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Buried deep in the article, what the clickbait headline alludes to: Car chargers are too complicated and expensive. We can make them simpler and cheaper while k

• formerly_proven 2y ago
  Or we could install more destination chargers, which are cheaper, more practical, don't strain the local grid and don't strain the battery.
• monero-xmr 2y ago
  Where I live the electricity is primarily generated by fossil fuels. The light is weak for many months of the year, and wind power is apparently way too expensive if they remove the subsidies (weird!). Wouldn’t gas cars just eliminate the middleman of fossil fuels -> power plant -> car? Like we did before EVs? I would love nuclear power but it doesn’t appear to be happening
  • IneffablePigeon 2y ago
    EVs emit less carbon even when powered by a fossil fuel dominated grid. The power plant is more efficient than your car, and often uses LNG rather than petrol or diesel, and there are still some renewables in almost any grid. In addition, air pollution close to where you live will be lower. In addition, the grid can be decarbonised over time and your car will become greener as it does.
    • monero-xmr 2y ago
      The convenience to me of being able to refuel anywhere quickly, plus the dubious carbon savings, plus the immediate discount on the car purchase (without any subsidies), makes it a moral purchase rather than a practical one. I am not very impressed by the benefits. I like how EVs accelerate faster. Otherwise it would make my life way more inconvenient, which I surmise is a major blocker for most potential EV purchasers
      • MostlyStable 2y ago
        I guess it depends on your driving habits and homecharging situation, but after a year with my EV, I wouldn't go back if God came down and personally told me that every EV resulted in a baby seal being clubbed. Among the many advantages, never having to go to a gas station is so much better.
        • monero-xmr 2y ago
          Why is going to a gas station difficult? I’m far more concerned about needing to charge in a pinch than needing to find a gas station
          • stavros 2y ago
            It's not difficult, but it's something extra. Now I just plug my car in the garage and it's always charged. Plus it drives so so much better (constant torque at any speed feels amazing, you can control the car very precisely), and doesn't stink and make noise. I wouldn't go back either, even with the occasional 20-minute charge break on a very long trip.
          • jfim 2y ago
            If you can charge at home overnight, then your "tank" is full every morning. The logistics are a bit more complicated for long distance road trips though.
          • theshrike79 2y ago
            There are no gas stations on my route. I'd need to specifically drive to one. And the one closest to my commute has a massive queue _every_ time. I just rather drive home, plug in and the battery will be at 80-100% next morning, depending on how much I drove that day.
            • monero-xmr 2y ago
              You must be the rare person with no gas stations near your entire commute!
    • lijok 2y ago
      Does this factor in the environmental impact of the battery lifecycle in those EVs?
      • maccard 2y ago
        Usually, yes. The break even point depends on how clean your energy source is but 15-40k km is about where they even out even considering batteries. Remember if you live somewhere like Norway or Scotland where it’s dark for 6 months, it’s also very very bright for the other 6 months.
    • robertlagrant 2y ago
      While a power plant is more efficient than my car, transmission reduces that efficiency sigificantly (I think here in the UK transmission accounts for 40%-50% of usage, although I may be misremembering). Does that affect the calculation at all? EDIT: I was totally wrong - it's more like 7%. Still interested whether that affects the calculation, although it's much less likely to!
      • Dylan16807 2y ago
        Wikipedia says 7.7% distribution loss.
        • robertlagrant 2y ago
          That is a lot lower than I remember! I'll try and find my source for that. EDIT: I can't find that source, and I found a load of sources around 7%. Thanks for the correction.
      • ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        You might be recalling that 40-60% of the fossil fuel is wasted as heat when generating the electricity, before transmission. Since cars are more like 80% waste heat, it still works out better to generate the electricity and feed it to EVs.
        • theshrike79 2y ago
          And when burned in bigger plants the waste heat can be used to heat up homes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating
    • throwaway473825 2y ago
      All of this is true, but it's not the main reason why EVs have taken off. Electricity generation is very flexible. You can use coal, gas, oil, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and so on. Every country has something. However, not every country has oil or gas. In fact, only a minority does. China is investing in EVs to avoid being dependent on energy imports. Many other countries are following. Russia and the US being laggards in EV adoption isn't really surprising.
    • insane_dreamer 2y ago
      Do you know whether the transmission costs of electricity are higher than that of transporting gas or lng, and whether that's a factor here?
