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We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

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Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#171

Post by ZeroGravitas »

lstodd wrote: post #139

BTW everyone is fond of Norway while having zero idea how it's actually over there. Consider this movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Order_of_Disappearance The protagonist plows snow for a living, using 200-300 bhp diesel truck for like half a year each year, day after day. This thing just can not be replaced with an electric no matter what you try. And without it there would be zero traffic, electric or no. It o…

"Electric snow plow put to the test by the Norwegian Road Administration"

https://www.designwerk.com/en/post/e-truck/pioneering-work-e...

I also saw a person in Norway commenting about their high uptake of EVs noting that at the end of the day the snow piles in the city are noticeably cleaner than they used to be when ICE engines were more common.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#172

Post by monero-xmr »

theshrike79 wrote: post #166
monero-xmr wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There are no gas stations on my route. I'd need to specifically drive to one. And the one closest to my commute has a massive queue _every_ time. I just rather drive home, plug in and the battery will be at 80-100% next morning, depending on how much I drove that day.

You must be the rare person with no gas stations near your entire commute!

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#173

Post by nothercastle »

theshrike79 wrote: post #164
monero-xmr wrote: post #118

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

Electric engines are 90-95 efficient in converting power to motion. Even the very best experimental gasoline engines in Toyota's labs are around 30-35% efficient. Even if all gasoline and diesel was used in massive generator units to produce electricity, EVs would still be better for the environment and the total gasoline/diesel usage would go down.

But the power plant has only slightly higher efficiency off the fossil fuels it burns. So you need to use the ev to store excess grid solar generated during the day to truly get an advantage

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#174

Post by throwaway473825 »

IneffablePigeon wrote: post #120
monero-xmr wrote: post #118

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.

All of this is true, but it's not the main reason why EVs have taken off. Electricity generation is very flexible. You can use coal, gas, oil, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and so on. Every country has something.

However, not every country has oil or gas. In fact, only a minority does. China is investing in EVs to avoid being dependent on energy imports. Many other countries are following. Russia and the US being laggards in EV adoption isn't really surprising.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#175

Post by progbits »

marsokod wrote: post #126
progbits wrote: post #109

> 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 s…

That's the product. I'm not questioning the price of those, but the price of components vs markup

Show me the IGBTs and inductors that cost 90k.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#176

Post by gilbetron »

metaphor wrote: post #9

Lightning strikes...how do EVs currently guard against it? - With galvanic isolation baked directly into onboard charger, I'm thinking worst case outcome is charging infra and isolation link get fried, but that really expensive EV battery remains safe. - Without galvanic isolation, battery goes...boom? Hopefully without you or your family waiting inside the vehicle under some false pretense of safety.

Lightning strike on a near empty tank of gas can go boom, too. Definitely can start a fire. This is like asking, "yeah, but what if the charging station gets hit by a meteor?"

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#177

Post by gilbetron »

timewizard wrote: post #110

> 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?

This is it - even a highly available charging network only lightly alleviates range anxiety, as the other portion is the time it takes to charge up. If I can drive for 600+ miles on a single charge, the vast majority of my trips are covered, even round-trips. But sitting around waiting 30m to charge gets annoying every several hours, even if I can find a working station.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#178

Post by ac29 »

loeg wrote: post #99
coryrc wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 7 mph of charging. The average car is driving 60 minutes per day, and if there are chargers everywhere that's 161 miles per day of charge if it's plugged in when not driven. That covers everything the existing system doesn't already.

The 7mph claim is inflated. The rare EV gets more than 5 mi/kWh in any situation, especially highway driving, and your L1 charging is getting you roughly 1 kWh/hr. > The average car is driving 60 minutes per day This is a sleight of hand. Non-average situations arise all the time. Your proposal is ridiculously burdensome and not especially helpful.

>your L1 charging is getting you roughly 1 kWh/hr

12 and 16A L1 chargers are common which is 1.44 and 1.92kW respectively at 120V. Its not 100% efficient but they definitely deliver more than 1kW to the battery.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#179

Post by coryrc »

stavros wrote: post #156
Dylan16807 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first sentence explicitly says 'outlet', which means not a cable even though the post doesn't use the word 'cable' until later. When you say "all about coin-op" you are still doing an incorrect simplification of "coin-operated 120V outlet". I know they forgot to repeat the word "outlet" on point 4, but even then they didn't just say coin-op, they said coin-op 120V. It's referring back to the first sentence, and 1…

Ahh, I didn't realize "outlet" referred to just the socket, thanks. In that case, isn't the GP describing pretty much a level 2 AC charger? Those don't come with cables (at least here).

120V outlet is level 1.

Outlet is aka a receptacle. In this case a NEMA 5-15r.

Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong

#180

Post by LooseMarmoset »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #155
LooseMarmoset wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is a neat trick. > As of July 2024, eight states had opened their first NEVI-funded stations, totaling 61 ports, and powered thousands of charging sessions. As of FY 2024, $2.385 billion had been allocated from the funding. For 61 ports across 4 (four) charging locations. $39M PER PORT. This, per NEVI's own numbers: https://driveelectric.gov/files/nevi-annual-report-2023-2024... I would sure like to see a b…

Has it been spent? Allocation is not spending.

allocated == money handed out

in accounting rules, it's spent money. the notes say that 61 ports have been built from that allocated money.

like I said, I would love to see the cost breakdown. is all that allocated money spent? are some projects still being constructed? three years seems like a long time to get 61 ports when you allocated $2B.

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