How do you know they are done? How do handle people who unplug others before they are done?
There is little question that those who do not have home access to charging (and for many even level one would suffice, it certainly has for me with my Energi) will not be adopters of EVs until charging at work and in public locations is widely available and that doing such will require systems to manage and perhaps to utilize that large numbers of those batteries on a system during peak demand hours. Fortunately in this country only a minority live in circumstances in which charging at home is not possible and the white space for EV adoption growth (assuming the right price point) is huge. About 2/3s of Americans live in single family homes. Another 9% in buildings with four or less units, which are usually not much of a challenge to get charging availability in. And those are 2000 census numbers. Since then the big population growth has been in surburbia. And the millennials who are opting for a “hyperurban” lifestyle are among those least likely to own their own cars at all. The “wall” of needing those who live in larger units in which charging availability is a less likely assured item to buy these vehicles to fuel further growth is a long way away. Really what were doing buying even a PHEV without access to a 110 outlet at home?
There is an infinitesimal number of plug-in vehicle owners right now who need public charging and the first large phase of adoption does not require its availability. Quick charge on interstates being widely available will help with some peoples fears but for daily use, not needed by most. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate having it as it can save me from having my PHEV have to go on gas at the end of my day sometimes and even if I had a full BEV I’d love the fact that it gets me prime parking spots in parking structures!
Eh. I don’t know how representative I am of the average commuter, but I have a two-car household with a garage, and a 70mi total daily commute. I also have a tesla model 3 reservation. 310 miles of range means I can completely forget to plug it in on two separate evenings and still have enough left to make it to work and back, and that’s assuming its only charged to 80% to start with. And even if I forget the third(!) time, I can just switch vehicles with my wife, and still leave her with enough range to get by on for the day.
Assuming the daily “chore” of plugging/unplugging it and stowing the cable in my garage is about 30 seconds long, it means that I’d spend 2.5 minutes every week keeping the vehicle topped off. Less if i “forget” to charge every day (twice a week would work out just fine for me). Compare that with the “chore” of a weekly 5-minute (probably being generous here, once you consider off-ramp detour times and traffic lights) fill up at a gas station for an ICE car, and I’m still coming out significantly ahead.
You’re currently the average EV commuter which means You have a garage. you are not the average car driver. There are a significant number of people without a garage or a place to plug in. that means fishing out an extension cord in the rain and snow. Most commuters have a gas station along the way that requires no diversion. So an economy car like a Prius goes 8 days between fill ups. And since there is currently gas stations everywhere there is no range anxiety. EVER.
This is why I think fast charge batteries and “gas stations” are a much better solution for the full spectrum of car users and will make the transition to EV’s quicker. Sure, you will plug yours in because you can. but you will also use charging stations for longer trips.
There are only a minority of drivers in America without a garage or a place that an EVSE could be installed.
Oh that minority is still significant but initial adoption can occur without even investing in new outlets. Carnegie Mellon did a study a few years back … 22% of all of the fleet could be EV without requiring any homes to invest even in creating a new outlet; only going beyond 39% of the fleet would require homes to upgrade electrical in order to charge more than one EV at a time, and only when aiming for fleet penetration beyond 47% will require residential charging for renters.
Please note: those are “of the fleet” numbers, not “of new car sales” numbers. Given the relatively long life span of cars these days it is quite a few years with a majority of cars sold being EV before you are even up to 22% of the fleet.
No question getting more than half of the vehicles on the road to be EVs will require major changes, either in residential parking, or in available public charging while parked daytime at work or otherwise, or even the archaic gas station style fill’er up model with “quick charge.” But getting to half of the vehicles on the road being EV would be a dozen years of all new cars sold being EV.
Still, true, selling more than 125 million or so EVs in the United States will hit a wall unless something is done by then that makes the technology work better for those without a location suitable for installing a charger at their homes.
This can be applied directly to charge the engine too, eliminating the use of large packs of batteries. A team in South Korea put a team together rather quickly in 2009, and a year later had a system up in no time which I believe was 7.5 miles. They used a bus, which had a smaller battery, but said a capacitor could also be used when off the on-line system.
