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A number of projects and circuits published in Practical Electronics
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Volume 49. No. 11
November 2020
ISSN 2632 573X
Editorial
Battery Day is here
When I started my career as a research engineer in the late 1980s,
I had the good fortune to work for an innovative automotive
component manufacturer. The projects I worked on tended not to
be car related, but more ‘Blue Skies’ research that looked far ahead
at engineering which was not yet ready for commercialisation, but
which would one day become useful. Despite this, the company did
source a lot of publications and journals that were car related, and I
remember reading an article that predicted electronics would make
up over 20% of the cost of a new car within a couple of decades.
At the time, it struck me as absurd – how could an FM radio and a
basic ignition system cost so much? What else was there to compete
with all that precision mechanical engineering?
Well, if anything, it was an underestimate. As I write, yesterday (22
September) was ‘Battery Day’, according to Elon Musk, the CEO of
upstart electric vehicle manufacturer, Tesla. The oddly eccentric,
but undoubtedly brilliant Musk claims Tesla have the technology
to cut battery costs by more than 50 percent and nearly double the
distance their vehicles can travel, setting the stage for the company
to make a $25,000 (£20,000) electric vehicle in around three years.
We have certainly passed one tipping point – the lifetime cost of
buying/running a midrange electric car is now on a par with a
petrol-engine version. If this happens at the cheaper end of the
car market then the take-off of battery/electronics-based transport
will be extraordinarily rapid. Charging times need to improve and
it’s important that we don’t shift the environmental burden to the
electricity generators – burning coal to run ‘green’ cars would be
the height of folly. Nevertheless, this is an exciting announcement,
and although it certainly won’t solve all our transport-related
climate-change challenges, Battery Day could signal a big step in
the right direction.
Is it too early to mention Christmas?
It happens every year in early September; I go to my local
supermarket for a spot of food shopping and I’m faced with
the first of what becomes many shelves of green and red tinsel,
pointless ‘festive’ trinkets and a not-so-subtle reminder to start
thinking about Christmas. I tend to mutter under my breath –
‘already? really? – it’s still (just) summer!’ – and then sigh with the
grim resignation that we’re racing towards the end of another year
– how do they pass so quickly?
I mention this simply because we have our own little helping
of early Christmas ‘cheer’ this month – our LED Christmas Tree
project. My excuse for this premature Xmas item is first that
you will read this in October (so not as awful as September) and
second – more reasonably – if you want to build a large version
of this project then it is probably worth starting early. If you do
decide to build this rather splendid item then don’t miss the
special offer for the relevant PCB(s) on page 22. In the meantime, I
hope you have a very enjoyable October and November!
Keep well everyone
Matt Pulzer
Publisher
Practical Electronics | November | 2020
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