China's EV champ BYD reveals super-fast charging that leaves Tesla eating dust Chinese electric automaker BYD has announced 1,000-volt supercharging technology it claims can fill a compatible vehicle’s battery in the same amount of time needed to pump fuel into a conventional car. BYD announced the new so-called Super E-Platform in a video posted to Weibo at the weekend. A brief clip posted by BYD …
"The Biden administration adopted policies that effectively ban them from 2027 onward ."
Thank you El Reg for being honest and not making this a Trump / Musk problem. It would have been easy to not mention that little fact above, but you didn't, so kudos to you.
I don't care who does what in politics, I do prefer that I just read the facts. Regardless of who is in power
It's good to see just some down to earth journalism.
And yes the article is extremely interesting , it's good for everyone when industry has to fight to improve.
Who is in the White House today?
Trump and President Musk. So....
- Trump pleases his boss by pretending to buy a car that he can never drive using the White House as a Tesla Stealership
- Perhaps that is in response to the Trump/Musk regime shutting down all the chargers on Government Property.
Good luck visiting somewhere like Yellowstone in an EV (if the National Park is even open once everyone in the NPS has been fired despite bringing in lots of revenue.
Tesla, as claimed by the cult is still 10 years ahead of the competition.
Yeah right.
In charging speeds, the Chinese and Koreans are beating them today.
In self driving, the list is long of those who are ahead of Muskmobiles. That's largely (IMHO) down to Elon deciding that LIDAR was not needed.
Because Musk/Trump are in power and they make the news all about them with their 'Hey look at me, I'm the Golf Club Champ' etc etc etc we have to make our comments about them.
The way things are going.... Look at the bill going through congress that will make any woman who changed their name when they got married unable to vote without re-registering with a birth certificate or passport... Yeah right.
The world is watching the USA self destruct at the hands of two men (being operated by the people behind Project 2025) and we don't like it one little bit.
Even here in the UK, a Labor Government are following Musk/Trump and cutting benefits for those who can't live a decent life without them. These cuts won't be the last. Watch out pensioners... We are next, then who? If this was being done by a Tory Government then the media would be up in arms. Today? Lukewarm at best. This is just like what is happening in the USA.
I have gone way off track.
Tesla is no longer the market leader. Muskmobiles are depreciating like a stone. Many dealers will not take them in Part Exchange. That is all down to Musk for not expanding hthe range of vehicles that can legally be driven here. They have stagnated when once they were a technology leader.
Some of the batteries coming out of China are world leading and Tesla is sitting on its hands seemingly doing nothing.
Like it or not, solid state batteries are almost here in the mainstream. When that happens, Tesla could be history. Robotaxi's? That won't keep the company alive in Europe.
Remember when having a Tesla, or better still a small fleet of them, was seen as badge of honour amongst the middle class? Oh look, I have an expensive and not very common car and its an EV so that means I'm wealthy but also pretend to care about the environment. Perfect for showing off on the school run.
All those poor influencers who have 3 Teslas, the matching home chargers, a row of Tesla home batteries and the Tesla roof tiles.
@AC
"I'm wealthy but also pretend to care about the environment."
The pretend bit is often true
On our street is a "big house", larger & lots more land than the others (others new(ish) builds, that "big house" was original large property of which some land was sold off to build the (small) housing estate).
People who live there have a Tesla (on their 2nd now), heat pump, solar panels.
.. I think they are doing it mainly for the long term cost savings, not for saving the environment reasons...their garden & field used to have a lot of mature trees that the wildlife loved, however they decided the tree shading was impacting on the productivity of their solar panels, so the old mature trees* were chopped down.
* It would take about a human lifespan if replacement trees were planted now to approach the size / maturity of the removed trees... and of course no saplings were planted as would affect the solar panels in years to come!
Tesla roof tiles still interest me, especially as I need to redo the whole roof as the tiles I have now no-one will install panels onto because of the type of tiles, the way they lift and no underfelt.
Redo roof + get solar, or redo roof in solar.
"Tesla roof tiles still interest me,"
Those were originally patented by NASA years ago and many companies have died on that hill. Tesla sorta has tiles, made for them by some mob in China, but nothing like the ones Elon was using to get the BoD of Tesla to bail him and his cousins out of Solar City.
It sounds clever, but for each tile as originally proposed, it takes a pair of wires. The Chinesium Tesla is selling has several cells in a group rather than one cell tiles. It's a far cry from 36-72 cells all wired up and sealed in a traditional panel. The more connections some contractor is making, the greater the chance you'll wind up with expensive problems down the road.
AC: "a car that he [Trump] can never drive"
Aw come on! He technically could drive it, it's just that as soon as he'd turn the power on, his very subtle transgender¹ woolly mammoth mouse hairpiece would first frizz-up, and then turn into a majorly hugeass Dolemite blaxploitation mutherfscking afro⁴, man! He'd never be able to exit the vehicle ever, again!
Speaking of which, with Musk's clownfish-like preference for reproduction through external fertilization, can we expect him to also become female when he matures (once the dominant female is removed from the group)? Inquiring minds ...
(¹⁻ or maybe it's transgenic ... nobody knows ...)
(⁴⁻ that may arguably make him feel closer to the new BBC ... maybe ... but mostly in a BOC, or more likely SOC kinda way really, IMO)
is the electrical distribution infrastructure sufficient to handle a significant number of these even-more-power-consumptive fast chargers?
Curiously I am sure I recently glimpsed a headline claiming BYD was going into the (domestic?) storage battery business in Europe (I think) which would also be eating Tesla's lunch in the battery market. :)
Were enough of these fast charging batteries widely distributed over the grid that problem might solve itself. Effectively static batteries that can rapidly sink excess renewable energy from household solar and grid feed in, could later supply power to charge EV batteries.
Probably not, as the grid still couldn't take the localised fast loads without massive and disruptive investment. However, see my response below to a related comment.. (edit, abandoned and put here).
There is a technical solution and it's the same as any current road vehicle filling station, of buffering storage. Instead of underground tanks of dinosaur juice just have a big bank of slow charge/fast discharge energy storage. A simple variant is a stack of shipping containers with batteries in them, as used in various large scale storage scenarios, equally could be buried or prettied up. This incidentally was trialled with shipping containers a few years back (can't recall the name of the companies involved), but absent widespread fast charging vehicles it didn't get adopted that I'm aware of.
The problem then becomes not technology, but economics - the cost of additional buffering storage, it's service life, and net system charge/discharge losses. All entirely feasible, but expensive.
This has been a pipedream for a while but it would only ever be possible during summer months when you have sufficient excess capacity. As EV take-up increases, we'll see more and more problems in cities where the grids simply cannot cope with the demand, and, of course, renewable generation is limited. As noted below, the costs associated with building out the grid and storage are staggering.
No, we will need hydrocarbons (many of which could bs synthesises) because of their energy density for a good while yet: full hybrids and fuel cells currently the best paths to follow without the need to build completely new infrastructure.
