Link (http://www.nationalpost.com/cars/story.html?id=1551305)

"One of the reasons for the controversy regarding the supply of lithium has to do with the different estimates regarding how much is actually needed to power an electric car. Although they are lumped into one category, hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and electric cars are two different beasts with different needs. Even the conversion of a conventional hybrid to a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is problematic."

From the article:

"Experts contend these deeper discharge rates will reduce battery life from an expected eight years to just three."

False! HyperMiler already said that lithium-ion batteries coming from some countries (not Japan) are proven to last 10 years. Oh, wait, he just pulls things out of his butt. Seriously, only three years? Who are these experts and what technology are they talking about? GM has been doing some good testing and feels they will last longer than 3 years. If not, the cost of the vehicle will have to include 3 battery changes.


"Despite many claims of huge nanotechnology developments, the mass production of a miracle battery may still be some distance in the future."

That's exactly why you can't look at the past improvements of batteries. It's like resetting the clock. Imagine that a new device (much like semiconductors) has just been invented. This invention uses nanotechnology that is still not clearly understood. They are now just taking stabs in the dark and still getting amazing improvements. Pretend it's a bit past 1957 when the semiconductor was invented. Sure they had transistors before using vacuum tubes but once the semiconductor was invented the pace of improvement skyrocketed. Same thing.

Since the author who wrote this does not have any idea what nanotechnology is or how new it actually is they cannot make that conceptual leap. They are talking about old lap-top and material science technology. If that was the case then I would agree.

I disagree with allot of things in the article ... but in general I do agree... better batteries continue to come ... and advancements continue to be made... but that miracle battery everyone always thinks is just 3 to 5 years away ... never happens and never will... I think it is highly unlikely that one will be able to buy any battery that will have more than 300 Wh / kg in the next 10 to 15 years.... and even some ~15+ years from now when you might be able to buy one ... they would be extremely expensive.



Pretend it's a bit past 1957 when the semiconductor was invented.


correction:
semiconductors had been invented long before 1957.

Michael Faraday first discovered the semiconductor effect in 1833 while experimenting with Silver Sulfide.

Ferdinand Braun made the first semiconductor diode in 1874.

The first semi-conductor device produced I know of is the 'Cat’s whisker'... patented in 1906.

The first Transistor was invented in 1925 ( patented in 1926 ) by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld.


Sure they had transistors before using vacuum tubes

correction:
They had vacuum tube devices to do the same functions as transistors... Transistors are made of semi-conductors by definition of what a transistor is... and can not be made with vacuum tube... although vacuum tube devices can be made to perform the same functions as transistors there are differences in them in production and in application that lead to the dominance of the transistor... even though there are things that the old tech vacuum tube devices are still better at than current transistor and semi-conductor devices.


but once the semiconductor was invented the pace of improvement skyrocketed. Same thing.

Correction:
Once the transistor started to become widely used as a replacement for vacuum tubes in the late 1950's early 1960's ... technology in general skyrocketed ... by that point the transistor itself was already over 25+ year old technology ... and semiconductor devices were already over 50+ year old technology ... and semiconductors themselves were already over 75+ year old technology

A good place to go if you want to learn about the history is...
http://www.computerhistory.org/

Your supposed to assume Texas knows what he's talking about and not check or contradict his information.

Your supposed to assume Texas knows what he's talking about and not check or contradict his information.

He does, you just need to substitute "integrated circuit" instead of "semiconductor".

He does, you just need to substitute "integrated circuit" instead of "semiconductor".



Yes, thank you. I was just making a point about how fast electronics spread after around 1957. I guess I just combined 1956 when Shockley won the Nobel prize for researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect:

"... was created by John Bardeen and Walter-H. Brattain. Shortly thereafter, however, Shockley greatly improved their design. His version comprised three semiconductor layers that were stacked on top of each other. Current flowed through the semiconductor material. Voltage on the center layer could be adjusted to turn the amplifier on and off. They called it a transistor, thereby combining the words "transfer" and "resistor." In 1956, the three men received the Nobel Prize in physics for their work, which led to the development of the first silicon chip."

http://www.synergymwave.com/articles/August2k6/


...and 1958 when Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit. I have to be more careful with details even when I'm just making a casual reference. Tough crowd. I expect nothing less. ;)

It's funny how Mike756 just waits for me to make a mistake. Made me laugh. Thanks Mike.

My point is still valid. As soon as practical semiconductor technology was invented, it didn't take long for the progress to skyrocket. It will be the same for the latest battery technology. In fact, it will probably be available even earlier because the need is so dire and the activity is so enormous. Place your bets. Quick-charge and inexpensive electrical energy storage is about 5 years away. EEscam says next year but they're full of it.

"He does, you just need to substitute "integrated circuit" instead of "semiconductor"."


So you agree that battery capacity will "skyrocket" just like the integrated circuit?

"He does, you just need to substitute "integrated circuit" instead of "semiconductor"."


So you agree that battery capacity will "skyrocket" just like the integrated circuit?





Relax Mike, you’re going to hurt yourself. Here’s the point I was trying to make:

"The first integrated circuits contained only a few transistors. Called "Small-Scale Integration" (SSI), digital circuits containing transistors numbering in the tens provided a few logic gates for example, while early linear ICs such as the Plessey SL201 or the Philips TAA320 had as few as two transistors.

SSI circuits were crucial to early aerospace projects, and vice-versa. Both the Minuteman missile and Apollo program needed lightweight digital computers for their inertial guidance systems; the Apollo guidance computer led and motivated the integrated-circuit technology[citation needed], while the Minuteman missile forced it into mass-production.

These programs purchased almost all of the available integrated circuits from 1960 through 1963, and almost alone provided the demand that funded the production improvements to get the production costs from $1000/circuit (in 1960 dollars) to merely $25/circuit (in 1963 dollars).[citation needed] They began to appear in consumer products at the turn of the decade, a typical application being FM inter-carrier sound processing in television receivers."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit


I just think we are in a situation like that (no Mike, not exactly). The new generation lithium-ion technology was invented about 10 years ago (No, I didn‘t look up the exact dates for each and every patent that each battery company is using because I‘m sure you will correct me - thanks) and now it's really gathering enough critical mass for the industry to expand rapidly. Notice how only a few events happen to drive things? Look at what the costs were for the IC before mass production. There was a great need by these programs to get these ICs in volume.

The EV industry is very close to this situation. Volumes are low, the technology is very new but the need is great. The rich and the government will help drive the R&D and move things to volume production. New technologies will keep the battery specifications improving while the higher volumes will drive the prices lower.

Everything is coming together at this point and the big boys are starting to throw down big money for factories and visible projects. The heat is on and the stress to succeed is great. This is when real progress takes place.

Let's face it, everyone knows it's all about the battery. You could have a Pinto with an EEscam-like device and it will blow the doors off the beautiful Volt. You put lipstick on a pig you're still stuck with a pig.

The stakes are now very high and big companies are banking their reputations on EV and hybrid success. Come to think of it, it's almost impossible for battery technology not to improve rapidly. The next 5 years are going to be like the 1960 - 1963 IC story. Big EV and hybrid projects will be delivered to customers in 2010-2011 and it's going to ramp from there. Every battery factory will be running around trying to incorporate the next big advance. Some will hold on, some will fail spectacularly. However, we consumers will win big.

I see the basis for the idealistic hope... It's always been the same kind of thinking for all the miracle batteries ... I just don't agree with it.

Of course we could go round and round about why I don't agree with it and others do agree with it... but I don't see much benefit from that... I suspect it will boil down to... those who believe look at certain trends and expect them to apply ... while they will look at other trends and think that they will not apply... and which trends one thinks apply and doesn't apply becomes very individualistic ... and why some people keep having faith in a miracle battery in the next 3 to 5 years while others do not.

Of course the old saying ... there's one born every minute ... means that no matter how many , learn the hard way ... there will always be more people willing to put down their hard earned money on a pipe dream ... and Dr Toms miracle tonic... or Dr ___'s miracle battery.

----------

Will rechargeable batteries improve ... yes... will we see better than 300 wh / kg in the next 10 years ... I seriously doubt it.

Will rechargeable batteries improve ... yes... will we see better than 300 wh / kg in the next 10 years ... I seriously doubt it.

Totally agree. We are at about 100 wh/kg now for commercial high-energy applications. 300 will be nice but unlikely. Probably more like 200 in the next 10 years for long-life deep discharge Lions.

A valid breakthrough will take 10 years to commercialize.

Totally agree. We are at about 100 wh/kg now for commercial high-energy applications. 300 will be nice but unlikely. Probably more like 200 in the next 10 years for long-life deep discharge Lions.

A valid breakthrough will take 10 years to commercialize.

I would agree with the 200 number as being the most likely to see level that one can actually buy in the next ~10 years.

I figured if I were to be overly idealistic and optimistic... Li-Ion cells from Gaia on the market anyone can buy now if you like are ~150 Wh / kg and were first offered to select research customers like universities almost ~5 years ago ... so although I think it would be a long shot at best... it might be at least possible to get into the 200's in the next 10 years... but 300's or above... I seriously doubt it... not in 10 years.... I doubt even in 15 years.

And as you indicated ... even if they do get into the upper 200's or even low 300's ... it isn't just about wh / kg ... that is a big part don't get me wrong... but if a miracle battery dies in 100 cycles ... it isn't a viable battery for any vehicle ... if a miracle battery with can only last a reasonable service life if you only use a 50% or less DoD... then it is effectively 1/2 the wh/kg... if a miracle battery cost 1,000x as much than it is too expensive ... if the a miracle battery is too toxic it isn't viable due to vehicular accidents & and end of life disposal ... if the miracle battery has odd requirements for operating conditions , like 500 deg F then it isn't viable either.... If the miracle battery take 1 week to recharge it also isn't viable... etc...etc... there is a very very long list of requirements that a battery would have to meet to be viable for vehicular use.

There is also issues of diminishing returns ... I have my doubts that it is even possible to make a 500 or 1,000 wh / kg rechargeable battery that is viable for vehicular use... ever... given any amount of time...

