3 ms·

Lithium-ion car batteries are already commercially available, though cripplingly expensive: http://www.jegs.com/p/Lithium-Pros/Lithium-Pros-12-Volt-Lithium-Batt

Lithium-ion car batteries are already commercially available, though cripplingly expensive: http://www.jegs.com/p/Lithium-Pros/Lithium-Pros-12-Volt-Lithium-Batteries/1770167/10002/-1 http://www.jegs.com/p/Lithium-Pros/Lithium-Pros-12-Volt-Lith... The innovation here seems to be the capacitor bank, which lets you get away with a much smaller and cheaper lithium ion pack.

tmuir 11y ago
This price has come down by 66% in just a couple of years. A company I used to work for sold these for $1500. The reason people are willing to spend this money is because these are geared toward drag racing, mainly for weight reduction. Compared to other reduction paths, $1500 to remove 30lbs is cheap. The main thing to realize though is that this is a market geared towards people who have purpose-built a car to drive for 10 seconds at a time, a couple times a weekend. Everything geared toward this market is expensive, because basic entry into the market requires a relatively large investment, and companies know that consumers are willing to spend. Its a lot like the wedding industry, in that regard. On the other hand, high margins are the only way to make money in this segment, as the entire market is less than 100,000 consumers.
conjecTech 11y ago
You're right. Pure lithium-ion batteries definitely are available. Besides price, one of the reasons they haven't been adopted is they don't have great performance over temperature. By using supercapacitors, we are able to make it a lot more immune to temperature. We really approached the problem from the opposite direction. We started with supercapacitors and asked ourselves how we could make a reliable system around them. Huge current surges at the levels needed for starting a car are hugely destructive for batteries. It's almost as bad as just shorting them with a wrench. We decided that capacitors were fundamentally better suited for what a car battery does.
Gravityloss 11y ago
Trucks have recently started having capacitors for starting. http://www.greencarcongress.com/2015/03/20150325-maxwell.html http://www.greencarcongress.com/2015/03/20150325-maxwell.htm...

tmuir 11y ago

This price has come down by 66% in just a couple of years. A company I used to work for sold these for $1500. The reason people are willing to spend this money is because these are geared toward drag racing, mainly for weight reduction. Compared to other reduction paths, $1500 to remove 30lbs is cheap. The main thing to realize though is that this is a market geared towards people who have purpose-built a car to drive for 10 seconds at a time, a couple times a weekend. Everything geared toward this market is expensive, because basic entry into the market requires a relatively large investment, and companies know that consumers are willing to spend. Its a lot like the wedding industry, in that regard. On the other hand, high margins are the only way to make money in this segment, as the entire market is less than 100,000 consumers.

conjecTech 11y ago

You're right. Pure lithium-ion batteries definitely are available. Besides price, one of the reasons they haven't been adopted is they don't have great performance over temperature. By using supercapacitors, we are able to make it a lot more immune to temperature. We really approached the problem from the opposite direction. We started with supercapacitors and asked ourselves how we could make a reliable system around them. Huge current surges at the levels needed for starting a car are hugely destructive for batteries. It's almost as bad as just shorting them with a wrench. We decided that capacitors were fundamentally better suited for what a car battery does.

Gravityloss 11y ago

Trucks have recently started having capacitors for starting. http://www.greencarcongress.com/2015/03/20150325-maxwell.html http://www.greencarcongress.com/2015/03/20150325-maxwell.htm...