Nissan develops 10-minute electric car charger
nydailynews.com
nydailynews.com
Gasoline and diesel are currently "standard" fuels we put into a container inside our cars. It takes 5 to 10 minutes to put fuel into said container when we fill up. Why are we trying to put electrons into a battery like we put fuel into fuel tanks? Why not just have a container in the car that holds a battery?
If the battery was standard, or even had a range of standard sizes, it would only take a few minutes for a robot to pull the discharged one out and put a fully charged one in. Then you're still putting "fuel" into a container, not pushing electrons into a chemistry.
There's all kinds of positives for this battery swapping: * You can still slow charge at home. * Batteries can be slow charged at the "gas station." * We don't need expensive charging stations to be developed. * No more getting out of the car to "fuel up." * Electrical grid doesn't have to support pushing outrageous currents to chargers (think of a "gas station" with 16 chargers all running at the same time, that's serious current). * Slow charging can stagger charging (or charge at off peak) and display what batteries are currently available online. * We can do this with today's tech!
It's insane and is delaying the mass acceptance of electric cars.
There's no reason to dictate the battery chemistry or internal cell layout. As long as a standard is set for slow-ish charging (i.e.: the battery tells the charger, "give me X amps at Y volts"), we're good to go.
Which standards in the gasoline world are comparable to the standards that you want for electric vehicles?
SAE has standards for lubricating oil properties, horsepower measurement, etc, but nothing that will let me move significant components from one gasoline car to another.
A second problem I can think of is that batteries fade over time, and people aren't going to want older batteries being swapped in for their flat but fresh units. Nor will "gas" stations, for that matter.
In the UK I'm starting to see more and more parking spaces with electric chargers so drivers can refuel while the car is stationary anyway.
I think the fast chargers would be useful for motorway service stations but elsewhere charging little and often (i.e at work, in car parks and at home) should be "good enough" for most uses.
Regarding slightly degraded batteries, I think that's less of a concern. You'd pay less for a less charged or capable battery (only fair). There'd probably even be grades of batteries, like we have for gasoline (RON or octane).
Also, people seem to have no problem doing exactly this with propane tanks (in the USA) for their BBQ grills. The tanks you exchange are definitely not as nice as the ones you can buy new and get filled but the convenience of being able to exchange a tank outweighs a lot of people's desire to get their tank refilled. You can always get your tank refilled, even if you previously exchanged it, you're not required to only exchange them. Same exact business model as exchangeable batteries.
The exchange system (or fast charge) is simply for longer trips exceeding battery range or when you weren't able to recharge enough at home. Curb-side parking spot chargers don't do anything different than in-home chargers, they're still slow and still don't solve the "I want to go further than my battery" problem.
Fast chargers, if used sparingly, could work. It's overuse of it that's the problem. I guess it all depends on how often people are using them. The one worry I'd think is that people won't install a home charger ($2k or so investment) but will rely upon the fast chargers or exchange systems as they do now for gasoline. If you're fast charging every other day or even twice a week, that's not good.
Except that no one cares what their tank looks like - they only care about how much it holds, or rather, how much gas they're going to get out of it, and whether it leaks.
The same is true of batteries, and that's the problem if batteries degrade with usage, heat, deep discharge, and so on.
Oh, and I do try to get the nicest propane tank when I exchange. I'm not the only one.
So it's mostly useless because everything else will change in a decade.
What we need is the $2 Billion spent each week in the Afghanistan war instead poured into battery research.
We need exponentially more battery capacity at a fraction of the price.
Then let the government own the patents on the battery, open source it and standardize it.
http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2011/09/14/scientists-just-re...
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/flow-batteries-0606.html
Those were two new technologies I saw this year that interested me. I am sure there are others.
Even when spending two billion a week in Afghanistan we still lose nearly the same in fraud with government medical services. So basically there is no end to the places we can get money from but the first realization is, even saving a hundred billion here and a hundred here still leaves us a trillion in the hole.
Research isn't useless just because it's not going to directly be used. Research produces knowledge and understand which can then be used as the basis for other research.
If you think of it from a programming perspective, are all early implementations of a program worthless if you go back and essentially rewrite everything? No, because through the process you gained a better understanding of your domain and your problem, and you've also probably determined some solutions that aren't optimal to your problem.