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Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward and unnecess

Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward and unnecessary hurdle. Especially in the coming age of self driving cars. Every time you arrive or leave you have to remember to (dis-)connect the charger. Why not just have some kind of inductive energy transfer or I dunno... something. Edit1: Heh, this could work I guess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI - seems it could be too expensive for mass-usage though. Edit2: This is more what I had in mind: https://www.pluglesspower.com/ https://www.pluglesspower.com/

yardie 9y ago
Have you felt how much heat your average 10W Qi charger puts out. While that energy loss is acceptable for a smartphone or tablet with a 10Wh battery your average BEV stores kWh of charge. 2 slabs of metal can move way more electrons than an electromagnet.
- londons_explore 9y ago
  A charging connector on the bottom of the car with some kind of self-aligning plastic shield could serve the same purpose. Park in a parking space, and the spring loaded charging connector built into the road surface springs up and connects the car and charging begins.
  - yardie 9y ago
    Then you get into the whole how do you design a better mousetrap problem. Floors get dirty. Roads get dirty. Car bottoms get dirty. Electrical contacts like to be clean. When they are not they get hot, carbonize, and then enter a chain reaction until it fails or catches fire. Whatever solution you can conceive is going to be too expensive simply because you have to protect a high voltage/high amperage connection from the elements.
jdietrich 9y ago
>Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward and unnecessary hurdle. It's a total non-issue in practice. Inductive charging has barely made an impact for mobile phones, because plugging in a cable just isn't a big chore. It very quickly becomes an automatic habit that requires no conscious effort.
- freehunter 9y ago
  Man on my old HP Touchpad, the charger dock was the best feature ever. Just set it down in the stand you were going to set it in anyway, and the whole time it's sitting there it's charging. Never have to plug it in, just set it on the stand and forget about it. Wireless charging of phones might not be all that extra convenient because they're either in our hands or in our pockets, but at least in my house tablets spend a lot of time playing Netflix or showing a recipe or the news or a book on the counter in a tablet stand. Might as well be charging too.
  - chewyland 9y ago
    My wife still uses her TouchPad every day. WebOS is a gem.
- aninhumer 9y ago
  While it's obviously impractical for cars, my experience using a wireless charger with my phone is that despite being a seemingly minor change, it makes quite a bit of difference for me in practice. Plugging in a micro USB cable is often quite fiddly, and sometimes the cable can fall behind the table and require crawling around on the floor. Not to mention the cables and ports can be quite fragile and end up breaking or becoming loose. Also if I want to use my phone occasionally while I'm sitting at my desk, I either have to have an awkward cable hanging off it, or plug and unplug it repeatedly. For these reasons, I found I'd occasionally leave my phone unplugged by mistake and have low charge in the morning. Since I got a wireless charger that never happens. That said, most of these advantages would come equally well from a docking station, the only problem being there's no standardisation for that.
jlebrech 9y ago
they had battery swapping stations, it would mean a "charge" in under a minute. but it needs a much greater infrastructure.
- Ygg2 9y ago
  Storing that many batteries in one place... Seems dangerous.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Now imagine they'd store thousands of gallons of a liquid that produces flammable vapor :)
    - Ygg2 9y ago
      It'd take flammable vapor over explosive pack of batteries :)
- thijsb 9y ago
  And the majority of cars have batteries as part of the chassis. Swapping it is nearly impossible.
- ClassyJacket 9y ago
  A Tesla battery weighs 550KG. It's an insane amount of space, energy and equipment - and obviously can't be standardised between different shapes and sizes of car.
  - ccozan 9y ago
    I remember in movies about old times, you would arrive with your horse-powered cart at a such station, they changed the horses, and off you go. I guess this is similar. Make batteries standard shape and size, just the power may vary. After all, the gasoline/diesel is the same all over the world and is made after some international standards. I think we are looking wrongly at the energy source of an electric car. If we assume electric power as raw oil, then the battery is a refinement of this electric power in form of an chemical power. Then in this case the unit of "power" is not the electricity but the battery holding the power to run the car. If you look from this angle, then the battery is obviously the unit that you need to load/unload from the "gas" station.
roman_savchuk 9y ago
I'd choose bmw's charger http://www.bmwblog.com/2017/04/27/bmw-wireless-charging-530e-2018-inductive-charging/ http://www.bmwblog.com/2017/04/27/bmw-wireless-charging-530e...
- rightnow 9y ago
  You do realize that 3.5 kW is a joke, right? Teslas is supercharged with 120 kW
willvarfar 9y ago
