Kevin Drum wants one.
I would too, if I thought for a minute that it would meet its declared specs – an electric car with a lithium-ion battery that does 0-60 in 4 seconds, has a top speed of 130 and a range of 250 miles.
One (or more) of these things is likely not to be true…I’ll keep an open ear, but will believe it when I see it proved.
What troubles me most is the Li-Ion part. Li-Ion batteries have a limited recharge cycle. They last maybe 300 recharges before they start degrading in charge capacity, with an effective useful life in the several hundred to low thousands of rechargings level. There is also, I believe, a degredation in performance over time which is completely independent of charging cycles. Meaning that the Li-Ion battery produced today is destined for the landfill within the next 5-10 years, tops. Even for those that sit on the shelf, apparently.
I would hardly describe that as an environmental “win” of any significant degree.
If there’s one thing I’m more than tired of in the realm of modern environmentalism it’s the lazy psuedo environmentalist who clambors for feel-good buzzwords but is utterly unable to evaluate the environmental impact of a given technological change. Such as switching to wind power for electricity, or switching to biodiesel for fuel, neither of which are entirely environmentally positive changes.
I did a quick Google, and it looks like the charge density of Li-I batteries is 150 200 Wh/Kg.
Gasoline has 12,000 Wh/Kg…
It’d be a fun exercise for someone with better math than mine to see if the performance envelope is achievable at those energy densities.
A.L.
Plus, over at wired, DaimlerChrysler just announced their electric car.
That sounds more sensible. Personally, though, I don’t see the point until most of our power is nuclear/hydro/solar/wind/etc. We have mostly coal power here, if I had an electric car all I would be doing is burning coal by proxy instead of oil. That has more of an economic/political benefit than an environmental one. (I’m not too worried about CO2 but I am worried about particular pollution and such.)
On the other hand I’d be quite happy to have a nuclear station nearby (doesn’t worry me) and charge a car off that. Wind or solar or whatever would be acceptable but I’m skeptical that it can be made economical.. yet. That may change as technology advances.
I think that the Tesla people need to be convinced that the blogosphere is the bleeding-edge marketing tool of the nulls. Their whole campaign must be based on a concentrated effort to bring bloggers, large and small, in from around the nation to stay at fine area hotels and test drive their new product.
The target market is price insensitive greenies. (Note the purchase price among all the specs?) Tesla will skim this rich but small market in an effort to generate enough profit to keep R&D going on the clear problem, the battery. It all depends on how long they can keep movie stars and liquidated Googlers sufficiently interested to keep funding flowing. Perhaps they should include forward dated stock options with each purchase.
There’s going to be a product in this space. It’s all a question of who introduces it when all the stars are aligned.
A mere $100,000. Hope to find one in my Xmas sock alongside the $70,000 103″ Panasonic plasma TV.
Life is good…..isn’t it?
Rip
What’s the warranty period and will it pass the NTSB’s safety ratings?
The main problem with electric cars has always been the limitations of existing batteries. They don’t have much range, and it takes a long time to recharge them. What I don’t understand is why no one has ever (to my knowledge) come up with a design where the battery pack is a module that could be lifted out and replaced within the span of time it takes to fill up a conventional car with gasoline. Instead of gas stations, you have battery stations where the depleted set is removed by some kind of lift, a new battery pack is inserted, and the depleted pack is put on a charger at the “gas station.” The battery packs would be kind of like glass beer bottles that you pay a deposit on; they wouldn’t be an intrinsic part of the vehicle. If the electric power that provided the charging came from a nuclear generating plant then so much the better. Such vehicles would not be practical for everyone, but they might make sense in urban areas where the commuting distance wasn’t that great.
tcobb,
That’s a darn good idea (although it creates the network problem of developing “battery stations.” Maybe gas stations could branch out?).
Too bad you’re discussing it publicly so you can’t patent it.
What worries me is a vehicle that can go 130 mph silently. I mean, it seems a bit dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, not to mention other auto drivers.
Maybe they could fix a playing card to project into the spokes with a clothespin?
As long as we’re all retreating into a fantasy world, I want a Cadillac that draws all its power from a local integral fusion reactor via wireless quantum technology. With leather seats that feel just like a woman’s butt.
“The battery packs would be kind of like glass beer bottles that you pay a deposit on; they wouldn’t be an intrinsic part of the vehicle.”
The problem is that batteries are worth FAR more than the charge on them. This limits the relationship to the service station. You would need a subscription. That means there would be far fewer places to get the batteries swapped.
I think an internal combustion engine to power batteries make much more sense until a good enough storage mechanism (like solid state hydrogen storage — 2-5 years away).
There are no plug-in hybrids currently on the market. A bio-diesel plug-in hybrid covered motorcycle (smaller than the Smart), could get hundreds of mpg of gasoline. I’m waiting 🙂
You would need a subscription. That means there would be far fewer places to get the batteries swapped.
I don’t see how this is a problem at all. You have to turn in your old battery pack. Make the model # match, no big deal. Or, if a subscription is truly required, a system similar to the ATM or credit card networds could easily handle it.
