Recently, Dylan Smith posted:

On 2007-01-09, Larry Dighera wrote:
Charge time for the Altair batteries is only a few minutes as I
recall.

I'm extremely skeptical - if these batteries are not snake oil,
consider this. Let's call "a few minutes" 10 minutes, and let's say
the battery pack stores 70kWh (enough to run a motor producing 94 hp
for 1 hour).

The Altair batteries are real, and a look at the Altair website reveals
its technology. Basically, they have created electrodes using
nanotechnology that eliminates the Solid Electrolyte Interphase barrier in
LI batteries.

http://www.altairnano.com/markets_amps.html

To put 70kWh's worth into a battery pack in 10 minutes would require a
charger capable of putting out 420kW.

Yes, and this is one of the reasons that I think their technology will be
of limited practicality for some common transportation uses.

At 120 volts, 420kW would require a current of 3500 amps. Look at the
massive thick wire coming into your house (which maybe is rated at 80
amps).

Now let's say these batteries give three hours worth at 70kWh, and
charge in 10 minutes - now you're up to 10,500 amps at 120 volts.

Well, first, these are 13V batteries @ 88AH, so it would be good to do
power requirement calculations based on that. You can probably avoid high
voltage issues, but not high current issues. Based on Atlair's claim that
the batteries can be charged in *one* minute, you're still looking at some
beefy components for charging and controlling the discharge of these
batteries.

Neil