Is this the one that the inventor was supposed to have driven all the way from somewhere like south Florida in a car the size of a 70's or 80's Lincoln Continental?

OK, it is 12am here and my brain is not working at full capacity, but if those figures were correct, then ANY electric car would be impossible. Are you saying that the energy in the amount of gasoline consumed in 5 minutes is 5.12 Megawatts? If it is, then I am going to go buy a gasoline generator and sell power to the electric company and become a billionaire!

I will have to go over them when I am wide awake, but it sounds like one of the mistakes that get made when converting units incorrectly...

I think it's right that it is unlikely, if not impossible to put 500 miles of driving energy into the "battery" in five minutes of household current. I think the math gets a bit off track in the calculation of the energy consumption for gasoline vehicles. First, you don't always use all, or even half, of the available horsepower. Much less when driving at a steady speed. Second, even then, a lot of the energy produced is wasted heat (dumped by the radiator) and going out the tailpipe. Electric cars don't have these losses.

Perhaps someone has better data to put into the math.

I'll believe the corporate "hype" when I see it in production.

Actually the situation is even worse for electric vehicles.

A conventional petrol car generates its power using an internal combustion engine with a typical efficiency of 30-35%.

An electric car has the energy generated by a power station (Gas, Coal, Nuclear) using gas/steam turbines with a typical efficiency of 40-45%, the energy has to be either stored (almost impossible on a large scale) or the capacity of the electricity generation needs to radically increased to keep the peak energy demands covered. Once energy transmission and local storage is taken into account, electric powered vehicles are less efficient.

Wide scale use of electric vehicles is unfeasable because the overall energy consumption is even worse due to the unworkable problem of storing electricity on a large scale. Power stations cannot be turned on like light switches especially if they are coal or nuclear.

For a society to convert to electric vehicles then the number of new power stations required to provide the increased electricity demand would need to triple. i.e. for every power station currently used in the US, then another two would have to be constructed (one for the actual energy demand and one to handle the peak energy demand)

The idea for a personal electric powered vehicle car, which can compete with your current SUV is about as silly as one powered by biofuel.

An electric powered train system really only makes sense simply because they are so efficient.

"I will have to go over them when I am wide awake, but it sounds like one of the mistakes that get made when converting units incorrectly..."

Yes, I'm getting the sense we're comparing apples to oranges or even lima beans. An automobile engine, as I understand it, generates a certain amount of horsepower in order to move on down the road. To do this it "burns" a certain quantity of gasoline. The more horsepower you call for, the more fuel it consumes, and we talk about miles traveled per gallon consumed. An electric motor does essentially the same thing, except it calls for fuel in the form of electrical current. I need to understand the proper unit of measuring its "fuel" usage per mile - KW? Amp Hours? Joules? And then I think I need to understand how to compare its energy consumption to that of an "equivalent" gasoline motor.

Or, I need to forget the whole thing and pump up the tires on my bicycle...

Frank2135

"The idea for a personal electric powered vehicle car, which can compete with your current SUV is about as silly as one powered by biofuel.

An electric powered train system really only makes sense simply because they are so efficient."

I couldn't agree more. And that's before we talk about the resources consumed in maintaining a redundant and oversized infrastructure to allow millions of individual automobiles to scurry hither and yon, compared to the limited and simple infrastructure needed to move a few hundred trains to the same destinations.

The vehicle over a 500 mile journey at 55 mph would take just over 9 hrs. I've assumed 60 hp over 9 hrs (this would also include braking and accelaration losses). The total energy for the 500 mile 9 hr trip is calculated at 406.7 kilowatt hours or 545.5 Horse power hrs or 1464.4 MegaJoules.

To store that amount of energy in a battery i,e to charge the battery in 5 minutes (300 seconds) (lets forget the energy convertion losses of the charger electronics for the moment)

So Power = Voltage * Current

and Total Energy = Power * time

Therefore Power = Total Energy /time = 1464,400,000/300 = 4,881,333 Watts or 4.881 Megawatts

Assuming a 95% effeciency this takes the power required to charge the battery to 5.12 Megawatts.

Therefore Current = Power / Voltage = 5,120,000/220 = 23272 Amps

Quoting the original post: “the ultracapacitors described in EEStor's patent operate at extremely high voltage, 10 times greater than those Maxwell manufactures, and won't work with regular wall outlets,”

Maybe the 500 miles from a 5 minute charge is based on the idea of filling up at a new gas station equipped with high voltage hookups? I only skimmed the article, so I could be wrong.

Rio