All modern electric cars can trivially have enough 'parking assistance' AI to line them up exactly with a charging port (which could be, for example, beside or even under the car). The car can then trigger the charger to connect, and when you get in the car and start it it can trigger the charger to disconnect. All that is needed is standardization effort, and an up-front security review e.g. cars 'sign on' with a proper certificate when the charger connects so charging stations can decide who to bill etc. I wouldn't imagine this replaces the conventional charging plug you can use at home, but rather augments it. Here's hoping ;)
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  The other day I tried parking assistance on my Volt, 3/5 times it was flawless. 1 time it happily parked in the middle of two spaces, and another time it couldn't detect a low curb and a hollow tube sticking out and would have happily ran them over if it didn't require manual acceleration and braking... I don't think manually plugging in a charger is a big deal
  - willvarfar 9y ago
    Crikey, that is so far away from the park-assist tight parallel-parking I've witnessed from Asian cars.. you tell it to park, and it drives slowly along the road until it spots a just-big-enough gap between two cars, and then it parks in the space for you. A couple of friends avoid parallel parking if they have to park themselves. One anecdote was a friend had parked and another car parked too close in front of them, and they were basically stuck. And then they remembered the new parking-assist, and they flipped the switch and the car inched backwards and forwards and basically extricated itself by moving sideways like a crab! Does the Volt get updates over-the-air etc? My comment was assuming parking-assist was a solved problem! ;)
    - BoorishBears 9y ago
      Parallel parking might be better, this was for reversing into a space I noticed it did fine when two cars were present for it to use as a guide, maybe being able to use the cars as markers helps? And as far as I know the car is "connected" via 4G (ODB data and remote controls are available in an online portal) but I don't think it's used for OTA updates (The last update I saw was for Android Auto integration and that was done by visiting a dealer)
HenryBemis 9y ago
Regarding the charging stations & related accessories, wait till Apple make its own electric car and I absolutely P_R_O_M_I_S_E you that action #1 on their agenda is to ensure that they use their own cables and fuses!!!!! (that will cost x20 the competition's accessories of course). Joking apart, this is good news for Humanity and planet Earth!
- abrowne 9y ago
  But will they include strain relief on the cable?
  - ccozan 9y ago
    Actually a magnetically holding cable would make sense in the context of a loading station for electric cars. Some stupid guy will drive forgetting that the power cable is still attached.
    - mikestew 9y ago
      I've been that stupid guy in my own garage. Thankfully, a Nissan Leaf has helpful lights and noises to tell you you're forgetful, meanwhile the car refuses to energize the motor until you fix the problem.
    - mywittyname 9y ago
      Manufactures could easily make it impossible to drive away while still charging.
chongli 9y ago
The problem with inductive charging is that it's inefficient. This means it'll take longer to charge and produce a bunch of extra waste heat. For a battery as large as an electric car's, this could be a considerable cost.
- jbms 9y ago
  93% efficiency at 1kW and 30kW wireless power delivery (from AC plug to vehicle, not 93% only for the transmission): http://www.deltaenergysystems.com/en/Wireless-Charging-Systems-342.htm http://www.deltaenergysystems.com/en/Wireless-Charging-Syste... This is very close to systems that are using cables and connectors.
  - throwaway9954 9y ago
    The loss associated with wireless charging is in addition to other losses, so this is 7% loss on top of whatever other losses are in the production, delivery and power conversion chain. Given the sheer amount of power used by vehicles, I would prefer we minimize losses there. Wireless charging for tablets, smartphones and other devices is less of a concern.
    - jbms 9y ago
      It's full system efficiency, not just the wireless charging.
  - kpil 9y ago
    I'm not sure of what effects you are talking about, but at home a reasonably probable 32 A 400V 10mm cable that is 8m long is about 99.75% efficient. I'm not sure about contacts but let's say it's at least 99%efficient in total. Fast charging stations is probably worse though.
    - Retric 9y ago
      AC plug to vehicle means you are doing AC > DC conversion which is not 99.75% efficient. So, if this is 93% including AC > DC that's actually fairly good.
rightnow 9y ago
This is a normal misunderstanding from someone who doesnt have an electric car. Attaching an electric charging cable to a Tesla takes approx 8 seconds. It takes way longer driving to a gas station to fill up and drive home.
skywhopper 9y ago
If self-driving cars ever actually work, then a robot arm that can plug the charger into the whatever car will not be a significant engineering challenge.
- worldsayshi 9y ago
  I'm thinking that a robot arm with moving parts would be kind of expensive considering how ubiquitous it should be.
IncRnd 9y ago
Inductive charging isn't really a feature. It is so easy to plug-in, and inductive charging has a lower efficiency than using cables.
Pica_soO 9y ago
What if the charging station could roll to your car and plug in while its parking? Basically a cable drum drone, with a little lair somewhere below the street.
- worldsayshi 9y ago
  If you need to modify the environment to install it it wont be ubiquitous. Also, moving parts means more maintenance.

