Electric Delivery Truck Recharges in Ten Minutes!

[Simon]

A Fiat Dovolo delivery vehicle has been driving around Europe...occasionally stopping for ten-minute breaks to refuel, and so the driver can go get a cup of coffee. It's not an unusual story, until the vehicle is refueling with electrons...not gasoline.

AltairNano, Aerovironment, Go Green Holding, and Micro-Vett have created a fast-chargable delivery vehicle for the European market and they just successfully tested it out in Norway.

The truck went on a 200-mile delivery circuit, stopping three times for ultra-rapid recharges. Other batteries take as long as six hours to recharge, but AltairNano's fancy lithium ion packs take less than ten minutes. Of course, they also require a special high-energy power station that would need to exist just like gas stations do now.

The range of the Dovolo is pretty short, and the necessity of new infrastructure eliminates one of the best advantages of electric cars (that the infrastructure is already in place.) So I don't think this vehicle will be for everyone. But it will find a big market, especially in Europe.

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1079/

[armadillo]

Seems pretty cool and effective.And they will surely make it even better and better

btw Simon,your new avatar is really funny(and dizzy if you look at it for a while)

[Simon]

Seems pretty cool and effective.And they will surely make it even better and better

btw Simon,your new avatar is really funny(and dizzy if you look at it for a while)

Yeah, the only problem is that the energy generated might be from fossil fuels so it such a big differenceyet it isn't. And do we really want to consume more electricity/energy?

Yeah, you like my new avatar?

[armadillo]

No,I guess we don't.But consuming electricity is more preferable than fuels right?

Yeah,your new avatar rocks,though looking it for a while makes you like hat

[Jim O]

...consuming electricity is more preferable than fuels right?

I think that depends on how the electricity was generated.

If it is generated in a dirty coal burning plant, as much of US electricity is, then it isn't necessarily cleaner in the long run. It may be cleaner in the city where the truck is running in the short term, but acid rain from the sulfur emissions have serious consequences. Add to that the fact that no process is 100% efficient (isn't that the second law of thermodynamics?) and you now are using two processes to power the vehicle, each with its built-in inefficiencies. Until electricity is effectively generated with clean, renewable energy sources, every time you turn on a light you are burning fossil fuels and creating greenhouse gases.