Electric vehicles are now commonplace on our roads, and charging infrastructure is being built out across the world to serve them. It’s the electric equivalent of the gas station, and soon enough, they’re going to be everywhere.
However, it raises an interesting problem. Gas pumps simply pour a liquid into a hole, and have been largely standardized for quite some time. That’s not quite the case in the world of EV chargers, so let’s dive in and check out the current state of play.
AC, DC, Fast, or Slow?
Since becoming more mainstream over the past decade or so, EV technology has undergone rapid development. With most EVs still somewhat limited in range, automakers have developed ever-faster charging vehicles over the years to improve practicality. This has come through improvements to batteries, controller hardware, and software. Charging tech has evolved to the point where the latest EVs can now add hundreds of miles of range in under 20 minutes.
However, charging EVs at this pace requires huge amounts of power. Thus, automakers and industry groups have worked to develop new charging standards that can deliver high current to top vehicle batteries off as quickly as possible.
As a guide, a typical home outlet in the US can deliver 1.8 kW of power. It would take an excruciating 48 hours or more to charge a modern EV from a home socket like this.
In contrast, modern EV charge ports can carry anywhere from 2 kW up to 350 kW in some cases, and require highly specialized connectors to do so. Various standards have come about over the years as automakers look to pump more electricity into a vehicle at greater speed. Let’s take a look at the most common options out in the wild today.
“Type 1” aka SAE J1772
AC, single phase.
The SAE J1772 standard was announced in June 2001, also known as the J Plug. The 5-pin connector supports single-phase AC charging at 1.44 kW when hooked up to a standard home power socket, ramping up to a full 19.2 kW when installed on a higher-speed EV charging station. The connector carries single-phase AC power on two conductors, signalling on two further conductors, with the fifth being a protective earth connection.
The J Plug became mandatory for all EVs sold in California after 2006, and quickly caught on in the USA and Japan, with some penetration into other worldwide markets.
“Type 2” aka Mennekes
AC, single or three phase.
The Type 2 connector, also known for its creator, German manufacturer Mennekes, was first proposed in 2009 as a replacement for SAE J1772 in the European Union. It’s headline feature is that its 7-pin connector design can carry single-phase or three-phase AC power, allowing it to charge vehicles with at up to 43 kW. In practice, many Type 2 chargers top out at 22 kW or less. It similarly features two pins for signalling pre-insertion and post-insertion, similar to J1772. It then has a protective earth, a neutral, and three conductors for the three AC phases.
In 2013, the EU chose Type 2 plugs as the new standard to replace J1772 and the obscure EV Plug Alliance Type 3A and 3C connectors in AC charging applications. The connector has become widely accepted the European market since then, and is available on many international market vehicles, too.
CCS – Combo 1, Combo 2
AC, single or three phase, DC fast charging
CCS stands for Combined Charging System, and uses “combo” connectors to allow both DC and AC charging. The standard was published in October 2011, and aimed to allow for high-speed DC charging to be easily implemented on new vehicles. This would be achieved by adding a pair of DC conductors to existing AC connector types. CCS comes in two main forms, the Combo 1 connector and the Combo 2 connector.
The Combo 1 features a Type 1 J1772 AC connector paired with two large DC conductors. Thus, a vehicle with a CCS Combo 1 connector can hook up to J1772 chargers for AC charging, or a Combo 1 connector for high-speed DC charging. This design was intended for vehicles on the US market, where the J1772 connector had become commonplace.
The Combo 2 connector features a Mennekes connector paired with two large DC conductors. Intended for the European market, this allows cars with a Combo 2 socket to charge on single or three phase AC with a Type 2 connector, or to hook up to a Combo 2 connector for DC fast charging.
CCS allows for AC charging as per the standards of either the J1772 or Mennekes subconnectors built into the design. When used for DC fast charging, however, it allows for lightning-fast charge rates up to 350 kW.
