4 ms·

BYD's New 'Megawatt' EV Charging Is So Fast It Makes Gas Irrelevant

24 points by 01-_- 2y ago

gnabgib 2y ago
Discussion (109 points, 1 day ago, 192 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43396853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43396853
- Frieren 2y ago
  First top three post are how much this does not matter. That is a losing mindset. China is doing great. Europe and the USA should catch up buy investing in local technology, educating engineers, and passing regulations to curve climate change. We have the know how and the money to do it, we need to overcome the legacy car manufacturers pulling us all down.
  - lm28469 2y ago
    It truly doesn't matter though. Electric cars are here to save the auto industry, they won't help much for climate change. They simply perpetuate the mindset that we can waste insane amount of energy to displace our lazy asses and our insane amount of useless gadgets. Nobody with half a brain cares about who's going to "win" this "race", there is nothing to win. Where are the "dumb" < $10k EVs ? Where are the world wide standards for chargers/batteries/interfaces ? Why do we have 50 companies working on solving the same problems in the US/EU ? All of this is so inefficient and so unimaginative, we basically keep everything the same, except the cars are bigger, more expensive, create more particulate pollution (huge tires, higher torque), will last decades less (who's going to fix a gen 1 tesla in 2040 ?), anything other than a fender bender = written off (https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratched-ev-battery-your-insurer-may-have-junk-whole-car-2023-03-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratc...). Let's not even mention the absolutely insane amount of mining we'll need to do to replace 1.4 billion ICE cars with EVs (plot twist, mining isn't very eco friendly)
    - cbeach 2y ago
      Every time I see a fossil fuel car sitting outside my son’s nursery, engine idling, spewing out huge amounts of poisonous fumes (23 shipping containers worth every five minutes), I’m thankful that we’re transitioning to EVs. Yes, there are problems, but many of the points made in the above post are dubious to say the least. I’ve had my EV for five years and the brakes are still pristine (regenerative braking saves mechanical brake wear). So I don’t buy that particulate pollution is higher in EVs. 50 companies solving the same problem? That’s GREAT! More scope for competition and innovation. Or would you rather ever drove Soviet Lada cars? Car costs are being driven down and we’re nearly at the tipping point where EVs are cheaper than fossil fuelled cars - which is surprising as EVs are better in nearly every single way. We have continent-wide defacto standards for chargers. Ideally it would be worldwide, but really, this is a trivial concern. You talk about mining (lithium I assume) as a concern, but that’s probably better overall than the huge environmental toll of oil extraction, transport, refinement and exhaust emission. This isn’t the time to let perfect be the enemy of good. Get onboard with the transition and we will make progress. Progress is good.
      - lm28469 2y ago
        > Progress is good. "progress" is exactly why we are where we are today... Electric cars just perpetuates the same cycle, the only way out is a complete redesign of the system. Personal ownership of 2500kg hunks of metal to transport your lazy 70kg ass isn't anywhere close to sustainable. I bike everyday, and everyday I witness the same thing, hundreds and hundreds of cars, most are empty waiting on a parking spot, 90% of the rest are occupied by a single person, usually stuck in a traffic jam. EVs or not that's just pure madness and misallocation of resources. You're moving the needle 0.1mm backwards when we need to go back a good 720 degrees. But of course it's much nicer to have trailing dams in a country the average american can't place on a map than having a car idle in front of _your_ school
        dastbe 2y ago
        720 degrees is spinning in circles and ending up pointed right back where you started.
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Ironically the base justification for protecting local car manufacturing is so they can be transformed into building tanks and bombers in case of war. But protecting them in such a way that they can't even transition from one kind of car to another over several decades and are unable to complete basic tasks that involve computers seems almost counter productive. Actively weakening the country at great financial cost.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      Machine factories are not as general as they were in the 40s when things were made with high skilled labour. They are more or less just buildings in that sense.
- aaron695 2y ago
  [dead]
metalman 2y ago
Batteries still have enormous room for improvement. Solar photo voltaics will also continue to improve for the forseeable future, and while they are not folowing moores law, there will be double digit improvements in performance every few years. And as true solid state batteries become the standard, longevity, saftey, and energy density improvments, will make them the only choice for most transportation and grid power. Everything is a photo active charge carrier, makeing left field infinite, which is great from a developmental aspect, but cold grue for investors,who are forced to act, as like it or not, the whole worlds energy market is going to shift.
- BenjiWiebe 2y ago
  Solar panels will have a really hard time breaking the 100% efficiency barrier.
alexk307 2y ago
Great! Now I'll just wait 10 years and pay double the price to get this in the US...
quickthrowman 2y ago
What are they using as conductors? 1MW is 1202A @ 480V three-phase, 288.6A @ 2kV three-phase, and 115.4A @ 5kV three-phase. That’s a lot of power, at 480V you’d need (4) parallel sets of #350MCM. #350s weigh just over 1lb/ft. Some kind of articulating busbar with some sort of specialized connector, perhaps?
- simne 2y ago
  In news said, they use 1KV for ultrafast charge (400km in 5 minutes). Probably, three-phase. And you hit bull eye - as I know, ultrafast charger cable usually have liquid cooling.
  - quickthrowman 2y ago
    Gotcha, that makes sense. If there’s liquid cooling for the conductors you can pump a lot more amps through them than you can at 75C. If you can keep the ambient temp to 0-10C, you multiply the ampacity in the 75C column by 1.36, I bet you can go way lower if it’s liquid cooled.

