ABB Unveils What It Calls Fastest Electric-Vehicle-Charging Station

Can existing EV's handle being juiced up that fast? A system designed to spend a work day being charged suddenly gets power fifty time higher... I can see a lot of exploding batteries.
 
Can existing EV's handle being juiced up that fast? A system designed to spend a work day being charged suddenly gets power fifty time higher... I can see a lot of exploding batteries.
The newer batteries can take such a charge, and for lesser batteries the battery and charger handshake to get to the right power level.

So your Porsche should be ok...
 
*IF* they can pull this off, this will go a long way to reducing the important objections to EVs. I recent put 800 miles on my car in a one-day trip; if i had to spend seven hours charging up after every 300 miles, I would have spent more time charging than driving, and it would have turned into a multi-day nightmare requiring motel stays.

Of course then the problem becomes "how do we provide power to the charging station."
 
Right now, as the health crisis begins to wind down, more news about electric vehicles will appear. Wall Street and EV makers want to make the most money possible, so more of this is coming. I doubt those behind charging stations have ignored any of the details. They don't want unsatisfied customers.
 
Beamed power from Space, my dear Scotty ;)

Not necessarily a bad option. My recent trip took me across Iowa and into Nebraska; there were wind turbines galore. A lot of places where charging stations could be conveniently built close to occasionally powerful weather-based power generators (better have a giant bank of batteries, of course). But there are vast regions where a beam of microwaves from the sky would make a lot more sense.

Might even make sense for some urban applications... not necessarily coming in from space, but beamed in from towers and skyscrapers. It would save having to run sizable power lines.
 
*IF* they can pull this off, this will go a long way to reducing the important objections to EVs. I recent put 800 miles on my car in a one-day trip; if i had to spend seven hours charging up after every 300 miles, I would have spent more time charging than driving, and it would have turned into a multi-day nightmare requiring motel stays.

Of course then the problem becomes "how do we provide power to the charging station."
Most DC fast chargers comfortably beat the 7 hour mark already, though Tesla's Superchargers are still the fastest and most ubiquitous.
 
Can existing EV's handle being juiced up that fast? A system designed to spend a work day being charged suddenly gets power fifty time higher... I can see a lot of exploding batteries.

That's not how EVs work. Every vehicle battery system and charging system is designed to negotiate the charging current before charging starts, and to continue negotiations during charging. This means the current supplied by the charger will vary during the charging process: charging starts slow, then ramps up to the highest current sustainable by the battery, and slows down again when the battery heats up or gets close to full.
 
That's not how EVs work. Every vehicle battery system and charging system is designed to negotiate the charging current before charging starts, and to continue negotiations during charging. This means the current supplied by the charger will vary during the charging process: charging starts slow, then ramps up to the highest current sustainable by the battery, and slows down again when the battery heats up or gets close to full.

That may be the design intent. Sometimes things get sporty.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2F9HKZ5VzA


Obviously you get fires at regular gas stations too; sometimes things just go wrong. But things tend to go wrong more with relatively new, relatively untried (on a vast scale) technologies.
 
This ABB charger can provide 360 kW. 250 kW chargers are already in common use - and practically no EV can charge at that rate for very long. If the power negotiation protocol were unreliable, we'd have thousands of EVs going up in flames every week. So this ABB station is no more of a hazard than the current high-speed chargers.
 
I suspect charging will move from 'fastest' to I will be here for 20 minutes, and need 200 miles, now charge slowly to make that - batteries hate being 'fast' charged, even Li-ion.
 
*IF* they can pull this off, this will go a long way to reducing the important objections to EVs. I recent put 800 miles on my car in a one-day trip; if i had to spend seven hours charging up after every 300 miles, I would have spent more time charging than driving, and it would have turned into a multi-day nightmare requiring motel stays.

One can look at people's experiences with electric Cars in Norway, which has 60% of the new car market being pure battery vehicle in 2021 (hitting 70% in the last few month). Sure government intervention changes the cost curve, but it does not change the usability of the vehicle.

So in this market a reviewer can try many vehicles in real world conditions: (time includes charging stops of course)
bjorn-nyland-1000-km-challenge-20210802.png
Some video of trips (50 videos of the above)
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_04rk3lIFcM&list=PLqKx2qnB8Xv7JYxuVkc5gSVJNWxaJmUNF


So vehicle performance really does matter here, with slow charging short ranged city cars having much poorer travel times. However for higher performing cars the time required is within the normal amount of time needed for rest, so as fast charger density goes up the real travel time penalty would not be significant for most users.

Depending on the charging infrastructure, electric vehicles may actually be favored for long range travel as electricity can be far cheaper than gas (really depends on the margins for chargers and all the government intervention in gas and electricity markets).

