OT: New Battery Technology

[TomC]

In the Los Angeles Times on Wed is the Highway section that talks about new cars and such.  They were talking about the new Chevy Volt concept car that has a battery pack of 16,000 amp hours and takes 7 hours to recharge on household current.  To put that in better perspective, if you were using the AGM 8D batteries (that I have 2 for my house batteries) that are 255 amp hours each, you would need almost 63 batteries, and at 155lb each would have a battery pack that weighed in at 9765lb and cost $14,175.00.  Now with the lithium-ion batteries that they are using (they look like "D" cells-many of them) the electric/hybrid cars are getting closer.  They are now centering in on a fully electric car with a small stand by (1 liter) engine to recharge as you are going, or when a plug is not available.  Sounds like a good future toad!  Batteries on the car could be recharging with the motion of going down the road.  I realize that would make a bit of a drag on the bus, but gets you thinking.  Good Luck, TomC

[Lee Bradley]

The story I read on the Volt said GM is waiting on the batteries to be developed.

[Chaz]

That would be cool. I also heard of a company working on capacitor theory and forgoing batteries all together. Now THAT would be awesome!!! But they say it is down the road a ways.

    Electrified,
        Chaz

[HighTechRedneck]

I'm sure that time will bring that and even more amazing options into being.   But that specification sheds light into the kind of infrastructure enhancements that will be needed to go with it.

battery pack of 16,000 amp hours and takes 7 hours to recharge on household current.

That would be over 100 amps at 240 volts for those 7 hours of recharging.

I have no doubt the future will bring amazing technology but it will take a lot of electricity.  So they better hurry up on working out cold fusion.