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>Elon Musk didn’t end up starting diverse startups like Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX by not being proactive He didn't start 2 of 3 of those companies. Regarding t

>Elon Musk didn’t end up starting diverse startups like Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX by not being proactive He didn't start 2 of 3 of those companies. Regarding the actual content, I've wondered about what this problem will look like in the short run. I've done plenty of road-tripping around Canada, and on holiday weekends gas stations are often lined up. How will this work with so many electric vehicles on the road when "refueling" takes so much longer with current technology?

ebbv 10y ago
You're still thinking like a gas car owner, thinking about needing charging stations like the ones Tesla has set up. Those will be a part of it, sure. But by the time EVs reach anything like ubiquity there will be charging available in the parking lots of restaurants and rest stops. Tons of them. Because they are cheap to install and attract customers at very little cost. Note that you don't have to be standing by your EV when it charges. My LEAF can be plugged in and when it's done it will automatically stop charging and unlock the handle so someone else can take it and charge with it in an adjacent spot. Note also that while with gas cars you have to fuel up at a station, with EVs everyone leaves home with a full charge. That means if you are driving less than the capacity of your vehicle in a day you have no need for any charging stations outside your home (which is the case for us all but a handful of days a year.)
- walshemj 10y ago
  Doing this is not the same as plugging in an extension lead to your existing supply - its not going to be as cheap as you think I fear.
  - ebbv 10y ago
    I installed a charger in my house, it's really quite affordable (usually less than $1k depending on the electrical work needed.) Level 3 chargers are pricier because of the 440v line that's needed, but those aren't needed everywhere. Level 2 (220v) will suffice and give you a good boost in range while you eat a meal, shop, etc.
    - walshemj 10y ago
      But running a extra 220v line into you garage is not the same as wiring up say 40-50 car parking spaces the extra load will probably trip your breakers for the typical site you suggest. And you probably are going to want higher amperage 410 V
- ge96 10y ago
  Hopefully they implement those ground-induction chargers in highways. Not a simple thing to do but I was happy to see I think Britain do it somewhere.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Horrible idea, induction charging is very inefficient, the cost increase in road costs would be insane and there are going to be quite a lot of health and safety concerns when driving ungrounded metal cans over an inductive field. Also remember some people still have pacemakers ;) If anything something like a charging rail with a physical contact that can be used some parts of the drive would be preferable. I do wonder if the tiers can be used for inductive or even conductive charging instead, because the regulation height of most cars would make it even more inefficient than it already is.
    - ge96 10y ago
      I wouldn't say it's horrible, I know roads aren't guaranteed to be smooth, if anything you could drop something to within inches to charge. Or at least don't put them on highways. I do think of a scenario where you're driving on the highway and you drive over the patch to charge your car, and it shows on your car's HUD, -$20.00 for the charge haha. I don't know shit so what I say is probably stupid.
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        The problem is that even 1-2 inches of distance decrease the efficiency greatly, inductive charging follows the square root law so even small changes in distance induce a large cost in efficiency which is already inefficient as it is. You can break most wireless cell phone chargers with a few sheets of paper, think what a few good inches of asphalt and a few inches of an air gap would do. Then you come to the biggest problem which is that it would require you to have coils all over the road and that would mean that a road that is pretty cheap to make now would cost millions per kilometer simply because of all the copper and charging circuitry involved. You