No Range anxiety with this Electric Car

Alcoa Aluminum and Phinergy are announcing a car test with an Aluminum-Air Battery! Performance of over 1000 miles on a charge! Anyone who has doubts of
Aluminum to hold enough energy to provide this much range is invited to Do a search for ALICE ROCKETS , the videos, which show total destructive release
of energy from Aluminum should make a believer out of you !

I had Expected that this later technology would have provided a reversible source of H2 gas for fuel cells Via Aluminum's freakish ability to rapidly oxidize !

Here is the site http://www.autonet.ca/en/2014/06/02/no-range-anxiety-with-this-electric-car

Unfortunately my 'Mac' does not play well with others ! Could some one help embed this ! For the Crafts ! Big AL

allen lumley wrote:Here is the site www.autonet.ca/en/2014/06/02/no-range-anxiety-with this-electric-car

Unfortunately my 'Mac' does not play well with others ! Could some one help embed this ! For the Crafts ! Big AL

Link appears to be broken, goes to a 404.

I edited the link to fix it. There was a space between "with" and "this" in that URL which I replaced by a "-".

1000 miles would seem to me to be TOO MUCH range. I never drive that far in a single day, and if I did a break where I had to stop for an hour or so, would be welcome. Carting all those batteries around the rest of the time, would therefore be a complete waste. 600 miles range would seem to be a better max for me, and I could easily live with 300 with no appreciable inconvenience, what about other people? If you had a EV car with 300 miles range, how much would you pay for an additional 100 miles?

Given Aluminum 'freakish ability to rapidly oxidize', how do they get the oxygen back off (iow, how do you recharge the battery)?

Thank You Kindly,
Topher

It needs to have enough range to make the full loop and back to home as most are not willing to wait the HOURS it takes to refuel on the road. Most only recharge at home, a very few can find meaningful power at work parking.

For an all electric to be practical for me, it would need an absolutely guaranteed 200 miles of range at full payload weight @ 75 on the highway and a little stop and go. And recharge in 8 hours or less. And that is a commuter ONLY car. To use it as an all-around vehicle it has to do more.

An update : While the Aluminum Air Battery people used the Guiles Villeneuve race track to demonstrate that their battery has made their modified electrical
test bed travel over 300 kilometers, It definitely was the Battery that was being demonstrated !

At this time they are proposing that their Al / Air Battery be used as a range extender for other future Electrical cars ! In their scenario a Tesla that can presently
go ~480~ kilometers using its 500 Kilogram battery, will have Phinergy's range extender Battery that will add a total of 3000 kilometers with their 100 kilogram battery.

Here the qualifications become very interesting, To activate this battery -water must be added, the 1st drink is good for any and all types of range extension up to
1600 kilometers, hopefully they will have a gauge on the dash that tells you that it is time for the 2nd and last drink ! Near the total 3000 kilometers you must swap
out that battery !

The technology is approx 30 years old, and this is as far as they have got, though the battery partnership has plains to market a stationary of-grid battery in
'the near future'.

I can only post he link and hope for admin help www.cbc.ca/news/technology/electric-car-with-massive-range-in-demo-by-phinergy-alcoa-1.2664653

I was hoping that this tech had evolved a little farther, still it may have a D.I.Y. future Big AL

is this it, Al?

electric car

-Yes ! Judith AND Jaikiran thank you, thank you, Thank you ! Big AL

allen lumley wrote:Near the total 3000 kilometers you must swap out that battery!

So conceptually more of a back up fuel tank. I wish I had time right now to figure out how much adding 100kg to a Tesla reduces its range.

I now remember these batteries--they were playing with full-size electric helicopters! These have to be thought of as a giant recyclable disposable AA battery.

I can definitely see a potential market for a backup battery--something smaller that was good for 50-100 miles, available at any walmart or gas station. Something 10-20 kg and universal for any ecar.

Topher Belknap wrote:

allen lumley wrote:Near the total 3000 kilometers you must swap out that battery!

So conceptually more of a back up fuel tank. I wish I had time right now to figure out how much adding 100kg to a Tesla reduces its range.

About the same as carrying an extra passenger and luggage. Not that bad but not something you want to do all the time.

Interesting concept. I was always hoping for a new type of "gas station" where you would pull up and instead of charging the battery you would just swap out the empty battery for a fully charged one. This seems to make it possible.

Markus loeffler : Pretend that you have a 2 yr old Tesla, The promised 480 kilometers (300 miles) per charge is slipping to 420ish, you have a
wedding to go to in 6 weeks, you get the Aluminum/Air Up-grade to add the full 3,000 Kilometers before your trip, traveling from downtown Toronto
to Prince Edward Island, the upgrade means that your 4 passenger car can now (optimally) hold 1 less !

About the time you arrive -The 420 kilometers plus about 1100 more from the Phinergy Battery, you are near the maximum Energy generation from
the amount of water you gave it to drink !

