Auto Makers Announce Electric Car Charging Standard

Overly Critical Guy writes "Auto makers are launching a universal EV charger that charges an electric vehicle in 15 to 20 minutes. The standard, called Combined Charging System, has been approved by the Society of Automotive Engineers and ACEA, the European association of vehicle manufacturers, as the standard for fast-charging electric vehicles."

Comments

Define "charges"

[MrEricSir]

I could claim that my phone "charges" in 30 seconds, and I'd be correct. Of course, it only charges ~1% in 30 seconds, so that's not very useful.

When they say this charger will charge your car in 15 minutes, I'm assuming they don't mean a full charge. But what DO they mean?

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Often when it comes to fast charge solutions, the quoted time is to reach 80% charge. The remaining 20% usually take a relatively long time because it's slower to charge a battery that's almost fully charged. You can see this in action pretty clearly if you own a laptop.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

It means the batteries will universally charge you for a new expensive replacement in 1.5 to 2 years deppending on how often you drive. Or something like that.

Re:Define "charges"

[gstrickler]

Valid question. But for something like the Volt, they only operate the battery from ~30% capacity to 80% capacity, which means you can fast charge a "full charge". Most batteries don't have to slow the charging until somewhere over 90% capacity.

Better question is how many KWh can it deliver in 15 mins? Since vehicle battery capacities vary significantly, that's the relevant question.

Re:Define "charges"

[caladine]

Well, they mean the system they're proposing will support charging your vehicle in as little as 15 minutes.
i.e. The connector supports lots of different fast-charging options ( 3 phase AC, High Voltage DC) and can handle the current required* to charge in 15 minutes.
*Naturally, YMMV - since you need to be able to source the current required, charging times are dependent upon battery size, etc.

Re:Define "charges"

[tftp]

Better question is how many KWh can it deliver in 15 mins?

Depends on the power available to the charger. For example, Volt's battery is about 16 kWh. If it is used by 2/3 (10 kWh) then to charge it in 1/4 of an hour you need to apply 40 kW for 15 minutes.

When you fuel your gas car the average [chemical] power of the connection is 8 MW.

Re:Define "charges"

[gstrickler]

Which is exactly why I asked the question. How much power can it deliver in 15 minutes? It will have maximum voltage and amperage that the connection is capable of delivering, yielding a maximum power it can deliver, yielding a maximum energy it can deliver. And the commonly used unit for measuring electric energy is KWh.

So again, how many KWh can it deliver in 15 mins? Everything else is secondary.

Re:Define "charges"

[Pentium100]

When you fuel your gas car the average [chemical] power of the connection is 8 MW.

But that's the difference - it does not take as much power to pump the fuel to my car, so it can be done pretty fast (full tank from empty in a couple of minutes), it is even possible to do it manually (using a gas canister) if car ran out of gas before you reached the station.

Re:Define "charges"

[gstrickler]

8MW is a measure of power, but it's irrelevant to the question at hand. Gas powered vehicles waste most of the energy in gasoline. Heat, friction, conversion efficiency, etc. So the theoretical power flowing through a fuel hose has only an indirect relationship to the amount of power an EV will require to theoretically be able to "charge" as quickly as you can refuel.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

According to http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-57427823-54/automakers-heres-how-well-charge-evs-in-15-20-minutes/ it is rated at 500 volts at 200 amps. So the total KWh for fifteen minutes would be 25.

Re:Define "charges"

[tftp]

Gasoline engines of around 100 HP are at efficiency from 25% to 30%. An EV that is 100% efficient would need to transfer energy at the rate of about 2 MW to match the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels (and the fueling time.)

There is another way to calculate it. As we know,

The Volt is propelled by an electric motor with a peak output of 111 kW (149 hp) delivering 273 lb-ft (368 N-m) of torque. (Wikipedia.)

If we presume that this motor is sufficient for all modes of operation (probably true) then we can say that the car takes 110 kW to run at 80 mph. If we want the range to be 300 miles (which is on the lower edge of usual ranges but will certainly do for an EV) then we need to drive for 4 hours. This will consume 440 kWh.

If the charger can transfer 2 MW of power then the charging will take 13.2 minutes. This does not include issues of battery cooling that will certainly arise at that rate of charging.

Considering that 80 mph is not the most efficient speed, the actual energy needs and the charging time will be somewhat smaller - like 10 minutes - but I don't know how much energy it may take to run Volt at different speeds.

Re:Define "charges"

[JesseMcDonald]

All true, aside from the "irrelevant" part: power capacity is very nearly the only relevant factor in an electric-vehicle charging system, aside from the obvious safety considerations. Electric vehicles do indeed require somewhat less energy to travel a given distance. However, all those factors combined only make an ideal (100% efficient) electric vehicle about 3-5 times more energy-efficient (gasoline being somewhere between 20% and 30%), whereas the 8MW delivered by a gas pump is 200 times the GP's estimated 40 kW charging rate. Whether the target is 8MW or 1MW, we're still a long way from matching the recharge rate possible with chemical energy.

Re:Define "charges"

[icebike]

But it does allow people to start planning service stations with some confidence that they will be able to service the bulk of the fleet, instead of needing charge stations for each car.

The 15 to 20 minutes is a reasonable amount of time as well. By the time you refill your coffee, pump the bilge, buy the snack, your car would be ready.

This also allows restaurants and coffee shops on major highways to start installing charge stations in their lots. They sell you the juice while you are having your lunch. We could see gas stations disappear in our life time. (Well, maybe in your life time).

Standardization of basic infrastructure like this is a key hurdle for EVs to gain market share. But the typical (and optimistic) 100 mile range of a Battery Electric Vehicle is still a killer for anything but around town driving.

Re:Define "charges"

[ozmanjusri]

I'm sure vendors will very quickly develop a "gas canister" sized portable battery pack for emergencies. It'll be even more convenient than the current petrol versions.

Re:Define "charges"

[FishTankX]

You're calculations are wrong. If the volt used 110kw to run at 80MPH, it would drain it's 16kwh battery pack in about 6 minutes, giving it a range of about 11 miles.

If you use this website

http://www.wallaceracing.com/Calculate%20HP%20For%20Speed.php

And plug in the relevant numbers for the volt (0.28cod, 25 sqft frontal area, ~3800lbs) you'll see that the volt only consumes around 24kw cruising at 80MPH.

The main reason cars have multiple hundred horse power engines is because acceleration is power demanding.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

...it is even possible to do it manually (using a gas canister) if car ran out of gas before you reached the station.

Do you have a citation for that assertion or are you just making that up?

Re:Define "charges"

[Pentium100]

That would be interesting - a small, but very powerful battery.

Usually the problem with small batteries is that they cannot supply a lot of power, even if they have a lot of energy. I am most familiar with lead-acid batteries (the kind that is used in a UPS), if you discharge them in 10 minutes or so, the real capacity becomes very small compared to the rated capacity (which is rated for a 20 hour discharge).

As electric cars need a lot of electricity (compared to, say, gasoline powered cars), the battery would have to have large capacity and be able to deliver it in 10 minutes or less, which may be a problem.
As it is now, if I ever manage to run out of gasoline (and LPG) I can just stop, take the can out of the trunk and pour the gasoline into the appropriate tank in my car. It takes a couple of minutes at most. Then I drive to a gas station to fill the can and fill the tank part way (the priority is like this - LPG (cheaper), then gas can ten gas tank if I still have some cash).

Re:Define "charges"

[Pentium100]

It is possible to carry some extra gasoline in a canister in the trunk, so if I run out, I can pour the gasoline from the canister to the tank. Did that a few times. Even if the canister was empty (or I forgot to bring it with me), I could still go to the nearest gas station on foot, buy the canister if I don't have one, fill it and bring it to my car, pour the gasoline to the tank and drive to the gas station. My dad did that once.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

"You're calculations are wrong"

You are grammar is wrong.

"would drain it's 16kwh battery"

it's means it is.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

By the time you refill your coffee, pump the bilge, buy the snack, your car would be ready.

*And* wait in line for the one or two EVs in front of you to finish.

Re:Define "charges"

[ozmanjusri]

the battery would have to have large capacity and be able to deliver it in 10 minutes or less

Not really.

The battery would be plugged in and stay in the car. Maybe even automatically switch it to an energy conservation mode to get it to the nearest charging station. For longer (remote area) rescues, you could probably even hire/use a battery or generator trailer.

Making things electric allows for a lot of smarts to be included.

Re:Define "charges"

[jo_ham]

...it is even possible to do it manually (using a gas canister) if car ran out of gas before you reached the station.

Do you have a citation for that assertion or are you just making that up?

You want a citation for "carrying a spare gallon of fuel in a fuel can in the trunk"?

Jesus. What are you, a wikipedia editor?

Re:Define "charges"

[jo_ham]

By the time you refill your coffee, pump the bilge, buy the snack, your car would be ready.

*And* wait in line for the one or two EVs in front of you to finish.

You're thinking like someone who can't break out of the "gas station" mentality - there's no reason for the cars to line up to get electricity from a small number of pumps that deliver liquid in the same way that gasoline or diesel is delivered. You can simply have a row of parking spaces with a connector in each one, or you put them in parking lots at the grocery store so that you recharge while you shop, or at the movie theatre, or at work etc.

A traditional gas station can simply have a set of parking spaces off to the side with a connector for each one. Positioning of charge sockets is much more flexible since it's just running a copper cable, not pipes full of liquid with the necessary pumps and so on.

Re:Define "charges"

[Pentium100]

The battery would be plugged in and stay in the car.

That will require even more power. While the average power consumption of a car might be manageable for a small battery, the initial acceleration may be a problem. Add in lights and heating (it may be -20C outside). And it results in a battery that I would like to have for my UPS :) After all, it has to be affordable.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to be a pure cynic here, but when we start seeing tons of cables sticking out at parking lots, we will start seeing vandals either cutting them (which was common with pay phone connectors), or making some device to short out leads just so they can see the arcs fly. The current (and voltage) needed to charge an EV quickly will make a lot of fireworks if short-circuited.

We will see drunks piss on a cable, then their next of kin sue the station and everyone else upstream.

At least with gasoline, if someone is an idiot, the court precedents are in place that show that if they light gasoline, it is their fault, not Shell's.

Re:Define "charges"

[green1]

That also guarantees you won't install this in your house as you have a maximum of 240v at 100-200amps available (200 only in the newest houses)

Re:Define "charges"

[loshwomp]

If we presume that this motor is sufficient for all modes of operation (probably true) then we can say that the car takes 110 kW to run at 80 mph.

No. A small-medium car like the volt will use 20-25 kW when cruising at 80 mph. As with gas cars, the peak motor output is really only used when accelerating.

Re:Define "charges"

[jo_ham]

I don't see it as any more dangerous than large tanks of gasoline, or above-ground propane tanks and transformers and so on.

We already have three phase outlets that can deliver that sort of punch and I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that circuit breakers and other such safety systems will be a major part of any EV charging system - like they are for any high voltage/high power electrical system in use today.

Re:Define "charges"

[roc97007]

But that's ok, because early adopters will be waiting for their full charge when I've long gotten back on the road. Maybe they'll put a Starbucks at the charging station for something to do while the cars are charging.

Re:Define "charges"

[roc97007]

> We will see drunks piss on a cable, then their next of kin sue the station and everyone else upstream.

But at very least, that will gain us a number of youtube moments.

Re:Define "charges"

[Mr. Underbridge]

Better question is how many KWh can it deliver in 15 mins? Since vehicle battery capacities vary significantly, that's the relevant question.

Actually, the relevant question is how many kWh the battery can take.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they'll put a Starbucks at the charging station for something to do while the cars are charging.

You're not far off. Have you noticed how gas stations are starting to charge more for credit than cash, sometimes by far more than the card fees are? It's got nothing to do with saving some money on the station's Visa bill. Gas stations make almost no money on the gas, the profits are all from selling you soda, cigarrettes, and potato chips inside the station; the cash discount is just to get you out of your car. The idea of a 15-minute fillup rather than a 2-minute fillup must have filling station owners excited as hell.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Different AC here. My question is that the article indicates that is DC charging. If so, is it possible to get 240V of AC power with 200 amps converted higher like that (or is it only possible to go lower)? What if it was 3 phase I occasionally hear about?

Re:Define "charges"

[gstrickler]

That's a secondary question. The capacity and charge rate of the specific vehicle/battery will of course affect charge time.

However, the capability of the charging system/connector puts a hard limit on all vehicles, thus it becomes the critical limit for designers of new vehicles.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn it /. mods his post isn't what the GP was talking about. The average [chemical] power of the connection being 8MW is referring to how much power the gasoline has. Not what it takes to pump it. For crying out loud.

Re:Define "charges"

[similar_name]

Ha, my horse never runs out of gas. If it's hungry I just let it eat grass. This new fangled gasoline powered transportation seems pretty inconvenient.

Re:Define "charges"

[tftp]

The idea of a 15-minute fillup rather than a 2-minute fillup must have filling station owners excited as hell.

Only if these stations have 7.5x larger parking area for all these cars to be at while they are charging and the owners are inside. But land is expensive in cities - and usually there is nowhere to expand. This means that instead of serving, say, 100 gasoline customers per hour they will serve 13.333 electric customers per hour. Since electric energy is cheaper, it's a complete loss for those stations - in both the number of visitors and in the value of goods sold.

Re:Define "charges"

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The station will have a limit of some sort on the total power available to it. It's harder than it should be to get figures on the power consumption of a charging post, but it wouldn't take a huge number before the "gas station" needed as much power supply as a typical utility substation.

Re:Define "charges"

[dissy]

We will see drunks piss on a cable, then their next of kin sue the station and everyone else upstream.

These problems have already been solved.

The Japanese fast charging standard CHAdeMO has both power delivery as well as a CAN bus data connection in the "nozzle".
A communications channel is opened, and a diagnostic run on the battery system to determine there are no problems before power is even engaged to the pump.

Shorting out the CAN data lines will do nothing. Unless your piss can speak binary using the right protocol and sending the right responses up the line, there will be no power to harm you.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/CHAdeMO_Plug_VacavilleDavisStDC2.jpg

There is no reason to NOT include such a basic safety feature, which is always the case for any such potentially dangerous machinery designed to be fully self serviced by the below average consumer.

Gas stations are already under heavy video surveillance to prevent both vandalism and theft of service. This will not change.

Re:Define "charges"

[Mr. Underbridge]

I assure you that the limiting factor will be the battery, in practice. The limits placed by the chemical reactions that occur under high sustained charging current is a much harder cap than the technical feasibility of fast chargers.

Re:Define "charges"

[gstrickler]

Apparently you haven't been keeping up with battery technology. Toshiba's SCiB charges in 10 mins. Been shipping for a few years now. Other researchers have reported similar capabilities in the lab.

So, your assurances aren't useful.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, K != k, and second, why are you asking in terms of kWh/15min instead of kW? If you want to calculate charging time on your own, then their 15 min is irrelevant and just gets in the way.

Re:Define "charges"

[chuckugly]

We could see gas stations disappear in our life time. (Well, maybe in your life time).

This is sort of what I was thinking. I'm not on the EV bandwagon but maybe the idea of a special place to pour explosive liquid fuel into a vehicle isn't the model of the future. Perhaps parking lots with charge stations are the way, where you can decide, almost every time you park, whether or not you need to top it off.

Still makes future road trips seem a little clumsy.

Re:Define "charges"

[Pentium100]

It is faster and can go further without rest though.

Re:Define "charges"

[SuricouRaven]

The arcing fun can be broken with a trivial data channel negociation before applying power. No real authentication, just the device sending the bytes to indicate if it wants AC or DC. Optionaly, they could actually do real authentication for payment purposes - user just plugs in the cable on a charging point, car supplies cryptographic proof of vehicle identity, and if the charger company has that vehicle in its database payment is automatic. Even without the crypto, your average vandal wouldn't have the knowledge to download the protocol specs and program a PIC chip to pretend to be a car.

Re:Define "charges"

[Jeremi]

That also guarantees you won't install this in your house as you have a maximum of 240v at 100-200amps available (200 only in the newest houses)

On the other hand, people typically want to stay home for more than 15 minutes at a stretch anyway, so slower charging times probably aren't such a big deal there.

Re:Define "charges"

[Jeremi]

You can simply have a row of parking spaces with a connector in each one, or you put them in parking lots at the grocery store so that you recharge while you shop, or at the movie theatre, or at work etc.

I agree that the physical connections themselves won't be a difficult problem, but I wonder if the limiting factor won't be how much electricity the station is able to serve up at any given instant.

i.e. it's not much use to have 100 outlets available if your power supply can only saturate 10 connections at a time. (and I doubt people would appreciate it if the "bandwidth" was shared, such that every additional car that came along slowed down the charging process for the cars that were currently charging)

Re:Define "charges"

[Jeremi]

Unless your piss can speak binary using the right protocol and sending the right responses up the line, there will be no power to harm you.

Luxury. When I was a lad, we had to flatten our own dried feces and perforate it into punched cards to mail to the local petroleum distillery, and two to three weeks later a salesman would come out to beat us with a rubber hose -- if we were lucky.

Re:Define "charges"

[darthdavid]

It's not quite that bad, an electric charge-point takes up a lot less space than a gas pump so that should free up some lot space and since their margins on gas are so low anyway they could probably still make a decent profit off fewer customers who stay there longer as long as they can find things to entice those people into spending money on while they're there.

Further, since there wouldn't be an oil cartel breathing down their neck to meet certain price points they could actually charge as much as the market will bear for electricity and make a bit of profit there as well.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

No - he's about to file a patent.

Re:Define "charges"

[Immerman]

Not sure exactly what you're asking, but I'll try to answer anyway. Converting AC power uses transformers which have no theoretical limits as to power conversion. You can convert a 1V input to a 1,000V output if you so choose. The catch is just that transforms maintain the same total power (volts * amps) between input and output - if you double the voltage you halve the current.

If you could draw 200amps from a 240v source you could convert that to 96 amps at 500V easily enough, and then convert it to DC without much trouble. But lets be clear, you're talking about 48,000W, enough power to simultaneously run 32 standard 1500W electric heaters on high. That's going to take some seriously thick wire and good insulation, and there's not actually any call for it. If you need to recharge quickly go to the charging station, at home just trickle-charge it overnight. Instead of drawing 100kW for 15 minutes you draw 500W for 5 hours, resulting in much less wear and tear on both your battery and your home wiring.

As for 3-phase power, that's a specialty thing. It doesn't really buy you any extra "magic" over normal AC, just makes some kinds of equipment more efficient and/or convenient to implement.

Re:Define "charges"

[thsths]

> Standardization of basic infrastructure like this is a key hurdle for EVs to gain market share.

It is on of the key hurdles. Another one is price: EV pay no road tax, no fuel tax, and even get a government subsidy. But still for most consumers they are not value for money. So there is a long way to go before they even break even. And we will talk about battery reliability again in 3 years, when all the Volt batteries break down...

Re:Define "charges"

[Immerman]

Unless your piss can speak binary using the right protocol and sending the right responses up the line

What, you mean yours can't?!? Though I'll admit mine might have trouble speaking that complicated Japanese binary...

In all seriousness though, you also left out that when it comes to vandalism these charging cables would also be pretty durable. We're not talking about a phone cord that any passing jackass with a pen knife can cut - we're talking over 13 extension cords worth of wire (of the common 15A rating variety), you'll need something closer to bolt cutters to chop through that.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

So far, the Prius batteries have proven to last far longer than three years.

What is the basis of your pessimism?

Re:Define "charges"

[TheRaven64]

Seriously? Microsoft paid to have a story about the automotive industry posted? In, what, the hopes that they would be subject to more favourable car analogies in the future?

