General > General Technical Chat

EV-based road transportation is not viable

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tggzzz:

--- Quote from: Marco on February 16, 2023, 08:51:21 pm ---
--- Quote from: tggzzz on February 16, 2023, 08:00:48 pm ---Besides, it isn't just the plug/socket, it is everything else in a charger.

--- End quote ---

Glue it to the heatsink and pot it. Except for the mains to electronics connection, but no doubt there are good standards and solutions for under ground mains connections already.


A ticket dispenser has UI and mechanical components. A minimal charger will just have a status LED and the connector exposed to humans (far more destructive than water).

--- End quote ---

A charger must have the ability to read a payment device, authenticate credit availibility, debit someone's account, and communicate that to the user.

I would prefer to listen to the experience of someone used to working in/under roads than someone presuming it is easy. The last time I had that pleasure was, gulp, 42 years ago at BT Research Labs. Eye opening.


--- Quote ---
--- Quote from: TimFox on February 16, 2023, 08:02:38 pm ---This is an engineering forum:  to advocate this method, one should include some quantitative estimates.

--- End quote ---

Capacitive charging at KW level has been done, but with large plates. If you can get away with a small mating surfaces depends on the structural properties of high permittivity ceramics.

--- End quote ---

Numbers please, e.g. voltages, currents, components, x/y/z dimensions.

rstofer:
Then we had Rural Electification starting in 1935.  The money came from .gov but the end result was private.

https://livingnewdeal.org/glossary/rural-electrification-administration-rea-1935

How could anybody afford a 10 mile overhead circuit just to light a lightbulb?  They still had ice men bringing ice on a cart pulled by horses, what did they know about the Internet?

Side issue, I don't remember which relative but I do remember the ice man and the ice box in the kitchen.

Along came telephones.  How could we ever afford to wire the country?  We did it anyway...

Gas heating (and, earlier, gas lighting) with millions of miles of underground piping.  How could we ever afford something like that?  We did it anyway...

Eisenhower's interstate freeway system.  How could we ever afford freeways across the country?  We did it anyway.  National security provided some of the incentive.  And is wasn't terribly expensive at $114 billion ($558 billion today).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System

Sure, these were large projects but they got done.

tom66:

--- Quote from: tggzzz on February 16, 2023, 04:58:55 pm ---Zero surprise here! I only mentioned a (very) few places I could think of that I had been to :)

tom66 lists his location as "Cambridgeshire". Having lived there I would characterise it as

* a few small old bits
* lots of new bits
* lots of space, even in the old bits
* bloody boring, except for Ely and Cambridge centresIn other words it does not represent typical UK townscapes.

Given that, it isn't surprising if tom66 (and some people from the US on other fora) don't understand the impracticalities of their vision in "other places". Dismissing other people's completely valid experiences of "other places" does not reflect well on them or their position.

--- End quote ---

tom66 spent most of his student life in Leeds and used to park on a terraced street near Headingley Stadium with a small car.  (Match days were not fun - do not move your car, you will not be able to park again.) tom66 also grew up in Hampshire in a small village with mostly street parking.  Currently I do have a driveway (it was a non-negotiable requirement when buying the house) but probably not enough space for a second car without remodelling the drive somewhat so when we do have two electric cars we will just alternate charging requirements between these cars.  The street I currently live on is alike many in semi-urban England - a mix of street parking and driveways, representative of the "25% of people*" not having access to off street parking.  I look at my street as being pretty representative of most, a mix of detached, semi-detached, terraced and bungalows, mostly built before the 1950's before cars were very popular, but actually not that difficult to serve for charging requirements.

I do not currently live in Cambridgeshire, I moved to Northamptonshire six months ago.  I would describe Northamptonshire as one of the most 'normal' counties I have lived in.  It very much just looks like England.

I do not see street charging for EVs as unsolvable but like many problems it will need solutions appropriate to the area. Pavement gulleys (and sure, let's fine people who leave their cables out, I'm absolutely okay with that, but let's also fine people who park unnecessarily on the footway, too), pop up chargers, small posts, lamppost charging. and for those who have it, charging at home.  Nothing about this is impractical, especially given there's at least 10-15 years before EVs become even a significant proportion of total vehicles on the road, and if you look at bigger cities the solutions are already appearing.

