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We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

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121–130 of 213 posts

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The convenience to me of being able to refuel anywhere quickly, plus the dubious carbon savings, plus the immediate discount on the car purchase (without any subsidies), makes it a moral purchase rather than a practical one. I am not very impressed by the benefits.

I like how EVs accelerate faster. Otherwise it would make my life way more inconvenient, which I surmise is a major blocker for most potential EV purchasers

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does this factor in the environmental impact of the battery lifecycle in those EVs?

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The convenience to me of being able to refuel anywhere quickly, plus the dubious carbon savings, plus the immediate discount on the car purchase (without any subsidies), makes it a moral purchase rather than a practical one. I am not very impressed by the benefits. I like how EVs accelerate faster. Otherwise it would make my life way more inconvenient, which I surmise is a major blocker for most potential EV purchase…

I guess it depends on your driving habits and homecharging situation, but after a year with my EV, I wouldn't go back if God came down and personally told me that every EV resulted in a baby seal being clubbed. Among the many advantages, never having to go to a gas station is so much better.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#124
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#125
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does this factor in the environmental impact of the battery lifecycle in those EVs?

Usually, yes. The break even point depends on how clean your energy source is but 15-40k km is about where they even out even considering batteries. Remember if you live somewhere like Norway or Scotland where it’s dark for 6 months, it’s also very very bright for the other 6 months.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#126

> 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 militar…

> > 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.

This kind of checks out with the price of 200kW and 400kW chargers from Alpitronics: https://www.connect-gp-joule.de/en/shop/dc-charging-stations...

Between €67k and €102k (for some reasons VAT included in that price) for these units.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The convenience to me of being able to refuel anywhere quickly, plus the dubious carbon savings, plus the immediate discount on the car purchase (without any subsidies), makes it a moral purchase rather than a practical one. I am not very impressed by the benefits. I like how EVs accelerate faster. Otherwise it would make my life way more inconvenient, which I surmise is a major blocker for most potential EV purchase…

I guess it depends on your driving habits and homecharging situation, but after a year with my EV, I wouldn't go back if God came down and personally told me that every EV resulted in a baby seal being clubbed. Among the many advantages, never having to go to a gas station is so much better.

Why is going to a gas station difficult? I’m far more concerned about needing to charge in a pinch than needing to find a gas station

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#128
post #96
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Premature reject. It's working in China, it would work in trucking. "Tesla tried" doesn't mean jack. No car manufacturers want to do this because it means loosing a point of innovation. It has to be regulated to happen at scale. It won't happen but not because it can't work. After all... look at 12v car batteries

Horrid quality video and not about the trucking you mean (i think), but these [0] electric dump trucks are a very welcome sight everywhere in Shenzhen, China.

[0]https://youtube.com/shorts/B0akomAQgkM?feature=shared

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on your driving habits and homecharging situation, but after a year with my EV, I wouldn't go back if God came down and personally told me that every EV resulted in a baby seal being clubbed. Among the many advantages, never having to go to a gas station is so much better.

Why is going to a gas station difficult? I’m far more concerned about needing to charge in a pinch than needing to find a gas station

It's not difficult, but it's something extra. Now I just plug my car in the garage and it's always charged. Plus it drives so so much better (constant torque at any speed feels amazing, you can control the car very precisely), and doesn't stink and make noise.

I wouldn't go back either, even with the occasional 20-minute charge break on a very long trip.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#130

> 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 militar…

These things also generate revenue. It's not a zero sum game. Fast charging pricing varies quite a lot but 50 cents per kwh is a nice round number to work with (and probably lowish). Some places charge more, some less. If an average charging session charges 30 kwh, that's 15$/session. To earn back 90K, you need 6000 charging sessions. At 17 sessions per day, you'd get there in about a year. You also have to deal with power and other overhead obviously. And chargers are more expensive than just that. A good charger should be generating 50-100K of revenue per year and do that for several years until it is replaced. The lifetime revenue should be at least a few hundred thousand $.

Of course this whole article is based on the notion that its assertions about cost are correct. They probably are high balling a few numbers. All I'm reading is that US charging companies are paying a high price for their infrastructure and are apparently failing to benefit from economies of scale, learning effects, etc.

High speed chargers are being deployed at scale across the globe. The US is technically behind on this front with relatively low EV adoption rates. So, I would expect US companies to be somewhat behind on the cost front as well.

Bottom line: done right, unsubsidized charging infrastructure should be doable and profitable.

Subsidies are of course involved in a lot of places. But it's not like fossil fuels are un-subsidized. Regardless of what you think of that, there's a good reason for that: governments are eager to sponsor energy infrastructure because it's an economic multiplier. Economic growth is strongly connected to energy availability and usage. Lucrative economic activity tends to be very energy intensive.

The US has invested many trillions in it's oil and gas infrastructure over the decades. And that's just direct investments. All those expensive wars in the middle east to secure access to oil are also part of this. And it has had a decent return on investment on those investments.

It's nowhere near matching that for the clean replacement for any of that stuff. Other countries are outspending the US so they can provide clean, cheap energy to their economies. The US should be spending more and spending smarter or it risks pricing itself out of the market. China in particular has built up quite a lead here. I don't think the Chinese are wasting their money.

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