Detroit show features electric car track

Last weekend, I was at a dealer of prestigious [rare] vintage cars (his prize possession was a Duesenberg worth $2.4 mill - it was Awesome!), and he started one of them up in the showroom to show someone that it ran, and (I knew it was a mistake before he even started it), the fumes were so bad after twenty seconds that we had to evacuate the showroom, open the large doors and wait for the fumes to dissipate. So .... this article makes me appreciate being able to operate electric indoors that much more. Has anyone on PriusChat ever driven their Prius in EV mode indoors before?

"Journalists attending press preview days starting Sunday will be able to drive cars on the track, but the public will only be allowed to ride with professional drivers, Fox said. There will be a 10 mph speed limit, and crash barriers will be installed to prevent accidents."
If there's a speed limit of 10mph, do you really need a professional driver? LOL!!!!!!!!!!
The only time I have ridden with a professional driver was with an ex-race car driver in a Z06, flying through orange cones at 80mph. When the car came to a stop, I was like "WOW!!!"

 

As we head for the opening of the North American International Auto Show this weekend and battery technology jumps to the forefront of the automotive agenda, it might be a good idea to remind ourselves of the U.S. auto industry’s real battery goals.

So let’s lay them out right here. Per the United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC), as told to Design News in mid-2008, here are a few short-term and long-term goals:

40-Mile Plug-In Hybrid Specific Energy: 97 W-hr/kg
40-Mile Plug-In Hybrid Cost: $293/kW-hr.

What’s that mean? It means that the U.S. auto industry is on the verge of meeting its own goals for plug-in hybrids. Lithium-ion batteries already exceed the required specific energy. Cost, however, is still an issue. A panel of experts contacted by Design News last year said that the actual costs for lithium-ion were still above $500/kW-hr. All, however, were optimistic about the ability to whittle costs down over time.

Making batteries for pure electrics, however, will still be tough. Last year, the USABC provided us with these rough goals.

Pure Electric Specific Energy (long term): 200 W-hr/kg.
Pure Electric Cost (long term): $100/kW-hr.

In truth, battery makers aren’t close to reaching those goals. The industry can start building pure electrics in the next few years, but the cost of batteries will still be too high. Automakers – some of whom are already on the verge of bankruptcy – will take a tremendous financial beating on those batteries if they jump now. Even at high production volumes, there’s still no $100/kW-hr battery on the horizon, according to our experts at MIT, Cal-Berkeley, Argonne National Labs, and elsewhere.

Recently, there’s been a lot of talk in the press about Intel wanting to jump into the EV battery fray. Before we all get breathless at the thought of Intel developing batteries, however, let’s remember how difficult it is to make advances in the historically mature arena of battery technology. Donald Sadoway, a battery expert and materials science professor at MIT, once put it best: “It’s the scientific equivalent of quicksand,” he said, “deceptively simple, yet enormously complex.”

In the next few days, some of the happy press coverage of NAIAS will leave the impression that long-range, low-cost pure electric vehicle batteries are ready today.

They’re not. Plug-in hybrid batteries are close, but much work remains on the batteries for pure EVs.

Plug-In Hybrids Are Still Today's Best Bet | Electronics News and Comment | Blog on Design News - 10695

 

Do you think the track will have a slot down the middle, and two metal power strips?

Tom

 

This area of Cobo Hall was always where the "other" manufacturers were put...the RV's, the Subaru Rally team, the Chery and so on. I think VW was stuck down there the year the Beetle was reintroduced. That year everyone visited the lower level,
otherwise nobody ever really visits the lower level.
Maybe this year this will be a draw for the crowds to see something worthwhile downstairs.

 

ZenMachine, are US automakers pulling another "EV1" by holding out on PHEV production until Li-Ion batteries are cost-effective? NiMH batteries are available today, and Toyota, Honda, others, and aftermarketers have already been using them for years. For almost a century, when a car is for sale, there are numerous different variations and options. If US automakers really wanted to be serious about this, they would offer NiMH in the base model, and 50/50 Li-Ion/NiHM in the middle model, and Li-Ion in the most expensive version.

Does this make sense, and if so, then why are the US automakers not using NiMH today?