<![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry - Jalopnik Comments]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry - Jalopnik Comments]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> For all of you who are nay-saying with words such as "bullshit" did you bother to read the patent? Do you know enough electro-chemistry to understand it, even roughly? Yes it's a capacitor, and did you bother to apprise yourselves on state-of-the-art capacitors? Did you read the latest on nanotechnology, and the manufacture of nano-materials to precise specs? If you crappers really want to do something worthwhile, criticize the actual applied acience and technology in a scientific way, point for point, instead of deriding the work without even examining it - which you obviously did not do!!!

TomFenton

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> Well, is it a capicator or a battery? With the huge amount of energy in this thing, every car is a mini-nuke waiting to detonate if something shorts out. Fire departments are already wary of hybrids, even. Hopefully they have this figured out. If so, and the costs are realistic, this is a major deal.

poppix920

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> High power switching regulators are used to change a varying DC input voltage into a fixed DC output voltage. They can easily handle this power level and the input voltage (3,500V) is also manageable. The efficiency can be quite high(~95% at this power level).

rauckr

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> re:comment by tj on electrical capacity - - although there may be 8 billion mdgawatt hours per year capacity, it may not actually be available - for example, the capacity of a hydroelectric plant is often a factor of two higher than the available water flow on an annual basis.

Another question, a capacitor would change voltage as it discharges. To have reasonable efficiency, the system must be able to use the variable voltage - anybody know how this is done?

stralkin

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> See somewhat more info at http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/15/technology/disruptors_eest...

I picked up this magazine for flight last night. Lead article lists 11 top innovations ("disruptors"). Would love to see it play out for the implications on Middle East and counties s.a. Venezuela. Then again - how much is hype? And what about the Texas connection - I'd feel better if it was born in Ann Arbor.

eoum1978

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> Hey Xman; Maybe you need the grid. However, thanks to solar and wind energy we don't.Of course, there will also be many other energy sources, too!

TBone

tone

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> They most likely use carbon (or nanotube?) based supercapacitors. Supercapacitors just like regular capacitors in your PC power supply, except they use materials like activated carbon to provide mind-boggling surface area. More surface area == more capacitance == more energy storage.

Capacitors dont need babying like batteries ... they can be discharged by shorting across the terminals or charged in a hurry with thousands of amperes in a short time .. they dont care.

Up till recently the thing holding Supercapacitors back is the fact that for a given weight, they dont store as much energy as say a Li - Ion battery. Maybe these guys have
a) Solved the energy storage problem (nanotubes anyone?) or
b) Use supercaps for energy recapture / charging and use high zoot power electronics to charge a fragile battery pach at its leisure

Assuming it really works, big oil / Detroit may kill this in the US... Still why can I see some dude in China (borrowing?) and mass producing a similar system -- they are determined to get primacy and dont give a damn about big US oil.

vicman

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> They most likely use carbon (or nanotube?) based supercapacitors. Supercapacitors just like regular capacitors in your PC power supply, except they use materials like activated carbon to provide mind-boggling surface area. More surface area == more capacitance == more energy storage.

Capacitors dont need babying like batteries ... they can be discharged by shorting across the terminals or charged in a hurry with thousands of amperes in a short time .. they dont care.

Up till recently the thing holding Supercapacitofs back is the fact that for a given weight, they dont store as much energy as say a Li - Ion battery. Maybe these guys have
a) Solved the energy storage problem or
b) Use supercaps for energy recapture / charging and use high zoot power electronics to charge a fragile battery pack at its leisure

