Well the faster and safer solution for a battery swap would be to drop the battery from the bottom, and not overhead through a hoisting system. This bottom removal would be very easy and the swapping would be faster than filling up currently at a gas station.
Until there is a revolution in storage and charging, we're not going to see EV cars become desirable. Charging must be faster, and power density must be much greater.
Battery swaps are not going to be very popular either. Do you want several hundred pounds of battery being swung in and out on hoists over your $40,000 car all the time?
The battery companies will be the key to electric vehicles.
Yes, I agree. The Pike's Peak climb is a sybolic victory. We'll see more of these going forward. As that happens, the EV will go from being an expensive under-performing car to just an expensive car. Competition, volume increases, and engineering advances will start to chip away at the cost at some point.
They may not be for everyone, but the performance issue is definitely a road block, particularly for the crowd that likes muscle cars and high performance handling. Any progress EVs can make addressing that obstacle is a bonus.
I agree - cool story and very encouraging for EVs and proponents of EVs. I still believe, however, that there are the types of people out there who will buy them and others who just won't, no matter the data they are presented or how well the car performs. They just aren't for everyone, as we've seen in polls over the last couple of years.
My solution to the energy crisis is more nuclear power - generating electricity and hydrogen to run our homes and transportation. Put the power plants away from populated areas, make them small, modular, and easy to shut down should something happen. Put the waste a mile underground in solid concrete.
Fossil fuels may eventually become scarce - just like whale oil became scarce in the 1800's. We all know how that ended, with Moby Dick sinking a ship 8000 miles away from home, looking for oil in the middle of the pacific...
Electric is capable of generating amazing bursts of acceleration, thanks in most part to the lighter vehicles and lithuim ion batteries.
I fly model helicopters and it is amazing how Lithium Ion the batteries can deliver a 7 minute flight and weigh almost nothing...
This is great. One more step toward eliminating the perception that EV cars underperform internal combustion engines. Electric vehicles still have some distance to make up on the cost/benefit front, but performance gains help close the gap. The big question, though, is whether the EV in the race was emitting false noise so the internal combustion vehicles would realize they were being passed.
For 3D printing to make the jump from rapid prototyping to manufacturing, engineers will need to find easier ways to move products from their CAD screens to their printers.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
To save this item to your list of favorite Design News content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
If you found this interesting or useful, please use the links to the services below to share it with other readers. You will need a free account with each service to share an item via that service.
Tweet This
2 
