5 ms·

Shame all these players cant get their shit together before we all have electric cars :-(

by boznz 9y ago

twblalock 9y ago
I'd rather see them compete on features, especially charging speed and ease of use. Hopefully the best system will become a standard, but even the mediocre ones should improve in response to competitive pressure. If the manufacturers agree on a standard so early in the development of the electric car industry, we'll be stuck with it for a while because there won't be anything pressuring them to improve it. All of this ought to be moot for buyers anyway. When I travel to countries with different electrical plugs than my own, I just bring an adapter. Hopefully the car charging systems will develop in such a way that it's possible for electric car owners to just keep a few adapters in their trunks when they need to charge somewhere other than their homes.
NotSammyHagar 9y ago
There are multiple failures. There is a standard for ac power, j1772, it works fine. Pretty much every electric car can use it, even the tesla (it comes with a free adapter). Early ev charging standards had a fatal flaw, they allowed too little power. The j1772 only allowed about 30 amps. This was fine because early electric car and charagable hyrbrids only had tiny batteries that could be filled up in a few hours, there was a giant failure of imagination to see larger in the future batteries, or deliberate sabotage, so there was no planning for what would be needed to support large battery cars with needs for traveling. Then tesla came along with a giant battery & it couldn't be recharged in a reasonable timeframe. What good is 250 miles range, 80 kwh if it takes 2 days to recharge it? So there was an extension of the j1772 standard to support 80 amps, 220 v and this let you charge the tesla at 60 miles of range per hour. The early leaf barely had 80 miles of effective range. So this extension of the j1772 was great, but only tesla needed it. afaik, no other evs support the higher power of the j1772. Then tesla forsaw if they built high power dc chargers, then you could have long range travel - there were the superchargers, 120 kw - this used dc. dc has an advantage bc it can directly charge the batteries. There was no good standard for that, so telsa made their own. They offer it free of charge if people agree to not sue them. Then the american automative engineers came up with a different plug standard that had sepaate ac and dc chargers, and it had the fatal flaw that there was one using it, it was less attractive than others. Next, in europe, the car makers noticed that tesla was impossibly building long range, good cars that people wanted and even reduced their sales a bit. They built their own standard. There were claims it could have larger power than tesla super chargers but I think it was limited in practice. and again, no cars using it (eventually a few came on the market), and few or no high powered chargers. There was a law mandating so teslas in europe use that plug format. Then porsche decided they'd build a new standard that was better than teslas, and it's like double the power. But tesla has already built thousands of super chargers in their worldwide network for years. The new porsche format would be faster than teslas but i believe there are none in existence outside of a test system, and it would also not work on normal commerical power systems, afaik. The tesla plug has another advantage, it is small and light and supports both ac and dc through the same plug. The other car companies would never accept that the tesla plug could be the defacto standard, so we have all these different things showing up. Chademo was a better plan, it was 50kw, it was in lots of place in Japan. It is the only widely used standard that approaches widespread use that is close to the supercharger. What's really needed is a world wide standard, free of patents and chargers, that spans ac and dc, and supports chargins and v2g, but also allowed for very high power rates. These plugs negotiate the amount of power that you send, the car controls it, so you can have a plug system that for some cars sends 120 kw, for others sends 120v 10 amps (1.2kw). We need a standard that can imagine charging 100kwh battery in 5 minutes in the distant future, but works for things today. Tesla could probably have been that. The likely thing is j1772 + one of the 3 major intl standards (higher power than 50kw chademo, or the euro standard or the us standard). Meanwhile, I'll keep driving my tesla, like I have since the end of 2012.
- tlb 9y ago
  AC is straightforward to standardize (it's just a plug, and signaling for the maximum current), but DC charging is complex because the charging electronics are in the charging station. A charge station would have to support all present and future pack voltages, and be able to deliver a requested current at that voltage (and the request can change second-by-second.)
  - heisenbit 9y ago
    Based on the article AC is not so powerful as DC. Makes perfect sense as the former changes direction while the latter is more direct. The mirages of modern journalism... You got a good point - the architecture, weight trade-off, capabilities trade-off and cost trade-offs matter. Who is responsible for what. As long as the industry changes quickly and big players don't agree the vertical integrated solutions will stay. In the long run there is a need for a platform as it will be cheaper to do as much as possible in the shared infrastructure. When lower cost cars are getting on the market in larger numbers may mark the time when things are settled.
- jwatte 9y ago
  The real problem is that there isn't enough "top off" outlets at shopping centers, work places, and parking lots. It's actually cheap to put in regular outlets or 220V J1772. In some northern states, they actually have these to heat the cars in winter; let's just promote that idea to everywhere.
- j1772 9y ago
  Don't forget China. They took the European charge Mennekes connector, swapped the polarity of the pins, and then declared it "promoting indigenous innovation". China also has a DC charging plug that is completely different from everything else. Now every Chinese car needs TWO plugs. The dream of a world wide standard is impossible to achieve, since setting differing standards is much easier than imposing duties. It is similar to why North American cars seldom have yellow turn signals at the rear ... FMVSS vs EU-Directive and the likes.

