Electric Car Batteries

by Sheila
(Colorado)

Seems like most electric car batteries available right now have to be plugged every night and last about 20 - 30 miles. The ones that are higher performance are patented, .. which makes them harder to get? I'd like to know more about this: how can i get a higher performance battery, something that maybe doesn't have to be plugged in for a very long time, that would last longer, and also.. can you tell me about (in gross range) pricing for them?

Hi, Sheila!
You're right - the batteries in your electric car need to be plugged in to a charger pretty much every night.
This is not a bad thing, though! It's just that we're USED to a certain way of doing things, the Gas-Guzzler Way, which means we take several minutes out of our busy day, a few times a week, to get stinky gas all over our favorite shoes (!) and drop a hundred dollars.
The Electric Car Way is to let the car refuel while we're doing something else. There's either opportunity charging, where we plug in for a while while we're at the store or work; or there's night-time charging, where we plug in while we're cooking dinner and watching CSI.

It's just different and it takes readjustment, but it's kinda nice once you get used to it!

About patented batteries: They are not more expensive, they are illegal to produce.
The documentary film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" exposes the misuse of patents by corporations - in this case Chevron, Cobasys, and GM - in collusion with government regulatory agencies, resulting in excellent NiMH electric car batteries being legally taken off the market until the patents expire. Small NiMH batteries are still available legally, and some folks wire a bunch of these together to power a car, but it's not the same; )
The high-end electric car batteries available right now are LiFePO4, Lithium Iron Phosphate. At Beepscom, you can get 200 AH and 48V for about $6000 and they claim that if you treat them right they'll last 200,000 miles.
(For a car, you'll need 2-3 of these packs.)

Regards,
Lynne