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posted by martyb on Wednesday November 22 2017, @12:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the roadrange++ dept.

Finer grained battery discharge boosts range:

Nissan Leafs, which go about 107 miles on a charge, sometimes end up relegated to commuter cars due to battery-life worries. The mass-market, standard Tesla Model 3 can go double that, but even that distance can be disconcerting on long road trips.

Both batteries could work about 50 percent longer with a device provisionally patented by Vanderbilt University's Ken Pence, professor of the practice of engineering management, and Tim Potteiger, a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering. It reconfigures modules in electric car battery packs to be online or offline—depending on whether they're going to pull down the other modules.

The two used Tesla's open-source, high-density, lithium-ion battery to model their method of improving durability, adding a controller to each of the battery's cells.

"We know there are some battery cells that run out of juice earlier than others, and when they do, the others run less efficiently," Potteiger said. "We make sure they all run out of energy at the same time, and there's none left over."

Is a 50% boost in range worth the expense of the extra controllers?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @09:03AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @09:03AM (#600113)

    Source code is a file or set of files that can be used to produce a working instance using an appropriate compilation procedure.

    Therefore when not being too pedantic, sufficiently detailed building instructions can well be considered source code.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday November 22 2017, @10:17AM (1 child)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday November 22 2017, @10:17AM (#600125) Homepage
    Whilst your argument has merit and historical precedent, for example in anti-DeCSS arguments source code was often likened to a recipe (despite food not being the output), do you not agree that the usage above did jar, and that a better term could have beem used - in fact simply dropping the term, as without extra context it adds nothing of relevance, would have been better. If there was something about the open nature of the batteries' specs that aided them in their work, then that fact should have been given an entire extra sentence, as it's a separate thought.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Wednesday November 22 2017, @03:41PM

      by SunTzuWarmaster (3971) on Wednesday November 22 2017, @03:41PM (#600193)

      But here's the rub - the other words already mean something. "Open Hardware" doesn't mean "publicly available blueprints" - it means "can be freely modified". "Open Design" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_design) means that BOTH the hardware and Software are open - which is most definitely NOT the case with Tesla (software is still closed-source). The "Open Hardware" page redirects to the "Open Source Hardware" page.

      Probably the best term is FOSH (Free and Open Source Hardware), but the term doesn't mean anything if people don't know what it means. The OSS term is still not particularly recognized by a novice engineer. "Open Source" is currently the best and most efficient term to describe "free and publicly available blueprints which are relatively unencumbered by royalties or patent provisions".