Those are percentages for 2023's usage. Shift more of the workload from ICE to EVs and the demand goes up. What would the situation be in 2033? We have had governments believing that all they had to do was pass laws mandating net zero by whatever year. It's only now starting to dawn on them that setting targets wasn't enough, they should have been doing something to meet them.
Of course the demand will go up. Not just ICE replacement but getting the fossil mix down will increase the need for electricity very considerably. So what? We knew that anyway, and the answer is to continue investing in renewables production, storage and distribution.
There are plenty of challenges in all of this, but renewables only being effective in the summer is not one of them.
"There are plenty of challenges in all of this, but renewables only being effective in the summer is not one of them."
The effectiveness of renewables can be partly put aside, but the point about renewables not addressing winter demand cannot. Peak demand in almost all of Europe is in winter. As more heat demand is met by electricity the existing winter demand peaks will exaggerate considerably. I recall some industry work I was involved in a few years back that looked at the half hourly demand for heating from gas, and winter peak for the UK was around 400 GW, about 6-7 times peak electricity demand. Even if you halved that through heat pumps and a national mandatory insulation (say £25k per property) it's still a vast demand that can't feasibly be met by renewables under current energy policy. I'm sure government will welcome ideas for solving this conundrum, as they have none at present.
"We knew that anyway"
Governments seem not to have. They seem to have thought that setting a legally binding target was sufficient.
Where were analyses of what was required? Where were the projects to deliver those? Where are the mandates about requiring more than token numbers of charging points at service stations? Where's the investment in beefing up the grid? We have the ridiculous situation of not being able to use sites for renewables because there are no connections.
They seem to have been thinking "don't build it and they will come."
It's only just dawning on them that their target is now unachievable.
The problem is that government have sought to force their chosen net zero solution on the energy sector, picking winners through various subsidy mechanisms, yet relying on private finance and some regulatory forcing by Ofgem. However, from the very start of the net zero adventure, there's been no system wide design or planning, no recognition of the total investment needed, no analysis to work out what the impact on energy bills will be, and how that can be afforded by households or by business, no examination of how the policy positions the UK internationally.
I've been previously involved in various industry working groups, the absence of any system design and modelling was recognised years ago, but ministers didn't care, they were just intent on waving bits of paper in the air, announcing how they were saving us from climate change. Whilst the leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition is now mouthing that it is unaffordable, her party were in control for fifteen years during which they continued the same policies as the previous and present governments - I don't think there's any recognition anywhere in Parliament that our approach to net zero is doomed to expensive failure.
Please tell us the plans for storage. Thus far I haven't seen anything close to hydrocarbons as a potential fit for the problem. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that is, generally, what life settled on for energy storage. We have a couple of tricks up our sleeve in not relying solely on solar cells, but research is woefully funded in comparison to batteries, where only marginal improvements are occurring.
There are three large battery storage sites being built in Scotland at the moment, and there's a lot of upset in Suffolk at the moment because of plans to build similar sites there to capture excess energy from the North Sea wind farms. They're also looking at upgrading the Cruachan pumped storage site in Scotland to give it even more capacity.
National Grid believes that this is a better way to handle unexpected loads. Of course, it goes without saying that they'll have to upgrade the power grid too (which also upsets a lot of Suffolk residents).
Aaaaaarrghh indeed, why can't anybody see that net 5 or net 10 would be so much more achievable and practical. The amount of co2 (and cash) invested in removing the last few percent is out of all proportion to the benefit. To fill short shortfalls in the renewable generating capacity we are seriously considering hollowing out mountains, building huge concrete tanks and installing massive infra structure! A comparatively tiny gas turbine comes on line fast, costs by comparison next to nothing, doesn't need to be placed in a remote location where there happens to be a spare mountain and possibly creates less co2 and other environmental damage over it's life than just the building of a hollow mountain never mind the maintenance.
No, I was responding to a post which suggested that. And, when it comes to the kind of distributed sources that might be required here, it is largely domestic solar installations. We both agree that they won't be sufficient, as anyone with solar unit and an electric vehicle will agree, or do you see many signs in front of houses offering to let people charge their cars for free. And, it's a complete non-starter for cities.
EVs will require a step change in the size of the grid and solutions for peak demand during times of minimal production: the infamous Dunkelflauten in winter. The costs to upgrade the grid and increase generating capacity, which is also supposed to power electric heat pumps, are simpy staggering.
exactly this
the infamous Dunkelflauten in winter
people do not seem to get if 25% plus of the grid is offline for even a minute; the grid collapses.
None of the protagonists appear to be able to understand the difference between dispatchable power and non-dispatchable power sources; and why the grid will be (is already ?) de-stabilised because there is too much non-dispatchable power in the system.
It doesn't matter how many days renewables supply all the UK's power needs; if there is no cover for when the sun don't shine& the wind don't blow (and its neap tides; and the rivers are all low/frozen etc) the result will be grid black out. And if you supply cover; to make it economical; then you need to use it at its most efficient - the cost of the plant standing idle for 95% plus of the year is too extreme to garner any economic backing.
Failing to plan for Dunkelflauten is a guarantee we will see blackouts. And add to the mix - using some form of stored energy (other than nuclear or coal/gas power stations) requires building what are effectively bombs all around the country; imagine a 1GW battery installation going up in flames ? I'll gladly have a nuke in my back garden; I don't want much more then a few 10s of kW in a batery pack anywhere near domestic dwellings.
Na-Ion should significantly reduce both the costs and fire-risks of battery storage, but you're still left with an insurmountable demand that needs to be MWh per m3. Synthetic hydrocarbons could fit the bill as being storable (I favour closed loops for winter heating) and transportable, but currently uneconomic. Though, as you note, what is the cost for a total grid shutdown?
> the infamous Dunkelflauten in winter
> people do not seem to get if 25% plus of the grid is offline for even a minute; the grid collapses.
That's what smart meters are for: either to cut off your power instantly or make the spot price so high that you have no choice to switch just about everything off.
I know how fuel cells are supposed to work… as for losses – the whole chain is full of losses – but what hydrogen, to some degree, and hydrocarbons to a much greater degree bring is high-density durable storage. In addition, you can produce them without elecricity, which is already a scarce commodity and getting scarcer as more systems electrify…
"Curiously I am sure I recently glimpsed a headline claiming BYD was going into the (domestic?) storage battery business in Europe (I think) which would also be eating Tesla's lunch in the battery market. :)"
They have battery backup systems for sale in Asia. So does everybody else and long before Tesla got into it. There's also been a bunch more boutique firms that sell the building blocks to specialist contracts to build back up systems to order. Engineer775 on YT is an example.
For other suppliers, check out LG, Bosch, Siemens and even Panasonic (Evervolt).
Considering zero of them support megawatt charging today, that's not a problem today.
If they installed megawatt chargers, didn't add/upgrade that background battery or otherwise were located next to a substation or the like, then yeah that would be a problem. But pointing out problems for tech that isn't installed that has a known solution that's already installed in some locations is pretty disingenuous.
