The reason has to do with how batteries work -- and a major technical challenge for automakers.
Custom-designed batteries?
Batteries are good at storing energy, but they degrade if they have to take on, or release, too much power too quickly. To deal with that degradation, automakers stuff cars with larger batteries, but that adds cost and weight.
Unlike batteries, supercapacitors are built for abuse: They can take a huge charge and discharge, thousands of times, without losing a step.
They're not so good at holding a charge, Nourbakhsh says, so the team decided to pair one with a battery.
Those Pittsburgh hills and traffic lights? They become energy savers.
"When you're stopping, all the current gets dumped into the capacitor, therefore saving the energy so that you can reuse it, rather than going into the battery, because putting it into the battery costs battery life," he says.
As the argument goes, if one knows exactly how someone drives, it's possible to come up with the perfect-size battery and supercapacitor for that driver.
At www.chargecar.org, the group is asking Web surfers to share information on their commutes in gasoline cars, including every highway ride and stop at Starbucks.
A $10,000 price tag
Nourbakhsh and his team are at work on a computer program that can predict where a driver speeds up, hits traffic and pauses for doughnuts -- all to make a battery system that's the perfect size.
Over time, this program could even learn more about the driver, firing up the capacitor or battery at precisely the right times to get her to work.
Nourbakhsh says a regular battery may cost $8,000, but adding a $1,000 capacitor to handle the sudden charges means the battery doesn't need to be as big, so the combo may cost only $2,000.
The total price of conversion? ChargeCar is targeting a $10,000 tag.
Paul Scott, vice president of advocacy group Plug-in America, said such a system could be the "magic bullet" of energy storage in cars, since it balances capacity and power.
Capacitors have already drawn interest from researchers, engineers and even some of the automakers. A spokesman for Toyota said, however, that the company has placed more focus on other electric technologies because it found capacitors too costly.
Scott panned the idea of designing electric cars mainly geared to the commute. "Everybody I know drives a car a lot of different ways," not just for commuting but also for going to the movies or visiting friends, he said.
Mechanics say this is the future
"If you optimize a car for just one specific task, it may not work as well for other tasks," he said.
Nourbakhsh said the car doesn't have to spend its last electron at the office -- it's possible to design "headroom" for a specific commute while still being efficient and saving on cost.
"But the point is, for the thing you do most frequently -- that you spend the most energy on -- let's have it be super-efficient at that," he said in an e-mail.
Some families might choose to have a ChargeCar and reserve a gasoline car for longer trips, said Leland Thorpe, a master's student at Carnegie Mellon who's on the ChargeCar team.
The project is recruiting local companies to sponsor the first wave of car conversions. Nourbakhsh says that would be a uniquely Pittsburgh solution, as companies "green" their reputations and Pittsburghers do the work in auto shops.
Even if electric cars catch on in Pittsburgh, Wichrowski, the manager of Baum Boulevard Automotive, isn't worried about having to lay off mechanics.
"Every hybrid car that we have also has conventional brakes, conventional exhaust, other things that you really need to do to have a regular car," he said as customers milled in and out of the shop. "They just have an added layer of the hybrid system bolted into the car somewhere."
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13 Comments
Add CommentAt least electricity can be produced cleanly. Just like gas autos, we need to get rid of dirty power plants, or we're just transferring pollution up the chain. All soot technology needs to be in our past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wish these guys luck because as far as I am concerned, the more the better on electric cars. But, this does not sound like a great idea. A gas car was built around a gas engine, transmission, drive train, fuel tank, air filter system, and standard brakes. Trying to convert this into an electric vehicle (which needs none of these items) is comparable to converting a horse drawn wagon into a gas powered car. It could be done, but much better to design the car for the power source to be used.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wish these guys luck because as far as I am concerned, the more the better on electric cars. But, this does not sound like a great idea. A gas car was built around a gas engine, transmission, drive train, fuel tank, air filter system, and standard brakes. Trying to convert this into an electric vehicle (which needs none of these items) is comparable to converting a horse drawn wagon into a gas powered car. It could be done, but much better to design the car for the power source to be used.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wish these guys luck because as far as I am concerned, the more the better on electric cars. But, this does not sound like a great idea. A gas car was built around a gas engine, transmission, drive train, fuel tank, air filter system, and standard brakes. Trying to convert this into an electric vehicle (which needs none of these items) is comparable to converting a horse drawn wagon into a gas powered car. It could be done, but much better to design the car for the power source to be used.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ Neptunerover
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince the majority of our current electricity is produced by burning COAL -- What is so clean about it?
@Quinn the Eskimo
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're misinterpreting his statement. Neptunerover said that "electricity CAN be produced cleanly" by methods such as wind turbines, solar, etc., this doesn't mean that electricity [in general] is produced cleanly...
I always liked the idea of a nuclear powered car with a trusty steam engine. Now, that's reliability!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConverted ICE cars can be done but only if lightweight to begin with as EV drives, battery packs size, cost are directly proportional to weight. Sadly lightweight in US cars is rare.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no need for for supercaps as they just add weight, expense. There are good batteries available either lead or Lithium that work fine without supercaps.
But by far the best way to built great, affordable EV's is design, build them from scratch as EV's with lightweight chassis/bodies, preferably all composite and aerodynamic. Such an EV with the same battery pack as a conversion, would go 2-3x's as far.
My present custom built EV's get 600 and 250mpg equivalent for a Harley size MC trike and a 2 seat EV sportswagon. They can be built at a profit $5k and $12k
GM built a great EV which could swap it's EV drivetrain with an ICE one in a couple minutes built in composites called the GM Ultra-Lite. This built in medium tech composites would be an excellent 4 seat EV.
EPA has studied and says even power by a coal plant, EV's are both cleaner and far more eff than gas cars.
This guy needs to bone up on his physics. There is no way electric can compete with gasoline. Unless he is hoping to get subsidies from a bankrupt government staggering toward economic collapse. Oh. Wait. That's stupid, too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfrgough,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe all need to clean up as best we can for the future or our children and all life on earth.
It's common sense, people get sick when it's too polluted.
Sometimes, we all have to work for FREE to help out a bit.
Honestly, look around...you can make some small changes to help. It's not that much work.
frgough, you forget the huge subsidies oil gets from your income taxes, health care costs. ect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNext it's you who needs a physics lesson as EV's are 3-6x's as eff than gas cars are. Tell me as gas prices rise how we can afford ICE's when EV costs are far lower?
The new Nissan Leaf EV will pay for itself in 10 yrs from gas savings making it far less expensive than a similar ICE.
Or do you want to keep us in oil wars forever?
One of the writers at Mapawatt Blog is converting a Porsche Boxster to an electric vehicle. The next post is going to be on installing 220V service in his garage so he can power up faster!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://blog.mapawatt.com/2010/02/05/preparing-a-home-for-electric-car/
So you are saying frgough that burning gasoline, which is 20-30% efficient, is much better than having a battery powered car which receives charging from a nuclear power plant which is 50-60% efficient? Or maybe a solar or wind power plant which produces no waste products? I think you might be a bit stupid...
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