Notably, DC fast chargers with the the Combo 2 connector eliminate the AC phase connections and neutral from the connector, as they are unneeded. Combo 1 connectors leave them in place, though they are unused. Both designs rely on the same signalling pins as used by the AC connector in order to communicate between vehicle and charger.
Tesla
AC single phase, DC fast charging
As one of the pioneering companies in the EV space, Tesla set out to design its own charging connector to suit the needs of its vehicles. This was rolled out as part of Tesla’s Supercharger network, which aimed to build out a fast-charger network to support the company’s vehicles when little other infrastructure existed for the purpose.
While the company fits its vehicles with Type 2 or CCS connectors in Europe, in the US, Tesla has used its own charge port standard. It can support both AC single and three phase charging, as well as the high-speed DC charging at Tesla’s Supercharger stalls.
Tesla’s original Supercharger stations could deliver up to 150 kW per car, though later low-power models for urban areas had a lower limit of 72 kW. The company’s latest chargers can deliver up to 250 kW to suitably equipped vehicles.
Chinese GB/T 20234.3 Standard
DC fast charging
Issued by the Standardization Administration of China, the GB/T 20234.3 standard covers a connector capable of both single-phase AC and DC fast charging. Virtually unknown outside China’s unique EV market, it’s rated to run at up to 1,000V DC and 250 amps, providing charging speeds up to 250 kW.
It’s unlikely you’d find this port on a vehicle that wasn’t built in China, and intended for its own market or perhaps those countries it has strong trade relationships with.
Perhaps most interesting about this port design are the A+ and A- pins. These are rated for up to 30 V and up to 20 A of current. They’re described in the standard as being for “low voltage auxiliary power supply provided by the off-board charger for the electric vehicle.”
Their exact function isn’t clear from that translation, but they may be intended to help jump-start an EV that has completely dead batteries. When an EV’s traction battery and 12V battery are both dead, it can be difficult to charge the vehicle as the car’s electronics don’t have any power to wake up and communicate with the charger. Nor can contactors be energized to connect the traction pack to the car’s various subsystems. These two pins may be intended to provide enough juice to run the car’s basic electronics and energise contactors so that the main traction battery can be charged even if the vehicle has absolutely no power. If you know more about this, feel free to let us know in the comments.
CHAdeMO
DC fast charging
CHAdeMO is a connector standard for EVs that was built first and foremost for fast-charging applications. It can deliver up to 62.5 kW via its unique connector. It was the first standard that aimed to provide DC fast charging to EVs regardless of manufacturer, and features CAN bus pins for communication between vehicle and charger.
The standard was proposed in 2010 for global use, backed by Japanese automakers. However, the standard has only really caught on in Japan, with Europe sticking to Type 2 and the US going with J1772 and Tesla’s own connector. The EU at one point considered mandating a complete phase-out of CHAdeMO chargers, but instead settled for a requirement that charging stalls “at least” feature a Type 2 or Combo 2 connector instead.
A backwards-compatible upgrade was announced in May 2018, which would allow CHAdeMO chargers to deliver up to 400 kW, eclipsing even CCS connectors in this area. Proponents of CHAdeMO cited its nature as a single standard around the globe, versus the split between US and EU CCS standards. However, it has failed to find much purchase outside the Japanese market.
A CHAdeMo 3.0 standard has been in development since 2018. Known as ChaoJi, it features a completely new 7-pin connector design, developed in partnership with the Standardization Administration of China. It hopes to increase charging rates up to 900 kW, running at 1.5 kV and delivering a full 600 amps through the use of liquid-cooled cabling.
Summary
Reading this article, you could be forgiven for thinking that there’s a whole mess of different charging standards ready to give you headaches wherever you drive your new EV. Thankfully, it’s not really the case. Most jurisdictions have worked to support one charging standard to the exclusion of most others, leading to most vehicles and chargers in a given area all being compatible. The exception, of course, is Tesla in the US, but they also have their own dedicated charging network.
