"Overcharge" was taken?A clever name there....
Electric cars?
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JohnDe
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Had a look at a BMW factory in Germany 5 years ago. Nothing special, just the public tour that anyone can do.
They were quite upfront that any new vehicle design was being done so as to accommodate any engine type without major changes. So petrol, diesel, electric can all be offered with the same vehicle body.
I can't post any photos, because they didn't allow any to be taken (and were extremely strict on that point - everyone entering was searched by security to ensure no cameras), but they'd clearly thought about it all yes and that was 5 years ago now.
I have admired quite a few BMW models, some very stylish classics in their catalogue. However, I have always been disappointed with their build quality and surprised at how people don't seem to mind.
JohnDe
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More evidence showing that EV charging infrastructure is required, and not subsidies and tax cuts for people to buy EVs.
www.economist.com
A lack of chargers could stall the electric-vehicle revolution
Forget Tesla’s production hell. The hardest bit of EVs is the powering up
Car-buyers are getting behind the wheel of an electric vehicle (ev) in ever greater numbers. As battery costs tumble, prices are falling. Compared with internal combustion engine (ice) cars, which can be a pain to drive and service, electric cars are a thrillseeking motorist’s dream. But the shift to evs is about more than driving pleasure. Transport accounts for around a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions, and road vehicles for around three-quarters of that share. If the world is to have any chance of reaching net-zero by 2050, evs will need to take over, and soon.
The 6m pioneers who opt for evs this year will still represent only 8% of all car purchasers. That figure must rise to two-thirds by 2030 and to 100% by 2050. Many investors are operating on the assumption that this will all happen as smoothly as a Tesla accelerates. The soaring market values of Elon Musk’s $1trn company, newcomers such as Rivian, which makes electric pickup trucks, and Chinese luxury ev firms, attest to sky-high confidence. Electric-battery makers, too, are booming.
Look beyond the glamorous, high-tech-filled automobiles that most obviously embody the ev revolution, however, and a merciless bottleneck appears. Not even those eyeing a new ev are sufficiently aware of it. Governments are only waking up to the problem. Put simply: how will all the electric cars get charged?
The current number of public chargers—1.3m—cannot begin to satisfy the demands of the world’s rapidly expanding electric fleet. According to an estimate by the International Energy Agency (iea), a forecaster, by the end of this decade 40m public charging points will be needed, requiring an annual investment of $90bn a year as 2030 approaches. If net-zero goals are to be met, by 2050 the world will need five times as many.
Governments’ current pledges to phase out ice cars and shift to evs are, it is true, not quite consistent with net-zero. Even if roads turn electric less speedily than they should, though, the sums the world needs to spend on charging infrastructure are still stupendous. In a slower scenario envisaged by Bloombergnef (bnef), a research firm, in which ev sales keep rising as battery prices fall but reach just under a third of all vehicles sold by 2030, roughly $600bn of investment would still be needed by 2040. That would pay for fewer chargers than the iea foresees—24m public points alone by 2040 (and 309m in total, see chart 1). If net-zero is to be achieved by 2050, bnef puts the cumulative charging investment required at a whopping $1.6trn.
Besides installing too few public chargers, the charging industry’s operational record is poor. The official number currently exceeds what some authorities reckon is needed. The European Commission, for example, thinks every ten evs require one public charger. According to the Boston Consulting Group (bcg), there are now five evs per charging point in the eu and China, and nine in America.
That is in theory. In practice, a survey of chargers in China by Volkswagen (vw) found many inoperable or “ iced” chargers (those blocked inadvertently or deliberately by fossil-fuelled cars). Only 30-40% of China’s 1m public points were available at any time. It is safe to assume some inoperability in the eu and America. This summer Herbert Diess, vw’s boss, complained on LinkedIn, a social network, that his holiday had gone less than smoothly because Ionity, a European charging network, provided too few points on the Brenner Pass between Austria and Italy. “Anything but a premium charging experience,” Mr Diess wrote. That vw part-owns Ionity made the criticism sting more.
Drivers can smell trouble ahead. Range anxiety and the availability of public charging is a huge issue (see chart 2). In a recent survey by AlixPartners, a consultancy, in the seven countries that make up 85% of global ev sales the cars’ high prices came third on the list of top five reasons not to switch to battery power; the four others were all worries related to charging.
