90 Minutes to Re-Charge Your EV? And They Call it a "Fast Charge?"

EV enthusiasts are attempting to paint Volvo's recent announcement in the best possible light. 90 minutes for a "fast charge" of your Volvo EV. Imagine if every time you refueled your gasoline or diesel powered auto, it took you 90 minutes!! No cigar, boys.

For those who don't know, charge time of all-electric vehicles can be a dealbreaker for the greenish technology — it can take 10 hours to charge a battery that only gets you 100 miles! Volvo's 90-minute claim is touted as six-times faster than comparable units, according to the company. The breakthrough could help spur sales.

While an hour and a half can seem like forever, with the appropriate infrastructure in place, getting a decent top-off in the parking lot at the grocery store or at the sports arena becomes a possible scenario.

Volvo is testing the technology in its Volvo C30 electric cars. No word on when it might be available to the public or costs, Earth Techling noted. _Fast Charger

Pluggable hybrids offer a lot of promise for the future, eventually. But for now? What a joke.

And yet, battery researchers continue to try to approach the energy density / power density advantages of fossil fuel powered cars:

... advanced battery makers in the United States have struggled. A123 Systems went bankrupt. Dow said its battery joint venture Dow Kokam had dropped markedly. And an LG Chem factory meant to supply batteries for the Chevrolet Volt has been built, but the factory is sitting idle, waiting for demand to pick up.

For electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids to compete with gas-powered cars, battery prices need to drop by between 50 and 80 percent, according to recent estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy. Getting there might require inventing entirely new kinds of batteries, but there’s also a strong case that improvements to the lithium-ion batteries that power the current generation of electric vehicles may be enough.

...The cost for the Leaf battery could drop to under $4,000 by 2025, according to a recent study by McKinsey, just by increasing the scale of battery production, forcing down component costs through competition, and approximately doubling the energy density of batteries, which reduces materials costs.

...24M, an early-stage startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is taking a different approach—rather than an all-solid battery, the company is developing a cross between a battery and a fuel cell in which the battery electrodes are a sludgy liquid that can be pumped around. The energy storage material could be stored in inexpensive tanks, and then pumped into a small device to generate power (see “A Car Battery at Half the Price”). _TechnologyReview

Perhaps within the next 20 years, battery technology will advance far enough to make pluggable hybrids competitive with ordinary workaday vehicles. But so far, you really have to want one, to be willing to put up with all the hassles and expense.

Versatile Home Power Distribution System for Use w/ EV

The DENSO power distribution system provides both quick DC charging of an EV battery AND emergency home power in the case of a power grid outage.

ENSO Home EV Power Distribution

The V2H system can quickly charge an EV with direct current from the HEMS storage battery, and can supply the electricity in the EV back to the household. In addition, the system can efficiently distribute electricity, including power generated by residential photovoltaic systems (solar panels), to the EV and to the home through the coordination of the HEMS. The two main features of the new system are as follows:

Quick recharging function using a HEMS storage battery. Because an EV is battery-powered, the battery needs to be quickly charged for the car to be practical and functional, particularly when the battery level is low. However, a quick charger uses a substantial amount of power, resulting in an increase in the consumer’s electricity contract/bill and it is difficult to install for household use.

DENSO’s new system can quickly supply the electricity that is stored in the HEMS storage battery to the EV when charging at home, which doesn’t require a dedicated charging device. Within just 15 minutes of charge using the DENSO system, the EV can travel up to about 20 km (12.4 miles).

Eco-V2H function. The HEMS can estimate the daily EV travel distance and household power consumption to best manage the charging and discharging of the electricity of EV and HEMS battery unit. Also, to achieve local production of energy for local consumer consumption, the energy surplus produced by the photovoltaic system can be stored in the EV or the HEMS storage battery as opposed to being sold to the local electric power company.

During the electricity peak time, surplus electricity stored in the HEMS storage battery is supplied back to the house to enable electricity peak shift. These functions require technology to combine electricity supplied back to the home from the EV and commercial power. Moreover, in emergencies such as natural disasters, electricity stored in the EV can be used at home in the same way as the PHV.

_GCC

Electric vehicles are likely to achieve slow but steady penetration into the private vehicular market. This will call for foolproof home systems which allow for quick EV charging. The ability to utilise stored EV and power system energy in the case of a power outage is an added plus.