While there are a few people that have gotten stuck with the wrong charger in the wrong place at the wrong time, they can often get by with an adapter of some sort or other where needed. Going forward, most new EVs are sticking to the established charger types in their region of sale, making life easier for everyone.
I will forever refer to Tesla’s Supercharger as the “Surprised Robot Face Plug”
https://m.xkcd.com/927/
Now the universal charge standard is USB-C :-). Everything should charge with USB-C, NO EXCEPTIONS. I envision a 100KW EV plug that is just an array of 1000 USB C connectors jammed into one plug all running in parallel. With the right materials you can probably keep the weight under 50 Kg (110 lbs) for ease of use.
I legit can’t wait until I can wire up lifepo4 batteries to a bms over usb pd.
Good news everyone!
Many PHEVs and electrics have up to 1000lb towing capacity, so you can use a trailer for schlepping your adapter and converter collection. Also gennys are on sale at Peavey Mart this week if there’s still a couple hundred GVWR spare.
Seems cumbersome when I can already plug in whenever I need to. Also, the generator is really slow.
The comments about Type 1 (SAE J1772) and CHAdeMO in Europe completely miss the fact that two of the best-selling EVs the Nissan LEAF and the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV feature these connectors.
These connectors are in widespread use and are not going to disappear. While Type 1 and Type 2 are compatible at the signal level (permitting detachable Type 2 to Type 1 cables), CHAdeMO and CCS are not compatible. There is no realistic way for a LEAF to charge from CCS.
If rapid chargers stopped having CHAdeMO capabilities I would seriously consider returning to ICE cars for long journies and keep my LEAF for local use only.
I have an Outlander PHEV. I have used the DC fast charge feature a handful of times just to try it when I have had free charging offers. Sure it charges the battery up to 80% in 20 minutes but that gets you around 20 km of EV range.
A lot of DC fast chargers are flat rate so you might be paying close to 100 times the normal cost of electricity for those 20 km’s which is way more than if you just drove using gasoline. The by the minute chargers are not much better since it is limited to 22 kw.
I love my Outlander since EV mode can cover my entire commute but the DC fast charging is a feature that is as useful as a third nipple on a man.
The CHAdeMO connectors should stick around for all the leafs (Leaves?) but don’t bother for the Outlanders.
Tesla also sells adapters which allow Teslas to use J1772 (of course) and CHAdeMO (a bit more surprising). They eventually discontinued the sale of the CHAdeMO adapter, and introduced a CCS adapter… but only for some vehicles, in some markets. The adapter needed for a US tesla with a proprietary tesla supercharger socket to charge from a CCS Type 1 charger is apparently only sold in South Korea (!), and only works on the newest cars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=584HfILW38Q
Electricity America and even Nissan have said they are phasing out Chademo in favor of CCS. The new Nissan Arya will be CCS and the Leaf stops production soon.
J1772 is here to stay though in the US atleast.
EV specialists Muxsan in The Netherlands have come up with a CCS addition for the Nissan LEAF, which replaces the
AC port.
This allows Type 2 AC & CCS2 DC charging, while keeping the CHAdeMo port.
Hi,
Do you have more information about that?
https://xkcd.com/927/
I should recognise that number without having to click it by now :-D
I know 123, 386 and 356 without looking too. Well, actually, I get the last two mixed up so need to check.
Yep. aka “I love standards, there are so many to choose from!”
Yeah, even more so when you assume its being linked in context…
But I had to click it myself, I guessed it would be the one it was, but the number gave me no clue at all.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2uuii3/a_man_goes_to_prison_joke_with_two_opposite/
The CCS2/Type 2 connector is coming to America, as the J3068 standard. Intended use case is for heavier duty vehicles, as the 3 phase power provides significantly faster rates. J3068 does specify a higher voltage than Type2, as it can go up to 600V phase to phase. DC charging is identical to CCS2. Voltages and currents exceeding Type2 standard require digital signaling so that the vehicle and EVSE can determine compatibility. At potentially 160A, J3068 could reach 166kW of AC power.