I know people love to point to the rapid growth of computers ... but diminishing returns can even be seen there...

In 1995:
~75 mhz 16 bit 16 MB 100 Mhz RAM PCs were the norm

By 2000:
~1,200 mhz 32bit 64 MB RAM ( twice as fast as 1995 RAM ) PCs were the norm.

That is about a 250x increase in PC power in ~5 years...

But where are we today... the norm is still 32 bit ... 64 bit is only starting to get market penetration ... under ~2,600 mhz ... 512 MB RAM ( about twice as fast as 2000 RAM ).

Previously our PCs were increasing at ~250x per 5 years... in the last 8 years they've improved but not by ~250x... it's been more like about 50x in the last 8 years.

I think there is still a good bit of room for technological progress... but the amount of energy one can fit into a viable rechargeable battery is ultimately limited ... it is not infinite ... and given what is known at this time ... I seriously doubt we will ever even given 1,000 years ... I doubt we will ever have a viable vehicular rechargeable battery that holds over 1,000 Wh / kg.

Maybe we eventually will abandon rechargeables in favor of fusion or something in 1,000+ years.... or maybe we won't need that much energy to move people around... if they even have to move around at all.;)

Totally agree. We are at about 100 wh/kg now for commercial high-energy applications. 300 will be nice but unlikely. Probably more like 200 in the next 10 years for long-life deep discharge Lions.

A valid breakthrough will take 10 years to commercialize.





Heck, I think the current lithium-ion technology would result in miracle batteries if the cost was reasonable. When the current batch of EV converters use them instead of lead acid then you know they reached a milestone.

If you are expecting 3X performance AND long life AND low cost then yeah, that might take some time. I just want good performance with reasonable life and expense. If it was quick-charge as well then that would be more than a miracle for me.

Since nobody knows if and when a huge jump in performance will hit we all have to circle a date on the calendar. I'm sticking with the 5 year mark. Other think there will only be slow growth for the next 20 years. If so, I'm going to die unfulfilled and bored. ;) Let's hope for that miracle.

I think falling prices (driven by competition, economies of scale, improvements in production techniques and yields, which all strike me as fairly certain to occur, these are engineering problems) are more likely than fundamental changes in the chemistries that would allow significantly longer range and significantly higher energy densities (this is a physics problem). So, I think we'll see cars that are reasonably priced and readily capable of 125 miles - maybe as much as 200 - before we see cars with really long ranges at any price.

Those ranges aren't much of a stretch... replace the several hundred pounds of motor, gas tank and generator in the Volt with an equivalent size package of batteries and you're pretty much there in a four-place car (twice the passenger capacity of an EV-1).

This dynamic - minor change in battery capability plus major shift in battery pricing - makes me wonder if battery swap is the way we should head. Lower cost batteries cuts the working capital cost of a "battery depot" or swap station significantly.

I think falling prices ... are more likely than fundamental changes in the chemistries that would allow significantly longer range and significantly higher energy densities.

I agree with this thought as well... prices may come down do to economies of scale... but even that will be at best 5+ years away ... more likely 10+ years away.


If so, I'm going to die unfulfilled and bored. ;) Let's hope for that miracle.

That's why I think it is better to switch the roles of optimism and pessimism... ;) instead of expecting the best thing to happen and then no matter what happens it always falls short of your expectations ... set easily achievable ( realistically pessimistic ) outlooks... then you don't need a miracle to be fulfilled and happy about it... as in batteries stay under 200 wh / kg for the next ~50 years... and don't drop more than 10% in price for the next ~25 years ...then if we see a 10% price drop in less than ~25 years... that is a great thing... and anything better is just better... instead of setting your hopes sooo high that the only way to be happy and view it as a great thing is if prices drop by 1/2 or better... and then all of the rest of the 1% and 2% improvements that make it to market in a viable product , don't have to be just ignored as unimportant and trivial... they can be great and uplifting .... but that's just my pessimistic 2 bits ;)

do we really need miracle batteries?

I think what we have now is fine, just needs to come down in cost a bit.. if it is proven they dont last 10 years then it means it must come down in cost some more.

Worried about resale?.. lease the batteries, buy the car.

If needed we could electrify all the nations highways, and the cost would not be extreme.. and thus get along very well with 10-20 mile range packs.

If needed we could electrify all the nations highways, and the cost would not be extreme..


What is your cost estimate for this? Also, can you include the technology needed to connect the car? Thanks.

You know - if problems could be solved by throwing money at them, then we would have nuclear fusion by now. Batteries are not like that.

The rate of progress in Li-ion battery capacity is a few percent a year since 1991. It has now pretty much stalled. Higher capacities have shorter cycle life. High power batteries have lower energy capacity - eg A123.

Sanyo has 2000 engineers working on these problems - do you think it is easy?

The US has essentially no indigenous battery manufacturer of note - pretty much everybody who tried failed.

perhaps ths ime it will be different

Just a wild guess.. but you would use inductive charging pads spaced out about 75ft on the highways.. as the car drove over them (at speed) it would pulse and recharge your battery (and charge your bank account).. all you need is about 200wh per mile or so, not a lot.

The Federal Insterstate Hwy System is 48k miles of roads, at a cost of $15k per pad it would take about $20 billion.. lots of jobs created also. Add $20 billion more for waste and pork..Totally guessing but probably in the ballpark.

You may want more power delivery than 200wh/mile to deal with faster vehicles or large 18-wheelers.. the power delivered per pad is still not much.

Inductive charging is a coil of wires buried just below the road surface, underneath the car is another coil of wires and together both form a transformer.. there are losses but we can make electricity in a nuclear reactor without having to go to the mid-east to suck it out of the ground.

Cost issues aside (and that is a BIG issue to set aside), inductive charging is really practical only with a stationary vehicle. A magnetic drag would occur if you try to move the vehicle over the charging pads, and the drag would be proportional to the energy transferred. To send any meaningful amount of energy would induce a substantial drag on the vehicle.

It may be possible to have a series of relatively small pads switched synchronously with the vehicle speed, so the "active" pad follows the vehicle, but there would still be a small amount of drag, and this system would be much more complex.

For all the cost and complexity, why not just turn the highways into linear electric motor stators? Sorry, not practical.

I think the best solution includes an improved battery or other high-density energy storage device (a la EESCAM). A truly electric vehicle needs to be capable of being rapidly recharged (<10mins) in order to be practical.

Just my opinions. ;)

the magnetic field pulses just as the car is above the pad.. thus no drag (the car is pushed up). This was done a while back (in the 60s?) as a test by the feds somewhere in California. Cant find a link in Google.

How much $$ do we send out of the country for oil every year?

Another solution is powered metal strips on the road, with self-aligning brushes on the car to track and make contact with the strips. The strips would be in short segments and they would turn on just before your car got to it. Less losses than the induction method but a lot more maintenance on the brushes and its robotic alignment mechanism.

do we really need miracle batteries?

No.

But, we do want them.

The vast majority do not need to travel more than 50 mile per day... which can easily be given with old school lead acid batteries ... people want more but it has nothing to do with what is actually needed...

People want to live further from work... but humans existed and society functioned when people walked and rode horses to work.... that is what we need... but it is not what we want.

People want the x minute charge times... but that also is a want... the vast majority of people can easily charge in the 20+ hours the car sits stationary parked every day.... especially as it only has to travel ~50 miles or less per day.

And we don't need 3,000+ pound vehicles to transport a ~200 pound person... it is a massive waste of energy to move around such large amounts of mass that are not needed.... but people want them.

People say aerodynamic cars like the Aptera are ugly ... but that is the shape of the car that best meets people's needs... by being more aerodynamic ... form should follow function ... instead we have people who want unaerodynamic styling ... so vehicles get designed like the original Volt concept ... which had crappy aerodynamics... again people want that look... even if it is not what they need and even if it wastes large amount of energy to perform the same task.

In the end... do we NEED the miracle batteries ... of course not... our current battery technology is 100% able to meet our needs... but we WANT the miracle battery because of all the things we want that have nothing to do with our needs.... and while what we want is not what we need... it is still very important to what we will pay for... what we will work for... etc... does anybody need TV... of course not... but we want it... same thing.

GM is being very conservative with their battery management and only rating this battery at 16kwh. If you subtract the weight of the battery management, mechanical structure, cooling system and calculate on full charge/discharge, you would find that these batteries are 300Wh/kg! This is not a miracle, just state of the art. Higher energy batteries are coming and it won't take 10 years.

GM is being very conservative with their battery management and only rating this battery at 16kwh. If you subtract the weight of the battery management, mechanical structure, cooling system and calculate on full charge/discharge, you would find that these batteries are 300Wh/kg! This is not a miracle, just state of the art. Higher energy batteries are coming and it won't take 10 years.




I agree with you that 300 Wh/kg will not take 15 years like IamIan claims (I say 5 years or less). However, I don't think we are there yet. Do you have references that prove otherwise? No, not just claims but real products. Also, if a technology needs a lot of heavy support then it should probably be included. Can it work without it? If so, then it can be excluded. I think that’s only fair. We want a practical solution and that includes all of the fine details needed to get there.

Sorry, I still don't buy it. Even if you could solve the technical problems, the cost and complexity of the moving-vehicle inductive charging system overshadow any possible benefit.

Give me a good battery or other high-density energy-storage device any day.

Here is a link to wireless power transmission:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiTricity

Here is a link to wireless power transmission:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiTricity

Uh-huh. Resonant coils within 1/4 wavelength (a few meters at the 10MHz frequency mentioned), axially aligned. Other articles, discussed quite some time ago here, point out the poor efficiency of wireless energy transfer. Besides, I'm not certain I want to subject myself to energy fields strong enough to power something substantial.

I think the point is that it can be done, no insurmountable obstacles. Power enough to drive a 60w light bulb at two meters distance.. a car will only need 4 times this to travel one mile.

Power enough to drive a 60w light bulb at two meters distance.. a car will only need 4 times this to travel one mile.
On a flat surface, with no extraneous loads on the system, right? Sorry, just doesn't fly with me. Installing a system like this to power a transportation grid would be massively expensive and impractical. Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done.

