**Tesla Model S** The first nail in the internal combustions engines coffin?

Angilion said:
A possible alternative is to detach the charging from the driving by swapping batteries.

i) Drive into a petrol/battery station.
ii) Swap discharged battery for charged one. Pay while a machine does the swap.
iii) Drive off.

There you go, a full charge from empty in under 5 minutes and functionality almost identical to refueling an ICE car (i.e. requires a station). With the possible extra option of a relatively slow charge in a garage at home being practical overnight, that would make an EV more practical than an ICEV.

There are practical issues to be addressed, but it's theoretically possible. The batteries could be charged in the station. If it has enough of them, it won't matter if it takes several hours to charge one.
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This is the only way i'd be even remotely interested in electric as an alternative, i mean the 200-300mile range is similar to what i have now in the evo, that i can live with but he 45+ minute recharge... no thanks.
lets face it my opinion dosnt really matter here though as i wouldnt be on the market for a new electric car even if this technology was in place, i cant afford it, and i cant see that changing in the near future, also noise and feel of a good performance petrol engine are more important to me than environment/economy, i have no desire for an electric powered car.
 
steve45 said:
This is the only way i'd be even remotely interested in electric as an alternative, i mean the 200-300mile range is similar to what i have now in the evo, that i can live with but he 45+ minute recharge... no thanks.
lets face it my opinion dosnt really matter here though as i wouldnt be on the market for a new electric car even if this technology was in place, i cant afford it, and i cant see that changing in the near future, also noise and feel of a good performance petrol engine are more important to me than environment/economy, i have no desire for an electric powered car.
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Eventually you will do though, you'll have to. Interpret the figures as you wish (most of them say different things anyway), but fossil fuels will run out one day. So eventually you'll have to buy into whichever technology it is that replaces them.
 
DAnDan said:
Eventually you will do though, you'll have to. Interpret the figures as you wish (most of them say different things anyway), but fossil fuels will run out one day. So eventually you'll have to buy into whichever technology it is that replaces them.
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cant see the internal combustion engine going within my lifetime, whether it will be petrol or some other substitute, who knows...
 
steve45 said:
cant see the internal combustion engine going within my lifetime, whether it will be petrol or some other substitute, who knows...
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I wouldn't be so sure about that, depending how old you are. Electric and alternative fuel now makes up 1.3% of sales in the uk. Nice review of 2011 sale figures
http://www.nextgreencar.com/news-item.php?SMMT-reports-on-2011-car-market
The growth in diesel and alternatively fuelled vehicles meant that they both took record market shares over the year, of 50.6% and 1.3% respectively. A total of 25,456 alternatively fuelled vehicles have now been registered in the UK, which includes hybrid and battery electric vehicles. Although it sounds small, alternatively fuelled vehicles rose from 1.1% market share to 1.3% since 2010, which was helped along by electric vehicle sales over the year
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I think that's pretty impressive seeing the current restrictions.

EU wants over 80% EV by 2050, which will be in most people life expectancy.

Fuel purchase fell again, this time by a billion litres.
Petrol sales at the pumps between January and September 2011 totalled 13.9 billion litres – compared with 14.9 billion litres between the same months in 2010 (a fall over over 6%), and
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I don't think this can be down to the recision or the Eco cars. But becuase people are choosing not to drive as much and driving more economically. How many more hike before more and more people look at alternatives. After all it's not just fuel, tax as well, if in London congestion and LEZ. In a survey some 40% said they would be driving less or more economically in 2012 to save money.
There's only so many uneasceray journeys you can cut out.
 
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Glaucus said:
More good news in batteries. Next 5 years is going to be interesting. One of these many developments must make it to manufacturing

This is quite a simple but ingenues design
http://*****.net/tech/news/industry/32627-new-li-ion-batteries-offer-10x-capacity/

10x current capacity for first 150charges then 5x current capacity afterwards. For phones that would be great, for cars :eek: imagine having 5 times the range or more likely 2.5times the range and half the battery size.
And can charge faster as well, a phone battery would take just 15minutes at normal charge rate, not sure how that would corespondent to EV charging.
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OcUK's autocensor has eaten your URL. Looking around, I see it's the silicon/graphene thing. I saw that last month while browsing stuff about graphene (which seems to be potentially almost as useful as unobtanium).