“in the US, Tesla has used its own charge port standard. It can support both AC single and three phase charging”
It can? Seems to me that the Tesla connector has too few pins for three phase charging.
It is only single phase. It is basically the J1772 plug in a different layout with added DC capability.
J1772 (CCS type 1) actually can support DC, but I’ve never seen anything implement it. The “dumb” j1772 protocol has a value for “digital mode required” and “type 1 DC” means dc on the L1/L2 pins. “Type 2 DC” requires the combo connector’s extra pins.
The US Tesla connector doesn’t support 3-phase AC. The author is confusing the US and European connecters, the latter of which (also known as CCS Type 2) does.
Apologies, corrected!
On a related topic: Are electric vehicles allowed on the roads without paying the road tax added to the cost of gasoline? If so, why? Assuming a (totally untenable) environmentalist utopia with >90% of cars being electric ever happens, where is the tax revenue to keep the roads drivable going to come from? You can add it to the cost of public charging, but people can also charge at home, from solar panels, or even from a generator running on “agricultural” diesel (no road tax).
All depends on the jurisdiction. Some places only charge it as a tax on fuel. Some charge vehicle registration fees as a fuel surcharge.
At some point some of the ways the these costs are recuperated will need to be changed. I’d like to see an equitable system where the fee is based on miles driven and weight of the vehicle as that is what determines how much wear you cause to the road. A carbon tax on fuel is probably more appropriate to even the playing field.
I would not. Mileage tax means tracking of vehicles and active violation of privacy, or “black boxes” and restrictions on repairing your vehicle in case of tampering.
Yearly taxes based on vehicle class, weight, motor size etc. are already a thing. The rest can come from corporate and income taxes. Of course it means the tax rate has to go up – but that just means the public becomes better aware of how much they’re actually paying anyways.
Mileage is read yearly here in VA at state inspection time, I don’t doubt it’s already being put in a database somewhere so it wouldn’t mean active vehicle tracking or any more invasion of privacy than the state is already perpetrating.
That’s mostly for statistics purposes, and for you to prove that you haven’t been screwing with the odometer when it comes to selling the car. If it was the basis for a tax, the government would have to double down that people don’t tamper with the meter – because you know you would. That means you have a black box in your car that is legally and most likely technically mandatory for its operation (no go if the black box isn’t recording), that you can’t touch even to repair your car, and neither can anyone not government licensed.
The alternative is to put a GPS tracker on every car to record their actual movements and send it up live, which you cannot legally turn off like you can with present tracking systems. Plus the above problems with right to repair.
In New Zealand only petrol has the roading taxes included, while diesel vehicles pay Road User Charges – mileage that you pre-pay just like registering a vehicle. The price of RUCs vary depending on the registered class of vehicle, and represent a compromise between complexity and fairness. Petrol vehicles are all roughly the same size, while diesels vary wildly. Fuel consumption also roughly tracks with the number of miles covered.
This system also eliminates the “farmer diesel” or “red diesel” issues that arise from tax-exempt fuel being used in roadgoing vehicles.
Right now EVs are exempt from RUCs – to encourage uptake I expect – but that’s very easily changed by adding EVs to an existing system and making them pay for the roads just like all other vehicles.
EVs would likely be classified at the lighted possible registration class despite their abnormal weight
It is entirely possible to know how far someone has driven in a year using self reporting rather than some kind of active tracking.
Keep in mind that road damage, which is the cause of the cost, is literally 99% caused by 18-wheeler cargo trucks, and 90% of that is by illegally over-weight trucks. And trucks pay only 34% of road taxes – consumer vehicles, which do 1% of the damage pay 66% of road taxes. It would be far more efficient to stop collecting money from consumer drivers via gas taxes, and just tax the commercial cargo carriers to pay for their road damage, vastly simplifying tax collection and allocating the costs more fairly.
This is only true for the interstate highway system and it’s closer to 70%. Wear and damage to city streets and side roads is caused by mostly cars and all of these roads exceed the interstate system miles by a factor of at least 1000.
