Making batteries last longer [for electric vehicles]

The early 1900's era of electric cars ended because the batteries didn't last long enough, and a new gasoline-engine-powered car cost less than a replacement battery. Long-life batteries are the key to achieving a low life-cycle cost for the electric vehicles that will help solve the air-pollution problem in our cities. New ways of making batteries last longer are discussed     

Electric-vehicle batteries

Electric vehicles that can't reach trolley wires need batteries. In the early 1900's electric cars disappeared when owners found that replacing the car's worn-out lead-acid battery costs more than a new gasoline-powered car. Most of today's electric cars are still propelled by lead-acid batteries. General Motors in their prototype Impact, for example, used starting-lighting-ignition batteries, which deliver lots of power for demonstrations, but have a life of less than 100 deep discharges. Now promising alternative technology has challenged the world-wide lead miners, refiners, and battery makers into forming a consortium that sponsors research into making better lead-acid batteries. Horizon's new bipolar battery delivered 50 watt-hours per kg (Wh/kg), compared with 20 for ordinary transport-vehicle batteries. The alternatives are delivering from 80 Wh/kg (nickel-metal hydride) up to 200 Wh/kg (zinc-bromine). A Fiat Panda traveled 260 km on a single charge of its zinc-bromine battery. A German 3.5-ton postal truck traveled 300 km with a single charge in its 650-kg (146 Wh/kg) zinc-air battery. Its top speed was 110 km per hour     

Recent developments of electric vehicles and their propulsionsystems

Major recent electric vehicle (EV) programs in North America, Europe, and Japan are reviewed. The developments discussed include electric vehicles for fleet operation and electric passenger cars for urban transit. All major auto makers have had their own concept electric vehicle programs, targeted at commercial production in the late 1990s. It Is noted that, with different objectives for various electric vehicles, considerations such as cost, reliability, efficiency, maintenance, durability, weight, size, and noise level should be compromised for the propulsion system design. Consequently, DC motor drives, induction motor drives, and permanent magnet brushless DC motor drives will continually be used for EV propulsion systems in the future, with DC drives being gradually replaced by AC drives. The rapid advances in power semiconductor devices and microprocessors have made it possible to build reliable and cost-effective AC drive systems     

Artificial hearts, batteries, and electric vehicles

New battery applications ranged from an implanted battery that powers an artificial heart, to powering a seismic sensor behind an oil-well drilling bit as it grinds through rock looking for oil-bearing structure. These applications require high reliability that justifies the cost of thorough qualification testing, production control, acceptance testing of every cell, and tracking every cell by its serial number through its lifetime. Electric vehicle developments ranged from electric scooters for commuting to work in Europe to electric cars connected to the electric grid when not being driven. Availability of their battery energy for carrying load peaks is so valuable that the electric utility being supported could offer to replace the vehicles batteries whenever they wear out, with no cost to the car owner.     

Energy sources for the world's post-petroleum era

Growth of industry and commerce during the last century have been accompanied by a significant increase in the use of natural gas and petroleum. Today's growing consumption of fuels indicates that, in the next SO years, the world's petroleum resources will be approaching exhaustion. For example, suppose that every family in China had two cars that are driven everyday as far as American family cars are driven today. Then, China would need 80 million barrels of petroleum each day. However, the world's current production of petroleum is only 74 million barrels per day. China's approach to their air-pollution and energy problems is constructing new nuclear power plants plus the 18.2 gigawatt Three Gorges hydro-power-plant. The increasing carbon dioxide content in our atmosphere, and a rising global temperature, accompany the world's growing fuel consumption. Archeological evidence relates the growth and decline of the ice ages to air temperature. Many popular techniques for reducing carbon-dioxide emissions have defects. For example, replacing nuclear power plants with wind-power plants is proposed in Germany. During no-wind conditions, hydropower would be imported from Switzerland. At night, the Swiss would pump, with nuclear power from France, water from the lake back up into the high-elevation storage reservoirs. These and other power-generation technologies are evaluated in this report.     

