Porsche Taycan

[LG9k]

SWoll said:

TBH I really hope you are right as despite only needing public charging infrequently it would be good to know things are improving rapidly as would remove any lingering doubts about moving to another brand as have no particular allegiance to Tesla, they just appear to offer the best overall EV experience at present.

It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Energy providers do not want to install lots of expensive chargers everywhere yet, as demand for them is quite low (note Tesla folks saying that most of the stalls are empty whenever they charge up).

EVs are still a tiny proportion of the overall number of cars out there.

Most EVs at present are second cars which are charged up at home over night and therefore only very rarely need any sort of public charging.

This will change in time as people want to/are forced to buy EVs and installing chargers in more locations makes commercial sense.

All IMHO of course.

[kambites]

LG9k said:

EVs are still a tiny proportion of the overall number of cars out there.

They are, but a rapidly rising one. So far this year, 7.5% of cars sold in the UK have been pure EVs (I doubt PHEV owners use fast public chargers). That does sound like a lot, but last year it was 3.8% and the year before around 2% which puts them on target to overtake diesels some time this year and probably petrols around 2025. Obviously the demographic of cars in use on the road lag behind current new cars sales, but it's not going to be long before these public chargers are (a) needed and (b) making a lot of money for someone.

If the charging networks don't install chargers, or at least start putting in place the infrastructure to install chargers, pretty soon they're likely to end up not being able to keep up with demand and losing a lot of potential revenue as a result.

[SWoll]

kambites said:

LG9k said:

EVs are still a tiny proportion of the overall number of cars out there.

They are, but a rapidly rising one. So far this year, 7.5% of cars sold in the UK have been pure EVs (I doubt PHEV owners use fast public chargers). That does sound like a lot, but last year it was 3.8% and the year before around 2% which puts them on target to overtake diesels some time this year and probably petrols around 2025. Obviously the demographic of cars in use on the road lag behind current new cars sales, but it's not going to be long before these public chargers are (a) needed and (b) making a lot of money for someone.

If the charging networks don't install chargers, or at least start putting in place the infrastructure to install chargers, pretty soon they're likely to end up not being able to keep up with demand and losing a lot of potential revenue as a result.

Seen rapid charge points in use numerous times by hybrid Range Rovers etc. Appears quite common in my limited experience.

[dmsims]

SWoll said:

Seen rapid charge points in use numerous times by hybrid Range Rovers etc. .

That's more about the type of person that drives those

[Dave Hedgehog]

SWoll said:

Seen rapid charge points in use numerous times by hybrid Range Rovers etc. Appears quite common in my limited experience.

in my experience they are using the charging point as a free all day parking spot, often there in the morning and evening when i return home

[kambites]

Dave Hedgehog said:

SWoll said:

Seen rapid charge points in use numerous times by hybrid Range Rovers etc. Appears quite common in my limited experience.

in my experience they are using the charging point as a free all day parking spot, often there in the morning and evening when i return home

That's certainly something which will have to be sorted, regardless of whether it's PHEV or BEV drivers doing it. I think they need to charge per time as well as per unit energy; or maybe just charge per unit time after the car is fully charged. Taking up a charging spot should clearly be more expensive than taking up a non-charging spot because the infrastructure you're using (or at least stopping others from using) is worth more.

[ecs]

SWoll said:

Having to visit a dealer for an OTA update though? Love to know what they charge to connect the car to their wi-fi and watch it download..

It's supposedly quite a chunky update which effects every module on the vehicle - it's meant to take 5hrs, but my OPC has said it's taking them up to 18hrs to complete. Plus, they've now got a bunch of bricked cars as the update has failed part way through.

[SWoll]

ecs said:

SWoll said:

Having to visit a dealer for an OTA update though? Love to know what they charge to connect the car to their wi-fi and watch it download..

It's supposedly quite a chunky update which effects every module on the vehicle - it's meant to take 5hrs, but my OPC has said it's taking them up to 18hrs to complete. Plus, they've now got a bunch of bricked cars as the update has failed part way through.

Not great then. Just shows this stuff really isn't easy.

I assume they aren't charging customers to apply it and are offering a courtesy car if it's taking that long?

