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Originally Posted by Pravus Prime
I think rather than a single battery, perhaps some sort of duel system would be better. While weight would undoubtedly be an issue, to have a battery drive off the plug in, then a "regular" hybrid drive and battery once the plug in has been drained would be pretty cool, IMHO.
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Actually this makes sense for these reasons:
1) removable batteries allows use of higher energy, non-rechargable chemistries - this would support 'drop off / exchange' of a battery. I'm thinking about the air-metal chemistries. Batch recharging air-metal, reducing them back to metal, can be handled efficiently outside of the vehicle. BTW, a discharged, air-metal battery weights more than a fresh one.
2) use of low-recharge rate batteries - high energy, litium cells remain relatively sensitive to charge and discharge rates. However, they could dump their energy into the NiMH battery which has excellent charge/discharge characteristics to handle driving loads.
3) deep discharge cycle refurbishment - a commuter battery is going to see deep discharge cycles. This risks the current battery technologies but they could be designed for automated, refurbishment. This will require removal from the vehicle.
Then if the NiMH battery can be augmented with ultra-capacitors, a non-trivial problem, we'd be pretty close to 'there'. The problem with ultra-capacitor energy storage is the requirement for deep discharge to recover the energy. Batteries deliver their energy via a nice voltage plateau.
Bob Wilson