Recently, articles in the press have made reference to electric cars powered by lithium-titanate nanoparticles, a development from the conventional lithium-ion cell; they boast a range of over 185 miles and take only 10 minutes to recharge. This leads readers to assume that a battery-electric car might be re-fueled at a local station as fast as a petroleum powered device and I'd like to think that's possible too but, and here's the but, the big J.Lo sized butt... that's more power than we have at hand.
Looking at the Tesla roadster, it consumes about 80A of current at 220v for 3½ hrs to charge up fully. That's 17.6KW for 3½hrs or a total of 52.8KWh of electricity.
If we look at dispensing that much power at 220v in just 10 minutes (21x faster than the Tesla charger) that's a total current of 1,680A, even at 440v that's 840A and that, regrettably is more amps that you get to your local distribution node.
Imagine the size of the wiring? 100A cable is difficult enough.
OK, another approach, the charge station uses local lithium-titanate nanoparticle batteries that it keeps charged like capacitors to dispense huge power on demand, well, the cables would need to be manageable so, assuming 100A ish the voltage of the batteries would need to be at least 4,000v. Now, that's not so difficult to manage as thick insulation can be made flexible but, imagine the connectors... in the rain?
Prove me wrong... please!
MPT
Posted
Jul 30 2008, 09:54 AM
by
Michael Thwaite