Expect more intelligence to be built into such systems, so that they will be able to also integrate and control auxiliary generator and fuel cell backup, for more extended power outages.

More on the DENSO Home Energy Management System (HEMS)

Image Source

Interesting Online Calculator to Compare Long Term Costs of Hybrids and Conventional Vehicles

What costs less? The $26,000 Nissan Leaf or the $24,000 Chevy Impala?

The Leaf actually runs about $17,000 less, when you include the total fuel costs over a 10-year period, estimate that gas will cost $3.61 a gallon and include the $7,500 federal tax credit for all-electric cars, according to a cost calculator created by the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Over the 10-year period, the Leaf will cost its owner $25,680 while the Impala will run $42,680.

The calculator, part of RMI's "Project Get Ready" initiative to acclimate policy makers, consumers and manufacturers to the coming changes to transportation, exists to provide somewhat close and realistic cost estimates for hybrids, plug-in hybrids and all-electrics, according to Tripp Hyde, the RMI analyst who came up with the application. _GTM

Comparing the long term costs of a pluggable hybrid with a conventional vehicle can be interesting. Go to http://projectgetready.com/js/tco.html for a helpful online calculator, which will assist you in determining whether the higher priced hybrid is worth the extra money.

Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. You also have to take into accounts whatever rebates, incentives, and tax breaks that may be applicable.

If you are shopping for a vehicle, or simply curious about whether the current crop of PHEVs are worth the extra cost, give it a try.

H/T GreentechMedia

Pluggable Hybrids: The Need for More Electric Power Plants: Stop the Denial

Electric vehicles are a great idea for shifting much of the energy burden of transportation from oil to electricity. But we need to make sure we can make enough electricity to re-charge the large fleet of EV's that are required to make a difference.

Based on the default assumptions on the spreadsheet - 15 million electric vehicle commuters, a 40 mile commute, and 4.0 miles per kilowatt-hour - it would take 150 gigawatt-hours of electricity to charge into such a fleet of battery-powered cars when they are plugged in every night.

Given these are off-peak hours, and given a 10 hour average recharge cycle, the electric power grid would have to deliver 15 gigawatts of additional power all night in order to recharge this quantity of cars. Input your own assumptions!

In California, for example, where during peak demand the power grid can deliver over 50 gigawatts, this is probably barely feasible. But where will the additional electricity come from? Even assuming massive grid-scale storage capacity, you only get about 1.5 gigawatt-hours per day from a one square mile solar thermal plant - you would need to build 100 of these. A nuclear power station can easily output 1.0 gigawatts, and since they run continuously, that would add 24 gigawatt-hours per day - you would need to build about six of them. But what if decentralized sources of electricity were used to power electric cars?

Ecoworld

Ecoworld has been kind enough to provide two online interactive spreadsheets to allow any reader to experiment with the numbers:

Gigawatts per E-Commuters

Photovoltaics per Electric Car

Ecoworld promotes the "series hybrid" which uses a small clean diesel engine running at constant rpm to an electric generator, which charges the batteries that power the electric motor drive.

Diesel can become a renewable fuel within the foreseeable future. So until safe, clean nuclear energy capacity is built to support an EV transportation infrastructure, we are going to have to make do with hybrids.

Volvo Pluggable Hybrid Concept Car--All Electric All the Time--No Transmission, No Driveshaft

Before you get too excited, you should know that this car will not see production before 2015 at the soonest. The four independent electric motors are built into the wheels, and the only power connection to the wheels is a power cable from the battery. The 1.6 liter flex-fuel engine is only there to keep the batteries charged.

When fully charged the Volvo ReCharge Concept can be driven approximately 62 miles on battery power alone before the car's four-cylinder 1.6 Flexifuel engine1 is needed to power the car and recharge the battery. The concept car also retains the Volvo C30's lively and sporty drive thanks to an acceleration figure of 0-62mph in 9 seconds and a top speed of 100mph.

"This is a groundbreaking innovation for sustainable transportation. This plug-in hybrid car, when used as intended, should have about 66 percent lower emissions of carbon dioxide compared with the best hybrid cars available on the market today. Emissions may be even lower if most of the electricity comes from CO2-friendly sources such as biogas, hydropower and nuclear power. A person driving less than 60 miles per day will rarely need to visit a filling station.

