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

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

#251
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd have to be a bit ignorant of very recent history to think that America is some cesspool of lack of innovation in the electric car industry. They invented it, despite there being no competition at the time.

The first automobiles were electric and they weren't American: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl... The most important component in an EV is the battery. The lithium ion battery made electric cars practical. So you could say Sony invented the electric car industry by being the first to commercialize lithium ion batteries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_lithium-ion_bat...

I suppose so. By that logic you could say that whoever invented the wheel invented the electric car industry. But I'd say it's definitely, overwhelmingly Tesla.

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

#252
post #235

The fundamental problem of high-wattage charges (say 500kW), isn't to deliver power from the charger to the car, but that there needs to be crazy amounts of grid capacity to support them. A house has like 10kW peak sustained power consumption (an apt even less), which it rarely reaches, so a park of these fast chargers need the same infrastructure as a small town. These loads are so huge Cities like Beijing have stro…

Sorry, but I think you're wrong on your concern: in China they specifically fix this issue with buffer batteries. From grid perspective, charging is no different than with regular, slow charging stations. You can still limit their capacity (as in cars that can be charged per 24h), the difference here is you can charge quickly. This is a good compromise for the time being while the grid catches up with demand.

Same thing in the US. Tesla does exactly that at their supercharger sites. Probably not all of them, but definitely some of them.

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

#253
post #123
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…

> On long distance trips I spend 1 hour charging for every 2 hours driving In Spain, I take ~600km trips every once in a while. I just need to charge once in the middle of the trip, in a super-charger that is. And the charge is 25min maximum. Your experience varies is basically opposite from my experience. Your situation is probably influenced, indeed, by the poor choice of EVs you purchased (range is the most import…

If an Ioniq 5 is a poor choice, I would love to know what a good choice is. Its energy usage is comparable to the vast majority of SUVs and it can charge at up to 227kW. The lack of good fast charger is certainly a difference compared to many areas.

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

#254
post #201
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…

In remote areas, sudden load from fast chargers can cause a bit of trouble with the rest of the local grid. It may be that those rest stops can't yet support a fast charger without upgrading their transformers.

That's not nearly the problem that people think it is. Industrial and farm operations often use that much.

Upgrading is the problem though. Many of these stations were installed when 50kW was normal. With no other competition nearby there is no incentive to replace everything. It would mean new transformers and potentially even new lines.

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

#255
post #208

Gas pumps in the US are artificially capped at 10 gallons per minute, and a gallon of gasoline is about 33kWh, so petrol cars in the US “charge” at 330kWh/min ~= 20MW. But most cars only turn about a third of that into motion, so let’s say 7MW equivalent? While BYD’s 1.5MW is amazing, it seems a stretch to call it “almost as fast as gas pumps.” Diesel pumps for trucks typically pump much faster too. And diesel is nea…

It’s the same order of magnitude, allowing people to mentally budget zero time for a charge.

You're right that it seems close enough, but only as long as we're talking about the time it takes a single vehicle to "fill up". Taking 2 minutes vs 8 minutes to fill up your car doesn't matter to you personally, but it is a significant difference to those installing and operating the fill up infrastructure since it takes 4 times as many charging points as it does gas pumps to serve the same volume of customers in a given period of time.

In a lot of cases that probably won't matter since chargers can be installed in more places than gas pumps and for gas stations that serve mainly local customers I'd expect demand for an equivalent charging station to be lower since some people will charge at home at least some of the time. But things like highway rest stops could be more of a challenge since you'd expect customer volume for EV charging to be similar to the demand for fuel so you'll need more charging stations at each stop to handle the increased time it takes each customer.

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

#256
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…

Several people have said that they get much more range and charge much faster. I'm quite interested to know what your situation is: what is the efficiency of your vehicle in kWh/100km or Wh/km? At what rate are you able to charge with nearby chargers? How dense is the population of chargers in your area?

I'm aware that my situation is far from ideal, maybe even far from normal - I have no way to know. What I do know is that this is common for all of Canada outside of the major cities, and to the best of my knowledge is common for much of the USA too. This is a huge market to be left out if this is the EV experience for them. It's not sufficient if EVs only work in specific areas that are densely populated and have ample infrastructure. It becomes a chicken-and-egg situation where nobody wants an EV because the infrastructure sucks, but nobody wants to invest in infrastructure because there aren't many EVs to have as customers.

Here are the numbers for my 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5. It has a 77kWh battery, though only nominally - only 68kWh is actually usable. On long trips I will charge up to 90% and drive down to 20%, so that leaves me with 70% of the available capacity for use, or 47.6kWh. On the highway going 100-110km/h I spend about 20kWh/100km during the summer, 25kWh/100km during the winter (it gets down to -30C and you have to heat the cabin). That gives me about 240km range in the summer, 190km range in the winter. Since chargers are few and far between around here I usually have to stop every 100-150km to charge - chargers are typically that far apart on the highway.

