DailyDirt: All Electric Vehicles
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Electric vehicles are gaining some increasing acceptance on the roads, as some drivers realize that the vast majority of their trips are less than a 40-mile roundtrip. The "range anxiety" factor is still a concern for a lot of people, but there might be some alternatives to the existing rechargeable batteries in use today. Here are just a few examples of possible solutions to improve the energy storage capacity in electric cars.- A German car maker is using a 'nanoFLOWCELL' technology to power its all electric vehicle. The Quant e-Sportlimousine might have a horrible name compared to a Tesla S/3/X, but it claims a range of 600 kilometers (372 miles). [url]
- Batteries might not be the best way to store energy for an electric vehicle, but the alternatives aren't quite ready for commercial vehicles. One of these alternatives is based on a phenomenon called 'thermopower wave' where a fuel is ignited at the end of a carbon nanotube, and the resulting heat pushes electrons and creates electricity. These nanogenerators are far from being perfected, but they have the potential to efficiently turn high energy density fuels into electricity much more efficiently than an internal combustion engine. [url]
- Phinergy and Alcoa have an aluminum-air battery that could power a small EV for 1,000 miles. The catch is that when your aluminum-air battery is depleted, you'd have to replace an aluminum-containing cartridge at a special service station (so you couldn't just recharge the aluminum-air battery by plugging it into a standard wall outlet). Still, it would could be a nice way to extend the range of an all-electric vehicle significantly with an energy storage technology that has a not-so-complex, closed-loop life cycle. [url]
Filed Under: aluminum-air battery, battery, electric vehicles, energy storage, ev, nanoflowcell, nanogenerators, nanotube, range anxiety, thermopower wave
Companies: alcoa, phinergy, quant, tesla
