Re: Tata's $2500 59mpg car on display in January

Alvin E. Toda wrote:
On Wed, 26 Dec 2007, Islander wrote:

Rumpelstiltskin wrote:
On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:05:27 -1000, "Alvin E. Toda" <aet@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007, John Galt wrote:

"Islander" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:mrCdnfvAXeLsP-_anZ2dnUVZ_hadnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The key to the electrics is, I think, the introduction of lithium ion batteries, light weight and long life. I've been watching their introduction into portable electronics and power tools where they are becoming standard. Scale them up a bit and electric cars become viable, IMV.
This is how the Prius tinkers got the Prius up to a couple hundred miles per gallon -- they added a few thousand dollars worth of LI's into the the trunk and a way to plug them in. This decreased the frequency of having to kick in the gasoline engine to recharge the batteries, and off they went.

An interesting concept. Not cost effective for the consumer (the LI's don't last forever), but certainly environmentally friendly
There's a lot of research going on for cars which can be plugged in for recharging. But from what I hear in the news, it seems that large capacity pasive devices called super-capacitors would be playing a large role in these electric cars. Having something like this in the system would allow the designer to control the rate of charging and extend the life of the battery.


Super-capacitors sound super-dangerous. I've told before of a lab assistant nicknamed Boy Blunder, (under supervision of Ratman) who put a screwdriver across the terminals of a 1/3 Farad capacitor, creating a small explosion and melting the capacitor, leaving Boy Blunder all agog and all us kids looking over at his bench to see what happened. Capacitance is usually measured in microfarads, but you'd probably need even more than that 1/3 Farad to store enough power for a car.

<snip>

Stored electric energy in any form is dangerous if you short it out. A car battery, for example, can cause severe burns if shorted. Imagine what can happen if you have the equivalent of dozens of car batteries which would approximate the amount of electrical energy that you would have to store in order to make an electric car viable. Lithium ion batteries are especially dangerous if damaged and there is quite a lot of on-going research to assure that they can be made safe, even if shorted out.

But, a gas tank full of gasoline is pretty dangerous too. Recall the problem with the Ford Pinto some time back.

The bottom line is that you need a substantial amount of energy stored in some form, chemical or electrical or a combination of both in order to replicate the 200 to 250 range of automobiles. I'm sure that there are Boy Blunders waiting in the wings to figure out how to do damage with that amount of energy.

Just as an aside, I can also vouch for how dangerous horses are.


It's usually possible to anticipate blunders and make the system safe. Whatever the problem with the power source though, it seems that electricity is the most likely alternative. BTW another problem is to ensure that it is robust enough to work under all kinds of conditions.

Yes, and this is a problem for lithium ion batteries. They presently have a limited operating temperature range. There are claims of innovations to extend that range, but I'm not aware of anything in the market yet.
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