I mean, a gas station with 50 pumps that had an underground tank that held only 2000 gallons of fuel would be stupid. To which you'd point out "but no one would do anything that dumb". Yes, just like no one is going to install megawatt chargers without provision that they be able to actually deliver that power. If for no other reason than I'm sure a megawatt charger will cost a lot more than one that delivers "only" 250 kw, so it would be foolish to pay extra for a charger that can't access the level of power it is capable of delivering.
BYD has already started to use Na-Ion cells in some of its batteries: heavier but lower cost, reduced fire risk. Tesla is at least a generation behind Chinese battery tech which now has a domestic market large enough to cover costs, ie. capital investment is cheaper than in the US. But, understandably, they're prioritisting the domestic market for the newer products.
The focus of the article is speed of charging. The key thing is charging faster doesn't make much difference to the total energy consumption. 4 x 250kw bays will use as much power as 1 x 1000kw bays, just cars can get through the latter and on with the journey more quickly.
The number of cars an hour you can serve with the same grid connection is largely the same (Obviously, save for some time getting the car in position)
Odds are you'll use some buffer batteries and have a bit of oversubscription to allow for that "downtime" while cars are moving in and out of bays.
And, how long will the batteries last? With current (250kw) charging tech, research suggests rapid charging has very little impact on battery life given careful thermal management. (You can cook the battery on an old leaf at 50kw because it had poor thermal management). 1000 kw charging will push the batteries and thermal management system harder, and it's hard to judge if this might be too hard in real world conditions for several years, but BYD are confident enough to warrant the battery under these conditions.
OK, so quick disclaimer, YMMV, I only took a few longer trips with EVs, and I don't really enjoy driving (depending on where and when, Switzerland is quite nice, other countries can be more stressful).
My experience was that I arrived at the destination way more relaxed. On a road trip with my brother we would choose tje charging points so that we could sit down, have a coffee, a chat, and then continue. Actually quite a nice relaced way of travelling.
I do travel quite frequently long distance with an EV, not entirely by choice (the EV, not the travel :) ).
What I like: quiet drive. Dislike: the massive loss of time charging (there is only so many meals I can handle in a day, or do so much shopping), the wide range of electronics determined to find any excuse at all to slow down (and if there's no excuse it will randomly hallucinate and slow down anyway). and the complete loss of privacy (Google maps in the dashboard knows everything about the vehicle, including charging levels so it can 'help' me. That is;, until the SIM in the car decides it doesn't like roaming for the day and I have to revert to a GPS app on my phone anyway.
Next car will be a hybrid. Or an old ICE with a CD player.
apart from the charging times, all dislikes are same-same for any new car, irrespective of propulsion. Quite frustrating to see just how bad most (mandated) assistants are, even taking into account a single miss will stay in your mind longer than the times the system worked as intended.
Mine is a plug-in so I could dip my toe in the electric car driving world. It is still a complete mess of different charging and billing systems of course (UK) but I can imagine it working great eventually as long as we shift away from this obsession to always refuel on demand in seconds. Endpoint charging is a long way away though - just look at any hotel car park, hundreds of spaces but few if any charging points. I always ask but am rarely successful.
Vans and wagons are different - they often need to go long distances all day every day but do not seem to be discussed much in the mainstream media.
p.s. our works forklift is electric and has been for decades, bit slow though.
"working great eventually as long as we shift away from this obsession to always refuel on demand in seconds. Endpoint charging is a long way away though - just look at any hotel car park, hundreds of spaces but few if any charging points. I always ask but am rarely successful."
The emboldened points are connected. Charging (or refueling) points are expensive to install, it makes great sense to have high asset utilisation, and that's why it makes sense to pursue fast charging/refueling at service stations. Trickle charging at every car park bay and street lamp is ultimately a wasteful idea, and investment in that may well be seen in retrospect as fighting the last war for EVs.
It is widely assumed that fast charging is only much of a convenience thing - there is that, but it disguises a far more substantive economic need.
"Charging (or refueling) points are expensive to install" :
In the case of rapid chargers, yes - they cost a fortune (I believe you're talking about £80k+ for ultra rapid). But for single-phase 7kW AC chargers the cost is a fraction of that. One can easily get a basic charger installed for under £1000 (and I think the charger units themselves are way overpriced for what they are) - certainly in my case even consistent access to a regular 13amp socket to use a so-called granny charger would have taken the edge off in most of my own cases. I'm sure the government could easily offer grants and incentives to business across the country to try and achieve basic charging facilities installed in the majority of public and private car parks.
One of the many problems with the public charging infrastructure is the extortionate prices they charge. e.g. At home I'm fortunate enough to have a driveway and a 'smart' home charger so I can charge for about 7p/kWh vs anything from around 43p on Tesla's network up to about 89p with the worst offenders (here's looking at you, InstaVolt and PotPoint!). Don't even get me started about 'fragmentation', shitty apps, incompatibility etc.
Rapid chargers are serious machines - liquid cooled cables delivering hundreds of volts DC at insane currents - they cost a bomb and then you have to deal with the latest craze of ne'er-do-well metal thieves chopping off the cables. I have to assume that a large part of the exorbitant price of charging is due to the exorbitant cost of installing and maintaining the chargers - i.e. rapid charging might always be a rip-off and not necessarily because of profiteering but because of the massive overhead costs of running them.
I think the long-term solution is two-fold:
Firstly:
EVs need to have sufficient range for their purpose. Tiny EVs marketed for inner city use can get away with a tiny battery whilst family/business EVs should (entirely in my opinion) have enough range to be able to handle 99% of regular journeys without needing a rapid charger.
My own yard stick is: My EV needs to be able to cover a minimum distance of 200 motorway miles driving at <u>the legal speed limit</u> in winter conditions. (N.B. it is quite common for EV drivers to brag about how they achieved a better range by driving at 50mph on the motorway. For me this is a deal-breaker.)
I had a Citroen e-C4 for three years with a 45kW battery and an advertised range of over 200miles. In reality when driving on the motorway I could not risk driving more than 120miles before needing to charge and this turned a ~400 mile journey to Cornwall with my kids (and a 400 mile return) into a "never again!" moment. The lack of charging infrastructure in Cornwall at the time compounded the misery. This was certainly a time when a even a humble granny charger would have made an improvement to the experience.
Now I've got a Polestar 2 which is an order of magnitude better than the Citroen on all counts, but the really crucial difference is that it is a long-range model with an 82kW battery - close to double that of the Citroen. This is a game changer for me - I can easily do a 200 mile round-trip from fully charged driving normally, using heated seats and A/C etc, and still get home with another 80+ miles of range remaining. In 4 months of ownership (well, 'lease-er-ship') I haven't needed to use a public charger once and don't envisage needing one any time soon.
Secondly: "Graze Charging" - Almost every time I have needed to use a rapid charger, my car has been parked for multiple hours with no access to power and could have easily been topped up enough to avoid the need to make a detour and delay my driving time at a rapid charge point.