To assess the scale of the challenge start with the basics. A big advantage of evs is that they can be charged at home—or at workplaces, if employers install chargers. In America 70% of homes have off-street parking where a charger can be installed (the equivalent figure is lower in Europe and China). bcg estimates that in 2020 home and workplace charging accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total charging energy use in America, seven-tenths in Europe and three-fifths in China.
Current ev models typically have batteries with ranges of around 400km. Some go over 650km. The average American drives 50km a day, according to Bank of America. Europeans and Chinese drive less. Two types of charger are good enough to top up vehicles, or give them a boost overnight at home or during the working day. The slowest, providing up to 8km of range an hour, can do the job. So do “level 2” chargers that provide 16-32km. Both are easy on the wallet. Drivers can use dedicated sockets that cost a few hundred dollars (and are often subsidised by governments) to tap the cheapest electricity tariffs.
Nonetheless, home and workplace charging only gets you so far. As ev ownership spreads from wealthier households to people living in flats or dwellings without the ability to plug in, a public network becomes vital. In America, Europe and China demand for public charging is expected to increase (see chart 3). Public chargers come in three varieties. A common kind is kerbside charging, via converted lampposts or other dedicated points, where cars might park overnight. Then there is “destination” charging, of the sort that is becoming more widely available in car parks at shopping centres, restaurants, cinemas and the like. Both kinds are level-2, with installation costs usually between $2,000 and $10,000 per point.
Fast charging, which typically adds 100-130km of range every 20 minutes, is vital on main roads for drivers making long inter-city trips and in cities for a quick emergency jolt. Commercial vehicles driving longer distances, such as taxis, need fast charging, too. But since charging firms need to recoup hefty costs of $100,000 or more per fast charger, using such facilities is pricey. To make life easier for customers, Tesla’s mapping software directs its cars on long journeys and works out the best route weaving through its dedicated “Supercharger” network. Other new ev models come with similar features.
Charging-industry insiders point out, reasonably, that both ev ownership and charging are in their infancy. Pessimism is unwarranted, they argue, based on a few short years of experience. Only one in 100 cars on the world’s roads is an ev, after all. Pat Romano of ChargePoint, one of the world’s biggest charging firms, talks of the start of “a 20-year arc”.
Fair enough. Still, future demand for charging at scale is impossible to know as yet. Expansion is coming fast, say some. Along with the momentum from electrophile governments, the opportunity to make money charging the world’s expanding fleet means that “hyperbolic growth” is on the way, says James West of Evercore isi, a bank. But exactly how many public chargers are needed for each ev on the road is “an open question”, notes Bank of America. Scott Bishop of Yunex Traffic, a division of Siemens, a German firm that makes charging hardware, hears many different answers when he asks insiders what share of chargers should be slow versus fast.
Another problem is the industry’s structure. Aakash Arora of bcg’s automotive practice calls its many complex layers the “gnarliest problem of all”. The need to co-ordinate with and get permission from many parties helps explain the slow roll-out. First, there are firms that make the chargers themselves. Then there are the operators. These might own the points, earning money from charging. Or they might collect fees for maintaining chargers operated by site-owners. Site-owners, usually businesses, other private landlords or local authorities, provide the locations for chargers and charge rent to point-owning operators. Service providers are middlemen who allow the charging to happen, with apps or cards that give access to charge points and facilitate payment.
Watt a business
Three kinds of firm are coming to rule the ev-charging roost. One is the vertically integrated car giant. Tesla has not revealed what it has spent on its “Supercharger” network, which now numbers 30,000 points worldwide. But it is probably several billion dollars. Other car firms are following, to a point. bmw, Ford, Hyundai and Daimler are partners with vw in Ionity. Its fast-charging network hopes to expand from 1,500 points to 7,000 by 2025. Electrify America, set up by vw in 2016 as part of its settlement with American regulators over its emissions-cheating scandal, now has 2,200 fast chargers in the United States. General Motors says it will spend $750m on charging. Its first move will be to install 40,000 points at dealerships.
