EV Thread

[Andy]

A pair of cringe-worthy videos proving how bad an idea EVs are:

The entire purpose of a car is to have the sort of freedom you don't have when relying on public transportation. It makes me thankful for the 5 minutes I spend every couple weeks at a gas pump, cleaning my rear window while dinosaur remains flow into my fuel tank.

 

[Uwe]

A 300-plus mile route, eh?

A Passat or Touareg TDI could do it non-stop.

Twice.

While keeping the occupants in air-conditioned comfort.

I can see using such a car for commuting and grocery-getting. But for real road trips? NFW!

 

[vreihen]

I can see using such a car for commuting and grocery-getting. But for real road trips? NFW!

...and now we have come full circle, with my argument that an EV is fine 96% of the time for most people. When you want to take a road trip, hitch up a fuel-powered generator, rent a fuel-powered car, or maybe come up with some type of front/rear railroad coupler arrangement so that you can join a highway train and recharge/regen while someone else is towing you and a batch of other cars.

Another option for interstate highways is some sort of a "third rail" setup in the dedicated EV lane. It doesn't need to be a continuous run along the entire length of the road. I'm thinking that 15-30 mile segments with a 50-75 mile gap between them would allow someone to quick charge when needed while still making miles and not stopping. I really like the German metro railroad idea of using a super-capacitor on their locomotives in lieu of a battery pack, and having the train recharge at every statin platform in the time that it takes passengers to board/unboard.

Funny story - Just this morning, I gave serious thought to plunking down a grand to get on Tesla's Model 3 order books for the end of 2018. (FWIW, all of the federal tax incentives for the Model 3 will be gone by then.) The deal-breaker was that Tesla does not have an available AM radio receiver as an option in any vehicle that they make. What were they thinking?????

 

[DV52]

The deal-breaker was that Tesla does not have an available AM radio receiver as an option in any vehicle that they make. What were they thinking?????

vreihen: Easy fix - All you need is a coil, a diode and a very rudimentary amplifier (I assume that no one sells "crystal sets" any more up there) - think of the saving that you just made for the planet!!

Don

 

[Uwe]

...and now we have come full circle, with my argument that an EV is fine 96% of the time for most people. When you want to take a road trip, hitch up a fuel-powered generator, rent a fuel-powered car, or maybe come up with some type of front/rear railroad coupler arrangement so that you can join a highway train and recharge/regen while someone else is towing you and a batch of other cars.

The fuel-powered generator is the only one of these that's appealing to my sensibilities. I've said this for many years -- the charging port should centrally located on the rear of the car to allow for this. I'd happily buy a 25kW towable diesel gen set, 'cause it would make an excellent home backup as well when it's not powering the car on road trips.

The deal-breaker was that Tesla does not have an available AM radio receiver as an option in any vehicle that they make. What were they thinking?????

I'm gonna go full tinfoil here: I guess Elon doesn't want people listening to "talk radio".

 

[jyoung8607]

I'm gonna go full tinfoil here: I guess Elon doesn't want people listening to "talk radio".

It's true the Venn diagram of EV owners and AM radio listeners probably have little overlap.

But if I were a betting man, I'd say there may be intractable electromagnetic interference problems. Think alternator noise, except with a Ludicrous Mode capable pair of motor-generators.

Jason

 

[vreihen]

vreihen: Easy fix - All you need is a coil, a diode and a very rudimentary amplifier (I assume that no one sells "crystal sets" any more up there) - think of the saving that you just made for the planet!!

I made one for the radio merit badge back in my boy scout days, and could easily wind another coil for a tuner. They wanted us to make a rock setting and use a raw piece of germanium and figure out which way the bias was, but I took the easier route and used a pre-packaged glass diode instead.

Anyway, the real reason why it is a deal-breaker is that leaving out the AM radio makes me think that the drivetrain is an unshielded RF nightmare on MF, HF, and the lower VHF bands. I would hate to be stuck with a commuter car where 10 and 6 meter radio frequencies were useless, since the transceiver on the dashboard of the Mighty Dodge always has one of its dual tuners set to 29.620 in case the sunspots align for a decent 10-meter band opening to South America or Europe.