Big oil / Detroit may kill this in the US... Still why can I see some dude in China (borrowing?) and mass producing a similar system -- They dont give a damn about Big US oil

vicman

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> The website is eestor.us but as you will see, they have done nothing but reserve the name. The inventors are being quite secretive, for better or worse. Maybe they don't want investors because if true, its worth a lot more to them if they don't have to share the profits. Most of the information comes from their patent application which specifies a 11"x13.5"13.5" cube at 336 lb with 52kWh (31F at 3500V). If you work through the calculations using a parallel plate capacitor, it seems possible, but I don't know enough about capacitors to give a definitive answer (do multi-material capacitors with glass and barium titanate add up capacitance in series or parallel?). The price is supposed $3200 early and dropping to $2100 in full production. A little uncomfortable with all these dramatic claims, but I wouldn't rule it out. As for the electric grid, most of the time you could recharge at night, when demand is much lower. Prices will be lower and no new capacity would be needed, by my calculations, for all transportation. The current breakdown is about 33% electric, 33% heating, and 33% transportation. Since cars are about 20%, electric cars on their own would cut this to about 5-7%. So that takes electric to about 40%. Currently, we have capacity of 1 million megawatts in the US, enough to produce 8 billion megawatt hours per year. Yet we only use about 4 billion megawatt hours as a nation. The rest of the time, the capacity is either idling (the electric companies hate this) at night or being repaired. So, if everyone has a timer in their garage, we have more than enough capacity to slow charge the nation's cars at night. As for horsepower and efficiency, there is no relationship in an electric car, as a more powerful motor just runs less often. And since electric motors are 90-95% efficient, they blow the combustion engine, at 15-20%, out of the water. Of course, this bombast is all for naught if the battery never works out. I'm sure Elon already knows.

mjtimber

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> there isn't anything on them anywhere on the intertubes. they aren't publicly traded, no website, nada - just wildassed speculation spreading like a gas fire.

wohho

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> Does anyone have the EEstor wesbite? I can not come up with anything.

The Reviewer

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> It is of course possible to built an atomic reactor the size of a salted and boiled Georgia peanut in-the-shell to power a car or truck. The problem is cost. Maybe they should put the preserved head of Sam Walton in charge of this miracle battery program.

monkeywrench

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> This sounds like the 100mpg (projected), 200hp (projected), 50lb (projected) 9 cycle rotary engines crackpots are always coming out with. Hope this one is for real though.

If it is, don't worry about the electrical grid, gas nut. We'll build more. Nuclear, wind, solar panels on my garage, whatever. Fuck it, we'll burn coal and pump the fucking CO2 into the ground if we have to.

Or maybe we can just wait around for the magickal "hydrogen economy" to appear, always 10-15 years away.

superbad

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> If a company like Wal-Mart footed the bill for several wind generators and a solar array farm to charge the batteries (like Costco has gas pumps) then its ON like Donkey Kong.

BlueRSX

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> $9 of juice in 5 minutes is a whopper of a lot of electricity moving around. We're talking serious, organ liquifying amperage.

wohho

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> The fact that Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley VC firm, is backing EEstor gives them lots of credibility. They don't invest recklessly, and when they do they often have winners. For example, they funded Google and Amazon.com.

DanceWithGoats

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> Sounds like the water engine. If it is, they will be getting a goverment contract soon, never to be seen again. ohhhh conspiracy

Buckster

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> If this is for real, shouldn't someone tell Elon Musk?

getgreg

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> When I first read the headline I thought maybe somebody had come up with replaceable/removable battery pack, like on a cordless drill, so that you could have one on the charger and one in the car.

Xman - Maybe people could charge them at night when there is excess capacity to be had?

comedian

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> That is, if it works.

Papercutninja

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> It'll never see the light of day once Exxon or Saudi Arabi buys the patent.

Papercutninja

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> How's the currently straining power grid going to handle the huge current draw of so many people charging up their EVs?? Answer me that EV-nuts....

Xman

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> ^ I agree. I wish it were true. Maybe it's true, but the size of the batteries are similar to baby whale.
If its true I want my 4x4 to have an engine and electric motor so I can drive for 800 miles...
yeah right...

SOAZtim

]]> <![CDATA[Never-Ending Potency: Battery Replacement Could Charge Electric-Car Industry]]> I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "bullshit." I sincerely hope I'm wrong (as this would be really cool), but such tremendous technological advancements in so short a period of time just don't ring true. For instance, how much does said device cost?

Bumblebee

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