• Cars

    Power Struggle

    By Seth Fletcher Posted on 10.29.2008 73 Comments

    The battery that will power the Chevrolet Volt weighs approximately 400 pounds and, stood on end, reaches a height of six feet. The $10,000-plus, T-shaped monolith contains 300 individual three-volt lithium-ion cells, bundled together in groups of three, then wired in series and kept from overheating by an elaborate liquid cooling mechanism.

    10.29.2008 at 09:35pm - Comment by wkguy

    Well, why bother using batteries to get 20 to 45 miles of transportation and at very high costs and limited recharging capacity....when you can use low cost technology as being developed and put into service in India of high pressure air... That's right, use high pressure air, contained in a carbon fiber tank with 340 liters of air at 4350 PSI... Rather than being limited to 25 to 35 miles, and limited recharging, you could have a reasonable range of 125 miles per fill up and save thousands of dollars over the expensive battery technology and I might also mention it wouldn't catch on fire...as a battery might... Add to this the use of light, inflatable cars such as from XP Vehicles, such as the Whisper car that weighs just 480 and could travel 400 or more miles at 65 mph on a single charge, and the car is essentially an air bag, made from the same material used for the landing airbags of NASA's Mars Probes... Sounds good to me... I think our Congressmen must spend too much time with their female adjutants and not enough time reading Popular Science or Popular Mechanics, because these two magazines have clearly shown the way out of our energy problems, and yet those folks in Washington have yet to see the light... What is their problem?



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