Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:34:18 GMT | no comments
Pike Research released a new report “Plug-in Electric Vehicles” which estimates that by 2015, sales of electric vehicles (EVs) will total over 3 million worldwide with over 800,000 sold in the U.S. While I think these numbers are conservative, they are higher than Pike predicted just a year ago.
Posted by Max Dunn Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:08:57 GMT | no comments
Five teams from four continents started the ZERO Race on August 16th in an attempt to drive their electric vehicles (EVs) around the world in 80 days using only renewable energy – which means they will produce no emissions at all!
It is not a race about speed, but the start to creating a greener planet and a better place to live for future generations by making small, efficient vehicles popular. The team with the smartest, most efficient, most reliable, most usable and most popular concept will be the winner.
Posted by Max Dunn Sun, 22 Aug 2010 16:33:36 GMT | 2 comments
I have been putting off this post about the cost of converting my Zapino electric scooter to lithium batteries because it was certainly more than I would have liked to spend. But anyone that is considering doing the same conversion should know about the cost, so I am going to bite the bullet and put out the numbers.
Whew, that wasn’t as bad as I thought!
I considered saving $300 by not buying the charger, but I am glad that I got it. Besides being 3 times faster than my current charger, it also works great with the battery balancers by providing pulsed charging at the end to equalize all the batteries.
Also, with care these batteries should provide about 60,000 miles of use, which works out to about $0.03 per mile. So even though the purchase price was high, the lifetime cost will be about 1/3 that of the cheaper lead-acid batteries all while providing higher performance.
Posted by Max Dunn Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:22:18 GMT | 1 comment
Putting in lithium-ion batteries in my Zapino scooter was a big investment and I am still a little nervous about how well they will work and how long they will last. But I just went for my first ride on my newly converted Zapino and came back with a big smile on my face after covering 18 miles!
I had planned on just riding to the library and back which would have been about 6 miles, but it felt so good after I got there that I decide to ride down to Los Gatos along the long stretch of Hwy 9. The entire trip, the acceleration remained peppy as the voltage on the batteries never sagged below 60 volts. I could also feel the difference that the 80 lb lighter weight made in acceleration and handling. I passed one radar speed sign and it said I was doing 37 MPH. The whole way the voltage of each battery pack remained very similar, which was a good sign.
I am estimating that with the new lithium batteries and lighter weight, I should be able to get about 40 miles out of my newly converted Zapino. Next up, a longer trip to test this range!
Posted by Max Dunn Mon, 02 Aug 2010 22:54:56 GMT | 3 comments
This post is very specific about the new Elite Power Solutions Thundersky battery balancers. I am posting it in order to help other people that might have the same questions I did about how to mount them.
First off, here are the old battery balancers that Elite Power Solutions provided for Thundersky batteries:
Notice that the circuit boards have a short wire attached. This makes it easier to mount and allows both LEDs on the board to be seen. However, some might think that the wires look a little sloppy.
Here are the new battery balancers:
Posted by Max Dunn Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:12:35 GMT | no comments
I finally did it – I got Li-Ion batteries for my Zapino and started the conversion! This will reduce the battery weight from 150 lbs to 70 lbs and increase the range from about 20 miles to about 40 miles. While quite a bit more expensive than lead-acid AGM batteries, they will last more than 3 times as long so the lifetime cost will be less.
The first challenge I ran into is that the batteries are slightly taller so the two in front wouldn’t fit. The fix for this was to take the Zapino to my mechanic and have him reweld the battery box to add about 2 inches to it. This worked fine, but does reduce my clearance so I will need to be more careful about speed bumps and going up curbs.
After
Batteries Mounted
Posted by Max Dunn Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:13:02 GMT | no comments
Battery life has always been a big concern of electric vehicles (EV). Being the most expensive element of an EV, if they don’t last long it would drastically increase the cost of owning an EV. Early ead acid batteries last about 300 to 500 cycles, which is good for only a year or two of driving. Lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries are much better, lasting about 1,500 cycles and with a 100 mile range, this would give a life of 150,000 miles, or about the same as the life of the car.
However, Toshiba has been working on a new battery technology with a greatly increased life span of 6,000 cycles. This would give an EV a lifetime range of about 600,000 miles, or enough to swap into 4 different EVs! Imagine that you buy an EV and 10 years later it is starting to fall apart, but you can use your batteries for your next EV greatly reducing the cost of your subsequent EVs.
Another advantage of the SCiB technology is that it is safer and can withstand fast charging. Now word on price or when it will be available, but they are working with Mitsubishi and several other partners to bring it to market.
Source: AutoBlog Green: Toshiba partners with Mitsubishi for development of li-ion SCiB EV batteries
Posted by Max Dunn Sun, 28 Mar 2010 15:32:54 GMT | 3 comments
There was an interesting article today on The Oil Drum today titled Using heat to refine kerogen from oil shale. The basic idea is that in order to get oil out of shale you need to heat it up, but then the oil can flow away and water can flow in. So first, it is necessary to create an ice wall around the site.
However, both the freezing and the heating takes tremendous amounts of energy. The article states:
“It has been suggested that the technology would need a dedicated power source of some 1.2 gigawatts, in order to yield a production of 100,000 bd.”
Let’s look at these numbers: 100,000 barrels of oil contains 4.2 million gallons of oil and if this were all converted to gas and used in standard cars that get 20 miles per gallon, it would power cars 84 million miles.
However, a 1.2 GW power plant would produce about 28 million kWh of electricity per day and if used for a standard electric vehicle (EV) which gets about 3 miles per kWh (plant to wheels) then it would power cars for 86 million miles.
So why spend all that effort and energy to extract oil from shale when the same amount of energy would power EVs farther?
Posted by Max Dunn Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:01:57 GMT | no comments
Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery prices are dropping rapidly and automakers are already seeing quotes of $450 per kWh for next year.
This is a huge drop from the historical price of $1,000 per kWh and even better than this year’s price of $650 per kWh.
In addition, this new report by Deutsche Bank not only predicts that performance of Li-ion batteries will double in the next 7 years, they also predict the price will decline by another 50% in the next 10 years.
At $450 kWh, the 16kWh battery in the Chevy Volt would add only an additional $7,200 to the price of the car which will pay for itself in the gas savings after 90,000 miles – or sooner if gas rises above $3 per gallon.
(Source: GM-Volt.com. Report Reveals Lithium-ion Battery Prices Already Dropping Steeper Than Expected.)
Posted by Max Dunn Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:10:55 GMT | no comments
Electric utilities are are scared of plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles (EVs) – scared they will all plug-in to recharge after work on a hot summer day and bring down the grid.
As long as EVs are charged off-peak, there is more than enough power to charge about 160 million EVs without building any new power stations. Below is an outline of some of the ideas I have about making sure EVs don’t charge during peak times but instead, actually help the electric grid.