Oh, and if I was worried about saving the planet, I wouldn't be driving around in an oversized 3,500kg (4 ton) diesel pickup truck every day. If you want to see my carbon footprint, look at the accelerator pedal.....

 

[NZDubNurd]

Why not convert gas stations to battery stations :-)

Load and unload the batteries under the car, from a massive underground storage area.

You pay a fee for the swap, the receive a battery that you never have to replace - the fee covers the "lease" of the battery, and the charge.

All it would take, is for a standard to be setup that manufacturers and countries around the world comply with.....

Oh yeah.

Forget it!

 

[vreihen]

^^^ I call that idea the barbecue grill propane tank business model. There's a store on every street corner here with an outdoor display of refilled propane tanks. Bring in an empty tank, and exchange it for a full tank and $15 or so.

You joke about the lack of battery pack standards, but didn't take into account that these are not kid's toys with easily-swappable AA batteries. By the time you disconnect the cooling lines, swap the batteries, and bleed the system, the car that came in at the same time and was simply plugged in next to it would be fully charged and ready to go.

Tow-behind rental generators, hydrogen fuel cells, or a third rail power system along roads are the only way to make an EV viable for a road trip.....

 

[Andy]

I was thinking that movie theaters would be an ideal spot for chargers. You have people who will not leave their parking spots for 2 hours. Require proof of movie ticket purchase (fandango/chargepoint tie-in?) and you could entice viewers to unwatchable movies by offering free charging. Buy two $11 tickets for the emoji movie and we will give you $1.50 of electricity for free!

 

[vreihen]

Movie theater? Are those still in business? Over-priced popcorn, sticky floors, lines at the bathroom, no pause/rewind button? No, thank you.

I don't know if you have ever seen this web site before, but their monthly fee is less than a bucket of stale popcorn at the old-fashioned moving pictures show:

http://www.netflix.com/

(I have personally never used the service, so I can't comment on how well it works. I don't have the attention span to watch even a 1/2 hour TV show straight through.)

Seriously though, we have a local restaurant catering to the $100K+ per year crowd that has a few Tesla charging stations in their parking lot. Given the current status symbol price of a Tesla, it seems like a good match for a restaurant that has a huge wine cellar to create an environment where the 25%'ers can enjoy a 2-hour meal with a bottle of wine while their car charges outside...DUI issue aside.

Is it worth splitting this discussion off into a new EV thread?????

 

[Uwe]

Is it worth splitting this discussion off into a new EV thread?????

Not a terrible idea.

For Posterity: Split from Page 90 of Random Videos.

-Uwe-

 

[vreihen]

Since I know that a few people at RT have prior experience with stuff bigger than TTL circuits, can you please check my math here?

Per the reports of Tesla owners and VW's e-Golf specs, it appears that the current status quo is an average draw of 300 watt*hours per mile over a typical driving cycle between recharges.

For the e-Golf:

Mk1 battery = 24.2 kWh for 83 miles, or 292 watt*hours per mile.
Mk2 battery = 35.8 kWh for 124 miles, or 289 watt*hours per mile.

For argument sake, let's just use 300 watt*hours per mile.

What I'm trying to do is get a napkin-math estimate of the instantaneous power needed to keep an EV moving at 60 MPH...which was chosen because it is one mile per minute and also a reasonable highway speed. Is the math as simple as this?

300 watt*hours / 0.01667 (minutes per hour) = 18,000 watts

Am I making a mistake or losing some units somewhere?

We don't know how much extra power will be needed to also tow a 1,500 pound generator behind an RV, but I'm thinking that 20-25 kW of generator is enough to cut the battery recovery times down to a usual 15-minute pee stop every few hours:

I believe that this particular unit is single phase, but there are multi-phase towables available.

Now, how do we get 20kW into the car? SAE J1772-2009? CCS with DC? Anderson connector?????

 

[vreihen]

Going native DC on an e-Golf, the battery pack is 323 volts (middle of the CCS DC charging voltage spec):

http://www.triplepundit.com/2014/10/photo-gallery-e-golf-batteries-made/cells-in-casings-lined-up/

The e-Golf battery is comprised of 264 individual prismatic cells, which are integrated into 27 modules for a nominal voltage of 323 volts.