I would rather have the efforts put into high-density energy storage, be it advanced-technology batteries or EESTOR-like devices.

GM is being very conservative with their battery management and only rating this battery at 16kwh. If you subtract the weight of the battery management, mechanical structure, cooling system and calculate on full charge/discharge, you would find that these batteries are 300Wh/kg! This is not a miracle, just state of the art. Higher energy batteries are coming and it won't take 10 years.

What's the source?

I'd like to read it... the last I read the batteries that were going into the Volt were around ~120 Wh / kg themselves ... then GM adds in the additional weight you talk about ... and limited DoD ... that allow them to function reliably in the automotive environment... for more than 1 year before failure ... thus significantly lowering the effective Wh/kg bellow the ~120 they started with.

I agree with Texas if the batteries need all those other things to reliably function in the automotive environment ... then they are necessary parts of the automotive battery... and their weight should be included.

I think the point is that it can be done, no insurmountable obstacles. Power enough to drive a 60w light bulb at two meters distance.. a car will only need 4 times this to travel one mile.

:D... ok that was a funny thing to wake up to...

yes.. a 60W light bulb in 1 hour will use 60 Wh and the average EV uses on average ~250 Wh per Mile... just don't confuse the watt ( W ) rate with the WattHour ( Wh ) total over time.... because in the example you give the EV is moving at only 1 MPH... in order to only use ~250 Wh over 1 mile and at a ~250 Watt power rate ... it scales up ... forgetting for a moment the increasing resistive forces as one moves faster ( and in the real world they do matter and can not be ignored ) ... at 40 MPH you would need more than 40x this amount of energy rate ... or over 10,000 Watt rate ( 10kwh burned up every 1 hour ) ... to move a car at highway speeds easily uses a higher watt energy rate than if you maxed out your electrical service for your whole house...

Here is a nifty experiment ... look at the kwh number on your next electric bill ... multiply that number by 4.... this is about how many miles an EV would have gone on that same total amount of electrical energy... for instance I use on average about ~250 kwh of total electrical energy per month ... Instead of powering my apartment for a whole month ... I could have driven for ~1,000 Miles in the average EV over the average driving conditions ... and if I did that at highway speeds of ~70 mph ... I would have burned up that same total amount of electrical energy in about ~14 hours of driving... and if you know what your electrical bill was for that same month's kwh ... you can also easily calculate what it would have cost you in electricity to travel that distance.... some parts of the country this works out greatly in the EVs favor because of low electrical rates ... other places where electricity is higher not so much...

If you feel like it , you can then compare the $ per Mile rate of the average EV on your electrical service , with the $ per mile rate of a gasoline car once you assume a MPG rate , and $ per gallon rate.

For Instance I get on average ~65 MPG in my gasoline 2000 Honda Insight ... when gasoline costs $2 per gallon it costs me ~$0.03 per mile ... when Gasoline is $3 per gallon it costs me ~$0.046 per mile... an average EV at ~4 miles per kwh I pay ~$0.107 per kwh ( including taxes and such ) would cost me ~$0.027 per mile... for me average EV compared to my 65 MPG isn't a very good example ... but the EV would still cost me less per mile to fuel ... EV converted Insights I have seen average over ~6 miles per kwh ... which would mean an EV version of my Insight would cost me $0.0178 per mile ... at 65 MPG Gasoline has to be under $1.16 per gallon just to break even with the fueling cost of the EV :D ... of course it's not the whole picture ... but like I said ... It think it is nifty none the less.... gasoline is very very cheap even at $5 per gallon for the amount of energy in that 1 gallon of gasoline... people just have lost sight of how massive the energy needs of their vehicle are.

Iam, a typical car does consume 200wh to travel at normal highways speeds for one mile. The volt uses 8kwh to travel 40 miles, that works out to 200wh per mile traveled.

Yes a 60w bulb does consume 60 watts every hour.. the power consumed by a 200w bulb is enough to move your car 1mile (or so). The bulb takes one hour to do it, the car does it in 1 minute.. but it still is the same amount of power... an potentially we can store that same amount of power in a battery or transmit it thru the air.

Ok, suppose we have a mile long electrical coil buried under the road.. along comes a BEV at 60mph.. once it is over the coil it starts sucking power at a 200wh rate.. if the coil is powered by 400Volts you will see 0.5Amps flowing thru it for a minute (in reality you really dont want to build up a 1 mile long magnetic field).

My idea is that instead of digging up the road for a mile at an astronomical expense.. we can divide the coil into
62 pieces and bury them every 85 ft or so (or whatever is most economical).. the 200wh would be distributed across the 62 coils but each coil would only work for a few milliseconds but at a much higher power level.. perhaps each pad seeing 300Amps for about 100msec.

The interesting thing about that link I posted previously is that you could actually bury the pads much deeper than I tought.. thus allowing for future road resurfacing without having to reinstall the pads. Hopefully the pads would be made in the US, and installed with local labor.. and hopefully with Federal money :)

I really think that batteries will come down in cost so much that 300 mile range BEV will become common.. and then all you would need would be 30 minute fastcharge stations placed periodically on the highways. The Florida Turnpike system has rest stations spaced every 50 miles or so, that seems to come in handy to spend lots of money on a Disney trip.

Here is an interesting thread on electrifying a highway:

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/05/05/reader-question-why-not-electrify-the-highways/

Ok, suppose we have a mile long electrical coil buried under the road.. along comes a BEV at 60mph.. once it is over the coil it starts sucking power at a 200wh rate.. if the coil is powered by 400Volts you will see 0.5Amps flowing thru it for a minute (in reality you really dont want to build up a 1 mile long magnetic field).

My idea is that instead of digging up the road for a mile at an astronomical expense.. we can divide the coil into
62 pieces and bury them every 85 ft or so (or whatever is most economical).. the 200wh would be distributed across the 62 coils but each coil would only work for a few milliseconds but at a much higher power level.. perhaps each pad seeing 300Amps for about 100msec.
So, over a one-mile distance, you would pass over roughly 62 pads. Traveling at 55mph (80.67ft/s), 100ms duration represents a length of roughly eight feet. If you put an eight-foot long coil underneath the vehicle, the fixed coil embedded in the roadway would need to be a minimum of 16 feet long for a full 100ms energy transfer period. You propose digging up 16 feet every 85 feet, leaving 69 feet of undisturbed pavement. This doesn't sound very economical to me.

At 55mph, traveling a distance of one mile will take 65.45 seconds. The vehicle will pass over a fixed coil about every 1.05 seconds. The 100ms energy transfer period represents a duty cycle of about 9.5%. You'd have to drive a long distance over this hideously expensive roadway to accumulate any meaningful charge.

I won't even begin to calculate the efficiency (losses) of the energy transfer; that sounds too much like my "day job".


The interesting thing about that link I posted previously is that you could actually bury the pads much deeper than I tought.. thus allowing for future road resurfacing without having to reinstall the pads. Hopefully the pads would be made in the US, and installed with local labor.. and hopefully with Federal money :)
OMG. Federal money = "free" money, right? Where do you think Federal money comes from? :rolleyes:


I really think that batteries will come down in cost so much that 300 mile range BEV will become common.. and then all you would need would be 30 minute fastcharge stations placed periodically on the highways. The Florida Turnpike system has rest stations spaced every 50 miles or so, that seems to come in handy to spend lots of money on a Disney trip.
A 30-minute charge time is not quite fast enough, in my opinion. I would rather see 10 minutes. Plus, those rest areas are used by people who need to use a rest room, pee their dogs, take a brief walk, etc. How many vehicles traveling over a given segment of highway stop at the rest area? I would hazard a guess that a very small percentage. If you now have vehicles that need to stop and CHARGE at the rest areas, you will find that your existing rest area charging stations will quickly become overwhelmed, and that 30-minute charge time could jump to a few hours.

IMO, the best model for EVs is a fast-charge (10 minutes max, 5 is better) and at least 200 mile range with all electrical loads operating. The closer we can make the EV model look like the gasoline-ICE model, the better. Of course, we will be able to home-charge the EV, but that may be an overnight proposition. I like this much better than ridiculously expensive "rolling charge" roadways.

" potentially we can store that same amount of power in a battery"

Uhmm, no....you can't. You can't store power. You don't understand the difference between energy and power. Look it up. Spend a few hours, then let go of your ridiculous idea.

Iam, a typical car does consume 200wh to travel at normal highways speeds for one mile. The volt uses 8kwh to travel 40 miles, that works out to 200wh per mile traveled.

Yes a 60w bulb does consume 60 watts every hour.. the power consumed by a 200w bulb is enough to move your car 1mile (or so). The bulb takes one hour to do it, the car does it in 1 minute.. but it still is the same amount of power... an potentially we can store that same amount of power in a battery or transmit it thru the air.

There is a difference between W ( watts ) and Wh (WattHours )...

Watts is a rate of power... when you say Watts in electrical terms it is like saying MPH in distance terms ... unless you give additional information it is just a rate and nothing more.

Watt Hours ( Wh ) in electrical terms is a specific amount of energy ... like miles are a specific amount of distance in distance terms.

60 watts used for 1 hour = 60 Watt Hours.
60 watts used for 30 minutes = 30 Watt Hours.
60 watts used for 2 hours = 120 Watt Hours.

Just like:
60 MPH for 1 hour = 60 Miles.
60 MPH for 30 Minutes = 30 Miles.
60 MPH for 2 hours = 120 Miles.

A 200 watt bulb is only the rate of energy usage ( ie Power ) ... in order to know the total energy usage you also have to know over what period of time you use that rate .... If you had a 200 watt Power usage rate for 1 hour you would have used a total of 200 Wh of energy ... but if you have the same 200 Watt power usage rate for 15 minutes you have only used 50 Wh of energy.

200 Wh of energy .... not 200 Watts of power ... is the amount of energy needed to move the Volt ~1 Mile... one is a rate the other is a specific amount.

If you applied a 200 W rate it would take you 1 hour to get 200 Wh of energy ... or 30 minutes to get 100 Wh of energy ... given 200 Wh of energy to move ~1 Mile ... your 200 watt energy rate would only move the Volt at most ~1 MPH.

