Electric Vehicle: Will you buy one

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › Electric Vehicle: Will you buy one - if not why not?

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#1824625 18-Jul-2017 17:30

WyleECoyoteNZ:

Cost is lower at moment while demand is low.

There is nothing to stop PowerCo in Waiouru for example charging the same to recharge your EV as it costs to fill a similar class of 4 door car in the future. Supply and Demand.

And in theory, this supply and demand could result in increased household costs for all, regardless of if you drive an EV or not, as the use and home charging (therefore demand) becomes more common place.

When do you suppose that would happen in NZ? How many EVs would there need to be for this to be a problem?

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frednz

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#1824626 18-Jul-2017 17:31

tripper1000:

Batman: Except that if you go on your annual journey, then so would 1 million others. Or 10 million if you are from a metropolis. The queue to charge would be ... Sorry beyond my math ability.

I'm sure they will come up with something ...

Overcrowding at gas stations during the holiday rush in nothing new.

As demand for energy switches from petrol to power, gas stations will replace pumps with chargers. It is simpler and cheaper to build charging stations than gas stations, (think hazardous goods and the compliance for fuel storage, and rain water filtering on forecourts) so it isn't unreasonable to expect 1 pump to be replaced with 2 or 3 charging stations. The delivery & distribution network already goes to most buildings in N.Z.

The economic model is already there for the gas stations - they already make most of their profit from selling you stuff other than fuel - if it takes 20 minutes to charge instead of 10 minutes to refuel, they're more likely to sell you coffee and pies.

If you imagine there are as many places to fast charge as there are gas stations and the maths are not so mind boggling.

There are some people who think that building a huge network of charging stations is quite impractical and simply not going to be useful into the future! See this article for instance, which sees quite a different future for recharging EVs and which would make current charging methods and equipment irrelevant and a very costly loss for those who have invested in it:

Designing and building enough of these recharging stations requires massive infrastructure development, which means the energy distribution and storage system is being rebuilt at tremendous cost to accommodate the need for continual local battery recharge,” said Eric Nauman, co-founder of Ifbattery and a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, basic medical sciences and biomedical engineering. “Ifbattery is developing an energy storage system that would enable drivers to fill up their electric or hybrid vehicles with fluid electrolytes to re-energize spent battery fluids much like refueling their gas tanks.”....

Mike Mueterthies, Purdue doctoral teaching and research assistant in physics and the third co-founder of Ifbattery, said the flow battery system makes the Ifbattery system unique.

“Other flow batteries exist, but we are the first to remove membranes which reduces costs and extends battery life,” Mueterthies said.

So, it may be too early in the development of EVs for companies to plan their long-term future and investment strategy around current battery charging technologies.

jarledb

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#1824648 18-Jul-2017 17:46

From the article you linked to:

I would be careful investing in a battery company that doesn't understand how EVs are used. EVs are predominantly charged at home over night, and only visit charging stations outside of the home when on longer trips.

They seem to imply that EVs have to visit a "Electric station" the same way that ICE cars need to visit the gas station. Thats completely misunderstanding the use and need.

There are some people who think that building a huge network of charging stations is quite impractical and simply not going to be useful into the future! See this article for instance, which sees quite a different future for recharging EVs and which would make current charging methods and equipment irrelevant and a very costly loss for those who have invested in it:

So using existing infrastructure that makes electricity available more or less everywhere and at a very low distribution cost is worse than building a whole new distribution for a new energy source??

Remind me, how is the uptake of hydrogen cars going around the world?

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#1824649 18-Jul-2017 17:48

MarkH67:

Batman: Except that if you go on your annual journey, then so would 1 million others. Or 10 million if you are from a metropolis. The queue to charge would be ... Sorry beyond my math ability.

I'm sure they will come up with something ...

That sounds like one of the easiest problems in the world to solve.

Simply park in a parking garage that has a charging point for every parking space, start charging and wonder off to have lunch. If a parking garage has 1,000 spaces then I'm talking about there being 1,000 charging points - this garage would be attached to a large mall with a variety of shops including a range of different food outlets.

