Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Standardization sounds like a good plan, so we can focus on one format of charging infrastructure.
With my prostrate, it takes me about that long to pee anyway, so it's good to see progress is being made.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
Why can't they just use micro USB like everyone else?
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
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.
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.
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.