As for EV fires, especially in China. It is a market that has 400! EV makers due to the government pushing it a crazy amount, and there are $5000 vehicles (with new ones aiming 300km NEDC range) and then there are things like pushing out 600kW recharging vehicles: https://min.news/en/auto/9b74fea8b7c3b805d0ab3c912b324cd5.html
So yeah, I'd expect some fires
 
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My problem with electric cars is not the cars but the grid.Without major
improvements , the grid can't handle the drain and will crash. This will
leave everyone in the dark .
 
My understanding is that this rapid charge option is being pushed, yet it destroys batteries much faster. There is also a lot of talk about electric cars giving charge back to the grid during the day. Excuse me but, give back charge to the grid when they are needed to go to and from work etc? Interesting theory but the zero sum option is not a reality yet.
 
My understanding is that this rapid charge option is being pushed, yet it destroys batteries much faster. There is also a lot of talk about electric cars giving charge back to the grid during the day. Excuse me but, give back charge to the grid when they are needed to go to and from work etc? Interesting theory but the zero sum option is not a reality yet.
it does, but on a new 100K Tesla, it will be on a 3 year lease, so the first 'owner' isnt going to care.

That said, the pricing of rapid charge, should push most people to use slow chargers, at home, much better for the battery, and the wallet.

You would be mad to rapid charge everywhere, but I suppose some will.
 
I cannot believe some of the uninformed replies here. Your EV will have an advanced solar panel on the roof. Solid-state batteries are near final development and "million mile" batteries exist now. The only thing slowing things down from release is the current health crisis. Those who want maximum money can't get it now so new vehicles are being built and vehicle and battery technology will improve by the end of the year when antiviral pills appear. The Grid will be robust when the time comes but not a day sooner.

Standalone charging stations will exist and other locations like parking garages and high volume traffic areas will have them.
 
I cannot believe some of the uninformed replies here. Your EV will have an advanced solar panel on the roof.

On the roof of the *car*? You'd be looking at about one square meter. Maybe three if you consider the trunk and hood as well. if the sun is directy overhead, you'd get *maybe* one kilowatt of sunlight per square meter, producing maybe a few hundred watts per square meter of electricity. being *very* generous, one kilowatt of electricity for a brief part of each day, power falling off as the sun goes away from zenith.

One kilowatt is not very fargin' much to power or recharge a car.
 
.....and those super electric cars are only a small percentage of the vehicles out there. Unless of course you think those of us who cannot afford a brand spanking new electric supercar should get back into our places and learn to walk everywhere and leave personal mobility to those with enough dosh to pay the electric way.

No Scott, not digging at you, just adding thoughts to the line you were on.
 
.....and those super electric cars are only a small percentage of the vehicles out there. Unless of course you think those of us who cannot afford a brand spanking new electric supercar should get back into our places and learn to walk everywhere and leave personal mobility to those with enough dosh to pay the electric way.

Don't forget the added cost of either an entire solar powerplant nailed to the roof of your house, or the fees added to your rent to add those solar panels to the roof of your apartment, or the added property and local sales taxes to pay for the added electrical infrastructure in your neighborhood/town/city, or the additional state income taxes to pay for the massive upgrades to the grid to bring in 1.21 jigawatts from the wind turbines out in the boonies.
 
My problem with electric cars is not the cars but the grid.Without major
improvements , the grid can't handle the drain and will crash. This will
leave everyone in the dark .
The grid needs those upgrades regardless of the state of the vehicle market. Ceasing EV development won't enable Texans to run their AC any longer than they can today.
 
Moose is correct on the grid . It needs upgrades and added security.
I am afraid they have the horse before the cart. Take care of the grid first
before the rush to replace all cars with electric ones by a certain date.
 
Moose is correct on the grid . It needs upgrades and added security.
I am afraid they have the horse before the cart. Take care of the grid first
before the rush to replace all cars with electric ones by a certain date.
Or support distributed networks with solar panels and batteries (or just the batteries in the vehicles themselves...
 
 
Unless of course you think those of us who cannot afford a brand spanking new electric supercar should get back into our places and learn to walk everywhere and leave personal mobility to those with enough dosh to pay the electric way.
Don't forget the added cost of either an entire solar powerplant nailed to the roof of your house, or the fees added to your rent to add those solar panels to the roof of your apartment, or the added property and local sales taxes to pay for the added electrical infrastructure in your neighborhood/town/city, or the additional state income taxes to pay for the massive upgrades to the grid to bring in 1.21 jigawatts from the wind turbines out in the boonies.
Those are FEATURES not bugs when it comes to driving adaptation.

the higher unit cost and near requirement for home ownership for practical electrical car ownership means it would be first adapted by higher class persons. The tastes and fashions of high class generally trickle down to the wider public, while the inverse do not necessarily happen. That was also the strategic edge tesla had over classical OEMs when it comes to entering the market.