If everyone was driving an electric car then how would such a thing NOT happen?

That sounds like the worst solution for the problem. I'd thought of induction charging.

MarkH67

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#1824715 18-Jul-2017 19:18

Batman:

That sounds like the worst solution for the problem. I'd thought of induction charging.

Wait, where did I say the charging points would necessarily require you to plug in? Obviously they could be induction charging points that you just need to park the car over. This could even be done for street parking. There could be communication between the car and the charging point so that the owner could be billed for the power.

Induction charging would also be easier for self driving cars that could just park in the right spot and start charging, then move off the charging point and park elsewhere to free up the charger for other cars.

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#1824734 18-Jul-2017 20:02

jarledb:

They seem to imply that EVs have to visit a "Electric station" the same way that ICE cars need to visit the gas station. Thats completely misunderstanding the use and need.

It's important to remember that not everyone has a garage or apartment carpark. A lot of people in my neighbourhood park on the street and even my car park, which is off street, is exposed and too far from my flat to run an extension cord.

PhantomNVD

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#1824787 18-Jul-2017 21:31

https://youtu.be/Kxryv2XrnqM

A fascinating look at the convergence of technologies currently heading to ‘disrupt’ our current way of life...

Not directly/only EV, but ‘market disruption’ discussion (horse>car=13 years, landline>cellphones=15 years...)

Wise

Send money globally for less with Wise - one free transfer up to NZ$900 (affiliate link).

jarledb

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#1824798 18-Jul-2017 21:44

alasta:

It's important to remember that not everyone has a garage or apartment carpark. A lot of people in my neighbourhood park on the street and even my car park, which is off street, is exposed and too far from my flat to run an extension cord.

Not a solution that's available today in NZ, but this is from public parking (free!) in Oslo, Norway:

It's not a huge investment and will be interesting for NZ as EV use increase

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#1824864 19-Jul-2017 01:15

Batman:

MarkH67:

Batman: Except that if you go on your annual journey, then so would 1 million others. Or 10 million if you are from a metropolis. The queue to charge would be ... Sorry beyond my math ability.

I'm sure they will come up with something ...

That sounds like one of the easiest problems in the world to solve.

Simply park in a parking garage that has a charging point for every parking space, start charging and wonder off to have lunch. If a parking garage has 1,000 spaces then I'm talking about there being 1,000 charging points - this garage would be attached to a large mall with a variety of shops including a range of different food outlets.

If everyone was driving an electric car then how would such a thing NOT happen?

That sounds like the worst solution for the problem. I'd thought of induction charging.

This is kind of funny.

When I was a kid in northern Ontario in Canada, the winters back then were bitterly cold and cars often could not start because the oil in the sump had become so thick and heavy due to the cold that you could not crank the engine. To avoid that, everyone had sump heaters installed in their cars. When the car wasn't running you'd plug it in and the sump heater would prevent the oil from being too cold.

You plugged your car in at home - whether house or apartment. You plugged your car in at the mall....and the mall parking lot had wooden frames with power points mounted on them for every single car park.

On a Saturday morning there would be literally hundreds of cars all plugged in at the mall......in 1968.

It's funny when, today, people say such thing can't happen. It was the daily winter norm 50 years ago across Canada. It's already been done. They'd have the power points set up in days once the weather got cold enough.....and take it all down again in the spring.

It was easy. It was also free of charge. You couldn't go shopping there if your car wasn't going to start after you'd been in the Mall for an hour.

They don't do this much anymore as the winters now are so much warmer than they used to be. There's still a lot of snow some years......but more snow means it's warmer.....not colder.

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#1824886 19-Jul-2017 06:53

frednz:

Designing and building enough of these recharging stations requires massive infrastructure development, which means the energy distribution and storage system is being rebuilt at tremendous cost to accommodate the need for continual local battery recharge,” said Eric Nauman, co-founder of Ifbattery and a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, basic medical sciences and biomedical engineering.

