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Japan To Standardize Electric Vehicle Chargers
JoshuaInNippon writes "Four major Japanese car manufacturers and one power company (Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, and Tokyo Electric) have teamed up with over 150 business and government entities in Japan to form a group to promote standardization in electric vehicle chargers and charging stations. The group hopes to leverage current Japanese electric vehicle technology and spread standardization throughout the country, as well as aim towards worldwide acceptance of their standardized charger model. In a very Japanese manner, the group has decided to call themselves 'CHAdeMO,' a play on the English words 'charge' and 'move,' as well as a Japanese pun that encourages tea-drinking while waiting the 15+ minutes it will take to charge one's vehicle battery."
They do have a standard:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/09/10/24/033257/Universal-Phone-Charger-Approved-By-UN-Body
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Actually, you already have one: SAE J1772 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772 ).
Which is going to be used in GM Volt and Nissan Leaf.
We Americans need to come up with our own, incompatible, standard for charging vehicles.
No problem dude we already have at least two incompatible charger standards.
SAE J1772 and IEC 62196
The SAE standard is supported by all the domestic manufacturers, AND THE JAPANESE whom supposedly, according to the article, want yet another standard. Probably SONY wants a battery charger with a root kit or something like that.
The IEC standard, which apparently no one wants to use, is basically the SAE on steroids with a bunch more control/DRM pins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
America should let the free market come up with at least 3 competing, mutually incompatible charging standards.
After all, as Grace Hopper would say, the wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
Ezekiel 23:20
My dad thinks an electric car could be powered by tying a generator to the wheels, and therefore never need to charge the battery, because the spinning wheels would keep it charged.
I wasted about a half hour of my life explaining why this won't work (because more energy is used moving the car than recovered by the wheel-generators), but when he started getting angry and insisting it's a conspiracy by the oil companies, I decided I'd had enough. Let the idiot continue to believe stupid stuff. Or put another way: Let sleeping dragons lie.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The average commute in Rochester NY is 20 minutes for 750 thousand people. Mine is 15 minutes without snow. I work inside city limits, and live in a relative country setting. Once you get outside the major cities commutes fall pretty quickly.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Because he's wrong?
Charging stations in Japan will be very common. Some of the convenience store chains such as Lawson which has over 9,500 stores in Japan, are planning on having charging stations at their stores which have parking lots. So are supermarkets. The charging stations won't be limited to current gasoline stations. Eventually many places where you park will have charging facilities so there will be little waiting time for someone to charge up as happens at gas stations. And unlike gas stations where you go specifically to gas up, many of the charging facilities in Japan will be at locations where you plan on spending time shopping or doing something. You won't just be waiting for your car to charge. This is why Japan is working on a standard now.
How on earth did the Japanese develop 15 minute charging? That's a LOT of energy to dump into a car.
To put this in perspective of what we are accustomed to:
1 gallon of gas =~ 120MJ
Average gas pump =~ 5-10 gpm
120MJ * 7.5 gpm * (1min/60sec) = 15 Megawatts
To put 15 Megawatts in perspective, the Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant, one of the biggest plants feeding the Eastern Seaboard, pumps out 2.4GW...which is less than the combined power of the gas pumps within a 5-mile radius
Basically, we are used to "charging" our cars really, REALLY fast. Attempting to replicate this performance with electricity is an extremely difficult problem.
Gasoline has two huge advantages over batteries:
1) Safety: untrained users operate quick-connect, megawatt-range power couplers with nearly negligible accident rates. Gasoline is ludicrously safe to handle for its power density.
2) Weight: gasoline doesn't need a oxidizer tank. 1kg of gasoline uses ~3kg of oxidizer. Gas vehicles use air. EVs have to lug both reactants around. In current EVs, ~20-25% of the battery capacity is used solely for storing the energy needed to transport the batteries, compared to about 1-2% for gasoline.