This might be the move that cements BYD in western markets.
BYD is bringing its 5-min 'Flash' electric car charging to Canada
141–147 of 147 posts
Re: BYD is bringing its 5-min 'Flash' electric car charging to Canada
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah that's why it probably needs to be more than 1 charge in the battery. Unless you do N back-to-back charges during peak time, the charger isn't utilized enough. And to do N back to back charges you need about N car batteries as buffer.
If you have full usage of your charger, then batteries are pointless anyway because you have steady usage no matter what. But it's not a realistic assumption, at the very least the driver has to park, get out of their car, plug the car, spend some time on the payment interface, then unplug the car and leave. So even in the maximum theoretical scenario where drivers are lining up at the charging station, your charger…
Yes it can't be used 24/7 for 5-minute charges because then the buffer does nothing.
But if there is never back-to-back charges then I'd argue it's also kind of pointless because when the speed most needed (when there is a queue) is when the charger starts going the slowest. The balance is to have N charges (say 3, 5 or 7) in the battery. That way you can churn through the peak with N charges (say 07-09) and then charge for several hours until the peak hour returns at 16-18 when you can once again at least serve the first few cars without falling back to whatever you can suck from the grid continuously.
Re: BYD is bringing its 5-min 'Flash' electric car charging to Canada
#143As an American, I'm going to be really sad when we miss this transition. Maybe there's still time?
As a European, US will probably overtake Europe on EVs soon and fast. You have two unique differences to many other countries - a lot of population lives in private houses or condos, where they can just plug in EV in a regular socket without much changes. And US has a sprawling net of private solar installations which will stimulate EVs even more as soon as people will wake up to bills they incur. And lastly US has a…
Also live in a ~1 mil EU city. We have a lot of 50-100+ year old buildings, they typically have no parking at all. Newer and larger apartment complexes typically have underground parking with lots of spaces. But the city is adding charging on street parking spots all over the city. I also have a fast charger 1 minute from my building, I vibe coded a plugin in home assistant that keeps track of free spots so I can always go and charge if I need to.
Would however be nice if the state/cities provided subsidies for apartment buildings to build charging spots, at least our tenant owner/cooperative type that are popular here.
Re: BYD is bringing its 5-min 'Flash' electric car charging to Canada
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
It will happen. My guess is that Canada is BYD’s pilot into the US. They have very similar buyer characteristics and the Canadian tariff deal allows them to enter the market without taking the risks of local factories. It won’t take much to get BYD access to the US. It’s a two-step process: - Toss a million bucks at Trump or wait for a Democratic administration - Build a plant in Alabama/Tennessee/South Carolina/Geor…
Nope the congressfolks from Ohio and Michigan would never allows that
I think they might. Look who owns the Lordstown assembly plant.
Honda has been the central Ohio automotive industry for decades.
Re: BYD is bringing its 5-min 'Flash' electric car charging to Canada
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have full usage of your charger, then batteries are pointless anyway because you have steady usage no matter what. But it's not a realistic assumption, at the very least the driver has to park, get out of their car, plug the car, spend some time on the payment interface, then unplug the car and leave. So even in the maximum theoretical scenario where drivers are lining up at the charging station, your charger…
Yes it can't be used 24/7 for 5-minute charges because then the buffer does nothing. But if there is never back-to-back charges then I'd argue it's also kind of pointless because when the speed most needed (when there is a queue) is when the charger starts going the slowest. The balance is to have N charges (say 3, 5 or 7) in the battery. That way you can churn through the peak with N charges (say 07-09) and then cha…
> then I'd argue it's also kind of pointless because when the speed most needed (when there is a queue)
The thing is: with 5min charging, it reduces the amount of situations where there's a queue at all.
> That way you can churn through the peak with N charges (say 07-09)
Again, 9 batteries is just an hour worth of energy if car are lining up. The goal of such battery is just to smooth the demand spikes, not to get though peak hour.
> The balance is to have N charges (say 3, 5 or 7) in the battery.
I suspect this will depend a lot on the expected usage of the charging station (an maybe adapted later on if the usage doesn't match their expectations), as I said above it's going to be a full time job.
Re: BYD is bringing its 5-min 'Flash' electric car charging to Canada
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the thing about SK... we do actually have a pretty significant hydro investment. Problem is that the untapped hydro resources are quite remote. We can't really extract a whole lot more energy out of the South Saskatchewan River without causing upstream and downstream problems. My own research and modelling basically showed... if we're going to remain energy independent (i.e. the ability for SaskPower to power…
It's strange to me that nuclear isn't a bigger mix in Sask with the Uranium industry so big there. Related, it seems like the only pull that nuclear is getting in AB as an adjunct support for the fossil fuel industry, to help with oil sands extraction. Which just shows how distorted the political-economic system is at this point.
> It's strange to me that nuclear isn't a bigger mix in Sask with the Uranium industry so big there.
There's two factors to this:
- Before SMRs, we wouldn't have been able to build conventional Big Reactors without violating grid redundancy requirements. Currently we have about 5,300 MW of installed capacity. With a conventional 1GW+ reactor, hitting the N-1 redundancy requirements would've been challenging. Losing ~20% of your capacity because one facility goes offline isn't acceptable unless you've got tons of extra generation capacity (either sitting idle or nominally running for export)
- The Sask NDP has traditionally been very staunchly opposed to nuclear. The SaskParty won their first election in 2007 and that was a pretty tenuous situation. They certainly didn't have much of an appetite to make any bold/potentially unpopular moves early on in their tenure. There's a large contingent of swing voters who in the early days likely would've rebelled against the SaskParty proposing nuclear. Even now it's moving very slowly; I appreciate that we're letting Darlington build the first BWRX-300 before we start building our own (Darlington is already sited for it and is honestly a better place for FOAK).
Edit: I missed this line from your comment:
> to help with oil sands extraction
That was a joke I used to tell in the early 2000s to upset my further-left anti-nuclear college friends: we should build nuclear reactors in the oil sands so that we can use the waste heat to process the bitumen. I'm honestly pretty amazed that no one had an aneurism.
Re: BYD is bringing its 5-min 'Flash' electric car charging to Canada
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope the congressfolks from Ohio and Michigan would never allows that
I think they might. Look who owns the Lordstown assembly plant. Honda has been the central Ohio automotive industry for decades.
I think Senator Slotkin singular goal in her senate life is to prevent Chinese cars from crossing from Canada