New technologies are transforming an old workhorse, promising all-electric lawnmowers and hybrid military vehicles.
Inexpensive and rugged lead-acid batteries, as everyone knows, can start a car in the dead of winter. But their excessive weight and their tradeoff between power and life -- the powerful version in your car doesn't last more than a few years -- have kept them out of hybrid vehicles and prevented their widespread use in all-electric vehicles.
Now the humble lead-acid battery has been gutted and redesigned, cutting its weight, extending its lifetime, and putting it in the same performance category as the nickel-metal hydride batteries used in today's hybrid cars, according to Firefly Energy, a Peoria IL company that's developing the new batteries for specific applications.
These new batteries are about one-third to one-quarter as heavy as traditional lead-acid batteries, and can be made about as powerful as nickel-metal hydride batteries without sacrificing longevity, says Mil Ovan, senior vice president and Firefly cofounder.
But the main advantage of the new batteries, he says, is price. Because lead is relatively cheap, and a huge infrastructure already exists to make lead-acid batteries, the company is confident they can produce the batteries at one-fifth the cost of nickel-metal hydrides. What's more, if hybrid cars become more popular, as expected, the cost-gap could widen as demand for nickel rises. "There's probably not enough nickel to put into everybody's car. Lead is more abundant," says I. Francis Cheng of the University of Idaho, who's developing advanced lead-acid batteries for the military.
Firefly dealt with the weight and performance issues by replacing the traditional heavy lead grids that collect electrons generated by a battery's chemical activity with a light graphite foam. The foam increases the surface area for the battery's chemical reactions, according to Cheng, whose separate work at Idaho uses additives to improve the weight and performance of lead-acid batteries. The increased surface area allows for faster charging and more powerful discharging. When engineers had experimented with increasing the surface area of the old lead grid, it accelerated the deterioration of the battery, forcing them to choose between a powerful battery that failed quickly or a less powerful, but more stable one.
The graphite foam grid is more resistant to the corrosion that eventually causes traditional lead-acid batteries to fail. Thus, it can last longer, allowing it to survive a long winter in a garage, for instance, which is useful in lawnmowers, Ovan says.
Guest (Tim)
Between Firefly and the China entry (www.guineng.com) it looks like batteries are finally getting some long overdue updates. I'm still thinking that the carbon nanotube based ultracapacitors will win in the end just because they have charge/discharge cycles measured in the 300,000 range compared to 500-1000 for the best batteries.
We'll see.
Altair long-life batteries for electric cars
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.
Guest (Daniel Scott Matthews)
Lead may be cheap, but it is rare
"lead is relatively cheap"..
Yes but Nickel makes up 0.019% of the earth's crust, where lead is much less common if the data in the URL is correct.
http://www.science.co.il/PTelements.asp?s=Earth
You need to look at these things from the long view, where H3 energy is way cheaper and total abundance is what gives an element it's value, not current recovery and refining costs.
A silicon super capacitor would be a much better long term target.
dan@3-e.net
Guest (Shiva Hanumanahally)
Good batteries will start a revolution.
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.
Re: Good batteries will start a revolution.
Better yet there is a Co. named AC Energy that supposedly has the Global rights on a perpetual basttery system, (never needs recharging) For now it's suppose to be primarly for mobile phones, games, lap tops, etc. The stock symbol is ACEN and it can be purchased for .03 cents a share for now. If this is for reals someone is going to make some big bucks with a minimal investment.
Guest (ringdrops)
Would ultracapacitors be used with these batteries or can they take a full charge fast enough to eliminate Ultracaps. I know that a 2700 farad ultracapacitor only has the energy of an AA flashlight batery but it will give and take the charge in about 10 seconds.
Guest (Scott)
Guest (Ron)
Ultra caps are rated in farads of capacitance. 2700uF is just a common every day electrolytic. The biggest problem with Ultra caps is that the voltage drops as it discharges where a battery maintains a semi constant voltage.
Guest (sadiq)
the voltage does drop but that can be compensated by using suitable elecronics, but it is their higher power density and longlife which makes them attractive in the hybrid car market where they can be used in conjunction with batteries as a complete solution.
I think that the 'up and down' motion of cars is completely overlooked and the energy of this up and down motion is therefor unused and going to waste.
Why not use this up and down push and pull on the wheels struts and the weight of the body and put it to use by converting it to electricity. Something like a toy top that you push down on and the spiral inside causes it to spin when you let go. There are many different ways to convert this up and down push and pull to electricity to power an electric car or store it in a coil spring or a spinning flywheel etc.
Also why not make standardized battery packs for electric cars. The idea being that when you pull into a gas station you simply change battery packs
and get a fully charged one and you just pay for the electricity that you used in the one you exchange. A lightweight battery pack could make this possible. You wouldn't have to wait for a recharge. The packs would be recharged at the gas stations. You could still recharge on your own at home but most people don't park near enough to an electrical outlet to make this practical.
New lightweight batteries are currently being developed that would make this possible and take the burden of recharging off the shoulders of the consumer. Anyone have any better solutions or comments please let everyone know. The world needs
electric cars as soon as possible!!!!!!
Hello there. Has anyone heard of a battery made or is in the works that claims that it never needs recharging. AC Energy Co. is suppose to be creating it and they have global rights or patents to it. They will be going primarly after the hughe global cell phone market. I just want to know if anyone has a comment on this or if you know of any bad/good news after Septembver 5th, 2007. This is the last date any info. has come out about this AC Energy firm. Their stock symbol is ACEN.
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.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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Guest (Al Meier)
Interested in hearing about Home Solar Usage
Couple of areas of interest / follow-up:
1) What changes are hoped for in the area of re-charging rates and out gasing of Hydrogen?
2) Will these new generation batteries be targeted for Off-Grid, solar powered homes?
3) What effect will environment temperature have?
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ssmokler
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Re: Interested in hearing about Home Solar Usage
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