I take it that this is beyond the safe range for speaker wire and paper masking tape insulation (*) over the splices.....

(*) Believe it or not, I spent an entire day back in the 1990's cleaning up a local high school's solar race car -- where they used coils of speaker wire between the solar panels, and had paper masking tape as the insulation on every terminal in the 72 volt @ god knows how many amps drivetrain power system. When I got done, the range went up from 13 miles to 24 miles per charge!

 

[Uwe]

300 watt*hours / 0.01667 (minutes per hour) = 18,000 watts

That sounds about right. It doesn't take all that much power to keep a reasonably aerodynamic car moving at 60 mph on a flat road, which is why I suggested 25 kW gen set some posts back.

I also don't think a gen-set like that needs to weigh 1500 lbs. How much does an old Rabbit Diesel engine weigh? It's gotta be a whole lot less than that. I think those made what, 50hp? An engine like that should be good for 25-30 kW easily.

 

[vreihen]

I also don't think a gen-set like that needs to weigh 1500 lbs. How much does an old Rabbit Diesel engine weigh? It's gotta be a whole lot less than that. I think those made what, 50hp? An engine like that should be good for 25-30 kW easily.

I was looking at the commercial/construction lines, and they use Isuzu diesels and tip the scales at over 2,500 pounds. That's the magic cutoff line for needing trailer brakes in many states, with New Yorkistan being more strict with a 2,000+ pound trailer brake requirement and a prohibition against tongue-mounted surge brakes.

On a side note, I just realized that I would be tapping out the limits on my 100 amp home power service to quick-charge an EV...and I'm getting too old for climbing up a utility pole every night to clamp my jumper cables onto the primary wires.....

 

[Jack@European_Parts]

WhisperWATT......... By far the best and most quiet gen sets....outside of Lister & with a TDI engine.

https://www.google.com/search?q=whi...rMHVAhUGQCYKHZE1BckQ_AUICygC&biw=1708&bih=778

 

[NZDubNurd]

Sooo... if the genset is towed behind the car... does the genset have to comply with emmissions standards?

It's not actually part of the vehicle, is it?

 

[PetrolDave]

On a side note, I just realized that I would be tapping out the limits on my 100 amp home power service to quick-charge an EV...and I'm getting too old for climbing up a utility pole every night to clamp my jumper cables onto the primary wires.....

In all the homes I've lived in here in the UK our "company fuse" (i.e. the incoming power feed fuse) has been 60A, albeit that we have a nominal 230V supply.

Don't some of the fastest chargers need a 3-phase supply? I don't know of any homes in the UK that have a 3-phase supply, that's limited to business premises only - so the cost of installing a 3-phase supply would be enormous since a new cable would need to be run back to the nearest transformer/switching station.

Makes the economics of EVs very questionable for the country, and that's without taking into account the enormous increase in generating capacity that will be required. Yes I know that EV chargers are often IoT devices so can be controlled and charging scheduled to limit peak demand on the utility companies, but once someone finds out they can disable that then they're going to permanently disable scheduled charging - nobody wants to be unsure if/when their EV will be charged do they? It should just charge when you plug it in, right?

 

[Uwe]

Most modern US homes have 200A service @240V. It's coming off a transformer with a center-tapped secondary coil, and the center tap is grounded, thus producing two 120V (relative to earth) legs that are 180 degrees out-of-phase. This gives us normal wall outlets at 120V, but also the availability of 240V for heavy loads such as electric clothes dryers, electric stoves, HVAC compressors, and so on.

For typical commuter and grocery-getter use, were someone would plug in their EV in their own garage overnight, that's more than adequate to get a full charge by morning. There's also plenty of spare capacity available on the grid late at night and into the wee hours.

Thus, I think you'd only need the really fast chargers for applications like road trips, where the distance being driven in a day exceeds the range available from a single charge. But that's relatively rare. Most people simply do not drive more than 100-150 miles a day in their daily routine, and a car with 200+ miles of range on a single charge would cover 90+% of their needs.