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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."
We need better education systems for our children to foster American puns so that we can compete with European and Asian puns.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
I went through this for a long time. I'm done.
Many newer phones use a USB-mini or USB-micro port for charging. Not all of them, of course, but you could shop for phones that have it, and vote with your dollars.
My Blackberry uses a USB-mini, which means I can charge it off my laptop, and car chargers are just a few bucks. USB charging capability was also one of the major criteria when we shopped for a new phone for my wife (one of the disqualifying points for an iPhone). Her phone also uses USB-mini. My bluetooth headset uses USB-micro, so I keep an adapter near the charging shelf so I can charge that when I need to off the same adapter. The only oddball device is my wife's iPod Touch.
As a bonus, the USB-mini port allows us to:
- Connect the phone to computers at the same time the phone is charging, on the same cable. This is both for Internet access (tethering) and for copying music, pictures, etc to and from the phones (USB mass media support on the SD chips we put into the phones).
- Plug the phone into her car stereo (which has a standard USB port) and, since both phones support mass media (like a USB thumb drive), listen to music from our phones. Also while the phone is charging.
Overall, I'd say next time you shop for a phone, make sure it has a standard connector that can be used for simultaneous power and data. USB's about the only game in that particular town right now, though if you want to go all-Apple the "Apple Connector" might be your chosen standard.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
>20 minute commute? What metropolitan area to you live in?
I live in a city with 1 million people, and my commute is under 20 minutes. Ten of those minutes are spent driving through the campus at 20 mph.
I used to live in a city with a metro population of 2 million (and huge traffic problems, due to it being on a peninsula with two bridges -- no, not San Francisco, but the traffic patterns were similar), and I had a 15 minute commute.
Living far from work is a choice, one which I choose not to make. You can, too.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Maybe they quick charge a supercapacitor, and then let the supercap slow charge the battery?
That's mostly a sourcing problem. If you only have a 20Amp source, you can't ever charge at a rate greater than 20Amps. The thing is (and this varies quite a bit in the specifics with battery type), as a rule of thumb for the first 80% you can charge at extremely high charge rates. This is because internal resistance builds as you put charge into the battery.
You've probably seen 15minute quick chargers for AA NiMH and NiCAD batteries. These charge the first 80% or so with extremely high currents and then drop down to some fraction of C after that point as it builds towards full charge. Lithium based batteries can generally sustain even higher initial charge currents than Nickel based batteries, but are more prone to explosion if you don't monitor changes in heat and internal resistance accurately. So the 15minutes quoted by the OP is totally realistic if the charge station could meet the current demands (ie, is at an electrical substation, has battery or super cap packs charged during off-hours on site, etc), but there really is no reason for the OP to have said 15+ instead of 3+, 60-, or "time it takes to charge".
Keep in mind, the 3.5hours you quote for Tesla is only on 240V service at 20A. 120V service at 20A takes 7-8hours. 240V at 40A or 440V at 20A might be closer to 2hours. And that's for the Tesla, which has a pretty wide range. A light weight commuter electric might only have 40-60miles of charge, so a full charge at standard 240V might only be an hour, meaning high current quick charges could be even faster.
Gotta disagree here. While I've never owned a Porsche or a Corvette, I have owned a big bore sports motorcycle with similar or better performance.
Sure it was fun for a while, but the need to watch the speedo everywhere I went to keep my license wore thin. It was frustrating to have so much power on tap and never being able to use it. The only plus in traffic was that lane changing was "point and shoot".
Compare/Contrast with my Honda CB200 that was small, light and nimble, but you needed to use what power it had to keep up with the traffic. Now that was fun!
Back on topic - a small electric vehicle with responsive brakes and steering and maximum torque available from zero up has the potential to be a lot of fun - even in traffic.
As long as it has enough charge to get to work and back.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Power is usually limited so that the battery does not blowup. Batteries like to be slow-charged at 1/10th C over several hours. Faster charging will work, but it typically damages the internal components and causes premature death, while the "15 minute" charging suggested by the article would make most batteries explode.
Which makes me wonder - How on earth did the Japanese develop 15 minute charging? That's a LOT of energy to dump into a car.
Most of the fast vehicle chargers I have seen use a coolant (usually water) that circulates through the battery pack during charging. Batteries can be harmed when charged quickly because charging is not 100% efficient due to the internal resistance of the batteries. The waste energy is heat that is usually just radiated away in a normal slow charge but can build up enough in a fast charge to damage your batteries. Cooling the pack using an external mechanism is perfect for this application. For normal charging you can just plug in the electrical connection, or for quick charging you can have 2 extra coolant lines on the connector to pump away excess heat.
Enigma