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Very Long Range Electric Vehicle Battery

Gord_in_Toronto said:
With such high energy densities I would begin to worry about a short across the terminals. Things go BOOM.
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Gasoline has higher energy density than any battery, and it too can go BOOM.

But don't worry, Tesla has developed a special electronic device to address this very issue - it's called a fuse. ;)

Even without fuses, shorting a high power battery pack probably won't cause an explosion. Why? Because it usually just vaporizes whatever you short it out with. A brief flash and a bit of molten metal is all you will probably see. The biggest danger with a lithium battery is overheating to the point where it catches fire - and most of the energy produced comes from combustion of materials in and around the battery, not the electrical charge.

Lead acid batteries are worse. A bit of hydrogen and oxygen produced by overcharging and a spark is all you need for an impressive explosion.

In the telephone exchange I worked at in the 1980s, another technician was charging a 12V car battery in the main battery room. He was supposed to go out into the other room to disconnect the charger, but instead he just just unclipped the lead from the battery itself. I heard the bang and raced in there to see him covered from head to foot in battery acid, and half the battery on the other side of the room (at least he had the good sense to wear full protective gear, so it didn't burn him). Luckily it didn't ignite the main batteries (48 individual cells each the size of a washing machine) because if that had gone up the blast would certainly have killed him, and perhaps even brought the building down!
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Gasoline has higher energy density than any battery, and it too can go BOOM.

But don't worry, Tesla has developed a special electronic device to address this very issue - it's called a fuse. ;)

Even without fuses, shorting a high power battery pack probably won't cause an explosion. Why? Because it usually just vaporizes whatever you short it out with. A brief flash and a bit of molten metal is all you will probably see. The biggest danger with a lithium battery is overheating to the point where it catches fire - and most of the energy produced comes from combustion of materials in and around the battery, not the electrical charge.

Lead acid batteries are worse. A bit of hydrogen and oxygen produced by overcharging and a spark is all you need for an impressive explosion.

In the telephone exchange I worked at in the 1980s, another technician was charging a 12V car battery in the main battery room. He was supposed to go out into the other room to disconnect the charger, but instead he just just unclipped the lead from the battery itself. I heard the bang and raced in there to see him covered from head to foot in battery acid, and half the battery on the other side of the room (at least he had the good sense to wear full protective gear, so it didn't burn him). Luckily it didn't ignite the main batteries (48 individual cells each the size of a washing machine) because if that had gone up the blast would certainly have killed him, and perhaps even brought the building down!
Click to expand...

I was only being facesious er facessious er fascitios silly. However, given various variables and a 3,650 mile range, would not the energy density of this battery be at least close to that of gasoline?

I have visited a site that used an impressive number of very large lead acid batteries to back up a mainframe computer. This was in the days before electrical inverters were practical and the DC to AC conversion was done by a large motor-generator. The room was the size of a small house. The thing I most remember was the size of the buses.
 
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