I've seen many claims for massive improvements in battery tech, but they don't seem to make it to production. STAIR is a good example - a brief flurry of news in 2009 and then nothing at all. They even had prototypes in 2009.

As for charging times, the practical limit is more likely to be what can be supplied rather than the theoretical maximum charge rate of the battery. Say, for example, you had a 50KWh battery in a car. That would get you a range of ~150 miles, maybe a bit more, over 200 with regenerative breaking doing some charging on the fly. If you want to charge that in 5 minutes, you need to pour ~660KW into it (assuming 90% charging efficiency). That's about 220 times mains. There's no getting around that - if you want to shove lots of KWh into a battery in a short period of time, you need to move lots of KW to do it.
 
That is one reason they are upgrading the grid.

We are seizing batteries come to market. The next gen EV packs to be released this year are better than the previuse ones. See the Mercedes for example.

Different link
http://www.dailytech.com/Battery+Breakthrough+Based+on+Graphene+Charges+10x+Faster/article23288.htm

And while we are at it, another battery tech
http://ev.sae.org/article/10312
The lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles have so far mostly been based on either lithium iron phosphate or lithium cobalt oxide electrochemistries. A U.K. industry/government RD&E project led by Scottish battery systems supplier Axeon has recently developed a next-generation EV battery pack that incorporates Li-ion cells that use nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) chemistry, a formulation that offers higher energy density and therefore greater range.

Most other Li-ion cells employ cathodes of carbon (graphite); the new NCM lithium-ion cells [Li(NiCoMn)O2] have cathodes composed of nickel, cobalt, and manganese.
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You have to remember it takes years to get to production. After this research comes more research, then finalisation. Then a year or two to actually start production. Read somewhere that after breakthroughs in batteries it takes 3-5years to hit production.
 
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Best way is to swap the battery out like they're doing in Israel and Denmark

http://www.greenprophet.com/2011/06/better-place-inaugurates-first-battery-swap-in-denmark/

Much, MUCH better idea than installing charging stations in your house.

http://www.renault-ze.com/en-gb/ele...electric-cars-charging-renault-z.e.-1967.html

About the only way it would take off - wont get the hassle of replacing batteries yourself, no need to install home charging point, batteries can be upgraded automatically with technolocy advances, etc.
 
Yeah battery swap is very appealing with several companies working on it.

But why wouldn't you install a charging station at home. The average driver only does a handful of long journeys a year. The rest is quite easy to slow charge at home and work.
 
Glaucus said:
Yeah battery swap is very appealing with several companies working on it.

But why wouldn't you install a charging station at home. The average driver only does a handful of long journeys a year. The rest is quite easy to slow charge at home and work.
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maybe you have a flat, dont want the extra expense and hassle, yadda yadda..

I'm sure some would but cannot see it taking off if everyone needed a charging point at home.
 
There's one which install in the street and have an account to bill you. If these where put in those sort of housing estates, it wouldnt be an issue.
 
No mention of the battery chemistry used, I'm assuming Li-po?

If so I can't see this being the nail in the coffin, as must internal combustion engines last longer than 5 years :p
 
For this to work there has to be a modular universal sized battery that is easily accessed and can be swapped at petrol stations for a full charged one. Similar to what has been said above.

Fafing around for 45 mins plus to charge your car is fail.

300 miles range is fine but it is the extra waiting to charge which is the killer and on top of that the relative lack of charging points.
 
sigma said:
I thought electric cars were never going to take off due to not them not actually being that environmentally friendly?

Could this country actually provide enough electricity at a rate cheaper/equivalent to petrol?

Or have I missed some news/breakthroughs?
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cost of the new car means if you want to save money its not an option...
 
kaiowas said:
Initially at least I'd expect electric cars to provide an ideal replacement for the second car in a two car household. It'll be the one which is only ever used for one or two short return journeys in a day then plugged in again to be ready for the next day.
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I can see it being a replacement for both the commuter car and the city runaround. You drive say 50 miles to work, the battery slow charges in the company carpark, you drive home again and it charges overnight. Meanwhile the little runaround, which has also been charging overnight, can do the whole day whizzing about the city, the schoolrun, shopping, etc.

