Does charging need to be faster then a cup of tea?
Discussion
Current EV tech gives us a 180 mile range and a 30 minute recharge
Now on UK roads 180 miles is realistically 3 hours driving
Now after 3 hours of driving i need a pee and want some tea and a bacon roll
This typically takes me 30 minutes which is the time it takes to charge a tesla on a rapid charge.
So as far as i am concerned EV technology has now reached a point where its endures matches mine
Do other want or need quicker charging?
Now on UK roads 180 miles is realistically 3 hours driving
Now after 3 hours of driving i need a pee and want some tea and a bacon roll
This typically takes me 30 minutes which is the time it takes to charge a tesla on a rapid charge.
So as far as i am concerned EV technology has now reached a point where its endures matches mine
Do other want or need quicker charging?
An electric car could easily replace my daily commuting car. 40 miles a day with the occasional 100 mile day. Any more than this and the company would rather hire a car and pay real fuel cost than pay us 40p/mile private mileage anyway.
A dozen times a year we travel between 100 and 130 miles to see relatives or friends, stay for lunch and then drive home. Knocking on the door with an extension lead in hand asking for a few hours on a 13amp charger seems a bit chavy to me. It's bad enough taking your phone charger in and asking for a top-up.
For us to replace the family car, they need an official 400+ mile range to give a real-world 300 mile range on a cold winters day.
The fast charger concept will not scale. This morning on a 12 car forecourt (and there's probably more than 20 forecourts like this in Basingstoke) I still had to wait for an available pump. This is fine because I had to wait 3 minutes. Just imagine arriving at your fast charge station to find someone else connected and another already waiting. Your 30 minutes coffee break becomes 90 minutes.
A dozen times a year we travel between 100 and 130 miles to see relatives or friends, stay for lunch and then drive home. Knocking on the door with an extension lead in hand asking for a few hours on a 13amp charger seems a bit chavy to me. It's bad enough taking your phone charger in and asking for a top-up.
For us to replace the family car, they need an official 400+ mile range to give a real-world 300 mile range on a cold winters day.
The fast charger concept will not scale. This morning on a 12 car forecourt (and there's probably more than 20 forecourts like this in Basingstoke) I still had to wait for an available pump. This is fine because I had to wait 3 minutes. Just imagine arriving at your fast charge station to find someone else connected and another already waiting. Your 30 minutes coffee break becomes 90 minutes.
alock said:
...The fast charger concept will not scale. This morning on a 12 car forecourt (and there's probably more than 20 forecourts like this in Basingstoke) I still had to wait for an available pump. This is fine because I had to wait 3 minutes. Just imagine arriving at your fast charge station to find someone else connected and another already waiting. Your 30 minutes coffee break becomes 90 minutes.
That's my view. It all seems fine and dandy while EVs are a rarity but imagine they are being used by everyone? Not only will the charging methods not scale but of course the government will remove all the tax breaks because they will need to replace the lost revenue from fuel duty and road tax etc.Slightly related, I was at the Heston services on the west bound M4 yesterday for a brief stop. There was a local taxi firm with a fleet of hideous looking EV's (they had a three letter name on the badge). Anyway, they were queuing for the two "pumps" - as soon as one charged up another would take its place. If I had turned up in an EV desperate for a charge I'd be pretty miffed!
When induction charging is the norm and they're buried in the road surface so you're charging as you drive, for all intents and purposes you'll drive from the induction power when on motorways and the battery when off them. Yes I know, huge disruption and cost to get it all laid, but thats when I believe they will be truly embraced by the masses.
B3NNL said:
When induction charging is the norm and they're buried in the road surface so you're charging as you drive, for all intents and purposes you'll drive from the induction power when on motorways and the battery when off them. Yes I know, huge disruption and cost to get it all laid, but thats when I believe they will be truly embraced by the masses.
And service stations will be selling LSD to help you on your trip.voicey said:
There was a local taxi firm with a fleet of hideous looking EV's (they had a three letter name on the badge).
They're Chinese - BYD e6 - there's been a batch imported as trials. Not exactly well received, by all accounts. Originally, it was going to be 50 for one cab operator, then that deal fell through and 20 came in for another.
alock said:
An electric car could easily replace my daily commuting car. 40 miles a day with the occasional 100 mile day. Any more than this and the company would rather hire a car and pay real fuel cost than pay us 40p/mile private mileage anyway.