[ecs]

It's a recall so is free of charge, I had a courtesy car booked for my (now cancelled) appointment. Was looking forward to hooning about in a Boxster for the day!

The car does do OTA updates, but this seems a bit more in depth! Can understand because I've noticed mine doing to weird st when driving. Also the infotainment system likes to restart itself out of the blue. Cars have too much software in them!

[romeogolf]

kambites said:

They are, but a rapidly rising one. So far this year, 7.5% of cars sold in the UK have been pure EVs (I doubt PHEV owners use fast public chargers).

If I had £10 for every time I'd sat watching an Outlander PHEV using a 50kw charging post to get a 7kw charge for 45 minutes I could afford to get the train...

In all seriousness, plenty of PHEV drivers have absolutely no idea how charging infrastructure works, how quickly their vehicles can charge, why charging at a service station will actually cost them more than just using the diesel engine in their car, or why EV drivers might be a little more desperate to use the charge post...!

[kambites]

If the Taycan contains enough firmware to take 5 minutes to update over a decent speed connection let alone five hours, Porsche need to fire their entire embedded systems team and employ a new one which actually knows what it's doing. Things like maps can be big, but the actual software which runs the car should be a few MB at most if it's written properly.

Embedded software engineers are getting lazy and shoddy, and the automotive industry seems to epitomise this more than any other. If they need to take the car in to update it because the image is too big to do OTA, that's just crap engineering.

Edited by kambites on Friday 16th April 17:12

[off_again]

kambites said:

If the Taycan contains enough firmware to take 5 minutes to update over a decent speed connection let alone five hours, Porsche need to fire their entire embedded systems team and employ a new one which actually knows what it's doing. Things like maps can be big, but the actual software which runs the car should be a few MB at most if it's written properly.

Embedded software engineers are getting lazy and shoddy, and the automotive industry seems to epitomise this more than any other. If they need to take the car in to update it because the image is too big to do OTA, that's just crap engineering.

Edited by kambites on Friday 16th April 17:12

Seems strange to me too! Just bought a new Macan with the new 12 inch screen thing. Ok, its the generation back from the Taycan, but got an update to the system and navigation pop-up the other week. I was a little concerned that this was going to take hours, and it even said this on the screen! Navigation update said something like 2 hours and the system was something like an hour. I dont live in a well covered area for a mobile network (I am pretty sure Porsche uses the AT&T network and its only 4G). All completed in around 45 mins and completed transparently.

Maybe they are just being overly cautious and running a bunch of diagnostics to make sure everything is working? Maybe its an update to the battery management system and they need to cycle the charge / discharge process? A software update shouldnt take long, suspect there is something else here.

[kambites]

off_again said:

Maybe its an update to the battery management system and they need to cycle the charge / discharge process? A software update shouldnt take long, suspect there is something else here.

That would be my guess. Some physical process which takes a while and will render the car undrivable while it's happening. In which case I'm sure it could be done remotely, but Porsche probably view it as less of a publicity faux pas to tell customers they need to bring their cars in for an update than to tell them they need to leave their car plugged in unused for five hours (even though almost most customers will probably do that every day anyway).

But what could actually take 5 hours? Cell rebalancing maybe?

[off_again]

kambites said:

But what could actually take 5 hours? Cell rebalancing maybe?

Yeah, that is what I was thinking! Rapid charge and discharge processing and running diagnostics and making sure everything is charging (and holding) charge correctly. Watched a video a while ago about someone building a home battery system using generic rechargeable batteries. They had to do that balancing process to make sure they didnt kill the batteries (and to highlight which batteries were cheap knock-off ones).

[Toaster Pilot]

romeogolf said:

If I had £10 for every time I'd sat watching an Outlander PHEV using a 50kw charging post to get a 7kw charge for 45 minutes I could afford to get the train...

In all seriousness, plenty of PHEV drivers have absolutely no idea how charging infrastructure works, how quickly their vehicles can charge, why charging at a service station will actually cost them more than just using the diesel engine in their car, or why EV drivers might be a little more desperate to use the charge post...!

Outlander charges at 22kW on DC.

