YOU!: Fix the US Energy Crisis

I'll give you an example: Hypothetically, you could drive in (Las Vegas) on a contract. Vegas is about a 15-mile-radius city, and you have a smaller battery inside. But on the edge of Vegas you might pull out your battery and put in a long-distance battery. In theory, you pay roaming charges as long as you have not returned that battery to the station. So, it would be a convenience thing. You'd go to L.A.; you'd drive a lot more; then you'd come back three days later; you'd drop the battery and take back the 50-mile battery.

The University of California study shows that the mass adoption of electric cars is a reachable goal. For electric cars to achieve this wide-scale adoption in the United States, these vehicles must be able to compete with the existing gasoline fueling infrastructure in terms of price, range, and reliability. Becker finds separating the purchase of the battery from the car is the most practical and cost-effective means of addressing these concerns.

First, not having to pay for the battery upfront makes the purchase price of an electric car competitive with that of an internal combustion vehicle. Given current battery prices and the federal tax incentives for the purchase of electric cars, switchable battery vehicles are expected to be $7,500 less expensive than a similar gasoline-powered car when introduced to the market in 2012. The total cost of ownership of these vehicles is expected to be between $0.10 and $0.13 lower on a per-mile basis than gasoline-powered cars, depending on the future price of oil.

Second, electric vehicles with switchable batteries can have a driving range comparable to gasoline-powered vehicles. Just as there is a network of gas stations, the study incorporates the cost of a network of public battery charging spots augmented by battery switching stations into the per-mile service contract price offered by electric car network operators. This business model innovation will ensure that a sufficient density of electric car infrastructure is deployed to extend the range of these vehicles. Through this system, Becker argues that "the overall range of electric cars will eventually rival that of gasoline-powered vehicles."

Lastly, consumers must perceive electric cars to be as reliable as gasoline-powered vehicles. To achieve this, Becker again finds that the best solution lies in separating the ownership of the vehicle from the battery. By placing ownership of the battery in the hands of an electric car network operator, consumer concerns over the lifetime or durability of the battery are eliminated. Switchable batteries also allow the newest innovations in battery technology to reach drivers more quickly.

Performance
Driving range over: 160km/100miles (US LA4 mode)
Max speed (km/h): over 140km/h (over 87 mph)

Motor
Type: AC motor
Max power (kW): 80kW
Max torque (Nm): 280Nm

Battery
Type: laminated lithium-ion battery
Total capacity (kWh): 24
Power output (kW): over 90
Energy density (Wh/kg): 140
Power density (kW/kg): 2.5
Number of modules: 48
Charging times: quick charger DC 50kW (0 to 80%): less than 30 min; home-use AC200V charger: less than 8 hrs
Battery layout: Under seat & floor

Meanwhile, Toyota's new president, Akio Toyoda, has become a big promoter of the company's fuel cells, which he calls the "ultimate" technology. But fuel cell cars, which produce electricity from hydrogen, would take even longer than battery-electric vehicles to commercialize.

Toyota recently announced they will be delaying the release of any all electric cars and will currently focus on hybrids (series/plug-in hybrids) until at least 2012. Also, they have been showing off their fuel cell vehicles to help promote the technology. It seems that this is the same path that GM is taking as well. A smart move for both companies in my opinion.


http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home...d=family-autos

...Toyota executives rattle off reasons to be skeptical of electric cars: They do not travel far enough on a charge; their batteries are expensive and not reliable; the electrical infrastructure is not in place to recharge them...

Infrastructure is a bigger problem, into which the vehicle manufacturers will have to wade, or partner with someone who will. Solve the infrastructure problem, and the other problems fall away.

X Lands Major Upgrade to Electric Vehicle Infrastructure
Reuters
Thu Aug 6, 2009
...
The state in which X is situated was named as a test market by the Electric Transportation Engineering Corporation (eTec), which announced today it's receiving $99.8 million in federal funds to study electric vehicle usage.
.....
eTec, a subsidiary of ECOtality, Inc., is working with Nissan North America to deploy approximately 5,000 electric vehicles and 12,750 charging stations in five U.S. markets

The post office just published a study on the feasibility of making its local delivery fleet of 146,000 vehicles electric. It's a nearly ideal case. First, daily range for the USPS vans is short, averaging only 18 miles per day, 97% of the fleet is less than 40 miles, and they park at night. Second, the stop/go pattern means the current combustion vehicles average ~10mpg in making the rounds allowing a large savings of 28 cents per mile in a replacement EV van, or $1500 per year per USPS van.

