projectevie
Jon Azrielant
Jeff Bladt
Matt Vance
andreafjeldFiled under: EV news, Grassroots EV | Tags: Electric Vehicle Conversion, ChargeCar.org, ChargeCar, Pittsburgh, supercapacitor, battery life cycle, EV conversion, Illah Nourbakhsh, Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, CMU
Anyone with a laptop computer, particularly those of us who NEVER turn it off and ALWAYS leave it plugged in, knows all too well about that 5 hours of battery-life ‘honeymoon’ period. Before you know it, 5 hours have become 4. Next you have trouble cozying up with it and watching an entire DVD. Then you can’t even take it out for coffee, too worried about how much power’s left, when the little bar will turn red, and the warning message will pop up. Finally, as your battery is in its death throes, a power outage leaves you scrambling to save your work and praying you will have enough time before everything goes.
Sound familiar? Well, electric car batteries are batteries, after all, which begs the question– can this happen to my car? Claims on the average EV battery life cycle range anywhere from 3 years to 15, depending on whether you’re talking to scientists, the car companies, or converted-EV owners. Folks, understandably, are a little concerned they’ll have to drop a few grand every couple of years just to get a new set of cells. Which would be a major bummer, considering how much money an EV otherwise saves you on energy costs and maintenance.
In response, some car companies are simply sticking behind their product, while others, such as Renault-Nissan and the EV infrastructure startup Better Place are proposing a battery leasing approach. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute however think they have found a different solution.
ChargeCar, an initiative of Carnegie Mellon, claims that by using supercapacitors and personal driving data they can reduce the load on batteries by 56 percent, reduce the heating of batteries by 53 percent, and raise the amount of energy recaptured during breaking by up to 48 percent. Pretty neat!
How does it work? By sticking a supercapacitor in between a conventional car’s batteries and its electric motor, and then installing a smart power management systems which uses a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI”>AI to regulate the flow of electrons between them.
Okay, so what is a supercapacitor? It’s basically an extremely dense block or ‘cache’ that has the capacity (or rather supercapacity) to store a $*%! ton of energy. Just so you know what kind of beefy energy box we’re talking about, they’re typically used to start locomotives, tanks (yes, tanks), and monstrous diesel trucks. They’re not chemical so they don’t have the same heat issues as EV batteries, and have much longer life cycles.
So why don’t all EVs use supercapacitors? With current technology, they’re significantly more expensive per unit energy than conventional EV batteries. Plus, even though supercapacitors can store a lot of energy in a small space, overall they can’t store as much energy as a series of EV batteries.
So how can supercapacitors improve battery life? Supercapacitors, in addition to approaching singularity-level energy densities, also have the ability to rapidly release this energy. ChargeCar’s idea is that by knowing an EV owner’s daily driving habits, the smart power management system can efficiently regulate whether the electric motor draws power from the supercapacitor, or the car’s batteries, and similarly, in which of the two is stored the energy recuperated from braking – therefore lowering the charge/discharge cycles of the battery and increasing its longevity.
Where words fail
Wouldn’t this be expensive? No, because even a very small supercapacitor can make a big difference. In a trial demonstration, the Pittsburgh team combined a 50W supercapacitor with a 25KW battery pack – making the supercapacitor 1/500th of the size of the batteries. Inputting a very simple program, they found that the supercapacitor significantly decreased the amount of times the battery was accessed for electricity.
ChargeCar plans to improve these efficiency gains even further by coming up with algorithms that tailor the smart power management system to drivers’ individual needs. They even hope one day to use the internet to take into account traffic conditions, weather, and even the timing of stoplights. Chargecar estimates that they could reduce the average Pttsburgher’s energy costs by up to 80%.
As part of this effort, ChargeCar is urging drivers to enter their commuting data on their website. Webgoers can also instantly calculate how much money they would save on their daily commute if they drove electric, and by how much stress on an EV battery would be reduced if a simple supercapacitor was added. They’re also holding an open contest geared towards programmers to come up with control algorithms for the smart power management system.
As chief researcher Illah Nourbakhsh, who has been working on electric vehicles since 1988, avouches, ChargeCar is not trying to develop new cars, but rather encourage the conversion of gasoline cars into efficient EVs with capacitors tailored to each drivers’ needs:
“Most electric cars today are being designed with top-down engineering to match the performance of gas-powered cars. Our goal is to revolutionize urban commuting by taking a different approach — by first analyzing the needs, conditions and habits of the daily commutes of actual people and then using this ‘commute ecology’ to develop electric vehicles suited to each unique commute.”