As per my initial point about the cost of chargers, I'm convinced that if some ~7kW chargers were available at the majority of car parks (and ideally half the price per kWh or better compared to rapid chargers) then the demand for rapid chargers would fall drastically and we'd all be a bit less obsessed with trying to push a huge amount of power into a battery in the shortest possible time.
Back on the topic of BYD - My gut feeling is that this new breakthrough, if it's viable, it likely to be even more costly than the current rapid charging options. I did look at BYD's cars when choosing my latest EV but the reviews were not particularly good and given they were similarly priced to the bigger names in the market there was nothing to inspire me to look at one this time round.
"But for single-phase 7kW AC chargers the cost is a fraction of that."
But the cumulative cost of providing many of them to serve (in context) most of a car park, or on street parking is. In addition to the cost of a charger and the local infrastructure, a hotel car park with 30 spaces and 50% provided with 7kW chargers needs a grid connection able to safely serve 105 kW. Sometimes that spare capacity will be available, but generally not leading to expensive distribution upgrades. It will be far easier and cheaper to reinforce grid connection to a moderate number of new fast charging stations than to rebuild the entire grid to spew 7kW to several million slow charge points.
I acknowledge that the cumulative cost will be greater although I question whether you'd really need as much as 50% coverage - there's a lot of EVs on the road these days, I've no idea of the percentage but the few hotels I've been to have had between 0 and 2 chargers and those which had chargers generally didn't seem to have much contention.
I'm sure the demand will increase but not every EV is going to need charging - e.g. I occasionally have to travel about 100 miles away for work and I choose to stay in a hotel when I work late. With my current EV I easily have enough range to drive the return journey plus local running around without needing to charge.
Assuming the charging isn't free and assuming it is more expensive than at home, I wouldn't use the hotel's chargers even if it had them. I can't be alone in this situation.
There's already standard technology to dynamically limit the rate of 7kw chargers so I'm sure there's also scope for a fair degree of "over commitment" - e.g. loads of 7kw chargers safely running off a supply which is smaller than the sum of them. Not all cars will need the same amount of charging nor will the pull the same current so over a longer, slower "graze" everybody can get sufficiently "fed".
Most of the EVs on the road are plug-ins that the industry produced in order to slide under fleet requirements for CO2, trousering the generous handouts that they got when companies bought them for their fleets, knowing full well that the majority would never be plugged in, as pretty much any fleet manager will tell you. They were also all but useless for the sales droids that got them because of the extremely limited range.
The odds are that most of the vehicles in the car park don't need 7kw for the entire night. Generally these larger installs will be setup to share a limited supply. The chargers all run at, say, 3.6kw until the cars with smaller batteries or who only need a top-off are done, after which the cars which need a deep charge get the full 7kw.
The signalling standards for AC charging allow a range of 5-32a, which allows for this sort of scheme. (Realistically, a large scheme will be 3 phase, but 7kw was picked as a number and I'm rolling with it)
I'm happy you rolled with 7kw - I used it as the notional best rate you'll get on a single phase charger... I believe 3-phase can go up to about 22kw BUT I'm not sure how many cars are compatible with it... My old Citroen e-C4 certainly only supported single phase :-|
In my opinion multiple phases in a grazing setup would be better used to support more single phase chargers.
"The signalling standards for AC charging allow a range of 5-32a, which allows for this sort of scheme. "
There's EV fleet management for charging that is very flexible. Perhaps at a hotel you can get free charging when there's capacity and pay top fees to get priority charging with maybe a middle tier as well. At an airport/train station, you could input your return time and charge needed and let the system sort out the priorities. If you will be gone for several days, chances would be good you'd be all charged up when you got back even choosing a budget tier.
I don't know about "allowed" - manufacturers seem to have stopped shipping them at standard but I think that's more because they're deemed too slow to be useful.
I don't have one and there are a tiny number of times when it would be of use to me. I keep toying with the idea of getting one but they are quite expensive and mine would likely sit unused for 364 days of the year
"I don't know about "allowed" - manufacturers seem to have stopped shipping them at standard but I think that's more because they're deemed too slow to be useful."
I still see them being included except....... Tesla. Tesla's have a lot of overhead so 120v charging in the US is rather pointless if you don't have a week. I'd still want one since I'd never own a Tesla and something that can work with a standard RV (NEMA 14-50) outlet gives a bunch of options. Some campgrounds have an EV deal during the day. It's a useful way to bridge the distance between fast chargers if your are off of the interstate highways where there isn't the same saturation of DCFC's. My mother's golf cart works on what is effectively a granny charger. She drives that around the senior community where she lives rather than taking the car to the pool(s), Libraries and club house. There's a path to get to the adjacent shopping center where they have a golf cart parking zone. I'll have to ask what she pays each month to be allowed to charge. It's not much and her leased car has a low annual limit on miles.
"Are granny chargers still allowed? Or have the EV manufacturers been "encouraged" to remove 2kW charging support?"
Rules vary depending on where you live! Mention of 2 kW charging suggests probably not the UK, and depends also on your definition of "granny chargers".
In the UK, current rules can be boiled down as follows: If you want a purpose made EV charging point on the wall, it needs to be smart regardless of capacity. If you simply plug a cable in to a wall socket, those smart requirements do not apply.
There isn't any way for a car to identify a granny charger vs a current limited fitted charger (For example, a Zappi which tries to match the available power to available Solar power in a domestic setting).
Manufacturers have stopped including them, but that's more of a cost cutting exercise than any regulatory push to get rid of them. They're about £150, some use them, some don't. Some have them left from previous cars, etc. I've used mine loads of road trips
"There isn't any way for a car to identify a granny charger vs a current limited fitted charger"
Those are effectively the same. One has the box bolted to the wall and the other is a snake that's just ate a small pig. Granny chargers in the US are typically 120v units with a ~1,200W limit. The fitted box has an internal setting the installer will set to match the wiring/breaker and it will tell the car it's max output.
"One of the many problems with the public charging infrastructure is the extortionate prices they charge."
Yeah, if you stop at Shell. The issue is those stations aren't cheap to install and there's a load of stockholders (c-level execs) all wanting a wind fall pile of money. Service is also a cost as well as people thieving the cables, vandalizing the gear and the insurance in case one of the metal thieves gets electrocuted and sues.
I'm getting closer to an EV, but my current car is still going strong so it's financially more prudent to stay with that. I AM an ideal candidate as the overwhelming number of my needs can be met on one charge, I own a home with off-street parking and a 240v/30A outlet installed and ready to use if I don't just rerun bigger cable and make it 50A. The long trips I'm mostly likely to make are well served along the way with charging choices. Since I wouldn't use a public charger more than a few times a year, the cost isn't really a bother.
Lots of Level 2 charging in places where people will spend an hour or more (shopping, cinema, amusement park, train station, etc) is more important than super fast chargers. When I go to trade shows about 220 miles from my house, I'm there for 4-6 hours and would love to have the option of plugging in while I pace the aisles looking at things. At 25mph of charging, that's 100-150 miles of range replaced and plenty for the return trip. If not, there's a favorite stop with good eats and lots of DCFC's already.
