Question About Charging

[Mithion]

As technology, or more in relation to my following question, infrastructure increases and charging stations become more numerous- will we see integrated chargers on electric vehicles removed to save weight?

What I mean by this is, if we end up having as many charging stations as we do gas stations and eventually a single universal charging type is used, is there a need to have the charger on board the vehicle when it can just be at the station?

Just wondering

[Richard230]

I hope not.  I like charging at home overnight.  It is bound to be much cheaper and convenient than going to a commercial charging station, waiting at the station while your vehicle charges and then paying much more for the power.  Obviously, if you are going to travel on a trip, commercial charging stations are great and necessary, but for local use, commuting and the like, charging at home seems like it would be the best approach for a homeowner.  After all, they always tell us that most miles are put on locally. 

This year I rode all of my IC motorcycles a total of about 8000 miles on trips and recreational riding distances over 80 miles.  I ride my Zero short distances almost every day and now have about 8000 miles on the clock.  I figure that I am putting about 5K miles a year on the bike, but with a bigger battery and a longer range between charges, I should be able to reverse those mileage numbers.   

[Mithion]

Why not just have a charging station at home? Does not have to be anything over the top, just a simple way to recharge your vehicle over night. Just seems that the weight savings could be beneficial unless the integrated charger of the vehicle really does not weigh that much anyway.

[00049 (AKA SopFu)]

I think either you're right, or chargers will eventually become so small and cheap that adding them to the bike/car will not be a problem for manufacturers to add them simply for the convenience. Since I already have to lug around the EVSE, having an integrated EVSE/charger probably would not be much worse for me than what we currently have.

[frodus]

That's basically what the L3 J1772 and Chademo chargers are. They are hard wired to AC and output do to the pack directly.

I'm all for it. It's faster and allows us to leave the charger at home. You can still have a small overnight charger... But it doesn't travel with you.

[protomech]

Hard to say.. but probably not.

As our bikes become higher voltage, discrete chargers should get smaller and probably less expensive.

As the technology matures, discrete chargers should get smaller as well.

As the bikes increase in volume, discrete chargers should get less expensive.

I think eventually we'll see the motor controller and charger integrated together into one power electronics block .. for a nearly zero weight gain.

It still might make sense at some point in the far distant future to leave off the onboard chargers .. but L3 charging would need to be reasonably well saturated - inside city centers as well, not just at highway stops. Onboard charging edit: will probably remain in some form as a fallback, but even a small 3 kW charger will be a loong overnight charge for a 30-40 kWh pack.

Ubiquitous L3 charging is so far out that I don't think we'll see it arrive with the current set of charging standards. If we look back only 10 years ago, standardized fast DC charging was only a twinkle, each of the prototype EVs used a different charging system from paddle inductive EVSE to conductive charging .. the J1772-2001 standard existed but was hardly dominant.

In 10 years time we've seen J1772 emerge as the dominant form of AC charging, though with different connector formats for the US/Japan and Europe. A battle for the future of fast DC charging is being waged as we speak. Wireless charging is being trialed in a handful of formats, basically where conductive/inductive charging was 10 years ago.

Hopefully all of this will shake out in relatively short order, as a lack of standardization hampers rollout of charging equipment, and lack of on-the-go charging is a huge shortcoming limiting EVs. If BMW/Honda/Ford/GM/Nissan etc can't settle on a standard in short order, then I think in 10 years we'll all be using Tesla superchargers for touring (and paying who knows what for access rights).

[BrammoBrian]

Cool discussion.  I maintain that the Brammo Owner's forum has some of the most informed/knowledgeable electric motorcycle enthusiasts in the world... 

Just to add something to the discussion, the 3kW on-board Level 2 charger on the Empulse integrates under the seat in the subframe (that's why the seat foam is so thin), and weighs in around 12lbs - so about 3% of the bike's overall mass.  This drops to under 2% when you consider a 200lbs rider as part of the system.



