Mercedes-Benz USA to offer free chargers with AA-powered electric vehicle (Video)

Cleveland, Ohio – Not to be outdone by Tesla Motors’ network of free charging stations, Mercedes-Benz USA plans to offer free portable chargers for its AA Class all-electric car.

On Twitter, company officials say the AA Class, powered entirely by store-purchasable AA batteries, will come with a Mercedes-branded charger that customers can plug into standard 110V wall outlet.

Promoted in a (satiracally fictional) television commercial on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, the AA Class promises to be an affordable electric vehicle with a top speed of 52mph. While the commercial noted that batteries are sold separately, it did not mention the free charger that can recharge up to four of the AA cells at a time (0.04% of the vehicle’s energy storage capacity).

Using 9,648 individual AA batteries, instead of a stack of lithium-ion batteries as Tesla and other EV manufacturers have used, provides some cost benefits. At Costco, you can buy 80 Duracell AAs for $15, so replacing all batteries on the AA Class would cost about $1,800 – far less than the expensive power plants on most electric vehicles.

At about 1.1oz per battery, the AA Class batteries would way about 650 lb and store about 36kWh of electricity, about half of the power storage of Tesla’s Model X SUV. As to weight, General Motors designers have said the 18kWh battery in the Chevy Volt weighs about 250 lb, so two Volt battery packs would match the power storage of the Model AA for about 500 lb of weight.

Mercedes officials did not say how often batteries would need to be charged or replaced.

Source: Mercedes-Benz USA