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Products => Dodgy Technology => Topic started by: ocset on September 04, 2018, 07:41:52 pm

Title: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ocset on September 04, 2018, 07:41:52 pm
Every country in the world should set up its own Government owned  Design and Manufacture centre for designing/manufacturing electric car chargers for its own country’s citizens.
This will prevent imports of huge amounts of dodgy electric car chargers by dodgy “middle men”. Such dodgy chargers will result in disappointed customers, and  tons and tons of scrap electronics…since these car chargers are big items.
These car chargers are high power items, and taking shortcuts in their design , to save money , will result in disappointed customers, as well as loads and loads  of scrap electronics. As such, the governments of countries should take over the design, to ensure that their country is not flooded with loads of super-cheap  electric  car chargers , which break down prematurely and  get scrapped. For example, these units will comprise fans which will fail because  dodgy  designers put cheap fans in them. However, a   government design agency would ensure that the right fan was used, and also ensure that units which had stopped working simply because their fan had stopped working are recycled by having their fan replaced…….ie the whole unit not scrapped  just because its fan had failed. This is just one example of the  tasks  of such a government agency towards providing good car chargers to its citizens.
If  this  kind of Government  agency is not set up, then loads of dodgy “middle men” will set themselves up to import loads of dodgy Far Eastern electric car chargers, making themselves mulit-millionaires overnight, and deluging their own country with tons and tons of scrap electronics. This must not be allowed to happen. Tariffs  must  be placed on any electric car charger that has not been purchased from the Government owned agency.
If the demand for electric car chargers outstrips the government owned agency’s  ability to supply electric car chargers, then  the government agency will import car chargers. But it will only do so if the schematic and hardware  is provided first,  so that the design of the charger can be checked  out. Any profit that the government agency makes by importing car chargers, will be transparently payed into the countries tax system….ie no dodgy “middle men” will become multi-millionaires overnight by importing lots of rubbish electric car chargers.
Are we all in agreement that the above must happen?
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: langwadt on September 04, 2018, 08:03:09 pm
just things were done in the Eastern Bloc before the end of the cold war, what a great idea /s
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: mmagin on September 04, 2018, 08:06:14 pm
How is this different from any other mains-connected electrical product?

Also, given that most EV chargers are just a fancy GFCI (RCD) and some serial communications to say what charge rates are acceptable, I expect the main ways they fail prematurely are just things like poor connectors, relays, etc.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: Ice-Tea on September 04, 2018, 08:09:11 pm
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.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: sokoloff on September 04, 2018, 08:09:24 pm
Are we all in agreement that the above must happen?
Absolutely not in agreement.

Assuming you're talking about the EVSE (the actual "charger" is on-board the car), it's a fairly simple device, and I see no reason to think that handing a monopoly over the design and manufacture of EVSEs to the government will result in a better outcome than the free market.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: IanB on September 04, 2018, 08:15:06 pm
How did treez learn to be so clueless? Is there a special school you can go to for this?
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: mikeselectricstuff on September 04, 2018, 08:18:03 pm
 :palm:
Yeah because governments are sooo good at doing things right when it comes to anything technical...
To suggest they participate in manufacture of a complex product is idiotically naive  and a recipie for disaster. If nothing else, by the time they'd decided anything, half the BOM would be obsolete.
What's so special about car chargers anyway..?
 
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: mikeselectricstuff on September 04, 2018, 08:19:08 pm
How did treez learn to be so clueless? Is there a special school you can go to for this?
I'm increasingly thinking he's just trolling to wind people up - if not he probably needs a major reality check...
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: langwadt on September 04, 2018, 08:19:18 pm
Also, given that most EV chargers are just a fancy GFCI (RCD) and some serial communications to say what charge rates are acceptable, I expect the main ways they fail prematurely are just things like poor connectors, relays, etc.

Household chargers? Maybe. Fast chargers? No.
Fast chargers have actual power electronics in them to convert grid voltage (380V/400V/480V/600V, or maybe up to pole voltage at 2~10kV) directly into battery voltage.

https://youtu.be/qy9pltNa0rY
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: Cyberdragon on September 04, 2018, 08:26:56 pm
:palm:
Yeah because governments are sooo good at doing things right when it comes to anything technical...
To suggest they participate in manufacture of a complex product is idiotically naive  and a recipie for disaster. If nothing else, by the time they'd decided anything, half the BOM would be obsolete.

(https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/01/15/article-0-16F37F62000005DC-701_306x519.jpg)

 ;D
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: jmelson on September 04, 2018, 08:45:13 pm
Every country in the world should set up its own Government owned  Design and Manufacture centre for designing/manufacturing electric car chargers for its own country’s citizens.
Hmm, the last electrical device designed by a government agency in the US was likely the "electric chair" to execute convicts.  Not a great precedent.

