The Oil Drum: Europe

212 comments on The high potential of plug-in hybrids

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Oilcanboyd on December 5, 2007 - 5:59pm

I agree I don't think it will work due to battery life time reduction costs. That is, the charge discharge cycles are increased through the grid connection. So the consumer(car owner) will have to replace the battery more often than a separate dedicated example. Now, if we could plug that car into a PV or wind gen apparatus, that would be even better.
But only time will tell.
Regards,
OCB

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step back on December 6, 2007 - 9:04am

Oilcanboyd,

One good point by you,
One (I believe) misunderstood point.

First your good point. Yes indeed we can couple PV-generated and Wind-generated electrical power to the vehicle from an under-the-street contactless connection point. Excellent point.

Accordingly, after the car/truck stops at a red light and over a contactless connection point, we can download the PV-generated and Wind-generated electrical power into the car/truck just as the light turns from red to green. The downloaded energy is used for acceleration of the car/truck out of its stopped mode.

The point I think you missed is that a "chemical" battery (with its limited charge/discharge times and cycle lifetimes) is not the only way to store energy. A flywheel could be used for temporary storage.