Hybrids set to switch to lithium-ion soon

This cool! 6 Minute EV Recharge!

Altair Nano Batteries

 

The use of Lithium Ion (or Poly) batteries in Hybrids I believe will be a MAJOR breakthrough. I fly R/C aircraft and currently have switched over to Lithium Poly batteries to power my aircraft. Although electric R/C aircraft have existed for a while, in the past they used NiCad and NiMh batteries that were relatively heavy and provided very limited flight times. The difference is night and day.

I can attest Lipoly batteries have taken the R/C market by storm. Many models can now perform as good or even better than their glow plug counterparts. Their cost is still higher compared to the venerable glow plug engines, but that too is coming down as the electrics become even more popular.

The main sticking point with using lithiums for autos is cost and safety. If charged incorrectly or abused (dropped or damaged), lithium batteries can catch fire or even explode. This of course CANNOT be allowed to happen in a consumer vehicle. Stories abound of modelers who have incorrectly charged models with lithium batteries and suffered major property damage as a result of fire.

But I hope/believe it is only a matter of a few years before Toyota and other auto manufacturers will "certify" lithium batteries safe and economical enough for use in hybrid vehicles.

Rick

 

Cool.. before "plug in" can really be widespread such that there are "filling stations" along the road and in rural or even wilderness areas, we will need such a battery that can charge at a rate such as this.

Who wants to wait more than 6 minutes for a fillup when your trying to get somewhere on a trip?

Until this gets up and running, gasoline or similiar crutch will be our mainstay from pure EV.

 

Cool, this is getting more and more exciting!...
NOT! a reason to not buy now..... once these come out.. it will be all about the ones that can recharge in 6 minutes becoming avail at a low cost, once those come out, it will be about bigger ones that can go long trips, once those come out possibly hydrogen or who knows.... technology will never stop.... might as well jump in now and enjoy the swim!

 

It'll be quite some time before the 6 minute charge vehicle comes out. Even if the tech was ready (it's not yet) you need a "pipe" capable of outputting that much juice in only 6 mins. While that's not hard to do, the infrastructure still would need to be built and that means time and money to build enough to be useful. Plus we need time to bring new electricity sources online to meet this additional demand (whether auto batteries or hydrogen).

 

I agree with all that you've written except for the very last part. If we assume that Electric Vehicles are *replacing* their gasoline counterparts (instead of just adding to them) then we don't need any more electricity than we're already producing. The amount of electricity that goes into making gas, is enough to charge an EV for at least as many miles as the gasoline would have powered a traditional car.

Crazy, eh?

Of course the caveat is that much of the electricity we use to make gasoline is actually made by the oil companies... so if they go away, we'll have to make up for that electricity generation. But I still say that's a net benefit. Replacing gasoline vehicles with grid-charged ones is not the huge hit on the grid as most believe. One reason is that most charging will be done over night when electricity demand is at its lowest. Of course our electricity demand has consistently grown just because the population grows, and the future will be no different...

The oil industry is the single larges electricity consumer in the US.

 

Is it practical for the auto manufacturers to invest their R&D on Lithuim Ion considering fuel cells are just around the corner, probably 5-7 years? Or is that a very optimistic assumption on my part?

 

Uh, yer last statement. There are many cool things going on in the hydrogen world but none are even close to the prime time. Besides, FCVs are still likely to by hybridized anyhow so the R&D wouldn't be wasted.

Here the catch though. There aren't a lot of proven AND cheap ways to produce hydrogen from renewables. Besides why incur the losses involved in that process. Wouldn't it be more effective to produce electricity and put that directly into a car's battery than to use the electricity to produce hydrogen and then store and then distribute the hydrogen?

There will be a lot of uses for FCs, especially in handheld and stationary power generation applications. I'm much less sure about the feasibility or need for them in the transportation sector, except perhaps for fueling generators (on semis and the railcars).

 

Tripp nailed it here!

While FCVs may be "right around the corner" we don't know how we'll actually refuel them, where the H2 will come from, where the heck we'll get all the energy to MAKE the H2, and how we'll afford them. A battery car is 3-4x as efficient as a FCV. So you start with a given amount of energy, and a battery car will go 3-4 times as far as a FCV. If we have all this extra energy sitting around, let's get some battery cars built to use it! The scary part is that most folks think that we'll just use (drum roll please...) fossil fuels to scrape the H2 off. Way easier that way! Ug.

And then there's cost. While Li-ion's may be expensive, we only have to chop that price in half or a quarter at most to be compentitive in today's auto market. To price FCVs in a competitive way, the price has to drop by about 99%! Remember that we already have electricity everywhere. Yes, we'd need some specialty chargers for the long-distance fast-charge folks... but a back of napkin calculation shows that we could install a fast charger every ten miles on every highway in CA for the cost of a SINGLE H2 filling station. And that's before we even start paying for the fuel!

Here's my page on Hydrogen vehicles lots of great links to studies that compare FC and battery cars.

http://www.darelldd.com/ev/fuel_cell.htm

 

I live near a big Dam.. The bonnieville dam..... I used to live off the grid and my whole home was powered by hydroelectric.... I made about 1400 watts 24 hours a day... I had enough for everything except home heating... I did everything else!...

Electricity made from Gas is not "alternative power"....

I'm sure you know what I mean, and I know what you mean.....

We need to develope alternative power!.. but until that happens.. its cheaper from out of my pocket to use grid power than spend it on gas... and thats probrably just because the price of gas has been raised so stinkin artificially high for the regular consumer compared to what it "really" cost the electric companies. There's a good reason Exxon made so much profit recently and still is!... we pay "way" more than it really cost the big boys!

Hybrid users can benifit from the cost of grid power, because they cannot raise everyones home electric rates to try and catch the hybrid users!

 

OK.
The plug-in Prius by EDrive will have 9kWh battery.
When you are going to charge the battery in 6 minutes, you'll require 90kW for 6 minutes.
It is 409 amp at 220 volt, what a huge charge station!!!

Ken@Japan

 

Even when FC are around, I rather have FC system at my house generating power than having to lug it around town.

I rather have an electric car instead since FC stations are not available any time soon. And probably cheaper to buy and have a tanker refuel in my house than find a station.