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm more cynic than you: tons of cables == tons of coppers == thousands of thieves.

Re:Define "charges"

[Chrisq]

First of all, K != k.

If you were confused by this and were thinking Kelvin-Watts you must specialise in some weird field of science!!

Re:Define "charges"

[Chrisq]

Ha, my horse never runs out of gas. If it's hungry I just let it eat grass.

i never run out of gas. If I get hungry I just smoke grass

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Still makes future road trips seem a little clumsy.

Depends on how far you can get on a charge. If the car could reliably last for at least ~5-6 hours on a charge, then at that point, a 15-20 minute break is probably a good idea whether you need to recharge your car or not. That's >6*70=420 miles on a charge, which is somewhat more than current EVs can handle.

Re:Define "charges"

[Chuq]

I'm going to be a pure cynic here, but when we start seeing tons of cables sticking out at parking lots, we will start seeing vandals either cutting them (which was common with pay phone connectors), or making some device to short out leads just so they can see the arcs fly.

The way Better Place handles it is that you swipe your card over the terminal to reveal the socket, you provide the lead, while charging it locks in place and you need to swipe your card again to unlock it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUICgOM6_gw&sns=em

Re:Define "charges"

[peragrin]

The trick is a gallon of gas gets you 10-30 mile range on average.

What size battery do you need to go 10 miles in a car that only has a 100 mile range to begin with?

think about how many miles are between the exits of your average interstate? except for cities it can be 10,20,30 miles or more.

Re:Define "charges"

[Smidge204]

Be careful here, because there are two kinds of "capacity" that are being discussed.

There's total capacity, which is the maximum sticker rating of the battery pack. Then there's available capacity, which is the software-limited range of total capacity that you as the end user have available. For example, the Nissan LEAF has a 24kWh battery back. If you add up the Wh rating of all the cells you get 24kWh. However, the vehicle only lets you use ~21-22kWh in order to keep the state of charge away from the extremes and protect the chemistry. The Chevy Volt has a 16kWh pack - that's total capacity. The available capacity is about 2/3rds of that.

When they talk about quick charging to 80%, they mean 80% of available capacity, not total capacity.
=Smidge=

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Comm connection? Great, Norton is probably developing an AV product for electric vehicles as I type this...

Re:Define "charges"

[couchslug]

Anything that makes three-phase more common and less expensive would be great.

"I don't see it as any more dangerous than large tanks of gasoline, or above-ground propane tanks and transformers and so on."

It's far LESS dangerous than gasoline or LP. Wiring them to code means appropriate circuit protection.

Re:Define "charges"

[Rich0]

The main reason cars have multiple hundred horse power engines is because acceleration is power demanding.

That is true (acceleration is really the only place where power is limiting in real-world car usage, unless real-world usage is a race track with long straightaways).

However, it is a bit misleading in some ways. Cars actually have way more horsepower than they really need to accelerate, because gasoline engines can only deliver that horsepower at high RPMs, and unless you have a transmission designed for a semi it takes a while to get to those RPMs. What tends to matter far more is torque at the low end, and electric motors have a huge advantage there.

If you throw in driving habits it becomes even more "important" - most people aren't comfortable with driving their engines at 6k RPM and most automatic transmissions won't kick back 2 gears as soon as you touch the gas. If you're a racecar driver and shift accordingly, then you can get quite a bit of power even out of mediocre engines, but most people won't push their cars past 3-4k RPM, and you're only getting a fraction of the car's advertised horsepower at those kinds of RPMs. An electric motor delivers very high power without sounding like a jet engine, so psychologically it is more suited to the average driver as well.

That's why cars with turbos are a waste for most consumers, beyond the status symbol aspect. Unless you're willing to kick back two gears when overtaking and go ahead and overtake 5 cars at a time when doing so, you'll never really get much boost out of it anyway. All a turbo does is even more dramatically increase the power output at high RPMs that most people don't like to operate at, and which aren't rapidly available anyway unless you're already moving and can shift back a few gears. In fact, manufacturers often reduce their engine sizes when they install a turbo, which lowers the torque at the low end even further.

For the way most people drive, a lower-power electric engine gets them better performance than a high-power gasoline one.

Re:Define "charges"

[Rich0]

While I agree that the amount of equipment needed to service a charging station is likely smaller than a gas pump, and safety issues will eliminate some aspects of gas station design, I'm not convinced that we'll see rapid chargers that resemble parking lots.

Rapid charging involves megawatt-scale power delivery. The cables for that are going to be reasonably sizable - we're not talking lamp cord. Finding charging stations will be easy - just follow the 30kV power lines, and if EV really takes off follow the 300kV lines and look for the huge transformer banks. If my electric bill is typical, a single charging booth for a car might take as much electrical supply as the average usage in 1500 homes (granted, most homes are wired to supply far more than their "average" use, but the average use at a charging station is going to be near-peak during business hours).

Something like a grocery store or mall might offer charging, but likely only at scales that you'd associate with home/overnight charging. Sure, if you're at the mall all day it will make quite a dent in your tank, but forget getting a full charge in only an hour or two. They'd need to charge by the hour in those spots unless they wire the entire parking lot, or people will just hog them. Most people will find it more convenient to do this sort of charging at home.

The main purpose of remote charging for an EV is to extend range. I could see charging stations having a place at workplaces to increase commuting range without a recharge stop, but otherwise I see the gas station model having a lot more utility over charging at other locations, unless the cost/logistics involved get so cheap so as to be trivial.

Re:Define "charges"

[RobertLTux]

how 3 phase current works is it is 3 separate currents clocked 33% behind each other (think of a boat with 3 rowers) if they are in proper sync then you end up getting very close to DC type current. (so the bits needed to get DC are a lot cheaper).

things get rather nasty if one phase gets out of sync and things go to heck if you are missing two phases.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Woosh.

That's either the sound of a funny comment blowing over your head, or a puddle of gasoline going up in flames.

(And no, Jesus is not a wikipedia editor.)

Re:Define "charges"

[BlueParrot]

Better question is how many KWh can it deliver in 15 mins? Since vehicle battery capacities vary significantly, that's the relevant question.

Dunno about this particular technology, but the Japanese are standardising on a system that can deliver 60kW, with experimental designs up to 120kW.
In comparison, the Tesla's battery pack is about 50kWh, so the 120kW system should be able to charge it to 80% in 20 minutes.

 

Re:Define "charges"

[Rei]

First, why would you ever need such fast charging in your house? No, seriously -- why? Given that you can't "rapid-charge" your gas car at home -- nay, can't "charge" it at all at home -- and that there's really no point, since you only need rapid charge on long trips...

Secondly, it is possible if you add a battery bank.

Re:Define "charges"

[Rei]

When you fuel your gas car the average [chemical] power of the connection is 8 MW.

Misleading. Given that there's about 20% average operational efficiency pump-to-wheel in a non-hybrid and a bit over 30% average efficiency in a hybrid (note: we're talking *average* efficiency, not peak), you're only getting ~1.5-2.5MW usable energy. Of the 100kW that goes to the EV, about 85kW is usable.

Secondly, most of the time spent filling up a vehicle isn't "filling up the vehicle". It's the time to find a gas station, drive out of your way to get to it, take an exit, decelerate, pull up to a pump, stop the vehicle, get out, get your credit card out, put it in the machine, put it away, open up the gas tank, take the cap off, pick up the pump, select your fuel, put the pump in, finish fueling, take the pump out, hang it back up, take your receipt, get back in your car, start it back up again, pull out of the gas station, reaccelerate, get back on the road, find your way back to where you left off, and continue on your way. And possibly add "go to the bathroom" or "get something from the convenience store" to the list while you're at it. The fueling process itself may only take a minute, but the whole process is more like 10 minutes or so on average.

Beyond that, while that is the "normal case" for a gasoline vehicle, that is the "special case" for an electric vehicle. Electric vehicles normally don't have to ever do any of that. You just plug it in in your garage and then never have to think about it unless you're going on a long trip. The charge is just there, every time, no going out of your way, no standing outside in bad weather, none of that.

I think the occasional 15 minute charge on a long trip -- aka, a bathroom break or quick meal -- and then never having to deal with going to a gas station in your normal daily life -- is more than reasonable.

Re:Define "charges"

[Rei]

I actually did the math once, and it is feasible. You need, of course, the more expensive, higher power cells to do it. And you don't want it just sitting around unused in the vehicle, because of course any batteries in the vehicle should be going to good use; it should be connected to the vehicle's electric system in normal operation. But if you have a detachable battery section, you can have 20-30 pounds of cells with shoulder straps and a hip belt for walking to the nearest farmhouse, charge on 110V/15A for an hour minutes or 220V/24A for 20 minutes, walk back, and add an another 5-10 miles range in a reduced power mode to your vehicle to get to a charging station. It's quite doable.

Re:Define "charges"

[Rei]

Gasoline engines of around 100 HP are at efficiency from 25% to 30%.

Please show me your gasoline car that spends all of its time operating at its nominal optimal efficiency, aka, in its optimal RPM/torque band.

then we can say that the car takes 110 kW to run at 80 mph

You would be grossly incorrect. A typical electric car will take 50kW or so to run at 80mph. Vehicles have to have motors that are way more powerful than is needed at cruising speeds in order to handle acceleration and changes in altitude.

Re:Define "charges"

[Rei]

People are thinking about this all wrong anyway. It's not going to be "gas stations" that are going to be installing these. It's going to be stores. Just one or two in the parking lot, possibly even as a loss leader just so that they can have you as a captive audience for 10-15 minutes.

Gas stations have many pumps per station because there's high capital costs installing that tank and for reasons of distribution simplicity (gasoline deliveries, etc) that simply don't apply to EV chargers (esp. if the charger has its own battery bank to pull from -- if it does, you could install one in the middle of the desert with nothing more than a dirt road to it and a solar panel on top of it ;) )

Re:Define "charges"

[sir-gold]

how does an electric charge point take less space than a gas pump? a gas pump is only 2 feet wide by 4 feet long, most of the "space" taken up by gas pumps is actually taken up by the cars themselves plus the free room needed to maneuver around the other cars.

if the electric car actually became popular then the gas station as we know it would probably die off. If you could have gasoline delivered straight to your house (like electricity already is), why wouldn't you just fill up in the garage?

in regards to the second part about the cartels: stations aren't charging such low margins because the cartels forced them to, they are doing it because the price of gas is already ABOVE what the market will bear before it even gets to the gas station, so people are just spending less on food and medicine in order to afford gas.
In other words, If the market will bear $3/gallon, and the station's cost is $3.75/gallon, theres not much room for markup.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution to this is to make batteries with about 130% of the normal power requirements - then you can get a good charge in the 15-20 minutes and forget about the last 20%.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't even have to go that far. A123 systems have had LiFePO4 cylindrical cells that charge in 5 minutes since 2005. Could Mr. Underbridge be a troll?

Re:Define "charges"

[roc97007]

> You're not far off. Have you noticed how gas stations are starting to charge more for credit than cash, sometimes by far more than the card fees are?

Yeah, I tend not to fuel up at stations with a quicki-mart. The reason for this is that I do not consider a gas station to be a destination. It is a necessary stop on the way to my real destination, and I want it to be as quick as possible. I don't consider fueling up as an opportunity to buy high priced carbohydrates, sodas, caffeine, or giggly hula dolls, pine scent air fresheners, or trucker caps. If I want to buy something, there are other places where I do those things.

Someone suggested that we work it backwards; that instead of trying to herd fuel purchasers into a little high priced store selling nothing interesting, that instead actual destinations you'd want to go to start providing fuel. If that fuel is electricity, that's fine. But seriously, putting a Starbucks at a fueling station is not a solution, except for the people who's destination is Starbucks and who happen to need fuel.

Re:Define "charges"

[llamapater]

Another thing this could solve is security your not going to sit at your car for the 30 min to charge someone can walk by pop the plug out of your car and into there's for free power; can even set it up so you don't even need to swipe a card. (i'm not sure if they already do this entirly unfamiliar with the standard)

Re:Define "charges"

[amorsen]

That's why cars with turbos are a waste for most consumers, beyond the status symbol aspect. Unless you're willing to kick back two gears when overtaking and go ahead and overtake 5 cars at a time when doing so, you'll never really get much boost out of it anyway. All a turbo does is even more dramatically increase the power output at high RPMs that most people don't like to operate at

The thing is, people like having a lot of power available, even if they never use it. Some even feel safer knowing that they can accelerate fast if they have to. Therefore they buy large engines and run them at 10% or less most of the time. If we can get them to accept turbo engines, we can give them 1l engines with 200hp. This saves a lot of fuel; gasoline engines are terribly inefficient unless you run them at close to 100%.

Of course the holy grail is electrical compression, that should make the turbo lag imperceptible.

Re:Define "charges"

[amorsen]

Vehicles have to have motors that are way more powerful than is needed at cruising speeds in order to handle acceleration and changes in altitude.

Electric motors are cheap compared to the other parts of the car anyway, and doubling the power does not double the cost. As an additional bonus, a more powerful motor is also a more powerful generator so you get better regenerative braking.

Re:Define "charges"

[amorsen]

Whether the target is 8MW or 1MW, we're still a long way from matching the recharge rate possible with chemical energy.

It is a little bit unfair to only look at the time spent while physically filling the tank though, at least if we are talking about a station which does not let you pay by card at the pump (and strangely those still exist). There is no reason to actually have to stand beside the electric car while it is filling up. At the very least you can be warm and dry inside the car for most of the fill-up, or you can be queueing to pay.

Anyway, surely the charging rate for this is higher than 40kW. According to Wikipedia, they were aiming for 90kW for "DC level 2" and significantly more than that for "DC level 3".

We might also all be safer if drivers had a 15 minute rest every 2 hours...

Re:Define "charges"

[amorsen]

Prius uses NiMH, no modern pure-electric cars use NiMH. You cannot really use the Prius for any statistics applying to other electric vehicles.

Not that I think it will be a problem, and even if it does, the used batteries will surely be valuable as resources for new ones.

Re:Define "charges"

[justthinkit]

The longest distance between interstate exits is almost 50 miles.

Re:Define "charges"

[drinkypoo]

If you were confused by this and were thinking Kelvin-Watts you must specialise in some weird field of science!!

Shit, now Westinghouse is going to have to burn down all our labs. Thanks, fucker.

Re:Define "charges"

[drinkypoo]

That's why cars with turbos are a waste for most consumers, beyond the status symbol aspect.

That is a lot of nonsense.

All a turbo does is even more dramatically increase the power output at high RPMs that most people don't like to operate at, and which aren't rapidly available anyway unless you're already moving and can shift back a few gears.

Turbochargers produce maximum boost during periods of maximum load, because this is when exhaust gases are greatest. This is why non-wastegated turbochargers don't ever produce maximum boost without a load. Wastegated turbos can make peak boost (for your engine) when the engine is not at maximum load. You don't really know what you're talking about.

Re:Define "charges"

[drinkypoo]

Vehicles have to have motors that are way more powerful than is needed at cruising speeds in order to handle acceleration and changes in altitude.

So, both vertical and horizontal acceleration, then?

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric powered vehicles waste most of their energy at the coal burning power plant that you're denying exists.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

But I don't want to stand in the cold waiting for my car to charge. I want to be at home finishing that bit of housework instead - or filling in some paperwork.

So if I'm not on a long trip and my car is getting a bit low on electrons I'd like to nip home and charge up, do something useful in the meantime, and then rock on out.

Re:Define "charges"

[giorgist]

> We will see drunks piss on a cable, then their next of kin sue the station and everyone else upstream.

Gee "upstream" ... gives a new meaning to the classic accident horror story where people get electrocuted as they come to save an electrocuted person

Re:Define "charges"

[jo_ham]

Double whoosh.

I see you missed my reply to an obvious joke with a joke of my own.

This is known as riffing off each other.

Never mind.

Re:Define "charges"

[illtud]

It is possible to carry some extra gasoline in a canister in the trunk, so if I run out, I can pour the gasoline from the canister to the tank. Did that a few times. Even if the canister was empty (or I forgot to bring it with me), I could still go to the nearest gas station on foot, buy the canister if I don't have one, fill it and bring it to my car, pour the gasoline to the tank and drive to the gas station. My dad did that once.

"My dad did that once" - Not to pick on you or anything, but you made that sound mythic, and I feel old.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. For not knowing what I was asking, you both managed to nail it. Looks like there are at least 2 reasons to go to slashdot.

Re:Define "charges"

[mea_culpa]

...how many KWh can it deliver in 15 mins? Everything else is secondary.

I think another important question is how many charging stations can be run simultaneously at service station?
My guess is one or two unless it is near thicker legs on the grid. What is it going to be like when there are 8 cars in front of you needing charged?
How many EVs charging in peoples garages at night will be enough to require peak power generation for this duration at higher rates?
What steps have local utilities taken?
I only ask this because I remember very well when the western US lost power in the summer of 97 and here in sunny AZ power could not be restored until very late in the night because of too many home HAVC units trying to start simultaneously.
I sure hope the right people are asking this, because if not we are in for a world of hurt when gas is +$9/gal and rolling blackouts occur and/or skyrocketing utility rates due to mass adoption of EVs.
Don't get me wrong, this is a good start, but I don't hear much talk this. I hope all goes smoothly as I plan on owning an EV as my next vehicle in a few years.

Re:Define "charges"

[swalve]

Exactly. I just saw a couple of charging stations in the parking lot of the tollway building where you go to buy/update your IPass (EZPass for Illinois). Nobody is in there for more than 10-20 minutes. But for people with electric only vehicles, topping off the charge while running errands makes great sense.

Re:Define "charges"

[swalve]

The gas can, theoretically, be cheaper at those stations because they can make their profit via the 128 oz Mountain Dews and Slim Jims, and just sell the gas at a break even price point to draw people in.

Re:Define "charges"

[swalve]

If they wired their batteries right, they could use them in series to power the car, and then charge the individual cells in parallel. Each cell wouldn't see a tremendous charging rate. I think.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi bonch.

Re:Define "charges"

[msobkow]

Silly me. Here I thought the Volt only ran on electrics up to around 80kph, beyond which it switches to gasoline power for long-haul trips.

Contrary to popular misconception, it does not run on batteries during full-speed highway drives. It runs on gas.

So both you AND the GP are way off base with your blather about how much power it consumes at 80 MPH. It doesn't run on batteries in the first place at that speed.

Re:Define "charges"

[swalve]

It can, but only little-endian.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha, my horse never runs out of gas. If it's hungry I just let it eat grass.

i never run out of gas. If I smoke grass I just get hungry

FTFY.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the trouble the UK minister got into for suggesting people carry fuel cans! Cos one lady tried to enter the darwin awards by refueling a jerry can with petrol in her kitchen... with the gas stove burning.

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the holy grail is electrical compression, that should make the turbo lag imperceptible.

And makes E85 make sense (from a consumer perspective, not overall -- though if we did less subsidizing corn ethanol and less protectionist tariffs on imports, it could make sense overall), because the efficiency from cranking compression up to 15:1 or so means getting equivalent or better mileage to gasoline. And makes water/alcohol injection practical (right now, it's of dubious utility outside turbo engines, because if you've got enough compression to benefit, as soon as your MW50 tank runs dry you instantly suffer knock and have to shoot your timing all to hell to stop it, or immediately refill with premium gasoline).

