Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.

[ocset]

Thanks,  Anyway, lets keep it technical…..the initial units would not be potted, because potting is what private co’s do to stop rivals from robbing their ideas….potting can cause problems with potting compound (especially in the prescence of vibration) ripping components off the board or stressing them mechanically……also, potting compound stops the government sponsored repair centre engineers from easily finding out which part of a circuit went wrong……and we need to know which part of the circuit went wrong…because then we can tweak it better…so the chargers get better and better……then all participant government sponsored companies can be fed the info…….private co’s would just pot the electronics in a (too small) metal case and when the unit fails…tough it goes for scrap.
The government sponsored units would use fans and heatsinks for cooling….but venting (and vent filters) would be special so that moisture and dust did not get in too much.
The correct fans will be used…for long life……….not the fans that use cheap grease which wears out quickly and renders the fan inoperable (the private sector would use these though) ….and when the fan eventually dies……..this will be sensed, and the unit returned to the government repair centre, and the fans replaced, and the unit sent back out…..not scrapping the entire unit because the fan had failed.
Hall sensors will be used to detect fan speed is correct…no private company would bother investing in this…but because multiple government sponsored companies would be all using the same fan speed sensor, they would buy in bulk together and thus get them cheap…..small private companies acting alone will simply not be able to get such volume price reductions….so the small private companies will give up and just end up importing vast amounts of middle-manned units in from overseas…and loads of scrap electronics will result…but the middle-men will be millionaires overnight.

[oPossum]

but as EVs get more common, EVs will not have the charger in the car any more.

As technology advances the power density of inverters will increase and cost per watt will decline. This will lead to EVs having increasingly higher capacity on board chargers and may ultimately bring to an end the need for proprietary external DC fast chargers.

No private company would bother to do the following excellent methods…............

Numerous companies throughout the world that have decades of inverter design experience. There is no need for government intervention here.

[MK14]

Transient protection, Mains input filter, PFC, isolation stage, current regulator stage….these should all be modular…..if one of them gets a fault….then it gets sent back to the repair centre, and the one module that has the fault is replaced…all the other modules will be re-used…..saving on scrap.

In general, putting lots of connectors, all over the place. Usually significantly reduces the reliability and lifetime. Yet increases the cost and complexity and can cause major headaches as regards EMC, safety, efficiency etc.

I.e. Which is better. A single, high quality PCB, with everything on it ?
Or alternatively, 5 .. 25 small, separate PCBs, with a huge number of (reasonably priced but not brilliant quality) connectors, wires, wiring-harnesses, mechanical bits and pieces (such as fasteners etc), to make it all work ?

tl;dr
Going modular, could very dramatically, double or even triple the cost, while considerably reducing the reliability, durability and other bad things, at the same time.

These days, the trend seems to be, for things to be one big giant assembly or device. Which is NOT repaired, but only replaced.

Also having these 5 .. 25 sub-assemblies, which might then go to several versions, leading to logistical problems, with all the hundreds of different PCB modules needed for all the different versions.
These items would need to be manufactured in very small quantities (as spares, which is very expensive), stocked somewhere (which is also expensive), and expensive technicians would have to diagnose what the problem is and replace the parts, which can cost a lot of money.

It can be done that way, but high quality, properly designed connectors, could cost a small fortune and need/use rare materials, such as gold. Which are best saved for more important uses..

[mikeselectricstuff]

Hall sensors will be used to detect fan speed is correct…no private company would bother investing in this…but because multiple government sponsored companies would be all using the same fan speed sensor, they would buy in bulk together and thus get them cheap

This just gets crazier and crazier. Either Treez is deliberately trolling, or delusional and needs help.

[Mr. Scram]

Yes, because as we all know:

- We must get rid of this free market crap. What good has that ever done us, eh?
- Clearly everything the Government does is high quality, top notch and efficiently executed.

If there's one thing the Government could be more involved in is enforcing existing standards. Other than that, I hope and prey they keep their noses out of it.

The more standards and regulations exist and are enforced, the more the market is slanted towards big players. This is something that needs to be addressed for a proper free market. Abolishing all standards is a terrible idea, but the price of entry should be kept reasonable.

Let's not even get started on patents and how they tend to favour a few massive players.

[ebastler]

This just gets crazier and crazier. Either Treez is deliberately trolling, or delusional and needs help.

Yes, it feels uncomfortable. But maybe it is simply a matter of his company not being able to compete in a cost-sensitive market, or his boss not accepting expensively engineered solutions, and treez looking for "government help"?

@treez -- we had "government sponsored" telephone makers in my country until 1980 or so. I believe the situation was similar in the UK and many other countries? Yes, the phones were pretty reliable. But there also was hardly any technical progress over five decades or so, ever since self-dialing had become the norm. And those phones were expensive! (If you could buy them at all and were not forced to pay a monthly leasing fee.) Can't say I miss those days.

[CCitizenTO]

You already got the government involved enough in the design.

They specify the mains voltage (120VAC/220VAC depending on jurisdiction).

They have building codes which require inspection of devices directly connected to the mains power (IE. Running a new 220VAC line to your garage probably requires an electrician).

They have rules and regulations on what devices may be sold in the country and likely require things like UL certification for anything that handles that much power.

Lastly they handle all the regulation and licensing of motor vehicles which means charging specification and battery capacities are likely handled in design and testing phase when they offer it to transportation authorities for testing and approval purposes. This is why self-driving cars weren't just allowed to be thrown into traffic without testing and the like.

[vk6zgo]

This just gets crazier and crazier. Either Treez is deliberately trolling, or delusional and needs help.