(Well, actually, it might be the NSA crypto gear, which wasn't too bad.)

Jon
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: Stray Electron on September 05, 2018, 03:44:59 am
:palm:

  Exactly!   OP, have you ever seen a charger that was designed and built by a "government agency"?  NOT a contractor but a real government agency?  I have and it wasn't pretty!  The government designs chargers about as well as they do anything else. Which is to say very poorly!
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: Raj on September 05, 2018, 02:16:19 pm
I disagree
Here's why-
People will re-purpose unused chargers for something else, if they remain unsold

People need to learn, the power inputting systems like powersupply needs to be super reliable for their electronics to work longer, be it the hard way like, computers blowing up.

After one or two bad things happen to a single product, the customers will soon realize the company is crap and lead to it's death.


Free market man. It corrects itself

Government is inefficient. Look at brexit. UK's surveillance and internet censorship (i I looked at your id's flag and thus giving examples you can relate to)

People who disagree with above things can move to Russia.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: Gregg on September 05, 2018, 04:44:04 pm
If technical development had been regulated by government, this question would be moot--- technology would never have developed enough for Treez to even ponder this.

Ineptitude in government far exceeds any glimmer of brilliance that may shine through the layers of false self-importance and corruption.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: mikeselectricstuff on September 05, 2018, 04:55:36 pm
The only role govts should have is setting and enforcing safety standards. Even this they sometimes go overboard ( CE including EMC immunity for example).
They will almost always be the least competent to manufacture anything - the Soviet Union proved that.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: T3sl4co1l on September 05, 2018, 05:13:49 pm
People making a distinction between "market" and "government" has always been peculiar to me.

The government is always for sale, for some price.  It is on the market.

If the market demands controls, laws will be enacted, and tweaked and added until the demand is balanced.

This is why we have laws concerning EMC, product safety* and so on.

*Actually, we don't even have much (if any??) law about that.  It's more if you want to get anything from your insurance company in case of disaster, you better be using equipment they trust -- i.e., carrying a UL mark (or other NRTL, for the US).

If a shitty charger passes UL and FCC, it might be shitty, but at least it probably won't burn down your house, or if it does, you're more likely to get a settlement out of it.

Beyond that, if you demand lower risk, contact your congresspersons and ask them to enact laws that raise the cost of bargain-basement electronics.  I'm sure they'll help you out with that! /s

Tim
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ocset on September 05, 2018, 07:18:06 pm
Thanks,
I should have probably said, that well run countries like America and Germany probably dont need this kind of Government intervention.
Americans and Germans have a natural sense of comraderie with  their fellow countrymen and dont seek to screw their fellow citizens like happens in UK.

I have experience with a company that sold 5-10kw electric drives….with this type of kit, there is lots you can do to increase the lifetime…but it costs………There is lots you can do to save money and create a cheaper product that will fail quickly….……loads of cheap dodgy chargers will be imported by middle men and create loads of scrap if the dodgy stuff isn’t blocked by tariffs etc.
When I worked with 5-10kw electric drives, so many used to fail (because we made them cheap), that we used to sell the customer “contracts to supply” electric drives, instead of selling the drives by volume…this was because they failed so often, that it was cheaper to just get the customer on a 12 month contract, and within that 12 months , we would just replace every failed electric drive for free…. As you know, this is what its like in the high power game, the kit can fail in droves when you take cost shortcuts….we did take cost shortcuts, because it was cheaper to just keep replacing the failed ones and make them cheaply.


Germany is the model country......where the German government secretly forces the German competitor companys to teamwork with each other….The great German car companies, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen….are all just one company in reality…sharing trade secrets with each other……by teamworking together their individual strengths are greater. The German government put “mixer staff” into these car companies, to make sure that trade secrets are shared…they also encourage BMW engineers to leave and go to Mercedes etc…part of the knowledge sharing….and look how effective this is.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: langwadt on September 05, 2018, 07:34:12 pm
Thanks,
I should have probably said, that well run countries like America and Germany probably dont need this kind of Government intervention.
Americans and Germans have a natural sense of comraderie with  their fellow countrymen and dont seek to screw their fellow citizens like happens in UK.

I have experience with a company that sold 5-10kw electric drives….with this type of kit, there is lots you can do to increase the lifetime…but it costs………There is lots you can do to save money and create a cheaper product that will fail quickly….……loads of cheap dodgy chargers will be imported by middle men and create loads of scrap if the dodgy stuff isn’t blocked by tariffs etc.
When I worked with 5-10kw electric drives, so many used to fail (because we made them cheap), that we used to sell the customer “contracts to supply” electric drives, instead of selling the drives by volume…this was because they failed so often, that it was cheaper to just get the customer on a 12 month contract, and within that 12 months , we would just replace every failed electric drive for free…. As you know, this is what its like in the high power game, the kit can fail in droves when you take cost shortcuts….we did take cost shortcuts, because it was cheaper to just keep replacing the failed ones and make them cheaply.