And EV’s, being cars, should pay for their share.
The benefit of roads is not the driving, but getting somewhere and doing something there. The funds should come from taxing commerce or income in general, because even people who do not drive derive profit from the fact that others do.
Fuel and vehicle taxes are simply abused to pay for everything else but roads and infrastructure. Vehicles are “inflexible demand” – taxing more does not cause people to drive much less, so it’s easy to crank up the taxes beyond what is actually needed or used for the purpose of the tax. The other reason is “tax diversification”: splitting up the tax revenue between many sources that are not easily collated by the public, so the taxpayers do not become directly aware of their total tax burden and will accept more public spending.
The third reason is that the political left finds private car ownership interferes with their attempts at social engineering. They’d like to plan where everyone lives and works, and how they get in between by public transportation – but people instantly bypass the whole “rational plan” because they can simply drive anywhere they like better, which they usually do.
So instead of making better plans or admitting that they’re incompetent and shouldn’t even try, they attack private vehicle ownership by increasing taxes and closing off roads in cities to push more people onto public transport.
Kick a commie square in the balls today!
wow you’re a delusional fool aren’t you
If you’re in any way adjacent to city/town planning politics and know people who are, you see all sorts. There are people who think they know what’s best for everyone, and 99 times out of 100 they’re wrong.
The problem is when they get into city planning and decide that, “Ooh, it would be nice if we banned automobiles in the city center, then everyone could walk on the streets! Equal access to those who don’t have cars!” Brilliant – except then the stores suffer because the only people who will visit there are those who already live in the center, and soon enough there will be a giant drive-to shopping center built somewhere on the outskirts of the city.
You think walking only downtowns cause Walmarts and Costco’s to spring up on the outskirts? Lol
It certainly does not help against them.
Here in VA, it’s an extra $90 added to the yearly registration, which made me pretty angry last year when I got my EV because neither the dealer nor the DMV website mentioned it. I’d waited a month for the DMV appointment and had only brought an extra $50 for unexpected fees or whatnot, so I had to wait another month for the next appointment.
However, aside from that initial inconvenience, it’s ok. I drive a lot of miles so the math works out to my advantage compared to gas taxes. For those who drive less, or in one of the several states with a $200+(!) yearly EV fee, it’s downright punitive in my opinion. Should be based on mileage and car size so it can be made equivalent to gas taxes.
“I’d waited a month for the DMV appointment”
I thought waiting an hour at the NY DMV was a pain…
You guys are doing it wrong.
“Mileage tax means tracking of vehicles and active violation of privacy”
Really. I get my car safety inspected once a year, they record the mileage. It’s not really a privacy violation.
Any fixed fee or tax on any car is going to end up unequal. The tax should just be rolled into income tax, as those who benefit most from people driving around in general would then pay the bigger share.
Oh, don’t forget that you get to pay a 4.5% personal property tax on that EV (whose value is increased by $10k since you bought the battery up-front instead of paying for fuel over time) in many localities in VA, plus the upfront sales tax. Also, the fee is $109, now. And you still get to pay taxes on electricity.
Just had to remind me about that yearly personal property tax, didn’tcha? And the yearly dmv fee has gone up, too? Lovely. :-P
I bought a tiny, ancient, short range, slow charging used EV because it was all I could afford (I still love the thing despite all that tho), so fortunately the property tax isn’t as bad as it is for folks who bought new, but with the ever increasing yearly “those freeloading electrics” fee it’s gonna take that much longer for me to break even on the upfront expense of even this used EV versus the running costs of a cheap gas car. It will be nice paying the equivalent of about a dollar a gallon after that tho…
Here in WA it is a $150 fee on the yearly registration.
In the US, most of the cost of roads is paid by local and state general taxes (sales, income, property). The fuel tax (and a similar one on tires) cover a portion of new interstate highway construction. The rest is general funds. Even the trade associations for the road building/construction industry admit that the taxes cover just part of the costs.