Yes, it feels uncomfortable. But maybe it is simply a matter of his company not being able to compete in a cost-sensitive market, or his boss not accepting expensively engineered solutions, and treez looking for "government help"?

@treez -- we had "government sponsored" telephone makers in my country until 1980 or so. I believe the situation was similar in the UK and many other countries? Yes, the phones were pretty reliable. But there also was hardly any technical progress over five decades or so, ever since self-dialing had become the norm. And those phones were expensive! (If you could buy them at all and were not forced to pay a monthly leasing fee.) Can't say I miss those days.

If it was like Australia, not only did the Telecommunications body own the phones, they also had responsibility for all the connections up to & including the phone.
If you had a faulty phone, they fixed it ----full stop.

With privatised suppliers, you have to pay someone else to fix your internal wiring--- the phone company just delights in  " duck shoving " the problem to someone else.

Technical progress?
When I was in Wyndham in tropical North Western Australia in 1967, the communications were magneto phones via a two wire pole route, all the way to Geraldton where it picked up the Coax system to Perth.
Funnily enough, Kununurra, 70km air distance ( a lot further by road) away, had an automatic exchange, so around the town were dial up, but if you wanted to call outside, you had to go through Wyndham manual exchange.

The pole route landline had a 12 channel voice system on it, plus a  24 channel  VFT ( telegraph) system.

In the "Wet" season, the poles would often get washed away, losing everything.
The backup was two Independent Sideband HF Transmitters to Derby, a bit further down the coast, (516 km air distance ),where hopefully they would connect to a still intact landline, otherwise it was another HF Radio link to Perth.
The problem was, the "Wet" wasn't a good season for HF Radio either!

By the way, the nearest AM Broadcast Station was in Darwin 446 km away in the Northern Territory.


By the mid 1980s, Wyndham had a Broadband UHF spur of the microwave system into Kununurra, Remote Area TV, AM & FM radio stations & an automatic exchange you could make STD & ISD calls through.

So, in a bit under 20 years, it had gone from a "frontier" standard of communications to a similar level to that of the major cities.

Of course, the big cities had dial phones for decades before that, but building auto exchanges in cities & using cable already in the ground is a lot easier & far less costly, than installing long haul comms.

So much of massive infrastructure & technology improvements over the years were "behind the scenes", & not apparent to the casual user.
A phone looked like a phone!

[sokoloff]

@treez -- we had "government sponsored" telephone makers in my country until 1980 or so. I believe the situation was similar in the UK and many other countries? Yes, the phones were pretty reliable. But there also was hardly any technical progress over five decades or so, ever since self-dialing had become the norm. And those phones were expensive! (If you could buy them at all and were not forced to pay a monthly leasing fee.) Can't say I miss those days.

If it was like Australia, not only did the Telecommunications body own the phones, they also had responsibility for all the connections up to & including the phone.
If you had a faulty phone, they fixed it ----full stop.

With privatised suppliers, you have to pay someone else to fix your internal wiring--- the phone company just delights in  " duck shoving " the problem to someone else.

Could everyone here who needed the phone company to come into their house to fix wiring in the last two decades please raise their hand? We're taking a survey. Keep 'em up high; I need to count them. Well, shoot, first it seems like I need to find them first... Anyone?

Around here, there's a clear phone network demark point. You can literally unplug the house and plug in a test phone. If that works, the phone company is off the hook (pun intended) for the outside wiring. If it doesn't, they are. Further, most of them offer a "more than $1, often more than $2/month" service where they will come in and fix internal wiring as well. I wouldn't be surprised if there was more labor involved in counting and accounting for that money than in doing repairs.

My electric company isn't responsible for the mains wiring inside my house.
My water company isn't responsible for the pipes inside.
My gas company isn't responsible for the gas lines inside.
Why should the phone company be (or more precisely, why should consumers have to support such a system if they don't want it)?

[ebastler]

If it was like Australia, not only did the Telecommunications body own the phones, they also had responsibility for all the connections up to & including the phone.
If you had a faulty phone, they fixed it ----full stop.

Same here. But it also meant that you were not allowed to touch the in-house wiring yourself! Phones were sealed, and when the federal post office technician showed up, you better had those seals intact...

And if you wanted your phone connected on the other side of the room instead, it sure wasn't you who would install that extra length of wire along the wall. (Cordless phone? What's that?!)    And those "optional upgrades" were not free at all.

Technical progress? [...]
So, in a bit under 20 years, it had gone from a "frontier" standard of communications to a similar level to that of the major cities.
[...]
So much of massive infrastructure & technology improvements over the years were "behind the scenes", & not apparent to the casual user.
A phone looked like a phone!

Having the state in charge of the central backbones (be it phone, power, gas, water, ...) is a different matter. I am in favor of that. But the consumer devices connected to those various utilities? Only if it affects safety, or reliability of the overall network.

[rrinker]

 In the US it was effectively a government sanctioned monopoly by AT&T that controlled he phones. Couldn't connect other devices, couldn't do your own wiring. All service provided by them.
And they often justified it on the grounds of it affecting the reliability of the network. They provided your local service, AND the long distance service. No options. Had this persisted into the PC and dialup modem era, I think we'd all still be using 2400 baud modems max. Luckily for us, the winds of change forced a breakup of AT&T and allowed consumers to purchase their own phones, anwering machines, and modems from anyone. Technically required to be certified by the FCC, but no longer restricted to just equipment supplied by AT&T.

[IanMacdonald]

I certainly think that EV owners should pay road tax / VED to cover the cost of charger installations. Why should the EV owners get to use the roads for free AND get us to pay for their charging points?

There's way too much of this, "I'm green so I should get everything for free" syndrome.

[ANTALIFE]

treez