Replaceable 1500 mile fuel cell.
Discussion
Apologies for the fail link.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7592485/F...
Obviously absolutely cobblers but if you read the guys CV he doesn't appear to be a complete crackpot, despite the 8 kids.
TL,DR
A fuel cell the size of a desktop PC power supply that can be exchanged at a supermarket and can provide a 1500 mile EV range, available next year and owned by the owners of the Austin brand.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7592485/F...
Obviously absolutely cobblers but if you read the guys CV he doesn't appear to be a complete crackpot, despite the 8 kids.
TL,DR
A fuel cell the size of a desktop PC power supply that can be exchanged at a supermarket and can provide a 1500 mile EV range, available next year and owned by the owners of the Austin brand.
This may be cobblers, but they’re being pretty precise about the details, and if the anecdote about the coke can is true (almost zero surface are for the reaction) is true, then it could be interesting, Li-ion as a technology is pretty much done - they’ll screw 10% out of it here and there, but what you need is the sort of transformative jump that something like this provides. This may not be it, but I’m pretty sure the future is not li-ion.
mikeiow said:
Sounds interesting.....but the combination of Daily Wail plus the google god not finding anything pertaining to this makes me pretty sceptical!
Your google-fu needs some work; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium%E2%80%93ai...I'm fairly confident that the technology will arrive that makes the electric car a no-brainer for 90+% of owners. When you think of how (mechanical) technology changed the world in the late 19th and then the 20th century I think it's naïve to think we'll keep driving the same sorts of cars forever.
Randy Winkman said:
I'm fairly confident that the technology will arrive that makes the electric car a no-brainer for 90+% of owners. When you think of how (mechanical) technology changed the world in the late 19th and then the 20th century I think it's naïve to think we'll keep driving the same sorts of cars forever.
But something that's basically available now, or next year with the energy density of about 3 tonnes worth of the very best li-ion cells available today, I don't think so. Edit. Not density but capacity.
Edited by ChocolateFrog on Sunday 20th October 10:48
ChocolateFrog said:
Randy Winkman said:
I'm fairly confident that the technology will arrive that makes the electric car a no-brainer for 90+% of owners. When you think of how (mechanical) technology changed the world in the late 19th and then the 20th century I think it's naïve to think we'll keep driving the same sorts of cars forever.
But something that's basically available now, or next year with the energy density of about 3 tonnes worth of the very best li-ion cells available today, I don't think so. It is entirely possible for one man to come up with a game changing invention, see the invention of many materials and products we take for granted today.
What makes me sceptical is him saying the car companies aren't interested, the same car companies that are investing heavily in electric vehicles.
I suspect therefore there is something that makes this commercially unviable, whether that be weight, reliability, safety or what have you.
What makes me sceptical is him saying the car companies aren't interested, the same car companies that are investing heavily in electric vehicles.
I suspect therefore there is something that makes this commercially unviable, whether that be weight, reliability, safety or what have you.
It sounds like an aluminium-air battery. This is a real thing under intensive research all around the world.
When making a conventional battery you need 3 chemicals - two reactants (the fuel, usually metal) and an electrolyte. In a potato battery, the fuel is the copper and zinc metal, and the electrolyte is the potato juice.
However, you don't need both fuels to be metal. In fact, oxygen works well for one. So you can make a battery with 1 metal, an electrolyte and a current collector wire as long as you can arrange for air to get in.
This type of battery has been used for hearing aids for decades because you get aboit 5x as much energy out than if you had to put all the material into the battery to stsrt with.
The limitation is that they are not rechargeable, and have high self discharge once the factory air-tight seal is broken. However, the materials are cheap, plentiful and easily recycled. So the predominant concept is that in a car, the battery unit would be exchanged for a new one once depleted.
A technical but very thorough article on the technology can be found at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/...
Otherwise just search for "metal air" battery.
When making a conventional battery you need 3 chemicals - two reactants (the fuel, usually metal) and an electrolyte. In a potato battery, the fuel is the copper and zinc metal, and the electrolyte is the potato juice.
However, you don't need both fuels to be metal. In fact, oxygen works well for one. So you can make a battery with 1 metal, an electrolyte and a current collector wire as long as you can arrange for air to get in.
This type of battery has been used for hearing aids for decades because you get aboit 5x as much energy out than if you had to put all the material into the battery to stsrt with.
The limitation is that they are not rechargeable, and have high self discharge once the factory air-tight seal is broken. However, the materials are cheap, plentiful and easily recycled. So the predominant concept is that in a car, the battery unit would be exchanged for a new one once depleted.
A technical but very thorough article on the technology can be found at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/...
Otherwise just search for "metal air" battery.
ChocolateFrog said:
Randy Winkman said:
I'm fairly confident that the technology will arrive that makes the electric car a no-brainer for 90+% of owners. When you think of how (mechanical) technology changed the world in the late 19th and then the 20th century I think it's naïve to think we'll keep driving the same sorts of cars forever.
But something that's basically available now, or next year with the energy density of about 3 tonnes worth of the very best li-ion cells available today, I don't think so. 
tJagLover said:
It is entirely possible for one man to come up with a game changing invention, see the invention of many materials and products we take for granted today.
What makes me sceptical is him saying the car companies aren't interested, the same car companies that are investing heavily in electric vehicles.
I suspect therefore there is something that makes this commercially unviable, whether that be weight, reliability, safety or what have you.
Hoping someone in the industry can say why it's not been picked up. What makes me sceptical is him saying the car companies aren't interested, the same car companies that are investing heavily in electric vehicles.
I suspect therefore there is something that makes this commercially unviable, whether that be weight, reliability, safety or what have you.
WatchfulEye said:
It sounds like an aluminium-air battery. This is a real thing under intensive research all around the world.
When making a conventional battery you need 3 chemicals - two reactants (the fuel, usually metal) and an electrolyte. In a potato battery, the fuel is the copper and zinc metal, and the electrolyte is the potato juice.
However, you don't need both fuels to be metal. In fact, oxygen works well for one. So you can make a battery with 1 metal, an electrolyte and a current collector wire as long as you can arrange for air to get in.
This type of battery has been used for hearing aids for decades because you get aboit 5x as much energy out than if you had to put all the material into the battery to stsrt with.
The limitation is that they are not rechargeable, and have high self discharge once the factory air-tight seal is broken. However, the materials are cheap, plentiful and easily recycled. So the predominant concept is that in a car, the battery unit would be exchanged for a new one once depleted.
A technical but very thorough article on the technology can be found at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/...
Otherwise just search for "metal air" battery.
Thanks When making a conventional battery you need 3 chemicals - two reactants (the fuel, usually metal) and an electrolyte. In a potato battery, the fuel is the copper and zinc metal, and the electrolyte is the potato juice.
However, you don't need both fuels to be metal. In fact, oxygen works well for one. So you can make a battery with 1 metal, an electrolyte and a current collector wire as long as you can arrange for air to get in.
This type of battery has been used for hearing aids for decades because you get aboit 5x as much energy out than if you had to put all the material into the battery to stsrt with.
The limitation is that they are not rechargeable, and have high self discharge once the factory air-tight seal is broken. However, the materials are cheap, plentiful and easily recycled. So the predominant concept is that in a car, the battery unit would be exchanged for a new one once depleted.
A technical but very thorough article on the technology can be found at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/...
Otherwise just search for "metal air" battery.
So moving back to the commercial aspects the issue is that you would need to build a car where the bank of batteries could be easily removed and there is an additional cost aspect in that the batteries will only last 1,500 miles rather than however many tens of thousands of miles with current rechargeable ones.
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