Their costs assumptions are shown below, which look reasonable to me, though I believe their battery replacement rate is too high at five years. A nine to ten year life with a daily full discharge/charge cycle is more reasonable for their use case.

Of course the USPS is $7B in the hole/yr so they can't afford new anything.
http://www.uspsoig.gov/FOIA_files/DA-WP-09-001.pdf

Trucking Headlines
DOE awards $300M in grants
9/1/2009

The U.S. Department of Energy last week announced the selection of 25 cost-share projects under the Clean Cities program that will be funded with nearly $300 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
.....

Under the Recovery Act, the Clean Cities program will fund a range of energy-efficient and advanced vehicle technologies, such as hybrids, electric vehicles, plug-in electric hybrids, hydraulic hybrids and compressed natural gas vehicles, helping reduce petroleum consumption across the United States.

Odd that they stop with a simple electric. Perhaps the UPS hydraulic hybrid didn't work out. It stuck me as a more logical stop and go system...

The biggest technology breakthrough in this design is the high-temperature electrolysis, which originally came from a program to study how nuclear reactors could be used to make hydrogen. But hydrogen-powered vehicles face a number of obstacles, including on-board storage and the infrastructure to cleanly produce and to distribute hydrogen.

By contrast, if the hydrogen was used to make hydrocarbon fuels, they could be distributed through the existing channels and be used with existing autos, including hybrid-electric vehicles.

The jump from hydrogen research to biofuels happened when Hawkes thought to make biomass the heat source for INL's high-temperature electrolysis, rather than the heat from a nuclear reactor. By making that switch, the electrolyzer can operate on biomass and electricity alone, rather than rely on a nuclear reactor.

"We feel each that each one of these technologies is individually proven but nobody has ever taken them and hooked them together to make one process," said Hawkes.

There are some commercially available biomass gasifiers and a few facilities turning synthesis gas into liquid fuel using coal as a feedstock. But coal-to-liquids has a high carbon footprint, even compared with gasoline, said Hawkes. If a renewable or carbon-free source, such as hydro power, can be used through bio-syntrolysis, the resulting fuel would have very low emissions, he said.

Storing hydrogen on plants
So far, INL researchers have done experiments using available commercial products and they have modeled the overall efficiency on computer. To build a high-temperature electrolyzer, they have purchased commercial fuels cells and modified them to work in reverse, so they produce hydrogen and oxygen from electricity.

"There is no need for any great discovery but there is a need for development of materials and electrolyzers and just the will the put all the different sources together," said Steve Herring, a research fellow at Idaho National Labs.

The projected cost of the fuel would be $2.50 a gallon to produce, which is not cheaper than today's gasoline. But the primary advantage is the fuel is domestically sourced, low-carbon, and available at a predictable price, Herring said. One of the rationales for the technology is that biomass to make fuel will become a scarce commodity, making techniques that can squeeze more energy from existing crops more compelling.

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It looks like gasoline will stay around $3/gal for the forseeable future. The supply is restricted in line with demand and OPEC and the other oil producers are comfortable for now with oil at around $70/bbl.

I would think that would be much more expensive way to capture stop/go energy than a simple regenerating electric motor.

I was all ready to argue this point until I saw the price of super-capacitors has fallen to a reasonable rate.

Gads.

$1.28 per kJoule!

This means to absorb the energy of a 3500 lb vehicle from 35 mph to zero will only cost $250, vs. $55,000 in 1996.

I should really double check that calculation. If true, my hobby just got a lot simpler.

I had ~387kj or ~$500. In any case, Im curious why caps aren't already the preffered storage mechanism just for regen braking. Their cycle life is essentially unlimited compared to chemical batteries, and there's no temperature dependence.

Perhaps you forgot the 1/2 factor.

But I'm curious also. I've been quite busy this last week with work and such, and have not had the time to research the mass and volume of a 194 kJ capacitor bank. Might be that they would weigh as much and/or take up as much room as a tractor trailer.

Otherwise, as you've alluded to, there'd've been mention of them.