At most my vehicle can charge up to 227kW. If I could get that consistently I would charge in 12.6 minutes. In practice I don't get anywhere near that. As I stated before, most chargers are 50-100kW in my area. There are some as high as 175kW, but they are in remote areas where chargers were only installed recently; all of the chargers along the main highways are older infrastructure that has been around for a few years and they are only 50kW. Thankfully, I actually get a consistent 50kW from those regardless of charge and temperature. That takes almost exactly an hour to charge. Going 100km/h with a range of ~200km that puts me at 1 hour of charging every 2 hours of driving.

Since the Tesla Supercharger network has opened up to non-Tesla vehicles, things have gotten a bit better, but only modestly. Despite the Superchargers being rated for 250kW, they run at 400V where my vehicle is on an 800V architecture. As a result I can only pull ~97kW from a Supercharger. This reduces the charging time to 30 minutes, which is manageable, but still a noticeable inconvenience. On an 8 hour drive this adds up to 2 hours of charging time, extending an 8 hour trip to 10 hours. I think you'll agree that's a significant increase.

In a nearby major city they did recently install 350kW chargers so I tried those out. Unfortunately, I happened to be travelling there on a cold winter day. I struggled to get up to 180kW, spending most of the time around 120kW. The battery preconditioning on this vehicle leaves much to be desired and it won't even turn on until you are within 50km of a stop on the nav (no manual override), despite it taking well over 30 minutes to get the battery up to temperature. The charging rate is severely limited below 0C and doesn't come up to full until about 20C. 20C is the high on a typical summer day around here; spring and autumn hover around 10C-15C. This means you only get full charging speeds in ideal conditions; anything else is noticeably worse.

For efficiency, my experienced 20kWh/100km of pure highway driving seems to be around average. EV-database.org lists the average WLTP (a blend of city and highway driving) as 190Wh/km, or 19kWh/100km. The Ioniq 5 AWD is listed at 180Wh/km, which is similar to my experience when combining both city and highway. The best are the Tesla Model 3 RWD at 130-140Wh/km which is quite impressive. Other small coupes have numbers about that around 150-160. The Ford Mach-e AWD is also common around here and comes out to 202Wh/100km, so notably higher. So other than comparing it to the most efficient RWD sedan, comparing it to other AWD SUVs it is quite normal. Around here, most people drive AWD SUVs or trucks because winter can be nasty. (You can drive FWD sedans - I did for 20 years - but most people get AWD SUVs or trucks if they can afford it because it's much better.)

So this is my experience. I hope it explains why I say that charging still needs to improve in many ways. Different vehicles will have different efficiency. Different areas will have different weather and availability of chargers. Both seem to be getting steadily better with time. But outside of ideal conditions, charging is still a serious downside for many people and it is a blocker to adoption to many. Even at my office several people have recently purchased EVs but had to swallow the pill that long trips were going to suck. Until consistently good efficiency and fast charging become widespread, EVs will remain a niche in many areas where the downsides are simply too great.

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of use cases of EVs can charge at home/work/shop, don't need separate infrastructure, logistics and supply chains for delivery of electricity. There is a very small fraction of EV trips that need charging on the go. The vast majority of trips are under 3 (or 5 miles).

> 99.9% of use cases of EVs can charge at home/work/shop This is yet again a very US-centric view where you assume people are living in house with a garage.

In Europe, I live in an apartment with an garage in the basement with EV chargers. Not sure why you you think it's an US-centric view.

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

#258
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a special excise tax on gasoline for highway and road maintenance. EVs don't pay that tax because they use normal electricity. So Alberta introduced a $200 EV fee to match the average revenue from the excise tax. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-electric-veh...

It sounds like the more accurate framing, then, is "I'm not getting a tax break for having an EV". Which is disappointing sure, but not outrageous either.

That's the framing but it's also misleading. We are being charged more than a typical ICE driver would pay in gasoline tax. It's also listed as being for road maintenance, but in fact it goes into the general revenue, so it has nothing to do with road maintenance.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is not paying our fair share, the issue is paying more than we would if we drove gas vehicles. They assume we drove X miles (I’m in Washington state) and that is not even close to what I actually drive (it’s much less, I could game it if I drove more than the C miles they compute the fee on, but I don’t need to drive that much).

> paying more than we would if we drove gas vehicles The 6 people driving EVs in Alberta/Saskatchewan are paying more than $7 trillion in taxes[1]? I find that hard to believe! [1] Fossil-fuel subsidies surged to a record $7 trillion last year: https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel...

Are you seriously comparing the number of people? That's silly. It's the amount paid per person. You pay so much in gas, I pay so much for my EV. For the same amount of driving, I am paying more than you do. That's the problem.

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

#260
post #253
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On long distance trips I spend 1 hour charging for every 2 hours driving In Spain, I take ~600km trips every once in a while. I just need to charge once in the middle of the trip, in a super-charger that is. And the charge is 25min maximum. Your experience varies is basically opposite from my experience. Your situation is probably influenced, indeed, by the poor choice of EVs you purchased (range is the most import…

If an Ioniq 5 is a poor choice, I would love to know what a good choice is. Its energy usage is comparable to the vast majority of SUVs and it can charge at up to 227kW. The lack of good fast charger is certainly a difference compared to many areas.

Only the Long Range version of the Ioniq5 has decent range IMO. And BTW, the fact that it's an SUV is precisely a downside about it; smaller cars would have obviously more efficiency.
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