Electric car breakthrough: 5 minute charge gets 500 miles

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

As far as other alternatives to gas go, electrical is really the only one that's fully viable in the near future.

Ethanol is nice for alleviating some of the demand for gas, and can be implemented tomorrow, but there just aren't enough potential sources of ethanol for it to ever account for more than ~10% of cars.

Likewise for biodiesel, propane, and natural gas.

Fuel cells would be great, but the technology just isn't ready yet, and it's unclear when it will be. Same for superflywheels.

The technology for electric cars, on the other hand, is fully viable today. If we were really serious about it and uncaring of effects on the economy, we could replace 100% of all cars with electric cars. Not so for any other alternative to gas.

The ideal solution, in my mind, is to stop looking for a "magic bullet", and use a combination of different available technologies. If production of ethanol, biodiesel, propane, and natural gas were at full tilt, together they could account for a significant chunk of the car market. With electric cars taking up some more slack and more diesel cars, it would be entirely possible to reduce gas-driven cars to a third or so of new cars sold, which would vastly reduce or perhaps even eliminate our depedence on foreign oil over the next decade. And the beauty of this plan is that it could be implemented tomorrow. The government could simply set standards for automakers that a certain percentage of their cars must use certain alternative fuels, with those percentages based on the production capacity of each alternative fuel.

The new wonder-technologies down the road would make things even easier, but there is no reason to sit on our collective asses and do jack shit until they arrive. Not when we have perfectly viable alternatives right now.

[FireNexus]

The government could simply set standards for automakers that a certain percentage of their cars must use certain alternative fuels, with those percentages based on the production capacity of each alternative fuel.

That's as likely to happen any time in the next twenty years as my penis tripling in size.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I said it was possible, not that it was likely to happen under current political conditions. The point is that those conditions are the only things stopping it, not any technical considerations.

[aerius]

Still, if they put a heavy enclosure that required special tools to open (to prevent do-it-yourselfers from getting themselves killed), it would only be a potential monetary expense and not really a significant safety hazard, correct?

Keep in mind that no matter how you armour the energy storage device, it has to have power leads to connect it to the charger, the drive system, and everything else in the car that uses electricity. The charger connection's relatively easy to take care of, the drive system's not too bad, but the rest of the car's going to take a lot of detail work. I think it's pretty doable but it ain't gonna be easy.

The government could simply set standards for automakers that a certain percentage of their cars must use certain alternative fuels, with those percentages based on the production capacity of each alternative fuel.

That's as likely to happen any time in the next twenty years as my penis tripling in size.

Every time I get a boner my penis triples in size.


Ok, seriously. If I wanted automakers to build efficient cars I'll just raise the CAFE standard by 10mpg or so and close a few loopholes. Then pick-ups and SUVs get reclassified as passenger vehicles, and I make the fines truly prohibitive. If someone wants to buy an Expedition, the cost literally gets doubled or worse with my new gas guzzler tax.

It's time to start shrinking cars back down again or making them a lot lighter. A modern day Honda Civic is the size of a Honda Accord from 10-15 years ago. My 2000 Chevy Malibu, a mid-size sedan, is the size of a full-size Delta 88 from the late 80's, and the engine has more power too. With cheap gas and laughable CAFE standards, it's no wonder that cars are getting bigger, heavier, and more powerful with each passing year. If the automakers spent as much effort making more efficient cars as they do making more powerful & faster cars, we could easily have family cars that average 40mpg. GM can make a 505 horsepower car that doesn't get hit with a gas guzzler tax, I'm pretty sure they can use some of that technology to make a 200 horsepower family car that gets 40mpg.

[ThatGuyFromThatPlace]

Still, if they put a heavy enclosure that required special tools to open (to prevent do-it-yourselfers from getting themselves killed), it would only be a potential monetary expense and not really a significant safety hazard, correct?

Keep in mind that no matter how you armour the energy storage device, it has to have power leads to connect it to the charger, the drive system, and everything else in the car that uses electricity. The charger connection's relatively easy to take care of, the drive system's not too bad, but the rest of the car's going to take a lot of detail work. I think it's pretty doable but it ain't gonna be easy.

couldn't you have the leads inside the case and only available through a Fuse, so that if the external leads are shorted, the fuses blow and break the connection?

[Stile]

Still, if they put a heavy enclosure that required special tools to open (to prevent do-it-yourselfers from getting themselves killed), it would only be a potential monetary expense and not really a significant safety hazard, correct?

Keep in mind that no matter how you armour the energy storage device, it has to have power leads to connect it to the charger, the drive system, and everything else in the car that uses electricity. The charger connection's relatively easy to take care of, the drive system's not too bad, but the rest of the car's going to take a lot of detail work. I think it's pretty doable but it ain't gonna be easy.

couldn't you have the leads inside the case and only available through a Fuse, so that if the external leads are shorted, the fuses blow and break the connection?

Or use a DC-AC converter and transformers.

[drachefly]

What's interesting is that none of the articles on the Web about this EEStor company and their ultracapacitor even mention the obvious question of what happens when you short the terminals. They talk about how it's safer because it can't blow up like a battery or leak acid, but they don't mention the fact that capacitors discharge their entire stored energy in a split-second when shorted: no small problem if the energy capacity is sufficient to power a performance automobile.

Which terminals? The refueling terminals on the side of the car? It would be very easy to put a heavy-duty diode (or series set of diodes to disperse the voltage load) on them so charge won't flow back out.

As for the internal terminals on the device itself, it wouldn't be too hard to put a safety switch on which cuts it off if the impedance across the terminals drops below some particular value. If nothing else, a circuit breaker would do.
To prevent serious damage being done in the mean time, an inductor would give the impedance-detecting circuit some time to throw the switch before the dispersed energy had gotten large.


So... even if they haven't incorporated such safety features yet, they can be without trouble.