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USB-C charging law in the EU.

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PlainName:

--- Quote ---nor putting an USB-C to an EV
--- End quote ---

What? I won't  be able to charge the EV from my phone's wallwart? What is the point of it all, then  :(

Siwastaja:

--- Quote from: PlainName on December 03, 2023, 03:57:54 pm ---
--- Quote ---nor putting an USB-C to an EV
--- End quote ---

What? I won't  be able to charge the EV from my phone's wallwart? What is the point of it all, then  :(

--- End quote ---

Think about the possibilities - at 200W USB-C quick charge, during 12 hours of overnight charge, you could get 15 km of driving range in your EV. All you need to do is to apply a bit of extra engineering bypassing the car's existing power-hungry always-on-during-charge systems like unnecessary computers, poorly designed BMS and whatever, so that you can put most of that 200W (minus the main contactor) to do actual work. Then you just need to design an isolated, say flyback converter from 20V to battery voltage (400V-ish). Easy-peasy!

andre_teprom:
Having all that extra stuff in the device can make it bulky and expensive. I prefer having the smarts in the charger too. Plus, it makes chargers more versatile for different devices. But it seems like the industry is moving towards USB-C for uniformity.

PlainName:

--- Quote from: andre_teprom on December 03, 2023, 09:05:40 pm ---I prefer having the smarts in the charger too.

--- End quote ---

It's not clear if you mean instead of, or as well as, smarts in the battery.

If it's the former then that would, IMO, be a bad move since the charger would need to know about the battery. Use the wrong charger and it could be goodbye battery (and whatever is nearby).


--- Quote --- Plus, it makes chargers more versatile for different devices.
--- End quote ---

Actually, less versatile. Consider that the charger would need to know about everything it might ever be charging, which is an impossibility. So there would be a subset of everything, and the likelihood is that the subset would be quite small. What happens about the stuff the charger doesn't know? Not awfully versatile with those, I guess.

On the other hand, a 12VDC supply is pretty versatile and generic. Doesn't give a damn about what's sucking juice from it, won't try to control whatever it is erroneously, etc. Of course, that means the batteries would need smarts, but once all of them have it the cost of adding it is very small. As an example, once upon a time a simple one-axis electronic gyro cost serious money, eventually falling to "er, I'll think about it" cost. Nowadays you get 6DOF sensors for peanuts, mainly because every phone contained a gyro or accelerometer or, more often, both.

I think things like charging, where there are two distinct entities that share nothing except the connection, should conform to Postel's law:  "an implementation should be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior". Perhaps USB PD does that.


--- Quote --- But it seems like the industry is moving towards USB-C for uniformity.

--- End quote ---

I think uniformity in this context is a Good Thing. The problem is that USB-C is quite complex, needing even special cables with smarts in them to really do the business. But it falls back to something sensible if you're cheaping out and just want simple.

NiHaoMike:

--- Quote from: Siwastaja on December 03, 2023, 05:12:47 pm ---Think about the possibilities - at 200W USB-C quick charge, during 12 hours of overnight charge, you could get 15 km of driving range in your EV. All you need to do is to apply a bit of extra engineering bypassing the car's existing power-hungry always-on-during-charge systems like unnecessary computers, poorly designed BMS and whatever, so that you can put most of that 200W (minus the main contactor) to do actual work. Then you just need to design an isolated, say flyback converter from 20V to battery voltage (400V-ish). Easy-peasy!

--- End quote ---
Somewhat more useful would be the capability to charge the 12V battery from USB-C. It wouldn't take much power at all to overcome the self discharge and keep the battery from going dead in a car that's only driven occasionally. If the USB-C port is already there for some other purpose (most likely charging portable devices when the car is running), it would only be a little more complexity to have the converter be able to run backwards. That said, it would make much less sense in an EV or plug in hybrid which already has a power input.

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