In the case of EV, the philosophy is that there are public benefits to promoting them, and until they are more than a fraction of the on-road population, skipping the $0.18/gallon tax is ok.
And the vehicles that they should start with are the heavy ones, as road wear goes up with the square of the weight. Given current fuel taxes, etc, trucks road use is heavily subsidized by the automobile and transit users. It won’t be a big stretch, CDL trucks already log and report mileage. In some states, diesel isn’t taxed at the pump, but instead applied as a charge for miles driven in that state. (Done to prevent “tankering”, filling up in adjacent lower tax states)
Don’t presently own one myself, but I believe in my neck of the woods Hybrids and EV’s pay a surcharge for the registration/plates once per year to offset the lost gasoline tax revenue. This works to the State’s advantage for elderly drivers who drive under 10,000 miles per year, and greatly benefits the ccommuter that racks up 100,000+ mies per year over the course of working, etc..
I think the fee structure needs to be considered a little more closely, as I would pay basically the same amount per mile regardless of how many miles I drive, and the Hybrid/EV drivers start out paying more per mile towards maintenance, but very quickly add up to paying for less maintenance, while adding more road wear overall.
I am also not an economist, or a tax expert, so wouldn’t know a fair way to handle this for all motorists, because I don’t rightly believe that it is fair to either party.
If this happens (and has happened), it’s because at some level (city, state, federal), government was trying to encourage electric vehicle adoption. Additionally, electric vehicles were allowed to used High Occupancy Vehicles (HOV) lanes with only a driver (HOV lane use generally required a driver and at least one passenger). Additionally, vehcle registration fees were greatly reduced (from $300+ to $25).
All of this has happened in Phoenix, AZ (and applied to my Leaf, and later to my Volt), but most have since been rolled back.
The Volt is a hybrid vehicle that both runs equally well on electricity and gas. My daily commute is just over 15 miles each way, and can charge at work. The range is up to 32 miles (depending on heating and A/C use). In summer, a one-way commute consumes about 60% of the charge, and if I can’t charge at all during the day (which happens), part of the commute home is gas powered. But the vast majority of my driving is electric-powered.
That raises the question about fuel taxes that pay for road construction and repairs. For the Volt, that can’t be completely gas-based, nor can it be completely milage-based.
The number of electric cars are only increasing. I think the day is coming when a switch to milage-based taxes occurs. That’s fine for residents, but what about visitors? Toll gates at state borders to capture mileage? License plate cameras at the state borders?
All sticky questions.
I think people like yourself are under the mistaken impression that 1) gas tax pays fully for the roads and 2) EVs don’t pay taxes and/or the weak form of 2), that EVs pay less state tax than ICE vehicles.
None of these things are true. First of all, in Virginia, EVs must pay an annual Highway Usage Fee of $109, which is equivalent to over 10,000 miles of driving with the 26.2 cent gas tax if you have 25mpg. If you drive any less than that, you’re actually paying higher taxes already. But that’s not the half of it.
Taxes and fees are paid on electricity. In Virginia, that’s 0.155 cents per kWh, which is about the same as an additional 1.6 cents per gallon gas tax (10kWh is about equivalent in terms of miles driven as 1 gallon of fuel). And with EVs, the battery itself acts as a kind of pre-payment of fuel (consider the battery + electricity costs to be equivalent to fuel costs), and the state sales tax on the battery portion of the EV (value of battery being around $10,000) is often considerable. Virginia charges 4.15% sales tax on vehicles, so the $10k battery means $415 extra in sales taxes collected. Virginia gas tax is $0.262 per gallon, so that $415 in sales tax would be enough for 40,000 miles traveled if you got 25mpg. That’s up-front cost on top of the annual HUF above.
In addition to all of that, many cities in Virginia charge a *considerable* Personal Property Tax fee on cars, on the order of 4.5% of value above $20k annually (and less if below that). Since the battery (which is essentially like pre-bought fuel) increases the value of an EV by about $10k, usually that puts the vehicle into the higher tax amount. So you’re paying an additional $450 in personal property taxes because you chose to get an EV where the equivalent of “fuel” is purchased up-front.
