- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.