  • johnfernow 2y ago
    Gas car ≠ EV charged by fossil fuels. As of 2018, 94% of the US population lived in an area where charging an EV would emit less than a >50mpg car. In terms of electricity grid regions, an EV has lower emissions than a 50 mpg gasoline vehicle in 85% of them. [1] Yes, most of the US is still powered by fossil fuels, but ICE tailpipe emissions are very different than power plant emissions. As for why switching to EVs is preferred to sticking with gas cars, aside from climate change, tailpipe emissions from ICE vehicles cause ∼200,000 early deaths to occur in the U.S. each year [2] (old data, but average MPG of vehicles in the US has barely changed, though particulate matter is better filtered, though there are more vehicles and annual vehicle miles traveled in the US has increased. Hard to pin an exact number without newer research, but without any doubt many thousands are dying from the pollution.) As far as climate change goes, over a quarter comes from transportation in the US [3]. EVs alone won't take that to single numbers, but halving transportation emissions would still be significant progress. As far as > The light is weak for many months of the year, and wind power is apparently way too expensive if they remove the subsidies (weird!) Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion or 7.1 percent of global GDP in 2022 [4]. 70% of energy subsidies go towards fossil fuels (admittedly not the case in the US though.) [5] But subsidies aside, solar and wind is very price competitive with gas (and often far cheaper than coal) [6]. There's also $24.662 trillion in externalities for energy and transport (equivalent to 28.7% of global GDP) [7]. So sticking with ICE cars and fossil fuels is unlikely to be a smart decision from a financial perspective. 1. https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2020-05/evs-cleaner-than-gasoline.pdf https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2020-05/evs-clean... 2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1352231013004548 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522... 3. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-... 4. https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidie... 5. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-do-government-subsidies-affect-price-fossil-fuel-energy-how-about-renewable-energy https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-do-government-subsi... 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source 7. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629620304606 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462962...
  • theshrike79 2y ago
    Electric engines are 90-95 efficient in converting power to motion. Even the very best experimental gasoline engines in Toyota's labs are around 30-35% efficient. Even if all gasoline and diesel was used in massive generator units to produce electricity, EVs would still be better for the environment and the total gasoline/diesel usage would go down.
    • nothercastle 2y ago
      But the power plant has only slightly higher efficiency off the fossil fuels it burns. So you need to use the ev to store excess grid solar generated during the day to truly get an advantage
      • theshrike79 2y ago
        Look up "district heating". The power plant can capture the waste heat and use it for something useful. Your car just radiates it wherever, benefiting no-one (except during winter)
      • kelnos 2y ago
        At least the power plant is burning that fuel and spewing garbage into the air in a place that isn't your home. And power plants capture more of that pollution than cars do, not to mention that many of them burn cleaner fuel than gasoline or diesel. And most people tend to keep their cars for 10+ years. The power grid is changing all the time, and it's likely in the time that you own your EV, the sources it gets powered from will become cleaner.
        • theshrike79 2y ago
          It's also easier to regulate a few dozen power plants to become more efficient and force them to capture more pollution vs. doing that to 100 million cars on the road after the fact.
• Dylan16807 2y ago
  What do you mean buried? The article says that at the end of the introduction section. And it's pretty reasonable to explain how current chargers exist before suggesting the alternative. There are nicely labeled sections to help with skipping forward.
• rcxdude 2y ago
  I must say I'm a little confused by their proposal: yes, the later stages of the power conversion in the charger provide the galvanic isolation, but they also provide a more essential role of voltage conversion and current regulation. Connecting a battery directly to a grid-connected rectifier is likely to get melty and or explodey pretty quick, as huge amounts of current will flow in either direction to try to equalise the almost certainly quite-unequal voltages. Fast chargers work because they can regulate the current flowing into the battery and convert the grid voltage to allow that to happen. Batteries are charged by feeding them with a constant current until you reach a certain voltage near 100% charge, then letting the current drop to get to a complete charge (which is part of why 20% to 80% charges are much faster than complete charges). This is 100% not what you get if you just cut out the charge circuit completely, you instead get a blown fuse at best or a fire at worst. There may be cheaper options for the charge circuit if you don't need them to provide the isolation, but they don't really discuss that, they just talk as if the cost would go to zero. (For slow charging, this circuit still exists, it's just in the car instead. But it's quite hard to fit something that can handle the power involved in fast charging into a car, which is why it's in the charger side instead).
  • pbronez 2y ago
    They propose to address this with a buck regulator: > [If] we are to get rid of galvanic isolation [there's still a ] need to prevent mismatches between the utility’s AC line voltage and that of the EV battery. > The solution to this problem is a device called a buck regulator (or buck converter). A buck regulator is similar, functionally, to a step-down transformer, except that it handles DC current rather than AC. In the event that the utility’s AC voltage exceeds the battery voltage, the buck regulator operates like a transformer and steps it down. In comparison with an isolation link of the same power rating, a buck regulator would cost less than 10 percent and the power loss would be less than 20 percent.