Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology have co-developed a nickel-hydrogen battery that recharges in less than 10 seconds, the Nikkei [sub] reports. That should get your plug-in EV or hybrid back on the road much faster than getting a tank of gas, a coffee and a doughnut. The new battery’s performance barely declines even after 1,000 quick charges, the developers say. That’s the good news. The bad news:
Kawasaki Heavy won’t have the battery ready for sale before five years are over. And when they are ready, they will go into trolleys, trams and buses. It’s a space thing. Not as in Buck Rogers. Space as in room to lug the thing around.
Hybrid automobiles currently use nickel-hydrogen batteries, but are moving to more powerful lithium ion. Large vehicles that have plenty of space, can accommodate the high-performance nickel-hydrogen batteries.
How about them Hummers?
What irony that would be for a “green” vehicle to be the size of a Hummer? Well at least the Hollywood elitists could still show up to their parties in big vehicles and not feel guilty.
Love the shirt!
“…a nickel-hydrogen battery that recharges in less than 10 seconds…”
Unless they learned how to defy the laws of physics, recharging a car-sized capable battery in less than ten seconds would spin the meter off the wall and cause it to explode unless you were hard wired directly into the grid.
It seems like no-one has addressed how such a battery could be supplied with enough electricity to be charged in 10 seconds. For example, to charge a 16kW-hr battery like the Volt’s in ten seconds you would need a 5,760 kW supply. If the voltage was 220, this means the amperage would be 26,182! Does anyone think your local C-store will have one of these?
Commando1: Well, they are talking STREETCAR SIZED No overhead wire. Streetcar stops. Discharges passengers. Charges battery, moves on. After all lights went out in the neighborhood, perhaps.
where do you get those T Shirts From?
I find it ironic that most electric cars are considered green b/c they get their power from the grid. That magic grid of electricity that burns coal which produces more emissions and pollution than a clean burning diesel or gasoline engine. Or creates toxic waste, or damages water habitats (dams and hydro power), etc. For most people out of sight out of mind.
Electric cars are not the answer until we can provide electricity from clean sources that do not alter ecosystems (i.e. solar / wind / geothermal).
Figuring it’s kawasaki, who wants to bet that they’ll have an electric motorcycle built around this bike? Perhaps it will have 20, 120v charging cords.
Obviously the answer to the recharge problem is a recharging station, which can invest in the tech needed to handle the bursts of electricity needed.
There have been two kinds of comments about this: ones from those that understand electrical energy and the immense sudden load this would represent…and those that don’t. When I said immense, we’re talking about megawatts, about maybe having your own electrical substation, one of those yards full of big-ass transformers with a direct high-tension feed.
Urban rail transit systems (think of the Chicago L) deal with these sorts of power levels, albeit with several distributed substations. The rectifiers to convert the AC into DC for the batteries in this scheme will be, ahem, supersized. Not something to be found on every corner, or run by people with little training or education.
Don’t forget your insulated boots and gloves and your safety eye wear. Also, be sure to follow instructions to avoid arcing.
jaje said:
I find it ironic that most electric cars are considered green b/c they get their power from the grid. That magic grid of electricity that burns coal which produces more emissions and pollution than a clean burning diesel or gasoline engine. Or creates toxic waste, or damages water habitats (dams and hydro power), etc. For most people out of sight out of mind.
Electric cars are not the answer until we can provide electricity from clean sources that do not alter ecosystems (i.e. solar / wind / geothermal).
True qualitatively, but not necessarily quantitatively. If the extra electricity is produced using the best thermal conversion methods available (e.g., syngas combined cycle), you get electricity out with up to 40% efficiency (ratio of electrical energy out to fossil energy in). Then you transmit and transform it with about 84% efficiency, and use it in a battery / electric motor combination with about 72% efficiency. 40% x 84% x 72% = 24.1% overall efficiency of fossil fuel energy conversion to mechanical energy at the crankshaft.
Petroleum based fuels are extracted, processed and delivered with an efficiency of about 85%, ***but then used in IC motors with about 20% efficiency***, so overall energy efficiency is only about 17%.
Conclusion: if we make the electricity properly, EV vehicles can be more efficient, considering the whole system. Plus, in the US we are using prmarily coal which has a practically unlimited DOMESTIC supply, rather than petroleum which does not. Plus, by doing the fossil fuel combustion centrally in thermal generation plants, rather than in millions of cars idling on city streets, there is at least the opportunity to make use of the most advanced pollution controls available, and even to pursue carbon capture technologies.