Getting rid of the on-board charger will certainly help performance, packaing, and cost, but probably wouldn't dramatically effect range.  I agree that most vehicles will need to have some ability to charge from an AC household mains supply until we start seeing ChadeMo and DC chargers being integrated into home garages.  For me, one of the biggest conveniences of EVs is the ability to charge at home, overnight and NOT needing to go to a "filling station". 

Keeping in mind that adding battery capacity also increases charge time, I wonder what people here believe is the correct balance between range and charge time on a bike like the Empulse (naked sport / commuter)? 

[Shinysideup]

Keeping in mind that adding battery capacity also increases charge time, I wonder what people here believe is the correct balance between range and charge time on a bike like the Empulse (naked sport / commuter)?

That's a difficult question to answer without considering monetary considerations, like price of the battery pack and price of a home charger.

Ruling out costs, I would go for the maximum range consistent with, say, 12 hours of charging on a L2 charger that could deliver all the amps available from the wall. That way I could arrive home at 6 pm and be ready to commute again at 6 am.

Ideally, I'd like DC fast charge in my garage and the 300 mile range of my ICE bikes. But, factoring in costs, this would undoubtedly be out of my price range, at least with the current state of the art.

[protomech]

Love the cut-apart Empulse.

I ran a poll a little while ago on the electricmotorcycleforum discussing range vs charge speed.
http://electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=3009.0

3 different classes of bikes were discussed in the poll: standard like existing Brammo/Zero bikes, a larger unfaired bike with more battery or charger, and slipstreamed touring.

The assumption is that chargers and battery both compete for volume, weight, and cost budgeting; so you can go big battery / small charger like the current Zero bikes, or fit a larger charger at the cost of additional battery.

Probably the absolute numbers are not particularly useful as they're wildly speculative. But the overall preferences are interesting, to me.

There's a fairly even spread of range and charge preferences for the two unfaired bikes. But when you get to the slipstreamed bike, charge speed is strongly favored. Presumably this is because the entire point of a slipstreamed bike is the ability to tour, and its touring capability is almost wholly dominated by charge speed.

It makes sense to have more powerful onboard chargers be modular equipment; certainly every day you will not need the ~200 pounds of chargers that Terry Hershner carries. But if you're traveling cross-country today, you pretty much HAVE to do so with fast AC charging.

And while 200 pounds is a LOT of weight, that's partly due to the non-specific and modular nature of his charging assembly. I suspect a bike-specific 12-15 kW charger could probably be designed at < 50 pound weight.

In the future things will look a little different.. and we may be able to get away with a small AC charger and rely upon DC charging for road trips.

[Mithion]

I see what you are all saying. It makes sense to have a battery vs charger set-up based on the type of bike and how it is used. You'd certainly want an external charger and a relatively fast charging time on say an electric dirt bike since you want it to be as light as possible.

The whole max range vs charging time is very interesting as it makes you wonder which will be up being used in what type of bike.

Do you want to go a long way without charging and have to wait a long time once you need to charge or do you want to go a series of shorter distances with very fast charges each time you stop. Another interesting thing to wonder is if electric vehicles will ever reach ICE on that level since an ICE vehicle can do both and go very far and refuel very fast. Time will tell.
.

[protomech]

Do you want to go a long way without charging and have to wait a long time once you need to charge or do you want to go a series of shorter distances with very fast charges each time you stop. Another interesting thing to wonder is if electric vehicles will ever reach ICE on that level since an ICE vehicle can do both and go very far and refuel very fast. Time will tell.

Battery-swaps can be faster than a gas fillup, at least in carefully constructed scenarios - see Tesla and the now-bankrupt Better Place. But in practice, battery swaps have huge logistics and inventory issues that really keep them isolated to very niche applications, like endurance racing and along certain very heavily-traveled corridors.

In commuter applications, electric can offer more real-world range than gas. See my experience - tl;dr is that while electric fills up to 100% overnight, gas can start the day at 50% to 25% forcing a re-fill at a time that may not be opportune. However, if you DO have to do an unexpected fill-up midday, electric probably will take too long.