Re:Define "charges"

[jo_ham]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2830149&cid=39898671

Re:Define "charges"

[roc97007]

*can*, but rarely is, at least in this area. I know the stations of which you speak -- they deliberately do not have any provision to do the transaction at the pump, forcing you to take your number and walk inside to conclude the transaction, on the off chance that you'll buy a novelty cigarette lighter or a $5 bottle of pepsi when you're in there. But what usually happens is that the convenience-trap stores notice that they can charge the same price as the fill-only stores and do about the same volume, so why would you want to give money away?

Even where the price is higher, it's worth money to me to be able to fill up at the pump in a minimum amount of time and then drive away. I don't think I'm alone. It's going to be interesting if the powers that be can pull off the social paradigm shift necessary for people to be ok with spending a half hour every 100 miles getting a charge.

Re:Define "charges"

[FishTankX]

killowatts is still a valid measure of power, so if you want to get technical, it still consumes about 20kw cruising down the highway. ~700w=1HP.

It's just that some of those killowatts are derived from gasoline combustion rather than battery storage.

I concede the point though, I wasn't aware that the volt was on gas power at 80MPH. Had forgotten about it.

Re:Define "charges"

[Smidge204]

That actually wouldn't help, because a Wh is a Wh any way you slice it. By taking the cells out of series configuration you only lower the effective voltage - meaning you'll need more current for the same power. That's exactly opposite from what you want, since charging current is the limiting factor (via connector and wire sizes mostly).

Though it does have the benefit of easier cell balancing I guess.
=Smidge=

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a bunch of different battery types out there but none of them can charge fully in 20 minutes. However, the Toshiba lithium titanate battery, which is being road tested by Mitsubishi and soon by Honda, can charge from 20% to 90% in about 10 minutes. You can look this up. Altairnano has a similar one that they say will be able to charge in 6 minutes, but it's still in testing. The important thing is the car companies are developing a standard so there only needs to be one type of charger out there.

Kerry

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thing this could solve is security your not going to sit at your car for the 30 min to charge someone can walk by pop the plug out of your car and into there's for free power; can even set it up so you don't even need to swipe a card. (i'm not sure if they already do this entirly unfamiliar with the standard)

The ChargePoint public chargers that I've used will stop charging when unplugged. To restart charging, you have to swipe (wave) your rfid card again. So there's no issue with someone else getting free power. Of course, all of theirs are currently Level 2, not the Level 3 DC quick chargers discussed in this article. I've only used a couple of L3 chargers, and they were free. So no issue there, either.

Of course, there is still the issue of someone just walking by and unplugging you when you really need that power to get home. Some handles/nozzles have a hole that will accept a luggage-size lock to keep the lever from being pressed to unlatch them. That should stop random acts of jackassery on the part of passers by. But then that goes against the desire to leave the charging station available for others to use when you'll be parked and away from your vehicle for longer than it will take to fill up (assuming there's room to pull up in the next space over).

Re:Define "charges"

[swalve]

You're right that the whole system is going to have the same power flowing through it. So yeah, the cord from the charging station to the car is going to have to carry the same amount of power. But at the battery pack, if you have all the cells in series, doesn't the current required to charge the last battery have to flow through all the other ones? Encountering each cell's internal resistance and heating up each cell along the way? If you can go parallel, each cell doesn't have to worry about getting heated up except for its own charging process, and doesn't have to get heated up passing current along to its neighbor.

Re:Define "charges"

[yurtinus]

Well no... I mean, that might be *a* factor, but the primary motivation is that there is more or less a fixed dollar amount of profit on a gallon of gas sold, so the stations make about the same on the sale of a gallon of gas whether the cost is $1 or $4 per gallon. On the flip side, the cost to process that transaction is based on the total cost. So, they are paying 4x as much to Visa but not making 4x as much per gallon of gas.

Re:Define "charges"

[Smidge204]

There's no difference between an electron flowing into the battery from the charging cable, or into one battery from another battery. (Remember that for every electron you put in, another one comes out the other side.)

The battery has no way of knowing where the electrons come from or where they go to - each cell in a series string sees the same current and the same voltage drop across itself (assuming all cells are healthy anyway).

What it sounds like you actually want to do is physically separate the cells so the heat from one doesn't heat up its neighbors.
=Smidge=

Re:Define "charges"

[Anonymous Coward]

Your 8MW metric was interesting and actually seemed to be quite high, so I independently calculated it and was quite surprised.

At the EPA limit of 10 gallons/minute for a gas pump and the NIST GGE of 33.41 kWh/gal the effective power is 20 MW. Crazy! Maybe your gas pumps are just a lot slower?

Re:Define "charges"

[roc97007]

In this particular case, I think I'd wait until he stops, um, doing his business before trying to handle him.

KKKZZZZZZZZZ hang on he's almost done ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZKZKKK ok grab him

Sense?

[kae77]

If this catches on (I don't see any Japanese partners in TFA), it could be a sudden outbreak of common sense. Maybe even... convenience for the consumer?

Re:Sense?

[Skapare]

... until you see how much it costs for this proprietary patent-laden charging station.

Still not practical

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not make the batteries replaceable? Just switch them as a gas station, simple.

Re:Still not practical

[0123456]

Why not make the batteries replaceable? Just switch them as a gas station, simple.

Because it's a stupid idea for reasons we've covered numerous times before.

1. Either you need a standard battery which prevents auto manufacturers from building different vehicles with different batteries, or the replacement station needs to store all possible batteries.
2. If you get there with a flat battery and they're out then you're screwed. That's not a big deal for a car where you can drive on to the next gas station twenty miles down the road, but a big problem if your electric car only does eighty miles per charge anyway.
3. Replacing batteries that weigh several hundred pounds is far from a simple task.
4. No-one wants to pay $30k for a new car, then drive it into a replacement station where they'll hand over their brand new battery and have it replaced by one that's done 500,000 miles.

etc, etc, etc.

Re:Still not practical

[MrEricSir]

Simple in theory, incredibly complex in practice. Not to mention expensive.

But these guys are still working on it.

Re:Still not practical

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Different vehicles with the same battery profile. Or have standards. Small medium large.
2. If you get to a gas station and they are out you are screwed.
3. It isnt that hard, there are already prototypes. We refill flying planes with other flying planes and you think this is 'far from simple?
4. Then dont include the battery with the car. 20k or whatever for the car and some 'battery insurance' in case you rally your car and the battery falls out. At that point you don't care what condition the battery is in, it isn't yours.

etc etc etc please do go on, the one and only problem is getting an entire nation to roll out stations which is expensive with a slow return on investment and getting auto manufacturers to standardize batteries.

Re:Still not practical

[Anonymous Coward]

$700mn raised by better place throughout the GFC, a nation-scale roll-out in Israel and Denmark and an ongoing one in Australia, along extensive well-publicized proof-of-concept rigs running for months on end and driving 24/7 suggests you're regurgitating old preconceptions and have utterly no idea what you're talking about.

Re:Still not practical

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me only way it would work is if you buy the car without a battery, and then buy into some sort of a battery scheme whereby you only rent the use of batteries from a supplier. It might seem more expensive, but the supplier would own all batteries, and replace the failing ones etc. It's not too far fetched.
And if we do come up with a great battery design, why wouldn't we use it in all electric models? With bigger cars using 2 batteries instead of 1...

Re:Still not practical

[Cosgrach]

Actually, it's not all that stupid.

1. Standardized battery packs can only be a good idea. Auto manufactures should develop and conform to standard packs (at least size, shape, and voltage). As battery chemistry progresses, it's not difficult to get the benefit of an upgrade. Just put it in.

2. If you run that close to the edge that you arrive at the station with little or not charge left, you are a fool. That being said, I'm sure that they could spot you with a quick (15 minute charge) so you can get to the next station or get home to do a proper charge.

3. You are not a mechanical engineer, are you? It is not really that hard to build an automated battery swapping system.

4. This is the hard bit. You would get a choice: It comes with a standard capacity (low cost) battery that the dealer/charging stations/whoever owns but you pay a small amount extra per swap. If you want a better battery that you own, then buy one outright, and charg it at you home / work / or other plug in charging station.

It's not rocket science people.

Re:Still not practical

[robot256]

3. It isnt that hard, there are already prototypes. We refill flying planes with other flying planes and you think this is 'far from simple?

Aerial refueling is far from simple, but it is performed by highly trained operators in billion dollar equipment. And you use that to justify why installing 100,000 battery changers, performing hundreds of millions of changes a year, operated by idiot consumers with cheap vehicles is somehow easy? You might as well say "We put a man on the moon, why don't we all travel in miniature scramjet pods?"

etc etc etc please do go on, the one and only problem is getting an entire nation to roll out stations which is expensive with a slow return on investment and getting auto manufacturers to standardize batteries.

So the only problems are that the infrastructure is too expensive to be profitable and the vehicles are too expensive to be profitable. Sure, that sounds totally viable in a free-market economy. /sarcasm.

Why are people so obsessed with having gas stations for electric cars? That defeats the whole purpose. Charge the car at home and at work, like your smartphone. No trips out of your way, no cruising for the cheapest price, no waiting by the pump, just a few seconds before and after to plug/unplug. If you need to go long distance, take a train/plane/bus, enjoy the view and relax for once in your life. And if your commute is too long, then you're not in the target demographic anyways.

For the cost of installing battery-swap infrastructure in a handful of locations, we could cover a city with standard charging stations. Then you could charge no matter where you park. Even installing networks of the fast-chargers on major corridors will end up being cheaper and more versatile.

Besides, you've seen how long it took them to agree on a standard for a charging plug. Just think how long it would take them to agree on standards for whole battery packs. By the time they finish, we'll have 400-mile Litihium-Air batteries and hydrogen fuel cell backups, and no one will care anymore.

Re:Still not practical

[smoothnorman]

exactly! just think about propane tanks. most places i go, they just take your empty tank and hand you a full one. all the rest is engineering and standardization. imagine a car-wash set-up that slips into a keyed channel on the underside of the car the charged battery in front of the depleted one that it slips out. it's not only not rocket science, it isn't brain surgery.

Re:Still not practical

[n8r0n]

Oh, stop it. Sorry, but this debate isn't over. Don't try to bully this forum by simply resorting to name-calling.

A standard set of battery sizes (A, AA, AAA, C, D, camera batteries, 9-volts, watch batteries, etc.) and capacities has prevented electronic device makers from building different devices? No, it hasn't.

The electric car battery issue is also a bigger deal, so there's even more motivation to come up with a standard solution. People aren't terribly worried about charge times for their flashlight, but they are for their EVs.

Your point number 2 ... do you worry about gas stations being "out of fuel"? (you actually did in the 70s, but that didn't stop people from wanting cars). You're exploiting the fact that any new technology has certain chicken-and-egg issues. As soon as EVs are prevalent, charge stations will exist to meet demand, like what you see for any other product. 3? Don't confuse "simple" with "not able to be done by hand". No, a person can't lift an EV battery pack. That doesn't mean they can't be made modularly to be swapped out by a machine with some mechanical advantage. A gas pump can pump hundreds of pounds of fuel in a few minutes. A battery lift isn't fundamentally more complex.

4 can be addressed. First of all, you're not stuck with the battery you swap in at a charge station, any more than you're stuck with the one that comes with your car. Like an odometer in a car, you attach a lifecycle monitor to each battery pack, so it's known how many cycles it's gone through. For a multi-thousand dollar pack, that's easily a justifiable expense.

You'd also probably have to sign up for some kind of network to be allowed to use the swapping system. That way, if you try to leave them with some kind of battery that's had its cycle counter tampered with, the charge station knows who you are. Lack of anonymity is a minor inconvenience for getting a full battery in a few minutes. Besides, nobody today (except tinfoil hats) buys gas with anything but a credit/debit card, which certainly isn't anonymous.

You're out of excuses.

Re:Still not practical

[Anonymous Coward]

For a rapid ramp-up of EVs, a combination of battery switching and public charging is the way to go. That's essential the Better Place plan although there are a few aspects I don't like.

And all the supposed problems you mention have already been solved by them but a lot depends on the reliability of their communications network.
And their swap stations don't have a problem with multiple battery pack formats as most of these would be bottom-mounted anyway.

Re:Still not practical

[couchslug]

"Besides, you've seen how long it took them to agree on a standard for a charging plug. Just think how long it would take them to agree on standards for whole battery packs."

Once you have that standard, you are STUCK with it, and replacing that sort of equipment isn't like going from AT to ATX form-factors in disposable PCs.

Electric car development is still in its infancy. A great way to "knife the baby" would be too many standards too early in the game.

Re:Still not practical

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand #1 and #3, but 2 and 4 I think are issues. For #4, the point would be that you never really own a battery. Its more like you join a "battery club". You don't buy the battery when you buy the car really - you buy the right to exchange batteries. For #2 I think there could be adequate quality control to make this extremely rare. When you think about it #2 and 4 are tied together.

#1 - that is legitimate. What incentive would a company have to innovate if the first exchange you just lose the latest charge. On the other hand your "battery club" could get a leg up on other "batter clubs" if it upgraded its fleet of batteries I suppose (but would be harder). #3 is a potentially bigger problem depending on the charging time for the exchanged batteries.

What I think would be a bigger problem is that if you really join a battery club when you buy a car - it may be a long trip between stations.

Re:Still not practical

[demonlapin]

Charge the car at home and at work, like your smartphone

The problem with charging at work is that charging everyone's car during peak electric demand hours is a terrible idea. Cars should be charged in the middle of the night with cheaper electricity, not dumped on the grid just as the day starts heating up.

Re:Still not practical

[CozmicCharlie]

Really!? Are you really comparing battery packs to propane tanks!? How much is an empty propane tank? How often do they wear out? Now, how much is a battery pack and how often do they wear out? While it's not rocket science, or brain surgery, your suggestion financially unsound.

Re:Still not practical

[rgbrenner]

That's right.. it's so stupid that Better Place raised $700 million to do it.

Thank you for pointing out how difficult it would be if they ran out. It's not like one switch station with 15 batteries could swap batteries for over 2500 EVs. and each station would cost 1/2 the cost of a gas station.. and the batteries could be swapped out in less time than it takes to fill a gas tank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place
http://www.autoobserver.com/2011/03/better-place-denmark-plan-gives-glimpse-of-battery-exchange-cost.html
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/better-place/
http://www.autoobserver.com/2010/04/battery-swap-program-begins-in-tokyo-with-taxi-company-demo.html

You're such a genius for pointing how wrong they are.

Re:Still not practical

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are people so obsessed with having gas stations for electric cars? That defeats the whole purpose. Charge the car at home and at work, like your smartphone.

Because people use their cars for other things than driving back and forth between work and home. Because most people cannot charge their car at work. Because people that live in apartments or condos cannot charge their cars at "home".

Re:Still not practical

[smoothnorman]

before blatantly stating that a suggestion is financially unsound describe the payment and costs involved. you do know that the propane tank example was just an example of a similar market exchange and not in direct monetary proportions, yes? i really don't understand this knee-jerk resistance to a possible solution to the recharge time problem. where has gone the modicum of imagination and ingenuity that used to triumph against far greater challenges than merely swapping batteries - even fairly large ones?

Re:Still not practical

[bubblegoose]

What about a main battery and a smaller higher voltage battery to top off the main battery? Kind of like the small USB pack that I carry when I travel to allow my Android phone to make it an entire day.
Load a 40 pound loaner battery into the trunk and maybe make it an extra 60 miles.

Re:Still not practical

[Skapare]

They just avoid standard batteries when then want. My Canon 7D uses a proprietary battery pack.

Merely changing battery packs has big issues. What if you get a bad set that was electrically abused and won't hold a charge for very long?

Re:Still not practical

[green1]

The bigger problem is that an easily replaceable battery pack means lots of wasted space. Manufacturers have trouble finding enough room to put in enough batteries to give a reasonable range. forcing them to all sit in one or two easily accessible packs for the convenience of swapping them would severely limit the options for fitting in more batteries. electric cars with reasonable range often shoehorn batteries in to every nook and cranny all over the car. Not really an option if you want to be able to swap them quickly.

Re:Still not practical

[green1]

You'll also notice that while this is standard practice for propane tanks for barbecues, they never swap the tank on your vehicle if you have a propane powered car... probably because it's quite awkward to do so.

Re:Still not practical

[thebigmacd]

What happens when you get a bad tank of gas and your car won't run? You have to drain the tank (usually pay a mechanic) and refill it.

I wouldn't expect it to be much different in inconvenience to require exchanging for another battery pack and tagging it as bad when you exchange it.

Re:Still not practical

[yoshi_mon]

Besides, nobody today (except tinfoil hats) buys gas with anything but a credit/debit card, which certainly isn't anonymous.

Citation please.

Or to put it another way, you are full of shit on that point.

Re:Still not practical

[roc97007]

> 4. Then dont include the battery with the car.

That's actually brilliant.

Re:Still not practical

[loshwomp]

Sorry, but this debate isn't over.

Actually, it absolutely is over among auto engineers.

Not that all traction batteries are the same (this is the whole point after all) but if you were to pick a typical one, it's the size of 4-5 gas tanks, and weighs 200-300 kg. At that scale is a structural part of the car. Making a one-size-fits-all battery is even less likely than a one-size-fits-all gasoline engine.

It's also entirely unnecessary. The desire for fast charging (and other manifestations of range anxiety) are mostly prevalent among people who don't actually drive the cars. Charging at home utterly dominates, since it's by far the most convenient, efficient, and cost effective.

Re:Still not practical

[robot256]

Frankly this is a non-issue. Some people have to charge at work to make the return trip, some don't. If the employer charges a nominal fee for charging at work, the two groups will sort themselves out on their own. Either way, it's not like cars suddenly drain the grid when they get plugged in--a typical trip uses far less than the whole-battery-charge which most numbers are based on. Right now we're still in the build-out phase, and it's important that people have as many options as possible. The employers who forbid charging at work are shooting themselves in the foot because it limits their employees' mobility. Maybe when 25 or 50% of all commuter vehicles are electric we will have to worry about grid load, but certainly not right now.

Re:Still not practical

[loshwomp]

it's so stupid that Better Place raised $700 million to do it.

It is stupid. The Better Place model only makes sense when you're optimizing the system to get Israel off "foreign" oil at any price. It's utter folly otherwise, as evidenced by no real progress (smoke-and-mirrors demos don't count) in spite of the $700 million.

Better Place would be better off if Shai ever actually tried driving an EV instead of trying to solve imaginary problems.

Re:Still not practical

[rgbrenner]

It's not an imaginary problem. Even with this tech, making people wait at a charging station for 30 minutes is a problem. No one is going to look at that and think it's a good thing. It's a ridiculously long wait before the driver can continue on their way.

Second, you obviously didn't read any of the links I posted. The swap station is 1/2 the price of a gas station, and the price to the driver is competitive with gasoline.

Third, Better Place is a Californian company, not an Israeli company. They are rolling this out in Finland, Japan, and Israel.. Not because Israel needs to get off gasoline, but because these are small areas where they can roll it out the service across the entire area (or country, in the case of Israel).

Why don't you try actually reading about what they are doing, instead of blindly dismissing it.

Re:Still not practical

[phorm]

Either you need a standard battery which prevents auto manufacturers from building different vehicles with different batteries, or the replacement station needs to store all possible batteries.

Why would you need different batteries? How about standard batteries in different combinations. Parallel or series gets the needed power output or duration.

That, or there will be a few standard sizes, just like we have for A-D batteries for everyday stuff.

Still, being able to "plug in" is a better solution, but a quick swappable battery would also do in a pinch.

Re:Still not practical

[Cosgrach]

It is awkward simply because it was not designed to be otherwise. For what ever reason. And, yes larger tanks are swapped. Granted, generally it's fork truck tanks, but the idea is in principal the same. It has not been done because there has not been the demand. I think that if electric is going to really make it, fast charging (under 5 minutes) or battery swapping must be done. The time to do the PROPER engineering is NOW, not after the fact.