The need for infrastructure also makes it very attractive for governments to push as it generate local jobs (which means votes), local businesses (which are both weak relative to government and utterly dependent on government for approval, more power to governments), and of course can be used to justify more taxes.

The ability to stop being extorted by oil producers and likes is also very attractive to nationalists. As we talk now, Britain is suffering a gas shortage scare and China is suffering rolling blackouts from splat over Australia result in lack of coal imports.

I think both China and Europe will push to hit electrification targets as there can be full left-right agreement on the issue. Better pay your own people to build infrastructure than pay Saudis or Russians and risk economic crash if the supply gets messed up for any reason. Oil is not freedom, it is noose held by Ivan~

The US having a serious oil industry with its own lobby power and no strategic need for moving off oil means the equation is different, and probably will really hit stride with electric cost superiority, which likely will happen soon enough with massive scaling of the Euroasian industry.
 
I thought we were supposed to live in a classless society.

Public transport cannot cope with the current demand, increasing demand will do nothing to help that.

There are alternatives to going fully electric that can use the current infrastructure and get results before a fully electric society could ever do. This is supposed to be helping the ecology.

How am I supposed to get to hospital for treatment which is needed rather than a 'like to have' option when there is no public transport to do the job?

Are you really suggesting that it's desirable to put down the poorer among us even further?
 
I thought we were supposed to live in a classless society.

Public transport cannot cope with the current demand, increasing demand will do nothing to help that.

There are alternatives to going fully electric that can use the current infrastructure and get results before a fully electric society could ever do. This is supposed to be helping the ecology.

How am I supposed to get to hospital for treatment which is needed rather than a 'like to have' option when there is no public transport to do the job?

Are you really suggesting that it's desirable to put down the poorer among us even further?
In Europe, most new bus purchases are Electric, for city transport an E-Bus is perfect. Intercity, not yet, but trains are mostly electric now, in Europe.

New cars in UK, are mostly bought by companies, for their staff, so the tax rules push electric, and hybrid, after 3 years these trickle down to the next level. So no, the poor are not expected to buy a Tesla, at least not for 10 years or so. And already most taxi's are hybrid.
 
How on earth will 'the poor' be buying a Tesla? At any age?

Buses, no electric buses here at all, perhaps in major cities and how does this help when there are no services from my home to the hospital? Just how difficult are you trying to make things for the disabled/poor and if someone is disabled there are almost certainly poorer or poor by definition.

There are ready alternatives to fully electric that are ready to go now. Hamstringing us to one solution is a poor tactic that reeks of favouritism and fraud.
 
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How on earth will 'the poor' be buying a Tesla? At any age?
The same way they buy ICE vehicles now: by waiting until EVs appear in the second-hand market, which is just a matter of time. You're also ignoring what's happening already in the new EV market: the first electric cars on the market were $100k. Now you can get one for 1/3 that, and the price keeps dropping.
 
Tesla may have a million mile ev battery coming to market but frankly even at ten years old they are not affordable to the poor. Those cars that do not have million mile batteries will require new batteries at the stage you suggest and the poor will not be able to afford that either.

Not realistic but you are ignoring that.
 
How on earth will 'the poor' be buying a Tesla? At any age?
The same way they buy ICE vehicles now: by waiting until EVs appear in the second-hand market, which is just a matter of time. You're also ignoring what's happening already in the new EV market: the first electric cars on the market were $100k. Now you can get one for 1/3 that, and the price keeps dropping.

I just went to cars.com and did a search for Teslas within 500 miles. Cheapest used Tesla is a 2013 model for a mere 30 grand. It has taken 8 years for a car to drop to only 20 times the cost of a car that many people can afford.

Yes, *eventually* EVs will get cheap. It's good question, though, what kind of piece of junk those used EVs will be. A $1500 ICE car goes just about as far as it did when new; a ten year old EV battery, on the other hand, might struggle to make it to the end of the block.
 
Tesla has plans to produce a hatchback at around $25K new; other automakers are also slowly catching up to Tesla in areas like range and charging speed - I think we'll see the mid-range for EVs become a lot more similar in capabilities over the next decade - things like 250kW+ fast charging, 300mi+ range, etc being more common, with price differences going more into vehicle size, power / performance and luxury features.