yardie 9y ago

Have you felt how much heat your average 10W Qi charger puts out. While that energy loss is acceptable for a smartphone or tablet with a 10Wh battery your average BEV stores kWh of charge. 2 slabs of metal can move way more electrons than an electromagnet.

londons_explore 9y ago
A charging connector on the bottom of the car with some kind of self-aligning plastic shield could serve the same purpose. Park in a parking space, and the spring loaded charging connector built into the road surface springs up and connects the car and charging begins.
- yardie 9y ago
  Then you get into the whole how do you design a better mousetrap problem. Floors get dirty. Roads get dirty. Car bottoms get dirty. Electrical contacts like to be clean. When they are not they get hot, carbonize, and then enter a chain reaction until it fails or catches fire. Whatever solution you can conceive is going to be too expensive simply because you have to protect a high voltage/high amperage connection from the elements.

jdietrich 9y ago

>Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward and unnecessary hurdle. It's a total non-issue in practice. Inductive charging has barely made an impact for mobile phones, because plugging in a cable just isn't a big chore. It very quickly becomes an automatic habit that requires no conscious effort.

freehunter 9y ago
Man on my old HP Touchpad, the charger dock was the best feature ever. Just set it down in the stand you were going to set it in anyway, and the whole time it's sitting there it's charging. Never have to plug it in, just set it on the stand and forget about it. Wireless charging of phones might not be all that extra convenient because they're either in our hands or in our pockets, but at least in my house tablets spend a lot of time playing Netflix or showing a recipe or the news or a book on the counter in a tablet stand. Might as well be charging too.
- chewyland 9y ago
  My wife still uses her TouchPad every day. WebOS is a gem.
aninhumer 9y ago
While it's obviously impractical for cars, my experience using a wireless charger with my phone is that despite being a seemingly minor change, it makes quite a bit of difference for me in practice. Plugging in a micro USB cable is often quite fiddly, and sometimes the cable can fall behind the table and require crawling around on the floor. Not to mention the cables and ports can be quite fragile and end up breaking or becoming loose. Also if I want to use my phone occasionally while I'm sitting at my desk, I either have to have an awkward cable hanging off it, or plug and unplug it repeatedly. For these reasons, I found I'd occasionally leave my phone unplugged by mistake and have low charge in the morning. Since I got a wireless charger that never happens. That said, most of these advantages would come equally well from a docking station, the only problem being there's no standardisation for that.

jlebrech 9y ago

they had battery swapping stations, it would mean a "charge" in under a minute. but it needs a much greater infrastructure.

Ygg2 9y ago
Storing that many batteries in one place... Seems dangerous.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Now imagine they'd store thousands of gallons of a liquid that produces flammable vapor :)
  - Ygg2 9y ago
    It'd take flammable vapor over explosive pack of batteries :)
thijsb 9y ago
And the majority of cars have batteries as part of the chassis. Swapping it is nearly impossible.
ClassyJacket 9y ago
A Tesla battery weighs 550KG. It's an insane amount of space, energy and equipment - and obviously can't be standardised between different shapes and sizes of car.
- ccozan 9y ago
  I remember in movies about old times, you would arrive with your horse-powered cart at a such station, they changed the horses, and off you go. I guess this is similar. Make batteries standard shape and size, just the power may vary. After all, the gasoline/diesel is the same all over the world and is made after some international standards. I think we are looking wrongly at the energy source of an electric car. If we assume electric power as raw oil, then the battery is a refinement of this electric power in form of an chemical power. Then in this case the unit of "power" is not the electricity but the battery holding the power to run the car. If you look from this angle, then the battery is obviously the unit that you need to load/unload from the "gas" station.

roman_savchuk 9y ago

I'd choose bmw's charger http://www.bmwblog.com/2017/04/27/bmw-wireless-charging-530e-2018-inductive-charging/ http://www.bmwblog.com/2017/04/27/bmw-wireless-charging-530e...

rightnow 9y ago
You do realize that 3.5 kW is a joke, right? Teslas is supercharged with 120 kW

willvarfar 9y ago

All modern electric cars can trivially have enough 'parking assistance' AI to line them up exactly with a charging port (which could be, for example, beside or even under the car). The car can then trigger the charger to connect, and when you get in the car and start it it can trigger the charger to disconnect. All that is needed is standardization effort, and an up-front security review e.g. cars 'sign on' with a proper certificate when the charger connects so charging stations can decide who to bill etc. I wouldn't imagine this replaces the conventional charging plug you can use at home, but rather augments it. Here's hoping ;)