Toward this end, Nourbakhsh’s team has come up with a ‘recipe’ for gasoline-electric conversion that they say any mechanic can follow. The process, which takes about 5 days and costs roughly $5,000 (though they are hoping to reduce this with federal tax incentives), works best, Nourbakhsh says, on lightweight cars with manual transmissions.
Last week ChargeCar held a conference in Pittsburgh with a converted 2006 Scion xB on display and invited car mechanics to come and learn about gasoline-electric conversion. They have even received a grant recently which will allow them to train several of them in the process.
“The number one cost of electric vehicle ownership is the batteries. Smart power management will save money initially because it pairs a low-cost battery pack with a small supercapacitor. And it will continue to save money by increasing efficiency and extending battery life.”
Filed under: EV news, EVs of the World | Tags: BYD, BYD e6, e6, BYD F3DM, F3DM, Geneva Auto Show, Geneva Motor Show, Brilliance, Chinese automaker, China, Wang Chuanfu
The e6 – the highly anticipated all-electric vehicle from BYD – made its European debut today at the Geneva Motor Show in Switzerland.
The unveiling came as part of an announcement by Henry Li, head of BYD auto exports, that BYD would begin selling the e6, as well as the F3DM dual-mode plug-in hybrid, in European car markets starting 2011. This follows BYD’s announcement earlier this year at the Detroit Auto Show that the e6 will go on sale in the US by late 2010.
It was the Chinese automaker’s first ever appearance at the Geneva Motor Show, but, as Li assured, it would certainly not be the last: “BYD is a feature of the Geneva show from now on” he told audience members at a press conference this morning at Geneva’s PALEXPO convention centre.
BYD is not the first Chinese car company to present at Geneva, however may well prove to be the first successful one. Its domestic rival, Brilliance, which displayed here in 2007, laid out similar ambitions of breaking into the European car market, however has not appeared since.
Brilliance’s failure has been attributed to their models’ poor performance in crash tests, and the company’s reluctance to lower prices (as their competitors did) in response to the 2009 recession.
BYD, however, is confident it will succeed where others before it failed. “In China, there are many automakers. Some are big and some are small. Some are government run and others are independent. I believe we are one of the best and we are a very serious company” said Li this morning.
The Shenzhen-based BYD (an acronym for Build Your Dreams) was founded by Wang Chuanfu in 1995 on a $300,000 loan. Over ten years it grew to become China’s largest manufacturer of mobile phone batteries, and producing over half of ALL rechargeable phone batteries worldwide. Applying its battery technology to cars, BYD Auto was founded in 2002. As of 2009, it is the sixth-largest car manufacturer in China, and exports cars globally to Africa, South America, and the Middle East. In 2008 it attracted the attention of uber-entrepreneur Warren Buffet, who invested $250 million in the company, buying up a 10% stake. In the beginning of 2010, Wuang Chuanfu was named the richest man in China.
Part of BYD Auto’s success has been on consistently producing reliable cars on par with those from bigger, more established car manufacturers in almost every facet except for one: price.
BYD’s innovative operating practices have enabled the company to significantly lower production costs on its vehicles. It produces 99% of its car components in-house, from the dashboard decals to the radio antennae, at a time when many major automakers are increasingly outsourcing vehicle parts. And it employs local Chinese laborers to put together parts that other major automakers produce on more expensive, machine-driven assembly lines.
BYD is pinning much of its hopes of cracking European and US car markets on the e6, its all-electric offering whose impressive specs have caused quite a buzz in the green car blogosphere.
The four-door, five-passenger car boasts a range of up to 250 miles on a single charge – the highest for any upcoming production-line EV. Its projected 72 Kwh lithium iron phosphate battery pack (the largest battery of any production-line EV) will be made entirely of recyclable chemicals, and be quick-charged to 50% capacity in 10 minutes. Performance-wise, the e6 will be able to do 0-60 mph in 12 seconds, and reach a top speed of 87 mph.
Some have questioned whether the e6 will be able to deliver on such claims, and more importantly, if it will be able to meet Western safety and driving standards. BYD, however, remains undaunted, and, as the e6 goes increasingly public, it seems BYD has every bit of reason to be confident in its product.
