Coming June 28, "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

Post by **Dardedar** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 9:41 pm

If you look carefully you will see that the above car is using a Zebra battery. It's a good battery in many ways but it's big disadvantage is that it operates at about 270 degrees C (that's 482 degrees fahrenheit).

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Characteristics of the Zebra battery:

High power, high capacity cells suitable for electric traction applications.

High Temperature Battery operating at over 270°C

Sodium Nickel Chloride (NaNCl) chemistry giving a nominal operation cell voltage of 2.58 Volts
Advantages

High energy density (5 times higher than Lead acid)

Large cells (up to 500Ah) possible

Cycle life better than 1000 cycles

Tolerant of short circuits

Safer than Sodium Sulfur cells

Typical cell failure is short circuit which does not cause complete failure of the battery.

Low cost materials
Shortcomings

Suitable for large capacity batteries only (> 20KWh)

Limited range of available sizes and capacities. (Large multi-cell blocks)

Only one factory in the world produces these batteries.

High internal resistance

Molten sodium electrode

High operating temperature.

Preheating needed to get battery up to the 270°C operating temperature. (Up to 24 hours from cold)

Uses 14% of its own capacity per day to maintain temperature when not in use.

Thermal management needed
Applications

Traction applications, EVs, HEV, and Railway
Costs

Expensive

Barbara Fitzpatrick · Post by **Barbara Fitzpatrick** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 8:29 am

What's a better battery than the Zebra & who, if anybody, is using it?

Post by **Dardedar** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 9:12 am

Barbara Fitzpatrick wrote:What's a better battery than the Zebra & who, if anybody, is using it?

DAR
There are so many varieties. Probably lithium Ion (and there are many different recipes of that kind). Light, high density, fairly quick recharge, long life. There are some problems with some of them chatching on fire if shorted out or drained too quickly but this will probably be worked out.

D.

Doug · Post by **Doug** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 1:56 pm

Nissan's HyperMini. 60mph. 60-mile range.

Nissan collected them up and crushed them. There are a few survivors. The Pasadena (CA) Water and Power System had 74 of them leased. They don't want to renew the leases. The leases are up soon and there is a grassroots movement to buy all 74 of them to keep Nissan from crushing them too.

See here.

Barbara Fitzpatrick · Mon Nov 20, 2006 10:31 am

I would love one - but that price tag will keep me in my '83 Datsun for as long as it runs.