Toshibas new battery tech

Tesla2Go · 08-19-2006, 02:43 PM

I'm copying here a post from the blog comments which I found VERY interesting:

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Quote:

Robert wrote on August 19th, 2006 at 2:08 am

Have you thought about partneting with Toshiba? They invented their new LI-ION Particle Cell Battery. This can change to Full in just under 2 mintues. With thousands of these instead of the normal batteries, this would make the car perfect for the future. Has this been a tought or is the technology still too new?

Quote:

Toshiba has developed a Lithium-Ion battery capable of being charged to 80 per cent of its full capacity in under 60 seconds. Filling it up takes just "a few more minutes", the company boasted today.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03...i-ion_battery/

Toshiba announced this in March 2005. Any news after that? Why haven't we seen these batteries yet for phones and laptops? Seems the perfect thing to diminish recharge time.

chucknorris · 08-19-2006, 02:59 PM

whoa
that is ridiculous
i wish i had that on my ipod(and my car)

dsacks6 · 08-19-2006, 04:49 PM

Priveate message me tesla, that question, and i'll ask that question to tesla in an interview hopefully

Tesla2Go · 08-19-2006, 04:52 PM

Or these ones:

Quote:

A123Systems Unveils Lithium-Ion Battery Technology that Delivers Unprecedented Levels of Power, Safety and Life

Nanotech-Enabled Batteries Deliver up to 10X Longer Cycle Life, 5X Power Gains and 5-Minute Charge Time; Company Discloses Multi-Year Deal with Black & Decker to provide battery for its DEWALT brand of Power Tools

http://www.a123systems.com/html/news...1102_news.html

It seems they wouldn't need cooling either...

I'm hopeful the battery tech necessary for longer range and much shorter recharge time is not 10-15 years away but 3-5 years.

WarpedOne · 08-20-2006, 11:48 AM

>> shorter recharge time

Just a reminder. Charge time depends not only on the battery tech but also on the power of your electric connection.

Don't know about you, but I have on 12kW connection (220V, two 30Amps line). To fill 50kWh of charge (current tesla bat-pack) with that connection it takes 50kWh / 12kW = 4 hours. Want to shorten that 10 times to 24 minutes? You need 10times more powerfull connection - 120kW. How many homes has that?

tonybelding · 08-20-2006, 06:07 PM

But you don't usually need to recharge that fast when you're at home. Super-fast recharge would mainly be useful when you are on the road and don't want to wait around 3.5 hours before continuing your trip.

I could imagine some kind of service station with high-current chargers, and maybe something like flywheel storage to balance the load. It could keep the flywheel spun up, and when somebody comes to the charger it could rapidly dump that energy into their car.

From the blog comments on Tesla's website, they seem to think the answer is cars with ever-longer range until you can literally drive all day on a charge, then let it charge during the night. You could drive it coast-to-coast, charging your car at each motel while you sleep. Rapid charging would never be necessary. It sounds good, but I wish I could be that optimistic about battery technology. We're a long way from there yet.

jadresak · 08-20-2006, 07:30 PM

But what about the battery problems (cars catching fire)? Dell has just recalled thousands of laptops because they can basically blow-up for no reason (though its sony's fault of course because Dell was using Sony's batteries). So now my laptop has to go back to Dell because I have one of the recalled batteries. Fun. I really hate Dell so much. Hopefully Tesla doesnt make the same mistake with the batteries and hopefully they have better customer service as well because thats another reason why Dell sucks.

dsacks6 · 08-20-2006, 07:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jadresak

But what about the battery problems (cars catching fire)?* Dell has just recalled thousands of laptops because they can basically blow-up for no reason (though its sony's fault of course because Dell was using Sony's batteries).* So now my laptop has to go back to Dell because I have one of the recalled batteries.* Fun.* I really hate Dell so much.* Hopefully Tesla doesnt make the same mistake with the batteries and hopefully they have better customer service as well because thats another reason why Dell sucks.

JAdre, read this article HERE

WarpedOne · 08-21-2006, 01:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tonybelding

... but I wish I could be that optimistic about battery technology. We're a long way from there yet.

It seems so, yes. Thats why I'm eagerly awainting supercapacitors to show what they can really do. Charging time would be mainly limited by your connection power, practicaly no refill degradation, no aging problems, instant power on demand, very low losses (current models have about 1% loss per month).

Charging stations for instant refill using flywheels sound cool, very cool 8)

Tesla2Go · 08-21-2006, 09:14 AM

But I thought ultracapacitors are good when you need a sudden powerful boost of electricity but they aren't so good at providing a steady flow?

Why I'm optimistic about battery tech is because the technology is not driven by development of electric cars, it's not the car companies who dictate the needs. Think about it, what made the Li-Ion batteries popular? Laptops and cellular phones...computers have doubled in computing power every year for the last 10 or so years= they need batteries to keep up. And now this technology spreads to other areas. I'm sure within a year we'll see these nanotech batteries appear for laptops. It then seems improbable to me that it will take 10 years before we see them used in electric vehicles.