"Endpoint charging is a long way away though - just look at any hotel car park"
The more people ask, the more those places will add charging. What can be frustrating in the US is to find there is charging, but they installed posts that only have the Tesla plug so you need to have an adapter on hand. BTW, the Tesla destination chargers will work with any car. The Superchargers don't.
I'm waiting for A Better Route Planner to incorporate whole trip planning that includes hotels with available EV charging. I'd like to tell the app how long I want to drive per day and have it figure out my charging stops and land me at a hotel where I can top up overnight. The US is really big and a long trip can easily be 3-4 days depending on how much touristing you want to do.
In the mean time, always call a hotel directly and ask the person on-site. If you just book online and believe it will all be rainbows and unicorns, step away from the mushrooms. The person at the hotel will know if they have EV charging and if it's working. The web site, not so much.
Sounds like Piss Poor Planning .... on your behalf.
23 mins to put 50kW in my EV-6 at a 350kW charger. Time for a comfort break, a brief walk to stretch the legs, buy a coffee to drink on the next leg.
Sure, some parts of the country are pathetic when it comes to > 100kW charging but it is getting better.
At times when I am forced to use a 50kW charger, I use the time productively. I don't eat at motorway service areas. Overpriced crap apart from a couple of places. Even taking a short nap can help with your driving.
I take it that you never need to empty your bladder then? Well done for not drinking and you do know that sitting in a car for long hours increases the risk of DVT.
The OP empties their bladder, does a bit of a walk and then gets some refreshment. Sensible person. you my friend are a disaster waiting to happen.
Unless.... you have to drive from one end of the country at breakneck speed every day. /s
"23 mins to put 50kW in my EV-6 at a 350kW charger. Time for a comfort break, a brief walk to stretch the legs, buy a coffee to drink on the next leg."
Are you timing your stops? If I'm using the restroom at home, there's no point in figuring out how long it takes to get to the bathroom, but on a driving stop, it could be 5 minutes each way to walk including the possibility of needing to wait one's turn. It's 5 minutes to complete a transaction, wash hands (and get a receipt on some planets). Buying drinks/snacks and doing a clean out of previous trash can be another 5 minutes. When I log long trips, a basic stop is 20 minutes fairly consistently. I'm betting that people that aren't keep track will remember it as taking less time. Any extra time charging might take can be used up by checking messages and the next segment of the journey for slow-downs and closures.
> "On a road trip with my brother we would choose tje charging points so that we could sit down, have a coffee, a chat, and then continue"
If you need to stop the car to have a sit down and a chat, how noisy is your car? Sounds like you've got a mechanical problem that should be checked out before it goes bang.
The coffee requirement can be met with a flask (although I'd much prefer tea in mine)
On long journeys I tend to stop for about 10 minutes every 4-6 hours, mostly to stretch my legs and relieve myself (the aforementioned tea has knock-on effects)
So you would encourage the driver to indulge in deep conversation with a passenger, taking their attention off the road (thought to be nearly as dangerous as taking a phone call).
It also seems that you drive for 2 or 3 times the recommended 2 hours before you have a break. Your concentration/performance WILL be measurably poorer by then making you more dangerous to the rest of us.
Well done.
"So you would encourage the driver to indulge in deep conversation with a passenger, taking their attention off the road (thought to be nearly as dangerous as taking a phone call)."
Worse still, encouraging the driver to drink tea or coffee whilst driving - and somehow open and pour from a flack to do so.
This is why popular places to stop for charging are being massively expanded. M6/J1 opened with 12 350kW chargers. Now there are 36 350kW chargers and an equal number of Tesla only chargers.
Eventually, we will see sites like this with a range of chargers. Wanna stop for a meal, plug into a 50kW and be there for an hour. Want to keep moving then there will soon be a 350Kw+ charger free.
Remember that with the faster time to charge the less time a charger is occupied per customer.
Only those incapable of planning their journey will panic.
"On a road trip with my brother we would choose tje charging points so that we could sit down, have a coffee, a chat, and then continue."
This assumes you can roll up to a charging point and find it available. When EVs become the dominant class of vehicles on long distance routes all the parking places at service stations would need to be equipped with chargers and their grid connections are going to need to support that.
"This assumes you can roll up to a charging point and find it available."
Classic supply and demand. If government continues to make it difficult to install charging, availability will be an issue. The adoption rate of EV's isn't so huge that there's no way charging can't keep pace. A site with 4 stalls becomes 6 becomes 12 as the vendors see the utilization picking up. There's no point in a 36 stall site (Tesla), as there is near my house, and there's only 5-6 cars at the busiest times. Only about 6 are the v4 capable of 800v with the rest v2.
Adding batteries to sites is a good interim fix. Dragging in another set of lines from the substation is extremely expensive. Most EV's will only sustain a high charging rate for a short while depending on temperature and state of charge of the pack. That can mean there is capacity to recharge a local battery that will be used to boost power as needed. Holiday weekends will be painful, but they can be with a petrol car. I filled up at the truck stop today since they were really cheap and had to wait for a spot. That's at a place with 24 pumps. 5-6 mins to pump 8 gallons PLUS waiting about an equal time to get a spot plus the time to go and fetch a receipt since the printer on the pump was busted. The Shell on the other side of the highway was $1.30/gallon more expensive. No waiting.
" On a road trip with my brother we would choose tje charging points so that we could sit down, have a coffee, a chat, and then continue."
Faster charging than what's already available with some EV's now might actually be a problem. Fast Chargers are something that you would use on long trips and charge at home/work the rest of the time. If you can't charge at home, why would you be wanting an EV? You don't get one of the biggest benefits. If your car is going to take 15-20 minutes to charge from 10%-80%, that's a moderately fast pit stop after roughly 4 hours of driving. If you want to sit down for a meal and chat over a coffee, that's 45 minutes. I've been logging my long trips for years and that's where the numbers come from. Sure, you could push it, pee in a bottle and eat on the wing to cut that down, but why again are you driving? What you'd want is to match the charging power with the time you might spend on a stop. Higher power chargers are more money and most stations will charge an idling fee after your car is finished charging and still plugged in with a 5-10 grace period.
Did I miss something? Is there a video that shows a nearly discharged vehicle being charged to full as well? What about half a dozen of them, all at the same time, like the usual rush at a petrol station when drivers know fuel prices are doing the usual weekly bump?
10 seconds for 20 km don't impress me much, as there's no indication this actually scaled.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo" as one of my mentors taught me, back in the day.
"Give these megawatt flexible cables 5 years of forecourt (ab)use, and I forsee some spectacular rapid unscheduled disassembly events coming up."
The hoses and dispenser nozzles for conventional fuels are subject to similar abuse, and therefore have a schedule of regular inspection and replacement either as necessary or on planned life. I'd suggest that the owners of EV fast charge stations will adopt the same approach, because otherwise they'll be in breach of H&S regulations, which exposes the business to unlimited fines.