In short, in order to pay less in state and local taxes for an electric car than for a conventional car, you’d have to drive the thing on the order of 50,000-60,000 miles *per year*. Electric car owners in many states like Virginia are being soaked, completely contrary to the idea that many (like yourself) have that EV owners are getting a “free ride.”
This is on top of the fact that the gas tax was always intended to act not just as a usage fee but a Pigouvian tax to encourage economizing of fuel. But now states have passed so many taxes and fees on EVs that essentially EV owners are subsidizing everyone else and are disincentivized. It’s absolutely insane, but almost everyone still seems to operate under the assumption that EV owners aren’t paying their fair share…
I don’t know about your state or country but here in Alabama, USA plug in hybrid owner pays an additional $100 annual excise tax and an electric vehicle owner pays an additional $200 annual excise tax. These taxes make up – on average – the taxes gathered with gasoline purchases.
This is a fair tax because EVs wear out the roads just like ICE vehicles do. And yet a few friends of mine are complaining because ‘the new tax is a rip-off’.
It *is* a rip off. The Alabama gas tax is 29 cents per gallon. That means if you drive 10,000 miles per year in an EV vs 10,000 miles in a typical 30mpg car, the EV is literally paying twice as much state tax. Plus, the EVs usually have part of their “fuel” paid up front (because you own the battery), which you have to pay the 4% state sales tax on.
And the gas tax was always supposed to encourage conservation as obviously exhaust is not great (produces smog in cities, etc, reducing property values, etc) and fossil fuels are a limited resource (often coming from dictatorships), not merely a use fee.
But EV owners are still niche, and people still think they’re only rich people (they’re not), so they still feel justified in soaking them. Easy to pass an unfair tax on a small minority. Especially when most people, even hackaday commenters, are still ignorant of these things.
Wow so you have electric vehicles, but you vote for lawmakers that write laws on stone tablets. Do you really assert that they are incapable of changing the laws?
The EV charging connector world seems too fragmented to me.
Can’t we just extend USB to charge EVs?
Which USB?
Naw. Having to flip the connector over twice before it will plug in would be too annoying.
It’s not. In the US, we have Tesla and CCS 1 for EVs, and diesel and 3 types of gasoline for petrol vehicles. In Europe, they have CCS 2, diesel, and gas. In Japan, CHAdeMO and gas.
The article confuses the issue my pretending people drive from Chicago to Berlin to Tokyo to Shanghai. They… don’t.
In europe for LPG cars there are four different nozzles, so dependin in the country and in some places, like Switzerland the fuel brand, you need different adapters. You have CNG. Same applies for methane cars, and there are differences with CNG tanks ones and LNG tank ones.
About recharging cars there are also CCS-2 to IEC 60309 portable wallbox, that could be use to recharge with the 35A single phase blue sockets or the 16A three-phase sockets. With these you could add some contraption like these https://www.amazon.co.uk/AVL130-CONVERTER-CONFORMS-BS1363-1-IEC60309-1/dp/B01JGMNFT0 to use a BS-1363 socket if you decice to visit UK or Ireland from Europe.
I see a USB-D (for USB-Drive, leading to no confusion at all with “a USB drive”), then USB-D-mega and Macro plugs to deliver even more power. In the end, we’ll get an orientation-independent version.
You know that is not actually called the “don’t say gay” bill, right?
Sure, just make a CCS to USB-C adapter. /s
There are a lot of standards. Thankfully, in individual markets, it’s pretty well-organised with most chargers using the same standard.
And where is the power for millions of cars plugged into 100kW+ charging ports going to come from? Car ownship will have to be *severely* restricted (once IC engines are banned).
Well the US generating capacity is about 1.14 billion KW so dividing by 100 KW results in enough electricity in the current grid (no pun intended) to charge over 11 million cars at the full 100KW rate simultaneously. That looks like plenty of juice to me given that everyone won’t be charging simultaneously 24×7 but it’s easy to do a more detailed calculation.
