4 ms·

Nissan develops 10-minute electric car charger

22 points by tilt 15y ago

stiller 15y ago
FTA: >Although it could take a decade to commercialize the technology Nothing takes a decade to commercialize anymore. The financial interests and the rate of innovation in this sector are too high.
bradfa 15y ago
Cool, except I keep feeling like fast charging is solving the wrong problem because it usually has such a dramatically bad impact on the life of a battery. Gasoline and diesel are currently "standard" fuels we put into a container inside our cars. It takes 5 to 10 minutes to put fuel into said container when we fill up. Why are we trying to put electrons into a battery like we put fuel into fuel tanks? Why not just have a container in the car that holds a battery? If the battery was standard, or even had a range of standard sizes, it would only take a few minutes for a robot to pull the discharged one out and put a fully charged one in. Then you're still putting "fuel" into a container, not pushing electrons into a chemistry. There's all kinds of positives for this battery swapping: * You can still slow charge at home. * Batteries can be slow charged at the "gas station." * We don't need expensive charging stations to be developed. * No more getting out of the car to "fuel up." * Electrical grid doesn't have to support pushing outrageous currents to chargers (think of a "gas station" with 16 chargers all running at the same time, that's serious current). * Slow charging can stagger charging (or charge at off peak) and display what batteries are currently available online. * We can do this with today's tech!
- planb 15y ago
  I had the same idea a while ago and talked with someone working in the automotive industry about this. The problem is that battery technology is an important differentiator in the e-mobility market so there's no chance all car markers would agree on one standard - at least not in the foreseeable future.
  - bradfa 15y ago
    What good are standards bodies (think SAE, ISO, DIN) in the automotive world if they won't solve this? Also, what ever happened to driving down cost by partnering with other automakers on expensive assemblies? Having a proprietary battery is completely the opposite of what every automaker has been doing for the past 2 decades. It's insane and is delaying the mass acceptance of electric cars.
    - anamax 15y ago
      > What good are standards bodies (think SAE, ISO, DIN) in the automotive world if they won't solve this? Which standards in the gasoline world are comparable to the standards that you want for electric vehicles? SAE has standards for lubricating oil properties, horsepower measurement, etc, but nothing that will let me move significant components from one gasoline car to another.
    - perokreco 15y ago
      It would not be beneficial to standardize such s young technology. It is likely that the best car battery design hasn't been invented yet. Standards bodies are there to codify best practices and not to decide things by themselves.
      - bradfa 15y ago
        But you don't have to standardize the internal battery tech, just the form fit and interaction. For example, the shape and electrical connectors the battery will use. Then everyone is free to make their battery hold 2x as much as the reference design and that's OK as long as it fits and talks the same language to the car and charger. Same way I can buy AA batteries with lithium inside that last 8x longer than the generic store brand. There's no reason to dictate the battery chemistry or internal cell layout. As long as a standard is set for slow-ish charging (i.e.: the battery tells the charger, "give me X amps at Y volts"), we're good to go.
        onemoreact 15y ago
- dan1234 15y ago
  One problem with battery swapping is making them accessible enough. I think current designs have the batteries under the floor of the midsection in order to keep the centre of gravity low, which makes them rather difficult to change without raising the car on ramp. A second problem I can think of is that batteries fade over time, and people aren't going to want older batteries being swapped in for their flat but fresh units. Nor will "gas" stations, for that matter. In the UK I'm starting to see more and more parking spaces with electric chargers so drivers can refuel while the car is stationary anyway. I think the fast chargers would be useful for motorway service stations but elsewhere charging little and often (i.e at work, in car parks and at home) should be "good enough" for most uses.