also now add a lot of weight and cost to the cars which are now have to have large inductive coils in them to take in the charge. And lastly you take a huge risk both in term of long term health effects of driving on top of a high power inductive field and the potential safety problems, what happens when you have a guy driving his truck with a wound copper cable which is just at the right length to pick up the charge? what happens when the handlebars at on some bus are arranged just in the right way to act as act as a decent antenna for the frequency you modulating your field at? what happens when some grandma with a pacemaker decides to take a cab ride or some one is driving on the road with sensitive electronic equipment? We have barely managed to standardize wireless charging for consumer electronics and these are low power devices that need pretty much near full contact with the charge station to charge, and those still come with warnings for people with medical implants. On an anecdotal side I've seen what happens when some one with an unlucky arrangement of dental implants (bracers) comes close to an active powerful RF source (SAR RADAR) those things heat up; luckily for them some one realized what was going on before their mouth turned into a BBQ pit. An overhead/undercarriage contact charging the same way some busses and other forms of public transportation are being powered is more than fine, but again we don't necessarily need them if your car has a range of even 50 miles on a charge in most uses it would work just fine with parked charging only, anything else just adds another layer of complexity and cost to the system which is likely to only impede adoption not improve it. If electrical cars are going to rely on multi billion or trillion dollar infrastructure improvement projects they are doomed, they have to be just as independant of road conditions and detached from their supporting infrastructure as petrol cars are, and for the most part they are.
- imglorp 10y ago
  > it will automatically stop charging and unlock the handle so someone else can take it and charge with it in an adjacent spot. Is there any concern about a random stranger detaching the unlocked handle from your car? Is anything fragile in there? Does your exposed charge connector present a vulnerability of some kind?
  - ebbv 10y ago
    Nope. It is no more delicate than say the headlights or something. Or the fuel door and cap on a gas car.
lisivka 10y ago
Electric charge stations are cheaper to build and have no logistic problems — just connect equipment to the high-power grid.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Electric charge stations are not by any means cheaper to build, a gas station can be as low tech as a guy with a bucket. Gas pumps cost about 2000-3000$ or 1000 or less if you order them from china... https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Self-service-fuel-dispenser-small-gas_60461219275.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Self-service-fuel-dis... The other thing you need is a tank and that's it. Electrical charge stations do require logistics you need to have a beefy electrical supply and meet regulations. But in both cases the cost of the pump/charging station isn't the big factor it's the cost of the land for parking and the convenience store and the rest of the pitstop facilities.
  - Kubuxu 10y ago
    You think storing tons of highly flammable and potentially explosive liquid doesn't require meeting regulations and is easy? Gas pump itself might be cheap but you have to connect it to storage tank.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      the tank is buried underground and that's it, again in both cases the charging station/fuel dispenser isn't the expensive part the land is. That said there is no way that a modern high power charging station is cheaper or anywhere near the price of an off the shelf fuel dispenser those things are very cheap and there is also a huge used market for them which is not currently the case for charging stations. If anything the problem with charging stations now is the lack of standardization every car has a different charger and charge requirements heck even Tesla has 2-3 chargers atm you can't charge the older roaster models on the Model S charge stations without a converter (and i think that one is only for the Leaf type charging station also).
- deleted 10y ago

