Finding the right battery

You're looking for double the voltage of typical modern EVs, so the obvious solution is simply two full sets of modules from a production EV, connected in series. That would mean 25 kWh to 45 kWh per original pack, and that's any of the small models. If you don't want active cooling, the 40 kWh Leaf (current version with the old-style battery, not the 62 kWh Leaf+) is an obvious choice, but it probably isn't suitable for your performance requirements (which you should mention).

Right, sorry. I'm looking for a max 920 kw discharge. Probably should have mentioned that. At the voltage I want, that's about 1300 amps.

Jomp135 said:

I'm looking for a combination of battery packs that would ideally give me around 700 volts and between 50 and 90 kwh.

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Jomp135 said:

I'm looking for a max 920 kw discharge.

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That's a discharge rate of 10 to 20 C/hour. At least the low end of that range is feasible for a few seconds (which is probably all you need) for at least the more suitable production EV batteries (particularly the plug-in hybrids, and generally those with good liquid cooling).

If you want more than a few seconds of high-rate discharge at a time, you might be interested in the experience of the builders of the Tesla-motor Cobra-replica race car.

You're right, I would only need such discharge times very occasionally: basically only when accelerating from 0-300 in 8.9 seconds, which is a fairly narrow use case. Would it be possible for me to use some sort of capacitor bank that I only charge up then to fulfill peak needs? It might be cheaper, or it could be more expensive, I don't know. Based on very preliminary calculations and a poor knowledge of how capacitors actually work, I would need a 700 volt, 36 farad capacitor bank. Any ideas about shortcomings/ what capacitors I would need?

Jomp135 said:

You're right, I would only need such discharge times very occasionally: basically only when accelerating from 0-300 in 8.9 seconds, which is a fairly narrow use case. Would it be possible for me to use some sort of capacitor bank that I only charge up then to fulfill peak needs? It might be cheaper, or it could be more expensive, I don't know. Based on very preliminary calculations and a poor knowledge of how capacitors actually work, I would need a 700 volt, 36 farad capacitor bank. Any ideas about shortcomings/ what capacitors I would need?

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Capacitors are not as energy dense as batteries, so the physical space required becomes an issue. For your application, I'd try contacting Arlin Sansome (youTube) for the race batteries he has and use a larger energy dense pack to charge the smaller, but capable of 100C discharge pack. Lots of electronics and control systems to make it work. Possible, but expensive and definitely requires a large area for batteries.
Bill

For batteries, I would need a 700 volt, 7.148 Ah battery bank capable of 200C discharge.

Jomp135 said:

For batteries, I would need a 700 volt, 7.148 Ah battery bank capable of 200C discharge.

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The individual cells were 100C continuous, 5 ah, so you'd need 2 of these in parallel and 194 of these in series. And then another larger pack to get the range you want and BMS magic to make the two packs work together without damage to either. Again, possible, but not cheap. Also custom design for cooling on the high discharge rate cells.

Actually, supercapacitors are looking better and better. If I use a bank of 35 20 volt, 1 farad supercapacitors, I can get my goals nicely, and for much cheaper than a high discharge battery. I would have to include a stepup transformer so that I could charge them to 700 volts, but it's doable for probably about 3000 dollars. Plus, when charging up for an acceleration, I get coil whine!

Jomp135 said:

Actually, supercapacitors are looking better and better. If I use a bank of 35 20 volt, 1 farad supercapacitors, I can get my goals nicely, and for much cheaper than a high discharge battery. I would have to include a stepup transformer so that I could charge them to 700 volts, but it's doable for probably about 3000 dollars. Plus, when charging up for an acceleration, I get coil whine!

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That's 35 farads of 20 volt capacitor, or one farad of 700 volt capacitor. Just like battery cells, a series connection adds up the voltage but doesn't change the capacity (amp-hours for a battery, farads for a capacitor); a parallel connection adds up the capacity but doesn't change the voltage. For 36 farads at 700 volts, you would need 36 (in parallel) x 35 (sets in series) = 1260 capacitors at one farad and a maximum of 20 volts each. If 35 capacitors cost $3,000, this is a $100,000 capacitor bank... and it weighs about two tons.

This is why EVs are not built with capacitors for energy storage, especially low-voltage capacitors.

Of course the whole scheme works much better with high voltage capacitors - then you would only need one set in parallel. But they're not cheap, and it is still possible to use only a small fraction of the energy stored in them before the voltage drops too low.

Yeah, after a bit more of a look I found that I'd need 350 farads starting at 700 volts. And yes, using 20 volt 1 farad capacitors that would be my price, but there's a problem. A series connection adds voltage but changes capacity. I'll do some more calculations.

Calculations not good, switching back to batteries.

The dielectric rating of the wiring and components needs to be 1kv. Most AC power wiring is marked 600v and DC signal wires 300v. Failure to use the correct wire could lead to electrocution.