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We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

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Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#111

Post by ralph84 »

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…

Many DCFC chargers these days have liquid-cooled cables. Not sure how that’d work with a portable cable.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#112

Post by brabel »

cyberax wrote: post #64
loeg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as it'll have to be able to break the fault if it happens Are you talking about the case where both of the ground wires fail while charging? If either is non-functional when charging starts, it disallows charging. If one fails during charging, charging disconnects.

Imagine a catastrophic fault: a dude in another car drives into your car, and a conductor in the car breaks off and energizes the car body. The current now goes through the car body into the ground, and also through the grounding wire back to the charger (EVSE). It's a phase-to-ground short. The charger tries to interrupt the flow, but the short circuit fries the power electrics in the buck converter (MOSFET/IGBTs ca…

Imagine a catastrophic fault: a dude in another car drives into your car at the petrol pump. The petrol pump starts dropping huge amounts of petrol on the ground. Part of the car wreck falls back on the ground and ignites a fire, causing the whole station to blow up, killing everyone within 100 meters. Clearly, we cannot allow petrol stations to exist.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#113

Post by sporf »

alvah wrote: post #67
Elixir6419 wrote: post #10

It would be nice if instead of the fast charging problem the focus would be shifted to standardized battery packs, that can be field replaced. I don't really want to own 50-100kwh battery. I just want to use the charge in it and happy to pay for that.

Tesla tried battery swapping in 2015 and abandoned it due to a lack of customer interest (and also due to various problems that made the process less straightforward than you'd think). Both the Model S and Model X were designed from the outset to have swappable batteries.

The battery swap feature was implemented only to maximize California clean energy credits. Only enough infrastructure was built to claim the credits.

“In 2013, California revised its Zero Emissions Vehicle credit system so that long-range ZEVs that were able to charge 80% in under 15 minutes earned almost twice as many credits as those that didn’t. Overnight, Tesla’s 85 kWh Model S went from earning four credits per vehicle to seven. Moreover, to earn this dramatic increase in credits, Tesla needed to prove to CARB that such rapid refueling events were possible. By demonstrating battery swap on just one vehicle, Tesla nearly doubled the ZEV credits earned by its entire fleet even if none of them actually used the swap capability.”

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#114

Post by n0n0n4t0r »

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.

America is now also a dictatorship according to many foreigners (all but russia maybe ).

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#115

Post by BiteCode_dev »

Elixir6419 wrote: post #10

It would be nice if instead of the fast charging problem the focus would be shifted to standardized battery packs, that can be field replaced. I don't really want to own 50-100kwh battery. I just want to use the charge in it and happy to pay for that.

Would slow down battery innovation. Form factor is constantly changing right now.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#116

Post by mrpopo »

daedrdev wrote: post #101
nextaccountic wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 statio…

I don't think a battery swap is more dangerous than the current fuel stations where you can just use your lighter and set everything on fire

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#117

Post by lstodd »

mjan22640 wrote: post #84
superjan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A battery can weigh up to half a ton. Because of the weight, you want to keep it at a low position in the car. That is not easy to swap. By contrast consider that you charge your car. For a daily commute, the most practical is to charge it on your driveway or at the office. In my case that means I only have to consider public charging on vacations and longer weekend trips. Now this means my net travel speed is lower…

It is actually practical position for an automated swap. You drive to the position, the door on the ground open, the robot pulls the old battery and installs the new one, no hassle.

no hassle unless the door has to cope with rain, salt water drizzle and daily freeze-thaw cycles. then it suddenly starts to cost like half a spaceship

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#118

Post by monero-xmr »

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.

Where I live the electricity is primarily generated by fossil fuels. The light is weak for many months of the year, and wind power is apparently way too expensive if they remove the subsidies (weird!).

Wouldn’t gas cars just eliminate the middleman of fossil fuels -> power plant -> car? Like we did before EVs?

I would love nuclear power but it doesn’t appear to be happening

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#119

Post by Gibbon1 »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #41
ForOldHack wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Henry Ford tried on the Model T: The Model T was offered in three fuels: Gasoline, Electric, and Alcohol. It only took I think less than a year to make it Gasoline only.

Is there any universe where we go the electric route instead of gasoline back then? I imagine the range was nothing

There were issues with charging, motor driving, and batteries.

For converting from ac to dc for charging you had either a dc generator or old school selenium rectifiers or vacuum tubes ones. I used to have an old 60's battery charger with selenium rectifier. First car I drove had a DC generator. So wasn't until the 70's you got cheap high quality rectifiers and thyristors.

When I started my career in the 80's it was all coming together. Robust power electronics shows up then. By the end of the decade inverter controllers for motors were becoming common. And the mid 90's is when Toyota starts working on their hybrid drive. The battery they used was a nicad battery.

And then there are batteries. Before 1980 or so you're options were lead acid or nicad. The former have low energy density and the max output current was low. Nicads were expensive and also low capacity, but had higher output per weight. Which is why the Prius and the EV1 used them.

Late 80's I got a hold of some lithium primary cells they could put out a few amps at 4.1V. I did a calculation if you put 5000 of them at $10 each into an EV the battery would weigh 600lbs and put out about 250 hp. Weeee! And at $15 each the battery would cost $75k. Cause primary batteries it's $250/mile. 1 years later you had rechargeables with similar specs and cheaper.

I feel that in the 1910-20s when gasoline won the electric technology just wasn't there. People wanted electric cars to succeed buy the economics and performance wasn't there.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#120

Post by IneffablePigeon »

monero-xmr wrote: post #118
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.

Where I live the electricity is primarily generated by fossil fuels. The light is weak for many months of the year, and wind power is apparently way too expensive if they remove the subsidies (weird!). Wouldn’t gas cars just eliminate the middleman of fossil fuels -> power plant -> car? Like we did before EVs? I would love nuclear power but it doesn’t appear to be happening

EVs emit less carbon even when powered by a fossil fuel dominated grid. The power plant is more efficient than your car, and often uses LNG rather than petrol or diesel, and there are still some renewables in almost any grid. In addition, air pollution close to where you live will be lower. In addition, the grid can be decarbonised over time and your car will become greener as it does.
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