1 HP = ~746 Watts ( in Electrical Terms )

HP is a rate of power ... just like watts is a rate of power.

you don't say it takes 200 HP to go 1 mile ... because it wouldn't make any sense ... just like saying 200 Watts to go 1 mile also doesn't make any sense.

( Watt-Hour ) is Metric = ( HorsePower per Hour ) in the English system.

it gets even worse.. the pads should have enough capacity to power 18 wheelers also.

I was hoping the pads would be smaller than 8 feet across but that may not be possible. I remember seeing a picture of a bus driving on a road in California back in the 60's.. supposedly powered by induction... but I cant find a link.

This idea would be worthwhile IF we never develop cheap large batteries.. and I dont think that will happen.

Yes, efficiency, cost and safety issues have to dealt with.

Sorry for expressing myself so poorly.. I is an electrical engineer and thus have poor writing skills. I do know the difference.

So you dont think it can be done or you think its not practical?


" potentially we can store that same amount of power in a battery"

Uhmm, no....you can't. You can't store power. You don't understand the difference between energy and power. Look it up. Spend a few hours, then let go of your ridiculous idea.

I am an electronic engineer, and I do believe that what you describe is technically possible. I believe that it would be inefficient, impractical, and horribly expensive. For that cost, you would almost be better served to make the highways into huge stators for linear motors, just pushing otherwise inert vehicles along on magnetic waves.

My bets (and hopes) are on improved energy-storage devices, capable of being charged quickly with an appropriate power source. This would be the most effective and least expensive solution. Couple this with high-capacity charging stations (a la gas stations) and we have a win. The frosting on the cake is that we can also charge the vehicles at home, albeit over a longer period of time.

Sorry for expressing myself so poorly.. I is an electrical engineer and thus have poor writing skills. I do know the difference.

So you dont think it can be done or you think its not practical?

Not practical.

a proper engineering study would have to be done to find the best way to do it..

The potential savings are huge, millions of cars using short range batteries instead of 300 mile packs, and thousands of long haul trucks not using any diesel.

One thing, the system must be rugged.. you dont want a major disaster stopping the movement of needed supplies.

Best of all, all the tech exists today.

a proper engineering study would have to be done to find the best way to do it..

The potential savings are huge, millions of cars using short range batteries instead of 300 mile packs, and thousands of long haul trucks not using any diesel.

One thing, the system must be rugged.. you dont want a major disaster stopping the movement of needed supplies.

Best of all, all the tech exists today.
A proper engineering study would conclude that the solution was far too expensive and impractical. Start costing out one mile of powered roadway. Be sure to include all material, labor, and necessary infrastructure. Next, multiply by the number of miles of major freeways in the United States. Show us some figures that hint towards your proposal making financial sense. I am thinking that upwards of about $50 million per mile sounds like a reasonable starting point for the sake of discussion - it's probably low, though. Install 100,000 miles of powered roadway for a staggering cost of $5,000,000,000,000? I don't think so.

Also, don't forget that your solution will be delivering power at peak usage times. Smart charging can be done at off-peak times.

Just because technology exists, doesn't mean it should be implemented in large scale.

You may be right, I have no idea how much it costs to dig up a road.. hopefully installing a pad every so many feet would be cheaper than tearing up the whole road.. and you dont have to install it everywhere, start with the Federal Highway System first.. after all, it will be many years before BEV become common.

It would make a good fed infrastructure improvement program (stimulus money dump) if gas hits $4 again.

The hardware would be the cheap part, it would be mass produced.. the unionized labor would be the big question.


A proper engineering study would conclude that the solution was far too expensive and impractical. Start costing out one mile of powered roadway. Be sure to include all material, labor, and necessary infrastructure.

Overhead wire and a ground strip would be cheaper.

You may be right, I have no idea how much it costs to dig up a road.. hopefully installing a pad every so many feet would be cheaper than tearing up the whole road.. and you dont have to install it everywhere, start with the Federal Highway System first.. after all, it will be many years before BEV become common.

It would make a good fed infrastructure improvement program (stimulus money dump) if gas hits $4 again.

The hardware would be the cheap part, it would be mass produced.. the unionized labor would be the big question.
We just got through putting in a light rail system in the Portland metro area, with installation costs at about $100 million per mile - and this is established technology. BTW, I'm sure that includes union labor. If you paid Federal taxes, I'd like to thank you for your (unwilling/unaware) contribution to Oregon's transportation infrastructure. ;)

Do you earn a good wage? Have you worked for very long? Don't be too quick to push for "stimulus" spending. That money will ultimately come from the taxpayers, and we are already battered flat from the spending of the government class and the corruption from the financial sector elite class.

Such a system would need to deliver over 10,000+ watt rates to each car traveling on an equipped road... just for them to keep pace with highway speed traffic ... there are allot of cars on any given road / highway... 10,000+ watts for each vehicle ... all at the same time ... and all durning peak electrical load times... that is a ton of electrical energy in the roads... and at the worst possible time to be pulling such large loads.

Even putting the cost of construction aside ... and I agree with Altazi , the construction costs alone would make it not cost effective ... given the amount of roads in the U.S.A. it would cost less to replace every car on the road with $100,000 electric cars than it would to rebuild all of that road ways to make the system work.

We can't even properly maintain the primitive / robust roads we have now... look at the solid and comparatively simple roads we have today... look at any major city and you find crappy roads that be repaired and replaced ... expect if such an inductive system were included into the road as well... not only is the road more complex , thus lending itself to a higher maintenance rate... but the cost of maintenance and repairs would be massively higher than a normal modern road is.

the idea is nice... but I think it only has potential in mass transit paths ... where lots of people take a vehicle like a train over a much more limited path... even then it only is worth doing in very limited and specific places.

12,000 watt rate to drive 60 miles in one hour, at a cost of 11 cents per Kwh that is $1.32 to drive 60 miles.. quite a bit cheaper than gasoline.


Such a system would need to deliver over 10,000+ watt rates to each car traveling on an equipped road.

Here is PRIMOVE (a catenary is an overhead power wire), developed by Bombardier :

http://www.railwaygazette.com/news_view/article/2009/01/9282/primove_catenary_free_induction_tram.html

Primove catenary-free induction tram

23 Jan 2009


GERMANY: A tram powered by Bombardier's prototype Primove induction system was formally launched at the company's Bautzen plant on January 22. A potential rival to Alstom's APS ground-level power supply, Primove removes the need for catenary.

Power is transferred to the vehicle by induction, as used in transformers. The principle is used in industrial applications and household appliances including electric toothbrushes, but Bombardier says Primove is the first tram application.

A primary circuit is formed from power cables buried between the rails and connected to a substation. This produces a magnetic field, which is converted back to electrical current by a pick-up coil mounted under the vehicle.

Cables can be laid under any surface, including concrete, tarmac or grass, and can be fitted to an existing trackbed. The components are not visible and are not affected by the weather, and the supply is only energised when the cable is covered by the vehicle, ensuring safe operation. As there is no direct contact the components are not subject to wear.

The 250 kW continuous output of the prototype is designed to power a typical 30 m light rail vehicle operating at 40 km/h on a 6% gradient. Commercial applications of 100 kW to 1 000 kW are planned.

Here is another one for trams, this one uses a third rail to transfer power. Safe for pedestrians that walk over it.

http://www.transport.alstom.com/home/elibrary/technical/environnement/31288.EN.php?languageId=EN&dir=/home/elibrary/technical/environnement/

" Power is supplied to the tram through a third rail embedded in the tracks. This third rail is made up of 8 metre-long conducting segments, which can be powered, and which are separated by 3 metre insulating joints. Power is supplied to the conducting segments by underground boxes every 22 metres. The electricity transmitted through this third rail is picked up by two friction contactors located in the mid-section of the tram. The delivery of power to the conducting segments is triggered by coded radio dialogue between the tram and the ground, and only occurs once the conducting segment has been covered by the tram, ensuring total safety for pedestrians."

Here is one for appliances, not moving vehicles:

http://www.ecoupled.com/

The intelligence of eCoupled technology allows it to dynamically seek resonance and optimize power transfers at high efficiencies (greater than 98% at 120 volts/1.4 kilowatts) under multiple, varying spatial configurations and load conditions – from low-power to high-power applications. Power and data can now be efficiently transmitted to virtually any electrical device without the constraints of cords, connectors or contact points. And the solution can be either adaptive or integrated. This means that different devices from different brands requiring different power needs can share a single power source creating a truly interoperable solution at energy costs comparable to hard-wired connections.

Through its advanced identification protocol, eCoupled technology adapts its operation to match the needs of each device it powers by communicating with it in real time. It assesses and determines not only power needs but also factors in battery or device age and charging lifecycles. It provides only the necessary power needed to keep a device at peak efficiency.

Additionally, eCoupled technology authenticates any device within range. If a device or object is not immediately recognized as eCoupled compatible, the power source will not supply power to it, maintaining a safe operating environment. eCoupled technology has been validated by standards organizations in 36 countries for safety, electromagnetic compatibility (noise) and other international performance criteria.

more ECOUPLED links:

a startling video of a blender in a kitchen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PC5DhpouaU


here is one for an iPhone:

http://gizmodo.com/5126025/hands+on-with-fulton-innovations-ecoupled-system-charges-gadgets-with-no-wires-necessary

a good article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_energy_transfer

In November 2006, Marin Soljačić and other researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology applied the near field behavior well known in electromagnetic theory to a wireless power transmission concept based on strongly-coupled resonators.[24][25][26] In a theoretical analysis,[27] they demonstrate that, by designing electromagnetic resonators that suffer minimal loss due to radiation and absorption and have a near field with mid-range extent (namely a few times the resonator size), mid-range efficient wireless energy-transfer is possible. The reason is that, if two such resonant circuits tuned to the same frequency are within a fraction of a wavelength, their near fields (consisting of 'evanescent waves') couple by means of evanescent wave coupling (which is related to quantum tunneling). Standing waves develop between the inductors, which can allow the energy to transfer from one object to the other within times much shorter than all loss times, which were designed to be long, and thus with the maximum possible energy-transfer efficiency. Since the resonant wavelength is much larger than the resonators, the field can circumvent extraneous objects in the vicinity and thus this mid-range energy-transfer scheme does not require line-of-sight. By utilizing in particular the magnetic field to achieve the coupling, this method can be safe, since magnetic fields interact weakly with living organisms.