Performance-wise electric vehicles have many advantages, but principally low-end torque. They accelerate off the line better than gas engines, and have oodles of torque on the low end. Where most people need it.
The achilles heel as noted has been batteries and also of course, all the performance issues associated with that (power-to-weight, batteries are heavy, lack of range, etc).
There’s a lot to like from performance perspectives, if the chemistry can be adjusted to give better power; quick charging; and light weight. Not the least of which is that gas engines are relatively heavy. But these technical issues are tough to crack.
tcobb: In an electric car with practical range, the batteries are a substantial part of the mass of the vehicle–according to the Tesla Motors web site, the battery pack weighs about 1000 pounds, while the whole vehicle comes in at about 2500 pounds. NiMH would be heavier still and sealed lead acid batteries much heavier, e.g. in the lead-acid version of the GM EV1 (there was a NiMH version as well), the battery pack was 1075 of the 2900 pounds of the vehicle curb weight. With that much of the weight of the vehicle in batteries, replacing the batteries is on the scale of pulling the whole engine out of a conventional car if you concentrated the batteries in one spot. (The EV1 actually distributed the batteries in a cage which ran down half the car’s frame.)
As for the Tesla Motors car (and other auto applications), I’d be worried about the Lithium ion batteries going into thermal runaway and exploding.* That’s nasty enough when that happens with a cell phone sized battery. Fortunately, that should be rare, but given what I’ve read about people tampering with the Li-ion protection circuits in iPods…
* Thermal runaway is a failure mode which happens when a Li-ion/Li-polymer battery gets damaged physically or by improper charging or discharge and then goes into a positive feedback cycle where its temperature increases until the unit breaks by bursting violently into fire.
Sam: You mean like this exploding laptop? Man, won’t spontaneously exploding cars be fun? 😉
tcobb: That’s an interesting idea, the problem I see is that it will expose the real cost of powering the car. That is, you won’t only be paying for the electricity, but also the percentage of the life of the batteries you use up discharging them. That won’t be trivial. My guess is it will add US$10 to each recharge at a minimum ($5000 for the battery pack divided by 1000 charge lifespan, plus say $5 for the crane usage to swap out the battery pack and the area the battery pack takes up while charging). Maybe more. I’d be curious to know what the exact figure would be, and how that would affect electric car running costs vs. chemical-powered ones.
With that much of the weight of the vehicle in batteries, replacing the batteries is on the scale of pulling the whole engine out of a conventional car if you concentrated the batteries in one spot.
Well, substantially more than the whole engine for many cars.
But it’s still not a huge engineering issue. The reason it’s hard to pull an engine (and I’ve done it) is not that it’s heavy, the reason is that it’s connected by a hundred damn little hoses and wires and whatnot, packed into a tiny space like some sick game of Tetris played by engineers at the expense of mechanics, that all have to come off without breaking and go back into the right place when you’re done.
Give me a simple crane, a couple of hard points on the battery, and clear access, and I’ll swap it out in 5 minutes.
Hmm…. my comment is perhaps a little unfair to electric vehicles. Gasoline and kerosene aren’t benign chemicals. Any mechanism to store significant amounts of energy is a potential risk that all the energy will be released unexpectedly.
Consumer Li-ion batteries already have protection circuits which monitor usage to prevent dangerous charging or discharging, my understanding is that most of the reports of Lithium-ion battery violent failures are due to incorrectly designed protection or physical damage. I’d expect accelerometers to be built into automotive battery packs to detect impacts which may damage the batteries.
tcobb,
How much does a battery pack weigh? How many fasteners are required? How much weight is added to the frame to make insertion removal easy?
How is the electrical connection handled? (Peak currents in the 1,000 Amp range with voltages of several hundred volts.
etc.
The removable battery pack is an old idea. The solution to the above problems (and several others) is not. Thus if you are a really good engineer you still have numerous patent opportunities.
#14 Robb,
Every car mfg will have its own battery pack design (at least as the idea catches on). That is a lot of $$$ in inventory. Even if there is a standard battery design and the batteries only cost $10,000 how much $$ in inventory would be required for 100 fill ups a day (a small gas station).
Oh yeah. You are probably back to needing attendants to make sure the job is done roght.
#18 Rob,
What is the labor rate for the crane and operator?
#19 Sam,
So significant impacts may require a new battery pack. Swell.
Suppose there is an electrical short or an opening of the battery in an accident?
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BTW the DOE target for safe storage of hydrogen is that the hydrogen will be 6% (by weight) of the storage mechanism. i.e. 94% dead weight. Right now it is around 4%.
We have a very long way to go and no clear path.
#19 Sam,
I forgot to mention that Li batteries have different chemistries and designs and the charge/discharge must be regulated accordingly. Other wise you get destruction of capacity at best or fires at worst.
There is no generic Li battery at this time. In fact there are no generic lead/acid jobs any more. There are gell cells. Flooded “low maintenance” cells. Flooded high maintenance cells etc.