An Auxiliary Battery Plug

[TimeHorse]

Shifting the paradigm: Is an Auxiliary Battery Plug a solution to @NissanLEAF and other BEV Range Anxiety?

I'm not the first to bring this up, but how's this for an EV (Electric Vehicle) paradigm. Normally, you drive around with a battery pack that is enough to get you to and from work; what you might call the commuter load. But say you want to go to grandmas, a metaphor I like to use for the perennial great North American road trip. Well, if you live in Montréal, PQ, Canada and your gran is in Toronto, OT, 550 km away. You EV can't make it; it's only got a 160 km range. You could of course rent an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) Vehicle to make the trek but renting a car is such a pain.

But what if you could extend your EV's range for those days when you're visiting grandma, but didn't want to lug around all that extra battery when you're just going to and from work? Wouldn't it be nice of an EV came with some standard Auxiliary Battery jack in the trunk where you could hook up supplemental battery power special for your trip?

With an auxiliary battery pack, you could potentially quadruple your battery capacity with some extra cell packs in the trunk — properly cooled — which would add to the car's weight and thus decrease its mileage but would probably be enough to get you the entire 550 km to grandmas. The question remains what you would do with the batteries once you've arrived. One possibility is you just charge the factory and auxiliary over a few days and nights to bring them up to capacity for the return trip. This would be the wisest decision of if you owned the auxiliary batteries outright. But if you owned them, you'd have to worry about storing them and that could get inconvenient. And what about the long-term storage of the auxiliary battery? Who needs the hassle?

And alternate solution could be to simply rent the auxiliary batteries for the purposes of your trip. You'd go to a battery rental place before leaving, and they would rent you fully-charged batteries. When you arrive at grandma's, you go to another local battery rental joint and return the now-depleted batteries you rented. You then repeat the same process when you're getting ready to leave grandma's. Now, the auxiliary batteries don't have to be your standard lithium batteries that are in your EV. Instead they could be high-capacity cells that can only be recharged with special equipment. So you return the depleted battery and the technician takes it into the back room and hooks it up to the special electrochemical equipment that restores an electric potential to the auxiliary unit. A few days later, that battery is ready to be rented again as fresh as the day it was first constructed — or at least nearly as fresh, depending on how the recharge process degrades capacity.

That's how I would solve the range problem with EVs. You don't need a backup ICE or some other complicated equipment you need to lug around with you the 97% of the time you're just going to work for the 3% of the time when you're visiting grandma. It's a simple, clean and efficient solution.

Too late for the 2011 model and setting up the system of battery rental stores, not to mention having them stock and buy the equipment to recharge, them would not be trivial. The idea of an electrochemically charged battery may seem a bit weird, but that's basically what a sodium-ion battery is, so we have the technology today. All that's needed is the Auxiliary Battery port and standard receptacle.

 

[TomT]

With the Leaf, you require 700 pounds of battery to go 100 miles. To triple that, you'd need 1,400 pounds of additional battery (ignoring the fact that you'd actually need more than that due to the extra weight you are now carrying around which would reduce the range).

Where are you going to carry that 1,400 pounds of battery?

But what if you could extend your EV's range for those days when you're visiting grandma, but didn't want to lug around all that extra battery when you're just going to and from work? Wouldn't it be nice of an EV came with some standard Auxiliary Battery jack in the trunk where you could hook up supplemental battery power special for your trip?

 

[turbo2ltr]

in the glove box, of course. :lol:

 

[TomT]

Well, on a F450 it might fit!

in the glove box, of course. :lol:

 

[EVDRIVER]

This topic has been hashed out in many ways so let's put this to rest because:

Extra batteries need packaging for safety and they change the CG of the car when mounted high or in front or back, they require more load capacity in the frame and suspension, special monitoring if not charged together, they reduce range with weight, etc, etc, etc. The Leaf is already heavy and more weight would have adverse effects not to mention the need for a new drive system. If it made sense and they could make money it would be available, but it makes no sense. If you want more range then follow the fundamentals of a good EV.

Low Weight
Low Drag
High Energy Density

 

[LakeLeaf]

We talked about this a number of months ago. While quadrupling your range may not be practical, being able to temporarily add 50 miles of range - like for the board member who is driving home through the Mojave - would be a great thing to be able to do everyone once in a while. Then instead of planning where to stop and recharge for a few hours at L1, you could pre-plan to have the batteries and make such a trip with no worries.