I agree EVs are more cost effective ( cheaper ) to fuel than gasoline powered cars.

I agree wireless power transfer is possible... AM crystal radios still work today.

I am not disagreeing with either of those two points.

------------------

I am saying that none of the wireless power systems are viable for vehicle applications other than isolated path mass transit systems ... and all of them are more expensive than BEVs for general road ways ... and such wireless power systems introduce more problems and issues than they solve when applied to general road ways.

Ecouple uses magnetic fields ... exactly the same way that transformers do... they are just moving the coils further from each other... anyone that has ever used even a simple refrigerator magnet knows how quickly the magnetic field weakens over distance... high efficiencies like in transformers are only possible when the two inductive devices are extremely close to each other... this system is not viable for vehicular use in public roads... even 1" distances would drastically reduce the power transfer ... this is why the power rail in electrified mass transit is never a large distance between the rail and the vehicle it transfers power to.

12 kw per vehicle times how many million vehicles all during peak hours ... this only makes the problems power plants have during idle times even worse... Conventional BEVs are far superior ... less expensive ... more durable ... and a BEVs shift the charging electrical usage to off peak times ... which helps to improve the over all efficiency of the electrical grid as a whole...

Like I said ... it is a nice idea... but it just isn't viable.

I think its viable, not sure about practical..did you see the link on the Primove system?, apparently it can be done and the airgap is not a problem.. quoting:

" Power is transferred to the vehicle by induction, as used in transformers.
.
.
Cables can be laid under any surface, including concrete, tarmac or grass, and can be fitted to an existing trackbed.
.
.
The 250 kW continuous output of the prototype is designed to power a typical 30 m light rail vehicle operating at 40 km/h on a 6% gradient. Commercial applications of 100 kW to 1 000 kW are planned."

http://www.railwaygazette.com/news_view/article/2009/01/9282/primove_catenary_free_induction_tram.html

I dont think the amount of power is a problem, just fire up another coal plant.



.. this system is not viable for vehicular use in public roads... even 1" distances would drastically reduce the power transfer ... this is why the power rail in electrified mass transit is never a large distance between the rail and the vehicle it transfers power to.

I think its viable, not sure about practical..

so we disagree... no big deal.



did you see the link on the Primove system?, apparently it can be done and the airgap is not a problem.. quoting:

" Power is transferred to the vehicle by induction, as used in transformers.


Yes ... and as I said ... possible yes... viable no... just like allot of other things.

This is effectively like making a road made out of high power transformers every inch along the way ... and it is just crazy expensive to make , to repair , to maintain, etc... it only becomes viable when there is a very high density of travel over a very limited narrow path ... ie trains, and similar.

Magnetic induction never fixes the problem of the air gap... it is inherent in all Magnetic induction systems ... magnetic fields weaken to fast over any type of distance ... pull your refrigerator magnet 1" from the fridge and you will easily see the magnetic field strength drop off I am talking about... Rail systems for isolated limited path mass transit systems always reduce the air gap distance as much as possible... this is just how magnetic fields work.

The only way to significantly reduce the air gap issue , is to forget about magnetic induction systems and move to other means of wireless power transfer .... and none of those systems are viable either.



I dont think the amount of power is a problem, just fire up another coal plant.

I think you greatly underestimate the scale of the power requirements your suggested system would require... If it is BEVs then they can take advantage of the off peak times to load level the power plants... when our exsisting power plants are least used... and allot of power is currently just wasted.

Your proposed system instead massively increases the peak loads required and further increases the off peak idle issues for power plants... this kind of peak power system would be pulling massive amounts of power at the worst possible time of day to pull them , when the power grid is already being asked for the highest amount of power.

http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_11.html

given the old 2006 number of just the 250 million registered vehicles ... forgetting about all the unregistered ones or the increase sense 2006... it seems safe to assume even if just 1/2 of those vehicles head to work during the peak times you are asking for 12+ kw per vehicle ... or more than 1,500GW of additional peak power.... for each hour they are running.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/reps/enduse/er01_us_tab1.html

In 2001 the whole U.S.A. used only ~1,140,000 GWH for all the houses for the whole US for the Whole year... or ~3,123 GWH per day ... or a ~130 GW rate per hour.

Your proposed system in addition to other issues ...would require not just 1 or two more power plants... in order to handle that kind of increased peak power load ... you would be looking to increase the entire countries electrical generating abilities by a very large amount... like more than doubling or tippling our entire countries electrical peak power output... and that is just not viable.

BEVs are a far better option... in my book... and charging at night when national electrical usage drops ... is just a better strategy.

wireless power like that is still a nice idea... just not viable.

well, if we are transitioning from an oil based transportation system to an electric based one you must expect a lot more need for electricity generation.

If the 250 million vehicles are fitted with 40 mile range packs then only 18% of them would need to draw power from the highway to finish their drive to work. The utilities could also shut off un-needed services during rush hour.. my AC and water heater are controlled remotely by the power company. The again people may choose to use 10 mile packs in their cars.

Rush hour does not happen all at the same time across the US, some load balancing could also be spread across the whole country.

No one knows what would happen that far into the future.

well, if we are transitioning from an oil based transportation system to an electric based one you must expect a lot more need for electricity generation.

If the 250 million vehicles are fitted with 40 mile range packs then only 18% of them would need to draw power from the highway to finish their drive to work. The utilities could also shut off un-needed services during rush hour.. my AC and water heater are controlled remotely by the power company. The again people may choose to use 10 mile packs in their cars.

Rush hour does not happen all at the same time across the US, some load balancing could also be spread across the whole country.

No one knows what would happen that far into the future.

You're just not getting it. I don't care if you can get this powered roadway thing to work technically. It's too damned expensive to even consider for mass installation. There are less expensive solutions that are far more practical.

Do some work on realistic cost estimates (as I requested earlier - see details in previous post) and show us that your concept makes financial sense. Prove it to us here. Make your case with facts.

I am getting the distinct impression that you don't care how much something costs, as long as someone else pays for it.

well, if we are transitioning from an oil based transportation system to an electric based one you must expect a lot more need for electricity generation.


I expect more... but not the crazy massive increases such a peak load system would require... do a bit a research on off peak electrical power ... once you understand that issue you might better grasp why adding such a massive increase in more peak demand is a bad idea.... especially when a BEV doesn't have this negative ... and it works on any road not just those you have upgraded.



The utilities could also shut off un-needed services during rush hour.. my AC and water heater are controlled remotely by the power company.


Now you are adding in an additional requirement to have mandatory smart grid system... you will never get such a federal law passed that tells people they aren't allowed to use AC ... or they aren't allowed to watch TV... that kind of mandatory electrical control ... would be more difficult to pass and enforce ... than just outlawing all personal vehicles and forcing everyone to use mass transit for 100% of all travel.

Even if you do get a mandatory smart grid ... the power storing feature of BEVs would better benefit and would still be the better option to a mandatory smart grid.



Rush hour does not happen all at the same time across the US, some load balancing could also be spread across the whole country.


It doesn't need to be everyone at once ... look at the scale of the power needs your system would need ... if even 1/20th of the registered vehicles were on such a system at any one given time ... you would be pulling more power at that time for your powered road system than every single house in the country all combined... the spike to the electrical grid around major cities during rush hour ... would require a doubling or tippling of the peak power generation... that is a massive expense ... added to the cost of the roads ... and neither expense is needed when a BEV gives 98% the same benefits without these massive costs.


No one knows what would happen that far into the future.

This is another reason the powered road way is not viable ... I can buy an BEV today ... charge it at my house and drive it on any public road ... today.

The powered road way system would take 20+ years at least in order to just get the primary roads and highways converted... at a cost easily in the $Trillions ... it would make the national debt look tiny in comparison... assuming you even get anyone to buy such a car ... when they could instead by a BEV without the road limitations.

Nice... yes ... possible , yes.... viable .. no.

...Still waiting for good batteries and electrical energy storage...

This waiting is getting boring. ;) I'm also tired of hearing there is no silver bullet, just silver BBs. This is all true until we can get cost effective energy storage.

Until then, we will be forced to use a smart grid system to carefully balance loads to match demand with supply. I think we can do it but the smart-grid will be a long time coming.

Even if we had a cost effective design for self powered roads it will be a long time coming.

No matter what, it will be a long time coming. Why do I bring this up? Because no matter what, we will need a transition strategy. We need to sharply reduce our petroleum use because we might not have access to as much of the beautiful liquid. If we can continue to survive or even thrive all the while keeping up with declining petroleum supply then we just might have a chance in keeping the pain down.

We have to keep asking questions:

1) How much energy and resources can we expend getting to a sustainable energy infrastructure.

2) How long will it take for said infrastructure to be useful. For example, BP needs to get a given amount of infrastructure in place before a customer will buy a BEV. A Volt, on the other hand, can be purchased today and start cutting down on petroleum use immediately.

3) How fast will global petroleum supply decrease. How much notice will we have.

4) What priority level should this be in our country. Has anyone noticed the level of political noise lately? It's all about stupid stuff. You can tell Americans are starting to feel complacent again when they talk about people's dogs and trying to put people in Jail for their war crimes. I got news for people, you should only do that AFTER the war! We have not won the energy war nor the Iraq war. We are losing focus on our energy crisis and that is very frustrating.

5) What are all of the other transportation and energy options. We need a comprehensive look at everything including a massive effort to model how each mix set would function. We have excellent tools that could do this but we don't have a central energy plan. This is also frustrating because there does not seem to be any coordinated effort to solve our most important problem. Obama is doing much better but I think he is also becoming distracted by low oil prices and Americans being so forgetful.