  - bradfa 15y ago
    As mentioned by xavi, betterplace is working on quick change battery tech. You drive up a ramp and the robot is inside the ramp. Regarding slightly degraded batteries, I think that's less of a concern. You'd pay less for a less charged or capable battery (only fair). There'd probably even be grades of batteries, like we have for gasoline (RON or octane). Also, people seem to have no problem doing exactly this with propane tanks (in the USA) for their BBQ grills. The tanks you exchange are definitely not as nice as the ones you can buy new and get filled but the convenience of being able to exchange a tank outweighs a lot of people's desire to get their tank refilled. You can always get your tank refilled, even if you previously exchanged it, you're not required to only exchange them. Same exact business model as exchangeable batteries. The exchange system (or fast charge) is simply for longer trips exceeding battery range or when you weren't able to recharge enough at home. Curb-side parking spot chargers don't do anything different than in-home chargers, they're still slow and still don't solve the "I want to go further than my battery" problem. Fast chargers, if used sparingly, could work. It's overuse of it that's the problem. I guess it all depends on how often people are using them. The one worry I'd think is that people won't install a home charger ($2k or so investment) but will rely upon the fast chargers or exchange systems as they do now for gasoline. If you're fast charging every other day or even twice a week, that's not good.
    - anamax 15y ago
- xavi 15y ago
  www.betterplace.com does what you describe
- onemoreact 15y ago
  IMO, the main issue with this is Batteries are expensive and degrade over time. Which makes it very hard to trust an independent 'gas station' to actually give you the real product and deal with the older battery's correctly and swap in new ones into the mix, and creates huge incentive for people to ‘miss report’ how many times a battery has been charged etc. You would also end up with a 'full tank' lasting a somewhat arbitrary distance depending on how new your replacements where.
  - dpres 15y ago
    You can quickly monitor a battery and get accurate stats on how long it will provide amps.
    - onemoreact 15y ago
      You might think that, but rechargable devices basicly just guess based on past preformance. Google "Laptop Battery Self Test"
ck2 15y ago
it could take a decade to commercialize the technology So it's mostly useless because everything else will change in a decade. What we need is the $2 Billion spent each week in the Afghanistan war instead poured into battery research. We need exponentially more battery capacity at a fraction of the price. Then let the government own the patents on the battery, open source it and standardize it.
- reverend_gonzo 15y ago
  So it's mostly useless because everything else will change in a decade. Research isn't useless just because it's not going to directly be used. Research produces knowledge and understand which can then be used as the basis for other research. If you think of it from a programming perspective, are all early implementations of a program worthless if you go back and essentially rewrite everything? No, because through the process you gained a better understanding of your domain and your problem, and you've also probably determined some solutions that aren't optimal to your problem.
- Shivetya 15y ago
  There is enough profit potential in this market for development to continue at the break neck pace it has been. The explosion of portable devices had lead to a large amount of research into battery technology that before was not needed. http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2011/09/14/scientists-just-revolutionized-the-battery-with-a-jelly-recipe/ http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2011/09/14/scientists-just-re... http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/flow-batteries-0606.html http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/flow-batteries-0606.html Those were two new technologies I saw this year that interested me. I am sure there are others. Even when spending two billion a week in Afghanistan we still lose nearly the same in fraud with government medical services. So basically there is no end to the places we can get money from but the first realization is, even saving a hundred billion here and a hundred here still leaves us a trillion in the hole.