Specialist charging businesses are also expanding. Several have gone public in the past year. None is profitable, and their revenues are tiny for now, but their market values are rising. The most richly valued (at around $7bn) is ChargePoint, which controls 44% of America’s public-charging market and is expanding in Europe. evBox, a Dutch firm, has 300,000 points worldwide, including a quarter of Europe’s public level-2 chargers and a third of fast-charging points. evgo has half the fast-charging market in America (excluding Tesla). But as Ryan Fisher of bnef notes, in the next decade charging firms will have to find business models that reliably produce profits even if governments cut subsidies.
A third category is energy firms. Fearful of losing business at petrol stations, they are developing ambitious schemes. After buying Ubitricity, a big European on-street charging firm, in February, Royal Dutch Shell, an Anglo-Dutch oil major, said in August that it planned to roll out 500,000 charging points around the world by 2025, both kerbside and fast charging. bp and Total have also been buying charging firms. Utilities are making a push, too. Wallbox, part-owned by Spain’s Iberdrola, sells chargers for homes and workplaces. The Electric Highway Coalition, made up of 17 American power companies, plans to install fast charging along inter-city routes.
Governments will act. America’s new infrastructure law sets aside $7.5bn for the installation of 500,000 public points by 2030. Mandates such as that recently announced in Britain requiring new homes, workplaces and retail sites to have charging points, adding 145,000 every year, are likely to become more common. A reason for optimism is that improvements in batteries should continue to offer ever longer ranges, and so less need for frequent charging. Newer batteries will be replenished more rapidly than today’s are, and chargers will provide current more swiftly.
Doubts about the ramp-up nevertheless persist. The numbers are still small relative to the vast scale of charging networks the world needs. More money will be required to update electricity grids to distribute power to the new source of demand. bcg forecasts that America, Europe and China, home to most of the world’s evs, will have only 6.5m public chargers between them by 2030—not enough to meet the iea’s global target of 40m. More cars will vie for each charger. Drivers may need to seek patience as well as thrills. ■
A lack of chargers could stall the electric-vehicle revolution
Forget Tesla’s production hell. The hardest bit of EVs is the powering up
This sounds hyperbolic and scammy.Next new idea.Travelling around Australia in your Telsa and bringing your own printed solar panels to power the trip.
The solar panels cost $10 a square metre.
Printed solar panels to power Tesla on Australian road trip
View attachment 140810
By E&T editorial staff
Published Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Scientists in Australia are testing printed solar panels they will use to power a Tesla on a 15,100km journey beginning in September. They hope the road trip will get the public thinking about steps to help avert climate change.
The Charge Around Australia project will power a Tesla with 18 of the team’s printed solar panels, each 18m long, rolling them out beside the vehicle to soak up sunlight when the car needs charging.
Paul Dastoor, the inventor of the printed solar panels, said the University of Newcastle (New South Wales) team would be testing not only the endurance of the panels but their potential performance for other applications.
“This is actually an ideal testbed to give us information about how we go about using and powering technology in other remote locations, for example, in space,” Dastoor told news agency Reuters in the town of Gosforth, north of Sydney.
Printed solar panels to power Tesla on Australian road trip
Scientists in Australia are testing printed solar panels they will use to power a Tesla on a 15,100km journey beginning in September. They hope the road trip will get the public thinking about steps to help avert climate change.eandt.theiet.org
The 4wd community have been using solar panels that roll up like a swag for some time now to charge their 12 volt system. They are readily available off the shelf.
Why is this reported as a scientific discovery and research??
What am I missing.
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Che ? Really 3 Hound? What are you missing ?
Did you actually read the story before commenting?
The 4 wd drive community use solar panels to power the fridge and the phones.
These panels are powering the whole trip. They are providing all the juice for the 15k trip around Oz.
On top of that the panels are in fact a completely new technology. They have been literally printed off a printing press. A significant part of this trip is exploring the reliability of these panels on long term usage - as the story points out.
I want their job, get tax funding for a lap around Australia to prove you can charge a battery with a solar panel.
Why not just stick on a lab roof do the measurements.
I like these scientists, my kind of people if they can get away with it.
Do they have insta and will they stop for some spear fishing etc??
Why not just stick on a lab roof do the measurements.
I like these scientists, my kind of people if they can get away with it.
Do they have insta and will they stop for some spear fishing etc??
JohnDe
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If you could do the hard yards, rather than whine about others, jobs like theirs would be open to you.
Printed Solar Cell Panels Off-grid | Charge Around Australia
Charge Around Australia uses printed solar technology to generate renewable energy for off-grid electric car charging on a drive round the country’s coast.
chargearoundaustralia.com
What hard yards, your first link goes to a family accounting firm with an interest in sustainability;If you could do the hard yards, rather than whine about others, jobs like theirs would be open to you.
Printed Solar Cell Panels Off-grid | Charge Around Australia
Charge Around Australia uses printed solar technology to generate renewable energy for off-grid electric car charging on a drive round the country’s coast.
Stuart McBain Accountants are a warm, friendly, accessible and down to earth team of specialist financial professionals delivering no nonsense advice in a language our clients can understand. We use our experience and track record to enable our clients to sleep well at night with the peace of mind that all of their accounts needs are being looked after
The other links are nearly purely marketing. Then there is the most unremarkable statement that paraphrasing the pandemic has taught how reliant we are on electricity....that's big brained.
There is no info about the experiments, performance measurements, vehicle characteristics, methodology....nothing other than they will educate kids in remote schools with STEM and relieve people of "range anxiety" but they have a full support team and support vehicle.
The only time efficiency was mentioned was 1-2% apparently in large scale building applications but it was not clear. I found nothing technical about the vehicle or experiments or the performance indicators. Doesn't mean they are not there I just didn't see them.
Point me to the technical bits I can't trawl thru your links looking for something substantial.
The scientific merit of this project is not obvious, the project seems more about marketing and education, nothing wrong with that but that is not why it was posted.
JohnDe
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Not sure where you got the 'family accounting firm' from.
Charge Around Australia is a collaboration between Charging Around Britain Ltd and the University of Newcastle, Australia. The partnership brings together two sustainable energy advocates – electric car enthusiast, Stuart McBain, and Professor Paul Dastoor, a world authority on organic electronics. The pair share an ambition to find real solutions to tackle climate change and the global energy crisis.
As director of Charging Around Britain Ltd, Stuart McBain has been investigating the development of products and services focussed on sustainability over the last five years.
In 2017, he drove around the coastline of Great Britain in an electric car to prove there are sufficient charging points in the UK to ensure that the road range of electric vehicles imposes no limits on journey length. Later that year, he drove around the rugged coastline of Iceland in a Nissan Leaf car to demonstrate that standard specification electric vehicles are more than capable of successfully completing challenging, long-distance journeys.
Physicist and solar energy researcher Professor Paul Dastoor is a global leader in organic electronics. His innovative work at the University of Newcastle developing the world’s first printed solar cell panels, led Stuart to contact him with a view to taking this pioneering technology to the next stage by demonstrating a commercial use for it.
Sustainable Energy - Climate Change | Charge Around Australia
Charge Around Australia partners Stuart McBain Ltd and the University of Newcastle in a project to use printed solar tech on a drive round the country’s coast.
chargearoundaustralia.com
You obviously haven't followed your own link.
Nothing you just posted in either the first or second post vaguely resembles any legit scientific experiment or research.
I get this is not an engineering forum but you don't seem to be able to tell a marketing and promotional article from a technical paper. Nothing wrong with that but you are not making a coherent case.
@JohnDe I'm the guy that is having doubts about spending $100 000+ on a new overland tourer to go around Australia in.
I am precisely the person this article purports to speak to to relieve "range anxiety". I made a thread about it this very issue so I have a vested interest in the topic.
The article fails miserably to address any of the issues it claims to.
It's seems nothing more than a publicity stunt or promotional flyer to promote the uni and educate people - a technical paper it is not.
I am yet hopeful I am wrong and you will show me some legitimate science I was "whining" about...please do.
I am precisely the person this article purports to speak to to relieve "range anxiety". I made a thread about it this very issue so I have a vested interest in the topic.
The article fails miserably to address any of the issues it claims to.
It's seems nothing more than a publicity stunt or promotional flyer to promote the uni and educate people - a technical paper it is not.
I am yet hopeful I am wrong and you will show me some legitimate science I was "whining" about...please do.
JohnDe
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First thing I did, and found "Charge Around Australia is a collaboration between Charging Around Britain Ltd and the University of Newcastle, Australia."
Printed Solar Cell Panels Off-grid | Charge Around Australia
Charge Around Australia uses printed solar technology to generate renewable energy for off-grid electric car charging on a drive round the country’s coast.
chargearoundaustralia.com
Stuart McBain is an entrepreneur with a serious interest in sustainable energy. The partnership between his company Charging Around Britain Ltd and the University of Newcastle, Australia, where physicist and solar energy researcher Professor Paul Dastoor leads the Centre for Organic Electronics, has resulted in Charge Around Australia. Together, Stuart and Professor Dastoor have assembled a dynamic, interdisciplinary team to take this innovative project forward.
Encompassing leading lights in the fields of chemistry, physics and the synthesis of conducting polymers, the team is tackling the challenge of generating renewable energy for long distance electric car travel.
Project Director and Driving Project Lead
Stuart McBain
Research Project Co-ordinator
Professor Paul Dastoor
PhD in Surface Physics, University of Cambridge
BA degree in Natural Sciences, University of Cambridge
ALSO INVOLVED
Aleksei Esguerra
Support vehicle driver and health and safety officer.
Dr Xiaojing Zhou
Provider of key expertise in device design and development and performance analysis.
Dr Ben Vaughan
Provider of key expertise in supporting the fabrication and manufacture of the printed solar cell panels.
Dr Michael Dickinson
Provider of key expertise in the generation system design and development.
First thing I did, and found "Charge Around Australia is a collaboration between Charging Around Britain Ltd and the University of Newcastle, Australia."
Printed Solar Cell Panels Off-grid | Charge Around Australia
Charge Around Australia uses printed solar technology to generate renewable energy for off-grid electric car charging on a drive round the country’s coast.
Our conversation has just ended.
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If there's one term I hate in all this, it's "range anxiety".
Either there's a problem in any given situation or there isn't. If there is well then it's far worse than "anxiety" when the vehicle actually does run out of power.
I just see it as somewhat dismissive as a term since the issue's extremely real if it occurs, it's not some imaginary thing that's all in the mind.
I know it's a widely used term but personally I'm not keen on it.
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Should point out I wasn't having go at JohnDe's post there, just the term itself.
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Think about the number of people who still manage to run out of fuel on ICEs while oetrol station are plentiful aand filling so quick.If there's one term I hate in all this, it's "range anxiety".
Either there's a problem in any given situation or there isn't. If there is well then it's far worse than "anxiety" when the vehicle actually does run out of power.
I just see it as somewhat dismissive as a term since the issue's extremely real if it occurs, it's not some imaginary thing that's all in the mind.
I know it's a widely used term but personally I'm not keen on it.
Now,use EV, huge variable cost of power) aka refill between time of day at home,at servo if when available and the time to recharge.it will be fun to see all thee EVs stuck on or along the road in a couple of yers.
Wonder if there is a business opportunity for giant batteries on wheels for onroad top up you could call, or as part of RACQ/V etc road assistance.get a 50km recharge in 10 minutes so that you can complete your trip or head to a recharge area
Unfortunately Australian culture has degenerated such that a vehicle stuck on the side of the road now means free parts and vandalism.
I suggest EV batteries will be a prize target.
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When people steal highway cables for copper , imagine the battery goldpot..
Cars stolen..just for the batteries, especially if they become interchangeable...which is a must have....and the black market will soon be here within 5y.
I buy an old tesla for 5k with 20km range then call my mate Johny who just got a near new battery fallen from a truck?
Yeah interchangeable aka easier to steal.
JohnDe
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If there's one term I hate in all this, it's "range anxiety".
Either there's a problem in any given situation or there isn't. If there is well then it's far worse than "anxiety" when the vehicle actually does run out of power.
I just see it as somewhat dismissive as a term since the issue's extremely real if it occurs, it's not some imaginary thing that's all in the mind.
I know it's a widely used term but personally I'm not keen on it.
I'm not sure what your saying. It is true, people either do or do not have a problem with range anxiety, the same as they do when traveling across the dessert in a petrol or diesel vehicle.
I have owned an EV since July 2021 and chose one with long range for travel and have been traveling extensively from about the second week of ownership. The first trip was a bit rushed and at night, there was a little 'range anxiety' when heading home but that was just because it was our first time.
People will always push things to the edge, people still run out of petrol in the city.