Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Have your cake and eat it too!

[Britt2Asa (Britt2Asa]

 

 

In a message dated 22/05/2010 18:58:15 GMT Daylight Time, FList [at] hanshansen.org writes:

Just a couple of quick notes:

 

1.  The $5K gadget he mentioned is *not* for a charger.  It is the "battery

management system" that is an integral part of the car.  It monitors and

controls both charging and discharging.  Most electric cars don't need

any sort of expensive dedicated charger - altho they are available if

quick charging is needed.  The Tesla is capable of recharging from

a regular 110V socket, as well as 220V household (think drier outlet)

sockets.  No special equipment needed, unless you want to go with

the 70A quick charge option.

 

Actually it is the Charger. the Tesla has a setup a bit different than what I work tih. Not better or worse, just different. The battery management system is something else. Over here as in all of Europe we work on 240v so things work a bit quicker for charging than in the USA. The lower voltage in the USA does throw up some interesting issues for home charging...

 

2.  When the battery eventually poops out, it will be recycled.  See

the Tesla website for more info.  This isn't a green weenie don't polute

effort; rather it is a practical economic one.  The contents of the battery

are valuable enough that it would be stupid to throw it away.

 

This is correct. That Li is valuable. It will be recycled. Actually 100% of the vehicle has to be recycled per the EU laws now...

 

3.  Yes, if too many people jump on the electric bandwagon, it could

tax the existing electric infrastructure.  Somewhere on the Tesla site

I read that if 1/3 of your neighbors try to recharge their Teslas at the

highest current rate (240V/70A) at the same time, it could overload your

neighborhood power transformer (that big thingy on top of a power pole

somewhere down the street).  So this is not an "end" technology, but

rather a supplemental one to what we already have.

 

I believe this issue will vary by country and how the infrastructure is set up. Keep in mind the daily worker is not the only place you will se EV in use. Think Bus, truck, delivery vehicles, post office vehicles ect. Charge from a commercial depot where the power supply is available. Think the 15,000 vehicles that operate at Atlanta Hartsfield as airport vehicles.... things like that.

 

Regards Britt

 

Hans.

On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 6:33 AM, Mike Fleischer <themightytoe [at] gmail.com> wrote:

OK

 

>The analogy is a bit silly if you don't mind me saying. Do you not think the battery failed in your computer because the charger was >probably not the best?

Silly?  Maybe it was poor charge cycling?  But no one can argue that the endless battery doesn't yet exist.  They all fail eventually.  But the point was when it did fail, finding a matching new one is a problem.  And that's for a 10 ounce pack...  Eventually the stuff will standardize but I don't want to be the guy with the beta VCR when it does.

It sounds like fantastic stuff on the horizon no question.  But a 5 grand swiss charge station doesn't sound like its going to be mainstream anytime soon?  Is this an install at your home or at your place of business?  How many Tesla's or LEAF's can you charge on that 5 grand station at one time 1/2 or 1/4 of a car?  How long to fully charge a LEAF that is completely discharged?  half a charge?  Sorry if this is still under NDA :)

I agree its going to eventually happen, but unless battery tech makes significant strides its going to trade in on current problems and pose as large or a larger problems than our current mainstream solution of gasoline.  The energy density of even today's best commercially available batteries isn't even in the ballpark close to Diesel or Gasoline, this looks dated to me, I think Li+ is actually about 2x better today than this chart shows, but its still miles away from what OPEC provides:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_density.svg

This means that if 50% of drivers go electric, we burn that much more coal (and its not 2x, more like 10x) (or nuclear fuel if you are in France) and the mild brownouts seen even in the United states become much less mild.  Also even if you manage to double the useful life of those batteries, they will still end up in a dump somewhere, does it matter if its 10 years or 30 years away?  Li+ always wants to be Li2 eventually.  And you really shouldn't drink that stuff, nor should your great grandchildren.

What I don't like most however is the utter shortsightedness of adding batteries to cars and kicking them out the door for a quick profit.  A 5000 charge station looks bad but is likely cheap compared to the infrastructure redesign that governments would need to undertake to properly run induction lines through roads, and let the cars minimize the on board energy storage.  This would improve efficiency across the board as the vehicles become much lighter, the need to recharge goes away, and so on...  We could still learn a lot from Nikolai Tesla, that guy had to be an alien or time-traveler...
 
BR,
Mike