I'm also not sure exactly what your proposed alternative *is*, if your assumption is EVs cannot work for the vast majority due to charging headaches.  We cannot continue to burn petrol, because climate change is a thing, most people do depend on their car so public transport alone won't pick up the slack, so we do have to figure this out.  So, what, do you want to see hydrogen cars instead, because those have worse infrastructure requirements, and don't give 50-75% of people the ability to 'refuel' at home.  There are so many more things about hydrogen which are more difficult than getting 2kW to a car to charge overnight, and let's not forget the poor efficiency of these vehicles making any "grid load" far worse for hydrogen if renewable energy would be used.  It might be a solution for some applications, but for cars, it is not.  Hybrid vehicles might make some sense in the short term if battery constraints existed, but so far those aren't rearing their ugly head, batteries have only fallen in cost every year since the Leaf.   Note that Toyota's position of hybrids and hydrogen is in part due to their poor Li-Ion battery production capacity; something Tesla, the Germans, and the rest of the American auto industry all have a reasonable head start on, and a market China really stands to compete in, too.

*25% is better than the earlier 50% figure I'd quoted from the AA, but they were probably not including anything but driveways in their estimation.  Driveways are the easiest problem to solve for EV charging, but off-road parking in a shared lot is probably the second easiest, though requires more negotiation between parties (LA, landlord/land owner/etc.)

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: rstofer on February 16, 2023, 09:49:43 pm ---
--- Quote from: tggzzz on February 16, 2023, 08:11:10 pm ---
Consider a much simpler problem: a machine to dispense car parking tickets for parking spaces on the road. Characteristics: above ground, one every 100m or so, low power. Given the proportion of those simple machines that are out of order when you try to buy a ticket, the reliability of roadside chargers is likely to be, um, less than acceptable.

--- End quote ---

Follow the money!  In the case of the ticket dispenser, the money goes to the City and repair is controlled by City employees.  They clearly don't give a damn at any level.

Hopefully, charging points will be owned by private enterprise and they have a profit motive for keeping them ALL working.  After all, there is no return on their capital investment if they can't sell kWh.

The .gov should clear the roadblocks but the work/return should all be private enterprise.

We'll get into the discussion of 'red-lining' (crossing out entire neighborhoods) later but that's one of those incentive deals where .gov can actually make a contribution to grease the skids.

In a lot of ways, charging points could be a public utility.  I wouldn't want to see it go that way because .gov has too much control over operations.  Keeping the service private is probably the best way to go.  We have all seen what happens with public utilities.

If there is money to be made, private industry will find it!  Kind of like residential solar.

--- End quote ---

And there we have the core political philosophy. Government is inefficient and industry isn't.

While that may be true in the US, over here people are people whether they are employed by the government or autocrats. The main difference here is that the people can get rid of politicians but they can't get rid of autocrats. I believe Comcast is a poster child for that, but I'm sure there are others like patent troll companies and those that jack up the cost of old drugs by 10000% just because they can.

Over here we have been privatising public utilities since the 80s. Most of the results have been dismal, partly because the same people are doing the same job, partly because the autocrats siphon off money into their own pockets, and partly because that is what all private monopolies do.

rstofer:

--- Quote from: tggzzz on February 16, 2023, 09:54:46 pm ---A charger must have the ability to read a payment device, authenticate credit availibility, debit someone's account, and communicate that to the user.

--- End quote ---

Gas pumps already do this and have for a long time.


--- Quote ---I would prefer to listen to the experience of someone used to working in/under roads than someone presuming it is easy. The last time I had that pleasure was, gulp, 42 years ago at BT Research Labs. Eye opening.

--- End quote ---

But it is already known how to do this.  I don't know how but there are thousands of people who do.  This is just a tiny detail.  BTW, we did that at a company I worked for when we wanted to run an 8" chilled water line among 3 buildings without tearing up the lawn and buried utilities.  Worked well!

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