A question about battery powered cars

[T C]

TL;DR Summary

A question about whether the power consumption of the battery of the battery cars will increase and decrease proportionately when the car accelerate or decelerate.

I have a question about battery cars. in our common household electrical appliances like the Fan, light i.e. gadgets having regulator attached to it consumes the same amount of energy whether in full power or at the lowest. Because the extra power will be channelled through resistance inside the regulator. I want to know is this same case for battery cars. I mean whether the power loss from the batteries will remain the same as long as the engine/motor is running or not.

 

[NascentOxygen]

Hi TC. Battery powered devices no longer have variable resistances to dissipate unwanted power. These days, digital electronics is employed and the power to the drive motors is pulsed ON and OFF rapidly so that it averages out to be whatever level of power is required. The unwanted energy is left in the battery for later use, not wasted as heat. Efficiency is the name of the game.

 

[T C]

Thanks for your reply. That's the information I need.

 

[T C]

Hi TC. Battery powered devices no longer have variable resistances to dissipate unwanted power. These days, digital electronics is employed and the power to the drive motors is pulsed ON and OFF rapidly so that it averages out to be whatever level of power is required. The unwanted energy is left in the battery for later use, not wasted as heat. Efficiency is the name of the game.

Kindly give me one information. What's the minimum power of such batteries that is now market available.

 

[sophiecentaur]

What's the minimum power of such batteries that is now market available.

There is no real minimum for Energy Storage capacity. What was the application you had in mind?

 

[T C]

I mean the type of batteries where the softwire can be installed to minimise power wastage.

 

[berkeman]

Summary: A question about whether the power consumption of the battery of the battery cars will increase and decrease proportionately when the car accelerate or decelerate.

I have a question about battery cars.

Battery powered devices no longer have variable resistances to dissipate unwanted power. These days, digital electronics is employed and the power to the drive motors is pulsed ON and OFF rapidly so that it averages out to be whatever level of power is required

Kindly give me one information. What's the minimum power of such batteries that is now market available.

I mean the type of batteries where the softwire can be installed to minimise power wastage.

The batteries don't have software in them, the power saving regulator circuits are outside the batteries and use the batteries as the power source that they efficiently use to convert the battery voltage to whatever the application input voltage requirement is.

The search term for you to use is DC-DC Converter. That is the basic building block electronic circuit that is used to efficiently convert from one voltage to another.

Most battery-powered consumer electronics (cell phones, laptops, televisions, etc.) use DC-DC converter circuits to efficiently convert their power source (AC Mains and/or batteries) to their output voltage rails to their circuits.

Battery powered vehicles will use whatever size battery is appropriate to hold enough energy for the daily use of the vehicle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-to-DC_converter

 

[sophiecentaur]

This is also the problem that I am wondering. Thanks to the topic owner, I have found my answer

Don't contemplate a DIY project unless you have a fair bit of experience. 'High current' Electrics has its own special problems, in the same way that High Voltage (mainsand above) Electrics. Shocks are unlikely but fires are a possible risk.

 

[Windadct]

TC - I did want to point out that your assumption used for comparison : "in our common household electrical appliances like the Fan, light i.e. gadgets having regulator attached to it consumes the same amount of energy whether in full power or at the lowest. Because the extra power will be channelled through resistance inside the regulator. " , is not accurate.

Very Rarely in system with any significant power, is a resistor used in this way. For example, a basic light dimmer switches the AC waveform to regulate the power, so the total power is reduced as the lights are dimmed.

 

[T C]

Very Rarely in system with any significant power, is a resistor used in this way. For example, a basic light dimmer switches the AC waveform to regulate the power, so the total power is reduced as the lights are dimmed.

Do you want to mean that in such cases less power used by the the main gadget means less power consumption?

 

[sophiecentaur]

Do you want to mean that in such cases less power used by the the main gadget means less power consumption?

Any kind of Power Supply (including a battery) dissipates power when it is delivering power. If the Power Supply uses a series resistor in order to reduce the output volts then the resistor can be dissipating a large proportion of the total power. Instead of a resistor, you can use a switch in series, which turns on and off rapidly to charge a reservoir Capacitor to the wanted voltage. When the switch is ON or OFF, no power is dissipated so the system is far more efficient.

Very Rarely in system with any significant power, is a resistor used in this way

A hundred years ago, Electric Locomotives used massive series resistors to regulate the power delivered to the motors. A lever, moved a copper contact over a series of studs to select the wanted supply power. (Some images of tram speed controllers here). The resistors would have been under the chassis in a cage.

Variable resistance supply was achieved for theatrical lighting (several kW) by using 'Dimmer Bottles' (see this link) which used a column of salt water as a variable resistor. I actually saw these used in a school show in the mid 50's. We were warned not to go near them! Health and safety nightmare.

EDIT: PS I heard the name "Dimmer bottles" as "Dinner Bottles" at the time (I was about 7 years old). So many questions sprung to my mind which were unanswered for decades!.