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How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

wired.com

171–180 of 286 posts

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#171

If you can get a megawatt into the car batteries without setting them on fire, that's game over for petrol cars. And for the other electric vehicles that haven't worked it out yet. Only reason I'm on petrol is unwillingness to wait an hour to recharge the car. The rest of the infra is fine if that can be done. Array of batteries and/or capacitors at the supply point and draw continuously from the grid. Most entertain…

Agreed. Right now EVs are almost strictly superior for day to day usage (only real downside is that the higher weight goes through tires faster). But for road trips, combustion vehicles blow them out of the water. If I'm taking a 12 hour road trip, no way am I going to take an EV if that means I will have to spend an extra hour or two charging it.

My wife has an EV and it's genuinely really nice. But until they get the charging experience on par with the speed of filling up a gas tank, we will always have one of our two cars be a combustion car, to give us that extra flexibility for long trips.

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like the US hasn't proped up our own industry to push out competition and dominate global markets. Nope, definitely never did that.

There’s controlling competition in your own country and dominating global markets. Nothing wrong with either. It’s not like it’s not happening anywhere else in the world.

It just makes me laugh when people complain about China propping up it's industry to complete globally. The US has overthrown governments to protect its geopolitical priorities.

I've got no love for China, but I'm not gonna shed a tear for a large corporations crying over someone else having an unfair advantage.

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#173
post #3

More importantly, the US has banned these cars in America to give protection to american manufacturers.

Definitely not bc these brands are being propped up by their government in order to flood world markets. Everyone should be able to make a luxury 30k vehicle sustainably

The North American car market is more subsidized than any other. It is why it is so uncompetitive.

North America imports cars in large quantities from every car making region in the world (that is not banned). What parts of the world sell high volumes of NA vehicles? They are not banned, just unwanted.

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#175
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually can breath in "large cities", unless you have a pre-existing health condition. Otherwise, all the people in those "large cities" would already be dead, and they'd cease being "large cities". Or at least, populated ones. "Carbon emissions" is a human rights issue, just as 1000 other things are. Whether "reducing" carbon emissions is determined to be a right is not black and white as of yet. Regardless, le…

>You actually can breath in "large cities", unless you have a pre-existing health condition. Did you know that some people have health conditions?

[deleted]

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#176

This [0] is the actual (good) news, linked from the article. [0] https://www.techradar.com/vehicle-tech/hybrid-electric-vehic...

With 5 minute charging, suddenly conventional gas stations can be used for EVs just as they are for ICE. Nice thing about 'plugging in' as opposed to 'filling up' is that a charging car can be left completely unattended (while you go to pay, get a coffee, or whatever). Seems that the technological barriers have been overcome, now we just need to build out the infrastructure - which could be as simple as retooling exi…

An EV is in digital communication with the charging station. Why would you “go pay”? You don’t “go pay” at a Tesla Supercharger.

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#177
post #96

I wonder if Gil Tal has ever used an EV as their daily vehicle. I have had two EVs in the last three years - a Kona and an IONIQ 5. I have greatly enjoyed them both. But one thing was a downside that I just had to accept: poor charging. Granted, I live in the Canadian Prairies full of small towns a fair distance apart. And it's not exactly progressive - I'm actually being taxed for owning an EV. The charging infrastr…

I have also had two EVs and what you are saying does not resonate.

I may be in warmer weather but I would say I probably charge 15 minutes to go 250 km or more. Given that the family also wants to stop to eat, go to the bathroom, or just get out for a bit, it mostly feels like we are stopping when we want to and not for much longer. Typically, stretches of driving are longer than 250 km. We can go over 400 km at a time (but rarely do).

To be fair though, we have great charging infrastructure. There is going to be fast charging in the next town pretty reliably.

At home, day to day, we charge at home and the car is basically magic. You drive as much as you like every day and never think about “fuel” at all. The thing just works. Going back to the non-EV SUV is daily “range anxiety” as it always seems like I am late for something and wondering if I have enough fuel to make it without having to stop.

Don’t get me wrong. Faster charging would be great and I am not saying we have never wanted to leave 10 minutes sooner from a charging station. But I have not found it anywhere near as bad as you are saying, even now.

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#178
post #2

Is this how the US falls behind? Missing technological improvements due to blind disagreements with Chinese/etc, combined with inability to update infrastructure? (Unclear how/why but datacenters being stood up so quickly seems like an exception to US’s bad construction)

It’s not even “falling behind”, it’s willfully jamming heads in sand and actively blocking innovation so the legacy US OEMs can fall further behind and become less relevant.

The country is doing the same thing on multiple fronts as fast as possible

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#179
post #54

Although the thought of getting an electric car has passed through my mind on a few occasions, I'm not 100% familiar with the intricate technical details. (for some reason, the tax incentives where I live are still in favor of continuing with the small petrol car I have. Taxes are primarily a function of weight in the Netherlands, and anything besides a lightweight Dacia Spring would imply significantly higher monthl…

Research on the current EVs shows that they degrade by on average 2.3 % of original capacity a year, but there is a strong dependency on how much the vehicle is used and how often it is DC fast charged, i.e. there is time based degradation and usage based degradation. Low use vehicles have degradation of 1.5 % a year, heavily used vehicles mostly slow charged had degradation of 2.2 % a year and heavily used vehicles…

> the article also notes that the degradation is not linear

Battery degradation is affected by multiple processes which respond primarily to different factors, such as heat, cycles or just time.

This[1] paper goes into some detail about that, and also notes that the typical way batteries were evaluated for longevity in the lab significantly overestimates the degradation compared to batteries used with real-world dynamic loads.

Some quotes:

We found that dynamic cycling enhances battery lifetime by up to 38%. Moreover, we determined the window for the tip-over C-rate that balances time-induced ageing and cycling ageing for this commercially relevant chemistry to be approximately between 0.3C and 0.5C, in the range of realistic average C-rates.

Figure 4a,b illustrates that the degradation is initially dominated by the loss of lithium inventory (QLi). [...] However, as the batteries age, additional degradation mechanisms become important. On the one hand, the positive electrode capacity loss dominates and is impacted by the rest fraction at high SOC [...]

On the other hand, the negative electrode capacity loss (which is less than the positive electrode capacity loss) is impacted by the DoD [...]

Figure 4d shows that, in particular at low average C-rates, when the DoD is beyond 85%, the negative electrode capacity degrades more rapidly, while cells avoiding deep discharge have more preserved negative electrode capacities, in agreement with Fig. 3e. In addition, the DoD has no impact on the positive electrode capacity (Fig. 4e).

SOC = State Of Charge

DoD = Depth of Discharge

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01675-8

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#180
post #3

More importantly, the US has banned these cars in America to give protection to american manufacturers.

During the Cold War would have imported cars from the USSR if they were better

Do we want to strength economically an authoritarian country who is opposed to Western aims across the world?

Of course not. That would be shooting ourselves in the foot.

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