Bill Reinert is doing a little tap dance and spin there claiming that a 200mile range battery takes a long time to charge - while true, that pre-supposes the existing methodology of waiting until you are on empty before refilling (as one does with a liquid fuel).

With the exception of the occassional long trip, nearly anyone with an electric vehicle would be able to do much more shallow charge/discharge cycles every night. Just have to avoid the "hassle" of messing with an extension cord (just waiting for people to forget to unplug and drive off - somewhat analogous to people leaving the gas cap off when they drive). A big drive on inductive charging "mat" could work well. Auto-matic charging, no cords, and could be made generic to accept any plug-in vehicle.

Any way you slice it the battery will still set you back 10 Large.

For every 10 miles of electric range you could displace roughly 3,000 miles per year's worth of petrol (5,000+ with charging at work / family / friends / shops)

Even a 13 mile range could provide enough electricity to cover about half of all miles driven and no worries about running out of power.

The early limited 20 Km e-range will be increased with every gain in battery peformance. New battery pack generations may come every 3 to 5 years.

Idealy, common sense PHEVs and BEVs could have 6+ plug-in (3 to 6 Kwh or so) battery pack modules. Every buyer would purchase the number of modules to meet his/her more pressing requirements and pocket book and add extra modules at a latter date, when price has gone down and performance has gone up.

Modular batteries could make early PHEVs and BEVs much more affordable.

Amother way to make early BEVs more affordable would be with the use of ultra light (300 Kg) C*ta body capable of going up to 25 Km on 1 Kwh. Most of us do not need a 3000+ lbs vehicle to go to work, go shopping, take the child to school etc.

G-Please:

What could be done to sell the modular (battery-pack) approach to future PHEV/BEV makers and to convince potential buyers that they should ask for it?

The technical challenge could certainly be managed by most if not all major players within 1 or 2 years.

It could be a good project to use recovery $$$.

One could even rent extra modules for rare long trips. Why carry a 30 Kwh pack when a 9 or 12 Kwh pack would do it.

This 13 mile EV range could be achieved with just 2.6 kWh available capacity, so say 3.5 kWh total battery capacity to allow gentle cycling.

That's less than double what the original Prius had (1.9 kWh) and would cost only $1,050 if using BYD's automotive LiFePO4 cells.

I think a lot of people would pay that much for the PHV option.

I think the modular way has to be the way to go.
You could have 4, 6, 8 KwH levels for starters.

People already pay more for more powerful engines, so why wouldn't they pay more for extra battery storage.

+ it solves the marketing problem of how large to make the battery pack - the customers will decide.

Better still, the government would set standards so you could use 3rd party batteries.

Comon Patrick, just think for 1.5 seconds.

Any electric car will simply detect the power cord being attached in and refuse to move until it's unplugged.

Uh-huh, and any modern OBD-II vehicle can detect that the gas cap is not on and refuse to move until it is but how many do that? Exactly none - they just give you a check engine light. So now you go to a service station and find out (several miles and many minutes later) that you don't have a gas cap on!

There are still many other problems with a power cord manually implemented that can be identified which don't require resorting to corner cases - just think about it for yourself for a few seconds.

There is a known solution for people with short memory or lack of manual dexterity., it is called the cordless battery charger.

Of course your electrified vehicle will have to be equipped with that option (at a small extra cost) but without physically being connected, you could never forget to unplug.

Cordless chargers could be installed a various places including your own car garage.

In your garage, a proximity switch + timer would turn it on and off for you, at the lowest rates time, without human intervention. How more user friendly can you get?

At public charge stations, your e-vehicle would be automatically identified and recharge while you get a fresh coffee and stretch your legs. We could drive off at any time. That would automatically terminate the charge action and the final bill would be electronically sent to your bank or credit card etc. No penalty for leaving early or before your battery was 100% charged. No cord/cable to break. No dirty cable to touch or handle or care for.

"This first-generation lithium battery has undergone more than three years of coordinated field testing in Japan, North America and Europe in a wide variety of climatic environments and driving conditions."

Only in the virtual world could we see a Toyota that two years ago swore they would NOT pursue LiIon BEVs because of safety concerns - produce this bit of PR.

But then these virtual worlds are all fabricated from imagination and have little or nothing to do with reality. Good news for electrification though!

(just waiting for people to forget to unplug and drive off - somewhat analogous to people leaving the gas cap off when they drive).

Any electric car will simply detect the power cord being attached in and refuse to move until it's unplugged.

patrick,

A gas car and ev are very different. I have never driven a car that detects an open gas cap. It's probably the cost of the sensor and cabling to hook it up to the OBD.

In an EV everything is governed by a computer that controls both the charging and functioning of the electric drive. It's a safety feature that comes at the expense of a few extra lines of code.

And the use cases are very different.

With a gas car, you wait for your car to fill up. It is very rare for people to forget the gas nozzle (but it happens).

An EV is quite different as in: you are supposed to plug in and then leave it while charging. That makes it a lot easier to forget to unplug.

That difference makes the 'not startable while plugged in' safety feature indispensable for EV's. And because it's indispensable, it will be standard. It will probably be mandatory.