A dozen times a year we travel between 100 and 130 miles to see relatives or friends, stay for lunch and then drive home. Knocking on the door with an extension lead in hand asking for a few hours on a 13amp charger seems a bit chavy to me. It's bad enough taking your phone charger in and asking for a top-up.
For us to replace the family car, they need an official 400+ mile range to give a real-world 300 mile range on a cold winters day.
The fast charger concept will not scale. This morning on a 12 car forecourt (and there's probably more than 20 forecourts like this in Basingstoke) I still had to wait for an available pump. This is fine because I had to wait 3 minutes. Just imagine arriving at your fast charge station to find someone else connected and another already waiting. Your 30 minutes coffee break becomes 90 minutes.
Of course each and every single car on the forecourt had just completed a 500 mile trip and needed to refill for the return legA dozen times a year we travel between 100 and 130 miles to see relatives or friends, stay for lunch and then drive home. Knocking on the door with an extension lead in hand asking for a few hours on a 13amp charger seems a bit chavy to me. It's bad enough taking your phone charger in and asking for a top-up.
For us to replace the family car, they need an official 400+ mile range to give a real-world 300 mile range on a cold winters day.
The fast charger concept will not scale. This morning on a 12 car forecourt (and there's probably more than 20 forecourts like this in Basingstoke) I still had to wait for an available pump. This is fine because I had to wait 3 minutes. Just imagine arriving at your fast charge station to find someone else connected and another already waiting. Your 30 minutes coffee break becomes 90 minutes.
Not one single one of them was filling up because they had no way of refilling the tank at home
Or could it be that
The vast majority of them were filling up because they had nowhere to fill up at home
voicey said:
TooMany2cvs said:
They're Chinese - BYD e6 - there's been a batch imported as trials. Not exactly well received, by all accounts. Originally, it was going to be 50 for one cab operator, then that deal fell through and 20 came in for another.
That's the one. Hideous.s1962a said:
I would be annoyed if there were a whole fleet of them when i can came in for a rapid charge. I'd actually ask them to let me go next, and create a fuss with the taxi firm if not. If the pumps are idle, then fair enough, but if a residential car turns up looking for a charge, that should take precedence over your waiting fleet.
I can't see the logic of that. Surely if there's a queue then you simply join the back and take a turn? RichB said:
s1962a said:
I would be annoyed if there were a whole fleet of them when i can came in for a rapid charge. I'd actually ask them to let me go next, and create a fuss with the taxi firm if not. If the pumps are idle, then fair enough, but if a residential car turns up looking for a charge, that should take precedence over your waiting fleet.
I can't see the logic of that. Surely if there's a queue then you simply join the back and take a turn? McWigglebum4th said:
Of course each and every single car on the forecourt had just completed a 500 mile trip and needed to refill for the return leg
Not one single one of them was filling up because they had no way of refilling the tank at home
Or could it be that
The vast majority of them were filling up because they had nowhere to fill up at home
But I'm not proposing they replace all 12 pumps with chargers. I'm not even proposing they replace every forecourt of 12 pumps with 1 fast charger.Not one single one of them was filling up because they had no way of refilling the tank at home
Or could it be that
The vast majority of them were filling up because they had nowhere to fill up at home
The solution doesn't scale because the user-experience falls off a cliff if they don't always have spare capacity. If a petrol station is too small to cope with a sudden influx of customers, everyone just waits a few minutes. If a fast-charging station is too small, people have to wait hours. If a petrol station has a power cut people have to detour a few miles. If a fast-charger has a power cut people have to detour many many miles.
It's a viscous circle. I will only rely solely on an electric car when I can plan to survive with only home charging while at the same time wanting a public network of high availability fast chargers for emergency use with a guaranteed wait time not exceeding 30 minutes.
As I said before, I can see myself buying an electric car in the next 5 years but this will be to replace one of our two cars that is used 100% for commuting and short journeys. It cannot replace the other car until the other issues are solved.
Having ordered a tesla and currently waiting I have spent a lot of time thinking about scenarios presented.
First things first, I never drive 200 miles regularly. In fact I drive that distance once a year I suppose, maybe twice.
However, I may do 100 miles a year a handful of times, so these journeys I make in a day and it's a 200 mile round trip. Now that's nearly 2 hours driving which is about when I would take a break. Let's assume it's winter, it's 3c and its raining and a bit windy for good measure. Let's also assume there is an accident, a road got closed and I made a detour. Let's also think, crap I didn't do a range charge so due to everything else I won't manage to eek out the 230 miles I need to get there and back + the detour and extra to cover extra energy used by weather friction. Now I have to make a detour and probably find a chademo fast DC charge on the motorway and sit there for 20 mins hoping it's working too. They sometimes are offline. In this case it would be a huge inconvenience.