Just look at Portillo's current oeuvre on BBC. He's in Bergen and the flexible(!) cables to deliver shore power to the cruise ships have to be seen to be believed.
As for fast charging, the Chinese have plenty of local copper and aluminium and they can just plan the capacity into their growing electricity distribution network. The UK equivalent is very mature and hard to augment, and with plenty of resistance to new pylon runs.
Hey cool, more "fast charging".
The last time I fast-charged a battery was an NiMH for my camera. It was drained, sadly, and I wanted to get a picture. So, fast change, 2A/min, for 5 minutes.
I got something like 5 pictures before the batteries died, and never took a charge again.
For the life of the batteries, slow-charge them. All this talk about fast-charging is like a lesson on "how to kill your car's $10 000 battery pack ASAP." Yeah, charging over an hour is different from charging over a few minutes, but all the focus on 10m battery charge for EV -- I see it as battery death.
"For the life of the batteries, slow-charge them."
Your story probably involved overcharging the battery, which is almost unavoidable if you speed charge to 100%.
Car batteries are not charged above 80%.
Below that level the speed is only limited by the battery temperature. If they heat up during charging it is bad for the battery. That's why the article stresses the lack of "ambient temperature" information from BYD.
Only a fool would charge his car battery to the max as an illustration that a fool and his money are easily parted.
That's the problem with EV charging stations today, people get their car to 80% in 20 minutes, but insist on leaving it plugged in for another hour while they have lunch, to get up to 100%, ignoring the queue of waiting vehicles. Doesn't sound like this technology will change that. I suppose it could shut off at 80% after 5 minutes and direct you to the slow charger queue if you want more.
I was that guy once or twice, although never knowingly with a queue of people waiting... Quite simply, my previous EV could only manage a measley 120 motorway miles from 100% so charging to 80% (~96 miles) simply didn't yield enough range on a long journey.
It was rare that the 80% was achieved in 30 mins too - anything from 40 to 60 mins was more normal. And then the final 20% was more like an extra 20-30 mins so not all that bad if it meant not having to stop and mess about with yet another charger.
In my experience it takes an absolute minimum of 10 mins just to come off the road and stop somewhere very briefly.
Then on average it probably takes 10 mins to get the charger to interface with the car and actually start charging. This bit is hugely variable and it's taken me as long as 40 minutes (in the pissing rain) to successfully pay and start charging - thankfully some other chargers take mere seconds to set up but it's a lottery right now.
So when an extra 20-30 mins gets enough charge to reach the destination Vs another 40+ mins stop later on seems a better bet to me.
Fortunately my current EV has a great range and 80% (~180 miles) will be more likely to cut it on most journeys. I also haven't needed a rapid charger since getting a long range car so I've never tested how quickly it charges but it supports 150kw charging so in theory should get to 80% even quicker than the previous car.
"That's the problem with EV charging stations today, people get their car to 80% in 20 minutes, but insist on leaving it plugged in for another hour while they have lunch, to get up to 100%, ignoring the queue of waiting vehicles."
You'd pay through for the privilege if you left the car plugged in for an hour. That last 20% would still be charged at the 350kW premium price when it would be cheaper and take a similar amount of time to use a 100-150kW unit instead. You get a-holes all over anyway. Just look at all of the cripples that will ICE an EV charging stall to be 10' closer to the store's front door. There's signs and painted spaces and everything. Most charging sites will allow a grace of 5 minutes after charging ends before they start charging again for "idling".
A fast charging car is something of a premium purchase and if you are going to plug into a 350kW charger to charge quickly, you will pay a premium for juice too. Most people people won't do that, but saying such, there's video of a blond female at a petrol station in a Tesla trying to figure out where the nozzle gets inserted. The guys filming are laughing their asses off.
I'm sorry, I can't get behind that simple of an explanation. Whether NiMH or Lithium ion, the problem is still basically the same:
> Over time, the salts in the solution can crystalize, forming solids that block the transmission of ions through the solution. If fewer ions get through, fewer electrons are released, and the battery can’t provide as much power as it did when it was new.
> This crystallization can happen more quickly if your phone is exposed to excessive heat, such as funneling a lot of power into the battery at once with a fast charger.
(this writing is about lithium ion batteries.) Excessive heat: you can't tell me that charging a phone at 100W isn't going to generate considerable heat within the battery. Similarly for a car's battery pack, you can't convince me that 350kW won't generate significant heat - if not at the surface (if you water cool it / giant aluminum heat sink), then at internal layers. Even if it doesn't set the battery alight, you're still pumping 350kW into it -- and no form of cooling is going to remove heat at a rate of 350kW from the surface of a battery pack, much less at internal layers. It'll be stored, with outer layers radiating the heat first, and then inner layers averaging out to lower temps as the stored energy dissipates.
It's like cooking / partial differential equation for temperature rate of change: if there is a relatively high temperature dissipating heat on the outside, then the core of the pack will be _much_ higher in comparison. If the outside of the pack is a little over ambient, then the core will be only a little higher, relatively. Cooking is the inverse: If you want to cook food evenly, use a low temperature. If you want to crisp breading on the outside and not melt the cheese in the middle of your chicken cordone bleu, crank the heat up high, it will burn/crisp the breading before the middle can get hot. Fast-charging is a high internal heat source, warming the outside as the center gets hot; not-fast charging is a slow heat source, where the overall battery pack stays about the same lower temperature.
Simply: to prevent salt formation, maintain a low temperature throughout the whole battery pack and avoid hot spots. Don't fast-charge for a longer-life battery.
In the article, there's probably a significant reason they stopped after 20 seconds. High temperature damage isn't instant, in their case it was probably more likely to set the pack on fire.
"and no form of cooling is going to remove heat at a rate of 350kW from the surface of a battery pack, much less at internal layers"
It doesn't need to, it only needs to remove the charging losses. Obviously if the losses are 10% then that's still a meaty 35kW to get rid of which is probably very difficult but just about possible with enough effort, but we don't know what the losses are on BYD's claimed new battery technology. If as claimed they've dramatically reduced internal resistance, then that reduces the charging losses.
Not only that but Li-Ion batteries degrade much more quickly at the extreme ends of charge range h both full and empty. You want those batteries to last many more years than most? Try your best to keep them in or near the middle third of the charge range (let's say 30-70% to make it easy). Doesn't always have to be there, just do it as much as you reasonably can & over time it'll make a big difference in the battery longevity.
You do realise that this is all handled in the BMS... You don't want to leave it at 1% whilst you go on holiday for several weeks, but that's about the only "restriction" in the real world.
The percentage on your display isn't the raw battery percentage, it's the "usable" which includes a buffer at both ends explicitly reserved to maintain battery health - and it works, EV battery failures are still rare enough to be newsworthy...
I've noticed that most small gadgets with rechargeable batteries tend to favor cost, simplicity, and capacity over longevity. So they likely have simple charging profiles, basic thermal management, no ability to charge to less than 100% (while using cell chemistry that is sensitive to degradation), and little more than passive heat radiation. And being small gadgets, there is likely some level of planned obsolescence baked in to drive profits.