And it won't be too long before electric bikes offer more range than most gas bikes, full stop.

In 2011 you could buy a 4 kWh Zero that offered 30 miles of mixed range @ $10k
In 2012 you could buy a 7.9 kWh Zero that offered 63 miles of mixed range @ $14k
In 2013 you could buy a 10 kWh Zero that offered 93 miles of mixed range @ $16k
In 2014 you can buy a 12.5 kWh Zero that offers 116 miles of mixed range @ $17.5k

Brutus V9 33.7 kWh claims 280 miles of range in the city, 210 on the highway.
http://brutusmotorcycle.com/brutusV9.html

This compares pretty favorably to "long-range" gas bikes, like BMW 1200 RT @ 41 mpg, 6.6 gal tank = 275 miles of range.

Charging of course will take significant time. But let's use the Brutus V9 as an example.

Suppose the Brutus can get a 70% charge in 30 minutes from 50 kW CHAdeMO or J1772 DC (charge from 10% to 80%). That's 150 miles, or about 2 hours of riding in 30 minutes (20% of round trip time charging) .. and very close to what the Tesla Model S can charge at with 120 kW supercharger.

And if you can "cheat" and charge on both sides - for example, an overnight stay - then charge times are even less penalizing.

150 mile trip: ~2.5 hours riding, no charge required (0% trip time spent charging)
200 mile trip: ~3.5 hours riding, 0.25-0.5 hours charging (7-13% of trip time, 1 stop)
300 mile trip: ~5 hours of riding, 0.5-0.75 hours charging (9-13%, 1-2 stops)
400 mile trip: ~6.5 hours riding, 0.75-1.0 hours charging (10-13%, 2 stops)
500 mile trip: ~8 hours of riding, 1.0-1.25 hours charging (11-14%, 2-3 stops)

This is on the freeway, which is the "worst case" for electric motorcycles.

A 300 mile "scenic route" trip might take 6 to 8 hours to ride, and require a 30 minute charge at some point along the way (6-8%).

Charging is certainly not free from compromise - electric will probably never satisfy the iron butt riders - but it's probably good enough for the majority of riders provided charging infrastructure is sufficiently available.

[protomech]

We're slowly demolishing objections to EVs.

A few ago Zero and Brammo introduced their first bikes.

"EVs are too slow, cost too much, have too little range, and charge too slowly."

Then Lightning won the PPIHC outright.

"EVs cost too much, have too little range, and charge too slowly."

Brutus's touring bike will be available soon.

"EVs cost too much OR have too little range and charge too slowly."

As costs fall and technology matures, we'll probably start to see 10-20 kWh packs in small bikes ($5000-10000) and 30-40 kWh packs in bigger bikes ($10000-15000). Maybe 5 years .. and hopefully we'll standardize on and rollout a fast DC charging system.

"I just don't like 'em!"

[Richard230]

Regarding initial purchase price, I note (with the possible exception of the latest mid-range Honda models) prices of just about all IC motorcycles are going up by thousands of dollars next year.  In particular European brands like BMW, KTM, Ducati and the like, are right up there with the most expensive Brammo and Zero models - and BMW is surging past quickly.  True, you get a lot more motorcycle (if that is what you want) and a well established dealer and parts network with the established IC brands, but if you want to ride something different, high tech, quiet, almost maintenance-free and environmentally friendly, electric offers a real choice at a comparable price.  And if you factor in running, maintenance and insurance costs of a BMW or Ducati, it won't take long to save a lot of money.  The times they are a-changing. 

[kingcharles]

I think that being able to fully utilize a L2 station is still the best approach for any vehicle today. I believe it's 6.6kWh in Europe for single phase. Almost all charge stations are single phase here.
DC charging should be an option for those that have the need but until there is consensus on the standard it may be risky for a small manufacturer like Brammo or Zero to invest in it.