Benjamin Nead
Well-known member
I was watching Saturday Night Live this past weekend. For those of you located outside of the US, this is a popular comedy television show that is well known for parodies of TV commercials. One of the segments took a good-natured poke at electric car technology, with the program's guest host (lovely and talented comedienne,) Julia Louis Dreyfus acting as spokesperson for the mythical Mercedes AA, an electric car powered entirely by 9648 AA Duracell "Coppertop" non-rechargeable batteries.
Two video links below. The first is the authorized NBC feed on Hulu, which won't display in some counties outside the US, and a YouTube dub that should . . .
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/new-mercedes/3021121
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arQ8_PW-RiA
Beyond the silliness of proposing an electric car with non-rechargeable cells and a pull strap to instantly dump all of those cells out of the car when they're expired, it's interesting to see how much of this comedy skit describes what we have in real EVs today. A 1.5V alkaline Duracell at 2.214Ah gives us 2.6Wh. Multiply that times 9648 and you get 25.084kWh . . . or about the same size pack that you would find on a Nissan Leaf. Replace those alkaline cells with rechargeable NiMH Sanyo Eneloops (1.2V @ 2.0Ah = 2.4Wh X 9648 = 23.1552kWh) and you've actually got some pretty nice late 1990 to early 21st century pack technology there. And, of course, we know what Tesla is able to do with almost as many lithium 18650 cylinder cells. Note that quite a few of those AA cells are in the body panels on the make-believe Mercedes EV. Such things have actually been proposed with upcoming solid electrolyte technology, when the panel itself could be molded into an actual battery. The closing "batteries not included" line also could describe the real world scenario of some EVs being sold without a purchase of a pack, which is never really owned by the driver, but rented from the car's manufacturer.
Two video links below. The first is the authorized NBC feed on Hulu, which won't display in some counties outside the US, and a YouTube dub that should . . .
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/new-mercedes/3021121
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arQ8_PW-RiA
Beyond the silliness of proposing an electric car with non-rechargeable cells and a pull strap to instantly dump all of those cells out of the car when they're expired, it's interesting to see how much of this comedy skit describes what we have in real EVs today. A 1.5V alkaline Duracell at 2.214Ah gives us 2.6Wh. Multiply that times 9648 and you get 25.084kWh . . . or about the same size pack that you would find on a Nissan Leaf. Replace those alkaline cells with rechargeable NiMH Sanyo Eneloops (1.2V @ 2.0Ah = 2.4Wh X 9648 = 23.1552kWh) and you've actually got some pretty nice late 1990 to early 21st century pack technology there. And, of course, we know what Tesla is able to do with almost as many lithium 18650 cylinder cells. Note that quite a few of those AA cells are in the body panels on the make-believe Mercedes EV. Such things have actually been proposed with upcoming solid electrolyte technology, when the panel itself could be molded into an actual battery. The closing "batteries not included" line also could describe the real world scenario of some EVs being sold without a purchase of a pack, which is never really owned by the driver, but rented from the car's manufacturer.