Re:Still not practical

[shutdown -p now]

If you need to go long distance, take a train/plane/bus, enjoy the view and relax for once in your life.

I go hiking on my weekends, with some locations being as far as 150 miles away (e.g. Hoh rainforest). Quite obviously, there are no charging stations there, and even if they were, most EV vehicles on the market can't drive that far even one way. Taking a bus that far, with all the hiking gear? No thanks.

Something like a Volt, though, that looks interesting - 100% EV for commute, and gas where you need it. It's still too expensive, though.

Re:Still not practical

[SuricouRaven]

Because not all batteries are equal. Some are just made to higher standards. Some are old, and with age comes lost capacity. Some will be damaged by abuse. A battery replacement service is just a machine by which someone can turn their hundred-quid cheap box of plastic and lead-acids into a fresh new five-thousand-quid li-ion pack. Operators would also have to inspect every single battery by hand to ensure it hasn't been damaged, or else be held potentially liable when they install it into another vehicle which shorts and ignites.

Re:Still not practical

[Cosgrach]

3. I am! And yes! it really is that hard!

From Lego university, no doubt. Poncy git. If you want me to take you seriously, don't post as A/C

The fact is that heavy (but easily) removable packs have been designed and are in use right now. Have been for years. Not so much in consumer automobiles, but the basic systems can be adapted to cars with a bit of imagination. Easily? Perhaps not, but far from hard or impossible.

And yes, I am a mechanical / electrical engineer who deals with heavy, high current systems all the time.

Re:Still not practical

[TheRaven64]

Ah, the 'it doesn't work for my atypical use case, therefore it's useless argument'. Obligatory for any technology article, well done.

Re:Still not practical

[TheRaven64]

Because most people cannot charge their car at work. Because people that live in apartments or condos cannot charge their cars at "home".

If there's a standard for electric car charging, expect to see charging stations appear in business parking lots and on the streets. When I was in Paris a few months ago there were already a number of electric car charging stations dotted around the place. You can deploy one anywhere that has a connection to the electricity grid and the space required is about the same as a parking space.

Re:Still not practical

[shutdown -p now]

I don't know what's so atypical about my use case. You don't ride out on weekends? Most of my coworkers do that, not every weekend perhaps, but certainly often enough. Living next to several state and national parks kinda encourages that kind of thing.

Re:Still not practical

[Chuq]

Merely changing battery packs has big issues. What if you get a bad set that was electrically abused and won't hold a charge for very long?

Change it again?

Predicted next question: what about if the next one is just as bad?

Answer: The EV infrastructure company has some SLA with the customer. If they need to swap battery more than X times over Y period, their account gets a credit. (I think with Better Place it is 52 times a year - I'm not sure how they handle specific use cases, such as someone who travels over 150km a day every day.). The point is that there is a financial incentive to get rid of poor performing batteries and keep the "fleet" fresh.

Re:Still not practical

[Wild Wizard]

Granted, generally it's fork truck tanks, but the idea is in principal the same.

Forklift LPG tanks are of the same design as your BBQ bottle just larger, they are however mounted on their side and you can't fill them when they're like that, Add in the fact that your average forklift doesn't travel really fast driving it to a service station to fill up is not a good use of it's time, so you get the gas man to deliver an entire bottle and swap it over.

Re:Still not practical

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple in theory, incredibly complex in practice. Not to mention expensive.

But these guys are still working on it.

Designing a car is complex.
Optimizing a vehicles structures and exterior for safety, performance, existing standards compliance and
attractive is difficult to do affordably.
Forcing a battery standard size and shape might be one too many compromises.
Aside from the other concerns mentioned ready, replacing an EV's batteries today is expensive,
however 8-10 years from now the energy density (range) could be greatly improved
by that time, or the cost to get same energy density batteries will go significantly lower until,
of course, they can't be made any cheaper.
There are so many variables to designing and manufacturing EVs.
It's nice to know that they can use the same roads.

Re:Still not practical

[Smidge204]

Aerial refueling is far from simple, but it is performed by highly trained operators in billion dollar equipment. And you use that to justify why installing 100,000 battery changers, performing hundreds of millions of changes a year, operated by idiot consumers with cheap vehicles is somehow easy?

That's why you let robots do it. Robots have been replacing vehicle batteries (the vehicles themselves often robots) for quite some time now.

For the cost of installing battery-swap infrastructure in a handful of locations, we could cover a city with standard charging stations.

I did some back-of-the-envelope calcs some time ago and concluded that a battery swap station would not be any more expensive than a typical gas station. Standard L1/L2 chargers are great and should be everywhere people tend to park for several hours at a time - but they're not going to help someone driving between cities.

Now I agree that the "gas station for EVs" is stupid, and that home.work charging is the primary means to keep it electron'd-up. But I also recognize the need for a minimal infrastructure to support long distance travel without the need to be parked somewhere for 20 minutes out of ever hour (or more).
=Smidge=

Re:Still not practical

[loshwomp]

It's not an imaginary problem. Even with this tech, making people wait at a charging station for 30 minutes is a problem.

The need for fast charging (or battery swapping or any of a host of other non-economical "solutions" to the "range problem") is what's imaginary. As anyone who actually drives an electric knows, the overwhelming majority of charging happens at home. Depending on range expended, the typical charge time is an hour or two, but it doesn't matter because it happens while you're doing other things.

Your argument applies much more strongly to cell phones. They only make calls for a few days, and then you have to wait for hours while they charge. No one would ever think that's a good thing!

The swap station is 1/2 the price of a gas station, and the price to the driver is competitive with gasoline.

It doesn't matter, because it's far cheaper still to charge at home. The economics of "fast charge" stations are dubious (that's being generous) and battery swapping is an order of magnitude worse.

And of course this is moot, because the auto industry is not adopting battery swapping. Period. Even Renault, which is building cars is not going along with it, which is why BP still has not deployed a single production swap station. Smoke and mirrors prototypes? Yeah, they got those. I'm sure their investors are thrilled that they blew a third of their cash on that.

They are rolling this out in Finland, Japan, and Israel.

Yeah sure they are. I guess that's why, according to Wikipedia: "As of March 2012, none of these deployments have occurred. Better Place plans to deploy the infrastructure on a country-by-country basis."

They're being left in the dust by the rest of the industry. Innovation by press release only works until other companies start delivering the stuff you promised.

Several standard deviations of charging happens at home. The rest happens as part of the routine (e.g. at work) and the rest is down in the noise. If Shai Agassi ever spent any significant time driving an EV, he'd realize this.

Re:Still not practical

[demonlapin]

Maybe when 25 or 50% of all commuter vehicles are electric we will have to worry about grid load

I suspect it won't even need to be that high, but I'm planning for the future.

Re:Still not practical

[robot256]

Can you try planning for the future by anticipating actual technology instead of resorting to knee-jerk reactionary tactics? Seriously, when it does become an issue, we have MUCH better ways to deal with it than shaming people who dare to plug in during the day. Yes, if everyone traded in their cars for electric right now it would be a big deal, but we have about a decade to figure it out before we hit even 1% market penetration.

The charging standard is set up so that the grid can control everyone's rate of charge. If you have a parking garage full of partially-charged vehicles they could easily be synchronized with the rest of the building and throttled so that the average load of the company is flat. If you have to leave in less than 6 hours, pay an extra buck and you get priority charging. Or the simplest solution of all: Install solar panels over your parking lot to charge the cars. Then it doesn't matter what the rest of the grid is doing, and you can sell back the excess.

For a typical commute of 40 miles one way, a car uses 40 miles / (4 miles/kWh) = 10kWh of electricity. At the max L2 rate of 6.6kW, this can be done in less than two hours. If you have a garage of 20 cars all traveling this far, you need 200 kWh of electricity delivered in about 8 hours, which is an average draw of 25kW. While not chump change, a constant load of 25kW is about the same as two or three commercial air conditioning units, hardly a drastic load on the grid, and the actual charging could by throttled so it only happens when the building A/C is off. This is also a pretty extreme scenario, with 20 cars all having long commutes. If there are 20 cars that require charging at work, there are probably 50 more that don't, and that is pretty high market penetration right there.

Re:Still not practical

[robot256]

Your "minimal infrastructure" involves make EVERY SINGLE CAR compliant with some battery standard, and installing these robot things all over the place. Sure, it works in a place like Israel because there's only one corridor and the whole country is small and self contained. But in the US? There are corridors freaking everywhere. Making that system ubiquitous enough that people would pay extra for a compatible car would be next to impossible. When you DO need to move your BEV between cities, waiting for 10-20 minutes won't be a big deal if it's in a nice location. Who would pay so much extra just to save 10 minutes when they do this once a year, or even once every five years?

And once again, traveling between cities in a BEV on a frequent basis is a generally dumb idea--that's what trains, planes, buses, and (at worst) rental cars are for. If such travel is in your job description, stop bitching and by a gas car, it's the only one that meets your requirements. You wouldn't try sailing across the Atlantic in a kayak, would you? But just as important, you wouldn't paddle the canals in a 100-foot schooner. Embrace BEVs for what they are, commuter vehicles designed to punch SMOG in the nuts and reduce our reliance on OIL in general. They ARE NOT magic unicorns come to replace every vehicle on the road right now.

Re:Still not practical

[robot256]

Some of us aren't that lucky, bro, and are stuck in a metropolitan hell-hole. Actually, there are plenty of parks and even a few other cities within 50 miles of here, so I'm happy. If your daily commute is less than 40 miles round-trip, though, go for the Volt. It would be perfect for your use case, and I hear it is awesome fun to drive.

Re:Still not practical

[Cosgrach]

True...

Re:Still not practical

[hebcal]

Why not make the batteries replaceable? Just switch them as a gas station, simple.

Because it's a stupid idea for reasons we've covered numerous times before.

...and yet betterplace is implementing this solution with success in Europe, Israel and Japan

http://www.betterplace.com/the-solution-switch-stations

Re:Still not practical

[ColdWetDog]

Nobody sane is suggesting that EVs entirely replace IC engine vehicles in the near term. There are too many edge cases that make EVs impractical for all uses while at the same time making perfect sense for many. We're talking multiple decades, perhaps generations to change off everything.

There is plenty of oil for that - we just have to start somewhere, somehow as there isn't enough (cheap) oil to last for multiple generations.

Perhaps your kids will be taking a driverless electric bus up from a transfer point on the highway, dropping off their gear and hiking over to another bus, transferring down to the main highway and picking up their EV which drove itself to the new spot.

Or maybe they'll be hunkered down in their bunker playing with an old Xbox run off a 12 v battery. Who knows?

Re:Still not practical

[Smidge204]

If we could reduce the number of "standard form factors" required to maybe four or five, it's possible. Small (compact, 2-door sedans) , Medium (4-door sedans, wagons, crossovers), Large (Larger crossovers, SUVs, vans, light trucks) and Heavy Duty. Considering the level of standardization in other industries - most notably the electronics and telecom industries - it is profoundly cynical to say the auto industry is unable to do this.

Remember that the fundamental reason most EVs don't have compatible batteries is all but two or three manufacturers are focusing on shoehorning an electric drivetrain into an existing car. Everyone who is building pure EVs from scratch have been accommodating: The Nissan Leaf has the battery pack under the floorboards (though the attachment system is not swap-capable, the location is). The Renault Fluence Z.E. is specifically built in partnership with Better Place with a swappable battery behind the rear seat. The Tesla Model S and BYD's e6 are also said to be swap compatible.

This goes way beyond Israel too. Better Place is an Israeli company, sure, but their battery swap pilot stations can be found in Japan, France, Denmark, and the US (California and Hawaii).

It's not just "waiting 10-20 minutes when moving between cities." For every ~60 miles you drive you will spend a minimum of 40 minutes recharging. That's ~1 hour of highway driving and 40 minutes charging. That's with fast chargers, not the significantly slower L2 stations which would take 6-8 hours. Battery swap takes less than 2 minutes and is fully automated. Roll up, swipe a credit card (or membership card for bill-me-later service), pull into what is essentially a car wash, and drive out faster than you could order a cup of coffee.

Don't forget that the ultimate goal is to "de-carbon" transportation, so "stop bitching and by (sic) a gas car" is antithetical to that goal. It's also irresponsibly unsustainable.
=Smidge=

Re:Still not practical

[DamonHD]

In Brussels I saw some parking spaces with charging while at FOSDEM, here:

http://gallery.hd.org/_c/travel/_more2012/_more02/car-electric-ZERO-ZENCAR-pair-charging-from-pillars-on-snowy-streets-of-Brussels-Belgium-1-DHD.jpg.html

Now this may be currently limited to one car rental scheme, but that's more-or-less a matter of software to fix, especially once a standard plug is widespread.

Rgds

Damon

Re:Still not practical

[amorsen]

We refill flying planes with other flying planes and you think this is 'far from simple?

The military does that. No civilian planes do, AFAIK. In-air refuelling would save LOTS of fuel on long trips; if it was practical it would surely be in use.

Re:Still not practical

[amorsen]

If solar cells keep improving their cost/benefit at the current rate and electric car uptake does not speed up dramatically, mid-day electricity will come from solar cells in most of the world.

Either way, we are too far away from 50% electric cars to really worry about that kind of thing. The power infrastructure will likely look quite different in 10 or 20 years.

Re:Still not practical

[robot256]

I didn't say it was impossible, I said the political reality is that it will be irrelevant before it is ready for market. Fast chargers will only get faster, battery packs will only get bigger. Once we have 200-mile battery packs (really only 5-10 years away), even most intercity trips won't be a problem. The remaining fraction of a percent of all vehicle miles spent on longer trips will be almost negligible (environmentally speaking) if we can electrify the other 99.99% of miles traveled.

The telecom industry standardizes plenty, sure, but they are not consumer products. They don't have meet the same kind of physical, aesthetic, and price constraints consumer products do. The closest analog is the laptop and cell phone industries where they standardized the plugs (mostly), but you're lucky if the battery packs are compatible with more than one exact model, much less multiple years over multiple manufacturers.

If you're looking for carbon-neutral, there are much better ways to travel long distance than battery power: biofuel or hydrogen-powered cars (either ICE or fuel cell), and most importantly high-speed electric railroads. Battery swapping is basically what the military would do if presented with "We have X technology now, we want to do Y with it, so build a Z to make it possible." But the Y you are talking about, making personal vehicles go unlimited distances using Li-Ion battery technology, isn't the problem. The problem is getting people from point A to point B with as conveniently and efficiently as possible. I won't accept battery-swapping as the best solution unless it's compared to these and other options that aren't restricted to the religion of the personal vehicle.

The reason myself and many other EV advocates argue against battery swapping is because inflates the perceived cost of the electric vehicle transition. If people think all that infrastructure is necessary for BEVs to be at all useful, they are going to question the wisdom of using them at all. The time and money required for carmakers to standardize packs would be much better spent making the standardization unnecessary. The investment in infrastructure for battery swapping would really only serve a tiny, tiny segment of the population, and the overall cost would slow adoption and make it even less profitable.

I want to say any development is a good development, but I'm just not convinced that battery swapping is worth the expenditure of both financial and political capital that would be required to get it off the ground, given how rapidly technology is moving forward.

Re:Still not practical

[Anonymous Coward]

(Haruchai posting as AC due to previous moderation)

You have heard of computer chips, yes? Recall that HP and others were putting them in printer cartridges to tell (or lie about ) how much ink was remaining?

The batteries have those too and swapping the battery will likely require the interaction of at least 4 computers - one to authenticate you, one in the battery, one in the car and another that controls whatever machine brings the new battery and takes away the old.

There are lots of legit concerns and practical problems with battery swapping but the major problems have been solved. No need to make up bullshit ones that were solved long ago by technology.

Re:Still not practical

[Smidge204]

Maybe something worth noting is that electric forklifts also have, often automated, battery swap systems.

=Smidge=

I hope this helps the electric car market.

[dopaz]

Standardization sounds like a good plan, so we can focus on one format of charging infrastructure.

Re:I hope this helps the electric car market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Standardization sounds like a good plan, so we can focus on one format of charging infrastructure.

It will help.....right up til one manufacturer says they own the patent on the design and that everyone must pay $100 per vehicle.

Pit stop

[fustakrakich]

With my prostrate, it takes me about that long to pee anyway, so it's good to see progress is being made.

Re:Pit stop

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always found it hard to pee laying down as well, plus it gets all over you!

Re:Pit stop

[M. Baranczak]

A few years ago I was in Boston, and heard a PSA on the radio. It was Mayor Menino talking about prostate cancer screenings... but it seemed like he wasn't sure how to pronounce it. About half the time he said "prostate", the other half he said "prostrate".

Then I realized that they probably recorded multiple takes, and this was the best one they could get.

Re:Pit stop

[Dragonslicer]

The question was answered in your first sentence. You have to realize that in Boston, the letter R has zero meaning. You're allowed to remove any R from any word or add an extra R anywhere in any word.

Re:Pit stop

[FishTankX]

Even at the beginning of the word?

rat=at?
rate=ate?
rum=um?

Re:Pit stop

[Rockoon]

No, but they add R's to ends of words.. which might as well be the beginning of the next.. a classic example is the Boston fisherman that calls the fish he catches "tuner" instead of "tuna" .. (and they say "tunah" instead of "tuner" when talking about the radio dial...)

Re:Pit stop

[Anonymous Coward]

With my prostrate

why don't you try it standing up? That might help.

Re:Pit stop

[rubycodez]

Lie on your side, and make it your partner's problem

Re:Pit stop

[swalve]

I think they only add the R when the next word begins with a vowel. "Tuna boat" and "tuner is good eatin'"

15-30 minutes

[girlintraining]

This just in, gas stations rolling out new chargers that will charge your vehicle for a whole week and it will only take 2 minutes. Please have your credit card handy.

Re:15-30 minutes

[billius]

This just in, gas stations rolling out new chargers that will charge your vehicle for a whole week and it will only take 2 minutes. Please have your credit card handy.

That's a fair point, but I could still see this being very practical if it's the type of thing you could do at home. I really like the idea of not having to worry about whether or not my car has enough "juice" (be it gasoline or electricity) because it gets fully charged every night.

Re:15-30 minutes

[RyoShin]

While I see your point, the result of this will be that we're going to see "refueling stations" pop up in a lot of heretofore unexpected places. To start, without the need for gas to be trucked in and stored locally they don't need the same infrastructure that a regular gas station does. Because of this, you can simply install one or two of these in common parking areas. Then, imagine going to a mall where you can park, plug in to a station (I'd imagine a handful per row, not one per spot) and do your shopping. Even if you're not in there long enough to get a full charge, you're still better off than you once were. It's also an extra feature that can be touted by various shopping locales to get people to shop there, and then combined with loyalty cards for "fuel" discounts for further enticements.

The main issue I see with this is how to make sure that while you're away someone doesn't unplug the charger, plug it into their own car, charge for a few minutes, and drive off. I haven't seen the spec, but including the ability (if not making it mandatory) that when unplugging the charger the transaction ceases sounds like a good idea. That opens its own problems to pranking, but I'd think most people would prefer not having a fully-charged car to having a fully-charged car and also paying for someone else's fully-charge car.

Some sort of locking mechanism with a key (like subway/airport lockers, before TERRERISTS made them go away) might be an option, but that introduces another set of problems and seems outside the goal of this spec.

