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The Quest For an EV Fast-Charge Standard
An anonymous reader writes "This article explores one of the stumbling blocks currently facing EV adoption: 'Sure, there are already public charging stations in service, and new ones are coming online daily. But those typically take several hours to fully replenish a battery. As a result, the ability for quick battery boosts — using a compatible direct current fast charger, the Leaf can refill to 80 percent capacity in 30 minutes — could potentially become an important point of differentiation among electric models. But the availability of fast charging points has in part been held up by the lack of an agreement among automakers on a universal method for fast charging — or even on a single electrical connector.'"
I think some of the battery arrays should be able to pulled out of the car and swapped in with a charged battery array. This process could happen in under a minute.
Someone is working on that.
I might be a little picky about swapping my brand new cells with an unknown station's current cell stock.
Treat them like gas canisters then. The canister remains the property of the company and all you do it buy the contents. The company is responsible for ensuring the canister is functional, safe etc. If the battery develops a fault - you can simply swap it free of charge for a new one. Obviously you are paying for this in part of the fee when you pick up a fresh battery, but it saves having to horde your own precious batteries.
To be honest I am surprised that the industry didn't do this from the get go since such schemes (as mentioned above) already exist all over the globe for many things. All there needs to be are a few agreed standards on size etc. Again, just like gas canisters really.
If one company makes a better battery that can fit into the same volume, then they can compete. heck, such standardisation could stimulate a new battery market.
Ultracapacitors currently only have about a tenth of the energy density of a battery and whether they can be improved more than two or three times while maintaining reasonable costs is far from certain.
Other than that, they're all good. Their efficiency is impressive (about 95% of electricity will end up in the motor, unlike batteries which can convert as much as 50% of it to heat during charging/discharging) and their working life makes them very attractive - current batteries aren't going to last more than a few years (much less if you're continually quick-charging them) and the e-waste millions of car batteries could produce down the line is huge.
Maybe we'll just have to get used to the idea of having a big chunk of the car space dedicated to the capacitor.
No sig today...