BoorishBears 9y ago
The other day I tried parking assistance on my Volt, 3/5 times it was flawless. 1 time it happily parked in the middle of two spaces, and another time it couldn't detect a low curb and a hollow tube sticking out and would have happily ran them over if it didn't require manual acceleration and braking... I don't think manually plugging in a charger is a big deal
- willvarfar 9y ago
  Crikey, that is so far away from the park-assist tight parallel-parking I've witnessed from Asian cars.. you tell it to park, and it drives slowly along the road until it spots a just-big-enough gap between two cars, and then it parks in the space for you. A couple of friends avoid parallel parking if they have to park themselves. One anecdote was a friend had parked and another car parked too close in front of them, and they were basically stuck. And then they remembered the new parking-assist, and they flipped the switch and the car inched backwards and forwards and basically extricated itself by moving sideways like a crab! Does the Volt get updates over-the-air etc? My comment was assuming parking-assist was a solved problem! ;)
  - BoorishBears 9y ago
    Parallel parking might be better, this was for reversing into a space I noticed it did fine when two cars were present for it to use as a guide, maybe being able to use the cars as markers helps? And as far as I know the car is "connected" via 4G (ODB data and remote controls are available in an online portal) but I don't think it's used for OTA updates (The last update I saw was for Android Auto integration and that was done by visiting a dealer)

HenryBemis 9y ago

Regarding the charging stations & related accessories, wait till Apple make its own electric car and I absolutely P_R_O_M_I_S_E you that action #1 on their agenda is to ensure that they use their own cables and fuses!!!!! (that will cost x20 the competition's accessories of course). Joking apart, this is good news for Humanity and planet Earth!

abrowne 9y ago
But will they include strain relief on the cable?
- ccozan 9y ago
  Actually a magnetically holding cable would make sense in the context of a loading station for electric cars. Some stupid guy will drive forgetting that the power cable is still attached.
  - mikestew 9y ago
    I've been that stupid guy in my own garage. Thankfully, a Nissan Leaf has helpful lights and noises to tell you you're forgetful, meanwhile the car refuses to energize the motor until you fix the problem.
  - mywittyname 9y ago
    Manufactures could easily make it impossible to drive away while still charging.

chongli 9y ago

The problem with inductive charging is that it's inefficient. This means it'll take longer to charge and produce a bunch of extra waste heat. For a battery as large as an electric car's, this could be a considerable cost.

jbms 9y ago
93% efficiency at 1kW and 30kW wireless power delivery (from AC plug to vehicle, not 93% only for the transmission): http://www.deltaenergysystems.com/en/Wireless-Charging-Systems-342.htm http://www.deltaenergysystems.com/en/Wireless-Charging-Syste... This is very close to systems that are using cables and connectors.
- throwaway9954 9y ago
  The loss associated with wireless charging is in addition to other losses, so this is 7% loss on top of whatever other losses are in the production, delivery and power conversion chain. Given the sheer amount of power used by vehicles, I would prefer we minimize losses there. Wireless charging for tablets, smartphones and other devices is less of a concern.
  - jbms 9y ago
    It's full system efficiency, not just the wireless charging.
- kpil 9y ago
  I'm not sure of what effects you are talking about, but at home a reasonably probable 32 A 400V 10mm cable that is 8m long is about 99.75% efficient. I'm not sure about contacts but let's say it's at least 99%efficient in total. Fast charging stations is probably worse though.
  - Retric 9y ago
    AC plug to vehicle means you are doing AC > DC conversion which is not 99.75% efficient. So, if this is 93% including AC > DC that's actually fairly good.

rightnow 9y ago

This is a normal misunderstanding from someone who doesnt have an electric car. Attaching an electric charging cable to a Tesla takes approx 8 seconds. It takes way longer driving to a gas station to fill up and drive home.

skywhopper 9y ago

If self-driving cars ever actually work, then a robot arm that can plug the charger into the whatever car will not be a significant engineering challenge.

worldsayshi 9y ago
I'm thinking that a robot arm with moving parts would be kind of expensive considering how ubiquitous it should be.

IncRnd 9y ago

Inductive charging isn't really a feature. It is so easy to plug-in, and inductive charging has a lower efficiency than using cables.

Pica_soO 9y ago

What if the charging station could roll to your car and plug in while its parking? Basically a cable drum drone, with a little lair somewhere below the street.

worldsayshi 9y ago
If you need to modify the environment to install it it wont be ubiquitous. Also, moving parts means more maintenance.