In a drab, cramped room at the back of Lee Hart's basement, there is a faint and somewhat eerie hum. More than a hundred large, mostly rechargeable batteries from around the world rise along the walls and sprawl across the floor. A few are hooked to machines with quivering meter needles measuring the amount and durability of their charges; the data are being fed into a 1987 Zenith XT computer with dual floppy disks stationed on a table in the corner. There are the traditional lead-acid batteries of the sort used in most cars. There's a stack of the nickel-metal-hydride batteries Hart salvaged from an EV1, the crushed vehicle that starred in the movie Who Killed the Electric Car? And there are the lighter, exponentially more expensive lithium-ion batteries.
Hart points to one of the latter—made in China, it's known as the Thunder Sky—and declares, "That would be a wonderful battery if it met the specs claimed by the manufacturer, and some of them do. But that tested out at about half the specs. You put this in a [gas-powered] truck, it would be hard to notice. But if you have a stack of underperforming batteries in an electric car, it makes a difference."
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3 comments so far...
18-Apr-2008
61253
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Many of us have found Lee Hart's Sunrise project such an inspiration that we donate monthly.
I do it when my monthly retirement check arrives,
via leeahart_at_earthlink.net on PayPal.
Posted by: John Spradley
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20-Apr-2008
61273
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Talking about charge: Rapid charge,25000 cycles,safe,250 miles range per charge....
Yes, meet NANOSAFE by Altairnano(Alti).
Check it out!
Posted by: Zan Zolit
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20-Apr-2008
61274
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The link:
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/01/12/electric-cars-nanotech-tech-sciences-cz_as_0112nano.html
Posted by: Zan Zolit
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