Austin-based EEStor says its cracked it. It's developed an electric car battery that will allow a car to travel for 500 miles on a five-minute charge. According to the AP, the Texas company's ultracapacitor (that's ultra, not flux) has a secret ingredient: "a material [barium titanate] sandwiched between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets, like a series of foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other. Charged particles stick to the metal sheets and move quickly across EEStor's proprietary material." Although Canadian electric car maker ZENN Motors says its taking delivery of the new battery for its "short-range, low-speed vehicles" and hailed the technology as "paradigm shift… that would would make internal combustion engines unnecessary" (note: would not will), skeptics are plenty damn skeptical. Ultracapacitor competitor Maxwell Technologies says the EEstor's doo-hickey won't work with regular wall outlets, could crack from road surface jolts or slowly discharge on it own, leaving the driver stranded. Georgia Tech Prof Joseph Perry shares similar concerns, but "I'd be very happy to be proved wrong." Amen.
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
I’d love to see this actually work.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, MY electric vehicle gets 1,000,000 miles to the charge and also goes 300 miles per hour, runs the quarter in 9 seconds, and can charge itself as it drives with only a modest decrease in power. I accept cash payments from those wishing to get in line for the first production vehicles which are coming out sometime soon.
Mmmm, Tesla go-cart.
Screw the capacitors — I’d like to see the 5-megajoule battery charger.
Charge in 5 minutes? That would require some very large changes in the electrical infastructure. It is not going to happen any time soon.
miked–you out there? please repeat the bit about the charging station replacing gas stations.
bottom line, a 5 minute charge for 500 miles is enough energy in a small amount of time to be wildly dangerous.
I was pouring gas into our tractor when I was twelve. Isn’t the energy in ten or twenty gallons of gasoline wildly explosive? We’ve simply accepted that risk.
How many gas pumps have a lock out that prevents you from pouring gas on the ground (as the moron next to you smokes while he’s filling up his still-sputtering ’70s POS)? It’d be easier to build one into a brand new form of charging connector that won’t allow current to flow until the plug is securely fixed into place.
Of course, this begs the question of this battery/cap actually working, being feasible to produce, and the requisite changes in wiring necessary to deliver 5.8 gigjoules of power to every other station in America…
a material [barium titanate] sandwiched between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets, like a series of foil-and-paper gum wrappers
For some reason, this article made me kinda hungry.
The article says charging is “lightning fast” but it won’t work with an ordinary wall outlet. Obviously, the charging device is actually a rain machine that instantly generates storms that provide five minutes of continuous lightning bolts. There’ll be no need to revamp the electric power infrastructure.
Obviously, the charging device is actually a rain machine that instantly generates storms that provide five minutes of continuous lightning bolts. There’ll be no need to revamp the electric power infrastructure.
Didn’t Nikola Tesla already invent/discover this “free-energy lighting power source” and Westinghouse killed it 80 years ago because free means without-profit.
The claim is a 500 mi charge in 5 minutes.
500 mi = 800 km
5 min = 300 sec
I have researched electric cars using NREL’s data, and based on their electric car research and the amount of gasoline used by the Honda Insight, an 850kg sub-compact sized car, I believe that you might get 100km for 50MJ (J= Joule = 1 watt * 1 second) of electricity.
So 800 km would require 400 MJ of electricity = 400 MWs.
400 MWs / 300 s = 1.3 MW
Watts = volts * amperes
Clearly we would need currents of kilo-amperes at kilo-volts to meet the claim. I doubt if this can be done by untrained people without special equipment.
Conclusion. Nothing to see here, move right along, please.
why are people wasting money and time coming up with all these useless battery/electric motor. People know that these so call hybrid or gas savinf vehicles will never make it to the market. People still waste money and time on these knowing that no matter how hard they try it will never replace regualr gasoline vehicles. Cause big oil company that runs this country will never give up their money making ways and switch to these so call battery/electric motor….
For anyone who thinks that “big oil” runs the country, I have some great news!
You too can start an oil company!
The technology to take oil out of the ground and turn it into gasoline is NOT, I repeat NOT rocket science. It is over 100 years old, and really, HAS NOT CHANGED (unless you want to do stupid high risk, high capital types of drilling). In fact, low volume producing wells are available at reasonable costs even today! People buy them, and collect the profits all the time.
See, you don’t even have to prospect, just buy one!
I think you will find, however, that “big oil” is only profitable because they do LOTS of volume in a very efficient way at insanely LOW margins. Your present way of life has been made possible buy these people, and they are in NO WAY impeding your ability to live how you would like.
If they were unjustly making HUGE profits at everyone elses expense, then someone could have easily come along and started doing it cheaper.
No one is killing off oil entrepeneurs in some conspiracy. The fact is, “big oil” is doing it about as cheap as it can be done. The only way to make big margins is to do so in the highly risky futures markets – JUST LIKE THE ONES THAT EXIST FOR EVERY OTHER COMMODITY!
Where is the cry about “big pork bellies”?