Meanwhile, electric vehicles tend to have very robust charging systems, thermal management, and cooling systems. Increasingly, they're using cell chemistry (LiFePO4) that sacrifices a bit of energy density for longevity, especially when charged to 100%. And since vehicles are often kept in service longer than many small gadgets and since many jurisdictions have rules mandating minimum warranties for EV battery life, there is pressure on manufacturers to take it all very seriously.
You need to preheat the battery to get the maximum charge - "battery preconditioning" it's often called.
On both my Kia EV6 and my mates Porsche Taycan, this involves selecting a charging station as a destination on the cars satnav - massively irritating on a Kia (do you know the official name of the nearest charging station in the satnav? Thought not). You may also need to select some sort of "battery precondition" option in your cars settings. But with this, I've hit the maximum 220kW on mine and my friend has hit 350kW on his.
250kw sounds suspiciously like a Telsa Model 3/Y with a long range NCM 75-82kWh pack.
I've done 250kw on mine (I bought it in April 22 before all of the unpleasantness..), but only when I arrived preconditioned at a fairly quiet V3 Supercharger at 5% state of charge, and it tails off to ~200 by 25% SOC. Some other manufacturers have a lower "peak" value, but continue at this peak for a wider range. But then sometimes you only need to stop for an extra 20% to get you home (Actually the case on one of my regular routes)...
You generally want to look at the charging curves as much as the peak.
"You generally want to look at the charging curves as much as the peak."
Unless you have a marketing degree, then it's all about the peak, baby.
I agree. A few cars will peak very shortly on a 350kW charger, but don't charge that much faster from 10-80% than they would on a less powerful charger.
Dave Jones of the EEVblog demonstrated a similar concept with his solar panels. The microinverters are rated less than the panels but it only clips at the peak of the day for 2 weeks in summer. The cost for matching micro-inverters had no ROI since the cost was so much more and it would only be used for the total of an hour or two every year, in the middle of the day when the only person home might be Mrs. EEVblog.
If I had a car with something like a 300 mile actual range, I wouldn't be the slightest bit bothered about how long it took the battery to recharge. The longest drive I make is 220 miles, after which I'm out walking the Derbyshire Dales for a couple of days, then it's short hops around the county to more walking locations before the next significant drive - home.
However, at 76 it's unlikely I'd be able to afford such a car before I'm too old to drive.
Last summer, I got an MG4 EV (another Chinese EV, but not the brand in the article). It has a real-life range of 280 miles in the summer, or over 200 miles in winter. Both can easily be extended by gentle driving, if you don't mind going a bit slower (keeping max speed to 50 mph would let you easily exceed 300 miles total range). Last weekend, I drove it 170 miles, pulling a trailer with a canoe on it, and still had 15% (~30 miles) when I got home (at around 3°C - ie well within the winter range). If needed, a top-up charge for 10 minutes can easily add 60 or 70 miles more range, and chargers are everywhere now.
EVs and batteries are improving constantly - mine is already nearly 2 years old. As far as I can see, the issue of range has been solved.
Price is another problem, and you're right, they're still around 50% more expensive than an equivalent petrol car. But I expect that to rapidly come down over the next few years, as manufacture volume increases, and the second hand market picks up in earnest.
So wait for vehicle fires to increase due to heat build up and combustion of the cells. unless they've managed to change the laws of physics or invent some new wonder cell. charging is inefficient as most of the power creates heat so speeding it up will create more heat. itll also destroy the cells faster.
We do need ultra fast charging, say to 80+ percent in less than 5 mins ,but that cant be done with Lithium cells at the moment. and they'll be gone soonish anyway to be replaced by Aluminium-Air batteries or some other material. which i welcome.
I was waiting for El Reg to cover this and hoping for a bit more detail, but sadly not. The Guardian has more info: the improvements are from reduced internal battery resistance, so I suppose yes - they have introduced a new wonder cell. Obviously fast charging is bad for the cells, but for 99% of EV drivers it's something you do only rarely on long trips. When you want it, you want it to be as fast as possible.
As for "Tesla Supercharger" being the pinnacle of technology and capping out at 250kW, the Ionity network in Europe has been delivering 350kW quite happily for a while, and I use a station with 20 of these, often all occupied (in Riems, France). That's a theoretical maximum of 7MW, and although I'm sure it's usually delivering only a fraction of that I don't see it's is going to be an major issue for the grid. What's more interesting is the CCS connector, which I think is limited to 1000V/500A. However Wikipedia tells me someone has already experimentally put 990kW over it with active cooling, so I guess this won't be a show-stopper.
Also wanted to note that one you take into account the increased efficiencies of EV vs Petrol, the amount of mileage you can put on charging at 1MW is only 10/20% less than the amount of mileage you can put in refilling with petrol - it's come up before (not my maths, but looks about right).
I could be wrong but doesn't Tesla already have 1.2MW charging for the Tesla Semi? my understanding is the V4 Superchargers will do 500kW for the Cybertruck as well. Maybe there aren't many of them out there, but it doesn't feel like BYD is really ahead here.
CT has a larger (120kWh) 800v, pack and can charge more quickly than the Model 3/Y. With the right charger it can do a little under 500kW, but most of the supercharger network is setup for 400v architecture.
The Tesla Semi Megacharger is against a very large 900kWh 1000v pack, it's a technical achievement to get to 1000kw of course, but it's a lot easier to do that on a huge pack than a pack which would fit in a car
Think how much less of a problem this would be if short journeys were taken, not by car, but by foot, bicycle or public transport. I know people who drive journeys of less than half a mile. Let’s get rid of those journeys at the very least - there’s no excuse. (In the UK 17% of car journeys are less than a mile. Ridiculous.)
I take it you live somewhere flat, that you are not, like one of my otherwise keen walking friends, waiting for a knee replacement, that you have not, like my (10 years younger) brother-in-law still working despite having had a stroke or many other misfortunes that may befall you.
I take it you're also not in the situation of a couple of my friends. She has been suppressively getting more disabled and gave up driving some time ago. Her husband, now 90 has also had to give up driving. They depend on taxis or friends to get around. I'll be giving her and her wheelchair a lift to a meeting tonight.
Rejoice in your current good fortune but always remember - it might be you one day.
I will also add that hidden issue when many people get old - need for frequent toilet breaks.
If age and illness mean it takes you a long time to walk a mile (especially in hilly areas) and there are no toilet facilities on / near that route (quite likely in many areas unless you live in / very near a town centre itself) then a big chance you will need a call of nature before you reach your "close destination" on foot & AFAIK it's an offence to perform such an activity in public (in addition to the embarrassment the old people would incur).
That's one reason I drive an elderly relative quite short distances on occasion - other being their level of mobility makes it a very, very painful & very, very slow walk.
So you're waiting for a knee replacement? That's your excuse for not walking, at all?