I guess that large batteries such as PowerWall are required at car charging stations. Otherwise each charging station would need to download at megawatt rates to be able to charge a dozen cars at a time at 100KW rates.

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#1824888 19-Jul-2017 06:59

Linuxluver:

When I was a kid in northern Ontario in Canada, the winters back then were bitterly cold and cars often could not start because the oil in the sump had become so thick and heavy due to the cold that you could not crank the engine. To avoid that, everyone had sump heaters installed in their cars. When the car wasn't running you'd plug it in and the sump heater would prevent the oil from being too cold.

You plugged your car in at home - whether house or apartment. You plugged your car in at the mall....and the mall parking lot had wooden frames with power points mounted on them for every single car park.

On a Saturday morning there would be literally hundreds of cars all plugged in at the mall......in 1968.

Right. But these were powering (I guess) 40W heaters. So total load for a 1000 cars would 40KW. For EV recharging, you need orders of magnitude more power supply, so much larger infrastructure.

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#1824978 19-Jul-2017 09:20

frankv:
Linuxluver:

When I was a kid in northern Ontario in Canada, the winters back then were bitterly cold and cars often could not start because the oil in the sump had become so thick and heavy due to the cold that you could not crank the engine. To avoid that, everyone had sump heaters installed in their cars. When the car wasn't running you'd plug it in and the sump heater would prevent the oil from being too cold.

You plugged your car in at home - whether house or apartment. You plugged your car in at the mall....and the mall parking lot had wooden frames with power points mounted on them for every single car park.

On a Saturday morning there would be literally hundreds of cars all plugged in at the mall......in 1968.

Right. But these were powering (I guess) 40W heaters. So total load for a 1000 cars would 40KW. For EV recharging, you need orders of magnitude more power supply, so much larger infrastructure.

Like build the mall next to the nuclear plant.

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#1825000 19-Jul-2017 10:02

Building charging facilities for EVs will be less drama than building petrol stations, but it's still not trivial.

I do think the charging station logistics will be interesting for service centres though.

Currently, EV aficionados seem to be people who are about the journey. Happy to divert off-highway to fill up at a cafe, mall etc. When EVs go mainstream, charging infrastructure has to cater for what most people do on longer trips, which is use a service station on the main road, preferably one on the left.

Consider a service station with 10 pumps - it's built around a ~3 minute fill time, after which people move their car to a parking space if they want to stop for longer.

Change the 3 minute fill time to a 30 minute charge time. Now you need many more delivery points (?50 -100?) to serve the same number of vehicles per day. So you lose the forecourt and pumps and you have a grid of charge points and car parks.

It's not a trivial undertaking it's sizeable capex and opex. The total load if all the chargers are in use would be substantial. The land area is substantial (or you build up).

Mike

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#1825006 19-Jul-2017 10:18

MikeAqua:

Building charging facilities for EVs will be less drama than building petrol stations, but it's still not trivial.

I do think the charging station logistics will be interesting for service centres though.

Currently, EV aficionados seem to be people who are about the journey. Happy to divert off-highway to fill up at a cafe, mall etc. When EVs go mainstream, charging infrastructure has to cater for what most people do on longer trips, which is use a service station on the main road, preferably one on the left.

Consider a service station with 10 pumps - it's built around a ~3 minute fill time, after which people move their car to a parking space if they want to stop for longer.

Change the 3 minute fill time to a 30 minute charge time. Now you need many more delivery points (?50 -100?) to serve the same number of vehicles per day. So you lose the forecourt and pumps and you have a grid of charge points and car parks.

It's not a trivial undertaking it's sizeable capex and opex. The total load if all the chargers are in use would be substantial. The land area is substantial (or you build up).

There's a few other factors to take into account. If most EV users charge overnight every night, they would not make use of public charging facilities as often as they would make use of petrol stations. Many people could go for months without using a public charger. The public EV stations would tend to be used by those on long journeys, or forgot to charge overnight etc?

It's hard to predict the usage pattern.

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#1825015 19-Jul-2017 10:29

It was hard to predict the usage pattern in horse and buggy days. The infrastructure evolved in response to demand.

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