Because you could plug in virtually any where, you can leave Prince Edward Island with a full charge on your Tesla Lithium batteries, but in order to
get the maximum range out of your Aluminum /Air batteries en route , you need to ether water-up before you go or make a planed stop shortly after
you leave to gain full effect -now aproximately 1400 Kilometers! Then when you get home, in order to allow you an extended driving range beyond the
420-ish Kilometers left in the Tesla batteries, you will need to swap out the Aluminum / Air batteries, the loss in available distance, to make you feel
comfortable between the two points of adding water -Means you pay a ~20%~ penalty ! (I THINK!) , perhaps there may be a slight rebate for not
running the battery flat, and scheduling the exchange for non peak hours, but who including your local 'rent a car' has ever given you a discount for fuel
left in the tank !

I still am in hopes that the AIR electrode/plate is not damaged by the production of electrical energy, and further the Plates of Pure aluminum -then
used to the point of becoming Alumina, are physically capable of being swapped out From the Aluminum / Air battery- new Aluminum plates being
replaced within the battery for the old used up Alumina and the whole thing being re-bolted back together to continue to function as a storage battery !

This tech is already 30 years old, and still needs further development, but It is more than just merely possible that we will see a D.I.Y. Aluminum / Air
Battery for home use - swap out !
For the good of the craft ! And with any road trip -Y.M.M.V. !Big AL

When I was in SoCal a couple of years ago, Santa Monica (a community near L.A.) had Park & Ride parking lots where the commuter buses stopped. Some of these lots were specifically for electric vehicles, and part of the parking fee included a plugin for recharging. Pretty snazzy. You get off of the bus at the end of a day at work, and your car is fully charged. I thought that this was a great way of encouraging apartment dwellers (who don't have a garage where they can recharge overnight) to take the plunge to EV. Very forward thinking - make it as convenient as possible for EV owners.

Interestingly, the current industrial process for aluminum smelting requires carbon and generates CO2. Basically, the oxygen bonded to the aluminum (in aluminum oxide) is transferred to carbon to drive the process. Funny how this is not mentioned in any of the articles I've seen on this technology. Note that I personally do not consider CO2 production to be cause for concern, but many do - therefore, it should have been emphasized. Gee, I wonder where they're getting the carbon (coal, maybe)? See link:

http://www.balcoindia.com/operation/pdf/Aluminium-Production-Process.pdf - This link shows 13460 KWh of electricity required to process one metric ton of aluminum. That's roughly 13.5 KWh per Kg of aluminum.

http://www.hybridcars.com/renault-nissan-to-use-phinergys-aluminum-air-battery/ - This link shows 4.05 KWh of electricity per Kg of aluminum from the aluminum air battery.

Overall efficiency in electricity storage is roughly 4.05/13.5 - 30%. There is also the energy consumed in transporting the spent battery and reconstituted battery to and from the processing centers. Compared to the efficiency of charging a traditional battery at roughly 80%, then this seems like a substantial loss. Of course, COST is the main consideration. However, I have serious concerns (outright doubts, in fact) about the existing financial system to generate meaningful prices for such comparisons - especially for long term considerations, which matter most. By default, I prefer the system that is both simpler and less centralized. In my opinion, this technology might be suitable only as a range extender for an EV, and this is the targeted application. Basically, the idea is to replace an internal combustion engine driven generator with one of these aluminum air batteries, but rely primarily on a more modest traditional battery to provide the 50 or so mile range normally seen each day. Ideally, the aluminum air battery would be used very rarely. In that setting it seems reasonable. Even so, it's not the most favorable prospect I've seen.

Overall efficiency in electricity storage is roughly 4.05/13.5 - 30%.

Personally, I believe that battery technology, and more importantly, their manufacturing technologies, need to be vastly improved before EVs can be seen as a real 'green' step forward.
We're slowly getting there, but it is still a long, bumpy road ahead of us.

John polk : While a l-o-o-o-ong way from perfect, the new Carbon Emissions Regulations from the E.P.A. must be seen as a step in the right direction.

For Electrical Vehicles to work, they must use Electricity that is cheaper per mile driven, than Gasoline, and we ARE there Now! , and the Electricity
must be as Carbon neutral as possible - Obviously any Geographically fixed power plant (All of them ) will be better able to 'scrub' and re-cycle its own
CO2 then any (mobile) Car/Vehicle/Power Plant

This is of course does not count in any way the generally considered 'Carbon Neutral' performance of a Wind/Solar array, OR consider the potential
savings from arriving home with a (Nearly?) Fully charged set of batteries carried aboard our electrical or Electric/Gas Hybrid, and available for use at
home -exactly during peak Kilowatt usage hours !

For The Vast majority of Americans who live any where on the planet, and by extension everyone- This is do-able today ! 4 the Crafts ! Big AL

It should probably be noted here, that Tesla has many supercharge stations where you can recharge your Tesla, from solar powered stations, quickly (well relatively quickly, while eating lunch for example), and for FREE (i.e. included in the price of the car).

If you were able to charge from one of these every time you needed to, how much would the car cost over its lifetime? How would that compare with the cost of an ICE car, AND all the fuel it will consume over its lifetime? And that only counts the observable costs. All those external costs, you still have to pay.

Thank You Kindly,
Topher