I can also see large companies with their own campuses, especially the likes of Apple or Google, installing these in their parking lots for employees and using a "co-op" setup, where the employees get the charge at cost or barely above. If they included some sort of valet system (I wouldn't be surprised if they already had something like that at the larger facilities), cars could be dropped off, charged, and parked once done on a rotating basis.

In short, gas stations as we understand them will die off with the use of gasoline (assuming it ever does so) and new options will emerge that will work with the extended refuel time. Also, if the 15-20 minutes is from near-empty to full charge (What, RTFA? Please.), most people will probably only need 2 minutes worth of charging to make sure they can get back home for short hops. They'll plug in at home and do a long charge overnight.

Re:15-30 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

That gas station charger also uses materials that are here for a limited time only. These materials will keep getting more expensive, until most people cannot afford to use it every day.

Re:15-30 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheetz (a semi-local gas station on the east coast) already rolled out/is rolling out electric charging stations

Re:15-30 minutes

[PopeRatzo]

There are several in my neighborhood, near downtown Chicago, in places you wouldn't expect. The parking lot for Walgreens for example. Other mall parking lots. Commuter train stations which seems like a really great idea, so people can charge their car while they're at work.

I just finished an interesting book about one part of the oil industry, Exxon-Mobil, called Private Empire. It's by Steve Coll, the writer from the New Yorker who's won a couple of Pulitzers. He spent a lot of time talking to Exxon people, and got unprecedented access to the company. He posits that Exxon isn't worried about solar, or wind, or any alternative fuel. The only technology that could present an existential threat to their hegemony as the most powerful corporation in the world (their own military, ambassadors, foreign policy, etc) - the one technology that worries them, is batteries. If there is a significant advance in battery technology, they're screwed. Apparently, they waited too long because of the ideological bent of their last CEO and didn't spend any money researching or acquiring tech that could help them in those areas, and now that their new CEO has (at least publicly) dropped the company's funding of anti-AGW groups, it's too late for them to make any inroads there.

I'm not particularly fond of Exxon-Mobil as a company. I don't buy gas (or soda pop, or cigarettes, or candy bars) from Exxon-Mobil and will drive an extra couple of miles to shop with a company that isn't quite so evil (Sunoco is my favorite). But the book was a fascinating read.

By the way, there are a couple of start-ups right here in Illinois that have been doing pretty well with research (partnered with UofIllinois) and development and manufacture of batteries for electric automobiles. Couple of thousand people working in a pretty hard-hit part of the state. They export batteries to Europe and Asia. They got start-up money from the DoE, just like Solyndra, but these companies have succeeded and one has already paid back all the government money with interest.

Does anyone think that we have reached some sort of absolute limit on the ability of batteries to power automobiles? I don't know enough about the technology to know one way or the other.

Re:15-30 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's your definition of practical, the current all electric cars will fully charge in 4 to 8 hours at home. That should be fine for your needs.

For me to go all electric I'd need a 15 minute or less charge with 300+ mile range. Of course it would also need to handle as well, be as fast, etc as my current car. I could handle a road trip at that rate, taking food breaks every 300/75 = 4 hours.

Re:15-30 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

We have had them scattered around Apple for some time.

Re:15-30 minutes

[robot256]

Heads-up: DC fast charging (L3) is NOT designed to replace the normal "slow" L1/L2 AC charging. At least with current battery technologies, frequent fast charging will dramatically reduce the lifespan of your battery pack and is discouraged by the manufacturers. Fast chargers should ONLY show up in places where people need emergency charging or need to make 100-300 mile hops between urban centers. When you do use them, expect to pay about as much as you would for a tank of gas. You'll want to avoid this as much as possible so you can actually save money by operating your EV.

Fast chargers are significantly more expensive to install than L2 (220VAC) chargers because they normally require *battery buffers* to reduce peak load on the grid. Commercial parking lots will almost never opt for expensive fast chargers when the standard L2 chargers provide about 30 miles of range in one hour, more than enough to aid your customers and much easier on your wallet and theirs alike.

The primary charging method of all EVs will still be slow-charging at home, just like you do with your smart phone. It's cheaper, easier, and takes less of your time than waiting around 15 minutes for it to finish at some dingy gas station. There is absolutely no reason to use fast chargers but in exceptional circumstances.

These are the "new options" that you speak of. Parking = Charging is where we need to be, and it will cover the vast majority of EV operating hours. The DC fast chargers are only to fill in the gaps between parked chargers, not some sort of "gas station replacement". The whole point of the electric vehicle is to do away with the gas station model and simply live off the grid, getting power whenever and wherever you happen to be.

Re:15-30 minutes

[CrazyDuke]

Spend about $36.00 in 5 minutes to drive for another 350 miles or about $3.00 in 20 to drive about another 64 miles (assuming comparable subcompacts, highway miles). Keep in mind, you will spend that 5 minutes fueling at a gas station, where you can charge at home and possibly at work, play, and shopping. So, if your idle time is really valuable, or you just go on long trips frequently, you may want to keep a gas car around.

I putter along at about 25 miles per day, with the odd 200 mile trip every few months where I don't mind stopping a couple of times to stretch, take a leak, grab some grub, etc... So, about every quarter, I would drive about 2350 miles. I would spend about 40 minutes during that time fueling my gas car (33 mpg combined, 9 gallons per stop), and 1 hour 20 minutes (4 80% recharges) screwing around at charging stations (20 minutes for 19.2kWh, 80% of a 24kWh pack, 64 miles per). I will have spent about $285 in Gas or about $12 at the charging stations, plus about $94 in household electricity (assuming no "free" charging).

That is about $269 per hour of waiting. Although, this does not include offsets such as the huge upfront cost of the pack (usually a $12k to $14k premium), nor the large difference in maintenance costs. It also does not include the few seconds to plug in the car at home, now that I think about it.

Re:15-30 minutes

[girlintraining]

To start, without the need for gas to be trucked in and stored locally they don't need the same infrastructure that a regular gas station does. Because of this, you can simply install one or two of these in common parking areas.

The same argument could be made for natural gas. And no, you don't want one of these in a common parking area. In a word, children. Anything that can dump several thousand watts of juice into a vehicle in that short of a time can be fucked with, and probably with deadly results. Also... unlike a gas station, the use of these pretty much mandates the use of credit cards... I haven't found an unattended gas station with a cash reader... ever. I like cash -- it works when the power goes out, the computer fouls up, the bank decides to hate me, the government decides I'm a terrorist, or my partner decides to drain my account dry and leave me hanging.

In short, gas stations as we understand them will die off with the use of gasoline (assuming it ever does so) and new options will emerge that will work with the extended refuel time.

buwahahahahahaaaaaaaa! *wipes tear from eye* Two words: Energy density. A gas-powered car using today's technology can travel 300+ miles, and refuel in 2 minutes before resuming its trip. Electric cars using today's technology can only travel half that distance and require 30x the amount of charging time, if not more. Using an electric car on a road trip with today's tech would waste would add 25% or more to the trip time. Using the charging methods on the market now, you'd be better off using a bicycle... -_-

All this eco-tech has huge drawbacks in terms of performance and convenience... and it costs more too. eco- is not econo-.

Re:15-30 minutes

[demonlapin]

they don't need the same infrastructure that a regular gas station does

Yes, they need a completely different set of infrastructure. Starting with having an electric substation very close by...

Re:15-30 minutes

[jo_ham]

That gas station charger also uses materials that are here for a limited time only. These materials will keep getting more expensive, until most people cannot afford to use it every day.

What do you mean? Do you mean in its construction; being made of plastic etc? The syngas process solves that one handily, plus there are a large number of materials you can use that are non fossil-fuel derived. Plus, the material resource cost of a physical object that is designed to last a long time is not comparable to a fuel that you simply burn once and then lose forever. Less material goes into the physical product, it can be recycled afterwards, it can be made of alternative materials etc. Not to mention that reducing the use of oil and gas as a fuel leaves more of it free to be used for other very useful things - like plastics, drugs, lubricants, etc.

Re:15-30 minutes

[Jedi Alec]

Yet at the same time oil gets more and more expensive while power generation as well as transfer gets more and more cheap.

I'm sure there was a point where replacing the horse and buggy infrastructure with one suitable for gasoline powered vehicles wasn't economically interesting either.

As for power outlets being dangerous to children...we seem to manage quite well with houses full of the damn things.

Re:15-30 minutes

[loshwomp]

Anything that can dump several thousand watts of juice into a vehicle in that short of a time can be fucked with, and probably with deadly results.

Please, for the good of humanity, stop spewing made-up bullshit when you don't know what you're talking about.

First, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of watts.

Second, the SAE charging standard is ridiculously safe, and does not energize the contacts until mated with the vehicle and a handshake has been exchanged.

Third, the number of watts is utterly irrelevant. Plugging in your iPod charger (or any other appliance) carries exactly the same risk--the electricity will kill you just as fast. Actually the car is safer as it would be damn near impossible to touch live contacts, unlike the NEMA plugs in the US.

A gas-powered car using today's technology can travel 300+ miles, and refuel in 2 minutes before resuming its trip.

Yeah yeah, change is scary and you're willfully ignorant. Everyone fancies himself as taking 300 mile road trips all the time, but the driving statistics (have a look at the University of George study) conclusively demonstrate that most people don't. Electrics aren't for everyone--they're only useful for about 80% of the driving we do. Your own anecdotes about your needs, even if true, don't change the big picture.

All this eco-tech has huge drawbacks in terms of performance and convenience.

Spoken like someone who has never driven an electric, nor even bothered to learn about them. The performance is outstanding, and it's difficult to beat the convenience of charging at home for a small fraction of the price of gasoline.

Re:15-30 minutes

[mark-t]

Everyone fancies himself as taking 300 mile road trips all the time, but the driving statistics (have a look at the University of George study) conclusively demonstrate that most people don't.

You're right that most people don't, but most people also want to at least have that as an option - even if only ever used less than half a dozen times in a year... without having to own both commuting vehicles for getting to and from work *AND* owing an additional recreational vehicle for when they do want to take road trips (not all of which may be planned far enough in advance for alternatives such as renting to be as amenable to people). People like the convenience of a vehicle with range, and I don't imagine them being willing to give it up anytime soon.

Re:15-30 minutes

[evilviper]

"This just in, gas stations rolling out new chargers that will charge your vehicle for a whole week and it will only take 2 minutes."

Unfortunately for them, people take longer to "charge" (and discharge) than 2 minutes. To make matters worse, gas stations tend not to be the kinds of place that people want to do either of those things, so it becomes two stops.

The first major fast-food chain that comits to having a fast charger at all their locations along major highways will make a killing.

Re:15-30 minutes

[Mal-2]

Also... unlike a gas station, the use of these pretty much mandates the use of credit cards... I haven't found an unattended gas station with a cash reader... ever. I like cash -- it works when the power goes out, the computer fouls up, the bank decides to hate me, the government decides I'm a terrorist, or my partner decides to drain my account dry and leave me hanging.

Never seen a PayQuick terminal at ARCO? Granted I've never owned a car that was happy with ARCO gas and typically do what I can to avoid fueling up there, but they accept bills just fine.

Re:15-30 minutes

[loshwomp]

People like the convenience of a vehicle with range

This line of reasoning always reduces down to: Electrics aren't a 100% solution, therefore they may as well not exist. Fortunately, no vehicle actually needs to appeal to anywhere near 100% of the market. If we applied that metric universally, we wouldn't have Hummers, concrete mixer trucks, or Smart cars.

The perceived "problem" with electrics has a name--range anxiety--and it's mostly a psychological phenomenon. I do not believe it will have a technical solution--education and experience will increase adoption gradually.

Re:15-30 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you frequently drive 300+ miles then only stop for 15 minutes or less?

Really?

I take it you're very young, have an freakishly large bladder, and/or want to die from throwing a blood clot?

Re:15-30 minutes

[girlintraining]

The perceived "problem" with electrics has a name--range anxiety--and it's mostly a psychological phenomenon. I do not believe it will have a technical solution--education and experience will increase adoption gradually.

A range of 50 miles before having to spend 3 or more hours recharging is not a "psychological phenomenon". The adoption rate is dropping -- very few people who buy an electric car buy another because they gain that experience and education that you speak so fondly of... and then make the informed decision to never again touch the technology because it's so pathetically underpowered compared to gasoline-driven solutions.

Re:15-30 minutes

[Jeremi]

the one technology that worries [Exxon], is batteries

Don't feel too sorry for them -- even if the entire world somehow stopped using gasoline as fuel, there's still a great future in plastics.

Re:15-30 minutes

[thsths]

> Heads-up: DC fast charging (L3) is NOT designed to replace the normal "slow" L1/L2 AC charging. At least with current battery technologies, frequent fast charging will dramatically reduce the lifespan of your battery pack and is discouraged by the manufacturers. Fast chargers should ONLY show up in places where people need emergency charging or need to make 100-300 mile hops between urban centers. When you do use them, expect to pay about as much as you would for a tank of gas.

If the fast charge is so expensive, and it ruins your battery, it begs the question why you would do it in the first place? Why not just rent a petrol car for a day? That is probably more economical in the end.

It seems that BEV are only really suitable for a very specific use case. If it has a range of 40 miles, you can only use it for a commute up to about 15 miles (plus the detour to the supermarket and some reserve for the winter). You want to charge it with night time electricity, so charging at work is not really an economical situation, unless it is exceptional. So if you work 200 days a year (accounting for business trips etc), you only drive about 6000 miles a year, plus maybe 1000 during the weekend.

In this use case it may work, but a compact car may still be more economical.

Re:15-30 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

80% of driving needs may be covered by ev's, but that doesn't mean most people are going to buy one as their main vehicle. Problem is similar to software features, most people don't use most of them most of the time, but most people do use a few of the seldom used ones occasionally, so you can't leave them out. When I need a table in my document, I need one, you cant just omit tables from a word processor because 80% of documents dont have them. Ev's will make great second cars for a lot of families, but most people are going to want the primary car to be gas, because of those five long trips they take every year.

Re:15-30 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

Different country, different habits. Here in Italy the norm is putting Euro notes in to a cash reader at unattended gas stations. All of them have one. Frankly I won't risk having my CC stuck into a reader at night, maybe because somebody decided to jam it and see what happens (either waiting for me to leave without the card or offering *some sort of help*).

Re:15-30 minutes

[Chuq]

The main issue I see with this is how to make sure that while you're away someone doesn't unplug the charger, plug it into their own car, charge for a few minutes, and drive off. I haven't seen the spec, but including the ability (if not making it mandatory) that when unplugging the charger the transaction ceases sounds like a good idea. That opens its own problems to pranking, but I'd think most people would prefer not having a fully-charged car to having a fully-charged car and also paying for someone else's fully-charge car.

Like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUICgOM6_gw&sns=em

Re:15-30 minutes

[loshwomp]

A range of 50 miles before having to spend 3 or more hours recharging is not a "psychological phenomenon"

It would be if you sat there waiting for it, but it charges while you're doing other things--like sleeping--so it actually only eats about two seconds of your time to plug it in.

I could make the same argument about cell phones. You can only make calls for a day or two, and then you have to plug it in for hours. No one will ever put up with that!

The adoption rate is dropping -- very few people who buy an electric car buy another

You're confusing the recent news about hybrids with electrics. Since the latter have only been widely available for a year or two, adoption is, of course, accelerating.

Consumer satisfaction with Teslas, BMWs, and Nissan LEAFs is through the roof. The number of households with two electrics defies logical explanation. A large fraction of Mini E drivers went on to lease Active Es, and Roadster drivers are the largest class of Model S pre-orders.

Re:15-30 minutes

[robot256]

What you point out is precisely the reason why Nissan has been considering giving out car rental coupons to Leaf buyers. It makes a lot of sense; but there are other cases, like when you live in NY and want to go to DC for the week, where getting a fast-charge along the way is the difference between using your nice BEV and paying for a whole week's rental.

What you say about range is correct, but all the decent BEVs on the market now (except the Volt) have a range of about 100 miles and can do round-trip commutes of 35 miles reliably. By your computation that puts it at 15,000 miles per year, which I understand is the expected average for ICE vehicles.

To address the cost of ownership question, I refer you to page 6 of this flyer, with five-year cost of ownership projections in California: Toyota Matrix XRS $41,435 ---- Toyota Prius 5 $41,724 --- Nissan Leaf SL $30,284. Lower maintenance make them pretty close, and government incentives make the BEV much cheaper in comparison.

Re:15-30 minutes

[mark-t]

People like the convenience of a vehicle with range

This line of reasoning always reduces down to: Electrics aren't a 100% solution, therefore they may as well not exist.

No... it reduces down to: electrics aren't viable for most people because they desire the convenience of being able to go wherever they want, even if this ability is not exercised frequently (and yes, I'm aware this is a purely psychological phenomenon), and they don't want to have to own an additional car on top of the one they use for commuting (this is not purely psychological... there are significant financial factors involved).

Re:15-30 minutes

[loshwomp]

I guess we'll see. For now, the first and second derivatives are solidly positive. It took mild hybrids ten years to reach 1% market share, and that was fast by automotive standards, so the transition will likely be more gradual than what is tossed around by the press and the EV "community".

I dispute your claim that people don't want an additional car. I don't recall the precise figure at the moment, but an enormous fraction of households in the US have two or more cars, and that trend is even stronger with electrics (i.e. they tend to be in multi-car households).

Interesting that you brought up financials. Even if you don't value the convenience or the smooth, high-torque driving experience with instant throttle response, the economics of electrics are about breakeven today. It's a massive win elsewhere in the world where gas isn't as cheap, and when gas hits $8 or $10 in the states, there will be no contest in terms of fully amortized cost per mile.

And of course, the real point I was trying to make is that, just like any other car model, electrics don't have to appeal to everyone or even "most people". Most people don't want an H2, either, but they still sold pretty well. Total worldwide production for electrics won't exceed 100,000 units for several more years. Demand won't be the limiting factor for a decade, even if it merely holds steady.

Re:15-30 minutes

[mark-t]

I'm not suggesting that families don't own multiple cars... I'm saying that the expense of an additional car that they do not regularly need is simply not worth it for most people. There are some people that have additional vehicles purely for recreational usage, but by no means are these the majority. This means that such households either buy cars they can use both for commuting and long trips, or else they relegate themselves to owning vehicles suitable only for commuting. Most people choose the former.

And consider also that EV's cost more than you're likely to spend on gasoline on a car that you own for almost the entire life of the car. Coupled with the fact that the electricity isn't free either, the economics of owning an EV just don't add up.

If EV's were half, or even better, a quarter the cost of a regular automobile, you'd see a lot more people being willing to own them in addition to their other cars. Of couse, that's not likely to happen until more people start buying them that the savings of mass production can bring their cost down. The only escape from this otherwise catch-22 is to increase the EV's range.

Re:15-30 minutes

[loshwomp]

not suggesting that families don't own multiple cars... I'm saying that the expense of an additional car that they do not regularly need is simply not worth it for most people.

It's not an "additional car" for a household that has two cars anyway, which, as we've established, many do. Practically no one needs two long distance cars.

No offense intended, but I get the feeling you don't actually know anyone who drives an electric. Typically someone commutes in the electric, and the spouse drives the "other car", which is also the obvious choice for family road trips. One of the more-progressive households I know has just one car, and for the occasional longer trip they trade cars with a friend. Of course, they could also rent a car.

And consider also that EV's cost more than you're likely to spend on gasoline on a car that you own for almost the entire life of the car.

True also for gas cars (at today's gas prices) but still irrelevant. It's the marginal cost per mile that matters, and it's not just fuel in the equation. Electrics need none of the service that gas cars require, aside from tires and wiper fluid.

