Nick: While it may look a regular auto shop, these MIT students are part of the school’s selection vehicle team and working on a project that could rival what major auto manufacturers are doing. By the third quarter of 2010, the team’s goal is to build an all-electric car with similar performance capabilities of gasoline only counterparts. That includes the top speed at about a hundred and sixty kilometers per hour, a family sedan capacity, a range of about 320 kilometers and the ability to recharge in about 10 minutes. To do this one the things the team needs to do is to wire together about 8000 battery cell and use about 350 kilowatts to charge the car.
Radu: So 350 kilowatts is almost 500 horse power which is enough to blow the fuses on in 20 residential homes at once. So it’s a little bit out there, but we can do that as a more crazy kind of project as a research institution, so we will be hooking up for 2 MIT power plant to get that kind of power. Right now we’re exploring down in a smaller scale with a motorcycle battery pack, we will be able to get away with a lotless power because it a smaller battery, and then developing our battery management electronics in cooling so that we can scale it up.
Nick: And for those who don’t have power plant, Gogoana said the cars can be charge at home over night using standard outlets. Some companies are working on building nationwide charging stations one such is Cool ‘Em in technologies, which has a 40 charge point in network charging stations across the US. Cool ‘em’s units can output 1.4 kilowatts or 120 volts at 12 amps which wouldn’t be enough to rapidly charge MIT’s car. In fact in order to charge it in about 10 minutes, the car needs 356 volts at a thousand amps. The cars motor is a 250 horsepower, 187 kilowatt AC induction motor that weighs a 154 kilograms including its controller. it was originally designed for a 15,000 kilogram electric bus, when it’s installed in a 2000 kilogram car it should allow it to go from 0 to about a 100 kilometers per hour in under 9 seconds and achieve a top speed of a 161 kilometers per hour. All of the components of the project excluding labor, total about 200,000 US dollars much of the materials for the project were donated and the electric vehicle team isn’t paid. It put in to mass production Gogoana predicts the cost could be driven way down.
Radu: The interesting part is that to build a motor like this, once the mass production is brought up it’s not that expensive, there no valuable component aside, it’s just this is the prototype motor, about 200 were ever made. So and the same goes with batteries, so what really allows us to happen later on is the cost of batteries. The motor controller system, your drive train is much simpler use a single gear; we’re going with the chain drives straight with differential. We have no CVT, no multi speed transmission all of that; your numbers of moving components are cut down drastically. You essentially have really no maintenance other than tires and break pad s and even your brake pads aren’t gonna get worn as much because most of that is taking up by the rejoin of braking so what luxury cars in the future, there’s nothing much to do with them.
Nick: Electric cars are nothing new for the team though, in 2006 they modified 1976 Porche 914 to run on battery power the end result was all electric car with a top speed of about 161 kilometers per hour that could fully charge in 8 hours. The main difference the Porche and the current project is rapid recharge of the batteries.
Radu: So that’s one thing that will be focusing on this project and seeing what the impact is on the life, especially with the rapid recharge and in a realistic scenario you wouldn’t be rapid recharging car all the time you'll be charging it at home, unless you’re driving it across the country all the time it wouldn’t really happen. Rapid recharging is a little bit harder on the batteries but these cells have been charging 5 minutes so we’re not being too harsh on them especially because it’s such a controlled environment.
Nick: While installing the 7,905 unit battery array the teams end goal, they plan to test the car with the smaller battery array by mid August, once those test are completed they hope to finish the car which includes installing the larger array and finalizing the rapid recharge system by the third quarter of 2010. From MIT in Cambridge, I'm Nick Barber IDG News Service.
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