OT: Electric car batteries

Limited to people going out of range. How many, how often? You need the answers to see how viable and yes, that is a limited market.

Those communing a few miles to work and trips to the store can just plug in.

What are the numbers?

I'd say considerable, as it's range that stops most people from buying electric cars. But those people only probably need the quick service a few times a year for holidays.

Slightly OT...

I was at a hotel recently that had 2 parking spots for electric cars. Primo spots, right by the lobby. 2 spots right next to each other. I was there for

My conclusion is that people do not like to stray far from home with an electric car. Perhaps battery swap locations would encourage more road trips.

Here, gas prices are going down again. I saw $2.00/gallon yesterday.

The problem is, who wants to go through all those possible permutations, having to figure out where you can and can't go, where there would be a battery swapper, etc. Gas or hybrid, you're good to go. It's for hippies or people who just want a second car for commuting, around town, etc and they have another one for longer trips. Maybe an SUV and an electric car.

These aren't D-cells. Consider a typical suburban gas station that fills, on average, 100 cars each hour. That's 2400 cars each day for which they'd need to stock battery packs. At about 5 cu. ft. per ea., that's a large volume of packs to stock (and recharge). Logistically, it's just not possible on a wide-scale.

It's only 2400 if you take a day to charge them.

Ed Pawlowski posted for all of us...

Take that to your investors and see how far you get. Lets start with an existing building that you can refurb. Up front it can be $100,000 plus rest of $2,000 a month. Add in some chargers at 2k or so each. Storage racks, tools, lifting equipment. You must be open at least 12 hours a day in rural areas, 16 to 24 in big cities. One person manning the station at $15/hr+

I can charge at home for $8. How much will it take to give me a battery swap?

Cheaper than I could charge an electric car.

If it's still considerably less than petrol, you'd pay for it for convenience.

If. The cost of gasoline in the US is about $.073 per mile for my car. The cost to charge an electric is about $.08. Economicaly it is not worth buying, certainly not to pay a premium for charging at a swap station. That will change with market conditions. l

The idea has been floated for many years - but untill you can get 2 or more manufacturers to standardise in a single battery design, and a chassis design that allows easy removal/replacement of that same batterry on all cars, it won't happen.

Would be interesting to know how the distribution fits "morning drive to work", "lunchtime" and "getting off work". You don't get a day to recharge them.

There's a lot of gasoline in the pipeline between the well and the car. Imagine how many batteries it would take to replace the energy stored in that pipeline.

You don't need to, because you can charge batteries nicely in an hour.

You don't need to. Because you can charge a battery in an hour, you can't get petrol from the well to the pump in that time.

USB is a standard.

USB IS a standard. Now, if everyone would follow it.

Standard? mini? micro? reversible? HDMI?

Try to figure out how to charge a device from USB. Lemmesee...do I want to short d- to d+? or 15K from one or both to ground? Or a voltage divider between v+ and ground? On one or both? What about pin4? OTG? sink or source? And the answer to all that is, "Depends"!

So, USB ARE standards, just depends on which one and if it's followed.

I think you're oversimplifying. It's quittin' time and 20 cars show up in the first ten minutes. How many batteries do you stock? How many forklifts? I don't know much about battery capacities, so scale to suit. Big round number is 100kWH x 20 = 2MWH in an hour. Where are you gonna get 2 Megawatts? Maybe it's half that??? Where are you gonna get a Megawatt? And how about the other three energy stations at that intersection?

There's no way, with current technology, to store massive amounts of electrical energy at the point of demand.

There's a HUGE amount of petroleum energy in the pipeline in train cars, storage depots, tanker trucks, on-site storage at gas stations. I suggest that there ain't enough electricity available to replace it in a way anywhere nearly as conveniently as "fill-er-up".

And, with current technology, what does pumping 100kW into a battery for an hour do to charge efficiency and battery life? Each 10% inefficiency costs you 10kWH. What do you do with the heat? How does temperature affect battery life?

Think deeper than the obvious.

You must be a Bernie Bro. Exactly who is that they that's going to keep buying new batteries for you? You but the car and the battery and it comes with a free lifetime supply of batteries?