Thus, we need to look at many factors to decide what we should be doing. I don't think we are even close to putting in induction roads. It's a nice future vision but we are far from having enough technology, resources, time, priority, planning, etc. to make it happen. Perhaps it will make better sense for the next generation, if we don't screw things up too much for them. If we tie them down with huge problems they are going to need full effort just to survive.

I'm not really going to do an in-depth study just to satisfy an internet discussion. Lets just leave at a thought experiment level.

Yes it probably would be nicer if everybody had a large battery pack in their BEV.. but that assumes that batteries will get much cheaper than the $26k that a 250 mile tesla pack cost today. I think batteries will get very cheap, I hope down to $5k for a 300 mile pack and we would all be happy and call that a miraculous battery.

My whole point that if we had to, we could do it with todays tech. Suppose it would cost $1 trillion to electrify the roadways, so what? how many years of paying for foreign oil is that?.. and we would replace it all with items manufactured in the US and installed/maintained by Americans.. is that really so bad?

How much can it cost to mass produce and install a coil under the pavement, maybe 5ft in diameter and buried a couple of feet down?.. not a million dollars I think.

It may be a massive investment, but perhaps the savings to the drivers would also be massive if they dont have to buy a 300 mile pack for their BEV.. it may even make financial sense for them to pay for the electric road than to spend thousands more when they buy a car. Yes, I expect the drivers to pay for the electric road.

Also roads are used 24 hours a day, but cars sit in the garage un-used most of the day.. so it makes financial sense to put that investment on the roads themselves.

Yes it is a lot of power, but the power companies are in the business of selling power.. probably lots of opportunities to invest in utilities at that time.


............................

if even 1/20th of the registered vehicles were on such a system at any one given time ... you would be pulling more power at that time for your powered road system than every single house in the country all combined... the spike to the electrical grid around major cities during rush hour ... would require a doubling or tippling of the peak power generation... that is a massive expense ... added to the cost of the roads ... and neither expense is needed when a BEV gives 98% the same benefits without these massive costs.

I'm not really going to do an in-depth study just to satisfy an internet discussion. Lets just leave at a thought experiment level.

Yes it probably would be nicer if everybody had a large battery pack in their BEV.. but that assumes that batteries will get much cheaper than the $26k that a 250 mile tesla pack cost today. I think batteries will get very cheap, I hope down to $5k for a 300 mile pack and we would all be happy and call that a miraculous battery.

My whole point that if we had to, we could do it with todays tech. Suppose it would cost $1 trillion to electrify the roadways, so what? how many years of paying for foreign oil is that?.. and we would replace it all with items manufactured in the US and installed/maintained by Americans.. is that really so bad?

How much can it cost to mass produce and install a coil under the pavement, maybe 5ft in diameter and buried a couple of feet down?.. not a million dollars I think.
Time to wrap this discussion. You think it's a good idea, many others think it's foolish. You're certainly not going to change our minds with your unsupported opinions, and we haven't been able to convince you that the idea is impractical on a number of different levels.

Next.

that was a good summation.. the only thing that would convince me is a proper study to do the financials.. and none of us is going to do that.

At least we know it is technically possible.

Suppose it would cost $1 trillion to electrify the roadways, so what?

How much can it cost to mass produce and install a coil under the pavement, maybe 5ft in diameter and buried a couple of feet down?.. not a million dollars I think.

We can agree to disagree if you like... I have no issue with that... but if you would also like to continue to discussion I am also game for that.

-----------------------

A couple feet down and you can forget magnetic induction ... as the losses over even a few inches make magnetic induction worthless ... and you can forget allot of other wireless power transfer technologies once you want to bury them under a couple feet down.

How much would it cost per mile?
It varies greatly depending on where the road is built and what kind of road.... but it cost allot more than most people think.

Let's look at the cost variations in Florida as an example (http://www.dot.state.fl.us/planning/policy/costs/costs-D3.pdf).

A normal ( non-powered ) road cost between :
New Construction Min $984,215 per mile
New Construction Max $53,446,293 per mile

What about the cost of burring the electrical line? Much more (http://www.entergy.com/2008_hurricanes/Underground-lines.pdf) than most people would think.

It also varies between ~$1 Million per mile and ~$5 Million per mile.

If we assume that some brilliant company finds a way to build the road version of the technology no more expensive than an underground power line ... and it is very likely it would cost several times more than this....

But if we want to be very optimistic , let's make that assumption.

How many miles of road are needed?
if we exclude all the smaller roads... just looking at Highways (http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_01.html).

In 2006 there were more than 4,016,741 highway miles.

Between the road itself and the power line you are spending between $2,000,000 and $60,000,000 per mile... depending on the conditions etc...

Just to do the Highways would cost an idealistic minimum of $8,000,000,000,000 ( $8 Trillion ) ... and up to $240 Trillion.... even if we wanted to be idealistically optimistic.

Let us look at the scale of that number.
For $8 Trillion we could instead replace all 240 million US registered vehicles with over $33,000 brand new vehicles.
For ~$240 Trillion we could instead replace all 240 million US registered vehicles with ~$1,000,000 brand new vehicles.



Yes it probably would be nicer if everybody had a large battery pack in their BEV.. but that assumes that batteries will get much cheaper than the $26k that a 250 mile tesla pack cost today. I think batteries will get very cheap, I hope down to $5k for a 300 mile pack and we would all be happy and call that a miraculous battery.


It would be cheaper to pay for 'free' $33k battery packs for every single car in the country than it would be to build the powered roadway.... depending on exactly how it worked out it is very likely it would be cheaper to pay for a 'free' $1,000,000 battery pack for every single car in the country than the powered highway would cost.... and the BEVs would still be a better alternative.

I really dont think we disagree on anything, just a lack of data and engineering studies. We are all guessing at it, IMO.

"A couple feet down and you can forget magnetic induction ... as the losses over even a few inches make magnetic induction worthless ... and you can forget allot of other wireless power transfer technologies once you want to bury them under a couple feet down."

But look at the Primover tram example in a previous link.. they are burying the coils under the "tarmac, grass or concrete", and supposedly below the rails also.. no details are given but this has to mean at least 1ft separation at a guess.. and they are transferring a lot of power. The MIT demo was with a range of 2 meters and we dont need that much.

Also, there is no need to electrify every road, much cheaper to refill your 40 mile range at home, the Federal Highway System is 47k miles I believe... we want a constant flow of high traffic so this thing has a chance to pay for itself by drivers that must travel more than 40 miles.

A cost of $2 million per mile breaks down to $32k per pad.. that is probably close to a real number. That would be $94 billion for the 47k miles of the Fed Highway system. Lets say it is $50k per pad to manufacture it, and $50k to bury it and run the power cable 85ft.. that would be $290 billion total, $6.2 million per mile.

What would be the cost if all the cars in the US had a 250 mile range battery?.. probably around $250 billion.

But look at the Primover tram example in a previous link.. they are burying the coils under the "tarmac, grass or concrete", and supposedly below the rails also.. no details are given but this has to mean at least 1ft separation at a guess..


Sure... let's look at Primover... they are putting the inductive coil 10 to 20 mm (http://www.railvolution.net/transurban/index.php?d=prispevky) bellow the surface.

There is no 1 foot separation happening.

Tarmac and concrete have very poor magnetic flux characteristics ... this is why they are not used in transformers ... they would greatly reduce the power transfer efficiency as they do not work as well as a magnetic field material as other materials like an Iron core does... there is a reason transformer manufactures do not include 10mm or 20mm air gaps or concrete inside the transformers ... power is lost with the square of the distance... from 10mm to 20mm you got twice the distance but your losses increased by 4 times.... by the time you get up to 1 foot or so... induction still exists ... but the efficiency is so bad it isn't viable.... remember you are competing with the cycle efficiency of the BEV... which with modern batteries , getting up around 95% cycle efficiency is not all that difficult to do.

Modern transformers without the 10mm+ air / concrete gap l... can get up to and above 95% efficient ... but once you include the air / concrete gap ... you will loose more energy than the batteries would have lost.

It isn't something that can be 'fixed' ... magnetic fields drop off in strength very fast over increasing distances... it is just how magnetic fields work... any form of induction will be limited by the same magnetic field effects and behaviors.

At ~10mm bellow the surface... can you imagine what the crazy road repair costs would be in order to prevent any one part of the road from getting a ~10mm deep crack in it... because we wouldn't want to expose lethal kv to people.

Also remember the Primover system requires the road to be in sync with the vehicle it is powering.... that is ugly complex.



much cheaper to refill your 40 mile range at home,


my point exactly. ;)



the Federal Highway System is 47k miles I believe...


ok... I get it... so you only want to install this system in ~1% of the roads in the country... and make cars equipped with systems the owners paid for on vehicle purchase that can only use this power system on ~1% of the roads.

And of course in addition to the cost of the vehicle system , Are we also passing the $ of the ~1% roadway on to the purchase price of vehicles as a massive new tax?... nice over $1,000 new tax on all registered vehicles in the country.... I know you are looking forward to paying your new $1,000 to $2,000 per car today for a product that might work on ~1% of the roads some 10 to 20 years from now. ;)



that would be $290 billion total, $6.2 million per mile.


$291 Billion would not be welcomed by tax payers for something they don't want and would only work in very isolated roads several years from now.



drivers that must travel more than 40 miles.


They want to travel 40 miles per day... like they want cell phones ... they want Internet ... they want TV... they want fast food ... they do not need any of these things.... living 40 miles away from ones work is a convince not a physical requirement. ;)



The MIT demo was with a range of 2 meters and we dont need that much.

correction there is no demo... read a bit more carefully:

In November 2006, Marin Soljačić and other researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology applied the near field behavior well known in electromagnetic theory to a wireless power transmission concept based on strongly-coupled resonators.[24][25][26] In a theoretical analysis,

It was all theory and on paper ... there was no real world work done... no demo ... to tests... to prototype... just a MIT teacher's assistant who wrote a paper about how he thought it might be possible.

