Batteries that Don't Die

ok

Tim, your data is out of date-- the best battery today overall that I know of is the Altair NanoSafe battery.  It has been tested in excess of 30,000 charge/discharge cycles, can be recharged in less than 10 minutes (theoretically it could be recharged in just a minute or two if you had a gigantic, powerful charger), it does not heat up in charge/discharge cycles, will not explode or catch fire even if deliberately abused (crushing, baking in ovens, driving nails through it).  In lab tests, in the first 1000 charge cycles, the charge capacity dropped about 15 percent, but thereater the charge capacity leveled off and stabilized.

The last data I have is that the test batteries were still working admirably after 30,000 charges,  which would equate to approximately 60 years or more of continuous daily use in an electric car based on typical driving distances and load.  Altair will continue to test it until the battery fails, but it seems to me that so far the battery seems to have an indefinitely long lifespan.  Altair tells me they will have three independent testers (perhaps Underwriters Labs, Consumer Reports and a university?) to verify the battery performance-- the reports should be out in the next 3 or 4 months.

Altair Nanotech of Reno, NV, is in a mutually exclusive agreement with Phoenix Motorcars, an electric car company in Ontario, Calif; for the next three years, Phoenix is not allowed to use rechargeable batteries from any other manufacturer, and Altair is not allowed to sell their batteries to any other car company for use in electric cars, although this battery may show up in other applications such as cell phones, laptops, buses, PDAs, power tools, etc.`

There are a few other competing technologies, including a battery from A123 Systems, which is reputed to give >1,000 charges before failure, and appears to be cost-competitive.

Phoenix Motorcars sells two different vehicles for $45,000 each: an SUT (truck) which they are making and selling now, and an SUV, which will not be available for a few months .  Each of these vehicles have ranges of 130 miles or 250 miles depending on the size of the battery array.  They are very powerful-- they have the same approximate top speed and acceleration as my BMW 735i.

Tho Phoenix selling price is slightly deceptive-- they are actually selling them at less than what it costs to make them, but they're receiving a kind of a subsidy of sorts that helps keep the price low.  Altair is working aggressively to cut the cost of manufacturing the batteries, which is key to being able to sell the cars at prices competitive with ICE (internal-combustion engine) vehicles.

Tesla Motors, Zap, Smart Car and other manufacturers should be praised for their efforts with electric cars, but none come close to being practical for most people: they are either wildly expensive, very limited in driving range, too tiny or impractical in other respects.

Chevy's "Volt" is a shameless sham-- it is intended to make people think they are serious about electrics, but they are not.  Watch "Who Killed the Electric Car" in you have any doubts.
GM is terrified that electrics will gain a foothold, because ordinary cars have thousands of parts that require lots of maintenance, replacement parts, tune-ups and repairs-- fan belts, valve adjustments, oil changes, smog tests,  transmission rebuilds, etc, are lucrative to the dealers and manufacturers.  Electric cars need none of that stuff-- they only have one major moving part, the motor.  Even the brakes last far longer, since electric cars use regenerative braking to assist in slowing, stopping, and extending the range of the batteries.

Battery-powered cars are the only sane alternative to ICEs-- hydrogen cars and ethanol, especially, could never hope to compete with pure electric cars... both fuels have only a small percentage of the energy potential of gasoline, and each would require a hundred billion dollars or so of special infrastructures of fuel tanks and other hardware just to hold the special fuels they would run on.  Electric cars are many times more efficient than any of these, and require no special infrastructure-- even Phoenix's SUV, which is bigger and more powerful than a Ford Explorer, runs for just 3 cents per mile.  If you install solar panels on the roof of your home, you don't even have to pay for your electricity-- you're practically driving for free.

With solar power that could be mounted on the car roofs etc., along with hybrid power including drawing on the thermal energy during braking, the
batteries are the only stumbling blocks. Once they become light weight, powerful and long lasting, there will be a revolution in terms of technology used for everyday life.

is that 2700 farads or micro farads ?

YEAH, RIGHT.

CHECK THE CLASSIFIEDS IN MECH. ILLUSTRATED. FOR YEARS YOU COULD HAVE BEEN RUNNING YOUR CAR ON WATER, NOT GAS. WHO NEEDS NEVER-CHARGE BARTTERIES?

GIVE ME A BREAK.