Coupled with the fact that the electricity isn't free either

Of course not, but it is about 90% cheaper, depending on your local electric rates. Almost everyone agrees that gasoline prices will rise faster (and be more volatile) than electric rates for the foreseeable future (decades).

If EV's were half, or even better, a quarter the cost of a regular automobile

Nah, totally unnecessary, because the cost of operation is so much lower. Remember, the industry is production limited (not demand limited) and this will not change for years.

The only escape from this otherwise catch-22 is to increase the EV's range.

There is some truth, here. Considering that marginal range costs $50-100 per mile (granted, it's falling quickly), there is a strong economic incentive not to design in more range than necessary, since the EV makes a poor long distance car in any case. There is an ideal range, and I think market forces will eventually find it, but it's still too early. 150 miles is probably too much for now. 50 is not enough.

Attempting to design for for widest appeal is a trap that leads to expensive solutions like battery swapping or series hybrids (e.g. the Volt, which, not coincidentally, is not selling nearly as well despite being a great, innovative vehicle).

Re:15-30 minutes

[mark-t]

Nah, totally unnecessary, because the cost of operation is so much lower

Which is more than completely offset by the difference in price between electric cars and gasoline powered cars. One must face making a compromise when getting an EV right now, which is sacrificing some of the mobility freedom that gasoline powered cars currently offer. I do not think it unreasonable to expect that this compromise should come at some sort of price and that EV's should be less expensive than a gasoline vehicle, since they do not offer a similar level of convenience. The lower cost of operation is a valid consideration, but as that is amortized over the life of the vehicle, it is generally less of a financial concern than that of simply owning the car in the first place. Something more is needed...either EV's must be more economical to PURCHASE than gasoline cars, or they must offer increased driving range comparable to a gasoline car before they are likely to be widely accepted.

Re:15-30 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

I like cash -- it works when the power goes out,

The electric car charger does not!!!

Re:15-30 minutes

[loshwomp]

Which is more than completely offset by the difference in price between electric cars and gasoline powered cars.

You keep writing that, but it's at best a marginal claim. Even with relatively high electric rates here in California, a Nissan LEAF would be nearly a breakeven cost experience over the life of the vehicle, and we're not even out of the "early adopter" part of the curve. Of course the cars will get cheaper over time, and the smart money knows gasoline will get more expensive.

There isn't much other data from which to draw conclusions, yet. (The Volt costs more and, not surprisingly, is faltering. Tesla is optimizing for performance rather than economy.)

since they do not offer a similar level of convenience

Ah, but they offer different conveniences, such as the convenience of never having to refuel. (Like your phone, it's full every morning.) I know this sounds crazy, because even people who want an electric don't get this at first, but after a few months you stop even thinking about range.

It's pretty convenient not having to do (or pay for) oil changes, timing belt replacements, or practically any other service.

Some people assign a high value to the knowledge that they're not using oil, as electricity is almost entirely sourced domestically. Unlike oil, electricity has a very stable price history, too, thanks to the fact that it comes from multiple root sources.

And electrics are just plain ridiculously fun to drive. If you haven't tried it, you won't understand. Maybe you don't care anyway, but anecdotes don't matter. People are starting to get it.

they must offer increased driving range comparable to a gasoline car

We're going in circles, now. That can be done at a cost no one would bear. (See the Volt.)

Tesla's Model S will be an interesting case study--it's available with three range options, and it's easy to calculate the marginal cost per mile. Unfortunately for science, Tesla's clientele is probably self-selected to be less-concerned with cost.

before they are likely to be widely accepted.

And we've covered this, too. They don't need to be "widely accepted" to be successful.

I get it, man. They're different, and change is scary.

Re:15-30 minutes

[LongearedBat]

how to make sure that while you're away someone doesn't unplug the charger, plug it into their own car, charge for a few minutes, and drive off

Suggestion...

Say each car had a unique code.

Each time a shopper wants to start charging, he/she would connect the charger to the car and provide a credit card. At that point the charger would dedicate its charge to that car. The charger would be inert for any other car.

That would simplify how to use the car charger, and it would prevent thieving.

Of course, I don't think the suggested standard can read the unique code of cars, and I don't think electric cars have unique codes... yet.

Re:15-30 minutes

[hotdog.sk]

The main issue I see with this is how to make sure that while you're away someone doesn't unplug the charger, plug it into their own car, charge for a few minutes, and drive off. I haven't seen the spec, but including the ability (if not making it mandatory) that when unplugging the charger the transaction ceases sounds like a good idea. That opens its own problems to pranking, but I'd think most people would prefer not having a fully-charged car to having a fully-charged car and also paying for someone else's fully-charge car.

Yes, the charging stops when either side of the cable gets unlocked. Not so much due to theft, but for electricity safety - there's lot of current running down the line and it would be dangerous to plug the connector under load. Public charging spots usually require authorization before charging starts, e. g. via RFID card.

Disclosure: I develop control and monitoring software for major EV charging infrastructure in Europe

Re:15-30 minutes

[Anonymous Coward]

and it costs more too. eco- is not econo-.

Funny. We were looking at several cars in the $25k range to replace an old and dying one. Then on a whim, I did the calculations on a Nissan LEAF at MSRP around $35k. Turns out for 1500 miles/month, we would save about $200/month or over $2000 a year on fuel. So break even time is less than 5 years for us, and with the current tax breaks (which won't last forever) it's actually 0 years in California. So we bought one. We're saving money from day one.

Yeah, late reply, blah blah blah.

Sounds like communism...

[Anonymous Coward]

The capitalist way is to have different ways to charge your car - none of this liberal communist standardisation.

Some EVs can't quick charge repeatedly

[Anonymous Coward]

Nissan advises Leaf owners to only Quick Charge twice per month. Some of the newer cars will be able to do it more frequently, possibly without any consequence over slow charging.

Any day now, I'm expecting a lot of noise around owners who didn't RTFM and end up frying their batteries early.

Re:Some EVs can't quick charge repeatedly

[robot256]

Frequent fast charging will only be safe once we transition from conventional Li-Ion and Li-Poly batteries to a totally new chemistry like Li-Air. There is simply no way for the batteries we have now to absorb energy that quickly without overstressing the internal components. I know Ford has a fancy liquid cooling system on the Focus EV battery, but they have no fast charge port whatsoever.

Re:Some EVs can't quick charge repeatedly

[n8r0n]

I own a LEAF, and I've heard no such recommendation. They recommend against multiple quick charges per day, but I haven't seen anything about twice a month. You don't want to put the battery through a quick charge when the batteries are real hot, but a battery pack is not going to hold heat for multiple days. Sorry, the thermal mass isn't that high.

Now, they do tell you that the less you quick charge, the longer your battery will last. They say that regular quick charging will leave you with 70% capacity after 8 or 10 years (I can't remember the quoted "lifetime"), and 80% capacity at "end of life" if you don't quick charge, but just use 110V trickle charging and 220V normal charging.

That's not exactly frying your batteries early.

Don't hold your breath on your non-RTFM scenario, dude. First of all, EV owners know the dominant strategy for charging is always going to be charging at home. Very few people are going to be doing a lot of quick charging (maybe cab drivers?). Quick charging is likely to be significantly more expensive per kWh than charging at home, and people just don't buy LEAFs if they do a lot of long-distance (100 miles+) driving. If they did, they'd but a Volt.

Re:Some EVs can't quick charge repeatedly

[Anonymous Coward]

Lithium-Iron-Phosphate batteries are supposed to be able to handle the strain of quickcharging quite well, but they don't have the energy density of normal LiIon cells.

Re:Some EVs can't quick charge repeatedly

[jo_ham]

As a matter of interest, what is the LEAF like to own?

Does it drive "just like a car"? I drive a diesel minivan with a manual gearbox, so I assume it's a lightyear away from that but I'd be interested if it was similar to an automatic car (except with none of the sluggish slushmatic non-performance).

Re:Some EVs can't quick charge repeatedly

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I don't own an electric car myself, but I have driven a couple, as we have them at work for external meetings within city limits.

My experience is that they drive like the perfect ideal of an automatic gearbox since you never have to change gear and you have instant response whenever you press the accelerator. You don't have to wait for a downshift, it just goes. It really is like a bumper car in that respect, press one pedal to go, press the other to stop.

Acceleration is one long smooth pull, you get no jolts from imperfect shifting.

In every other respect, it's just like driving any other car. Everything works just like you're used to, except you have a kwh counter instead of a fuel gauge.

Re:Some EVs can't quick charge repeatedly

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not n8r0n, but I've owned a LEAF for about 2 months now. In one sentence, it's the best car I've ever owned (at least through the first 2 months; anything could happen in the years to come, of course).

For the most part, it does drive "just like a car." I've actually gotten comments like that from friends or coworkers who rode in it ("wow, it drives just like a regular car"). As if it would be significantly different.

One of the advantages of an electric drivetrain is that you get instant torque to the wheels. This is especially apparent at the low end, when starting from a dead stop. I would say that the LEAF could probably beat most regular (non-performance) cars from 0 to 40 mph - it really pushes you back in your seat when you floor the accelerator. Above that speed, not so much; acceleration declines as the electric motor doesn't have a huge amount of power (80 kW / 107 hp). Even then it's plenty for maneuvering at highway speeds.

Everything KozmoStevnNaut said is correct. Acceleration is very smooth, and cruising is as smooth as the road allows.

The LEAF has 2 different driving modes, sort of like different "gears" in an automatic (regular/low/etc) but the only real difference is the mapping of accelerator pedal position to motor output in software. "D" is the "normal" mode, with pedal position mapped to torque, and light regeneration when you take your foot off. "Eco" mode adds heavier regen and more fine control at the low end - so you generally have to push the pedal farther down to get the same response as in D. Users have figured out that pedal position in Eco maps to power instead of torque. Some would like an even heavier regen option, like the Teslas and the BMW Active-E, where single-pedal driving is possible because regen literally almost brings the car to a complete stop.

If you're truly interested, head over to mynissanleaf.com where you'll find tons and tons of great information / discussions by enthusiasts.

Can the batteries be charged that fast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody know if the lithium-oxygen batteries (when they finally make them for cars) will charge that fast?

beware the exploding cars

[v1]

lets just hope that Sony isn't supplying the batteries...

Whither Tesla?

[johndoe42]

This is endorsed by Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, GM, Porsche and Volkswagen. Tesla is conspicuously missing. The Tesla Roadster and the Tesla Model S are the only electric cars in or near production that are close to road-trip worthy, so the omission is unfortunate.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[MBCook]

I'd be much more worried about the fact that neither Honda nor Toyota are there. In fact, neither is Nissan or Kia. I'd imagine that no Asian car makers being involved could be a big problem.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[CaptainLugnuts]

It's too late. All the Japanese manufacturers standardized on CHAdeMO for charging.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[gstrickler]

Rather than fight a standards war, they'll likely adopt this for the US and European models. Having the charging infrastructure is more important than the specific charging system.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[Twinbee]

How does it compare technically to this one?

Re:Whither Tesla?

[cynyr]

So how would they retrofit the charger into their current cars. Do they even have a road map that extends 4 months let alone 5+ years it will take to roll this out?

Re:Whither Tesla?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla IS pretty much Toyota these days.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[thomkt]

That's odd. It's Daimler using Tesla's batteries in their electric Smart?

Re:Whither Tesla?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even close to being Toyota.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[Anonymous Coward]

Audi, Porsche, and Volkswagen are parts of one parent company. How many own BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, and GM now?

Re:Whither Tesla?

[cvtan]

I would guess the Tesla is absent because their battery packs are made from 6000-7000 laptop batteries and can't take rapid charging. They are in "production" because they use a $40000 battery pack that no one else thought was a good idea.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same shit, different plug.

Level 3 charging (this) is where the AC-DC conversion is done by the charger and high voltage DC is run directly to your battery.

(Level 1 and Level 2 charging are where you run AC to the car and it does the DC conversion, so the cost of the "charge station" is much lower and you can have them in your house. L1 is a normal 110V AC line and is slow as all hell, L2 is a 240V circuit like you have for an electric stove/clothes dryer/arc welder and it's a bit faster.)

CHAdeMO used a whole different plug than the SAE slow-charge plug, so cars like the Leaf had two plugs, one for fast charging and one for normal. This uses a plug that's compatible with the SAE plug so you can use L1/L2 SAE chargers in cars with this plug. (You can't use this plug on legacy cars.) But both are still high voltage DC, and it's stupid to have two competing standards.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[loshwomp]

How does [CHAdeMO] compare technically to [the new SAE standard]?

CHAdeMO supports DC charging only, at up to 125A.

The SAE spec supports DC at up to 200A, as well as pretty high power three-phase AC charging.

Ultimately, I believe the AC charging will prove more useful. The need for fast charging is greatly exaggerated to begin with, but DC charging standards will be obsolete as soon as the next generation of high voltage traction batteries arrive, since both CHAdeMO and SAE are limited to 500V. (The next wave of cars will have 600V or even 1000V batteries.)

Re:Whither Tesla?

[loshwomp]

I would guess the Tesla is absent because their battery packs are made from 6000-7000 laptop batteries and can't take rapid charging.

No need to guess; Tesla's traction batteries can be fast charged just fine. Also, the raw cells share the 18650 form factor with your laptop cells, but that's where the similarity ends. The resulting battery is better for cost, specific power, and specific energy than anything else on the market, and that's why they use them.

Comparing the boutique battery in the roadster (total production about 2000 units) to a higher volume one is silly--of course the higher volume will have better production cost.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doing the AC to DC conversion in the car is like having an oil refinery on board to you can take on crude.
It isn't cheap to deal with high current conversions; do you want it in the car where you have to pay for it on each vehicle, or do you want it in the charger so it's cost is amortized over many vehicles?

Re:Whither Tesla?

[loshwomp]

It isn't cheap to deal with high current conversions

Actually, yes, it's cheap. You need two IGBTs per phase, as well as a lot of capacitance, and you need both of those for the motor drive (inverter) anyway. The marginal cost of high power charging is negligible, once you've got the inverter on board.

A 50kW offboard DC charger costs $40,000-$50,000, whereas onboard charging is a few hundred bucks.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[lakeland]

In many ways, that works out well.

Tesla can go far enough on a single charge that they can afford to require owners to charge at home or carry the charger with them.

However at least here almost every electric car is Japanese and so I don't see this standard as especially important.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[91degrees]

Maybe they'll simply change the socket for different countries. Require an adapter for the few people who do take their car to another continent.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[rubycodez]

no problem, they can also quickly produce anything a mass market in US and Europe adopts.

Re:Whither Tesla?

[Anonymous Coward]

As others have pointed out, Nissan is supporting the Japanese CHAdeMO standard. The LEAF comes with this port for DC quick charging. Mitsubishi also supports it on their MiEV. I believe Toyota is part of CHAdeMO, but they've made it clear that they're not really interested in electric vehicles (the latest RAV4 EV is going to be a limited run in California, just to satisfy CARB standards) so I don't think their support of either means much. Honda seems to be in the same boat (the Fit EV is limited to 1100 in a closed-end lease): both companies seem to be betting on hybrids for the forseeable future with only minor lipservice to pure EVs.

CHAdeMO is the only standard of these two with actual chargers out in the field - they exist and are operational in Japan, Europe, and the US. So we'll still have a standards war on our hands. But the good thing is that charger manufacturers seem to be doing the best thing for consumers. At the EVS show (International Electric Vehicle Symposium) this weekend in Los Angeles, several manufacturers either showed or talked about forthcoming units that would have both plugs.

Wow, that's quick, but still need to answer where

[Anonymous Coward]

So for the time it takes to eat at some fast food place you could charge your car. That sounds like real progress to me... Now the next hurdle is how to offer it reliably across the nation. Maybe turn gas/charging stations into fast food places?

Brilliant, a yet-different American-only "standard

[olden]

And predictably, the only 2 major players in the EV market now, Nissan and Mitsubishi, will just stick to the only widely-deployed fast-charge connector to date, CHAdeMO http://www.chademo.com/

By announcing this new American-only Frankenplug, the SAE only helps delaying the (IMHO much-needed) EV adoption in the US and related charging infrastructure. But that's probably exactly what Chrysler & Co want, so they have more time catching up with the Japanese automakers...

ObligXKCD

[Caerdwyn]

Yeah! Standards!

Re:Brilliant, a yet-different American-only "stand

[Anonymous Coward]

When did Audi, BMW, Daimler AG, Porsche, and Volkswagen become American companies?

Re:Brilliant, a yet-different American-only "stand

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhhh, leaking information about an upcoming invasion could be considered treason. They actually think it's for missile defense...

Holy crap!

[Charliemopps]

Something just dawned on me... They have made a standard for this connection... and you're going to be trapped at the charging station for 20min... How long do you think it will take them to include a data connection along with the plug and the car companies allow them to flood your car with ads for 20min as part of the payment for the charge?

Re:Holy crap!

[AtariEric]

Longer than it will take them to simply mount weather-resistant screens and speakers near the pump.

Re:Holy crap!

[Firethorn]

Not to mention that at 20 minutes, I'm not going to a 'gas' station. I'm going to the grocery store to pick up my food for the week along with the charge. Heck, I fill up there anyway, it'd be even faster for me. No 5 minutes at the pump waiting for the tank to fill, instead it's 30 seconds plugging my car in before I head inside, then 30 seconds disconnecting when I get out.

That or a restaurant, mall, movie theater, etc....

Of course, most the time it'd simply be charged at home, maybe work. Charging outside of there would be when I'm traveling, and 300 mile range EVs like the Tesla would be running dry about the time I need to stop for a break & food anyways.

Re:Holy crap!

[Anonymous Coward]

This will only be used for long trips. For most people, I think the idea is you plug in at home. For long trips, you stop for 20 minutes every two hours (I think right now we stop about every 4 for gas). In this case you'll get out and stretch your legs, get coffee/lunch/whatever. It won't be sitting there watching the pump for 20 minutes.

Re:Holy crap!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that at 20 minutes, I'm not going to a 'gas' station. I'm going to the grocery store to pick up my food for the week along with the charge. Heck, I fill up there anyway, it'd be even faster for me.

You an idiot to believe you grocery store will have a charging station or that I won't unplug your car and use your money to charge my car instead.

Re:Holy crap!

[jo_ham]

Not to mention that at 20 minutes, I'm not going to a 'gas' station. I'm going to the grocery store to pick up my food for the week along with the charge. Heck, I fill up there anyway, it'd be even faster for me.

You an idiot to believe you grocery store will have a charging station or that I won't unplug your car and use your money to charge my car instead.

You're an idiot to not read up on how the connector works - it makes a data connection with the car so it knows who is using it. If you plugged it into your car it would know that and start to charge you (money, and electricity) instead. The fact that you're a douche and unplugged someone else's (lockable) charger is not something unique to the two of you having electric cars. You're probably the guy who doesn't put the cart back after shopping and just leaves it blocking a space or just push it away so it crashes into someone else's car.

Re:Holy crap!

[Cosgrach]

That and the fact that if you unplugged my car, I can guarantee that something 'bad' would most certainly happen to your car.

Re:Holy crap!

[91degrees]

A 20 minute break every 2 hours is seen as a good idea anyway. As long as there are enough charging points along the route that you can get close to the full 2 hours.

Re:Holy crap!

[Chuq]

This is the third time I've had to post this video in this article.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUICgOM6_gw&sns=em

Re:Holy crap!

[Amouth]

i'm still curious how the leaf handles the charging when rain starts.. also what happens when you insert that connector in the reverse direction and it happens to be soaking wet?

Re:Holy crap!