Germany is the model country......where the German government secretly forces the German competitor companys to teamwork with each other….The great German car companies, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen….are all just one company in reality…sharing trade secrets with each other……by teamworking together their individual strengths are greater. The German government put “mixer staff” into these car companies, to make sure that trade secrets are shared…they also encourage BMW engineers to leave and go to Mercedes etc…part of the knowledge sharing….and look how effective this is.

you should try a career in comedy, your writing is hilarious

Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: mmagin on September 05, 2018, 07:54:40 pm
Also, given that most EV chargers are just a fancy GFCI (RCD) and some serial communications to say what charge rates are acceptable, I expect the main ways they fail prematurely are just things like poor connectors, relays, etc.

Household chargers? Maybe. Fast chargers? No.
Fast chargers have actual power electronics in them to convert grid voltage (380V/400V/480V/600V, or maybe up to pole voltage at 2~10kV) directly into battery voltage.

Sure, but I assume the cheap crappy ones that fail prematurely aren't the high power fast chargers that run off >250V.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: jmelson on September 05, 2018, 08:53:22 pm
If a shitty charger passes UL and FCC, it might be shitty, but at least it probably won't burn down your house, or if it does, you're more likely to get a settlement out of it.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of stuff on the market that bears a UL label, but was actually NOT certified by them.  They have not come up with a system to control the fraudulent use of fake UL labels.  If you go to WalMart, you will see tons of products that have UL labels - most of them are fake!

I reported one power strip/surge supressor to UL as being an obvious fake, they didn't even respond.  The most obvious part was if you plugged a US plug into the brand-new strip and turned it over, the plug FELL OUT of the socket.  This kind of poor connection COULD burn your house down!

YIKES!

Jon
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ConKbot on September 06, 2018, 05:24:28 pm
Thanks,
I should have probably said, that well run countries like America and Germany probably dont need this kind of Government intervention.
Americans and Germans have a natural sense of comraderie with  their fellow countrymen and dont seek to screw their fellow citizens like happens in UK.

I have experience with a company that sold 5-10kw electric drives….with this type of kit, there is lots you can do to increase the lifetime…but it costs………There is lots you can do to save money and create a cheaper product that will fail quickly….……loads of cheap dodgy chargers will be imported by middle men and create loads of scrap if the dodgy stuff isn’t blocked by tariffs etc.
When I worked with 5-10kw electric drives, so many used to fail (because we made them cheap), that we used to sell the customer “contracts to supply” electric drives, instead of selling the drives by volume…this was because they failed so often, that it was cheaper to just get the customer on a 12 month contract, and within that 12 months , we would just replace every failed electric drive for free…. As you know, this is what its like in the high power game, the kit can fail in droves when you take cost shortcuts….we did take cost shortcuts, because it was cheaper to just keep replacing the failed ones and make them cheaply.


Germany is the model country......where the German government secretly forces the German competitor companys to teamwork with each other….The great German car companies, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen….are all just one company in reality…sharing trade secrets with each other……by teamworking together their individual strengths are greater. The German government put “mixer staff” into these car companies, to make sure that trade secrets are shared…they also encourage BMW engineers to leave and go to Mercedes etc…part of the knowledge sharing….and look how effective this is.

you should try a career in comedy, your writing is hilarious
The ongoing schtick is as good as some of the ones I see on R/eve.  Wants to be dodgy middleman importer one thread,  livid about them and wanting gov't intervention the next.  Can't make a street lamp driver without adversaries attacking it with EM weapons, or a 50W driverand then wants gov't programs for multi-KW stuff. You can admire coppercones consistently insane stuff, but with a treez thread it's a Christmas gift because you never know what you're gonna get, but you have a suspicion its gonna be good.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ocset on September 06, 2018, 07:30:03 pm
Thanks, the main power level of electric   car charger purchased will be 3kW. This is because it can be  connected  to single phase  domestic mains. Also, it gives a range of about 150 miles from an overnight charge…enough to get to work for most.
So the  dodgy geezers will be running the fets too hot and getting premature fails…What we could  see from the government run companys is actual heat sensors on each power fet so that if the user mounts the charger in a too-hot ambient and the fets start to overheat, then it will safely switch off and flag up “overheating”.
Its this kind of thing that the governemnt run companys can work on to end up with  a really long lasting efficienct charger…when failed units come back, they can be assessed and the results put into future builds until the failures are weeded out.
Many companies would be in the governemnt scheme, and together, they woudl end up with a great product and few failures.