Practically, it's much harder. Any extra battery packs would have to be light enough for you to pick up and put in the Leaf. Even if you went as heavy as a 100 pound pack - that pack would only have about 15 miles of range in it. Then you'd have to have a way to chain a number of these packs together to get to an additional 50% capacity. A number of shipping companies like UPS limit the max weight of a single package to something more reasonable for their drivers to pick up - so you may end up chaining a half dozen packs together. The complexity plus the cost of shipping the packs around probably makes this an unrealizable idea.

 

[TimeHorse]

Stop thinking Lithium:

http://entropyproduction.blogspot.com/2007/10/sodium-ion-batteries.html

 

[garygid]

The next 20 years will bring great changes to energy storage (batteries).

But, a good "Flux Capacitor" is not yet ready for public use.
The military [probably] has "first dibbs" (for use in airplanes and rockets).

 

[AndyH]

Stop thinking Lithium:<snip>

Patooey. There's no shortage of lithium. It's also used as a thickener in lubricating grease and even the lubricant trade journals make it clear that there's plenty to go around. The folks crying 'lithium shortage' are likely oil companies or promoting other battery chemistries.

There are plenty of cell chemistries and cell tweaks in labs all over the world - and some of them might end up in market-ready battery packs - but it took more than 15 years for LiMh to move from the lab to the street, and 10 years for LiFePO4. We want to drive mature batteries.


http://www.imakenews.com/lng/e_article001947963.cfm?x=b11,0,w
Will Lithium Run Out?

KIEV, Ukraine – The global grease industry can breathe easy. Despite soaring demand for lithium in batteries, there is ample lithium for future use by both the grease and automotive industries, Chemetall contends.

The grease industry, a major user of lithium hydroxide in grease thickening systems, has watched with some concern as lithium-ion batteries consume growing volumes of the metal. “Is there enough? This is the big question,” Wolfgang Bos, global business manager for Chemetall Lithium, told the European Lubricating Grease Institute Annual General meeting here on Oct. 25.

This means, said Bos, that new lithium capacity equal to total existing worldwide capacity will be needed by 2020 under the most conservative projection. The world’s lithium reserves are ready to meet that demand, Bos concluded, citing huge reserves from continental brine in South America and China, and from silicate ore in the U.S., Africa, Central Europe, Central Asia and China.

 

[TimeHorse]

Patooey. There's no shortage of lithium. It's also used as a thickener in lubricating grease and even the lubricant trade journals make it clear that there's plenty to go around. The folks crying 'lithium shortage' are likely oil companies or promoting other battery chemistries.

I'm not worried about Lithium availability or price. My point was -- well, let me phrase it more correctly: Stop thinking rechargeable -- think recyclable.

Mind you, if such an AUX Port existed, how many days until someone tried to hook up an ICE generator to it??

 

[AndyH]

I'm not worried about Lithium availability or price. My point was -- well, let me phrase it more correctly: Stop thinking rechargeable -- think recyclable.

What about lithium iron or lithium manganese isn't recyclable?

Mind you, if such an AUX Port existed, how many days until someone tried to hook up an ICE generator to it??

How long would it take to make a cable? :lol:

 

[EVDRIVER]

Those that have experience building and repairing advanced EVs will know you don't just add a generator to a pack plug or another pack. There are many issues regarding monitoring two packs and generators are another issue all together. It makes no practical sense to do either of these on a Leaf no matter how many times people think it can be done easily. When you build and package a traction pack you get a deep respect for the engineering and complexity of a proper system that works over time. I'm sure someone will try something silly like this and ultimately come to the conclusion that it was only an expensive learning experience and a quick way to severely reduce the value of their car.

 

[TimeHorse]

Well, my point was most of us only focus on batteries that are Rechargeable as if that was the only type there was. Of course, there is also Disposable but I'm no fan of that any more than any of you are. Most Rechargeable batteries are highly recyclable, to be sure, but not every recyclable battery can be electrically recharged. This class of battery is rarely talked about since as a primary energy storage it's extremely impractical because it's not trivial to recharge (it must be done electrochemically).

