That's pretty hot, but with a good radiator and exhaust fan it would not vaporize the battery or cause a fire. With a lead-acid battery, which is 70% efficient, it would produce 200 or 300 kW, which *would* cause a fire.
I should have said: "If a lead acid battery could recharge this quickly it *would* cause a fire."
He would have to pull into a Dunkin' Donuts store and use their friendly customer "emergency charge slot" which would take 15 or 20 minutes for a partial recharge (say, 20 kW), and cost him $5.
As I said earlier, it is much easier to set up a low-capacity or emergency charge station than a gasoline station. You can put small electric car charge stations in parking lots anywhere. A few Atlanta malls already have some, in fact. Stores were people are likely to stop along the way to work anyway, such as Dunkin' Donuts, will probably offer a few. A Dunkin' Donuts might even have a 2-car BBB, which would allow a person to recharge in six minutes. This calls for much less infrastructure than today's gas station. Safety and equipment maintenance would be a much smaller problem. Judging by the size of the bank of batteries needed in today's electric automobiles, and taking into account the fact that the new Toshiba battery is smaller and lighter, a 2-car BBB would be a box roughly the size of household external air-conditioner unit, or a kitchen stove. It would not be huge or expensive.
If gasoline goes up to $4 or $5 per gallon, you will see this kind of thing implemented with lightning speed -- much faster than anyone has predicted or imagined lately. By comparison, consider how long it took to equip nearly every city, town and highway in the US with gasoline stations. That transition occurred from 1908 to 1925 -- 17 years -- and it was not done in response to a dire national emergency.
- Jed