Indded , many failures are connectors and solder opens, bent-board-cracked-ceramics etc...so thats all good stuff to weed out

I reverse engineered a 3kw charger some years ago and found the power fet isolated gate drives were not giving enough  voltage to get into the lower rds(on)  area…such slack and el-cheapo practices would be weeded out by the government monitored process. All individual companys who were taking part in this government initiative would have the info distributed to them so that all could benefit from each others knowledge….teamwork. All would be payed bonus’s if any member got good results, to encourage team effort...encourage helping each other along.

This is nothing  new..in USA, all the big semicons are known, behind the scenes, to be in bed with each  other…the USA Government enforces this (albeit secretly)…because the success of  all the American semicons, is crucial to the success of the American military machine.
China of course is another example…the worlds biggest exporter by volume….and a truly amazing rate of advancement in technology in a short time….all Chinese co’s are owned by the Chinese Government…and  with  a network of  UK middle men that they have cultivated in UK for example, they have  pretty much dismantled loads of  the UK electronics industry..nobody can say for sure thats what they meant to do..but thats what happened.....amazing operators.

We would also like to see heatsinks in failed units going back into new units, rather than sent for melting down...lots of stuff like this.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: coppercone2 on September 06, 2018, 07:41:19 pm
How did treez learn to be so clueless? Is there a special school you can go to for this?
I'm increasingly thinking he's just trolling to wind people up - if not he probably needs a major reality check...

If you read his previous posts it is obvious he is looking for government/political protection for his company because he works in highly competitive market places that end up having retarded margins or he is trying to break into certain market places populated by whale companies as a small fish company. If you can't use massive discounts due to insane volume to compete then you either need to either use shady engineering or business practices. The parts/solutions he asks for do not exist (i.e. handling his needs with existing device classes) so he is looking for some other method with which to operate a business.

Eliminating a free market and being first does the trick but unfortunately this results in command economies... So the business functions by robbing the tax payers. On the positive maybe his attitude is Machiavellian rather then completely sociopathic so he will make a high quality product that makes sense once he accumulates the necessary resources for cost reduction by scale.

The ethical way (i.e. not penalizing the freaking tax payer) of achieving this goal would be to develop a product that will work in the correct scale and look for trustworthy investors/venture capitalists, rather then eliminating competition with gestapo tactics. In short there is an idiot some where in his company and they are extremely pigheaded. The engineering specifications he gets with relation to BOM are completely insane. I am surprised they even try to develop that shit. How does that garbage even get authorized to go into the engineering department for development? The person authorizing the research is incompetent, the clear answer is that the market place is too difficult to enter at the current time with current resources. It is a gangsterish directive, with the hope that the engineers can hustle together some kind of solution in the face of extreme odds. Usually BOM reduction is started AFTER a reasonably easy to develop prototype is made that can at least make some money, to see if you can make more money.. as a side benefit.

I think there is paranoia in his sales department and company vision because they have been in competition with other little fish for so long, that they forgot you can actually get bigger WITHOUT selling anything if you have a GOOD PLAN that CONVINCES PEOPLE TO INVEST. Like people getting out of prison don't realize there is a economy that works well without stabbings and cigarette cartons. It seems they feel that they have to prove current production is highly profitable, rather then to admit that the market changed and they need additional resources to continue to prosper. Its basically a refusal of acceptance by MANAGEMENT.

 Remember the episode of the Simpsons where marge advises a fellow inmate that his art work will look better if he does not use the stabbing motion with the paint brush?

I have a  feeling that if they manage to produce a product that can satisfy company objectives at this point with the current company directives that lead to the development of the product it will literally be a smelly abomination... or some truly epic engineering (which is generally unlikely for any product). The cost related requirements are some Apollo 13 shit.

And the problem with a command economy is that it basically has a shitty transient response that ends up wasting a ton of cash, people high up don't have a good feel of what is going on and they can't respond quickly enough to market fluctuations. I would regard communism as 'dampened to shit all', it probobly won't ever reach the set point, let alone respond to changes.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: mikeselectricstuff on September 06, 2018, 08:23:21 pm
Its this kind of thing that the governemnt run companys can work on to end up with  a really long lasting efficienct charger…
Where did you get the ridiculous idea that "govt run companies" are capable of doing anything competently or efficiently?
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: boffin on September 06, 2018, 08:37:48 pm
Its this kind of thing that the governemnt run companys can work on to end up with  a really long lasting efficienct charger…
Where did you get the ridiculous idea that "govt run companies" are capable of doing anything competently or efficiently?

Having worked in the public and private sector, trust me when I say that they they're in competition as to who can do the worst job. Worst might be measured slightly different in different aspects of the implementation, but they both suck equally.