I have been asked to provide proof of my claim that the Volt batteries are 300Wh/kg. This is a little awkward as I am not a GM, or LG employee and therefore do not have absolute facts. However this is my rational:

Electrovaya has been manufacturing Lithium Manganese Polymer batteries for some time, this is exactly the same type as LG makes for GM. In the past Electrovaya did provide power density specs, but have since changed their web site and this information was removed. They originally claimed 330Wh/kg and 650Wh/liter.
Electrovaya sells a product called a PowerPad in two sizes, 95Wh and 130Wh the weights of these models are 840 grams and 940 grams and includes plastic covers, frame, electronics. see http://www.electrovaya.com/products/powerpad/master/Default.aspx
If you take the difference in power, 35Wh divided by the difference in weight, 100 grams then the power density is 350Wh/kg.
I know this is not the nice clean proof you would like, but is the best I can do for now.
As far as including control electronics, cooling etc. in the battery density spec, this would be fine if the entire industry did so, but to compare one battery with another it is only fair to do so under the same conditions.
There might have been a mention of power density in the Kia presentation at the Los Angles? auto show, I'm trying to find it.

The one I saw was an actual demo, they powered a 60w bulb at a distance of 2 meters..



correction there is no demo... read a bit more carefully:

It was all theory and on paper ... there was no real world work done... no demo ... to tests... to prototype... just a MIT teacher's assistant who wrote a paper about how he thought it might be possible.

Yes I only want to install it on major highways connecting cities, not on in-town roads.. 40 mile batteries should be fine for in town driving.

I was hoping the drivers would pay for it as they pulled power from it, if they wanted to..




ok... I get it... so you only want to install this system in ~1% of the roads in the country... and make cars equipped with systems the owners paid for on vehicle purchase that can only use this power system on ~1% of the roads.

While you are designing your system, I know someone you might want to consult. He goes by the the name of Eddy Current.

Just a follow-up to my last post.
The L.A. auto show presentation I was thinking about was Hyundai, not Kia http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2062066/hyundai_blue_drive_press_conference/
Unfortunately they do not give power density specs.

The one I saw was an actual demo, they powered a 60w bulb at a distance of 2 meters..


great... link please ;)

and what % of the power feed to the transmitter comes out the other end of the receiver ?... how much did it cost? ... how safe is the distance between for living things like people? ... how durable is the design? ... will it only transmit through air or can it also penetrate things with very bad magnetic properties like cement and asphalt?



Yes I only want to install it on major highways connecting cities, not on in-town roads.. 40 mile batteries should be fine for in town driving.


The federal highway system of those ~47k miles is not all the US highways... it is just part of them that happens to get a large % of the operating costs from the federal government.... for instance expressways & bypasses are a different classification of roadway and are not included in that ~47k miles... neither are allot of other highways.

If you just want to exclude in-town roads... you have to include more than just the federal highway system ... it is only ~1% of the roadways in the U.S.... in short ... the federal highway system ... is not all US highways.

Also excluding city roads excludes allot of the high vehicle use areas like those in all the major cities... specifically excluding high usage areas like all the major cities while spending $6+ Million per mile on federal highways out in the bread basket of the country doesn't seem to be a very popular idea to me.



I was hoping the drivers would pay for it as they pulled power from it, if they wanted to..


ok I see... so instead of a vehicle tax... you want a much much smaller target market ... instead of 100% of all US drivers you seem more like targeting only about ~5% of them... which mean that these privileged ~5% are looking at ~$30,000 per year of additional fees for the fueling on the go system... if you think you can sell that kind of cost... then you might have a chance of starting this powered roadway system of yours... but I doubt in this free market you would get enough people to sign up in order to meet your minimum project start up costs.... I would expect you would need well over 10,000 people to sign up an pay up front before you could even begin construction.... which wouldn't have its first couple of miles completed for 5 to 10 years before those 10,000+ people could actually begin to use this powered roadway they are paying ~$30,000 a year for access to.


I have been asked to provide proof of my claim that the Volt batteries are 300Wh/kg. This is a little awkward as I am not a GM, or LG employee and therefore do not have absolute facts. However this is my rational:

I know this is not the nice clean proof you would like, but is the best I can do for now.


Thanks for the effort :)



Electrovaya has been manufacturing Lithium Manganese Polymer batteries for some time, this is exactly the same type as LG makes for GM.


And you know this how?
There are literally thousands of different ways to make Lithium Manganese Polymer batteries... and battery companies usually guard their specific exact chemistry and manufacturing methods... so this seems like a massive assumption to me ;)



In the past Electrovaya did provide power density specs, but have since changed their web site and this information was removed.


No, they just moved it.
it is HERE (http://www.electrovaya.com/pdf/TR/Electrovaya_lithium_Ion_Technology_Background.pdf) .



They originally claimed 330Wh/kg and 650Wh/liter.


They are only claiming 170wh/kg to 210wh/kg.
I tried to use wayback and a few other searches ... but I was not able to find any cache referencing your numbers... which are revolutionary battery numbers ... and it would have been surprising for it not to have been mirrored in a variety of tech blogs and new reports ... etc... but I did not find it.

you have a specific reference? ;)



If you take the difference in power, 35Wh divided by the difference in weight, 100 grams then the power density is 350Wh/kg.


Taking the difference between the two is not a very good method as you wrote, and in this case it gives a very inaccurate calculation... when Electrovaya themselves are only claiming at most ~210 Wh/kg.

I suspect that the difference between those two is caused by other things.



As far as including control electronics, cooling etc. in the battery density spec, this would be fine if the entire industry did so, but to compare one battery with another it is only fair to do so under the same conditions.


I agree ... we just need to keep in mind that the required supporting infrastructure should be included in battery comparisons...

One could talk about a nuclear battery like those used on deep space probes... which provide less and less power as the half life of the radioactive core breaks down... in the range of ~5,000 kwh/kg at first... averaging out to a power output of ~2,500 kwh / kg over the first 100 years of operation ... then averaging about ~1,250 kwh / kg output between 101 and 200 years... etc...etc... these nuclear batteries are not rechargeable... the other issue is they have very bad power density ... only about ~6w/kg.... and they have lots of other issues too... but one has to look at all those issues for ones application ...

Just looking at the kwh/kg by itself doesn't tell you enough... so I agree... we should compare the other pieces as well... and do so for all battery comparisons.

--------------

A friend of mine once said to me that EVs should all get a 'small' nuclear batteries like those, in them in the range of about ~50 pounds or so... which would provide a constant power source to recharge ones larger battery with.... putting aside the safety issues and costs , etc... ... I told him... it would work... but his ~50pound nuclear battery would only give him a bit over 100 watt charging rates... or about ~2.4 kwh per day ... or a bit over 10 miles of driving per day.... and I told him for that much power , I'd rather have solar cells on my car... but still he loved the idea... his next plan was to try and find a way to buy a 100 watt output unit for his house.

IamIan

Good research, I obviously missed that link. I see that Electrovaya has down graded their specification, so I guess I have to eat crow. Also I shouldn't have used the word "exactly", what I meant is they are both Lithium manganese polymer designs.

IamIan

Good research, I obviously missed that link. I see that Electrovaya has down graded their specification, so I guess I have to eat crow. Also I shouldn't have used the word "exactly", what I meant is they are both Lithium manganese polymer designs.

They still have almost double the kwh / kg that A123 has... but ... A123 is the media darling ;)

This might be a scam to get more of those Obama dollars but they have been in business for a while and just take a look at those theoretical values! Anyway, this is what their website states:

"With over 350 Wh/Kg today, this exceeds most manufacturers’ expectations for specific energy for a vehicle battery. The chart below clearly demonstrates why Li-S is the key to a successful electric vehicle battery:

Advantages of Li-S in Electric Vehicles
Using Full Toyota RAV4 EV Pack Volume

NiMH(27 kWh) Li-Ion(30 kWh) Li-Ls(54 kWh) Li-Ls(70 kWh)
Driving Range (miles) 81 94 170 226
Total Module Weight (lbs) 995 600 475 426
Total Module Volume (cu ft) 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.7
Max Vehicle Payload (lbs) 766 766 1286 1335



(The 54 kWh packs is based on using SION’s 350 WH/Kg technology while the 70 kWh pack is using the next generation of cells that are at 450 WH/Kg.)"

http://www.sionpower.com/applications/electric.html

I guess it's all hot air until we can buy the cells. Anyway, check out the following article:


Researchers Develop Electrode Materials for High-Capacity Li-S Battery Cells
18 May 2009

"The galvanostatic discharge and charge profiles of the first cycle of CMK-3 + sulfur; CMK-3/S-145; and CMK-3/S-155. Source: Ji et al. (2009) Click to enlarge.
Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have developed electrode materials for Lithium-Sulfur batteries using a conductive mesoporous carbon framework that have demonstrated reversible capacities of up to 1,320 mAh g-1. A paper on their work appears online in the journal Nature Materials.

The Li-S battery is of interest due a high theoretical specific energy density (~2,600 Wh/kg) that exceeds that of conventional lithium-ion batteries by about a factor of five, good low-temperature performance, and its use of inexpensive and nontoxic raw materials. Last week, for example, BASF and Sion Power Corporation signed a Joint Development Agreement (JDA) to accelerate the commercialization of Sion Power’s proprietary lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery technology for the electric vehicle (EV) market and other high-energy applications."


http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/05/researchers-develop-electrode-materials-for-highcapacity-lis-battery-cells.html#more


Now those are some serious numbers. Let me guess, the technology will be commercialized in 10 years (researchers always say that because they need their funding and don't like to be "under the gun").

Hummm. From my above post things seem to get a bit more interesting. Sion Power has been very quiet (dead) since 2006. Even though they claimed to have very high capacity they must have had a critical problem because we haven't heard a peep from them.

All of a sudden we get this lithium-sulfer breakthough and now Sion Power lands a new agreement to collaborate with BASF. All in the same month. Is this a legitimate breakthough? I guess we will see:


BASF and Sion Power Collaborate on New Battery Technology

"Sion Power Corporation, Tucson, AZ, USA, and BASF SE, Ludwigshafen, Germany, today announced a Joint Development Agreement (JDA) to accelerate the commercialization of Sion Power’s proprietary lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery technology e.g. for the electric vehicle (EV) market and other high-energy applications.

