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Car companies, starting with Volvo last summer, have laid out plans to electrify entire lineups of vehicles. But the fine print makes it clear that the coming decade and beyond will focus not just on massive battery packs powering electric motors, but also on adding a little extra juice to the venerable internal combustion engine.
Increasingly, that juice will arrive in the form of new electrical systems built to a 48-volt standard, instead of the 12-volt systems that have dominated since the 1950s. Simpler than Prius-type drivetrains and less expensive than Tesla-scale battery power, the new electrical architecture both satisfies the demands of cars made more power hungry by their gadget load and enables the use of lower-cost hybrid drive systems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/electric-cars-48-volts.html
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @08:57AM (1 child)
According to my mechanic, it takes 15 minutes of driving to recharge the battery after starting a car.
That's 15 minutes for the alternator to supply the amount of power to the battery, that the battery supplied to the starter motor in a couple of seconds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @10:35AM
The CCA on a starter battery is usually around 500 amps. A good alternator will put out 50 amps at 14 volts. Unless you are simultaneously running every electrical gadget in the car a few seconds of cranking the engine is going to be repaid in less than a minute of running.
Your basic point is correct though, the battery can output far more than the alternator. 6000 watts vs 600 watts