Take 3 minutes of your time to see this. If that interests you, look at other youtube clips of their cars and trains already using this wireless technology now, and eliminating the large battery packs, going with something much smaller.
A book put out this year that I have yet to read myself, a bit pricey, but look forward when I get the time. See OLEV (on-line electric vehicles)
I just don’t see fast charge as ever becoming a standard way to charge an electric car. Even if my car could be charged at a charging station in 5 minutes, I’d rather plug it in every night than to go to a charging station every week. If I lived in an apartment, I’d prefer having a charging outlet at every parking spot than to have a 5-minute charging station around the corner.
Fast charge is a niche need, only for those who routinely use the car for inter-city travel, and/or can’t stand the thought of having to stop for >30 min every 200 miles when they do travel long distance. I expect those people will buy hybrids or PHEVs until EV range gets up to the “more than you’d ever want to drive in a day” range. And I suspect 900-mile range will become a reality before 5-minute charging.
And people wouldn’t be poor if they had money. Which is what is required to install a station. In the real world there are a substantial number of people who will not see a station next to their parking space for many, many, many, years.
Fast charge batteries represent a commodity that every battery manufacturer is driving hard to bring it to market.
Even if there were as many charging stations as gas stations, why would anyone buy an electric car that they’d have to take to a charging station every few days?? You’re giving up one significant advantage of an electric car - i.e. that it’s fully charged every morning, and you never have to take it anywhere to refuel/recharge. If I lived in an apartment I’d buy a gasoline-powered hybrid, even if an EV were available for the same price with 200-mile range and 5-minute charging. The Prius gets 588 miles range per tank of gas. And an EV station likely charges more than a home charging would cost, which negates the cost advantage of EVs.
I think you guys are talking past one another - nobody is saying that people will exclusively fast-charge their cars at gas stations; the position is that fast-charging batteries are coming and will maybe be thing that bridges EV from “local driving only” to “both local and cross-country”. So your car CAN fast-charge at a station, if you find yourself running low in the middle of nowhere, but obviously when you get back home, you’ll just plug it in there.
Actually no I do not think that is what Magiver is saying. That is really what most everyone else is saying: that fast-charge’s niche will be to enable cross-country travel by EV petty much exclusively and will mainly be located on interstates.
Oil is largely imported from middle east , Iran etc. . So it is highly taxed by the government. So, it costs 4-5 INR (Indian Rupees) per kilometer in a petrol car. Electricity costs ~5 INR per unit and going down due to solar plants. Let’s say EV runs 7 km per unit. It means 5/7= 0.71 INR per kilometer. That’s a humongous saving.
Indian cities are amongst the most polluted in the world. Every Indian would rather own a EV than a ICE car.
Everybody here will gladly spend 10 Mins charge time at a charging station for 200 miles.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that a 5-minute fast charge battery wouldn’t have a major impact on EV adoption. But it’s not the only metric that consumers are going to look at when evaluating the decision to switch to an EV. “Time spent at a station to fill up 300 miles on the highway” is only one metric out of many. Here are some other ones:
Overall time spent being inconvenienced by “fueling” over the lifetime of the vehicle - EV has a major advantage here already over ICE, for families with 2 car households, garages, and <200 mile total daily commute distances. As quick-charging gets faster, OR as battery sizes increase, it’ll start being valid for more and more consumers outside of that group (which is probably the majority of the US auto-market already). After 4+ hours of driving on the highway, pretty much everyone stops for 30 minutes to eat and use the bathroom anyway- a 400+ mile EV with a 30 minute “quick” charge is going to offer almost zero time lost over a hypothetical 1000 mile ICE for highway trips, assuming saturation of chargers near McDonalds locations along major interstates.
Cost of “fueling” over lifetime of vehicle- EV has a major advantage here over ICE for the vast majority of electricity markets in the US, assuming access to a garage or apt with average electricity (10cents/kWhr) rates. “Quick” charging stations will likely settle to a cost below gasoline.
Engine throttle/ transmission response - EV has a major advantage here. Max torque at 1RPM. No gear shift lag (there are no shifts at all, since it only needs a 1-speed fixed transmission).
