Brammo Owners Forum
General => Off Topic => Topic started by: Mithion on August 25, 2012, 07:17:57 AM
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I am trying to figure out what the real benefit of having the charger on board or built in is?
I understand that without the on board charger there would be no way to let's say go to a restaurant and charge the bike up using the restaurants outlets. So let's assume that as electric vehicle usage increases overall so to will the infrastructure of electric recharging stations and battery capacity.
Would removing these supposedly heavy chargers from the actual bike provide any benefit? From what I have read a "fast charger" or "Level II" is a very heavy and large unit to have on a motorcycle so why not remove it and have the charger as something you just hook up to the bike when it needs to be recharged?
Sorry if my lack of knowledge is offensive lol :0)
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I like an on-board charger. I used mine all the time when I was riding my GPR-S to work. I would ride to work, charge up the bike for a few hours and be ready to go for a ride at lunchtime. I would return to work, plug it in and be ready to ride back home in the evening.
Now I ride my Zero to a County forest park 30 miles away, plug it in at an unused picnic shelter, go hiking for a few hours and ride home without worrying about saving electrons.
I think they are worth the extra few pounds of weight and book-sized space that they take up on a motorcycle.
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One big advantage of an on board charger is that it acts as a standard interface between the electricity supply and the multitude of battery systems out there. Right now, the battery systems are not standard, and every company is free to make their batteries work any way they want. As long as the input of the battery charging unit follows a standard (e.g. J1772), you will have a good chance of being able to charge up at lots of places that support that standard.
It's possible that in the future some battery system standards will appear and one of two will become dominant. At that point, it may be possible to remove the charging unit from the EV.
I believe that CHAdeMO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHAdeMO) is one such standard. It connects directly to the DC battery and bypasses any on board charger, which also allows you to recharge much faster.
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The 0.8 kW (effective) charger on the Zero weighs about 13 pounds. A lot of that is heatsink.
The 3.3 kW charger on the Empulse operates at a higher voltage, it's probably somewhat more efficient. I believe it uses the same liquid cooling system as the motor, so it probably weighs about as much as the Zero charger.