair test.

However, if this technology allows for faster recharging, then the regen might be more efficient and incur less loss during hard braking, but we're talking about difference of several percent, not another 100%.

Relax, let it go. It's just another reporter who doesn't know (or forgot) that an improvement of 300% is not the same thing as tripling something. Studies have shown that 4 out of 3 people have problems with fractions and percentages.

 

I think the point here is not 300% vs 400%, if this is real then EV's make a giant advance. America becomes Energy Independent! Great for everyone in the world.