US annual electricity usage is about 3.9 trillion KWHr per year. Dividing that by 24*365 hours per year results in average demand of 456 million KW comparted to 1.14 billion KW capacity. This means we use less than half of current grid capacity and have about 684 million KW in reserve we could dump into charging cars.
The average driver clocks 40 miles per day and EVs use about 1/3 KWHr per mile. 40*7/3 equals less than 100 KWHr per week to stay topped off or about 1 hour of full rate 100KW charging. Charging 300 million vehicles for 1 hour a week at 100KW is an average rate of 300e6*100/(24*7) or roughly 180 milion KW. That is about 1/4 of the excess 684 KW generating capacity the US has today.
We excess generating capacity because electricity demand is very lumpy throughout the day and throughout the year. Generating capacity has to meet peak demand since we have almost no grid level storage capacity. But EVs can charge any time and they would make the grid more efficient by reducing the need to idle generating capacity during off peak demand times. Lower rate at home charging over night would keep most personal EVs topped off while leaving plenty of capacity for those needing 100KW at peak demand times. There are even schemes to allow people to sell back power from charged EVs that they don’t need right away should peak demand rise. This could potentially turn a chunk of the personally owned EV fleet into a large grid storage battery making the grid even more efficient.
That is where the power to charge millions of new EVs will come from.
Ha. You slow ninja’d me (probably there’s a comment approval delay), but I’m happy to see I’m not the only one here who learned dimensional analysis in high school. :-D
From the grid. Less sarcastically though, I guess *millions* of cars charging at once at 100kw is a little bit of an of an over estimate but a *million* (without the “s”) is about right from an grid usage mathematics point of view, though also the median use case is probably going to look way different.
According to the US DOT (via this KBB site https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/average-miles-driven-per-year) Americans drove 3.26 trillion miles in 2019 (before the pandemic drastically cut driving). With 365 days in a year, that’s 8.93 billion miles a day. My electric car generally goes about 5 or 6 miles/kWh, but my car is pretty small and that huge new Hummer EV isn’t going to do that, so lets just assume a much lower average of 3 miles/kWh. With 8.93 billion miles per day in the USA, accomplishing those miles at 3 miles per kWh requires about 2.98 billion kWh per day. If you’re delivering that energy at 100kW, that’s about 29.77 million hours (vehicle hours, that is) of charging and with 24 hours in a day, spreading the load out perfectly evenly, that means only about 1.24 million vehicles are charging at 100kW at any given time.
Of course the typical use case is probably going to be way different. I think it’s fairly common in the US for people to live in a single family home with at least a driveway and maybe even a garage and also fairly common for them to drive less than 50 miles in a day (which happens to be the scenario I’ve been using my EV to drive 12,000mi/year for the past couple of years). Under those conditions, it’s more like pressing some buttons on the infotainment system so it’s configured to get a full charge by 4:30am, plugging in your car when you get home, and letting it wake up early in the morning (when grid utilization happens be at its minimum) and letting it sip 3.3kW or 10kW or some other low number like that from the grid.
Historically there are 3 car-fuel pump nozzle sizes. Leaded, Unleaded, and Diesel. Each one is a successively smaller size so you can’t insert a leaded pump nozzle into an unleaded vehicle (though leaded has been long gone from passenger cars; only us dinosaurs remember it) and you can’t insert an diesel pump nozzle into unleaded (passenger) vehicle. Mostly; ymmv, not all standards are the same, I have no experience outside of california.
any vehicle equipped so it can be remotely disabled is complete garbage. just sayin. talk all ya want about ev’s but they all have this same flaw, as well as do many modern vehicles that are not an ev. aaaannnnddd the gubberment wants them ALL to have remote shut off. i will just say no to all of this.
Seems like a mention of MCS should be included in the article. With liquid cooled cables, up to 3+ megawatts is planned for.