[Smidge204]

There's a video (in Japanese) that shows various testing they did with the LEAF. One of them was to have a hose pour water into the charge connector (skip to ~26min) as it was plugged and powered to test exactly that. Although the testing shows the CHAdeMO connector, not the J1772 plug Chuq's link shows, the level of safety is identical.

The J1772 standard is pilot-operated. Normally the cable is not powered at all. Then the cable is plugged in, the car sends a voltage signal to the EVSE which tests the connection and closes a relay to let the power flow. (The charger is in the car, the wall unit is called an Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment - EVSE). Because of this, there is no danger of electrical shock while plugging in since there's no electricity until the connection is proven.

The connector is asymmetric and can't be connected backwards. Even if you could, since it's AC going through it it wouldn't matter much.

As a related aside, the LEAF can drive through 27 inches (700mm) of standing water without incident. Great video of this just after the part showing the connector water test.
=Smidge=

Re:Holy crap!

[Amouth]

that is an interesting video - but i still question the leaf's design when left out charging and it begins to rain. the video shows water pouring on a already made connection, i wonder what happens when the connection is connected/disconnected while having heavy rain in high winds..

Re:Holy crap!

[Smidge204]

The video showed the guy dumping a bunch of water into the connector immediately before plugging in. With his bare hands. Again, there is no power in the cable until the connection is made and the car activates it. If you unplug it while charging, the first thing that breaks is the pilot signal from car to EVSE. Once that pilot signal is lost, the EVSE shuts off the power to the cord - and that happens before the connector is fully unseated. That's about as safe as anything is going to get.

So to answer your question directly: What happens when you connect/disconnect while in heavy rain and high winds? You get wet.
=Smidge=

Re:Holy crap!

[Firethorn]

Why wouldn't my grocery store have a charging station? It has a gas station now.

As otherwise mentioned, the cables lock into place, which would make such a theft difficult to begin with.

At best with a non-locking plug if you unplug my car you end the charge cycle much like how putting a gas pump back into it's slot ends that fueling period, and you end up with a plug demanding payment. Assuming that they put enough charging stations in, why bother? Heck, you're going to have to be parked right next to me in order to use the charger, which means that when I return it's trivial for me to both unplug and key your car/spike your tires/spray paint 'cheater' on the windshield. Looking at the video provided, you'd have a hard time stretching the cord long enough to reach the charge point from a different spot, even one just on the other side. Bring a longer cord? If they're that unsecured, I'm stealing it then, and you're out $100 of special extra-long charge cord for less than $1 of electricity.

At worst you end up on CCTV with your car's plates noted, and criminal/civil charges awaiting you. Is it really worth it to steal $1 of electricity?

Re:Holy crap!

[Amouth]

i missed that - sorry i only could find the part with the cable already connected and the hose just pouring on it..

Re:Brilliant, a yet-different American-only "stand

[robot256]

What the J1772 CCS standard has going for it is that it's a free-license standard. (And that it can be covered by a single round "fuel cap".) All those cheapskate developing countries don't want to pay CHAdeMO royalties on every single connector they build, so once China starts producing them en masse the cost for the rest of us will come down. Unless CHAdeMO opens up its standard, it will slowly be eclipsed by the free standard.

Or, consumers will get frustrated that they never have the right plug in the right place, and give up on L3 charging altogether, which doesn't help anyone. Really not sure how this one is going to play out.

Charge plug standard just in time to be obsolete

[Firethorn]

Besides, you've seen how long it took them to agree on a standard for a charging plug. Just think how long it would take them to agree on standards for whole battery packs. By the time they finish, we'll have 400-mile Litihium-Air batteries and hydrogen fuel cell backups, and no one will care anymore.

What I find hilarious about this is that I've started seeing a number of proposals to switch to parking spot mounted inductive chargers. They're agreeing on a standard plug when the plug might end up going away anyways. In which case you wouldn't even need to spend a minute plugging your car in - just park and accept the charge for the electricity while inside your car(assuming that it's not a subscription and therefore fully automatic).

Disappointing

[ModernGeek]

I was hoping to see an inductive charger similar to the one sported by the EV1.

Re:Disappointing

[loshwomp]

I was hoping to see an inductive charger similar to the one sported by the EV1.

Why? Conductive charging is better by every imaginable metric. Inductive charging is obsolete, and for good reason.

Micro USB

[locopuyo]

Why can't they just use micro USB like everyone else?

Re:Micro USB

[Ironchew]

5 volts should be enough for anybody.

Re:Micro USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Too flimsy. It'll be on the new MACRO USB (imagine a beefy version of a B connector). This way you can also update the cars firmware and upload music.

Re:Micro USB

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a limit on the number of micro USB ports that can be connected simultaneously on the same car? That would make an interesting design :-)

We are running out of helium

[Anonymous Coward]

And the only thing you care about is electric car charging stations?

Re:We are running out of helium

[SEWilco]

And the only thing you care about is electric car charging stations?

Did anyone not read that in a high-pitched voice?

Re:We are running out of helium

[rubycodez]

that's alarmist fud, we are not running out of helium. helium can be extracted from the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is where all that past used helium went. A perfect application for solar power panels out in wasteland, to provide the energy source for the refrigeration.

Re:We are running out of helium

[Anonymous Coward]

At what altitude should I start collecting helium?
Helium is usually gathered from oil wells where it is generated underground from natural decay of radioactive isotopes.

Just what we need!

[SEWilco]

Finally, a way to charge our laptops in a minute!
We just have to wait for the battery packs and chargers that will appear in a year.

After driving a Leaf for a year

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the things I've discovered is that I almost never need to charge away from home. I've been driving my Leaf for a year and so far I've charged at public stations 3 times, and really only one of those times did I really need to.

Ask yourself this question. If you could fill up your gasoline car in your own garage, how often would you use public gas stations?

Re:Charge plug standard just in time to be obsolet

[robot256]

Sure, there are proposals for inductive charging systems, but they are years away from any reasonable standard, and I don't think "fast charging" speeds are even physically practical at the moment. Inductive charging will always be less efficient than plug charging, and given the likely cost of deploying permanent inductive charging stations, uptake will be slow in markets where the plug works just as well. I certainly don't anticipate everyone digging up their driveways and garages to install them. Besides, there is no way they can sell an electric car without a standard 120V "contingency" charger, and that needs a plug. Trust me, friend, the humble plug is going nowhere, and we will be thanking them in a decade that all our cars have the same standard.

It also KILLS the battery faster

[Anonymous Coward]

Fast charging battery tend to have very low lifespan.

But in the end the problem is not only limited to the charger. What about actual millage?? A 100 MPC is nowhere acceptable for a commute ride, much less a cross town trip. And except for the Tesla, no EV today actually give the real life 100 MPC.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Anonymous Coward]

The average commute in the US is 40 miles round trip.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[MightyYar]

A 100 MPC is nowhere acceptable for a commute ride, much less a cross town trip

You poor bastard, my commute is 20 miles round trip :)

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Skapare]

While sitting for hours behind creepy crawlies the day they decide to repair a pothole. Plan to add two hours to a commute on some days.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric vehicles use zero power while stopped, and damned little while moving slowly in stop-and-go with regenerative braking. It's maintaining the highway speeds that kills the battery faster. This isn't like an internal combustion engine, which makes peak efficiency at more-or-less highway speeds and wastes power idling in traffic.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Anonymous Coward]

I commute 5 miles each way. I think it works for me.

In my department, all but one commute less than 20 miles each way.

That one commutes just over 100 miles each way.

It seems to be the case in most other departments as well that there's 5% - 10% that are long distance commuters. The rest of us commute a relatively short distance.

It must suck to find out that some cars are now being built for the 95%, not the 5%. Too bad for you, so glad for me.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[chuckugly]

My last commute would have made a 100 mile battery last over a month.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Anonymous Coward]

Sitting for hours in traffic is a problem for internal combustion engines because they generally run their engine for all that time, using up fuel. It's only a problem for an electric car if you have the headlights on and heater or AC running.

dom

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[TheRaven64]

So, your commute was about a mile and a half each way? Would you even bother driving that kind of distance?

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Anonymous Coward]

The air conditioner and the heating system consume power even if the car is stopped. Heating is not always optional, because you want to keep windows defrosted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle#Heating_of_electric_vehicles

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Chrisq]

So, your commute was about a mile and a half each way? Would you even bother driving that kind of distance?

In parts of the world there is no alternative. I remember seeing a nice restaurant across a highway from a hotel in Texas once, and after wandering around for a bit I realised the only way to get to t was to get in the car, drive half a mile to an exit with a loop under, then drive back again.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Gordonjcp]

My daily commute is about 15 miles round trip. While I'm actually working, though, I can easily clock up four or five hundred miles depending on what has broken and where.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Anonymous Coward]

You poor bastard, I work from home! ;)

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Spugglefink]

So, your commute was about a mile and a half each way? Would you even bother driving that kind of distance?

I used to commute half that distance.

Sure, it's only three quarters of a mile, why not break the American mold, get some exercise, and save money in the process? Because I always sucked at playing Frogger, that's why. There are no sidewalks, there are no crosswalks, and there is no respect for pedestrians between here and there. It's good exercise running like hell trying to avoid getting hit by cars going 20 mph over the speed limit, true enough, but running for your life tends to make you show up for work looking sweaty and haggard.

This phenomenon is one of the bigger things that I really wish America, or at least my corner of it, would fix. I actually like to walk, and I'd be happy to walk that distance and more every day if it weren't such a fundamentally suicidal undertaking.

I guess it's all moot now anyway. I lost that job, and now I have to drive 115 miles round trip.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[DNS-and-BIND]

I think someone needs to read up on what "limited access highway" means. No, you can not walk across them. I stagger to contemplate the mind that thinks this could, nay, should be possible.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[nschubach]

Yeah, but there are a vast number of people that are desk jockeys. Just because the system doesn't work for you doesn't mean it's not ready at all.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Anonymous Coward]

So, your commute was about a mile and a half each way? Would you even bother driving that kind of distance?

In parts of the world there is no alternative. I remember seeing a nice restaurant across a highway from a hotel in Texas once, and after wandering around for a bit I realised the only way to get to t was to get in the car, drive half a mile to an exit with a loop under, then drive back again.

Alternative: Fly

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[MightyYar]

LOL - did that for a few years and it was AWESOME!

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[MightyYar]

I forgot to mention in my post that my wife's commute is only about 10 miles round trip... we actually put under 5000 miles per year on her car. We'll be totally sick of it before it actually wears out... at the current rate we're looking at over 12 more years until the 100,000 mile mark. We'll get a new car when we retire the mortgage :)

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[rubycodez]

thank a lot. I faced the restaurant on the other side of the highway, unzipped mine, and, "going commando" at the time, was subsequently incarcerated for public indecency. Damn you, slashdot anonymous coward!

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Rei]

Quite true. The optimal speed for a Tesla Roadster under controlled conditions (perfectly flat, no wind, no accel/decel, etc) is 17-18 mph. The Roadster's range under such conditions is about 410 miles, versus the 170 or so that you'll get driving 70 down a highway (the Roadster's nominal range is generally achieved at around 55mph steady-state).

Yes, running the AC or heater takes power. But, say, 3kW to run a heater (the heat output of two blow driers running at full blast) for two hours stuck in traffic in freezing weather is still only 6 kWh, compared with the 3x efficiency gain from driving slowly. Run a heat pump or insulate the vehicle, and your heating requirements become much less.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Rei]

Fast charging battery tend to have very low lifespan.

Only in batteries not designed for fast charging.

That may sound like a snarky answer, but it's not. There's a huge number of engineering design decisions and tradeoffs that one can make, and you can basically pick and choose your ability to deal with different challenges by how much you care about them versus other challenges -- namely, cost and energy density. Of course, today's LiPos and spinels have advanced so much that it's not hard at all to deal with fast charging, from a cell chemistry perspective; the main challenge now is simply designing a pack that can be cooled properly without being overly heavy or complicated.

FYI, A123 has packs that can repeatedly be charged and discharged in just a couple minutes without any special cooling that are popular in the RC world, but they're quite expensive.

And anyway, beyond all this -- how often do you think the average person goes more than 100 miles on a tank? No, seriously? A couple times a year perhaps? A couple fast charges per year -- let's say 6 -- and, say, a 10 year battery life = 60 fast charges. Not a freaking lot.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd recommend cycling rather than walking -- Yeah, you get exactly zero more respect from drivers, or maybe even less, but you can more nearly engage them on their own turns, especially on a short ride where you can sprint without tiring. You can bolt on an ungodly number of lights to make them see you (in the morning before sunup, my 5 headlamps are putting more light on the road than almost any cars without HIDs, and my three taillights are on par with most cars -- thanks to recent power LED tech), and with a little route planning, you can usually cross a road either at a traffic light, or by turning onto it, changing lanes successively to the left-most, and making a left turn. Of course, ghod help you either way if you have to commute during rush hour (not that it's any fun with a car either, but at least you won't die), but my employer lets me shift to a little earlier schedule, which makes my 2 mile bicycle commute rather pleasant.

One of these days, I aim to buy a second bike (a suspensionless mountain bike that can take the torque -- my hardtail hybrid is great for cruising town, taking potholes and hopping curns, but just not sturdy enough) and building it into an electric "moped" (in reality, I aim to not pedal at all -- with front and rear hub motors, and ample batteries, that'll only be useful as a last resort) that'll get me higher speeds (better flow with cars) and no sweat -- I think that's really the ultimate in urban short-commute transport, but a bike comes pretty damn close.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[sir-gold]

if you are driving more than 100 miles just to get to and from work every day, then you need to find a new job or a new place to live. no wonder there is gridlock and pollution with idiots like you, you waste 4 hours of time and 6 gallons of gas every day just so you can save $100-$200 a month on rent.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Gonoff]

That is why there is such a thing as a footbridge. Or are they only known outside where you live?

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Gordonjcp]

Exactly. I just wanted to make the point that the commute isn't everything...

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[cayenne8]

That is why there is such a thing as a footbridge. Or are they only known outside where you live?

Those are VERY rarely seen in the US.

I don't recall seeing one ever when I've had to visit Houston....and I've run into the 'restaurant across the hwy' scenario a number of times. Yep...you gotta drive over there and back, unless you want to die trying to walk/run over there.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[cayenne8]

if you are driving more than 100 miles just to get to and from work every day, then you need to find a new job or a new place to live. no wonder there is gridlock and pollution with idiots like you, you waste 4 hours of time and 6 gallons of gas every day just so you can save $100-$200 a month on rent.

So, you're suggesting, that every time someone changes a job, they pick up, sell their homes and move to be closer to the new job. Hmm...what about people with kids, you want them to uproot them from schools every time jobs change? If a married couple...who's job take priority....likely as not one of them will have to drive further than the other one, rarely do couples work at the same fucking place you know...

I mean, this is no longer the age of having a job for life. The only way to gain higher job position and, more importantly increases in job PAY...is to change jobs with regularity. No one trying to move up in the world stays at one place usually more than 3 years or so.....and in this economy, it is a bit hard to sell your house every few years.....not everyone rents and is single. Even those that are....have enough stuff that moving is a major even in terms of time, effort and money.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[SpryGuy]

I hate commuting so I usually try to move close to my job (and I tend to keep jobs for a while). I remember my last car was 12 years old when I sold it... with 70,000 miles on it. And yes, I took road-trips. It's just that my daily commute was very small.

Even now, my commute is only about 9 miles round-trip (throw on more for driving to lunch, so call it "under 15"). Driving around town during the week probably puts on another 50 or so total. I don't drive a lot. My current car is seven years old now, and still feels "new".

I'm glad they've made this crucial step towards electric car adoption. I'm seriously looking at something like the Volt for my next car... at any rate, my next car WILL be a re-chargable electric/hybrid of some kind. I want to keep the flexibility of extended range and ability to use the gasoline infrastructure as things transition to nationwide electric fast-charging stations.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[MightyYar]

I used to get an apartment within walking distance of wherever I worked, but marriage and kids have changed that strategy :)

Now we split the difference as much as is possible while also staying in the school district that we prefer. And of course, buying a house and having kids in the local school system has made us less mobile should one of our job situations change.

I've also looked into hybrids, but they simply don't make sense for me or the environment. When a car is more likely to rot than wear out, you aren't spending enough money on gas to recoup your investment. I could justify an all-electric conversion kit with a short range, so maybe I'll look into that more.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[DamonHD]

"So, you're suggesting, that every time someone changes a job, they pick up, sell their homes and move to be closer to the new job. Hmm...what about people with kids, you want them to uproot them from schools every time jobs change?"

Well, that's what we did when my dad changed jobs, maybe an average of once per year at times IIRC, and it didn't kill us.

And I don't own a car (and never have) and manage to commute less than half the week, and when I do it is by (electrified) public transport and to decent/fun clients that pay well and at non-peak hours.

The horrors! Maybe it *is* terrible being a creepy commie energy-efficient European banker IT consultant after all, and my kids hate me too, really.

Rgds

Damon

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Anonymous Coward]

people in FL don't use air conditioning when stopped in traffic? Sucks to be them!

Seriously, though, for long distance travel, we could have power rails in the road and a pantograph to keep the cars charged on the highway. With telemetry, we could easily get rid of the long distance problem, by having cars follow automatically and keep charged.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[justthinkit]

Come on. This would be much quicker.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[cayenne8]

he horrors! Maybe it *is* terrible being a creepy commie energy-efficient European banker IT consultant after all, and my kids hate me too, really.

Not really, but it is two ENTIRELY different standards of living conditions. You're likely in a small country, the size of one of our states, with old cities, with small streets, short distances....and public transportation.

That type of thing just plain doesn't exist at all in the majority of the cities in the US. In most cities, you can't walk down the street for a loaf of bread, you have to get in the car and drive a few miles, to buy your groceries, etc. Public transportation is pretty much non-existant, and what is there, isn't suitable for normal lifestyle.

It is hard for you to go on like that....when you live in Europe somewhere, that is likely 180 degrees different than how we have to live over here....at bare minimum, is the existing infrastructure one lives within....

Does you wife also work? Are the kids old enough to have jobs too (I've been working since I was 16yrs)....?

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[DamonHD]

Right, but there are plenty of people in US cities who could live like I do in a European one. Energy consumption per capita is comparable I suspect between EU and US cities, unlike the average US citizen using twice as much as the average EU citizen, of which a lot will be (self-inflicted) travel.

No one forces the building of exurbs or living there! And we have crap-to-get-to places in the EU too.

We've taken a conscious decision to live somewhere that has good public transport.

And no, my partner does not currently work, but that will change. My kids are not old enough for me to send them down the mines yet. B^>

Rgds

Damon

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[uninformedLuddite]

I run my entire house on an average of 6.2kW/H a day. If you need 3kW/H to keep your car warm you are doing something wrong (or live in a very cold place).

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[networkBoy]

My commute is 12 miles round trip (one gallon of gas in my truck).
I've been thinking of making a Karmann Ghia EV mod using LiPo batteries for weight. I figure all I need is a 40 mile range (run a couple errands) and I can charge for free at work. It's not cost effective, but I've done some math and I think I can gut sub 5 second 0-60 (I'm going to shoot for 4.3) and it'll be one hell of a fun ride.
-nB

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[MightyYar]

That'd be the fastest Karmann Ghia ever! LOL... lucky if the frame stays together.

If you did it with lead acid batteries and a DC motor it would probably be cost effective - but it would take a while and the performance would be more classically Karmann Ghia :)

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Anonymous Coward]

Zero power, except for the headlights, air conditioning or heating, for instance...