Hydrogen-fueled pollution-free transportation

Hydrogen has been a useful fuel in manned spacecraft, where the only exhaust from the electric power generating fuel cells is useful water. The cost of producing and delivering the hydrogen, though high, was trivial compared to its value in the missions. We have a new problem in our Earth's atmosphere - its growing content of carbon dioxide, 47% of which comes from transportation-vehicle exhausts. Replacing all of the petroleum-fueled transportation with hydrogen-fueled transportation would reduce the carbon dioxide air pollution from transportation to zero. The cost of producing hydrogen during the night by electrolysing water with power from nuclear power plants would be trivial. However, there are added costs in hauling hydrogen in tank trucks to filling stations and carrying hydrogen fuel in cars     

Prospects for electric vehicles

The state-of-the-art of electric vehicles (EVs) is discussed with examples of prototype vehicles-Electric G-Van, Chrysler TEVan, Eaton DSEP, and Ford/GE ETX-II. The acceleration, top speed, and range of these electric vehicles are delineated to demonstrate their performance capabilities, which are comparable with conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. The prospects for the commercialization of the Electric G-van and the TEVan and the improvements expected from the AC drive systems of the DSEP and ETX-II vehicles are discussed. The impacts of progress made in the development of a fuel cell/battery hybrid bus and advanced EVs on the competitiveness of EVs with ICE vehicles, and their potential for reduction of air pollution and utility load management are postulated     

Heating and cooling battery electric vehicles-the final barrier

Battery electric vehicles (EVs) present a particular challenge to the development of more efficient and effective heating and cooling systems for automotive applications. Because heating-ventilating-air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are electrically powered, vehicle range is reduced when the HVAC system is operating. The alternative solutions to HVAC battery electric vehicles are identified and evaluated. These include a basis for determining HVAC boundary design assumptions and showing mathematical methods for estimating the HVAC load and energy requirements, and evaluation of the new European and Japanese approaches to wintertime heating, such as NaS battery, motor and component waste heat recovery, electric seat warmer, radiant foot warmer, electric windshield and backlight defrost, molten salt latent heat storage, metal hydride hydrogen storage and catalytic heater, and liquid fueled heater     

Ultra light electric vehicle parameters

A comparative assessment of the applications of ultralight technology to electric vehicles (EV) under development since 1990 has been made. The general nature of the mathematical model permitted EVs of all types, including bicycles and magnetic levitation vehicles, to be evaluated and compared for acceleration levels, elapsed time, and elapsed distance performance in a standardized framework, with acceptable accuracy in comparison to the performance results published in the public domain. The aerodynamic coefficients and the skin friction component of the total aerodynamic drag coefficient could be estimated     

电机-变距螺旋桨动力系统功率优化控制

电动螺旋桨无人机应用越来越普及,但普遍续航时间较短,提高电动力系统效率、降低功率消耗是提高航时的主要措施。电机-变距螺旋桨动力系统（以下简称变距电动力系统）可同时改变转速、桨距两个量,存在桨距和转速的最佳组合,使系统功率最小。相比电机-定距螺旋桨动力系统,其在耗能方面具有特殊优势,但如何达到最小功率点,目前研究较少。针对上述问题,为提高计算效率,便于控制研究工作的开展,首先基于改进天牛须算法的BP神经网络训练得到变距电动力系统的神经网络代理模型。接着提出了一种变距电动力系统功率优化控制策略：在一定入流速度、拉力需求下,基于自适应扩展卡尔曼滤波-牛顿法实时优化桨距,并在一定桨距下利用模糊PID控制系统转速以达目标拉力,实现目标拉力需求下的最小功率控制。仿真验证结果表明,提出的功率优化控制策略鲁棒性更强、优化速度更快、收敛效果更好。     

Comparison of AC drives for electric vehicles-a report on experts'opinion survey

It is recognized that wide applications of electric vehicles (EVs) will bring tremendous social, economical and ecological benefits. With the growing interests in electric vehicles, much effort is demanded for the development of efficient, reliable and economical AC drives' for EV propulsion purpose. Both induction motor (IM) drives and permanent magnet brushless DC motor (IM) drives have been applied to EVs. Switched reluctance motor (SRM) drives have been proposed as an alternative for EV propulsion. In order to assess the suitability of IM, BDCM and SRM drives for EV applications and to provide a technical support for the development and selection of future EV propulsion systems, the existing EV AC propulsion drives were compared, and a survey of experts' opinions was conducted. Comparison of the three AC drives was made on a relative and a quantitative basis using the survey questionnaires. According to the majority of the experts, induction motor drives are best suited for EV propulsion purpose, due to their low cost, high reliability, high speed, established converter and manufacturing technology, low torque ripple/noise and absence of position sensors. BDCM drives feature compactness, low weight and high efficiency and therefore provide an alternative for EV propulsion. The experts regard insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) as the most suited power semiconductor devices for AC drive converters at the present stage     

无人机航向测量的罗差修正研究

 针对数字式磁航向测量系统在无人机上的应用,系统地研究了任意姿态下的罗差修正问题。通过分析罗差形成的原因,提出一种更为简单的罗差修正方法和确定罗差系数的工程方法。为了减少试验工作量和试验数据的错误,用计算机检验罗差系数的正确性,并提出试验数据正确性的检验方法。实验结果表明,该方法是很有效的。这种方法不仅可用于无人机,也可用于车辆、轮船等其它运载工具。     

