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Europe Is Getting a Network of 'Ultra-Fast, High-Powered' EV Chargers (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ford, and Volkswagen have entered into a partnership to create a network of high-speed charging stations for electric vehicles across Europe. The new chargers will be capable of doling out up to 350 kW of power -- which would make them almost three times as powerful as Tesla's Supercharging stations. The result will be "the highest-powered charging network in Europe," according to a statement released by the manufacturers. The automakers say that construction will begin in 2017 with "about 400 sites" being targeted, and that the network will have "thousands of high-powered charging points" available by 2020. Those four major conglomerates will be "equal partners" in the joint venture, but according to the statement they are encouraging other manufacturers to "participate in the network." One of the reasons for bothering to call on other automakers to hook into this system is because there's a standards war happening with fast charging networks. The charging network announced today will use the Combined Charging System (CCS) technology, which is what that most major automakers already use for their EVs. But Nissan, Toyota, and Honda are notable holdouts from CCS, because many of their EVs and plug-in hybrids use a competing standard known as CHAdeMO.
Why do tech companies even do this? Why can't everyone just agree on a standard and stick with it from the start instead of having a war that means us consumers who buy gear from the wrong side will suffer. No doubt there will be large dongle adapters between charging standards, but I bet an adapter that can handle 100+ kilowatts is pretty darn expensive.
I mean, the basic requirements for a plug are that it be mechanically sound and inexpensive to manufacture. It ought to have several conductor pins, filled in by order of amperage, so a 2 pin plug is 50 amp and a 4 pin plug is 100 amp and so on. The plugs for lower amperage would be the same size plastic mold, just missing the conductors for higher amperage. Not that hard to get right. It needs a data pin to do handshaking with the destination.
It's not worth fighting a war to get royalties, every electric car manufacturer has an incentive to use the standard used by the majority so everyone's vehicles can charge more places.
The exact same reason why open source software is never forked, and everyone agrees on one particular standard and implementation.
Why do tech companies even do this?
Tech companies do this because standards organizations move too slow. Manufacturers want to ship something this (week, month, quarter, year...) and the standards people will still be arguing over the name of the new group. I work in 802.11 and we see this happen way too often.
We need new standards when the old standards are insufficient. Tesla developed their own standard because there wasn't anything else fast enough (CHAdeMO is slower). CCS is designed to work as an extension to the standard J1772 level-2 (240V) chargers, and I think it's faster.
The good news is that it should be possible to create adaptors. Tesla already has CHAdeMO adaptors, and I suspect CSS adaptors will be available soon. I would suspect that CHAdeMO and CSS will have adaptors for each other at some point. For the short term, it means carrying around extra cables, but eventually it will be all sorted out.
The other reason is no one is an expert until it's actually tried. Each "standard" has their own pluses and minuses, each of which wasn't readily apparent when it was created.
That, and most standards organizations are all about patent swapping - I'll get your patent into the standard, if you'll get my patent in the standard. They're less about pushing technology forward and more about how diplomatic you can be during negotiations.
Indeed, when a new standard is called for, usually there's a call to industry to propose their ideas and implementations and if there's only one working one out there, it will likely be the standard regardless if there's a better version in R&D right now.
What "standard that was in place first" are you talking about? There have been tons of EV charging standards over time as the technology has evolved. This isn't like some sort of wall plug, there's data exchange and negotiation before beginning a charge, and newer standards handle higher powers than old ones.
350kW is superb, I'm really glad to see them taking such a bold step. They'll even be able to recharge freight vehicles in plausible lengths of time at those power levels.
* Streamlined, efficient small car (200Wh/mi): 29 miles of range added per minute charging (60mph = 2 minutes charging per hour on the road)
* Typical crossover SUV (350 Wh/mi): 17 miles of range added per minute charging (60mph = 3 minutes charging per hour on the road)
* Large freight truck, ~30 tonne load (2 kWh/mi): 2.9 miles of range added per minute charging (60mph = 15 minutes charging per hour on the road)
In the last case the slowdown is measurable... but probably well worth the fuel cost savings. For passenger vehicles, the difference vs. gasoline is insignificant
That said, I do hope that they're putting battery buffers in these chargers. Otherwise, grid operators are not going to be very happy with them, and they'll need to have a good supply line. But with a buffer you could run them off of a small solar panel out in the middle of the desert, so long as your net generation exceeds your net discharge needs.
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
It looks like the new 350kW stations will be 800 or 1000 volts at 350 amps.
However, the current CCS cable and connector is only good for 200 amps so something will need to change.
The utilities are also likely to have something to say about people plugging and unplugging 350 kW loads for short periods of time.
Current Tesla Superchargers usually have a 500 kW transformer to serve six or eight charging stations (which are paired to share power). This could accommodate one or two (at reduced power) of the new stations.
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