I just love the smell of electrical fires first thing in the morning
I won’t need to be addressing the technical issues here, since others have done so, but anytime you read something in the text like
won’t have the battery ready for sale before five years are over
…that alone should trigger a vaporware alert.
jaje :
June 10th, 2009 at 9:12 am
I find it ironic that most electric cars are considered green b/c they get their power from the grid. That magic grid of electricity that burns coal which produces more emissions and pollution than a clean burning diesel or gasoline engine. Or creates toxic waste, or damages water habitats (dams and hydro power), etc. For most people out of sight out of mind.
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Your logic is flawed. It’s unfair to compare coal-electricity-cars to gasoline cars. Fair comparisons would be
1) Coal-electricity-cars vs. Coal-burning-cars
2) Gasoline-electricity-cars vs. Gasoline-burning-cars
Either way, electricity cars win.
See, with electric cars replacing ICE cars, you don’t have to use coal to generate the additional electricity needed by electric cars. You can simply use the gasoline or diesel that would otherwise be used by ICE cars.
And, a 10 Megawatt diesel burning generator is far more clean and efficient than your 2.0 TDI.
Someone should do the math before they get excited.
To recharge a battery pack the size of the Tesla Roadster’s (53 kWh) in 10 seconds would require over 72,000 amps using 440 volt input. This is lightning bolt amperage. If you could wait 6 minutes, about the same time to put 20 gallons in the tank, it would be 1,200 amps. To get down to a reasonable 50 amps, it would require over two hours to refuel.
The problem of refueling an electric vehicle is not so much in the battery as it is with handling the massive amount of energy when it is in pure electron form.
A 10 second quick recharge is useless for automotive purposes. Not because the grid couldn’t handle it but because the car couldn’t loose the heat quick enough. A battery loose a few % of the electricity to heat when it is recharge. That would be the same as the energy release of a litre of gas in 10 seconds. Not something you want to be near to
I had a Kawasaki Battery drill, I was semi happy with for the day it lasted, the replacement lasted a month before it got fried too. I politely declined the third replacement and asked for my money back.
Hope they have come a long way in their battery development since those turds hit the market.
A 10 second quick recharge is useless for automotive purposes. Not because the grid couldn’t handle it but because the car couldn’t loose the heat quick enough. A battery loose a few % of the electricity to heat when it is recharge. That would be the same as the energy release of a litre of gas in 10 seconds. Not something you want to be near to
Maybe they chill the whole shebang with the Mr. Freeze’s diamond powered freeze ray until it superconducts, or something.
@Robstar :
June 10th, 2009 at 9:25 am
“Figuring it’s kawasaki, who wants to bet that they’ll have an electric motorcycle built around this bike? Perhaps it will have 20, 120v charging cords.”
Nothing like getting out on a sunny day, jumping on your bike, keying the ignition, and listening to it………..hum?!?!?
Lol!
With a small battery you can dissipate that much heat so for a drill (or maybe something even smaller) it is usefull. but a car? forget it
Clueless comments about. We already have “10-second charge” batteries, those are called capacitors, in some cases supercapacitors.
Quite a few of new breed of power lithium batteries are 10-minute charge capable as well, meaning they have high C rating for both charge and discharge.
Kawasaki put another one together, fine.
Charge rate hasnt been a problem in a while.
Delivering the burst of energy from the grid would be a problem, but if you have a battery in a car that can charge in 10 seconds, you can have a similar stationary battery that can discharge in 10 secons. Or a flywheel, those are already in use to stabilize grids.
Now getting the charge from one battery to another would still require fat power cables, but even there it would be possible to up the voltage, or use magnetic coupling.
None of these problems are unsolveable, the charging infrastructure will develop in future and become quite flexible, depending on which direction the auto manufacturers take ( quick charges, battery swaps, tricklecharge from solar, range extenders etc etc )
And as for the “electricity from coal isnt green” claims, go get a clue. Even the Prius produces about three times Co2 per mile, when compared to an efficient battery-electric like Roadster, powered from coal-derived electricity.
We already have “10-second charge” batteries, those are called capacitors, in some cases supercapacitors.
You sound so proud of yourself. Did these supercapacitators just get invented in your world?
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Charge rate hasnt been a problem in a while.
Room temperature superconductors must be available in your universe, too.
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Even the Prius produces about three times Co2 per mile, when compared to an efficient battery-electric like Roadster, powered from coal-derived electricity.
Yeah, I guess if your alternate universe lready have a super-conductors grid and superlative-capacitator cars, you’re all set.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor
Go buy them from Maxwell
BATTERY Charge rate hasnt been a problem, pumping megawatts over the wire obviously is, and as pointed out, there are workable solutions.
Oh everyone knows they’ve been invented here for ages. They’re only novel to your universe.
BATTERY Charge rate hasnt been a problem, pumping megawatts over the wire obviously is, and as pointed out, there are workable solutions.
Oh really? So they already invented diamond powered freeze rays in your universe to resolve the potentially K-MW’s of resistive heating we’re talking about at those charge rates?