The electric car: once dead, could its resurrection be our energy solution? Part 2 of 2.


Compared to many other battery technologies out there, the EESU battery has advantages in many areas, especially in terms of charge time and weight. Typically, electric cars, laptops, cell phones, and all manner of portable electronics are now powered by lithium ion batteries. The problem with these batteries is several layers deep.

One, Li ion batteries can be bulky when designed to power something like a car; for a typical laptop, to get about 5 hours of battery life, you need a reasonably large battery, bigger than the standard one they come fitted with. Two, li-ions have a finite number of discharge cycles – this means that as they are used over time, their charge capacity (how long they last) degrades, until they die. The more they are used, the faster they die, leaving a near useless husk of toxic chemicals. There are some agencies that take in old batteries and recycle them, but the fact remains that reliability over time must go down.

What this means for electric cars, is that a typical unit designed to power them would keep the range of the car limited between recharges, with that range constantly decreasing, until the large battery would need to be removed and replaced. This is seen in cell phones often – their batteries typically last a couple of years, just long enough in most contracts to be eligible for a phone upgrade. This leads to a massive amount of cell phone trash – instead of buying new batteries, which are nearly as expensive as the phones themselves, people just get new phones and throw their old ones away.

The way EESUs work is quite different. The device uses barium titanate powder, made from barite, whose world reserves are estimated at about 2 billion tons (enough for about 10 billion units at current specifications). The actual energy storage is 52 KWh, about 1.5 times as much as a typical li-ion battery and made at about 25% the cost. In the event of a crash, the unit is designed to instantly discharge into the ground should it become compromised. The broken unit can be sent back and remade into a new unit.

EESUs have been tested into the millions of cycles, an almost limitless lifetime, compared to the 5000 discharge cycle limit on li-ion batteries. How it actually works, according to US Patent 7033406, involves sintering small grains of barium titanate powder into a bulk ceramic, which eliminates pore space, thus reducing the discharge rate. Barium titanate crystals have high permittivity (ability to store energy), and the bulk ceramic is designed to mimic this behavior. A single unit of these in a car would not only extend the range, life expectancy, and decrease charge time (the average charge time is 3-6 minutes [Source: EEStor, INC]), it would also allow electric cars to be viable for the mainstream public.




[...] this scheme i, the fact remains that the UK remains well behind California in terms of pioneering electric vehicular transport (although they don’t have flying cars [...]

The electric car was invented over 100 years ago, but was soon overtaken by the internal combustion engine. I think that in the 100 years since we have come a long way in battery technology and could definately put them in cars today.

When the concept of electric car comes, people donot know that it will grow as the way it is growing right now, it gives many benefits to the people as well as save the environmental resource of the earth. this concept should be promoted all over the world.

The electric car didn't really die, but was put into the backburner till more practical, affordable alternatives (like hybrids) became more mainstream. Most people who'd buy electric cars would first make the move to hybrid.

Gasoline-powered vehicles (fortunately or unfortunately)aren't going off the roads anytime soon. Still, I appreciate the "green" direction our automotive industries are taking.

I think electric cars are definalty the future. I believe the goverment should fund more long term trials running small and medimum sized cars in cities and then evaluate the econmics of mass production of electric vehicles.

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