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Posted on 04/22/2008 8:49:09 AM PDT by mjp
Ian Clifford wants to start a global revolution by building a practical, everyday car with no gasoline engine, no batteries, and no emissions. While big Detroit automakers ponder a future plug-in car that goes 40 miles on a battery charge before its gas engine kicks in, Mr. Clifford's tiny ZENN Motor, a Toronto maker of low-speed electric cars, announced in March that it will build a new highway-speed (80 m.p.h.) model that goes 250 miles on a charge – and can recharge in just five minutes. Having no batteries, the new "cityZENN" model will use a breakthrough version of a common electrical storage device called an ultracapacitor to store power from a wall socket, the company says. Fuel costs to operate it would be about one-tenth of today's gas-powered vehicle. If that astounding claim is real (and there are many skeptics), it could revolutionize automotive travel by making all-electric cars competitive with gas-powered vehicles and easing the world's dependence on oil.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
An ultracapacitor? This has got to be a typo — surely they meant to say flux capacitor, yes?
Ultracapacitors are the power source for Ion Cannons on Imperial Cruisers.
Five minutes to re-charge?.........
...already posted: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2002207/posts
Great Scott!!
How soon do we get these cars? I wonder how much Mr. Clifford needs to get started. The first thing he will have to do is buy the patents on the 150 mpg carburetor to stop competition. Or have those patents expired?
Necessity is the mother of all invention. But can we innovate our way out of the massive global financial mess we have made in time to avoid a depression and world conflict? Good question, I guess time will tell.
This story was posted about a week are so back, everyone had a good laugh.!!!!
The only people that believe these sorts of things are ignorant of math and science.
Let’s think about this a sec: How much energy can you pull out of a “wall socket” in five minutes?
Well, this isn’t rocket science. This, in fact, is really basic math and electrician’s level of knowledge about electricity.
A “wall socket” produces 120 volts, AC, on average in North America. It does so at 60 Hertz, but we don’t need to worry about that here.
This “wall socket” is usually limited to 15 amps. 20 amps in some homes, but usually 15 amps (by the fuses or the circuit breaker).
120V * 15 amps = 1,800 watts.
Let’s then think about this in terms of horsepower: If you can convert electrical power to mechanical power at 100% efficiency (which you cannot do, but let’s assume that you could), 1 HP requires 746 watts.
That means that you can run a 2.4 HP motor at steady-state (ie, let’s ignore the inrush current issues) on a “wall plug.”
Again, assuming complete conversion of the electrical power pulled out of the “wall plug” into mechanical power, this guy is claiming that he could run a 2.4HP motor for five minutes.
And this is going to replace the automobile. And batteries.
Somehow, I don’t think so.
His claim is debunked the same way so many claims like this are:
1. Does he violate the First Law of Thermodynamics? Yes, he appears to, because he’s claiming that he can make a five-minute charge from a “wall plug” move that car and the occupants 250 miles at 80mph. He’s somehow getting more energy out of his car than he put into it.
2. Does he violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Yes, because he’s violating the first.
A national automotive infrastructure based on ultracapacitors may or may not be an irrational idea, but ultra-caps are NOT magic....unless you think physics is magic.
Ultracaps already exist, and are used, for example in everyday solar calculators to manage the charge/discharge cycle of that application indefinitely (ultracaps/supercaps don't have memory or lifetime failures as they don't use chemical storage.)
These are just regular plate capacitors with improved dielectric material giving them multiple Farads of capacitance instead of microfarads.
Whether they can be used economically in a a high-current automotive application remains to be demonstrated.
I do wish all these ZENNwhatever type companies would release more products and less press releases....
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
The whole point of capacitors is that they can be charged and discharged very rapidly if need be. They also hold a charge for a LONG time. It is possible to touch the leads of a capacitor (one of my amps has capacitors almost the size of a coke can) on an amp that has not been plugged into a wall socket for decades and get electrocuted.
Capacitors also never wear out. You can charge them as often as you want with no ill effect.
Thanks to modern technology it would be easy to control the output power of a capacitor to effectively make them an excellent replacement for batteries.
The problem with capacitors is that they depend on internal surface area to hold a charge. The more area, the more energy they store. With current technology there is just not that much energy in a capacitor to replace batteries of the same size. But there is talk of nano-technology breakthroughs that would allow incredible amounts of surface area within a small capacitor, allowing it to become a viable alternative to batteries.
We’ll see.
Caveot: This is all my opinion based on what I know. There may be some important details left out.
What staggers the imagination is the possibility of creating a capacitor with so much internal surface that a really small capacitor could supply a lot of power. Imagine a capacitor the size of a standar battery that could hold enough charge to take an electric vehicle hundreds of miles (or thousands!). It would take a while to charge from your house - or you’d melt your houses wiring.
Where I live, it is mostly hydroelectric. But nuclear would be nice too.
Assume this car goes 250 miles at 65 mph on a charge and uses about 50 hp on the average. This is 144 kw-hr of energy consumption. To replace this energy at a 100 % effieicncy from a “household” 220V power line the current drawn would be as follows depending on the time to recharge:
24 hours 28 amps
8 hours 82 amps
1 hour 653 amps
15 min 2600 amps
This calculation uses real math not enviromath.
“Let’s think about this a sec: How much energy can you pull out of a “wall socket” in five minutes?”
That is THE part of the article that is totally and utterly bogus. I totally agree.
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