17% of trips in the UK are less than 1mile (km?), and all of those people are awaiting knee replacements? and all of them have to go *so many* trips that it adds up to 1/5 of all the car trips in the UK? I suppose if you had to get in your car to drive to the bathroom maybe it would.
Ludicrous.
"FFS you don't have to be young or fit to walk a mile. I guess it's much better to claim your PIP and get an SUV though..."
Oi, El Reg! Can we have a system of banking our potential downvotes, so we can give especially stupid, judgemental or bilious posts an extra helping?
Again, you are maybe thinking in terms of flat country. I'm not sure how well the average mobility scooter would tackle of of our hills and the consequences of running out of power half way up would be a bit problematic - and I do wonder about the brakes going down. There's local guy who had a stroke in, I think. his 20s who I see about on a scooter down on the main road along the valley bottom and covering quite substantial distances but I've never seen him up here.
Personally, I was up and down everywhere when I was a kid. Now I'm old and short-winded I can still walk up from the village if need be but it takes a few stops, either that or I take the longer route which takes out some of the rise over a longer distance. The rest I can manage not too bad but not as well as when I used to take that same path to school.
"Again, you are maybe thinking in terms of flat country. I'm not sure how well the average mobility scooter would tackle of of our hills and the consequences of running out of power half way up would be a bit problematic "
There's also the question of whether a mobility scooter is usable for where somebody wants/needs to go. The roads are crap where I live and where there are pavements (sidewalks) many of those are crap too and the rest is dirt. The scooters I see have 150mm ish hard rubber wheels. They aren't akin to the off-road Segways with cushy inflatable tires and ground clearance.
Even my Peugot 103 I still have that was my training bike when I raced triathlons doesn't do so well where I live now. We have what I call "puncture weeds" with armored stickers that go right through the most robust 10-speed bike tires. After hurting my back, riding a bike isn't comfortable for very long so I haven't invested in mountain bike where I could put on tires that could deal the stickers. A good eBike can be as expensive as an old Nissan Leaf with piddly range. I'd get the Leaf since it has doors and AC.
"Either you're younger and fitter than me or you live in a nice flat area. "
and not bringing anything home. I try to combine my trips so I wind up with far more than I could put in a bike basket. Tomorrow I need to go pick up a vintage 212 guitar speaker cabinet and on the way, I'll drop a load of stuff off at the recycling center. That's not going to happen on a bike or bus. I never just nip over to grab a coffee and a bun at the local Starbucks. I will only pick up a couple of things at the grocery if I'm already out or I'm stocking up. Anything that can be stored is bought in multiples. This means I am making fewer trips but making them really count.
Short journeys tend to consume very little battery power, especially if they're low speed. Takes very little time to recoup that amount of power even with a slow L2 home or office charger.
Where really fast charging tends to be most useful is for long trips on high speed roads where the battery drains quickly and you don't want to wait long to top it back up. I'm fine with stops lasting 15 to 25 minutes every couple hours, but some people just can't be inconvenienced like that, so 8 to 10 minutes is about their limit.
Because then you sidestep the charging problem by having a car that can go and charge itself when it suits you, it and the grid.
And if it can take a few passengers around while it's at it, it can start to pay for itself. Or the consortium that bought it.
Until then, pissing around with storage is like tweaking mortgage rates to fix the housing crisis.
A few guesstimates: In Australia, we think we all drive huge distances; we do, occasionally. The average is about 30-35km a day. A reasonably efficient EV with regeneration uses about 15 kWhr/100km (particularly for urban use) - so about 5 kWhr/day to top it up. A "granny charger" (a normal 10 A 220 Volt domestic socket) can generate 2.2 kWh an hour, or ~2.5 hrs to top up. I have 3.6kW solar panels on the roof which generate ~25 kWh in summer, and ~8 kWh in winter. I'm retired, so the car would be at home for much of the day, and would get charged "for free" (not quite as there is a "lost opportunity cost" averaging at about AU$0.01 to AU$0.26 per kWh (depending on the season). The average "fuel costs" for a day averaged over the year are therefore about AU$0.33 or about AU$120 a year ( ~£59). If I didn't have solar, the cost would be about double that. A similar size ICE vehicle (like a VW Golf) doing the same 12,000 km at an average consumption of ~6 litres/100km would need about 720 litres of PULP at ~AU$2.10/litre (today) or ~AU$1,500 (~£735, or at least 6 times as much).
Having said that, many of my neighbours drive huge ICE 4x4 SUVs; which at best get 10 litres/100km. Some need those vehicles (tradespeople etc.), but for many a challenging drive is to go to the supermarket <5km away.
Using averages is meaningless. My average mileage is less than 25miles per day, but that tends to be either short journeys of 10 miles or so, or longer ones of 300+ with no option to charge at my destination.
I drive a PHEV, it's the best option for my use case. An EV would be a PITA.
It's all about face.
BYD is a battery company that also make cars.
Tesla is a car company that also make batteries.
BYD are a clever bunch. For example, their bonkers hypercar charges faster than most other cars, because you can TWO chargers at once. Simple, but effective.
Unless there are no lines, no one should be allowed to charge past 85% - at least not without paying a lot more since you're potentially wasting the time of those forced to wait. 80-85% is where things start to really slow down, and it is a massive waste of a high capacity charger's capacity to let it trickle the last few percent at a tiny fraction of their capacity.
If they can make it so you can charge your car up to 85% in less than five minutes then it is comparable to filling the tank with gas, and you aren't going to mind having to stop 50 miles sooner when it is for a 5 minute top out than a 20 or 30 minute fill to 100%.
Ok, so BYD claims a vehicle that can charge really really fast. Where would one go to get those speeds? The current CCS standard doesn't support that much power. Charging companies aren't installing chargers with the capability and when they do, it will be for large trucks rather than passenger vehicles. At least to begin with.
There's not a big point to that level of charging since the vast majority of people with EV's don't even have a vehicle that will utilize the full output of the 350kW charger. The cars that are getting close have high peak rates measured in minutes. Once most cars can plow 500A from a charger into a battery pack, that's the point to ramp up if there's a real need.
ICEV's have about 400 miles of range per tank and the nature of the fuel lends itself to more rapid replenishment. We'll just ignore that the amount of latent energy in petrol compared to what is used to turn the wheels is painful to express. The reason for the range is it's a good compromise between tank size (money, design issues) and how often people will put up with visiting a petrol station to fill up given the average weekly driving distance. If people had to fill up their tank every day, we'd need loads more forecourts and patience. With an EV, it can be no problem to plug in at home each night since it requires no specialized store nor vast amount of time. With that comes a lower maximum range to meet the majority of people's requirements. Some people drive all day and do need to fill up every day or nearly so. Some people will need more range on a regular basis than an EV provides. There's no silver bullet, one-size-fits-all. For me, there's very little I'd have to do for it to work. Others might have to make adjustments and some won't be able to use an EV at all. There's also those that can't be bothered to assess what the really need over what they think they need... just in case.
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