22 points by tilt 15y ago

FTA: >Although it could take a decade to commercialize the technology Nothing takes a decade to commercialize anymore. The financial interests and the rate of innovation in this sector are too high.

bradfa 15y ago

Cool, except I keep feeling like fast charging is solving the wrong problem because it usually has such a dramatically bad impact on the life of a battery. Gasoline and diesel are currently "standard" fuels we put into a container inside our cars. It takes 5 to 10 minutes to put fuel into said container when we fill up. Why are we trying to put electrons into a battery like we put fuel into fuel tanks? Why not just have a container in the car that holds a battery? If the battery was standard, or even had a range of standard sizes, it would only take a few minutes for a robot to pull the discharged one out and put a fully charged one in. Then you're still putting "fuel" into a container, not pushing electrons into a chemistry. There's all kinds of positives for this battery swapping: * You can still slow charge at home. * Batteries can be slow charged at the "gas station." * We don't need expensive charging stations to be developed. * No more getting out of the car to "fuel up." * Electrical grid doesn't have to support pushing outrageous currents to chargers (think of a "gas station" with 16 chargers all running at the same time, that's serious current). * Slow charging can stagger charging (or charge at off peak) and display what batteries are currently available online. * We can do this with today's tech!

planb 15y ago
I had the same idea a while ago and talked with someone working in the automotive industry about this. The problem is that battery technology is an important differentiator in the e-mobility market so there's no chance all car markers would agree on one standard - at least not in the foreseeable future.
- bradfa 15y ago
  What good are standards bodies (think SAE, ISO, DIN) in the automotive world if they won't solve this? Also, what ever happened to driving down cost by partnering with other automakers on expensive assemblies? Having a proprietary battery is completely the opposite of what every automaker has been doing for the past 2 decades. It's insane and is delaying the mass acceptance of electric cars.
  - anamax 15y ago
    > What good are standards bodies (think SAE, ISO, DIN) in the automotive world if they won't solve this? Which standards in the gasoline world are comparable to the standards that you want for electric vehicles? SAE has standards for lubricating oil properties, horsepower measurement, etc, but nothing that will let me move significant components from one gasoline car to another.
  - perokreco 15y ago
    It would not be beneficial to standardize such s young technology. It is likely that the best car battery design hasn't been invented yet. Standards bodies are there to codify best practices and not to decide things by themselves.
    - bradfa 15y ago
      But you don't have to standardize the internal battery tech, just the form fit and interaction. For example, the shape and electrical connectors the battery will use. Then everyone is free to make their battery hold 2x as much as the reference design and that's OK as long as it fits and talks the same language to the car and charger. Same way I can buy AA batteries with lithium inside that last 8x longer than the generic store brand. There's no reason to dictate the battery chemistry or internal cell layout. As long as a standard is set for slow-ish charging (i.e.: the battery tells the charger, "give me X amps at Y volts"), we're good to go.
      - onemoreact 15y ago
dan1234 15y ago
One problem with battery swapping is making them accessible enough. I think current designs have the batteries under the floor of the midsection in order to keep the centre of gravity low, which makes them rather difficult to change without raising the car on ramp. A second problem I can think of is that batteries fade over time, and people aren't going to want older batteries being swapped in for their flat but fresh units. Nor will "gas" stations, for that matter. In the UK I'm starting to see more and more parking spaces with electric chargers so drivers can refuel while the car is stationary anyway. I think the fast chargers would be useful for motorway service stations but elsewhere charging little and often (i.e at work, in car parks and at home) should be "good enough" for most uses.
- bradfa 15y ago
  As mentioned by xavi, betterplace is working on quick change battery tech. You drive up a ramp and the robot is inside the ramp. Regarding slightly degraded batteries, I think that's less of a concern. You'd pay less for a less charged or capable battery (only fair). There'd probably even be grades of batteries, like we have for gasoline (RON or octane). Also, people seem to have no problem doing exactly this with propane tanks (in the USA) for their BBQ grills. The tanks you exchange are definitely not as nice as the ones you can buy new and get filled but the convenience of being able to exchange a tank outweighs a lot of people's desire to get their tank refilled. You can always get your tank refilled, even if you previously exchanged it, you're not required to only exchange them. Same exact business model as exchangeable batteries. The exchange system (or fast charge) is simply for longer trips exceeding battery range or when you weren't able to recharge enough at home. Curb-side parking spot chargers don't do anything different than in-home chargers, they're still slow and still don't solve the "I want to go further than my battery" problem. Fast chargers, if used sparingly, could work. It's overuse of it that's the problem. I guess it all depends on how often people are using them. The one worry I'd think is that people won't install a home charger ($2k or so investment) but will rely upon the fast chargers or exchange systems as they do now for gasoline. If you're fast charging every other day or even twice a week, that's not good.
  - anamax 15y ago
xavi 15y ago
www.betterplace.com does what you describe
onemoreact 15y ago
IMO, the main issue with this is Batteries are expensive and degrade over time. Which makes it very hard to trust an independent 'gas station' to actually give you the real product and deal with the older battery's correctly and swap in new ones into the mix, and creates huge incentive for people to ‘miss report’ how many times a battery has been charged etc. You would also end up with a 'full tank' lasting a somewhat arbitrary distance depending on how new your replacements where.
- dpres 15y ago
  You can quickly monitor a battery and get accurate stats on how long it will provide amps.
  - onemoreact 15y ago
    You might think that, but rechargable devices basicly just guess based on past preformance. Google "Laptop Battery Self Test"

ck2 15y ago

it could take a decade to commercialize the technology So it's mostly useless because everything else will change in a decade. What we need is the $2 Billion spent each week in the Afghanistan war instead poured into battery research. We need exponentially more battery capacity at a fraction of the price. Then let the government own the patents on the battery, open source it and standardize it.

reverend_gonzo 15y ago
So it's mostly useless because everything else will change in a decade. Research isn't useless just because it's not going to directly be used. Research produces knowledge and understand which can then be used as the basis for other research. If you think of it from a programming perspective, are all early implementations of a program worthless if you go back and essentially rewrite everything? No, because through the process you gained a better understanding of your domain and your problem, and you've also probably determined some solutions that aren't optimal to your problem.
Shivetya 15y ago
There is enough profit potential in this market for development to continue at the break neck pace it has been. The explosion of portable devices had lead to a large amount of research into battery technology that before was not needed. http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2011/09/14/scientists-just-revolutionized-the-battery-with-a-jelly-recipe/ http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2011/09/14/scientists-just-re... http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/flow-batteries-0606.html http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/flow-batteries-0606.html Those were two new technologies I saw this year that interested me. I am sure there are others. Even when spending two billion a week in Afghanistan we still lose nearly the same in fraud with government medical services. So basically there is no end to the places we can get money from but the first realization is, even saving a hundred billion here and a hundred here still leaves us a trillion in the hole.