It is stuff like this that makes you doubt we will swap the way we think about cars any time soon. I believe that electrical cars will be an amazing leap once we solve the generation issue. The idea of 4 electrical motors propelling the vehicle opens so many possibilities that I cannot wait for it to happen. But the electricity needs to be generated on demand internally and easy to refill and not simply stored, drained and then attached to an umbilical for hours.
I’m sure we can find some pictures of gas stations that are closed due to to flooding as well – admittedly less of an issue because there is probably another one within a 10 minute drive, not so much for charging stations at the moment.
I don’t currently own one as they were not affordable when I bought my last round of vehicles (which are still well inside their useful life), but might consider electric for the next time around. There are certainly some downsides, but I think we are mostly over the viability hump now for the majority of use cases, especially in urban and suburban areas. I don’t think charging overnight is much of a burden for most daily commute uses (I’d rather do this than waste time at a gas station once or twice a week).
I can count the number of times annually I drive more than 250+ miles in a single day on a couple of fingers. But still the big hangup for me was always the recharge time on longer road trips beyond the range of the battery capacity.
This is becoming less of an issue with the rollout of the 250kW v3 superchargers. At that charge rate, Tesla claims to add 75 miles of range to a Model 3 in 5 minutes of charging (still not sure I want to be sitting in it while doing so though!). But if in 15 min (barely enough time to grab a fresh cup of coffee and dispose of the prior cup) I can get another 225 miles of driving, I’m probably good with it as long as there are enough charging stations along the route that I can stop when it is convenient, not when I need to due to limited availability.
Unfortunately the best proposed fusion reactor technology is still too big for cars by about an order of magnitude.
That said, as I pointed out before, focusing on charging stations is somewhat misleading. Much car usage doesn’t involve driving long distances. I’ve never had a need for a charging station; the 50 A plug in my garage does the job just fine (and in fact is more than I need). Apart from that, the umbilicals you showed don’t need to be used “for hours” but rather for 30 minutes max.
Sssssooooo how are y all gonna recharge your climate change toy when bloomberg n bernie get in power and SHUT DOWN ALL THE COAL AND OIL FIRED POWER PLANTS?????? Yes electric vehicles are a good idea. In some places like cities. I dont think i want one in north dakota where theres 3 roads(heh heh) in the whole state. Too funny. Up periscope!!
I remain convinced that the solution will (eventually) be a hot-swappable battery system with a business model similar to those now ubiquitous Blue Rhino propane bottle refills.
Pull in, swipe card to begin transaction, insert dead battery into open charging slot to unlock a fresh battery, place fresh battery into vehicle slot. Rinse and repeat until you are fully ‘re-fueled’. Batteries in the rack recharge at their leisure and aren’t unlock-able until fully charged.
Might take a bit longer and with a bit more exercise than one of those 250kw fast chargers, but you really only need it on longer roadtrips, and most folks are up for a good stretch after three hours of just sitting anyway.
This of course would require EV’s to move to an industry standard battery format, but I’m sure that Big Brother will find some way to justify regulating/legislating that…for good or ill.
Tesla demonstrated swappable batteries a couple of years ago, and deployed it in the field on a trial basis. After a while, they concluded the idea wasn’t ready to be mainstream yet.
One of the hurdles is the fact that Rhino tanks don’t wear out to speak of, but batteries do. Or at least they are perceived to. So when you swap a battery, do you get a very old one in its place? Once it becomes clear that the answer is “not so as you can tell” it’s likely to be adopted.
The capital investment for the swapping stations is pretty substantial, though, and you need a serious power line coming in. Suppose you have a customer flow similar to a good sized highway gas station — 100 per hour, perhaps — you’d need perhaps 10 battery swap stations, which is ok. And you also need to have on average 50 batteries charging at any time, which adds up to several megawatts. Multiply by 5-ish if you’re dealing with electric trucks rather than cars.
That’s the difficulty with a lot of this stuff: it’s really hard to come anywhere close to the energy and power density of chemical fuels.
Battery swapping has been tried, but failed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company) This company set up a complete system of leased cars (to standardize batteries) and swap stations in Israel but went bust, although management was a significant factor in the failure. The pilot in Israel was actually sensible, standard car, company owned batteries, so no fussing over what pack you got, and deployed in a small place so stations were close together.
I think a less ambitious operation might succeed where Better Place failed.
When they can get a 250-300 mile range at 70 miles an hour and recharge in 15 minutes they will have a sure winner. Improvements in technology is already increasing the range, charge time and battery life is next…if it ends up being batteries at all. I’m betting on some sort of fuel cell myself.
Whatever the answer ends up being it will probably be based on something that already exists and that no one has figured out a practical use for or ever thought of using in that particular way. That seems to be the way technology develops.