As for the OP's comment, I see no problem with properly inspected items being sold by the private sector. The problem lies in that it's pretty easy to get things into the country without approval, and there's little recourse when you're buying it directly from an offshore source.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: langwadt on September 06, 2018, 08:58:12 pm
Its this kind of thing that the governemnt run companys can work on to end up with  a really long lasting efficienct charger…
Where did you get the ridiculous idea that "govt run companies" are capable of doing anything competently or efficiently?

Having worked in the public and private sector, trust me when I say that they they're in competition as to who can do the worst job. Worst might be measured slightly different in different aspects of the implementation, but they both suck equally.

private companies run out of money and disappear, govt run companies have an infinite supply of tax money

Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: sokoloff on September 06, 2018, 09:03:41 pm
Thanks, the main power level of electric   car charger purchased will be 3kW. This is because it can be  connected  to single phase  domestic mains. Also, it gives a range of about 150 miles from an overnight charge…enough to get to work for most.
So the  dodgy geezers will be running the fets too hot and getting premature fails…What we could  see from the government run companys is actual heat sensors on each power fet so that if the user mounts the charger in a too-hot ambient and the fets start to overheat, then it will safely switch off and flag up “overheating”.
Why use a FET here? Relays work just fine (and seem to be the more common solution in EVSEs that I’ve opened). The EVSE just serves to advertise max current and supply unregulated current to the car’s charger. It’s the car’s charger (built into the car) that’s responsible for honoring the current limit, not the EVSE’s responsibility to enforce it.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: boffin on September 07, 2018, 01:42:21 am
Thanks, the main power level of electric   car charger purchased will be 3kW. This is because it can be  connected  to single phase  domestic mains. Also, it gives a range of about 150 miles from an overnight charge…enough to get to work for most.
So the  dodgy geezers will be running the fets too hot and getting premature fails…What we could  see from the government run companys is actual heat sensors on each power fet so that if the user mounts the charger in a too-hot ambient and the fets start to overheat, then it will safely switch off and flag up “overheating”.
Why use a FET here? Relays work just fine (and seem to be the more common solution in EVSEs that I’ve opened). The EVSE just serves to advertise max current and supply unregulated current to the car’s charger. It’s the car’s charger (built into the car) that’s responsible for honoring the current limit, not the EVSE’s responsibility to enforce it.

The charger is built into the car.  All the outlet needs to do is provide 120/240V, and tell the car (via a -12v square wave) how much current it's allowed to pull.  Any additional circuitry is all protection.  If you want to see how a car EVSE works, I suggest you have a look at the open EVSE project.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: sokoloff on September 07, 2018, 01:44:54 am
Thanks, the main power level of electric   car charger purchased will be 3kW. This is because it can be  connected  to single phase  domestic mains. Also, it gives a range of about 150 miles from an overnight charge…enough to get to work for most.
So the  dodgy geezers will be running the fets too hot and getting premature fails…What we could  see from the government run companys is actual heat sensors on each power fet so that if the user mounts the charger in a too-hot ambient and the fets start to overheat, then it will safely switch off and flag up “overheating”.
Why use a FET here? Relays work just fine (and seem to be the more common solution in EVSEs that I’ve opened). The EVSE just serves to advertise max current and supply unregulated current to the car’s charger. It’s the car’s charger (built into the car) that’s responsible for honoring the current limit, not the EVSE’s responsibility to enforce it.
The charger is built into the car.  All the outlet needs to do is provide 120/240V, and tell the car (via a -12v square wave) how much current it's allowed to pull.  Any additional circuitry is all protection.  If you want to see how a car EVSE works, I suggest you have a look at the open EVSE project.
Yes, I’m well aware.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: MK14 on September 07, 2018, 02:41:43 am
Every country in the world should set up its own Government owned  Design and Manufacture centre for designing/manufacturing electric car chargers for its own country’s citizens.
..
..
Are we all in agreement that the above must happen?

No, I don't agree.

If the Government (taking the UK as an example), did the Electric Car Chargers, they would (perhaps) ...
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: Brumby on September 07, 2018, 03:12:11 am
MK14 understands Government.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: vk6zgo on September 07, 2018, 12:34:45 pm
If technical development had been regulated by government, this question would be moot--- technology would never have developed enough for Treez to even ponder this.
For much of the 20th Century, it was, & an avalanche of technological developments occurred.
Many large technology companies relied upon Government orders to keep their doors open.
Quote

Ineptitude in government far exceeds any glimmer of brilliance that may shine through the layers of false self-importance and corruption.

Politicians and non-technical public servants wouldn't be designing stuff.
I have worked in Australian Govt & Private Sector organisations, & there was not a sniff of corruption among the people I worked with.