[romeogolf]

Toaster Pilot said:

romeogolf said:

If I had £10 for every time I'd sat watching an Outlander PHEV using a 50kw charging post to get a 7kw charge for 45 minutes I could afford to get the train...

In all seriousness, plenty of PHEV drivers have absolutely no idea how charging infrastructure works, how quickly their vehicles can charge, why charging at a service station will actually cost them more than just using the diesel engine in their car, or why EV drivers might be a little more desperate to use the charge post...!

Outlander charges at 22kW on DC.

Fair - We actually have a Zoe so use the 43kW AC post on which it would be taking 7kW, right? I tend to round off to 50kW as that's the general "motorway services" charging speed.

[sjg]

Outlander is type 1 so no, it wouldn't be using AC on a rapid. Other PHEVs may well be though.

I hardly ever see them on Chademo these days since you have to pay everywhere and it's marginal at best whether that's better than using petrol.

[LG9k]

kambites said:

They are, but a rapidly rising one. So far this year, 7.5% of cars sold in the UK have been pure EVs (I doubt PHEV owners use fast public chargers). That does sound like a lot, but last year it was 3.8% and the year before around 2% which puts them on target to overtake diesels some time this year and probably petrols around 2025. Obviously the demographic of cars in use on the road lag behind current new cars sales, but it's not going to be long before these public chargers are (a) needed and (b) making a lot of money for someone.

If the charging networks don't install chargers, or at least start putting in place the infrastructure to install chargers, pretty soon they're likely to end up not being able to keep up with demand and losing a lot of potential revenue as a result.

Don't forget that those are sales figures of new cars. EVs will be a small proportion of the "installed base" for a good few years yet.

[Heres Johnny]

LG9k said:

kambites said:

They are, but a rapidly rising one. So far this year, 7.5% of cars sold in the UK have been pure EVs (I doubt PHEV owners use fast public chargers). That does sound like a lot, but last year it was 3.8% and the year before around 2% which puts them on target to overtake diesels some time this year and probably petrols around 2025. Obviously the demographic of cars in use on the road lag behind current new cars sales, but it's not going to be long before these public chargers are (a) needed and (b) making a lot of money for someone.

If the charging networks don't install chargers, or at least start putting in place the infrastructure to install chargers, pretty soon they're likely to end up not being able to keep up with demand and losing a lot of potential revenue as a result.

Don't forget that those are sales figures of new cars. EVs will be a small proportion of the "installed base" for a good few years yet.

Yep, let’s say a typical car lives for 10 years (oretty sure it’s longer but the maths is easier), 7.5% sales equates to a 0.7% change in what’s in the road. Then factor in something like 90% of charging is done at home and you have 0.07% shift from petrol stations to public charging.

[LG9k]

Here are some stats from a recent Car Magazine Article:
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/motoring-is...

The article says there are 35m cars in the UK alone.

According to the RAC here:
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/choosing...

They estimate there are 239,000 BEVs on the road in the UK (although the official stats say 155,000)

239,000/ 35,000,000 = 0.68%

In a normal year, (2019) there were about 2.3m new car sales, so on that basis, it will take (35m/2.3m) about 15 years for the current set of cars on the road to be replaced. In reality, it will be longer than that given cars last a long time now, and a decent minority people run cars older than 15 years.

Obviously EV sales proportions will grow, and pretty fast at that, it's going to be a long time before EVs make up a majority of the overall market (and never mind the barriers to ownership for lots of people who don't have access to the same parking space every night).

I know BP are investing heavily over the next few years, and they estimate "The number of EVs on the road is anticipated to increase rapidly in coming decades. By 2040 BP estimates that there will be 12 million EVs on UK roads, up from around 200,000 at the start of 2019."

"Today, you’ll find 7,000 public charging points available across the UK, and bp’s ambition is to increase this to 16,000 by 2030. bp pulse has also been powering up 150kW ultra-fast electric vehicle (EV) chargers since 2019, with a further 1,400 planned to be added to the bp pulse network by 2030."
https://www.bp.com/en_gb/united-kingdom/home/produ...

Charger installation doesn't need to be fast at present, but will increase in line with the market.

Does anyone know how long it takes to add chargers to a site?