Vehicle handling- Batteries are heavy, but so are ICE engines, and batteries can be packaged in a lot better places for handling (below the passenger compartment, concentrated around the center of the vehicle. There’s a reason why many supercars are rear-mid-engined. Especially as batteries get lighter, EVs can replicate that without sacrificing the rear passenger cabin to do so.
Vehicle safety - a few high profile battery fires aside, an EV allows for much more front crumple zone space, since there is no bulky engine up front, and the battery can be used for extra structural structural stiffness to protect against cabin intrusion.
Engine noise/smell- EV has a major advantage here. Can turn on climate control system remotely, 10 minutes prior to getting in, in a confined space like a garage, and have no issues with fumes.
Maintenance/reliability - EV should eventually have a major advantage here with much less moving parts in the drivetrain, and motors that should last a million miles. Battery life is probably the weakest link right now, but as battery prices continue to drop, complete battery replacements at say the 250,000 mile mark are going to become more feasible/easy to do.
Initial Cost - ICE definitely wins this right now. Most of the EV costs are driven by the battery. As battery prices drop, should eclipse ICE cost in the within 5-10 years, since the rest of the drivetrain is much cheaper than an ICE.
Sure, battery quick charge times are a major factor in aiding EV adoption. But probably much more critical is battery cost, and weight, in that order, as those would shore up all the EV disadvantages in all the other categories, and further improve many of the existing advantages. If you’re the 1% of drivers with an iron bladder, a rotating shift of drivers, an ample supply of beef jerky, and regular cross country trips, an EV may never be the car for you until we get to 5-minute charge batteries. But with improvements in battery cost and weight, all the other advantages should be enough to lure the other 99% to an EV.
Well, I was talking about jz78817’s and my company, so the answer is trivial: The charging light turns off, as the only allowed cars all have charging lights. As a backup measure, we all have to use the same app to start the charging process, and it tells us which chargers are not charging.
In the broader, public scheme of things, though, you have a point.
Read at a couple of places that total lithium on earth is 13-14 million tonnes. How correct is that? And if that’s correct and if an ev on average takes 10 kgs of lithium, total EVs which can be made using available lithium is only 1.3-1.4 billion, which may not be sufficient for 8 billion people.
Also to factor in is that unlike cell phone and computer lithium batteries, EV lithium batteries represent a large volume in one place with a means of collected less complicated that harvesting out of the general waste stream. It may be a while until any significant numbers of these batteries reach end of life (end of life may even be beyond however they last in the vehicles, as at that point they may still have more than 3/4 of their capacity and still be able to be repurposed, such as by utilities for stationarystorage) but when such number exist recycling their lithium will be a distinct possibility as well. Such is already done for lead acid automotive batteries and while the processes involved in harvesting the contents of EV batteries may be more complicated, various start-ups are already working on how to make the process profitable so that they are prepared when the volume exists.
Enjoying everyone’s input. Don’t have too much more time to devote to the boards myself, until maybe December, but wanted to cover a few other metals that haven’t gotten as much attention, and where it is being mined.
Lithium in batteries is important, and some project prices will start going up, including Musk. But it it only makes up about 2% of the content of lithium batteries if I remember right (lost my cites). Others are voicing concerns about getting a quality enough grade that will need to supply the future factories.
Graphite makes up 10-30x of the amount of lithium batteries, often 50-100 lbs or more. Look at the graphite map which is used for the anode, and where it is coming from. China being responsible and clearly dominating world-wide production. And while EV’s may drastically reduce pollution, these metals are something of a concern for countries that mine it. China to date has already shut down 55 of their graphite mines, IIRC. There are three types of naturally occuring graphite, with synthetic being a fourth type. But Musk just doesnt’ want any graphite either, he wants spherical graphite, and once again 95+% of the world supply is coming from China uncoated. Synthetic graphite is an option, but it appears spherical graphite is what others are seeking. It looks like Musk is going to get his graphite from Canada in the future. I believe Alabama may be another and looks to re-open their graphite mine.
Cobalt is another metal that is used for the cathode, and the Demoncratic Republic of the Congo is responsible for 55% of it. It poses even bigger problems than the graphite.
OLEV or other types of electrification deserves consideration. The batteries are coming regardless, but hope all are not going to be hauling around over a half a ton of batteries.