[tessalu]

This sounds just like what I need, so I hope it is true.

[Professional Engineer]

The first deliveries are expected to begin next northern summer

That'll grab your attention.

[Old Professer]

Sounds like this thing has about 8,500 volts fully charged; state of the art Li-Ion cells have about 7.2 amp hours so the batteries would be depleted in 3.25 hours or so at a 25 amp draw.

Household voltage is 208-230 and 200KW divided by 230 would be 869 amps; further dividing by 3.5 hours for charging time would give us 248 amps.

200KW divided by the available 8500 volts only gives us one tenth that current (actually 23.5).

There must be something here I'm missing.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

How long does it take to charge?

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Never mind, just re-read it. 3 1/2 hours minimum.

Works for city driving only but few people do city driving only.

[MrEdd]

400 Km? I need 400 miles. Another car only suitable for urbanites.

[RayChuang88]

They're almost there, but for an electric car to be really practical you need to drastically reduce the size of the battery pack and also dramatically reduce the charging time.

Fortunately, thanks to nanotechnology, scientists at MIT have come up with a new type of supercapacitor that could replace even lithium-ion batteries. This new capacitor design can store a huge amount of electrical energy, plus it has a charging time measured in only a few minutes! This means instead of an electric car having to lug around a huge battery pack all the time we could use a battery pack not much bigger than the fuel tank in a regular car, have a range of over 300 miles easily, and fully recharge in under three minutes! The supercapacitor power pack finally makes it possible for an electric car to truly replace gasoline-fuelled automobiles.