|
Most of the homemade electric cars use lead acid car/golf-cart batteries. Except for the fact that there is a high voltage, it's not that unsafe. And since the batteries are under the hood or where the fuel tank used to be, they should be ok. And the cars have already passed the safety tests. I mean, a chevy s10 doesn't become less safe because it has a bunch of batteries in the back. The airbags and seatbelts still work, and the crumple zones and reinforced beams are still the same.
The NiMH battery patents are held by a large oil company and no one is allowed to make a large battery pack to sell to home builders or the auto companies. I would like to be able to buy a 156V battery with enough amp-hours to power a pickup truck from one of the battery stores around here.
But, I do worry about the life of these batteries and making sure that they can be recycled or reused again. The other thing is, if some new great and cheap battery does come out, it wouldn't take a lot of effort to change it out and make the car better.
Charging is an issue and hopefully the government and power companies can work on that. I'm not sure why it would be in the car owners interest to feed power back to the grid though. Maybe if they wanted to power their house when the power went out.
|