...During a journey the combustion engine starts up automatically when 70 percent of the battery power has been used up. However, the driver also has the option of controlling the four-cylinder Flexifuel engine manually via a button in the control panel. This allows the driver to start the engine earlier in order to maximise battery charge, for instance when out on a motorway in order to save battery capacity for driving through the next town.

* The battery pack integrated into the boot uses lithium-polymer battery technology. The batteries are intended to have a useful life beyond that of the car itself.
* Four electric motors, one at each wheel, provide independent traction power.
* Four-cylinder 1.6-litre Flexifuel engine drives an advanced generator that efficiently powers the wheel motors when the battery is depleted.

...The central electrical components in the Volvo ReCharge Concept – the generator for the APU and the wheel motors – were developed together with British electromagnetic specialists PML Flightlink.

With an individual electric motor at each wheel, weight distribution as well as mechanical efficiency and traction are maximised and the friction in mechanical gears is eliminated. Since the car does not have the transmission found in ordinary cars, there is no need for a gear lever.

...The energy that is generated during braking is transmitted to the battery pack. When the system is ultimately developed, traditional wheel brakes will be completely replaced by electrical brakes with minimal energy wasted through friction. To ensure reliable operation of the drivetrain and braking system, driver inputs are fed into a quadruple-redundant electronic control system.

Source
Hat tip Gizmag

Pluggable Hybrid Video

Pluggable hybrids can be plugged in to the electrical grid, or other source of electricity. Electrical energy is currently less expensive per unit of energy, than petroleum based fuels. As time goes by, electricity should become more available and de-centralised, while petroleum will probably trend more expensive, over time.

Battery technology is lagging far behind the needs of modern travelers. Electric vehicles are severely limited in their travel range, due to the miniscule amount of energy storage that even very large and heavy battery banks can contain.

Current battery storage is a joke. Fuel cell technology, on the other hand, promises to advance more quickly in the near to intermediate term than battery technology. Fuel cells that run on biofuels would run fairly clean.

Pluggable automobiles that combine fuel cells running on biofuel, with state of the art electrical storage batteries, may be the best near to middle term approach to personal transportation. Ultracapacitors may by some miracle become good enough in energy density to replace storage batteries, but that would require significant advances in nanotechnology. By that time, integrated molecular manufacturing will probably probably blur the distinctions between the ultracapacitor and the storage batter. Fuel cells will also become far better, and closer to the high performance in both energy and power densities that typify the internal combustion engine--while maintaining a cleaner and more efficient operation.

Plug In Your Hybrid for Better Mileage

First of all, what is a pluggable hybrid? Also called a Plug-in Hybrid, a pluggable hybrid is a car that can be powered by either internal combustion engine or electric motor--but it has larger batteries than conventional hybrids, and you can plug it in overnight to use inexpensive power grid energy for your daily commute. That constitutes a major shift in energy use from petrol to grid electricity. If the grid electricity comes from renewables (or nuclear), you can commute to work all week in a pluggable hybrid, without burning fossil fuel.

Among those who follow energy trends, the pluggable hybrid has become quite popular. Which makes many people wonder, why has Toyota gone to great lengths to distance itself from the pluggable hybrid concept?

On Tuesday, a Toyota representative wrote to an individual, "we do not currently have any announced plans to introduce a plug-in hybrid Toyota vehicle in the U.S." Find an expert who could say if that's intentionally evasive. (See our chronology of all automakers comments in the past year at http://www.calcars.org/carmakers.html .)

In a story broadcast today on NPR All Things Considered, you can hear spokeswoman Cindy Knight say, "You can certainly make a vehicle that will run, but you can't necessarily make a vehicle that people will buy.... Toyota went to great lengths to address the drawbacks of battery vehicles so that people do not have to plug our hybrids in, and our customers tell us that that is one of the features they like about the vehicle, they don't have to plug it in."

If the big carmakers distance themselves from this obviously winning concept, smaller players will rush in to fill the gap. Jim at the Energy Blog keeps close track of developments in pluggable hybrids, and he has a full array of energy links. Jim's place is an excellent site for following the progress in this war of the vehicular power plants.

Check out this Al Fin post for some of the underlying energy issues involved in the transition from internal combustion engines to fuel cell/supercapacitor/battery powered electric motor vehicles. The pluggable hybrid is a very useful intermediate step in the transition. No matter what the big auto manufacturers do, they cannot stop it from happening.