Also, while this won't be ideal for a bunch of people, Tesla's long term plan is to manufacture vehicles for themselves and operate an autonomous taxi fleet. Maybe it'll just be nothing more than a Point A to Point B taxi service like Uber (or rather Waymo), but I wouldn't be surprised either if Tesla or their competitors has a rental service for camping, cargo transport, etc purposes. If robotaxi's can charge fees closer to what you'd pay for a bus or train vs a regular taxi (enabled by being able to generate revenue almost 24/7 and not having to pay for a human driver), then they'd probably be a decent option for those on a lower income.
 
I bought my car 33 years ago for the princely sum of £500. When will a used Tesla at al get to that price point? Going to the hospital in a taxi is £60 each way so not even close to being comparible and an extortionate amount for someone of very limited income. This is before I even TRY to go anywhere for recreational purposes. If I went to the stupor market and the hospital in the same week it is more than half my income after paying rent. That does not include buying, you know, wasteful and luxury items like you know, food and heat/lighting. I get it, the real world items get in the way of pie in the sky planning and people do so love pie in the sky thinking, it's so, simple.
 
Cheapest electric car in the UK today, is £2100 with new batteries. a G-Wiz. So not quite £500 but getting there.

A 10 year old Nissan leaf is £5000, so we are getting there.
 
On some meta level, governments and elite are not driven by some meta morality, but mostly by "tactical morality" with immediate utility. Compared to say, fumbling a poorly thought out covid plan or endless foolishness this issue really doesn't make the cut except in its ease of comprehension.

On the cost side: the entire electrical vehicle supply chain is drained against massive demand and price can not go down until the demand is fulfilled. There are things like tens if not hundreds of thousands of preorders on vehicles not to be delivered in years. Existing models have delivery dates a quarter or three down the line. Dealers are putting 10k or more in mark up. Year(s) old vehicles are costing more than new vehicles.

People have often complained that Teslas don't have interiors fit for its price range, and they are right as Tesla is built cheaply with budget car levels of price cutting, and vehicle margins is like 25%, much better than traditional vehicles at 10% and even lower for cheaper cars and wait time is still months. This kind of high margin goes up the supply chain all the way up to battery suppliers and mines. (this is why vertical integration is considered attractive)

A 10x scaling of the Li-ion battery industry simply can not happen overnight. Billions of investment have been put in the pipeline not to produce products until ~2025.



Even Tesla's own investment in battery production has not reached production vehicles.
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Prices may not come down much until ~2027 where all those factories complete and ramp up to saturate higher margin markets, unless Chinese (with some crazy scaling plans announced: that is where the big battery producers are already at) managed to export in a big way before that.
 
On some meta level, governments and elite are not driven by some meta morality, but mostly by "tactical morality" with immediate utility. Compared to say, fumbling a poorly thought out covid plan or endless foolishness this issue really doesn't make the cut except in its ease of comprehension.

On the cost side: the entire electrical vehicle supply chain is drained against massive demand and price can not go down until the demand is fulfilled. There are things like tens if not hundreds of thousands of preorders on vehicles not to be delivered in years. Existing models have delivery dates a quarter or three down the line. Dealers are putting 10k or more in mark up. Year(s) old vehicles are costing more than new vehicles.

People have often complained that Teslas don't have interiors fit for its price range, and they are right as Tesla is built cheaply with budget car levels of price cutting, and vehicle margins is like 25%, much better than traditional vehicles at 10% and even lower for cheaper cars and wait time is still months. This kind of high margin goes up the supply chain all the way up to battery suppliers and mines. (this is why vertical integration is considered attractive)

A 10x scaling of the Li-ion battery industry simply can not happen overnight. Billions of investment have been put in the pipeline not to produce products until ~2025.



Even Tesla's own investment in battery production has not reached production vehicles.
---------
Prices may not come down much until ~2027 where all those factories complete and ramp up to saturate higher margin markets, unless Chinese (with some crazy scaling plans announced: that is where the big battery producers are already at) managed to export in a big way before that.
I think the big car manufacturers know the game is up, you would as a uk company buyer be nuts to buy new ICE cars, and their lease costs must be going through the roof, as residuals will plummet. Everyone wants an electric, just cant afford them, or find them....

They just hope dopy old Joe public, stays on autopilot, and picks the ICE car with the nicest colour, again.
 
Cheapest electric car in the UK today, is £2100 with new batteries. a G-Wiz. So not quite £500 but getting there.

A 10 year old Nissan leaf is £5000, so we are getting there.
A G=WIZ is not a car, it's a bluddy death trap.

A ten year old Leaf will need a new battery so add that to the cost of the car.

Porsche have produced a clean fuel that can equal or better the emissions of an EV.

That fuel can be sold through an existing infrastructure and start making a difference NOW, not in the future when EV infrastructure may or may not be in place.
 

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