Electric cars

NigeWick

When I picked up my 64kWh Hyundai Kona, I drove 270 miles stopping once to charge. 70mph on motorways and 60mph in national speed limit areas where I could due to the weather. Over half of the journey was through freezing fog and temperature of 28F. The car returned 3.2 miles per kWh with lights, heating & aircon on.

As Hyundai give usable battery capacity that's a range of 200 miles with a tiny safety net. It would have been slightly better if I'd had the heating and aircon just on the driver's side as there was nobody with me.

Martyn1981

News/update on the V2G testing going on in Germany. It seems that less energy is being transferred than expected, and potential earnings of €20/week. Promising, especially for fleets.

Nissan V2G project in Germany shows results

Martyn1981

For anyone interested in the boring background 'stuff', I thought this vid was very informative, looking into the advantages of having on site storage at charging stations (and to preempt any pointless negativity, obviously the storage solution doesn't have to be from a Tesla product):

Why Tesla PowerPacks and Charging Stations Are a Marriage Made in Heaven

Edit - as, sadly, this post still attracted negative nonsense, for those not interested in watching the vid, it explains the boring bit about commercial customers and billing, and how charges go up when they draw greater power. Hence why a steady draw (through the use of batts), rather than peaks and troughs, leads to cheaper leccy for them even if the same amount of energy is supplied.

AdrianC

<shrug> Seems like a no-brainer bit of basic physics to me.

Totally illustrative numbers:
3hrs x 15kWh in = 45kWh in
1hr x 45kWh out = 45kWh out

'course, it doesn't really help scalability as much as you may think once the grid connection starts to become the bottleneck - because it still takes the same amount of time to get the same amount of charge into the site. It simply means that the first car driver charges in a third of the time, but you don't get three times as many cars through. You'll get a slight increase in throughput, because you aren't wasting the time that the charging point is sat idle, either simply because of the time taken to unhook/move out the way/next car in/hook-up/charging-card in... or because the driver of the fully charged car is finishing his coffee/shopping/having a widdle while the queue behind him waits. They don't actually get to leave much quicker, but at least they don't feel like they're wasting their time...

Herzlos

I think that's the point; it's intending to dampen the grid demand, and means it can recharge with cheaper electrons whilst not actively being used. Either when it's totally idle, when the car has finished but not been removed, or when cars are being changed over.

It scales a bit, in that it can reduce the peak demand by topping up off peak. How much impact it has will depend on the battery capacity and how much time it spends idle.

zeupater

AdrianC wrote: »

<shrug> Seems like a no-brainer bit of basic physics to me.

Totally illustrative numbers:
3hrs x 15kWh in = 45kWh in
1hr x 45kWh out = 45kWh out

'course, it doesn't really help scalability as much as you may think once the grid connection starts to become the bottleneck - because it still takes the same amount of time to get the same amount of charge into the site. It simply means that the first car driver charges in a third of the time, but you don't get three times as many cars through. You'll get a slight increase in throughput, because you aren't wasting the time that the charging point is sat idle, either simply because of the time taken to unhook/move out the way/next car in/hook-up/charging-card in... or because the driver of the fully charged car is finishing his coffee/shopping/having a widdle while the queue behind him waits. They don't actually get to leave much quicker, but at least they don't feel like they're wasting their time...

Hi

Totally missing the point that as the charge rate isn't linear and there's the potential for missed charging opportunity this solution accumulates energy so as to provide additional power capacity for the next connection thus smoothing out overall power demand & acting to reduce grid peaks, which in turn allows for a better distribution of charging facilities without creating major issues for existing grid infrastructure, thus reducing both the timescales & cost of rollout.

Just think .... even out in the sticks there may be rapid charging facilities nearby!

HTH
Z

AdrianC

Herzlos wrote: »

I think that's the point; it's intending to dampen the grid demand

Oh, sure. Although more a case of allowing larger/more chargers without having to upgrade all the supply infrastructure.

zeupater

AdrianC wrote: »

Oh, sure. Although more a case of allowing larger/more chargers without having to upgrade all the supply infrastructure.

Hi

Of course, what you really mean is the ability to roll out faster chargers to outlying parts of the grid more rapidly and thereby support those who require long distance in-journey rapid charging at an earlier stage ...

Chin up, maybe all the range based doom-'n-gloom surrounding EVs that's peddled by the naysayers is beginning to unravel! ...:);)

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

AdrianC wrote: »

Oh, sure. Although more a case of allowing larger/more chargers without having to upgrade all the supply infrastructure.

Perhaps, if you'd watched the vid and thereby been 'more informed' (the reason I posted it), we wouldn't have to waste our time answering your negativity and confusion.

Storage allows for faster charging at the site.
Storage allows for a smoother draw on the grid.
Storage allows for cheaper leccy for the site.
Storage could, if savings are passed on, allow cheaper charging for BEV owners.

And, purely a suggestion from myself, onsite storage might allow the charging site(s) to offer grid support during peak demand periods, if they are well charged and demand (for charging) happens to be low at that point in time. This could be a nice bit of bonus income for them when grid spot prices are in the £100/MWh+ region.

Martyn1981

First ~3,000 Tesla Model 3s For European Customers Arrive In European Port — Pictures!


And a fun item showing that VW missed their 2018 EV target by 72%. Based on previous posts, and assuming balance, this is going to make a certain poster very, very angry, and lead to vast numbers of posts about targets v's delivery, I assume!

Volkswagen Missed Its 2018 Electric Vehicle Goal By ~217,000 Units

A Tesla Motors Club forum member somehow came across a 2018 electric vehicle (EV) sales target from Volkswagen Group that the company shared back in 2010. Volkswagen was hoping to sell ~300,000 EVs a year by 2018. It turns out the 2018 total was more like … 82,685 (and that’s counting a bunch of plug-in hybrids as electric vehicles, which many people wouldn’t count).