I'd like to see some innovation in carparking and car design with the prevalence of electric cars. No need for the bonnet-cabin-boot setup if the motor is mounted between the wheels and the battery is in the floor. Also lighter cars could pave the way for stacking carparks to increase parking at shops & offices.

I can't wait for the future :D
 
PiKe said:
So what battery technology is it if it's not lithium polymer?
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Actually Hyundai have used LiPo in the Sonata Hybrid.

Telsa Model S is going with the Lithium Phosphate Iron Chemistry but there is also talk of the 300 mile range being the Panasonic "Nickel Oxide based New Platform" which is a version of lithium ion with a nickel positive electrode. It also has a Heat Resistance Layer for extra safety versus other similar batteries.
 
Well, it's here now so I'll resurrect this thread instead of starting a new one. There are some claims that I'm not sure about and I'd like someone who knows more than me about batteries to feed me the info.



So...the Tesla Model S uses thousands of standard small batteries. Fair enough - they're easily obtained and Tesla have done a lot of work on connecting thousands of them together.

The biggest battery pack holds 85KWh, with a 300 mile claimed range with normal driving. With regenerative braking adding charge on the go, that's a reasonable claim. It's not really the 300 miles from a fully charged battery pack that it's implied as being (the official figure is 265 miles), but since the regenerative braking exists it's fair to include it. You could probably get a fair bit more if you're careful.

Tesla have built half a dozen fast charge stations. 30 minutes to pour enough electricity into the car for 150 miles. OK, so that's about 42.5KWh. In half an hour with some inevitable loss in charging, that means the station is going to have to supply about 90KW. A quick check on Tesla's website and yes, that's exactly what the station supplies.


But here's what I'm missing. They claim that charging the batteries at 90KW doesn't reduce their maximum charge any faster than charging them at <3KW from a domestic plug. I thought that was unavoidable with Li-ion batteries.


While watching Jay Leno's video on the car, I was struck by how the guy from Tesla refused to answer a quite important question - with thousands of individual batteries connected together, do they all lose charge at the same rate or not? He evaded the question by advertising Tesla. It was like watching a politician.

It's an interesting development in EVs, but there's still the ridiculous level of evasion and disinformation regarding running costs. Tesla make a vague estimate of about 10 years useful working life for the battery pack...but they refuse to say anything about how much it costs for a new one except to express a hope that it'll be far cheaper in 10 years. Which is hardly surprising, as it's most of the cost of the car. It uses standard Panasonic batteries. They're used in all sorts of things. You can buy them retail for about £8 each. There are about 7000 of them in the 85KWh pack. I'd be very surprised if Tesla can make those packs for under £30,000 each. Maybe not for under £40,000 each. Battery cost adds a huge amount to the running costs of an EV - no wonder everyone who promotes EVs in any way completely ignores it and claims that the only running cost is about two shillings and sixpence a year for electricity.
 
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I'm not sure exactly what cells tesla are using, but I've heard it's 18650 li ion cells and they may water cool them.

Anyway, charging them at 1c or less is recommended for best lifespan. Charging faster than 2c will reduce lifetime, but its worth noting that fast discharging also reduces lifetime. The c rate depends on the chemistry.

If you know the number of cells they they are using, and of what type, then it would be too hard to calculate the ideal charge rate. 45kw is a fair chunk of power however...
 
MikeHunt79 said:
I'm not sure exactly what cells tesla are using, but I've heard it's 18650 li ion cells and they may water cool them.

Anyway, charging them at 1c or less is recommended for best lifespan. Charging faster than 2c will reduce lifetime, but its worth noting that fast discharging also reduces lifetime. The c rate depends on the chemistry.

If you know the number of cells they they are using, and of what type, then it would be too hard to calculate the ideal charge rate. 45kw is a fair chunk of power however...
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They're using standard off the shelf Panasonic 18650 Li-ion cells, but I can't easily find which ones. The only number I can find is "over 7000". They have both cooling and heating available, to maintain optimum temperature.

Where are you getting "45kw" from?
 
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