I try to restrict my joking to the Chit Chat section, unless it's aimed at myself - per the TOS.
Although I've seen many times that people put batteries in series, intuitively it just seems like there would be some point at which you needed bigger wires - even if only to over come the total series resistance of the wire.
I've studied a lot about aircraft systems over the years, but we never have more than two batteries in a circuit (e.g. 2x12v to get 24 volt). Thus, I have never considered the concept of literally dozens or even hundreds of batteries in series before joining this forum.
Part of the reason I'm asking this is because I have an idea to manufacture Edison cells using tricks employed by other manufacturing verticals - specifically, use metal foil instead of plates and wind them like the "spiral wound" batteries as a trick to increase the surface area and make them smaller. There may or may not be patents on this idea, although since capacitors do the same thing I hardly think they are enforceable just because it's a battery. But, if you have to increase the current capacity of the wires significantly the idea falls down because the "terminals" will be simply an attachment to one end of the foil strip, and might melt the foil in high current situations. The other concern I have is that if I use an insulating layer too thin then either the electrolyte won't circulate well or it will become a giant capacitor and likely sizzle, perhaps spectacularly (and perhaps painfully).
Anyway, if I make cells that are much smaller (the smallest Edison cells for sale are quite large) then logically I will need to use a lot more of them to get decent current. I want to target two banks of cells at 380 volts, or about 250 cells per bank, to make best use of a Solitron. That's a lot of cells to assemble per vehicle, even if you make a simple assembly line. Target size would be approximately the size of a 32 oz drink bottle, available in quantity very inexpensively, and materials price would be around $10/cell. It might look something like this:
In the 70's, apparently some major car maker made an Edison cell car with 200km range and highway speeds - then junked the project. They must have done SOMETHING to the cells, and my first hunch is surface area. Nickel and mild steel (iron) foils are rather inexpensive, and so I should be able to construct some test cells fairly inexpensively.
The materials should be really inexpensive. If it all works, I may sell kits to homebuilders who either can't afford LiIon, or who simply want bragging rights to say they built their own batteries that will last forever.
Well anyway, I'm not likely to get rich doing it it's more for the fun of experimentation. I'm sure if I ever tried to sell finished cells I'd get a dozen harassing lawsuits from all the regular suspects.
