Tag Archives: car

Charge electric cars fast by changing the battery

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An electric car drives into a charging station. The driver pushes a button to unlock the battery compartment hatch on the rear bumper. The hatch springs open, which is detected by a camera of the station. A robotic arm swings into motion and, guided by cameras, radar or ultrasound, latches on to well-marked standardised handles on the rear of the battery. The arm pulls out the 300kg, 1×2 metre battery from underneath the floor of the car and slides it onto a conveyor belt. The belt moves the battery to one side and brings up a new battery, which the robotic arm picks up and slides back into the car’s battery compartment. The driver pushes a button to close and lock the battery compartment and drives off. The whole charging process takes less than a minute – significantly faster than filling up a gasoline-powered car.
Due to the weight and size of an electric car’s battery, a robotic arm is probably necessary. It is also faster and more precise than a human.
The usage history of the battery should be recorded securely, in order to make users pay for its depreciation, not just the electricity they used. Blockchain may be useful for keeping track of usage, which is needed to deter the moral hazard of using the battery inappropriately and not paying for the damage, or swapping it for a cheaper alternative before having it changed back to a standard one in a charging station.
The compartment in which the battery is has to be water-tight and locked (like the trunk or hood of a car) to prevent theft. The compartment should also be unlockable remotely by the owner or other authorised person, in case the car is self-driving and has no humans in it.

Adding anticipation to automatic transmission

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Some of the downsides of automatic transmission in cars are that it does not anticipate hills or overtaking, and does not respond to slippery conditions appropriately. The technology that could enable the transmission to anticipate hills or overtaking is already available and incorporated in some cars, namely GPS, maps and sensors that look ahead of the car. If the map data includes altitude, then the location and movement direction of the car on the map predicts the slope that the car will be on in the near future. This information could be sent to the automatic transmission to enable it to shift gears in anticipation of a hill. A forward-looking sensor that has a range of a few hundred metres can also see a hill if the road does not curve too much. The sensor data could also be sent to the transmission. Similarly, a sensor could detect the nearing of the car in front and shift to a lower gear to prepare to accelerate for overtaking.
Slippery conditions can be predicted using the car’s thermometer, perhaps with the addition of a humidity sensor, or detected using a wheel slip sensor. This information could also be sent to the computer controlling the automatic transmission, to prevent it from spinning the wheels too fast when there is little grip. The GPS or forward-looking sensor could also tell whether the car is moving relative to the landscape. Comparing the movement data with the wheel spinning speed reveals whether the wheels are slipping.