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We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

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Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#101

Post by daedrdev »

nextaccountic wrote: post #83
L-four wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dictatorships don't care if things are practical.

Battery swapping isn't some top-down authoritarian decision made by the CCP and forced into the Chinese society. Nio is just a company that's providing a much needed solution to this problem.

They also have 2% ev marketshare in China, because its still an expensive and complex feature that has downsides that the previous comment mentioned. Like these high energy batteries are dangerous as the can burn quite spectacularly, so I personally would not want to take and remove one from my car every charge hen I can wait a few minutes at a regular charging station that is much more common than a replacing station.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#102

Post by fingerlocks »

Vecr wrote: post #86
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the big division we need to kill is ethanol in fuel. it's 30% less efficient than gas, much more expensive, produces more CO2 and gums up and destroys engines if you let it sit for a few weeks.

You need some. Otherwise you would need to re-engineer for a different anti-knock. Tetraethyllead is unusable in modern cars.

There are many premium gas stations that sell unleaded ethanol free gasoline

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#103

Post by loeg »

rswail wrote: post #79
loeg wrote: post #3

tl;dr existing galvanic isolation in fast chargers is very costly (~60% of capital cost) and delaying deployment of unsubsidized EV charging infrastructure; the authors think it can be replaced safely and cost-effectively with a second ground wire and some logic to detect/verify grounding.

It also didn't compare the capital costs to the costs of building an ICE refuelling station. What is the cost of the tanks, fuel pumps, calibration, etc? Including the costs of rehabilitation of the ground from fuel contamination over the lifetime of the infrastructure as well? That's what needs to be compared, not the current capital costs of infrastructure that is only just been sufficiently standardized and regula…

How is that useful for this analysis? I agree it might be interesting in the abstract, and probably interesting for an investor choosing how to deploy capital. But I don't think it has any impact on the argument. Clearly there is a high cost to deploying existing charging stalls. Lowering that cost would clearly increase infrastructure rollout.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#104

Post by est »

jjallen wrote: post #61

We could use smaller external batteries that take seconds to replace more often? I still think road charging would be cool and obviously the fastest if we never have to stop anyways. Couldn’t work everywhere in the US probably but I can dream. Trains and buses do it already where I live.

NIO does that in China

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#105

Post by blitzar »

L-four wrote: post #71
nradov wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impractical? Nio is already doing battery swaps at scale in China. https://hbr.org/2024/05/how-one-chinese-ev-company-made-batt...

Dictatorships don't care if things are practical.

That is a harsh characterisation of the work done by Tesla.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#106

Post by loeg »

stahtops wrote: post #81

This doesn't solve fundamental problems with how America has built its charging infrastructure. We never should have placed hardwired cables on the L2 or L3 chargers. The CCS plugs are broken about 50% of the time? It's a joke. Rented an EV in Europe... the cable is in the trunk! You own it. Take it out, plug it into the charger, plug it into your car. Having a bad day? Drive over the plug? Smash it with a hammer? Do…

Somehow this largely isn't a problem for gas stations. Not sure why you'd want to carry around a bulky cable when it can just live at the charge station.

> The CCS plugs are broken about 50% of the time?

Anecdotal, but this has not been my experience at all.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#107

Post by formerly_proven »

raldi wrote: post #91

Buried deep in the article, what the clickbait headline alludes to: Car chargers are too complicated and expensive. We can make them simpler and cheaper while keeping them safe, which would let us build many more charging stations.

Or we could install more destination chargers, which are cheaper, more practical, don't strain the local grid and don't strain the battery.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#108

Post by rswail »

loeg wrote: post #103
rswail wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also didn't compare the capital costs to the costs of building an ICE refuelling station. What is the cost of the tanks, fuel pumps, calibration, etc? Including the costs of rehabilitation of the ground from fuel contamination over the lifetime of the infrastructure as well? That's what needs to be compared, not the current capital costs of infrastructure that is only just been sufficiently standardized and regula…

How is that useful for this analysis? I agree it might be interesting in the abstract, and probably interesting for an investor choosing how to deploy capital. But I don't think it has any impact on the argument. Clearly there is a high cost to deploying existing charging stalls. Lowering that cost would clearly increase infrastructure rollout.

Part of the article is claiming that the rollout of EV charging is slowed by the large capital cost, and about how to reduce that capital cost.

But without comparing to existing ICE refuelling, which is what EV charging replaces/stands alongside, there's no real identification as to whether the capital costs actually are slowing the rollout.

What is driving the rollout is demand not supply. Of course, they're related, but EV fast charging will tend to be for distance travel, not commuting.

Commuters will plug in at home (or at work) and standard L1 charging is going to be "enough".

So EV charging will be for distance, on major highways etc.

How much is a highway "services" installation, where refuelling/recharging is combined with food or other services, an actual limitation of capital cost of the recharging compared to other capital costs?

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#109

Post by progbits »

> We estimate that the cost of the bill of materials and assembly of a galvanically isolated charging port is about $300 per kilowatt. So a single 300-kW port in a public charging station includes about $90,000 of power electronics, of which about $54,000 is for the isolation link.

I would love to see a concrete BOM for a sample build and mouser links to back this up.

Seems ridiculously high, like paying some military/space grade premiums, or just using very niche parts without economies of scale driving the cost down.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#110

Post by timewizard »

> indicated that 62 percent of EV owners were so anxious about EV range that they had at times curtailed their travel plans.

So.. wouldn't increasing overall range be the "one thing" you could do to actually improve this?

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