Quote:
Originally Posted by ballaratdragons
6 hours on charge to get 40 miles!!!!!!!!!!! I thought technology was waayyy beyond that!
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Maybe it's coming down to a price-point that they've achieved. An electric DC motor (or 4 for a car - one for each wheel) must chew several hundred amps when accelerating a family-sized vehicle to 100kmh. If you take a standard 100A/Hour wet cell battery, you'd only get around the block before it was stuffed. Put enough (like a dozen) of these full-sized car batteries in your boot and you'll probably get 40 miles, or 60km. You'd then need to charge them all for a few days to get the next trip out of them and they'd weigh half a ton.
Is 6 hours so bad? 60km total, or 30km return radius is plenty for a great many city dwellers to get to work and back. Probably no good in the country, but I dare say it wasn't designed for country miles at this stage. If you're at work for longer than 6 hours, then you'd charge it there - effectively doubling the distances and giving you a daily range of 120km.
For them to develop a battery that's small and light enough not to have to take a trailer to carry them behind you and still go the distance is pretty amazing really.