New (Flow) Battery Design Could Help Solar and Wind Energy Power the Grid

[BlueStreak]

29. The one huge disadvantage of EVs

is recharge time, and hydrogen would not have that problem. Hydrogen could be refueled as fast as you pump a tank of gasoline.

We keep hearing about all these advances in battery recharge time, and still we're talking 8 hours to get a full charge. It doesn't seem like there has been any advancement at all.

And really, anything longer than about 10 minutes is going to keep EVs from ever hitting the mainstream. A small percentage of the market can live with an 8 hour recharge, but most people cannot.

The reliable Tesla run time (in variety of weather conditions, and driving normally in highway traffic), is more like 120-150 miles -- and that is with their biggest battery pack that makes the car a $70K item. It makes no sense whatsoever to drive for 2 hours and then recharge for 8 hours.

Now, if they could economically get a true 400 mile range, that would probably be good enough for the mainstream. If you take a long trip, you could plan a 45-minute "top off" charge while you eat lunch, and that would probably get you 500 miles. That's about the the limit of what most people would try to drive in a day, and then you could get a full charge overnight (assuming your hotel has facilities.)

But that means double or triple today's range and 1/4 today's cost -- in other words about an 800% improvement -- almost an order of magnitude. That' won't happen before 2020, I bet.