An idea to make EV charging like refueling | Hacker News Reader

An idea to make EV charging like refueling

6 pointstaosimple13 comments

Implementation: Currently, the batteries in EV consist of numerous small cells connected together. The idea is to design these cells as spherical units, similar to small steel balls. Charging stations would be similar to gas stations. When charging, drain the battery balls from the bottom of the battery container, then inject fully charged ones. Drained balls are recharged at the station for reuse. Making charging as convenient as refueling.

Difference from Battery Swap: Battery swapping requires predetermined battery specs and structures, limiting universality. This system allows for battery container of various sizes and shapes, like fuel tanks, while the battery balls remain universal. This decouples the container from the batteries.

Challenges to solve: A key challenge is ensuring that the spherical batteries connect correctly by polarity. This could be achieved by applying a magnetic field inside the power container or designing the batteries themselves to be magnetic, thus aligning them in the correct sequence.

This might sound far-fetched, consider how shipping containers revolutionized transport efficiency and changed the world just by altering the combination method.

Feel free to discuss and share your thoughts or alternative suggestions.

Typically, the battery cells that are formed into packs are rigidly arranged. So far as I know, they are arranged to have a common positive cathode by being connected as a single node with a conductor. In other words, they are wired in parallel.

I'm not a chemistry major, but everything I've seen suggests that the parallel arrangement allows them to drain concurrently and maintain a near-identical charge. Now, I'm oversimplifying, because there must be some modest isolation cell-to-cell, that lets these batteries be balanced to get to a near-identical charge level at charge completion.

That said, depleting some batteries, while others remain freshly charged (or adding freshly charged cells) can cause some problems, which I'm sure someone smarter than me will explain. But, for so long as these batteries need to hold a near identical volatage, it is going to be rather challenging to have a partial swap of some of the batteries.

They are connected in a mix. Some cars use 800 V internally,its easier and safer to connect around 200 in a row to get the needed 800 V than to transform it.

That's right, it's still just a concept, and there are many engineering challenges to overcome.

Why EV gas stations are needed at all? Plug during the night and at the any parking spot. Zero time wasted refueling.

Having to refuel your vehicle at specific locations is a downside of the status quo, not a feature we need to repeat.

The future is "recharge anywhere there is power", not "drive to specific places, engage in specific mechanisms, and pay someone else for doing so, all just to keep your car moving"

There isn't power a few blocks down the street from an apartment. Deploying millions of ruggedized outdoor chargers would be a big job that I haven't seen starting.

The thing is that anything's that's in a car gets subjected to pretty intense mechanical and thermal stress. Your thing needs to work in a [-40C,+60C] temperature range, while going over bumping roads. A small accident like someone running into you at a red light should not disrupt the connection of the batteries.

You need to maintain a rock solid connection from balls to the car, while also allowing them to move freely when at the charging station.

And then you have all the battery swap problems. And you still need a universal standard for the balls themselves.

It's a cool idea, but forget about it.

Exactly. I'd add to that the introduction of dust or debris into the physical system. If a stick or leaf or bit of tinfoil wrapper got in between battery balls, they could disrupt the connection or, worse, short the connection and create a fire hazard.

Also, any physical recycling/reclamation system has two disadvantages 1) capital investment in "balls" by the vendor (larger than just investment in a static power station) and 2) theft/vandalism prevention i.e. you've got prevent users swapping fake, damaged or substandard "balls" for good ones. Image a gang of ball thieves swapping 3D-printed balls filled with clay for good ones and reselling them. Or, imagine terrorists/vandals introducing fake balls filled w/ fireworks to destroy your charging stations or (if clever enough to pass as real) redistribute balls to sabotage unsuspecting cars.

What if the car had, instead of 1 giant heavy battery, maybe 20 much smaller batteries. Couldn't you then plug in 20 chargers? Or just hand swap all twenty shoe-box sized batteries yourself (a good workout!)

No need for manual replacement, the battery particle balls can be injected into the power container like a fluid.

Yes. Make the energy balls as small as hydrogen. Then you drain out little balls the size of water molecules.

Or electrons!

You might lookup redox flow batteries.

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