- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
EU passes law to blanket highways with fast EV chargers by 2025::The chargers must be placed every 60km (37mi) and allow ad-hoc payment by card or contactless device without subscriptions.
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One of the major reasons people shy away from EV is the range. This is great to bring more people to EVs.
However, what policies is EU passing to improve the network of public transport such as buses, trams, and trains?
This is just one area of the overall fit for 55 and general EU plans. Public transport is already being looked at under different working groups (e.g. https://rail-research.europa.eu/about-europes-rail/).
The aim of the overall plan look very promising. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/green-deal/fit-for-55-the-eu-plan-for-a-green-transition/
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There are chargers now that provide 20km of range for every 60 seconds your car is plugged in.
So if you stretch your legs, get a bite to eat, go to the toilet, etc you’ve added enough range to give your car another five hours of range.
And if those chargers are every 60km along the highway… then you’ll be able to stop when it’s convenient for you. That’s an opportunity to stop every 30 minutes.
But the reality is most people will charger their EV while they’re at home or at work. And therefore it will just always be full, you will only ever need to stop on long road trips. Realistically, how many times a year do you go on a road trip? Once? Twice? Not at all?
A Tesla can supercharge from 10 to 90 in about 30 minutes if you tell it to pre-heat the battery while* driving. If you’re going 120 on the highway I’m assuming you should get ~400-500 out of it ( depending on how heavily you’re loaded and how much that impacts your aerodynamics ).
I can’t say for non-tesla cars as I’ve not driven one before.
When charging an EV it seems the last 10% takes longer than the first 90. The more throughput the car cam take the faster it will charge. Unfortunately there’s car companies ( like Skoda ) who sell higher charge throughputs separately. I think teslas model 3 can take around 150kw?
I’m not sure on the exact terms( like kw ). I always get them mixed up. Sorry if it doesn’t make sense
Yeah, the charging curve is very tilted. From 0-20%, a Tesla will do 250+ kW, so that only takes a couple of minutes. Then the power slowly tapers off, so your typical motorway charging session will be from 6 % to 70 %, and take around 22 minutes.
Such a charging session will typically yield another 2-2.5 hours of driving at 120 km/h, depending on model and conditions.
I highly recommend abetterrouteplanner if you want to play around with very accurate travel planning for almost any EV on the market.
Regarding the range problem, that is my personal conspiracy theory. It makes a lot of sense but no way that I or anyone can ever prove it.
Theory: Range was never a real problem and car manufacturers seeded that topic to journalists/press, as the companies already had the solution available before communicating the problem.
More range is done with a larger batteries, usually higher quality cells/chemicals. So making the car bigger and more expensive. That’s what manufacturers desire to do and sell anyways.
It never was or is a real problem. They can just charge the customers more and it’s solved.
As I’ve already seen posted, the real problem that cannot be easily solved is the charging time. Right now I ‘charge’ 0% to 100% in 1-2 minutes. No preparation, no special fuel, no special fees or subscriptions, no fuel stations only for specific brands, no apps, summer or winter same 1-2 min, no strain on the fuel tank by filling fast, sometimes waiting lines at the stations but they move quickly with 1-2 min per vehicle.
I don’t see battery or charging tech anywhere close to that in the next 5, 10 or even 20 years.
That’s hard to advance, with decades of research behind us and decades ahead, so car manufacturers focus on their favorite topic: range, where they can just throw their customers money at to solve it immediately.
I think the bigger societal problem is that people need to start thinking differently of how charging works. It won’t and doesn’t need to work like refueling.
What I mean is, nobody would refuel every day at the beginning of their 10km commute. What they’ll do is commute for 2 weeks, and when the car is empty they’ll refuel and then continue on their way.
With EVs, this can be different. Once chargers (and not even fast chargers) are placed on every major location, you don’t need to go 0-100% in 99% of the cases. Getting groceries? Charge at the store for 30mins Going to the gym? Charge there for an hour or two Going out for dinner? Charge for 3h
The car doesn’t need to go empty all the way. Obviously you can’t do that with the current infrastructure, but with enough effort, that’s easily achievable.
Adding an extra step for every time I stop at whatever location is a big ask. Personally, those little tasks wreck havoc with my executive disfunction disorder.
Truthfully, the range is only for long trips. Most commuting will be within normal operating ranges of EVs.
But it does need to be solved in some manner since it’s not uncommon for people to take road trips, even fairly short ones.
Those are various ideas regarding charging problematic.
I’m still on the range topic that people apparently see as the main problem with EVs but I don’t. I’d be even fine with less range than the current top models offer.
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Range was definitely a major problem for early adopters - because at the time there weren’t many places you could charge the car.
And now that it’s set in everyone’s mind, it continues to be talked about.
Seriously. Do people really think EVs will save us from climate change? They are hardly good for the environment. There’s already a sustainable EV, it’s called a train.
And don’t get me started on electrical scooters… How is that more sustainable than a bike…
I don’t have anything against trains, but our rail network is really limited.
If I want to go from Barcelona to Madrid, it’s easy and actually more convenient than flying albeit more expensive.
But if I want to take my kids to go and see the cool medieval castle in the mountains? There’s no train going anywhere near there.
E-Scooters are much better in conjunction with public transit as they take up much less space and are easier to take up steps to the platform.
As such they are a good personal transportation option to solve the ‘last mile’.
I do however think that public, shared E-Scooters are a big nuicance to a citys center especially
a lot of the shared E-Scotter thing is local cities not wanting them to exist in the first place, replace a parking spot every once in a while with a scooter collection point and watch as they almost completely disappear from the side of the road, we give the literally worse in every aspect cars their own dedicated infrastructure that is choking our cities, but a scooter? no, that’s untenable…
I disagree. Foldable bikes are a thing here, and many people use them together with public transport. Go to town with train, go to office from trainstation with bike
This is great, and ambitious.
I wish it was more ambitious with a fatter timeline.
I’d rather see passive charging lanes added by 2030 or something.
But again, this is great.
I think it would be much cheaper if there was a universal standard for car batteries that could then be replaced for charged ones at charging stations
Another good move EU!!
I guess it will be great in the wealthier countries. Here in Spain the reason EV’s are incredibly rare is simply the cost.
And rather than making them more affordable the Government just makes ICE vehicles more expensive to use, which is almost a regressive tax on those too poor to afford an EV. Especially given in many areas it’s not really optional given public transport may be unreliable or non-existent.
you could elect people who will expand public transport… we did it, went from 4 buses a day to an hourly schedule, middle Mosel region Germany, come by our wine is better =P
I lived in Germany for some months in University.
The trains there are amazing, it really feels like you can get just about anywhere by train. In Spain, we have good connections between major cities but you can’t really use them to go on day-trips to places like the castles or the salt mines or whatever.