ebbv 10y ago

You're still thinking like a gas car owner, thinking about needing charging stations like the ones Tesla has set up. Those will be a part of it, sure. But by the time EVs reach anything like ubiquity there will be charging available in the parking lots of restaurants and rest stops. Tons of them. Because they are cheap to install and attract customers at very little cost. Note that you don't have to be standing by your EV when it charges. My LEAF can be plugged in and when it's done it will automatically stop charging and unlock the handle so someone else can take it and charge with it in an adjacent spot. Note also that while with gas cars you have to fuel up at a station, with EVs everyone leaves home with a full charge. That means if you are driving less than the capacity of your vehicle in a day you have no need for any charging stations outside your home (which is the case for us all but a handful of days a year.)

walshemj 10y ago
Doing this is not the same as plugging in an extension lead to your existing supply - its not going to be as cheap as you think I fear.
- ebbv 10y ago
  I installed a charger in my house, it's really quite affordable (usually less than $1k depending on the electrical work needed.) Level 3 chargers are pricier because of the 440v line that's needed, but those aren't needed everywhere. Level 2 (220v) will suffice and give you a good boost in range while you eat a meal, shop, etc.
  - walshemj 10y ago
    But running a extra 220v line into you garage is not the same as wiring up say 40-50 car parking spaces the extra load will probably trip your breakers for the typical site you suggest. And you probably are going to want higher amperage 410 V
ge96 10y ago
Hopefully they implement those ground-induction chargers in highways. Not a simple thing to do but I was happy to see I think Britain do it somewhere.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Horrible idea, induction charging is very inefficient, the cost increase in road costs would be insane and there are going to be quite a lot of health and safety concerns when driving ungrounded metal cans over an inductive field. Also remember some people still have pacemakers ;) If anything something like a charging rail with a physical contact that can be used some parts of the drive would be preferable. I do wonder if the tiers can be used for inductive or even conductive charging instead, because the regulation height of most cars would make it even more inefficient than it already is.
  - ge96 10y ago
    I wouldn't say it's horrible, I know roads aren't guaranteed to be smooth, if anything you could drop something to within inches to charge. Or at least don't put them on highways. I do think of a scenario where you're driving on the highway and you drive over the patch to charge your car, and it shows on your car's HUD, -$20.00 for the charge haha. I don't know shit so what I say is probably stupid.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      The problem is that even 1-2 inches of distance decrease the efficiency greatly, inductive charging follows the square root law so even small changes in distance induce a large cost in efficiency which is already inefficient as it is. You can break most wireless cell phone chargers with a few sheets of paper, think what a few good inches of asphalt and a few inches of an air gap would do. Then you come to the biggest problem which is that it would require you to have coils all over the road and that would mean that a road that is pretty cheap to make now would cost millions per kilometer simply because of all the copper and charging circuitry involved. You also now add a lot of weight and cost to the cars which are now have to have large inductive coils in them to take in the charge. And lastly you take a huge risk both in term of long term health effects of driving on top of a high power inductive field and the potential safety problems, what happens when you have a guy driving his truck with a wound copper cable which is just at the right length to pick up the charge? what happens when the handlebars at on some bus are arranged just in the right way to act as act as a decent antenna for the frequency you modulating your field at? what happens when some grandma with a pacemaker decides to take a cab ride or some one is driving on the road with sensitive electronic equipment? We have barely managed to standardize wireless charging for consumer electronics and these are low power devices that need pretty much near full contact with the charge station to charge, and those still come with warnings for people with medical implants. On an anecdotal side I've seen what happens when some one with an unlucky arrangement of dental implants (bracers) comes close to an active powerful RF source (SAR RADAR) those things heat up; luckily for them some one realized what was going on before their mouth turned into a BBQ pit. An overhead/undercarriage contact charging the same way some busses and other forms of public transportation are being powered is more than fine, but again we don't necessarily need them if your car has a range of even 50 miles on a charge in most uses it would work just fine with parked charging only, anything else just adds another layer of complexity and cost to the system which is likely to only impede adoption not improve it. If electrical cars are going to rely on multi billion or trillion dollar infrastructure improvement projects they are doomed, they have to be just as independant of road conditions and detached from their supporting infrastructure as petrol cars are, and for the most part they are.
imglorp 10y ago
> it will automatically stop charging and unlock the handle so someone else can take it and charge with it in an adjacent spot. Is there any concern about a random stranger detaching the unlocked handle from your car? Is anything fragile in there? Does your exposed charge connector present a vulnerability of some kind?
- ebbv 10y ago
  Nope. It is no more delicate than say the headlights or something. Or the fuel door and cap on a gas car.

lisivka 10y ago

Electric charge stations are cheaper to build and have no logistic problems — just connect equipment to the high-power grid.

dogma1138 10y ago
Electric charge stations are not by any means cheaper to build, a gas station can be as low tech as a guy with a bucket. Gas pumps cost about 2000-3000$ or 1000 or less if you order them from china... https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Self-service-fuel-dispenser-small-gas_60461219275.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Self-service-fuel-dis... The other thing you need is a tank and that's it. Electrical charge stations do require logistics you need to have a beefy electrical supply and meet regulations. But in both cases the cost of the pump/charging station isn't the big factor it's the cost of the land for parking and the convenience store and the rest of the pitstop facilities.
- Kubuxu 10y ago
  You think storing tons of highly flammable and potentially explosive liquid doesn't require meeting regulations and is easy? Gas pump itself might be cheap but you have to connect it to storage tank.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    the tank is buried underground and that's it, again in both cases the charging station/fuel dispenser isn't the expensive part the land is. That said there is no way that a modern high power charging station is cheaper or anywhere near the price of an off the shelf fuel dispenser those things are very cheap and there is also a huge used market for them which is not currently the case for charging stations. If anything the problem with charging stations now is the lack of standardization every car has a different charger and charge requirements heck even Tesla has 2-3 chargers atm you can't charge the older roaster models on the Model S charge stations without a converter (and i think that one is only for the Leaf type charging station also).
deleted 10y ago