Segmented battery charger for high energy 28 V lithium ion battery

Since they were first introduced in the early 1990s, lithium ion batteries have enjoyed unprecedented growth and success in the consumer marketplace. Combining excellent performance with affordability, they have become the product of choice for portable computers and cellular phones. Building on the same energy and life cycle attributes, which marked their consumer market success, but adding new high power storage capability, lithium ion technology is now poised to play a similar role in the transportation, military, and space sectors. With major program in various aspects of electric and hybrid electric vehicles, Saft has developed a family of battery products that address the power and energy storage where lightweight, long life, and excellent energy or power storage capabilities are needed. Significant progress in the packaging and control of high power, yet compact, batteries has been accomplished for a variety of vehicle applications. This paper discusses the charger and balancing strategies of one of this family of products     

Fuel cells for “personal electricity”

Cars powered by fuel cells have been built and tested; however, the aerospace fuel cells could not deliver high power quickly when the driver wanted to accelerate his car. Today's hybrid electric cars carry a battery that supplies the acceleration power, and the prime power source, whether an engine or fuel cell, is not stressed with sudden load peaks. Zero air pollution becomes attainable when fuel-cells supply the prime power on a hybrid vehicle     

Advances in the development of ovonic nickel metal hydridebatteries for industrial and electric vehicles

The environmental advantages of ovonic NiH₂ batteries, due to the nontoxicity of ovonic alloys, are briefly discussed, and their general performance is described. Commercial progress in their development is summarized. Their use in electric vehicles is examined     

Advanced materials for next generation NiMH portable, HEV and EVbatteries

While Ovonic NiMH batteries are already in high volume commercial production for portable applications, advances in materials technology have enabled performance improvements in specific energy (100 Wh/kg), specific power (600-1000 W/kg), high temperature operation, charge retention, and voltage stability. Concurrent with technology advances, Ovonic NiMH batteries have established performance and commercial milestones in electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, as well as scooter, motorcycle and bicycle applications. As important as these advances, significant manufacturing cost reductions have also occurred which allow continued growth of NiMH technology. In this paper, advances in performance, applications and cost reduction are discussed with particular emphasis on the improved proprietary metal hydride and nickel hydroxide materials that make such advances possible     

Applications of aluminum-air batteries

Advances in aluminum-air batteries are described. These include alloys that show higher efficiencies and therefore lower hydrogen evolution, low-cost air cathodes that can be fabricated in production quantities, and methods for handling the aluminum hydroxide reaction product. Emphasis is placed on the advances in air cathodes. The application of this technology to new products and the implications for electric vehicles are discussed     

Engine-driven generators for deep space probes

Summarizes important developments relating to power for deep space missions. The important alternatives to thermocouples for converting radioisotope heat into electric power are Stirling engines, alkali-metal thermal-to-electric converters (AMTEC), thermionic converters, and thermo-photovoltaic converters. The operating principles and limitations of these converters are described.     

Bipolar nickel-metal hydride battery for hybrid vehicles

Hybrid electric vehicles are receiving increased interest as an approach to decrease vehicle pollution, dependence, and consumption of liquid petroleum and meet forthcoming Government vehicle emission standards. A number of schemes are under consideration (heat engine battery, fuel cell battery, peaking battery, inner-city battery, etc.). The success of any of the approaches will be dependent on battery capabilities, i.e., power, density, life, and cost. The nickel-metal hydride system appears to be the most promising of the candidate battery chemistries. Preliminary designs and analysis have been prepared and are presented for various configurations. Initial performance characterization tests are presented. It is concluded that a bipolar package arrangement for the Ni-MH chemistry appears most suited for the hybrid vehicle application considered     

Development of an Italian low cost GNSS/INS system universally suitable for mobile mapping

The first studies for the mobile mapping and creation of a vehicle for this kind of research was carried out by Canadian Researchers in the 1980s. Since then, these vehicles have been widely employed in several applications (road cadastre maps, terrestrial photogrammihetry, road sign recognition, etc.) for both commercial and research purposes throughout the world. Many GNSSIINS vehicles which can be equipped in different ways with one or more GPS, inertial sensors, and one or several cameras, have been realized. A characteristic shared by most of these devices concerns the high costs of the sensors, of the realization and of the maintenance. For this reason, a GNSSIINS system, that is suitable for any vehicle, made up of low cost devices (two GPS receivers, an INS, and a camera rigidly placed on a metallic bar), has been designed and built by our research group. Two tests run at different velocities have been carried out to evaluate the reliability of the system. After a presentation of the system, the differences that were witnessed during the application of these calibration methods are explained herein.