The charge of the battery car

Ian Grant — Fri, 09 Oct 1998 23:00:00 +0000

ELECTRIC vehicles have a major drawback—the eight hours or so it
takes to recharge their batteries. Now an American company has developed a
system that recharges the batteries intelligently and cuts the time needed to
just half an hour, making the vehicles a more attractive prospect.

AeroVironment of Monrovia, California, demonstrated its PosiCharge system at
last week’s International Electric Vehicle Symposium in Brussels. The trick is
to regulate the current according to the temperature of the battery, says
Deborah Jelen, marketing manager of AeroVironment. If the battery gets too hot,
the recharging process would slow down, so a chip simply keeps the battery at
the optimum temperature.

The system calculates the best temperature for a particular voltage for any
battery type and prevents deviations from it. This enables batteries to be
safely recharged within a reasonable time. A 60-kilowatt charging system using
the technology now works ten times as fast as its predecessor, according to
Jelen.

The system will be tested soon in Oahu, Hawaii, where Thomas Quin, director
of the Hawaii Electric Vehicle Demonstration Project, says around 40 electric
vehicles will soon be on the road.

Lasers start to shine in fluid situations: Engineers need to know the forces that the wind, waves and ice exert on their structures at sea. Lasers are helping them to do the job better than before

Ian Grant — Fri, 30 Jun 1989 23:00:00 +0000

Ian Grant, Author at New �Ӱ�ԭ��

The charge of the battery car

Lasers start to shine in fluid situations: Engineers need to know the forces that the wind, waves and ice exert on their structures at sea. Lasers are helping them to do the job better than before