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[sir-gold]

The US has a much higher ratio of home owners to renters than any other country in the world. In most parts of the world, it's fairly common for a family to uproot and move in search of work. Just look at distant history, humans were perpetually moving their families in search of work (animals to hunt)

The situation you describe, having to sell you house, move a ton of crap, and then buy a new house, is entirely intentional and was created by the US government in the 1940s specifically to prevent people from moving around in search of better pay and conditions, in an attempt to reduce the bargaining power of the unions.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[DNS-and-BIND]

Uh, yeah, we do know that footbridges are excellent places for muggers to intercept their victims, where there is no hope of escape? Seriously, where do you GET this stuff? Even if there was a footbridge, I'd still drive, because walking on one is just ASKING to become a crime victim. Dumbfuck.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[networkBoy]

the performance would be more classically Karmann Ghia

At which point it would be even better to just rebuild the engine to run on propane from an economy standpoint.
Also, I'm not sure the frame could handle the weight of Lead Acid to be honest. If I do the mod I'll be having the body professionally redone by a local body shop I trust, and while they're at it I plan on having them add stiffener bars/trusses in key areas.
-nB

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[MightyYar]

Also, I'm not sure the frame could handle the weight of Lead Acid to be honest.

Ha! Good point! They sell kits for bugs, so I presumed they'd be OK in a Ghia. But you are right, the batteries are a lot heavier than the little engines that were back there.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Trogre]

Wait, muggers? What messed-up backwater are you talking about?

If people are too afraid to freaking cross the street then I put to you that your state has severe socio-economic issues. Wait, doesn't everyone in Texas own a gun?

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Firethorn]

Does Alaska count? About 6 months of the year the heat is permanently set to 'high defrost'.

The problem up north with heat is that cars tend to have NO real insulation, they're not even as air tight as homes. Also, do you have electric heat? I use a lot more than 6.2kW/H of heating in the winter.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Firethorn]

So, you're suggesting, that every time someone changes a job, they pick up, sell their homes and move to be closer to the new job. Hmm...what about people with kids, you want them to uproot them from schools every time jobs change? If a married couple...who's job take priority....likely as not one of them will have to drive further than the other one, rarely do couples work at the same fucking place you know...

My suggestion would be to increase overall density. Encourage Arcology-light type buildings. I'd say that cities in the USA don't encourage housing within themselves anywhere near enough. They offer the top end and subsidize the bottom end, but they don't encourage the middle class with things like good public schools, decent sized apartments that are financially competitive with the suburbs, etc... You also have to contend with the 'american dream'.

by 'Arcology-light' I mean that you don't bother trying to make a single building handle 99% of people's needs - just 90%. Something like the first 3-5 floors are retail, the next 5-10 are office/light commercial, and the rest of the building, somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3rds, is apartment/condo space. Build GOOD apartments/condos.

Then have pedestrian skyways between the buildings and good walking paths. Preferably allow micro-electric vehicles, a bit bigger than Segways, but smaller than the open people-movers that many bigger airports have, that are optimized for light delivery of things like groceries, and deliveries like pizza. If the city gets big enough, go with slideways. The ideal is that the paths are developed enough that a walker can cover a mile quicker than a car. Maybe 2 with the slideways.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[yurtinus]

Hah, was about to respond to say this exact thing. Glad I didn't bother. This is correct - need to be careful not to assume zero power draw while sitting in stop and go traffic. Sure, you'll go quite a bit further at slow speeds not having to fight wind resistance, but don't ignore the power draw for climate control, stereos, and other accessories.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[yurtinus]

There's good points on both sides here. Many places in the US (as well as in the EU) are not amenable to walking down the street for whatever business you have to do. My observations in a medium sized US city is that there are a lot of ways we're improving and a lot of ways we're making it worse.

First off, there is a growing trend toward urban living here. People moving into smaller downtown condos or apartments (or in some of the denser old downtown neighborhoods). A handful of the downtown roads - those which are not major through-ways - have been converted from four lane throughways to two lanes with bicycle paths. Slower traffic and far more pedestrian friendly. There is a slowly growing population of bicycle commuters, so the city is adjusting its infrastructure and more importantly drivers are becoming more accustomed to seeing bicycles on the road and know how to deal with it.

On the flip side, we still have the "big box" stores (like Wal Mart). The kind that you go to for *everything*. They're huge so by their nature they won't be on every corner. People no longer walk to the corner store to pick up what they need for the day, they make weekly trips to pick up everything. Hard to carry on public transport, hard to put on a bicycle, discouraging putting the infrastructure in place. This ultimately is what kills the suburbs and forces the car-centric society - the dearth of neighborhood shops. We got too lazy to walk a few blocks to them, so they closed up and now we drive a few miles to the big box store.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[DamonHD]

Except that we do fine without a car even though those big places exist here too. For bulky stuff we have the supermarket deliver to us (which is probably more carbon-efficient too). Only light/fresh stuff then needs to be carried by hand.

There are several chains competing, but we use Tesco, which does a good job and is not expensive at all.

It simply matters between you and the car, which is to be master.

Rgds

Damon

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[yurtinus]

I'm not disagreeing - there is no reason somebody here couldn't choose to live without a car and be perfectly happy. There are plenty of cities in the US where a car is a large expense with little added value. You can't discount the cultural difference though - going car-less sounds like it's a common thing to do there, but here it's a bit bigger psychological barrier outside of those few dense cities. It's not impossible to do, but it takes some more active choices in your lifestyle and where you choose to live.

All this said, while 90% of the time I ride my bicycle or motorbike to work, I would not choose to go without a car.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[DamonHD]

I do understand the cultural aspect, but maybe that culture will change quickly if/when the price of gasoline doubles again...

People have to be clear about the difference between "need" and "want".

Rgds

Damon

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[uninformedLuddite]

Is it a very very cold place?

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[uninformedLuddite]

The heating can use electrickery(props to Catweazle) if nec. The underfloor interweb is fed by both solar hot water and a wetback fire. Will be adding more solar panels so will have more energy to play with soon. We are very frugal energy users but I guess you worked that out from our daily average. Not as frugal as I am with grammar.

Re:It also KILLS the battery faster

[Firethorn]

I guess what I need to state better is that Cars, unlike houses, aren't (significantly) insulated. My house has over a foot of insulation excepting windows and doors. It also gets the short end of the stick when it comes to wind chill - 55mph winds are pretty much guaranteed.

As a result, I can turn the heat off in the house much sooner than I stop heating my car.

Alaska is far enough north that even if I bought an EV I'd probably be retrofitting a liquid fuel heater into it. It wouldn't need that much fuel to keep the cabin/battery warm, and 90% efficient burners are well known knowledge. That way you enjoy the energy density of hydrocarbons for heating, and the efficiency of electric for moving.

"Not sure if it is actually production ready"

[Macman408]

...says the article.

I should say not, given that the photo of the plug at the top of the article would obviously never fit into the photo of the socket halfway down. The accompanying plug photo in the second photo may not have the same problem (at least the two parts of the plugs don't protrude different amounts). Anyway, graphic designer fail.

And, for a less-superficial observation, who's going to want to open two port covers on opposite corners of the socket, especially given that both are likely to be spring-loaded? You're gonna need three hands to plug the car in! Let's hope those were subject to the artist's wild imagination as well.

Re:"Not sure if it is actually production ready"

[Anonymous Coward]

...says the article.

I should say not, given that the photo of the plug at the top of the article would obviously never fit into the photo of the socket halfway down. The accompanying plug photo in the second photo may not have the same problem (at least the two parts of the plugs don't protrude different amounts).

Uh, no. The plug in the second picture also has different protrusions -- for the parts that go inside the socket. Like the top picture, those plug sections both extend from a common plane, which mates to the flat surface of the socket. Look at a grounded electric plug -- see how the pins are different lengths? Same thing here (the DC pins, which have to handle higher current, are longer to allow more contact area), except there's also a shroud around each group of pins, which unsurprisingly is sized to suit the pins. As long as the mating cavities are also different depths (and there's no reason to assume otherwise), everything looks good.

And, for a less-superficial observation, who's going to want to open two port covers on opposite corners of the socket, especially given that both are likely to be spring-loaded? You're gonna need three hands to plug the car in! Let's hope those were subject to the artist's wild imagination as well.

Which would likely be spring-loaded... why? Oh, because you want to imagine it being unusable, rather than making the reasonable assumption that they'd have a snap-action spring to retain it in either the open or closed orientation (or even be spring-loaded open with latches, though that variant is not shown). In terms of likely evolutions not shown in the basic model pictured, you could also have a lip on the bottom cover, such that opening it pops the top cover open (and the spring takes it the rest of the way) -- pop the top cover for AC slow charging, pop the bottom cover to open both for DC fast charging.

Even disregarding everything not shown, and taking the picture at face value (the picture shows it open with no plug, so spring-loaded closed is right out, snap-action is more likely), you'd have to open the sheet-metal door, flip off on one cover, and (if DC charging) flip another cover, then push the plug in. Compare to a standard gasoline fueling port, where you open the sheet-metal door, unscrew the cover at least a half-turn, then push the nozzle in. The charging port is less effort, and may be one more step -- anyone sane would see that as an improvement.

But clearly, you're more interested in finding fault than honestly evaluating it.

Re:Brilliant, a yet-different American-only "stand

[Skapare]

Yeah, if we were to have a world-wide universal standard, then we could drive to Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and both Americas in the same car.

Sure to be implemented in 2059

[gelfling]

On 15% of the cars by then.

Question?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

If it takes 15 minutes to charge up - exactly how big would a charging stop have to be to replace a gas station? I can fuel up, pay and be gone in less than 4 minutes in a busy gas station with 12 pumps. If I had to wait for people to charge up when the pumps took almost 4 times as long, there would be a long line in front and behind me.

Re:Question?

[Chuq]

You have to remember that in your scenario where everyone is driving EVs, you are assuming that fast charging will replace refueling. In practice, 80% of refueling is replaced with recharging at home overnight; so the "gas station replacements" are now 1/5 as busy, not taking into account some (perhaps most) of those 20% will prever to use battery swapping (which takes 60 seconds, 120 if you count from the time you drive off the road to the time you drive back onto it).

That's unlikely.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's unlikely. The companies that have standardized on CHAdeMO are actually producing and selling electric vehicles while the ones that are adopting this new "standard" are not.

Strain on the local grid

[g0tai]

I hope they included some type of offset/tarrif scheme to the charging stations (or at least suggested it, unfortunately the news article didn't really illude) - as we get more and more EVs and charging points, you're eventually going to get to the point where everyone comes home from work and plugs their EV in. That's going to place a tremendous strain on the local electricity grid as EV's suck up a lot of power, especially if you're doing fast charges!

Re:Strain on the local grid

[Chrisq]

I hope they included some type of offset/tarrif scheme to the charging stations (or at least suggested it, unfortunately the news article didn't really illude) - as we get more and more EVs and charging points, you're eventually going to get to the point where everyone comes home from work and plugs their EV in. That's going to place a tremendous strain on the local electricity grid as EV's suck up a lot of power, especially if you're doing fast charges!

My guess is that most people will use a "night rate" meter and charge it at night when electricity is cheaper. Of course if this means that there is no longer a surplus from the base generation capacity it will no longer be cheaper.

Re:Strain on the local grid

[Smidge204]

Using more power at night actually helps the power utilities. The more evenly distributed the power usage is throughout the day, the more efficiently they can operate and the lower the costs. This is one of many videos describing how it all works. They use the term "filling the bathtub." Detroit Edison did a study on the impact of EVs. Basically it would require some upgrades in localized areas but it's perfectly manageable.
=Smidge=

Re:Charge plug standard just in time to be obsolet

[Firethorn]

The comments I saw said that the inductive charging is as efficient as a corded.

Besides, if you're providing the option for 120V 'cripple' charge, you're going to be using a standard, if heavy duty, extension cord, not some fancy high speed charge port.

Re:Brilliant, a yet-different American-only "stand

[Anonymous Coward]

When they started mass-producing electric/hybird cars.

Re:15-30 minutes * * New study just in * *

[Cosgrach]

Many people who suffer from 'Range Anxiety' also have small penises.

Re:Brilliant, a yet-different American-only "stand

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if it was also an amphibious car.

Waiting for a new version of GNU automake!

[Czubaka]

Yesss! With a new version of automake (aclocal, autoconf too) I won't be needing to use more and more expensive gas to fuel up my car. Cheers GNU Projects!

Invest?

[tjlaxs]

Good time to invest in nuclear power?

Re:Invest?

[rubycodez]

Outside of the US, Japan and certain European countries, in lands where people have some brains, yes.

Great ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now everyone will leave it until the last minute to charge their cars before setting out to work.

Hey guys, you've just /.ed the electricity grid.

They should also mandate USB ports internally

[thehunger]

Why not standardize what connectors should be available charging portable electronics? Ie. mandate USB 3.0 ports internally. So that you can always expect to plug in your tablet, smart phone, portable hard drive or whatever..

Tesla supports fast charging, their SuperCharger

[spage]

A bigger battery pack can usually charge at higher power than a smaller one. Sure enough the Tesla Roadster with its monster 52 kWh pack has a 16 kW AC charger, by far the most powerful of any electric car. It came out before the SAE J1772 AC charging standard was adopted in 2009, so Tesla developed its own connector; You can buy an expensive adapter cable for it to use at the thousands of public AC charging stations. The Roadster doesn't support even higher-power DC fast charging.

This new standard has a Frankenplug that adds two fat pins for DC power to the existing 5 pins (RTFA for a picture). But Tesla didn't go for it. They developed their own compact plug that supports both AC and DC fast charging (scroll down for a picture) with fewer pins. Using it a Model S with the biggest battery option can recharge at 90 kW (the same maximum power as this new standard) from a Tesla-specific "SuperCharger", and Elon Musk has talked about setting up networks of SuperChargers along major highways.. But I don't think Tesla ever seriously proposed it as a standard, SAE was always only going to choose between the Japanese CHAdeMO plug on the Nissan Leaf and this Frankenplug. I hope Tesla develops an adapter for the DC fast charge that succeeds.

Better Place demonstrates swap problems

[spage]

Sure, Better Place raised all that money and Shai Agassi is everywhere saying how great it is.

But look at actual results.

*There is only one car in the world that supports the QuickDrop approach, the Renault Fluence Z.E. Despite all the PR and spin, no one else has an EV even planned for production using it. As others have pointed out, technology has advanced, so BP will have to offer a second pack for any second model, greatly increasing their costs.
* BP is only up and running in Israel and maybe Denmark. And I think they have only built one battery swap station in Israel, because a single swap station and a supply of batteries costs millions. (BP loves to conflate charging stations and swap stations, as when they claimed a Chinese utility was going to install thousands of the latter, or when they filmed some guys sticking an AC socket on a post.)
* Because of the cost of the stations and maintaining spare batteries, BP's approach can only increase the cost of operating an electric car. Their mantra "we sell you battery charge" means you have to pay them to recharge at home, where it's ordinarily cheapest and where most drivers do charging.

Better Place's value proposition is that with 5-minute battery swap range anxiety goes anywhere. It's great for a small country if and when BP can actually put in the swap stations required to cover it. It's an intriguing idea for city dwellers without a parking space with a (low-cost AC) charging station. But in the real world it isn't happening.

standards war bad, but still progress

[spage]

I agree with your standards war analysis. SAE had a "bake-off" between the Frankenplug and CHAdeMO for fast DC charging, but the standards process was dominated by companies that don't have a pure EV for sale. They have every incentive to pick a slightly better standard in defiance of the only DC fast charge system shipping in cars you can buy and charging stations on the ground (1154 in Japan, 207 in Europe, and 34 elsewhere according to http://chademo.com/).

The significance of this announcement is that the Europeans have gone for it. The existing SAE J1772 AC charging standard (up to 19 kW) benefited USA and Japan but didn't support Europe where much higher power three-phase 400V AC charging is simple thanks to its 240V supply; so the Europeans were off proposing the Mennekes plug for up to 43 kW.

Many companies announced CHAdeMO charging stations in the hope of making big $$$, I think all were blindsided by the relatively cheap charger Nissan introduced that they say they'll put in all their dealers. The best hope is that they all offer a charging station with two plugs during the transition.

The "best" plug is the Tesla SuperCharger (scroll down for a pic), slim, elegant, reuses the same pins for DC and AC, also goes to 90 kW. But it never had a serious chance at standardization.

200 mile battery packs are here

[spage]

I'm with you on the dubiousness of battery swapping[**], but
Once we have 200-mile battery packs (really only 5-10 years away)
Surely you know the Tesla Roadster has 245 mile range according to the EPA. And coming in July:
"Three battery options are offered: 160-, 230-, or 300-mile range. Model S comes standard with the 160-mile range battery at the quoted $49,900 base price (after the $7,500 Federal Tax Credit)."

[**] I like the idea of dropping in a few extra battery slices/sheets in the trunk for a long trip, sort of like clipping a bigger battery onto your iPhoPablet. But at 40 pounds each and with a host of electrical, mechanical, and thermal safety issues, I don't see that happening either.

don't believe the hype

[spage]

Australia is a fantasy, Better Place got an agreement that if Holden makes an electric vehicle then it may be compatible with their swappable battery design. It's as meaningless as their deal with Chery. Better Place had a swap station demonstration in "Gladsaxe" in Denmark last year, but I can't find it on Google Street View, and I don't believe a Dane can sign up for BP right now. Much like the hydrogen vehicle future, "roll-out" means "planning something," not "the first lucky owners are driving away in one."

add-on battery still a hard engineering problem

[spage]

Sounds great, pop one or two add-on batteries in the trunk for a long drive. But
* how do you mount a heavy battery safely in the trunk?
* how do you monitor it for electrical and thermal runaway?
* how do you cool it?
* how does you safely cable it to safely supply 40 kW (80 amps at 500 V)?
* what happens to all this in a collision?

These are all merely engineering problems, but they're non-trivial.

And to go the extra 60 miles, you're looking at 200 pounds-plus of batteries even with next-gen battery tech. (The Leaf's 648 lb battery pack sends it 73 miles.) So someone has to carry five 40-pound sheets back and forth at the Amp'n'Go station. It'll be a great job for underemployed weight builders.

Re:add-on battery still a hard engineering problem

[Firethorn]

1. You don't put it in the trunk. For roll resistance it's best to mount the weight as low as possible. Best spot is actually right in the middle at the bottom, under the passengers. You adjust the shocks to the appropriate weight.
2. Seriously? You run the appropriate cable harness wires to some sensors mounted on/in the battery.
3. Cooling can be handled by some fins underneath. If that's not enough, induction fans, water cooling, etc... Might as well ask how the heck we're going to manage to cool an internal combustion engine, the loads there are insane compared to what the battery pack needs.
4. It is an interesting question, but it's an engineering one, not one of science. We already hook up high voltage lines that are at 60kv, 500-600V is certainly doable, you just need the appropriate safety systems so that average joes with minimal training can use it safely. Basically, for 80 Amps you're looking at #2 wire for the lead up to the station, and depending on how they decide, they could go as low as #7 for the cable from the station to the car, though I think that keeping it #2 is a definite possibility.
5. Collision sensors trip relays in the critical spots, like in the battery pack and perhaps at the motor. Quite likely redundant relays at that.

About Time!

[Ferretman]

Let's hope this gets rolled out soon.

Ferret

Chargers at petrol stations?

[LongearedBat]

Where I live, people freak out when someone uses a mobile phone at a petrol station, 'cos they think it could ignite petrol fumes. (A myth, I know.)

So... electric car chargers at petrol stations?!?

It would be interesting to see how people react to that. My bet is that it'll slide, as most people will just accept it without noticing/thinking about it.