Even if conditions were not so bad it might be cutting it close at 200 mile round trip in winter. I'm sure you have at least 250 but still that fear of running out does bother me and it would annoy me having to detour and wait.
Now looking at it differently, the supercharger network is becoming very decent. Like you pointed out after 3 hours you absolutely need a break and at that distance you are using motorways. There is a supercharger at logically distances on nearly all major routes South of Leeds excluding Wales with a bit of patchiness from the Midlands up to Preston. This should improve but I'm confident I'm covered on long journeys.
My concern is simply the mid length journeys which I would complete in a day that I do infrequently but I do do them and I would prefer to not be stopping and hanging about or detouring to get 20-50 miles buffer fill. It would simply annoy me and take off the shine.
Owners claim it's the best car they've ever had and rarely complain about the scenarios I've outlined. I think for 90% of journeys it's not question. For the 5% long haul the supercharger network is logical and well placed. For the remaining 5% where you do a round trip between 170 and 230 miles these trips bother me and usually I wouldn't need to stop for a break or fuel.
So essentially I wouldn't care if the battery only did 200 miles but if I could get a 80% charge in 5mins I would be over the moon. As it turns out tesla said they can get the charge time around 5-10mins for a 80% charge but it would need 1,500volts, upgrades to their supercharger pods and ideally an automated tethering cable mechanism as the charger cable for be massive ans extremely heavy. Amongst other things I assume. Even though they didn't mention the batteries I assume there must be some sort of upgrade car side too.
First things first, I never drive 200 miles regularly. In fact I drive that distance once a year I suppose, maybe twice.
However, I may do 100 miles a year a handful of times, so these journeys I make in a day and it's a 200 mile round trip. Now that's nearly 2 hours driving which is about when I would take a break. Let's assume it's winter, it's 3c and its raining and a bit windy for good measure. Let's also assume there is an accident, a road got closed and I made a detour. Let's also think, crap I didn't do a range charge so due to everything else I won't manage to eek out the 230 miles I need to get there and back + the detour and extra to cover extra energy used by weather friction. Now I have to make a detour and probably find a chademo fast DC charge on the motorway and sit there for 20 mins hoping it's working too. They sometimes are offline. In this case it would be a huge inconvenience.
Even if conditions were not so bad it might be cutting it close at 200 mile round trip in winter. I'm sure you have at least 250 but still that fear of running out does bother me and it would annoy me having to detour and wait.
Now looking at it differently, the supercharger network is becoming very decent. Like you pointed out after 3 hours you absolutely need a break and at that distance you are using motorways. There is a supercharger at logically distances on nearly all major routes South of Leeds excluding Wales with a bit of patchiness from the Midlands up to Preston. This should improve but I'm confident I'm covered on long journeys.
My concern is simply the mid length journeys which I would complete in a day that I do infrequently but I do do them and I would prefer to not be stopping and hanging about or detouring to get 20-50 miles buffer fill. It would simply annoy me and take off the shine.
Owners claim it's the best car they've ever had and rarely complain about the scenarios I've outlined. I think for 90% of journeys it's not question. For the 5% long haul the supercharger network is logical and well placed. For the remaining 5% where you do a round trip between 170 and 230 miles these trips bother me and usually I wouldn't need to stop for a break or fuel.
So essentially I wouldn't care if the battery only did 200 miles but if I could get a 80% charge in 5mins I would be over the moon. As it turns out tesla said they can get the charge time around 5-10mins for a 80% charge but it would need 1,500volts, upgrades to their supercharger pods and ideally an automated tethering cable mechanism as the charger cable for be massive ans extremely heavy. Amongst other things I assume. Even though they didn't mention the batteries I assume there must be some sort of upgrade car side too.
s1962a said:
RichB said:
s1962a said:
I would be annoyed if there were a whole fleet of them when i can came in for a rapid charge. I'd actually ask them to let me go next, and create a fuss with the taxi firm if not. If the pumps are idle, then fair enough, but if a residential car turns up looking for a charge, that should take precedence over your waiting fleet.
I can't see the logic of that. Surely if there's a queue then you simply join the back and take a turn? Gassing Station | EV and Alternative Fuels | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff