Future EV predictions, anyone?

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eyedrop

Active member
Joined
Sep 26, 2016
Messages
37
Location
Black Canyon City, AZ
I own a 2015 Leaf S and love it. Its the perfect vehicle for commuting, and is capable of road trips with some extra time and careful planning. It really fits my needs perfectly.

I dont own any gas cars (no need to). However, my workplace has recently given me a driving job where I do 350+ miles a day using their company vehicle. Its a 2016 Ram Promaster city. The thing smells, its loud, vibrates, has no power, and just feels archaic like an old relic.

But one thing that has impressed me is the refueling time. I can do my 350 mile route without having to stop and refuel. And when I do refuel, it only takes a couple minutes. I had forgotten how nice of a luxury it is... The thing gets more range than my leaf on a quarter tank of fuel, and you can basically just wait until the fuel light comes on and your pretty much guaranteed to be close to some sort of gas station, where you can stop for just 5 minutes and go another 400 miles.

Its not so much the range that impresses me. Its more about the refueling time and the sheer number of available stations. Its not often you hear people complain that their new car only gets 200 miles to the tank vs. 300. When you can refuel in 5 minutes, and stations are everywhere, range doesn't really matter that much..

I feel like the range issue with EV's is blown out of proportion. The real issue is recharge time IMO. And to a somewhat lesser degree, a lack of stations...

I understand that some Tesla's can get 300+ miles per charge, which is fantastic. But your still spending atleast an hour at the supercharger just to fill it to 80% charge.

My question is, are there any plans to upgrade these charging networks to provide 5-10 minute fueling times, in line with combustion engines? It seems like as EV's become more popular, there will be a need for not only more charging stations, but faster charge times as well. Even if they come out with 500 mile range EV's, nobody is going to want to sit for hours waiting for a charge. For alot of businesses, time is money. You see long haul truck drivers easily cover 800 miles in a day. Imagine how long it would take to recharge that Tesla semi truck with its massive capacity battery, and how huge and congested the lines would be at the charge stations... I just dont see it working on a mainstream level. We will have to totally upgrade the power grid, which would be a massive undertaking. Everyone would need special breaker boxes and power nodes throughout the city which will cost a fortune and take years to implement. Heck, even a standard L3 DC fast charger costs $100k to install. It takes special permits, special installation and wiring, etc...

There are other great ideas, such as magnetic roads that charge your car as you drive. Or roads with built in solar panels to take pressure off the main grid. But again, your talking big $$$ and lots of time to redo our current infrastructure, which has taken decades for our society to build. Its just not ideal or realistic. There has to be an easier solution...

And as a side question, does anyone have insight on what current prototype/proof of concept battery designs are doing capacity wise? What kind of range will we see in 5-10 years? Maybe it will be possible to eventually far exceed the range that gas powered cars are getting. Pretty much nobody drives more that a 1000 miles in a day before sleeping. So maybe mega range batteries will help solve the recharge time issue in the sense that people shouldn't need to be inconvenienced in their waking hours to charge.

Imagine batteries that could go thousands of miles on a charge. You could basically get away with charging it at home with your 110V any time your not using it, and have such a large reserve that a spontaneous road trip across country would be no issue.

There is also the quick battery swap concept that is genious, but none of the manufacturers seem to want to go that direction for some reason. Its a real shame!
 
eyedrop said:
I own an MY 2015 Leaf S and love it. Its the perfect vehicle for commuting, and is capable of road trips with some extra time and careful planning. It really fits my needs perfectly.

I dont own any gas cars (no need to). However, my workplace has recently given me a driving job where I do 350+ miles a day using their company vehicle. Its a 2016 Ram Promaster city. The thing smells, its loud, vibrates, has no power, and just feels archaic like an old relic.

Oh heavens yes! I have a 2013 Leaf and also a 2006 Grand Caravan that I drove today for the first time in more than a week, and it's bloody huge and wasteful with insufficient "pickup" compared to the almost instantaneous max torque that electric motors get!

But one thing that has impressed me is the range. I can do my 350 mile route without having to stop and refuel. And when I do refuel, it only takes a couple minutes. I had forgotten how nice of a luxury it is... The thing gets more range than my leaf on a quarter tank of fuel, and you can basically just wait until the fuel light comes on and your pretty much guaranteed to be close to some sort of gas station, where you can stop for just 5 minutes and go another 400 miles.

I understand that some Tesla's can get 300+ miles per charge, which is fantastic. But your still spending atleast an hour at the supercharger just to fill it to 80% charge.

Elon Musk actually demonstrated the battery pack changing for Tesla cars that operates faster than filling the average gas tank!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE81S26XG8c


My question is, are there any plans to upgrade these charging networks to provide 5-10 minute fueling times, in line with combustion engines? It seems like as EV's become more popular, there will be a need for not only more charging stations, but faster charge times as well. Even if they come out with 500 mile range EV's, nobody is going to want to sit for hours waiting for a charge. For alot of businesses, time is money. You see long haul truck drivers easily cover 800 miles in a day. Imagine how long it would take to recharge that Tesla semi truck with its massive capacity battery, and how huge and congested the lines would be at the charge stations... I just dont see it working on a mainstream level. We will have to totally upgrade the power grid, which would be a massive undertaking. Everyone would need special breaker boxes and power nodes throughout the city which will cost a fortune and take years to implement. Heck, even a standard L3 DC fast charger costs $100k to install. It takes special permits, special installation and wiring, etc... There are other ideas, such as magnetic roads that charge your car as you drive. But again, your talking big $$$ and lots of time to redo our current infrastructure,m which has taken decades for our society to build. Its just not ideal or realistic. There has to be an easier solution...

And as a side question, does anyone have insight on what current prototype/proof of concept battery designs are doing capacity wise? What kind of range will we see in 5-10 years? Maybe it will be possible to eventually far exceed the range that gas powered cars are getting. Pretty much nobody drives more that a 1000 miles in a day before sleeping. So maybe mega range batteries will help solve the recharge time issue in the sense that people shouldn't need to be inconvenienced in their waking hours to charge. Imagine batteries that could go thousands of miles without a recharge. You could basically get away with charging it at home with your 110V any time your not using it, and have such a large reserve that a spontaneous road trip across country would be no issue.

There is also the quick battery swap concept that is genious, but none of the manufacturers seem to want to go that direction for some reason. Its a real shame!

Proofs of concept!ome may go into production at different times. The battery pack swaps would require a very standard battery pack to be adopted.

John Kuthe...
 
JohnKuthe said:
Proofs of concept!ome may go into production at different times. The battery pack swaps would require a very standard battery pack to be adopted.
As for the bolded part, that's rather unlikely between competing automakers. They can't even agree on a single DC FC standard and plug.

Locking multiple automakers into a specific form factor, capacity, mounting methods, connectors (e.g. for power, signal, cooling lines, etc.), chemistry, discharge curve, communications protocols, etc. for who knows how long isn't really going to fly. Each automaker wants to have a competitive advantage and distinguish their product from the others.

What happens when improved batteries come out or there are future generations? What will the stations need to stock?

There are also huge problems in terms of the economics (e.g. utilization rate, staffing needed, batteries needed to be kept on hand, electricity to charge them, cost of the batteries, etc.), placement of stations and how much could be charged for swapping.

This topic has been discussed extensively either here or on definitely very extensively on "TMC" (e.g. https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/swapping-is-coming-discuss-how-it-will-be-accomplished.16730/ and https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/tesla-battery-swap-post-announcement-discussion.18124/).

Tesla's battery swapping experiment is dead. Please see replies at https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/harris-ranch-is-getting-first-battery-swap-station.31947/page-28.

Better Place tried to do battery swapping w/fleets of identical cars. They went bankrupt after blowing thru $800+ million. See http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=8040&start=30 and the page that follows.

There was an attempt between Better Place, Coda and FEV to do battery swapping w/Codas and use them as taxis. Well, Coda went BK as well, and it seems we never got any Coda battery swapping taxis: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/ca-spends-3m-on-6-ev-taxis.10664/.

OTOH, I did physically see these at CES possibly in multiple years: http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1101295_taiwanese-gogoro-brings-back-battery-swapping-for-scooters-not-cars. Not sure how these are doing. No special expensive buildings, machinery and "stations" are required. Humans can easily lift those packs (I did).
 
350mi / day routes are not the normal. It is foolish to make 1 vehicle that does every job. For the extremely few people who do 350miles a day, current BEVs and likely no BEV will be a good replacement. Charge time is irrelevant, that's just not what they are meant to do.

My "fill up time" is only counted by the time it takes to plug in at night, and disconnect in the morning. Way faster than a petrol car, and it is always full every morning. Having a fictional battery that goes 2000miles is a waste of resources. If I want to go large distances, I fly. If i have to drive, I use a petrol powered car. I see that as the best solution. BEVs everywhere within town, and dino powered rental vehicles for when you need to go far.

When you are flying in a plane with 140 other people, you are "carpooling" and the resources used per mile are actually pretty favourable and in most cases better than driving comparable distances. Airlines don't fly empty planes anymore, every flight is a full flight. Just makes it better.
 
A Prius Prime would probably do ok for that many miles. You'd charge it once a day, and leave it in Hybrid mode, allowing the car to use the extra kwh only as needed. It would probably average about 65MPG per day.
 
IMO there will always be a need for ICE vehicles, just not to the degree we use them now. I mean 95%?? of peoples daily drives are within even the range of the Leaf or other BEVs, use them for that purpose and a ICE for longer trips or when you need 100+ miles at a shot. I suppose the ideal all in one vehicle would be the PHEV with say a 30-50 mile EV only range, EV for 90% of your trips, ICE for the other 10%. Unfortunately there aren't all that many decent options for PHEVs, the new Chrystler Pacifica PHEV is nice but at ~$40K and 30 mile EV range, it's on the spendy side. If Mitsubishi ever gets their act together, their Outlander PHEV might be nice and then theirs the new Prius Prime, low 20s for EV only miles and very good highway mileage, kind of the best of both worlds for a smaller car. Lastly the Volt on paper seems to have most everything, 50+ EV range and decent(although not Prius great) hwy mpg, although it's a rather cramped tight car in most every respect, personally I'd have NO interest in one.
IMO if you need more range than say 100 miles or maybe 200 with some of the new EVs coming down the pike, I'd say to get a decent PHEV, much more practical than carrying around 1000s of pounds of batteries and probably better for the environment in the long run. EVs aren't the end-all, but they do a nice job 95% of the time :)
 
I wonder whats up with the Tesla semi truck, and how the heck they will be able to pull that one off. The batteries have got to be massive, with a ridiculous recharge time. Maybe they have something new and groundbreaking up their sleeve? Otherwise, I just dont see it happening... Maybe for a daybcab style truck it would work. But long haul? No way...
 
jjeff said:
IMO there will always be a need for ICE vehicles, just not to the degree we use them now. I mean 95%?? of peoples daily drives are within even the range of the Leaf or other BEVs, use them for that purpose and a ICE for longer trips or when you need 100+ miles at a shot. I suppose the ideal all in one vehicle would be the PHEV with say a 30-50 mile EV only range, EV for 90% of your trips, ICE for the other 10%.


This is where I personally think motoring will go in the future, at least short-term. A battery large enough for the overwhelming majority of your driving needs, but a small engine (perhaps 1 liter displacement or less) for those few times you actually need to go further, or need to charge away from a plug.
 
eyedrop said:
... batteries have got to be massive, with a ridiculous recharge time...
The batteries are just a combination of smaller batteries. There is no reason you can't just break the problem down to smaller pieces. With multiple charge cords it will charge just as fast as today's batteries or faster if they decide to increase the voltage or amperage.
 
DanCar said:
eyedrop said:
... batteries have got to be massive, with a ridiculous recharge time...
The batteries are just a combination of smaller batteries. There is no reason you can't just break the problem down to smaller pieces. With multiple charge cords it will charge just as fast as today's batteries or faster if they decide to increase the voltage or amperage.

This gives me an image of a Tesla Semi pulling into a Supercharging station and plugging every single cord into his truck. Like a mother pig feeding her young, only in reverse.

:lol:
 
So I found this interesting technology that ABB has come up with for quickly charging EV buses. Basically, its called "flash" charging and delivers an astonishing 400Kw for 15 seconds, charging up the battery in just 15 seconds.

http://new.abb.com/smartcities/transport/electric-buses/flash-charging
 
I can drive well over 600 miles in my 1985 VW Golf diesel on a single tank of fuel and then fill it back up with about 10 gallons and then go another 600 miles. I once drove clear to Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico doing well over 3,000 miles round trip and paid less than $200 worth of fuel with my family of four. I don't see me doing that in my Leaf although I would love to.

Ultra capacitors
These have been heavily debated as a future electric propulsion storage method. But they do have their place and may some day make things really interesting. Ultra capacitors can charge and discharge extremely fast, within seconds if there's enough current, with no degradation. Heat and cold also have little or no effect on them. And their longevity makes lithium ion look like a joke.

But they fail in the amount of energy they can store and price. Last I read, ultra capacitors in laboratories can hold as much energy as lead acid batteries. But there hasn't been any like that have been put into production yet. However, even though that's about a third of what modern lithium ion can hold, a car with an ultra capacitor pack could charge off of an ultra capacitor storage "tank" literally in seconds (or less than a second if we can get super conductors or carbon nanotube wire figured out.) This is basically what China is doing with their "Capabuses" that charge at each stop.

But even before ultra capacitors become the main energy storage on BEV's (or would we call them UCEV's?) they can have a place on our EV's right now. Part of battery degradation and efficiency loss is the quick charging and discharging of the battery as one accelerates and decelerates. A small ultra capacitor pack could do that job of supplying instant high current for acceleration and then absorb it all back up during braking while the main traction battery simply supplies a steady average current throughout the day. The result would be a cooler battery, better efficiency and longer battery life.

Air batteries
One of the weight limits of modern batteries is the heavy oxidizing cathode material. But what if we could replace that with air? Zinc air batteries have been proven to work and hold several times the amount of energy lithium ion does. Doing some math on the MetAir 12V battery, if I had 150lbs of those batteries I could hold about 24kWh of electric energy. A company called Phinergy made an aluminum air battery that apparently drove a Nissan Leaf on a trip of over 1,000 miles. But the problem with aluminum and zinc air batteries is that they are primary batteries meaning that they can't be recharged. Efforts have been made to make a rechargeable zinc air battery but it's energy to weight ratio is now about the same as lithium ion. There's the idea to "recharge" via replacing the aluminum anode material which could be recycled and reused.

Unless we can figure out how to make air batteries rechargeable without sacrificing their's advantages most likely these will only end up as backup batteries. Say you need to go over the range of your BEV. After you use up your lithium ion battery you switch over to the air battery and then go several times the distance you could have on pure lithium ion. But after that long to you have to get the air battery serviced or replaced.

Wire Fed EV's
Making huge quick charging batteries is quite expensive and creates an electric infrastructure that is always going on-off-on-off which may require more battery energy storage at charging stations do as not to wreck havoc on the electric grid. But if you could bring the electricity directly to the car the electric grid wouldn't feel that off-on of cars charging all over. Imagine overhead cables that you have a charging "antenna" that reaches up and takes electricity directly from the grid. A small battery or ultra capacitor pack could still be installed on the car for certain areas where you don't have overhead cables, like driving in and out of your driveway.

Maglev EV's

Why put the wires above the car when you can bury them in the ground? With super conducting wires and controllers placed all throughout our paved streets and highways you could provide a magnetic propulsion system that not only propels vehicles, but charges their electric needs and, most importantly, levitates them off the ground! No tires ever needed. Ice and snow would have zero effect on traction. Rolling resistance would be completely eliminated. Couple this with ultra aerodynamic vehicles and this would be the most efficient form of transportation!

Aerodynamics
I want an Aptera!

Come on car manufacturers! Get this figured out! We have the technology to make our cars so aerodynamic you could go well over twice the distance with the same ol' batteries we have now! It seems cars are more about style than practical use. For an example, people prefer crossovers instead of minivans because they like the SUV look even though crossovers are more cramped and less fuel efficient. And remember when the Prius came out and everyone mocked it's funky looks?
 
eyedrop said:
I own a 2015 Leaf S and love it. Its the perfect vehicle for commuting, and is capable of road trips with some extra time and careful planning. It really fits my needs perfectly.

I dont own any gas cars (no need to). However, my workplace has recently given me a driving job where I do 350+ miles a day using their company vehicle. Its a 2016 Ram Promaster city. The thing smells, its loud, vibrates, has no power, and just feels archaic like an old relic.

But one thing that has impressed me is the refueling time. I can do my 350 mile route without having to stop and refuel. And when I do refuel, it only takes a couple minutes. I had forgotten how nice of a luxury it is... The thing gets more range than my leaf on a quarter tank of fuel, and you can basically just wait until the fuel light comes on and your pretty much guaranteed to be close to some sort of gas station, where you can stop for just 5 minutes and go another 400 miles.

Its not so much the range that impresses me. Its more about the refueling time and the sheer number of available stations. Its not often you hear people complain that their new car only gets 200 miles to the tank vs. 300. When you can refuel in 5 minutes, and stations are everywhere, range doesn't really matter that much..

I feel like the range issue with EV's is blown out of proportion. The real issue is recharge time IMO. And to a somewhat lesser degree, a lack of stations...

I understand that some Tesla's can get 300+ miles per charge, which is fantastic. But your still spending atleast an hour at the supercharger just to fill it to 80% charge.

My question is, are there any plans to upgrade these charging networks to provide 5-10 minute fueling times, in line with combustion engines? It seems like as EV's become more popular, there will be a need for not only more charging stations, but faster charge times as well. Even if they come out with 500 mile range EV's, nobody is going to want to sit for hours waiting for a charge. For alot of businesses, time is money. You see long haul truck drivers easily cover 800 miles in a day. Imagine how long it would take to recharge that Tesla semi truck with its massive capacity battery, and how huge and congested the lines would be at the charge stations... I just dont see it working on a mainstream level. We will have to totally upgrade the power grid, which would be a massive undertaking. Everyone would need special breaker boxes and power nodes throughout the city which will cost a fortune and take years to implement. Heck, even a standard L3 DC fast charger costs $100k to install. It takes special permits, special installation and wiring, etc...

There are other great ideas, such as magnetic roads that charge your car as you drive. Or roads with built in solar panels to take pressure off the main grid. But again, your talking big $$$ and lots of time to redo our current infrastructure, which has taken decades for our society to build. Its just not ideal or realistic. There has to be an easier solution...

And as a side question, does anyone have insight on what current prototype/proof of concept battery designs are doing capacity wise? What kind of range will we see in 5-10 years? Maybe it will be possible to eventually far exceed the range that gas powered cars are getting. Pretty much nobody drives more that a 1000 miles in a day before sleeping. So maybe mega range batteries will help solve the recharge time issue in the sense that people shouldn't need to be inconvenienced in their waking hours to charge.

Imagine batteries that could go thousands of miles on a charge. You could basically get away with charging it at home with your 110V any time your not using it, and have such a large reserve that a spontaneous road trip across country would be no issue.

There is also the quick battery swap concept that is genious, but none of the manufacturers seem to want to go that direction for some reason. Its a real shame!

I read an article a few weeks ago reporting that Tesla had plans to upgrade their charging stations from 145kW to around 300kW in the near future. For comparison, typical CHAdeMO charging stations deliver at a 40-60kw rate. At 300kW, you could theoretically charge a 30kW leaf in about 6 minutes. Give the leaf a 60kW battery and you suddently have around 225 miles of range that only takes around 15 minutes to "fill up." Of course, on the freeway the range would be more like 150miles, but oh well.
 
You've got your units mixed up.

Fixing the units in your post and bolding the corrections.
webb14leafs said:
I read an article a few weeks ago reporting that Tesla had plans to upgrade their charging stations from 145kW to around 300kW in the near future. For comparison, typical CHAdeMO charging stations deliver at a 40-60kw rate. At 300kW, you could theoretically charge a 30kWh leaf in about 6 minutes. Give the leaf a 60kWh battery and you suddently have around 225 miles of range that only takes around 15 minutes to "fill up." Of course, on the freeway the range would be more like 150miles, but oh well.
kW and kWh are very different metrics. It's the same as confusing gallons with horsepower. Think of kW = horsepower, kWh = gallons.

If one charges at 1 kW (or 1000 watts) for 6 hours, 6 kWh came out of the wall. If it's at 6 kW for 1 hour, it's also 6 kWh. If it's 1 watt for 6000 hours, it's also 6 kWh.

(BTW, 1 hp = ~0.746 kW. And, many .gov sites say 1 gallon of gasoline=33.7 kWh.)

A 145 kW or 300 kW DC FC for a 30 kWh Leaf doesn't matter. It cannot accept a charge at anywhere near that rate.
 
cwerdna said:
You've got your units mixed up.

Fixing the units in your post and bolding the corrections.
webb14leafs said:
I read an article a few weeks ago reporting that Tesla had plans to upgrade their charging stations from 145kW to around 300kW in the near future. For comparison, typical CHAdeMO charging stations deliver at a 40-60kw rate. At 300kW, you could theoretically charge a 30kWh leaf in about 6 minutes. Give the leaf a 60kWh battery and you suddently have around 225 miles of range that only takes around 15 minutes to "fill up." Of course, on the freeway the range would be more like 150miles, but oh well.
kW and kWh are very different metrics. It's the same as confusing gallons with horsepower. Think of kW = horsepower, kWh = gallons.

If one charges at 1 kW (or 1000 watts) for 6 hours, 6 kWh came out of the wall. If it's at 6 kW for 1 hour, it's also 6 kWh. If it's 1 watt for 6000 hours, it's also 6 kWh.

(BTW, 1 hp = ~0.746 kW. And, many .gov sites say 1 gallon of gasoline=33.7 kWh.)

A 145 kW or 300 kW DC FC for a 30 kWh Leaf doesn't matter. It cannot accept a charge at anywhere near that rate.

Thanks for the correction. I understand the difference between power and energy. Just a mistake.

I couldn't find the max rate that a leaf could currently accept. Have you found that info? We know it can accept 100kW, and I would assume it can accept 150kW, since there are plans for EVgo to deply those CHAdeMO chargers this year. Regardless, it's safe to say their threshold would increase with future generations.
 
RonDawg said:
jjeff said:
IMO there will always be a need for ICE vehicles, just not to the degree we use them now. I mean 95%?? of peoples daily drives are within even the range of the Leaf or other BEVs, use them for that purpose and a ICE for longer trips or when you need 100+ miles at a shot. I suppose the ideal all in one vehicle would be the PHEV with say a 30-50 mile EV only range, EV for 90% of your trips, ICE for the other 10%.


This is where I personally think motoring will go in the future, at least short-term. A battery large enough for the overwhelming majority of your driving needs, but a small engine (perhaps 1 liter displacement or less) for those few times you actually need to go further, or need to charge away from a plug.

You are talking about range extenders and you can already get one (Chevy Volt, BMW i3, etc.).

With regards to range - obviously the vast majority of people out there drive very little day to day and for that reason, low range EVs are fine. However, there is always the possibility that an unexpected eventuality may come up that could require you to drive more. For example, let's say you have a Leaf that you can realistically drive 100 miles before empty. Your day to day driving is around 50 miles. Suddenly, you get a phone call that someone has died, someone needs to be picked up or taken to the airport, you have a family emergency where someone has been taken to a hospital far away - whatever scenario you want to use. Now you are faced with an emergency that you cannot get to because your car simply cannot get you there. This is something that you do not have to worry about with an ICE car because you probably have enough gas already to get there and if not, a quick stop at a gas station can fix that. Now granted, that is an extreme situation, but they are not unheard of (I've been through enough of them to know that).

That is my biggest issue with limited range EVs and it's something that I don't have the same reservations about with cars like the Bolt and the various Teslas - I just cannot afford either of those. So for me, and I would assume the vast majority of other people on the fence with adopting the tech, range is an issue that needs to be addressed. I think having a car that, at minimum, can go around 250+ miles on a charge would fix that. Forget about EVs and use this same argument for ICE cars. How many of you would buy a gasoline powered car that could only go 100 miles before needing a fill up? Then assume that there wasn't a gas station on every street corner and that an average fill up of your car will take an hour or more, would you still buy that gasoline car? Not when every other car on the market can go 300 or more on a tank you're not.

The next problem with getting people to adopt these en masse is the cost of them. It's hard to convince someone to spend $35K or more on an EV when they can buy an ICE car for $16K+ (and I'm talking basic transportation here people - I'm not talking about someone who is happy to spend six figures on a car). There is another thread where I have put up my approximate costs for operating my current car (Fiat 500) and it would cost me more money to own an EV than what I am spending on my ICE car to operate - the economics of them are simply not there for the vast majority of people (I'm talking about the masses here and not people who can easily afford $40K + cars - the masses cannot afford those cars).

You start marketing a reliable EV with a 250+ mile range in the $20K range and I think you will see more adopters. I think Hyundai is on the right track with pricing the Ioniq EV at $29K and that is a step in the right direction.

Purely my opinion as a poor guy ;)
 
eyedrop said:
So I found this interesting technology that ABB has come up with for quickly charging EV buses. Basically, its called "flash" charging and delivers an astonishing 400Kw for 15 seconds, charging up the battery in just 15 seconds.

http://new.abb.com/smartcities/transport/electric-buses/flash-charging
That works out to about to about 6.5 - 7.0 miles of range per 15 second zap
 
webb14leafs said:
eyedrop said:
I read an article a few weeks ago reporting that Tesla had plans to upgrade their charging stations from 145kW to around 300kW in the near future.
Or more, but I am pretty confident that power delivery is for the Tesla Semi and not a passenger car.

It has recently come to light that Tesla throttles some of its Model S cars to 95 kW if a lot of DCFC has been logged. It took about 300 charges for one owner to be throttled, and that was using mostly ChaDemo which is limited to ~ 50 kW. I think this is pretty good evidence that Tesla is already pushing the envelope at 120 kW maximum charging rates at current Superchargers and substantial improvements in battery chemistry are needed before higher charging rates are practical. At least, if you want the battery to last.
 
tattoogunman said:
You start marketing a reliable EV with a 250+ mile range in the $20K range and I think you will see more adopters. I think Hyundai is on the right track with pricing the Ioniq EV at $29K and that is a step in the right direction.
Different strokes for different folks.

I like the combination of one short range, inexpensive EV commuter and one long-distance, more expensive *EV in our household. For now that means a LEAF and a Prius Prime, but I expect that to change to a LEAF and a Tesla Model 3 in a year or so.

The * can be any of
Big(ger) battery
Fast(er) charging
Liquid fuel engine

Overall, the current Tesla recipe of 200+ miles from home plus another 20 minutes charging per extra 100 miles thereafter is a damned good solution. In general, I much prefer a trade-off of fast(er) trip charging instead of big(ger) battery, simply because most of my driving is short range so the big(ger) battery adds cost and reduces efficiency 30/31 days of the month.

In other news, the average transaction price of a car in the US in 2016 was $33k
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj0nLH83fTTAhUY5mMKHfm6BcAQFggpMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmediaroom.kbb.com%2Fnew-car-transaction-prices-up-2-percent-march-2016&usg=AFQjCNHaL2c9yse9rJjvbjpSjZoVQop29A&sig2=1QGJ1XzZmXz00sgEdgWyrA
 
SageBrush said:
.....In other news, the average transaction price of a car in the US in 2016 was $33k
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj0nLH83fTTAhUY5mMKHfm6BcAQFggpMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmediaroom.kbb.com%2Fnew-car-transaction-prices-up-2-percent-march-2016&usg=AFQjCNHaL2c9yse9rJjvbjpSjZoVQop29A&sig2=1QGJ1XzZmXz00sgEdgWyrA
Interesting they actually give Electric Vehicles a seperate line. At $36,644 average, they can't be selling too many $70-100k Teslas.....
 
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