MIT Electric Car Claims 10 Minute Charge Time
It shouldn’t really surprise anyone that the school, whose students manage to build cars overnight inside off-limits campus structures, has a team working on an EV that rivals the Roadster. And this one can charge in ten minutes.
The team is retrofitting a 2010 Mercury Milan hybrid with an electric engine built for a bus. Their EV will have a top speed of 100 mph, will crank out 12,000 RPM, and - using a mere 7,905 lithium ion batteries – can drive 200 miles on a single, 350 kwh charge.
The bad news is, 7,905 batteries are expensive – the MIT team spent $80,000 on their battery pack alone. Also, 350 kwh is a humongous amount of charge; you don’t get that from your outlet, you need special chargers for that. A lot of EV batteries might be able to charge that quickly if they were hooked up to a mega-sized charger like that.
The good news is that this car isn’t bad for a group of inexperienced students’ first try. GM, and all the other car companies who want to build EVs for real should take note, and make sure to hire the best and brightest engineers. Maybe they should just hire these guys.
Via Gas 2.0