Buried deep in the article, what the clickbait headline alludes to: Car chargers are too complicated and expensive. We can make them simpler and cheaper while keeping them safe, which would let us build many more charging stations.
We're Charging Our Cars Wrong
91–100 of 213 posts
Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dictatorships don't care if things are practical.
Battery swapping isn't some top-down authoritarian decision made by the CCP and forced into the Chinese society. Nio is just a company that's providing a much needed solution to this problem.
I agree, but there are aggressive subsidies around electric vehicles and general graft. Similar things happen in most countries but in dictatorships things can go to absurd levels when it aligns with the current policy.
Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong
#93Require a coin-operated 120V outlet with gfci and accessible way to reset the breaker for every two parking spots, everywhere. Many benefits: 1. Everywhere you go, you know there'll be somewhere to charge overnight. 2. It's the cheapest per installed spot, by far, allowing way more locations. 3. Renters can safely by an electric car and have home charging. 4. Coin-op 120V are far more robust than cables with valuable…
What's a 'coin'?
"coin operated" like a vending machine, with what ever payment processing they usually use.
Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of projects were planned to start this year. It takes a while to get all the surveys and permits.
>It takes a while to get all the surveys and permits. Yes, that's exactly the problem, an over regulated permitting regime. If we are in a climate emergency then we should treat it as such, which means that if the Federal government can't overrule local permitting restrictions, they should prioritize funding to states that are willing to relax permitting requirements and get shovels in the ground.
Feds could/should be reforming NEPA.
Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong
#95It would be nice if instead of the fast charging problem the focus would be shifted to standardized battery packs, that can be field replaced. I don't really want to own 50-100kwh battery. I just want to use the charge in it and happy to pay for that.
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.
NIO is still working on this and expanding outside China.
They sell a tiny amount of cars still, but hit 500k total production last year, which is not insignificant.
Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong
#96It would be nice if instead of the fast charging problem the focus would be shifted to standardized battery packs, that can be field replaced. I don't really want to own 50-100kwh battery. I just want to use the charge in it and happy to pay for that.
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
Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Realistically, this is a pipe dream. China has had a few that are trying this NIO being the most well known. To me, it's not really viable. The 3 main problems are - The extra costs in a vehicle to allow swapping within say 5 minutes is non-trivial. The physical space required to house X number of batteries ready, X number swap ready is a lot at any moderate volume. Last, Batteries are not universal and now you're co…
> NIO might do it The main obstacle is battery swap is capex heavy, hence PRC might do it, but most other places, less likely. It's pretty easy to extrapolate PRC auto parking / self driving cars sneaking out during low congestion to hit their battery swap queue. But that is a fairly significant logistics / infra issue when most countries would be lucky to get sufficient fast charging piles in place. Battery volume i…
NIO has a battery swap station in my city in Trondheim, Norway. It has not been that popular. You might say that installing a fast charger is complex and costly, but a battery swapping station is also very costly and complex. The difference is that you can put out more fast charging stations at various locations. This means that you often have to choose between driving 20 minutes to a battery swapping station to do a 5 minute swap, or drive 5 minutes to do a 20 minute fast charge. The added complexity of a swapping station just is not worth it.
Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
We also require arc-fault breakers in the electrical code for new construction despite even their first-order effects being negative. We're drowning in over-regulation and the most prominent people pretending to care aren't going after the real problems.
Arc-fault protections are required primarily due to lobbying by receptacle and panel manufactures, not because they provide a real benefit. The number of people injured due to arc faults is vanishingly low, and a better solution to the majority of applications is to replace the NEMA 5-15 receptacle with almost literally any other (or at least improve upon the design). A more fitting comparison might be ground-fault c…
The car can't have the ground-fault circuit; it must be in the stationary part.
The article does point out they believe non-galvanically-isolated can be as safe in practical usage; similar to half of Japan outlets are all protected by GFCI and don't use a ground, yet have a similar safety record. The authors built a system using the motor as an inductor and the inverter as a step-down buck regulator to charge the batteries, back in the 90s; they know what they're talking about.
> Engineering safety regulations and guidelines are written in blood. Anyone who doesn’t understand that is either ignorant of the dangers involved, or narcissistic to the point of believing they are immune to danger.
Not sure how you square this with your opening paragraph.
Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
L1 charging isn't really appropriate anywhere except at home or something like an airport parking lot where cars may be plugged in for a significant amount of time.. like 24h+. It's very slow.
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.
Re: We're Charging Our Cars Wrong
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
We also require arc-fault breakers in the electrical code for new construction despite even their first-order effects being negative. We're drowning in over-regulation and the most prominent people pretending to care aren't going after the real problems.
Construction with decades old regulations and fast paced technology is a pretty different environment from electric vehicle development where regulators are (usually) actively trying to make things easier.
Explain the bullshit CCS plug then. It's all protectionism and cronyism.