The Sion Power / BASF collaboration targets the development of battery materials to improve Li-S battery life and to increase the energy density and thus extend driving range of future EVs beyond what is currently available with alternative rechargeable battery technologies. Li-S technology already offers significant energy density and weight advantages over those existing technologies.

According to Dr. Dennis Mangino, CEO of Sion Power, “We are proud to be partnered with BASF, the world’s leading chemical company, as we accelerate the development and introduction of our high energy, light weight, and transformational battery products. BASF’s vast expertise in materials development and manufacturing are important to our success.”"

http://www.sionpower.com/pdf/news/Sion%20Power-BASF%20press%20release.pdf

Sorry for the delay, here are the links:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/wireless-grp1-enlarged.html

a picture of the setup, with all the team members sitting in-between the coils, 2 meter separation, to demonstrate safety.. those coils sure look simple to make.

article:

"At first glance, such a power transfer is reminiscent of relatively commonplace magnetic induction, such as is used in power transformers, which contain coils that transmit power to each other over very short distances. An electric current running in a sending coil induces another current in a receiving coil. The two coils are very close, but they do not touch. However, this behavior changes dramatically when the distance between the coils is increased. As Karalis, a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, points out, "Here is where the magic of the resonant coupling comes about. The usual non-resonant magnetic induction would be almost 1 million times less efficient in this particular system."

pdf here:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/techtalk51-30.pdf

Interesting that the coils could be placed on the side of the road, not buried in the road ( I still would prefer if it was buried safely out of sight)..

MIT research was paid by the Army Research Office



great... link please ;)

and what % of the power feed to the transmitter comes out the other end of the receiver ?... how much did it cost? ... how safe is the distance between for living things like people? ... how durable is the design? ... will it only transmit through air or can it also penetrate things with very bad magnetic properties like cement and asphalt?

oops, article link:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/wireless-0607.html

Here is a better article from Techology Review (http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=emerging08&id=20248) that includes diagrams and numbers.

Excerpt from linked article:
So far, the most effective setup consists of 60-centimeter copper coils and a 10-megahertz magnetic field; this transfers power over a distance of two meters with about 50 percent efficiency. The team is looking at silver and other materials to decrease coil size and boost efficiency. "While ideally it would be nice to have efficiencies at 100 percent, realistically, 70 to 80 percent could be possible for a typical application," says Soljačić.
You want to deliver ridiculously huge amounts of energy to a nation-wide powered highway system at 70-80% efficiency? Riiiiight . . .

You cannot engage in intelligent, worthwhile discussion on this subject without including relevant figures like amount of energy needed, transfer efficiency, and COST. This approach remains absurdly impractical when including this information.

I also think the electrified road is too costly. However, the Koreans don't agree. How do I know this? They have a working system and have plans for a much bigger test:


"At Korea's leading technology university, the electric car of the future does not require a pit stop to charge or change batteries -- because it draws its power right from the road itself.

The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, headquartered in Daejeon, about 150 kilometers from Seoul, is working on a vehicle it calls "OLEV." That stands for Online Electric Vehicle. At this point, it looks like a souped up golf cart. But engineering professor Cho Dong-ho, the manager of the OLEV program, says some revolutionary technology is on board. "This model [has] a power supply system installed under the ground," said Cho.

...By contrast, he says online electric vehicle power strips will cost only about $400,000 per kilometer. Cho says the technology has proven safe to use around people and machinery in all experiments so far. ..."

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/05/19/2009051901831.html

I also think the electrified road is too costly. However, the Koreans don't agree. How do I know this? They have a working system and have plans for a much bigger test:


"At Korea's leading technology university, the electric car of the future does not require a pit stop to charge or change batteries -- because it draws its power right from the road itself.

The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, headquartered in Daejeon, about 150 kilometers from Seoul, is working on a vehicle it calls "OLEV." That stands for Online Electric Vehicle. At this point, it looks like a souped up golf cart. But engineering professor Cho Dong-ho, the manager of the OLEV program, says some revolutionary technology is on board. "This model [has] a power supply system installed under the ground," said Cho.

...By contrast, he says online electric vehicle power strips will cost only about $400,000 per kilometer. Cho says the technology has proven safe to use around people and machinery in all experiments so far. ..."

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/05/19/2009051901831.html

Critical point quoted from referenced article:
The power charging strips are designed to be installed at intersections and other places where traffic slows down naturally, so vehicles can derive the maximum charge.
At $400k per kilometer (roughly $640k/mile), I am left wondering how many charging pads are included in that distance, and how large are the pads? Is that figure a materials cost, or an all-inclusive installed cost? Also hinted at is that there is an energy-distribution infrastructure required to support this system, which is not costed out.

I do believe that a powered road system may make sense in limited installations, e.g., tram lines, but ubiquitous powered roads remain impractical.

Nice work on the magnetic wireless power transfer ... but 50% loss when only traveling through air ... is still very very bad numbers.... especially compared to batteries which cycle 90+% efficiency.

-----------

The Li-S ... just bring us back to talking about more than just the kwh / kg of a battery.

Historically Li-S has not struggled so much with the kwh/kg ... which they have had very good numbers with for many years.... they have struggled with the cycle life.... as in getting it to a viable / reasonable level for commercial application.

Sionpower claims:

Cycle life for these high specific energy and energy density designs is still low approaching 100 cycles (http://www.sionpower.com/pdf/articles/WinHEC2004WhitePaper.pdf)

sorry ... "approaching 100 cycles" ... sense when is struggling to get 100 cycles a good thing for a rechargeable battery?

They also don't do very well with Self Discharge:

Self-discharge is < 15% per month. (http://www.sionpower.com/pdf/articles/PowerSources2004.pdf)

Sure they will make progress and improve the ~100 cycle life... maybe improve the ~15% per month self discharge... but ~10 years is very optimistic for a viable Li-S battery... I wouldn't expect to see a viable product on the market for 15 to 20 years for Li-S.... with slow and relatively steady progress in tiny steps over that 15 to 20 years.

Sure they will make progress and improve the ~100 cycle life... maybe improve the ~15% per month self discharge... but ~10 years is very optimistic for a viable Li-S battery... I wouldn't expect to see a viable product on the market for 15 to 20 years for Li-S.... with slow and relatively steady progress in tiny steps over that 15 to 20 years.





I believe the new nano structure has increased the stability of the system just like nanotechnology has increased the life of next gen lithium-ion.

http://www.rsc.org/images/lithium-sulfur-batteries-300_tcm18-152515.jpg

"Still, there are problems in realizing the devices. Sulfur is both electrically and ionically insulating, so for the electrodes to work the sulfur must always be in close contact with a conductor. Moreover, 'polysulfide' ions, which are intermediates in the redox reaction, are so soluble they can leak out of the electrodes and into the electrolyte, thereby reducing the electrodes' active mass.

Linda Nazar and colleagues at the University of Waterloo say they have got around these problems with a cathode formed on a conductive carbon framework. They begin by separating a number of thick, porous carbon nanorods, 6-7nm in diameter, with several thin carbon microfibres. Then they fill the structure with molten sulfur, which shrinks upon solidifying to leave porous channels into which an electrolyte can eventually flow. In the final step they apply a polymer coating, which helps prevent polysulphide ions from escaping."


http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2009/May/17050902.asp


Yes, you are in the 10 - 15 year and possibly longer camp and I'm in the 5 year or less camp. I hope I'm right and wish we had a time machine so I could collect my virtual winnings today. ;)

You want ridiculous?.. how about the whole oil infrastructure?? .. it is so vast that it will never be built, you even need ocean going ships the size of skyscrapers!.. spend all that money and we are not even sure how much oil there is.



You want to deliver ridiculously huge amounts of energy to a nation-wide powered highway system at 70-80% efficiency? Riiiiight . . .

You cannot engage in intelligent, worthwhile discussion on this subject without including relevant figures like amount of energy needed, transfer efficiency, and COST. This approach remains absurdly impractical when including this information.

You want ridiculous?.. how about the whole oil infrastructure?? .. it is so vast that it will never be built, you even need ocean going ships the size of skyscrapers!.. spend all that money and we are not even sure how much oil there is.
If you cannot see how the oil infrastructure was implemented incrementally, and this powered roadway of yours is a different implementation model, there is no point in attempting to discuss this with you.

Yes, you are in the 10 - 15 year and possibly longer camp and I'm in the 5 year or less camp. I hope I'm right and wish we had a time machine so I could collect my virtual winnings today. ;)

We don't have to wait 10 to 15 years or more... we will know in ~5 years that you were wrong ;)

By then of course I suspect you will have moved on to the next 5 year miracle battery.... and I will still have been very happy with the much smaller steps improving batteries tiny bits at time. :cool:

10x improvement after x years in the future ... blah blah blah...

2% improvement on the market today that I can get my teeth into and enjoy reading the technical articles on how they did it.

You are using strawmen arguments, I was the one proposing a limited implementation and you expanded it to every single road the US.. then you mention the cost would be huge, duh!


If you cannot see how the oil infrastructure was implemented incrementally, and this powered roadway of yours is a different implementation model, there is no point in attempting to discuss this with you.

You are using strawmen arguments, I was the one proposing a limited implementation and you expanded it to every single road the US.. then you mention the cost would be huge, duh!

Glad you are coming around!

I am imagining that $640,000 would have to include the cost of installation. That means they're estimating approx. $122 per foot. Copper is expensive, but it wouldn't be THAT expensive.

Here's the reason why it would never work. Putting that much copper (let alone silver) in the ground would be too tempting for meth heads and pretty much anyone without morals and a lot of time on their hands to just leave it sitting there in the ground.

That could be a big problem, definetely bury it under concrete and hopefully the 440v will fry some druggies..

Here in Miami they were cutting down aluminum lamp posts for the scrap aluminum.




Here's the reason why it would never work. Putting that much copper (let alone silver) in the ground would be too tempting for meth heads and pretty much anyone without morals and a lot of time on their hands to just leave it sitting there in the ground.

http://www.examiner.com/x-9508-Aspen-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2009m10d8-New-wireless-roadcharging-system-gives-electric-vehicles-endless-range

still too expensive?