The EEs & other technical staff were just as proficient & diligent in the three large organisations I worked at, although the CEO of one of the Private Sector ones did take off to Majorca with a lot of financial questions unanswered.

The one with the most  problem with " self importance" was a quite small company I worked at after the others.
At that one, no ideas were any good unless they came from the official "chain of command", in complete
contrast to all my earlier Employers in the Technical area.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: vk6zgo on September 07, 2018, 03:44:39 pm
Even governments knowing the minute details on how to run state corporations like China and Russia know to not touch consumer business.
State owned consumer business is destined to fail due to the difficulty of introducing unfair competitiveness and the inherent inefficiency of state owned business.
If you can't compete well and you can't get good amount of unfair help, then how can you expect to survive?

The State owned Electricity supplier in Western Australia has lower prices than the "Privatised" (ex State) Suppliers in the other States.

Govt run industries in vital areas like communications & utilities ran efficiently for many years in Australia, until, in an orgy of "Ideological Purity", most of them were sold of to the Private Sector, who continue to suck away at the public teat, whilst supplying an inferior grade of service.

If the Private Sector ones were cheap, that would be one thing, but they aren't.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: T3sl4co1l on September 07, 2018, 04:15:44 pm
Indeed, gov't sponsored or operated research has driven the last almost-century of technological development.  Silicon Valley, as such, wouldn't exist without military and intelligence projects.

The challenge is to select research that's speculative enough that it probably won't have immediate ROI, but is nonetheless likely to succeed on its stated goals.  The lack of ROI means your average corporation won't undertake it; and a large one would be able to, but would have too much policy and office politics to facilitate research.  The cost of research is then spread over the taxpayers, and the benefits turn up later as companies are able to turn that research into greater productivity, more advanced technology and cheaper products (heh, well, hopefully; the semiconductor industry is perhaps too good of an example of this, and I'm sure there are many examples that aren't as beneficial to all people..).

For a more direct example, consider "green energy" projects, and the grants, subsidies and such that are related to them.  Some pay off, some don't.  Wind and solar (Solyndra and such notwithstanding!) have proven economical in suitable regions; US biofuels not so much (E85 consumes a food staple, and doesn't break even with unleaded at current prices).

Tim
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: Nominal Animal on September 08, 2018, 07:44:54 am
Governments, cities, and municipalities should stick to providing the necessities -- which today includes internet connectivity, IMO -- that are natural monopolies, and leave the rest to competition.

The rules for competition should be transparent and require quality checks, though. There are lots of people who are willing to e.g. mix melamine to milk just to get a little bit more profit, or use a bit cheaper but fundamentally unsuitable concrete mix, to ensure they won't overrun the budget, even when building something as structurally critical as a nuclear reactor. (After all, everyone assumes they can use all of the safety margin themselves, or otherwise they'll be long gone before the problem is noticed, and is therefore Somebody Else's Problem.)

I think the ancient Romans got it right: when they commissioned a bridge, I believe they paid 50% when the bridge was erected, and the other 50% fifty years later, if the bridge was still standing.  Obviously, we cannot do the same today, partially because of inflation, but mostly because everyone wants their profits now and not later.  Interestingly, many western societies seem quite keen to otherwise reproduce the situation of the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ocset on September 08, 2018, 02:41:21 pm
Thanks, Anyway I depict the participant companies will share “secrets” on longevity and value of design for this 3kw EV charger application…….for example there will be no skimping on transient protection…and units that have merely blown a fuse because the mov was old and battered will be brought back into production and not scrapped….or rather, bits of them will be…eg the mains filter, or the heatsinks, etc etc.

Recently, the UK government invested huge amounts of money into producing smart meters for domestic and industrial energy useage in UK (charging for electricity)……the contracts to build the small offline power supplies for the smart meters were spread around about five companies based in UK…none of these companies were actually British owned. These 5 companies worked totally in isolation from each other, and did not share secrets on their work with each other…neither did they check each others work…as a result, there were many incidences of huge amounts of products having to be recalled because either they were electrically unsafe, or the transient protection had a problem, and resulted in premature failure of the PSU’s. This is one of the reasons why a proper Governement backed teamwork operation must happen for 3kw electric car chargers.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: mikeselectricstuff on September 08, 2018, 04:38:02 pm
Quote
This is one of the reasons why a proper Governement backed teamwork operation must happen for 3kw electric car chargers.
Again, what makes you think the govt would do it any better than experienced commercial companies?
And don't you think they have more important things to be doing?
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ocset on September 08, 2018, 06:23:31 pm
Quote
The charger is built into the car.
Thanks, yes, but thats just a small charger for those  hopefully few occasions when the driver forgets and gets caught out, and needs 10 miles or so of charge  to get to the nearesst garage etc...the 3kw chargers will be oftheshelf items boutght additionally for the elctric car
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: mikeselectricstuff on September 08, 2018, 06:40:27 pm
Why would the internal charger not be capable of 3kw?
That's a pretty low charge rate, anything less would be pretty useless.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: sokoloff on September 08, 2018, 07:27:32 pm
Quote
The charger is built into the car.
Thanks, yes, but thats just a small charger for those  hopefully few occasions when the driver forgets and gets caught out, and needs 10 miles or so of charge  to get to the nearesst garage etc...the 3kw chargers will be oftheshelf items boutght additionally for the elctric car
In EV terminology, the charger is built into the car (it's literally part of the car and the owner of the car is never intended to see/touch it).

