News Silicon to improve batteries tenfold

you do know all-electric cars already exist right? range and recharge time are already problems. these new batteries would take a huge chunk out of both of those, closing the gap between electric and gasoline cars.

as far as price per mile, electrics already have fossil fuel vehicles beat by a long ways.

 

That's really cool. Hopefully it'll be here sooner than later.

 

Electric motorcycles, too! But as you say, range and recharge time make them only useful for a narrow band of applications. For something like a 50 mile a day commuter it's already there, easily within range and rechargable overnight but good luck going more than a couple hundred miles without significant downtime to recharge.

With the new technology from the article there are really two applications to electric vehicles: Keep the same bulk of batteries but have massively increased range (1000+ miles), or reduce the battery bulk in order to reduce weight and cost while maintaining a range which is deemed acceptable.

Or more recently, HAMR technology meant to increase capacity on physical hard drives. Ended up having HDD capacities balloon past the typical user's needs anyway. It's always a good thing to be researching new technologies, people just need to look at them for what they are and, equally important, journalists need to stop over hyping technology which is still quite far away.

 

The battery we built into our electric snowmobile could be charged from flat to full in around 15 min, you would just need a sufficiently powerful charger. Our battery pack was 176 volts and could output 350 kilowatts in bursts or 246 kilowatts sustained. If we upgraded our batteries to the premium version we could charge the whole battery in less than 2-3 minuets, and it would output over 1 Megawatt in bursts or, could run at ~600-700 kilowatts sustained.

The problem with current batteries isn't their power density (How much HP they can output) and charge time, it is their energy density. (How much power they store)



As for costs, an electric vehicle costs around 20% to go the same distance as the gas powered vehicle.

 

Oops hit the quote button instead of the edit button

 

uhhh....what?

i dont mean to doubt you, but those numbers are all ludicrous. the tesla roaster, the worlds fastest street legal electric vehicle, does 0-60 in 3.7 seconds and runs the 1/4 mile in 12.7 seconds all while pulling a maximum of 183kw. something as light as a snow machine putting down that much power would be moving too fast for a rider to hold on to. the tesla also takes 3.5 hours to recharge using a state of the art (it is a super car after all) charging system.

i guess im just going to require some proof before i can swallow those figures.

 

We'll see if this can actually produce the lab results in the real world - assuming it actually becomes a commercial product.

 

Wow, is it just me or would Electric cars now make sense? they'd take 30 minutes to charge and go 1,000 miles? I doubt you want to do much more than that in a day! And that'd easily take me to scotland for my jollydays....

Thats assuming, obviously, this technology is 'safe for use' in cars and the current average of MPC (miles per charge) of 100Miles (LOL) is true.

 

Yes I do know that . I read the story again because I had a feeling I had missed something and I did indeed. I missed the bit about faster recharge times, lol. You are right about these new batteries taking huge chunks out of range and recharge times, but I am still cynical about electric cars in general.

If you can show me proof that electric cars provide better price per mile, I would believe you, but for the time being you have nothing to back up that claim.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/17/nissan-leaf-electric-car-cost

bit old so not totally up to date prices but basics is

electirc car 2p per mile
petrol car 14p per mile

 

Cheers for that.

 

assuming one of the less efficient vehicles im familiar with, the ford ranger EV:

the battery stores 30kwh
electricity is $0.066 per kwh in my area
a full charge would cost you $1.98
real world range on this vehicle is about 65 miles
$1.98/65=$0.03/mi

a gasoline 4 cylinder ranger gets about 25mpg
yesterday when i filled up, i paid $3.66/gal
$3.66/25=$0.14/mi

even my fuel sipping escort costs me $0.10 a mile, 3 times that of an electric vehicle with the aerodynamic properties of a brick.

obviously savings will vary depending on local prices, but electric vehicles always come out on top by several fold.

sauce

 

Thanks for getting the information to me. I still think we need to wait a number of years for electric cars to be suitable for the majority of consumers. They save money in the long run, but the initial price is too high to be viable for most people.

 

Why do people think that electric vehicles are somehow better for the environment? Most electricity still comes from burning fossil fuels. So whether you burn them in your car, or at a power station, you are still using them up. Big waste of time. Wait for the hydrogen fuel cell.

But back on topic. Yeah I'm pretty excited about this. Seems batteries have needed to be improved for a very long time. Let us hope they don't run into production issues.

 

Gasoline powered vehicles need oil, which is **** for the environment, expensive and getting harder to extract. Electric motors can be powered by anything. Coal, oil, solar, wind, nuclear, hamsters etc etc. Its easier to improve the source of the electricity without any effects to the end user than it is to change how gasoline vehicles work. If you buy a Electric car now and in 10 years you can power it entirely from renewable sources from the grid, you dont need to change your car.

 

Fizzban, there are already some hydrogen fuel celled vehicles out there, Honda have the FCX Clarity for example. The initial problem is where do you fill them up? The first public station only opened in the UK September this year and it requires a significant infrastructure change before they become a viable option. Don't get me wrong, I agree whole heartedly that it is the better, greener alternative but even these are going to be using fossil fuel to generate the hydrogen, either directly from the fuel itself or by using electrolysis. Add on top of that the cost involved in producing the fuel cells themselves and we're still a fair way off.

Improved batteries are a good interim measure that may help in the shorter term by making it more viable for more people to go electric over fossil fuel (yes, I know it still ends up powered by fossil fuel but a degree more efficiently AFAIK) whereas fuel cells are a much longer term investment.

I definitely agree that would be nice to have a decent powered laptop (minimum quad core) with a charge lifespan measured in whole days as opposed to a few hours here and there though. I might even consider them as being less of a waste of space then

 

i never said anything about electric vehicles being better for the environment, but since we're on the subject...

saying "most" power still comes from fossil fuels is kind of a blanket statement. it varies highly by area. for example about 80% of the power in my area comes from 3 major hydro-electric projects in the olympic range. the rest is made up by natural gas fueled plants. even if 100% of my power came from the natural gas plants my carbon footprint would still be smaller than that of a gas vehicle due to stricter emissions standards on power plants and natural gas burning cleaner than gas or diesel.

hydrogen cell vehicles will be cool once someone is brave enough to stand up to the oil companies and start installing stations.

it used to be, but thats also getting better. the newest electric production vehicle, the nissan leaf, has a base price of $27k. thats not much more than a similarly equipped mid-size sedan.