Depending on your point of view, the journey of EE Times/EE Life editorial director Brian Fuller across America in a Chevy Volt was either a great adventure or the cushy assignment of the year. In my view, it represented EE Times’ most significant investment thus far -- thanks to the sponsorship of Avnet -- in perhaps the most important technology of the 21st century: electric power storage, specifically in the form of long-life batteries.
Fuller and his videographer brother Kirk, driving coast-to-coast in an electric car with internal-combustion backup, was something of a leap of faith. They faced swathes of America in which there exist no power stations to plug in their Volt and recharge the juice in the vehicle’s 288-cell, 16-kilowatt hour battery pack. Right now, 48 of 50 states, according to Car and Driver, have fewer than 10 such stations each. This left Brian and Kirk using the Volt’s cute backup 83hp internal combustion engine a lot more than they might have preferred. Indeed, after the switch from battery (range 35 miles) to gasoline power (an additional 300-odd miles), the Volt averages around 30 miles per gallon. This isn’t bad, but, compared to, say, a 1972 Honda Civic, it’s embarrassing.
When I heard about Brian’s “Drive for Innovation” experiment, I found myself focusing not on the current Chevy Volt’s limitations, but on the surprising speed of its development. When I first read about Volt prototypes less than two years ago, I understood that an operating, affordable consumer Volt was still far, far away. It wouldn’t hit the market, in any substantial volume, within the decade.
That prediction was over cautious. Today, there are enough Volts on the road -- along with competitors like Nissan’s Leaf, various hybrids, and an electric Ford Focus due out in limited production next year -- that it might be safe to suggest that the electric car is here to stay.
Advancing the cause is the federal government’s commitment to R&D in power storage technology, batteries in particular. It started with a $69-billion clean-energy package and the revival of General Motors (creator of the Volt). There’s a $7,500 tax credit to purchasers of electric cars, and the Obama administration has invested in battery development throughout America’s 20 National Laboratories. In the current issue of Washington Monthly, Eric D. Isaacs, director of the Argonne National Lab., notes that his team pioneered the technology in the 2011 Volt battery, which was licensed for manufacture by Korean chemical giant LG Chem.
Perhaps the most encouraging facet of the Volt and its overly large, short-range, too-expensive ($10,000) lithium-ion battery pack is Isaacs’ lament that researchers have until now failed miserably in producing an air-cathode battery. If this technology could be conquered, it would multiply tenfold the storage capacity of long-life batteries -- from the Volt’s 35-mile range to 350 miles.
I had to chuckle once again at the comparison of the Volt's highway mileage during a cross-country trek to that of an old Honda. Really, who cares about highway mileage these days? Population density is highest at each end of the country and that's where the jobs are. For the average working stiff who lives on either coast, citymileage is of utmost importance and that's where hybrids and electric vehicles embarass cars of old. Let's see an old Honda Civic get 50 MPG in high-traffic conditions!
The other thing that bothers me is any comparison of diesel vehicles to hybrids without mention of the large fuel cost differences between diesel and regular gas. It can be as high as $.50/gallon here in CA.
From an Energy Storage argument, it appears we should be shoveling funds into a "hydrogen economy", if we wish to maximize energy storage efficiency."
The problem with that hydrogen tank is that hydrogen is so light weight that the tank needs to be either very large or kept at enormous pressure (700 atmospheres is a figure that comes to mind). In either case, that tank ends up being a pretty large and heavy metal structure. Once you adjust the numbers to include the weight of the tank along with the wieight of the fuel, the numbers look quite different.
It's clear to me that we need to apply the engineering and scientific talent we already have to come up with a "SuperBattery" regardless of the preceived current efficiency of the total system.
After we solve the basic problem of a light weight energy storage device then we can address the primary source of power........maybe it has to be Nuclear ! maybe solar...We can figure that out later...
The main impediment to getting rid of the internal combustion engine and the importation of oil ......is the lack of an Energy Storage Device
We must have a "SuperBattery"
and we must work on it's development and manufacture Now !!!
I don't get it. I could have done this 11 years ago with my Honda Insight. Anyone who owns a Prius can do this.
Remember, in spite of the blindness of the press and the successful marketing snowjob from GM, a Volt is just a hybrid. It has the same limitations as a hybrid (uses gasoline, has a complex power train) and the same benefits (doesn't depend on finding places to plug in).
If someone did a cross-country drive in a Leaf or a Tesla, THAT would be news. Doing it in a Volt doesn't prove anything other than that GM has better marketing people than DN has journalists.
Let's keep in mind the other big issue with hydrogen that seems often forgotten in the media hype: it's not an energy source, it's an energy storage material. There aren't any hydrogen mines. Hydrogen is not a primary source of energy. We still need to mine uranium, coal, etc. or build solar collectors or hydroelectric dams to come up with the energy needed to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which is later burned in the car engine (or used in the fuel cell) to release that stored energy, at less than 100% efficiency. Then we must use more energy to compress the hydrogen into tanks, much of which is lost as waste heat. Look at an air compressor in the hardware store; there's a reason they have fans blowing air over cooling fins! Hopefully some of that loss will be recoverable.
Also, metal hydride storage has not advanced appreciably to extract the tied up hydrogen quickly enough for it to be viable for most applications.
Also, hydrogen is typically gotten by steam methane reformation (SMR) which use hydrocarbon as the feedstock (lot's of CO2). Unless we are diasociating water via electrolysis to get H2 and using renewable energy inputs to do it, we are merely squeezing the closed system part of the balloon on our planet.
We've got far too many technically challenged but heavy on the tree hugging ignorance amongst us, a lot of them gullible and shallow politicians.
I once told a disagreeing poster to do the material and energy balance to prove a point about an energy process and he accused me of muddying up the discussion. Absolutely amazing...
Hydrogen storage has some interesting possibilities: some metal/ceramic compounds can be saturated with hydrogen at densities larger than liquid hydrogen--very counterintuitive, but true. They are inherently safe, too---the extraction rate is slow enough so that there is no 'gigantic fireball' if the tank is compromised.
Diesel fuel has larger energy content, and is slightly more expensive---the $/J is approximately the same. In Europe, diesel is subsidized (or, rather, the regular gas is taxed even more per Joule) so the prices are similar, I think.
D, Sherman wrote "The history of engineering shows that the longer people have been trying unsuccessfully to solve a given problem, the less likely it is that a solution exists."
I don't think this is a reasonable conclusion. For instance, steam power machines date back to Heron of Alexandria, but the precision machining required for a working steam engine wasn't available until 1750's. James Burke's Connections shows very well how most of engineering is interdependent and requires specific accomplishments in seemingly unrelated areas.
Specifically, fusion power is an area where progress has been disappointingly slow, but I think they are getting there: c.f. recent news about new method to stabilize plasma on a large scale.
Continuous research funding is crucial to progress---in fact I challenge you to name a non-trivial number of technological advances that can NOT be traced to society's rational choice to fund scientific research.
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