However, for a temporary energy storage -- such as an extra pack for a longer trip -- this type of battery becomes feasible. That's not to say that a Rechargeable battery can't also be used, but we shouldn't limit our possibilities to just Rechargeable batteries for this use case. There is this whole class of Recyclable / Electrochemically recharged batteries that might be a perfect fit for temporary range extension needs. The Sodium Ion cell is one such battery type.

It's basically a question of which battery, be it Rechargeable or purely Recyclable, has the best energy density in terms of mass and volume? I find it hard to believe that what's in the LEAF is the best energy-density battery out there. As I said, they had to use a Rechargeable battery. But what if that wasn't a restriction? How much better a battery could we get?

As for the Auxiliary ICE, I agree with EVDriver: if a fool wants to ruin his car, so be it. But I don't think that would be practical -- if nothing else, where does the exhaust exit the vehicle! Sounds more like an application for a Darwin award to me.

 

[AndyH]

Those that have experience building and repairing advanced EVs will know you don't just add a generator to a pack plug or another pack. <snip>

These cars are very new - absolutely. But eventually they'll be 5-10 years old and range will drop a bit. While one is free to wear their white suit to the Nissan dealer for a factory-authorized pack replacement complete with "warranty void if removed or tampered with" stickers, not everyone on the street will choose that path - and that's perfectly fine! :lol:

There are plenty of ways to safely and reliably add electrons to our Leaf. Folks have reverse-engineered the GenI Insight and Prius systems to replace battery packs, interface new pack management devices, and change pack use parameters. Legacy EV owners are reconfiguring their Lead-acid vehicles to use NiMh and lithium, folks are modifying the vehicle's systems to use larger capacity packs for longer range, folks are retrofitting old charge systems to upgrade to J1772 Jan 2010, others are adding faster chargers.

Hey - if nothing else, one can toss a Thunder Sky pack in the car with a DIY J1772 interface and use the pack like a portable EVSE. Range extension without warranty hassle.

 

[dheywood71]

I'm hopping this is still on the subject at hand. I commute 130 km round trip. In the summer I am having no problem. Come winter I am going to to have to charge to get home. Right now there is no convenient place to plug in at work. All I need is two more bars. Has anyone come up with an auxiliary battery pack that would give you just a little extra? We are talking about 10 to 16 % more.

 

[TonyWilliams]

I'm hopping this is still on the subject at hand. I commute 130 km round trip. In the summer I am having no problem. Come winter I am going to to have to charge to get home. Right now there is no convenient place to plug in at work. All I need is two more bars. Has anyone come up with an auxiliary battery pack that would give you just a little extra? We are talking about 10 to 16 % more.

This pack will be heated up with your interior heater:


http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=214856#p214856" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[ydnas7]

perhaps if the new models could have some elegant way of providing 'training wheels' for EV buyers.
a 48V plug in the boot that connects to the cars built in charger. Its not meant to extend onroad range of the car (yet) but provide a portable L1 charger substitute.
The idea being, a 6kWH is rented to new car buyers, to alleviate range anxiety. for a period of about 3 months each.
After 2 years (8 rentals) its fully paid off.

to hold something like a 48 volt version of this http://www.balqon.com/store.php#ecwid:category=2736914&mode=product&product=13216609" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[EVDRIVER]

perhaps if the new models could have some elegant way of providing 'training wheels' for EV buyers.
a 48V plug in the boot that connects to the cars built in charger. Its not meant to extend onroad range of the car (yet) but provide a portable L1 charger substitute.
The idea being, a 6kWH is rented to new car buyers, to alleviate range anxiety. for a period of about 3 months each.
After 2 years (8 rentals) its fully paid off.

to hold something like a 48 volt version of this http://www.balqon.com/store.php#ecwid:category=2736914&mode=product&product=13216609" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Not very practical and the pack is 400V.

 

[ydnas7]

pack is 400V, but the onboard charge can accept 110V, what else can it handle?

 

[planet4ever]

pack is 400V, but the onboard charge can accept 110V, what else can it handle?

What voltages it could handle is completely beside the point. The onboard charger, via the J1772 port, can only accept alternating current. If you want to give the car direct current you have to go through the CHAdeMO port, and for that the external charger has to provide the voltage demanded by the car's battery monitor. The monitor will demand voltages that vary during the charging but are in the neighborhood of 400v.

Ray