24 points by 01-_- 2y ago

Discussion (109 points, 1 day ago, 192 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43396853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43396853

Frieren 2y ago
First top three post are how much this does not matter. That is a losing mindset. China is doing great. Europe and the USA should catch up buy investing in local technology, educating engineers, and passing regulations to curve climate change. We have the know how and the money to do it, we need to overcome the legacy car manufacturers pulling us all down.
- lm28469 2y ago
  It truly doesn't matter though. Electric cars are here to save the auto industry, they won't help much for climate change. They simply perpetuate the mindset that we can waste insane amount of energy to displace our lazy asses and our insane amount of useless gadgets. Nobody with half a brain cares about who's going to "win" this "race", there is nothing to win. Where are the "dumb" < $10k EVs ? Where are the world wide standards for chargers/batteries/interfaces ? Why do we have 50 companies working on solving the same problems in the US/EU ? All of this is so inefficient and so unimaginative, we basically keep everything the same, except the cars are bigger, more expensive, create more particulate pollution (huge tires, higher torque), will last decades less (who's going to fix a gen 1 tesla in 2040 ?), anything other than a fender bender = written off (https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratched-ev-battery-your-insurer-may-have-junk-whole-car-2023-03-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratc...). Let's not even mention the absolutely insane amount of mining we'll need to do to replace 1.4 billion ICE cars with EVs (plot twist, mining isn't very eco friendly)
  - cbeach 2y ago
    Every time I see a fossil fuel car sitting outside my son’s nursery, engine idling, spewing out huge amounts of poisonous fumes (23 shipping containers worth every five minutes), I’m thankful that we’re transitioning to EVs. Yes, there are problems, but many of the points made in the above post are dubious to say the least. I’ve had my EV for five years and the brakes are still pristine (regenerative braking saves mechanical brake wear). So I don’t buy that particulate pollution is higher in EVs. 50 companies solving the same problem? That’s GREAT! More scope for competition and innovation. Or would you rather ever drove Soviet Lada cars? Car costs are being driven down and we’re nearly at the tipping point where EVs are cheaper than fossil fuelled cars - which is surprising as EVs are better in nearly every single way. We have continent-wide defacto standards for chargers. Ideally it would be worldwide, but really, this is a trivial concern. You talk about mining (lithium I assume) as a concern, but that’s probably better overall than the huge environmental toll of oil extraction, transport, refinement and exhaust emission. This isn’t the time to let perfect be the enemy of good. Get onboard with the transition and we will make progress. Progress is good.
    - lm28469 2y ago
      > Progress is good. "progress" is exactly why we are where we are today... Electric cars just perpetuates the same cycle, the only way out is a complete redesign of the system. Personal ownership of 2500kg hunks of metal to transport your lazy 70kg ass isn't anywhere close to sustainable. I bike everyday, and everyday I witness the same thing, hundreds and hundreds of cars, most are empty waiting on a parking spot, 90% of the rest are occupied by a single person, usually stuck in a traffic jam. EVs or not that's just pure madness and misallocation of resources. You're moving the needle 0.1mm backwards when we need to go back a good 720 degrees. But of course it's much nicer to have trailing dams in a country the average american can't place on a map than having a car idle in front of _your_ school
      - dastbe 2y ago
        720 degrees is spinning in circles and ending up pointed right back where you started.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Ironically the base justification for protecting local car manufacturing is so they can be transformed into building tanks and bombers in case of war. But protecting them in such a way that they can't even transition from one kind of car to another over several decades and are unable to complete basic tasks that involve computers seems almost counter productive. Actively weakening the country at great financial cost.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Machine factories are not as general as they were in the 40s when things were made with high skilled labour. They are more or less just buildings in that sense.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]

metalman 2y ago

Batteries still have enormous room for improvement. Solar photo voltaics will also continue to improve for the forseeable future, and while they are not folowing moores law, there will be double digit improvements in performance every few years. And as true solid state batteries become the standard, longevity, saftey, and energy density improvments, will make them the only choice for most transportation and grid power. Everything is a photo active charge carrier, makeing left field infinite, which is great from a developmental aspect, but cold grue for investors,who are forced to act, as like it or not, the whole worlds energy market is going to shift.

BenjiWiebe 2y ago
Solar panels will have a really hard time breaking the 100% efficiency barrier.

alexk307 2y ago

Great! Now I'll just wait 10 years and pay double the price to get this in the US...

quickthrowman 2y ago

What are they using as conductors? 1MW is 1202A @ 480V three-phase, 288.6A @ 2kV three-phase, and 115.4A @ 5kV three-phase. That’s a lot of power, at 480V you’d need (4) parallel sets of #350MCM. #350s weigh just over 1lb/ft. Some kind of articulating busbar with some sort of specialized connector, perhaps?

simne 2y ago
In news said, they use 1KV for ultrafast charge (400km in 5 minutes). Probably, three-phase. And you hit bull eye - as I know, ultrafast charger cable usually have liquid cooling.
- quickthrowman 2y ago
  Gotcha, that makes sense. If there’s liquid cooling for the conductors you can pump a lot more amps through them than you can at 75C. If you can keep the ambient temp to 0-10C, you multiply the ampacity in the 75C column by 1.36, I bet you can go way lower if it’s liquid cooled.