Re: Battery Technology [Was: Re: short range hybrid product idea]

[Paul Wallace <pwallace@jf.intel.com>]

Chuck;
don't believe all you hear about nicad memory effects.  The dry cell style of 
nicads, like the ones your kid uses in his electric RC car, may exhibit a 
depressed terminal voltage after repeated shallow discharge/recharge cycles.  
The flooded vehicle nicads don't show this same affect.  That said, even with 
the SAFT nicads that I am using, I don't think that you have the space to hold 
enough of them for a Honda civic conversion that will go 100 miles.  The 100ah 
blocks will go strong up to 90ah or so, per Hilton Dier III, in a Geo Metro 
conversion.  I don't think that the Geo had 100 miles of range.  To get that 
kind of range requires a set up like John Waylands Red Beastie, as discussed 
on the list just recently, or a set of NIMH batteries.  NIMH batteries are not 
quite available yet to us common folk the last I heard.  When they are 
available for converters, you should be able to get close to 100 miles of 
range.  This seems to be about what the Toyota RAV4-ev is getting with a NIMH 
pack.  When I checked, they were using a 288vdc battery setup of about 100ah 
NIMH batteries for about 28kwh of power.  From the data I have, they need to 
run the high voltage to keep the battery current down per the HIMH specs.

Paul Wallace
'91 Chevy S-10 full of SAFT Nicads