Shame all these players cant get their shit together before we all have electric cars :-(

by boznz 9y ago

Shame all these players cant get their shit together before we all have electric cars :-(

I'd rather see them compete on features, especially charging speed and ease of use. Hopefully the best system will become a standard, but even the mediocre ones should improve in response to competitive pressure. If the manufacturers agree on a standard so early in the development of the electric car industry, we'll be stuck with it for a while because there won't be anything pressuring them to improve it. All of this ought to be moot for buyers anyway. When I travel to countries with different electrical plugs than my own, I just bring an adapter. Hopefully the car charging systems will develop in such a way that it's possible for electric car owners to just keep a few adapters in their trunks when they need to charge somewhere other than their homes.

NotSammyHagar 9y ago

There are multiple failures. There is a standard for ac power, j1772, it works fine. Pretty much every electric car can use it, even the tesla (it comes with a free adapter). Early ev charging standards had a fatal flaw, they allowed too little power. The j1772 only allowed about 30 amps. This was fine because early electric car and charagable hyrbrids only had tiny batteries that could be filled up in a few hours, there was a giant failure of imagination to see larger in the future batteries, or deliberate sabotage, so there was no planning for what would be needed to support large battery cars with needs for traveling. Then tesla came along with a giant battery & it couldn't be recharged in a reasonable timeframe. What good is 250 miles range, 80 kwh if it takes 2 days to recharge it? So there was an extension of the j1772 standard to support 80 amps, 220 v and this let you charge the tesla at 60 miles of range per hour. The early leaf barely had 80 miles of effective range. So this extension of the j1772 was great, but only tesla needed it. afaik, no other evs support the higher power of the j1772. Then tesla forsaw if they built high power dc chargers, then you could have long range travel - there were the superchargers, 120 kw - this used dc. dc has an advantage bc it can directly charge the batteries. There was no good standard for that, so telsa made their own. They offer it free of charge if people agree to not sue them. Then the american automative engineers came up with a different plug standard that had sepaate ac and dc chargers, and it had the fatal flaw that there was one using it, it was less attractive than others. Next, in europe, the car makers noticed that tesla was impossibly building long range, good cars that people wanted and even reduced their sales a bit. They built their own standard. There were claims it could have larger power than tesla super chargers but I think it was limited in practice. and again, no cars using it (eventually a few came on the market), and few or no high powered chargers. There was a law mandating so teslas in europe use that plug format. Then porsche decided they'd build a new standard that was better than teslas, and it's like double the power. But tesla has already built thousands of super chargers in their worldwide network for years. The new porsche format would be faster than teslas but i believe there are none in existence outside of a test system, and it would also not work on normal commerical power systems, afaik. The tesla plug has another advantage, it is small and light and supports both ac and dc through the same plug. The other car companies would never accept that the tesla plug could be the defacto standard, so we have all these different things showing up. Chademo was a better plan, it was 50kw, it was in lots of place in Japan. It is the only widely used standard that approaches widespread use that is close to the supercharger. What's really needed is a world wide standard, free of patents and chargers, that spans ac and dc, and supports chargins and v2g, but also allowed for very high power rates. These plugs negotiate the amount of power that you send, the car controls it, so you can have a plug system that for some cars sends 120 kw, for others sends 120v 10 amps (1.2kw). We need a standard that can imagine charging 100kwh battery in 5 minutes in the distant future, but works for things today. Tesla could probably have been that. The likely thing is j1772 + one of the 3 major intl standards (higher power than 50kw chademo, or the euro standard or the us standard). Meanwhile, I'll keep driving my tesla, like I have since the end of 2012.

tlb 9y ago
AC is straightforward to standardize (it's just a plug, and signaling for the maximum current), but DC charging is complex because the charging electronics are in the charging station. A charge station would have to support all present and future pack voltages, and be able to deliver a requested current at that voltage (and the request can change second-by-second.)
- heisenbit 9y ago
  Based on the article AC is not so powerful as DC. Makes perfect sense as the former changes direction while the latter is more direct. The mirages of modern journalism... You got a good point - the architecture, weight trade-off, capabilities trade-off and cost trade-offs matter. Who is responsible for what. As long as the industry changes quickly and big players don't agree the vertical integrated solutions will stay. In the long run there is a need for a platform as it will be cheaper to do as much as possible in the shared infrastructure. When lower cost cars are getting on the market in larger numbers may mark the time when things are settled.
jwatte 9y ago
The real problem is that there isn't enough "top off" outlets at shopping centers, work places, and parking lots. It's actually cheap to put in regular outlets or 220V J1772. In some northern states, they actually have these to heat the cars in winter; let's just promote that idea to everywhere.
j1772 9y ago
Don't forget China. They took the European charge Mennekes connector, swapped the polarity of the pins, and then declared it "promoting indigenous innovation". China also has a DC charging plug that is completely different from everything else. Now every Chinese car needs TWO plugs. The dream of a world wide standard is impossible to achieve, since setting differing standards is much easier than imposing duties. It is similar to why North American cars seldom have yellow turn signals at the rear ... FMVSS vs EU-Directive and the likes.