The thing that everyone calls a "charger" is properly called an EVSE ("electric vehicle supply equipment") and is responsible for getting power from the source (typically the utility) into the car such that the car's charger can charge the battery. It's the thing that you plug in to charge your car, yet it's not a charger in engineering speak.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: NiHaoMike on September 08, 2018, 09:35:30 pm
In EV terminology, the charger is built into the car (it's literally part of the car and the owner of the car is never intended to see/touch it).

The thing that everyone calls a "charger" is properly called an EVSE ("electric vehicle supply equipment") and is responsible for getting power from the source (typically the utility) into the car such that the car's charger can charge the battery. It's the thing that you plug in to charge your car, yet it's not a charger in engineering speak.
Consumer products that have the charging socket connected directly to the battery are quite uncommon - the most common are power tools and R/C toys. Pretty much every modern smartphone, tablet, and laptop has the charger built in yet the power supply used to charge those is pretty much always called a "charger".
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ocset on September 08, 2018, 10:29:28 pm
Quote
In EV terminology, the charger is built into the car (it's literally part of the car and the owner of the car is never intended to see/touch it).
Thanks, but sorry, an onboard charger would have to be capable of 50kW fast charge otherwise it would get in the  way....and there's no way you'd put a 50kw charger onboard a car...so it has to be customer discretion...and the customer can choose whether to buy a home charger capable of 50kw, or just 3kw.
But every electric car must be capable of being connected to a 50kw charger, or a 3kw charger, or anything inbetween.
I am pretty sure that the most efficienct charge is gotten from c/10 chargers.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: langwadt on September 08, 2018, 11:11:53 pm
Quote
In EV terminology, the charger is built into the car (it's literally part of the car and the owner of the car is never intended to see/touch it).
Thanks, but sorry, an onboard charger would have to be capable of 50kW fast charge otherwise it would get in the  way....and there's no way you'd put a 50kw charger onboard a car...so it has to be customer discretion...and the customer can choose whether to buy a home charger capable of 50kw, or just 3kw.
But every electric car must be capable of being connected to a 50kw charger, or a 3kw charger, or anything inbetween.
I am pretty sure that the most efficienct charge is gotten from c/10 chargers.

The Tesla has a build in charger that will do 11kW  from a 16A 3phase outlet which is pretty standard around here, afaiu you can get a
second charger a mounted to do 22kW if you have a 32A outlet
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ocset on September 09, 2018, 11:56:52 am
Thanks thats interesting, i think in most of the EU, and USA, and Aus/NZ, plus most others,  the domestic supply is single phase, and  they are 16A plugs, and really 3kw is the maximum you can have.

I appreciate some cars have built in  11kw chargers, but really, i think the chargers in most cars will be external to the car, or otherwise  the onbaord charger would have to be capable of too many different things....from 50kw, with three phase connection, to 3kw, with single phase connection.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: sokoloff on September 09, 2018, 12:05:40 pm
In EV terminology, the charger is built into the car (it's literally part of the car and the owner of the car is never intended to see/touch it).

The thing that everyone calls a "charger" is properly called an EVSE ("electric vehicle supply equipment") and is responsible for getting power from the source (typically the utility) into the car such that the car's charger can charge the battery. It's the thing that you plug in to charge your car, yet it's not a charger in engineering speak.
Consumer products that have the charging socket connected directly to the battery are quite uncommon - the most common are power tools and R/C toys. Pretty much every modern smartphone, tablet, and laptop has the charger built in yet the power supply used to charge those is pretty much always called a "charger".
I agree with your argument as logical, but that's not consistent with the terminology the EV industry engineering seems to have settled on.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: mikeselectricstuff on September 09, 2018, 12:34:57 pm
Thanks thats interesting, i think in most of the EU, and USA, and Aus/NZ, plus most others,  the domestic supply is single phase, and  they are 16A plugs, and really 3kw is the maximum you can have.

