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Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

estonianworld.com

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Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#21

Post by nuclear_eclipse »

henrikschroder wrote: post #20
firefoxman1 wrote: post #5

What happened to hydrogen cars? I was expecting them to come out on top, but it seems electric charging stations are growing much faster than hydrogen refill stations.

Burning hydrogen is but one step in the whole "well to wheels" chain that's needed to get your car moving. That single step appears very appealing - it turns into water! - but all the other steps along the way are extremely difficult. How much energy can a car have with a "full tank of hydrogen", and what would that tank look like? Remember, a bucket of gasoline contains more hydrogen than a bucket of liquid hydrogen…

The benefit of hydrogen IMO is not needing to mine tons of potentially hazardous or toxic minerals to make giant swaths of batteries, not to mention that you can actually fill up the fuel tanks just like you would with gasoline, rather than needing to wait 30-60 minutes for a "supercharger", and the overall range of existing hydrogen vehicles is generally on par with or better than the range of gas-powered vehicles.

They've already "solved" most of the problems you mention; the "problems" are with scaling that sort of infrastructure. Scaling EV chargers is just much simpler.

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#22

Post by jnsaff2 »

relix wrote: post #3

On the highways, every 60km a ChaDeMo quickcharger. €18.000 credit if your car is 100% EV. I just wish Tesla sold some here.

I spoke to Tesla about this, they were not interested. Said I'd have to sell a few Roadsters to demonstrate interest.

Mind you I was talking to their sales team in London, who probably needed to offload unsold Roadsters.

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#24

Post by jusben1369 »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #22
relix wrote: post #3

On the highways, every 60km a ChaDeMo quickcharger. €18.000 credit if your car is 100% EV. I just wish Tesla sold some here.

I spoke to Tesla about this, they were not interested. Said I'd have to sell a few Roadsters to demonstrate interest. Mind you I was talking to their sales team in London, who probably needed to offload unsold Roadsters.

Ha! Perhaps try calling them back on the 1st of the month rather than the 27th when they're trying to make quota :-)

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#25

Post by brownbat »

newbie12 wrote: post #9
tadfisher wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Aren't coal-fired plants more efficient than internal combustion engines?

Not even close. First of all, mining and burning coal is far worse for the environment than oil. Mining is destructive, impacts water tables, and burning coal produces lots of toxic byproducts like mercury and other heavy metals. Further, there is significant loss/waste as you push electricity across the grid. There's no environmental case for EV-only cars, unless you are powering the grid with solar, wind, or hydro.

> Further, there is significant loss/waste as you push electricity across the grid.

Trucking hydrocarbons around to thousands of endpoints doesn't actually compare favorably to line loss.

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#27

Post by prostoalex »

vacri wrote: post #14

I do have to note that Estonia with its 165 chargers is curiously only as wide as the distance between the 'superchargers' in the recent Tesla debacle...

Surprised Vatican hasn't beaten them to a punch with a nationwide charging network, but with their upper management exodus I guess that slipped on the priority list.

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#28

Post by pm90 »

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #21
henrikschroder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burning hydrogen is but one step in the whole "well to wheels" chain that's needed to get your car moving. That single step appears very appealing - it turns into water! - but all the other steps along the way are extremely difficult. How much energy can a car have with a "full tank of hydrogen", and what would that tank look like? Remember, a bucket of gasoline contains more hydrogen than a bucket of liquid hydrogen…

The benefit of hydrogen IMO is not needing to mine tons of potentially hazardous or toxic minerals to make giant swaths of batteries, not to mention that you can actually fill up the fuel tanks just like you would with gasoline, rather than needing to wait 30-60 minutes for a "supercharger", and the overall range of existing hydrogen vehicles is generally on par with or better than the range of gas-powered vehicles.…

Once the number of EV's get high enough, we can have recycling stations for them. Another benefit of having an Electric car is that you don't care about the source that produces the electricity. So tomorrow when cold fusion is feasible, we just build a bunch of them and power all our vehicles with the electricity that they produce.

However, I am interested in hydrogen as a fuel from a long term perspective. In the future when we have vehicles that need to run on other planets, presumably hydrogen will be the fuel; however I'm not sure those engines will be IC; maybe miniaturized jet engines? :) edit: probably not, since jet engines need oxygen which may not be available on other planets

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#29

Post by anonymousDan »

The construction of the fast-charging network was financed by using the funds received pursuant to a CO2 emission quota sales agreement entered into between the Republic of Estonia and Mitsubishi Corporation.

Anyone understand what this sentence from the article means?

Re: Estonia becomes the first to open a nationwide electric vehicle charging network

#30

Post by pm90 »

henrikschroder wrote: post #20
firefoxman1 wrote: post #5

What happened to hydrogen cars? I was expecting them to come out on top, but it seems electric charging stations are growing much faster than hydrogen refill stations.

Burning hydrogen is but one step in the whole "well to wheels" chain that's needed to get your car moving. That single step appears very appealing - it turns into water! - but all the other steps along the way are extremely difficult. How much energy can a car have with a "full tank of hydrogen", and what would that tank look like? Remember, a bucket of gasoline contains more hydrogen than a bucket of liquid hydrogen…

>Remember, a bucket of gasoline contains more hydrogen than a bucket of liquid hydrogen

I don't know what you mean by "contains more hydrogen", but if we look at the calorific value (energy per unit weight) then hydrogen has almost 3 times that of gasoline [1]

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_of_combustion#Heat_of_comb...

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