Goal of M.I.T. Electric Car Is 10-Minute Charge Time

A team of six undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has converted a 2010 Mercury Milan hybrid into a pure battery electric car. It’s part of a larger program with the goal of building an electric car that can travel 200 miles between charges and have a charging time of 10 minutes. By comparison, Tesla Motors says that its $3,000 Home Connector unit can fully charge its Roadster in less than four hours.

The team plans to unveil its electric Milan — a former test mule with 8,000 miles on the clock, donated by Ford — at a press briefing on Friday. After picking up the car in Dearborn, Mich., earlier this summer, the students (at least some of whom were working on $4,500 M.I.T. summer grants) put in 100-hour weeks, first to strip out the drivetrain, hybrid system, transmission and fuel lines, and then to install an A123 battery pack and a 187-kilowatt, 250-horsepower Satcon Technology electric motor designed to power a bus.

“It’s got way too much power,” said Radu Gogoana, a team member and mechanical engineering student who hopes eventually to build electric cars professionally. Mr. Gogoana estimated that the first iteration of the electric Milan, with a 65-mile range battery pack, could accelerate from zero to 60 miles an hour in six to seven seconds. The 200-mile range version will weigh more and have a zero to 60 time in the eight second range.

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Tags: a123 battery, battery pack, charge time, drivetrain, electric car, electric cars, electric vehicles, hybrid system, Innovation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, mechanical engineering, mercury milan, MIT, tesla motors

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Automotive, Cutting-edge Research, Innovation, NY Times, Project Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.