I appreciate some cars have built in  11kw chargers, but really, i think the chargers in most cars will be external to the car, or otherwise  the onbaord charger would have to be capable of too many different things....from 50kw, with three phase connection, to 3kw, with single phase connection.
3phase vs. 1phase is just 2 more diodes and higher voltage tolerance, so not a big deal.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: oPossum on September 09, 2018, 01:42:31 pm
Tesla uses 3 identical inverters for 3 phase. Two of the three are used for single phase operation.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: oPossum on September 09, 2018, 01:48:49 pm
Thanks thats interesting, i think in most of the EU, and USA, and Aus/NZ, plus most others,  the domestic supply is single phase, and  they are 16A plugs, and really 3kw is the maximum you can have.

12 kW in the USA is not a problem. Ordinary domestic supply is 240 V split phase, and 50 A circuits are used for air conditioning, resistive heating and other applications including EVSE.

The Tesla Model 3 has a 7.7 or 9.6 kW charger on board (depending on battery capacity), so getting close to what a common domestic supply can provide.

The first generation Tesla superchargers where just a stack of the same on board charger used in the car.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ocset on September 09, 2018, 02:24:23 pm
Yes, thanks, Tesla put the charger in the car, because chargers and EV's etc etc arent that common at the moment, so they put it in the car to relieve the customer of the effort of having to buy a charger...but as EVs get more common, EVs will not have the charger in the car any more.

Ok thanks, by the way, this thread was never meant to be political…it was always supposed to be about discussing technical ideas toward 3kw EV chargers that the government could do in a big team effort between government sponsored companies…for example…

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

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.
Also, proper temperature sensing throughout the converter, including elec’lytic cap cases…..no private co’ would bother with this…power would be pegged back till the temp went down to good level. A private co would just shove one NTC in there and try and do it from that alone…loads of scrap would result.
MOVs will be used…and if done by private sector, units which blew a fuse simply because the mov blew up will be totally scrapped…..not so with the government led thing………….MOV units will be replaced and the unit sent back out after some advisory testing.

This government led project will also massively help bring on power supply engineers in the UK or whatever country.
There is a massive shortage in uk...plus other countries.
I appreciate that if any individual is making a ton of money through working in the private sector, then you’re not going to be interested in any government backed project, period……but just think of all the government money which gets poured into UK co’s at the moment…in terms of “development grants”…this amounts to billions of pounds of wasted money every year…wasted by private UK companies doing “waste of time” things with this taxpayers money.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: langwadt on September 09, 2018, 02:39:55 pm
Yes, thanks, Tesla put the charger in the car, because chargers and EV's etc etc arent that common at the moment, so they put it in the car to relieve the customer of the effort of having to buy a charger...but as EVs get more common, EVs will not have the charger in the car any more.

Ok thanks, by the way, this thread was never meant to be political…it was always supposed to be about discussing technical ideas toward 3kw EV chargers that the government could do in a big team effort between government sponsored companies…for example…

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

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.
Also, proper temperature sensing throughout the converter, including elec’lytic cap cases…..no private co’ would bother with this…power would be pegged back till the temp went down to good level. A private co would just shove one NTC in there and try and do it from that alone…loads of scrap would result.
MOVs will be used…and if done by private sector, units which blew a fuse simply because the mov blew up will be totally scrapped…..not so with the government led thing………….MOV units will be replaced and the unit sent back out after some advisory testing.

This government led project will also massively help bring on power supply engineers in the UK or whatever country.
There is a massive shortage in uk...plus other countries.
I appreciate that if any individual is making a ton of money through working in the private sector, then you’re not going to be interested in any government backed project, period……but just think of all the government money which gets poured into UK co’s at the moment…in terms of “development grants”…this amounts to billions of pounds of wasted money every year…wasted by private UK companies doing “waste of time” things with this taxpayers money.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Poe%27s%20Law (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Poe%27s%20Law)
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ocset on September 09, 2018, 02:47:27 pm
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.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: oPossum on September 09, 2018, 02:55:30 pm
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.

Quote
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.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: MK14 on September 09, 2018, 03:00:37 pm
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..
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: mikeselectricstuff on September 09, 2018, 10:01:16 pm
Quote
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.


Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: Mr. Scram on September 09, 2018, 10:36:37 pm
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.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ebastler on September 10, 2018, 07:48:45 pm
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.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: CCitizenTO on September 12, 2018, 09:40:00 pm
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.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: vk6zgo on September 13, 2018, 12:22:08 pm
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!
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: sokoloff on September 13, 2018, 12:42:53 pm
@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)?
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ebastler on September 13, 2018, 01:41:59 pm
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.

Quote
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.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: rrinker on September 13, 2018, 07:54:42 pm
 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.
Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: IanMacdonald on September 26, 2018, 04:47:32 pm
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.

Title: Re: Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.
Post by: ANTALIFE on September 27, 2018, 01:16:33 am
treez

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k0SmqbBIpQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k0SmqbBIpQ)