Ultra fast chargers

[Richard230]

In my newspaper today was a long article written by David Stringer and published by Bloomberg News.  It discusses very powerful chargers that are now being introduced to the world market. One company making them is Tritium, located in Brisbane, Australia. They are said to be making among the most advanced car chargers available, promising to deliver a full charge to an EV car battery in just minutes.

The article says that thousands of these charging stations are being installed along highways from Shanghai to Germany to California, with the capacity to charge up to 20 miles of driving range in just one minute. Unfortunately, EVs can not take full advantage of these new charger systems right now and it will be later this year before they start arriving in the EV market.

Another manufacturer of these extreme chargers is Innogy's BTCPower, which has plants in California and the Philippines. Tritium offers charging stations that will add more than 215 miles of range in just 10 minutes.  Ionity is building about 400 stations, with as many as six ultra fast chargers each, on European highways.

Electrify America, a VW unit created under a settlement due to their emissions scandal, is spending $2 billion on refueling stations around the U.S. over the next decade. Their first ultra fast charger was installed in Chicopee, Massachusetts last May.

"The speed at which current EVs can recharge is limited by such factors as the size of their batteries, the voltage the pack can accept and the charger's current."  The article says it may be years before new electric vehicles can handle the power of these new chargers. Only Porsche's Taycan sports car, to be introduced later this year, will be able to take full advantage of the these ultra chargers. The roll out of the new chargers are considered to be part of a 10 year plan.

"By the end of 2018 there were more than 630,000 public charging stations installed globally, most of which are located in China. By 2030, there may be demand for more than 20 million public EV charging pumps, the International Energy Agency forecasts." According to the article.

[HadesOmega]

That's good hopefully this tech trickles down to motorcycles because it's painful waiting for this bike to charge if you need to get somewhere =P  I wish I could utilize those DC Fast Chargers.  Plus I can't believe people are charging their Teslas with Level 2 chargers what's the point it won't get any significant charge, it charges painfully slow from a Level 2 charger.  I think they just do it to get the EV parking.

[siai47]

The whole level 2 charging infrastructure is a mess.  Many cars have internal chargers that aren't any bigger than the charger in an Empulse.  For cars that have larger chargers installed (like some of the early Tesla's that can draw up to 80 amps-around 18 KW) the public charging stands are limited by amperage (many 30 amps) and by voltage (many are using a single phase of a 3-phase system that can only provide 208 volts).  On a charging stand like that, the best you can do is a little over 6 KW regardless of the size of the vehicles internal charger.  In addition, private owners of these charging stands need to get their money back so unless the stand is there to entice you to come to their place of business, the purchase cost per KWH of power delivered is extreme.  Tesla's current large cars have a maximum of 72 amps input on the internal charger and the smaller Model 3 has a maximum of 48 amp charger.  As shown in Tesla's case the future isn't AC charging with larger internal chargers.  AC charging will be only used at home for charging the large battery pack over many overnight hours.

That being said (at least for automobile sized vehicles) the emphasis is on level 3 DC charging.  This puts the burden of cost on the charging stand (EVSE) owner and reduces the cost and weight of the vehicle.  As far as motorcycles are concerned there is also a packaging problem for larger chargers.  Some motorcycles have been shown with DC fast charging capability but although that standard isn't settled yet it appears to be going to a plug style known as "CCS" which is a pretty large socket to install on a motorcycle along with the associated wiring for the DC connections to the battery.  The initial cost of a DC charging station is extremely high compared to a level 2 AC charging stand so the rollout will be limited to areas where longer trip drivers operate their vehicles.  As vehicle range per charge increases, the charging stations will be spaced further apart and may be out of the range of many motorcycles until pack density increases and a 250 mile or so range is obtainable between charges.  I am really happy that the Empulse has a reasonable sized charger installed and isn't some 120 volt wall plug unit.  So although slow and limiting usefulness of the motorcycle it was still a reasonable sized unit for its day.