3 ms·

Why can't the masses just plug them in at night like current Tesla owners?

by tlb 13y ago

mynegation 13y ago
Imagine you are told that you have to spend the night in the middle of nowhere on your weekend trip mere 600 kilometers from home. Just to charge the battery.
- tlb 13y ago
  Tesla supercharger stations charge the batteries in an hour.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    Those are a gimmick. Completely non-scalable. Imagine the lines at gas stations if it took an hour to fill up. The thing I keep coming back to is this: as we transition to EVs, we have a once-in-a-century chance to do it right. Look how badly we screwed ourselves during most of the twentieth century when gasoline-powered cars started to become popular. Lead in gasoline. No emissions or crash-safety regulations. Transportation planning driven by politics rather than logic. We need to be a little smarter this time around. That means not allowing the market to evolve in a manner that leads to 20 different manufacturers selling us vehicles with hardwired proprietary batteries that we charge by plugging them into the same outlets that charge our electric toothbrushes. It's frustrating that nobody seems to understand how dumb that is.
CamperBob2 13y ago
Our power grid isn't what it needs to be to make that a widespread, scalable strategy, IMHO.
- tlb 13y ago
  You do realize that battery swapping stations would also have to charge the batteries from the same grid?
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    You do realize that battery swapping stations would also have to charge the batteries from the same grid? Sure, but not at the household 120V/240V "leaf nodes," where much of the power is wasted before it ever reaches my car. Ideally, EV batteries could be swapped at any gas station. Just as gas stations don't need their own oil wells, the batteries they lease could be charged and maintained at centralized plants with minimum electrical losses and optimized load scheduling, and trucked to the service stations. At some point, probably very soon, the energy-management advantages will exceed the energy used by the trucks. This scheme will ultimately require mandatory standardization of battery form factors, much like fuel standards are already legislated. Fortunately, with modern power conversion technology, only the physical sizes of the batteries will need to be specified. Manufacturers will be able to compete with each other on chemistry, pricing, weight, and other factors. In engineering terms, migrating to EVs any other way is insanely goddamned stupid, and that's why I just bought a new fossil-fueled car. I keep my cars a long time, though, so I'm optimistic that by the time I'm ready for my next one, it'll be a Tesla. That will happen only if I can spend less time refueling it than I do now, and not more. And that, in turn, can happen only with swappable batteries.
Avshalom 13y ago
That would require a seventy foot extension cord hanging out my window. 7-8 hundred feet for the people on the other side of my building. and that's for 120v

Why can't the masses just plug them in at night like current Tesla owners?

by tlb 13y ago

Why can't the masses just plug them in at night like current Tesla owners?

Imagine you are told that you have to spend the night in the middle of nowhere on your weekend trip mere 600 kilometers from home. Just to charge the battery.

tlb 13y ago
Tesla supercharger stations charge the batteries in an hour.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Those are a gimmick. Completely non-scalable. Imagine the lines at gas stations if it took an hour to fill up. The thing I keep coming back to is this: as we transition to EVs, we have a once-in-a-century chance to do it right. Look how badly we screwed ourselves during most of the twentieth century when gasoline-powered cars started to become popular. Lead in gasoline. No emissions or crash-safety regulations. Transportation planning driven by politics rather than logic. We need to be a little smarter this time around. That means not allowing the market to evolve in a manner that leads to 20 different manufacturers selling us vehicles with hardwired proprietary batteries that we charge by plugging them into the same outlets that charge our electric toothbrushes. It's frustrating that nobody seems to understand how dumb that is.

CamperBob2 13y ago

Our power grid isn't what it needs to be to make that a widespread, scalable strategy, IMHO.

tlb 13y ago
You do realize that battery swapping stations would also have to charge the batteries from the same grid?
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  You do realize that battery swapping stations would also have to charge the batteries from the same grid? Sure, but not at the household 120V/240V "leaf nodes," where much of the power is wasted before it ever reaches my car. Ideally, EV batteries could be swapped at any gas station. Just as gas stations don't need their own oil wells, the batteries they lease could be charged and maintained at centralized plants with minimum electrical losses and optimized load scheduling, and trucked to the service stations. At some point, probably very soon, the energy-management advantages will exceed the energy used by the trucks. This scheme will ultimately require mandatory standardization of battery form factors, much like fuel standards are already legislated. Fortunately, with modern power conversion technology, only the physical sizes of the batteries will need to be specified. Manufacturers will be able to compete with each other on chemistry, pricing, weight, and other factors. In engineering terms, migrating to EVs any other way is insanely goddamned stupid, and that's why I just bought a new fossil-fueled car. I keep my cars a long time, though, so I'm optimistic that by the time I'm ready for my next one, it'll be a Tesla. That will happen only if I can spend less time refueling it than I do now, and not more. And that, in turn, can happen only with swappable batteries.

Avshalom 13y ago

That would require a seventy foot extension cord hanging out my window. 7-8 hundred feet for the people on the other side of my building. and that's for 120v