On 8 Mar 2015 at 15:44, jerry freedomev via EV wrote: > Alum/Zinc-air primary batteries ... could be sold near anywhere > including gas stations just exchanging the spent one with a reformed > one.
I have trouble seeing the advantage of primary batteries in EVs. Part of their high financial and environmental cost lies in transporting the batteries from the manufacturer to the user. Then you have to ship them again for disposal, recycling, or rebuilding. All this hauling them around increases the embedded energy and is arguably worse than the cost of transporting gasoline and Diesel fuel to filling stations by truck. There's a good reason that we don't try to use primary batteries in high- demand, daily-use gadgets such as mobile phones and computers. It just costs too much! Using them in EVs doesn't make sense, either. It's way more reasonable and economical to "reform" the batteries right where they are in the EV, by using secondary batteries and a charger. About 25 years ago, an Israeli company - I think it was called Electric Fuel Corporation - came up with the idea of Zn-Air batteries using rebuildable zinc "cassettes." The German Post worked with them on a trial program of EVs using these batteries. It went on for quite some time - several years, IIRC - but in the end they concluded that it wasn't a viable system. Last I heard, the battery company had switched to lithium battery development. I did have some fun with this idea years ago, though. When I drove a Comuta- Car, I used to get a lot of questions about it in parking lots. One that I heard over and over again was "does it really run on batteries?" So I went to Radio Shack and bought a plastic holder for 8 D-size flashlight cells. I filled it up with old Energizer discards, soldered a length of lamp cord to the terminals, and tied the other end of the lamp cord under the dash. Then I chucked the holder on that under-dash shelf that, in early C-cars, had held a monstrous Lester charger. Ever after, when I got that question, I'd respond, "Sure, wanna see?" ;-) David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA EVDL Administrator = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = EVDL Information: http://www.evdl.org/help/ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Note: mail sent to "evpost" and "etpost" addresses will not reach me. To send a private message, please obtain my email address from the webpage http://www.evdl.org/help/ . = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
