Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
'Tesla' = 'Fixed', when it comes to grins
Indeed, Tesla have more or less admitted that the issue of "range anxiety" exists, as the company has previously said that it will offer versions of its forthcoming Model S with internal combustion generators supplementing the batteries.
... you're going to need one of these.
The "Tesla grin" seems more than a little strained on this one, then.
All that said, battery-car fanciers needn't give up yet. The prospect exists of cars using lithium-titanate batteries reaching the market at some point. These still can't charge up fast from any normal power outlet, but given industrial three-phase juice they can be up to 80 per cent in under three minutes.
Unlike a Roadster, a Lightning li-ti supercar could one day pull onto a forecourt, charge in a few minutes, and drive off. As a result, garage owners might actually put high-power outlets on their forecourts, happy in the knowledge that a reasonable number of paying customers might be able to use them in a day.
But the Lightning seems to be retreating further and further into the future. Two years ago it was one year off: as of now, deliveries are expected in two years.
Meanwhile, reputable Swiss boffins have lately pointed out that in fact a VW Golf powered by one of the new, super-low-emission injected turbodiesels is responsible for less carbon emissions over its lifespan than one with a li-ion battery running on typical grid power.
It may be true that ultimately electric transport and battery cars are the way forward: after all, quite apart from anything else, the oil and gas will one day run out (if perhaps not as soon as some are predicting). And Western consumers might like to stop buying oil and gas from unpleasant regimes sooner than that, regardless of the fact that ecodiesels mean less carbon emissions than battery EVs.
But right now and in the near future, that "Tesla grin" is definitely looking rather fixed. ®
COMMENTS
Oh how we laugh
>> ...but given industrial three-phase juice they can be up to 80 per cent in under three minutes
Hmm, lets do some figures for that. The Tesla is 50-something kWH, and it's suggested we can charge something of that sort of size to 80% in 3 minutes.
80% of 50 is 40kWH, 3 minutes is 1/20th of an hour. So the power required is in the order of 800kW.
A commercial supply to a garage isn't likely to be more than 100A/phase if 3 phase. So that's a maximum of around 75kW if you ignore the power it needs for it's own use - like running the lights, the pumps, the tills, the car wash, etc, etc. So the total supply available is only around 1/10th of the power required to charge a single car at that rate - so we've immediately put the recharge time up to 30 minutes, and only one car at a time. If the supply is single phase (not unlikely) then we're only looking at 25kW and 90 minutes charge time.
No problem, the garage owner can just have the supply upgraded. Well all I'll say is that he'd better be sitting down when he gets the quote ! You want a supply capable of charging just one car at that rate - that's most likely going to mean you get your own substation, and upgrade the local distribution network to cope. In fact, the local electricity company may well prohibit you from putting that sort of intermittent load on the existing network because of what it will do to their other users* - a look back in history at the JET project shows the sort of things you may have to do if you want to attach a large intermittent load to the electricity supply. So think new cables dug under the road back to the nearest grid substation and your own 11kV feed - that's not going to be cheap.
* You stick an 800kW load on the local 11kV ring main and chances are you'll drop other users below the lower voltage limits for the supply. If that results in tap changers upping the voltage to correct, then at the end of charge, other local users will get an overvoltage. Anyone doing monitoring will report the electricity company who will get fined - and they'll be looking for the culprit to pass the bill onto.
Or to sum all that up is a few words - fast charging like that will only happen on some very well supplied industrial estates and in cloud cuckoo land. Elsewhere it's complete fantasy as the electrical supply infrastructure just couldn't support it without **MASSIVE** investment.
Easier to make methanol where the electricity is available (ie sunny places where PV arrays would work) and ship it around in the infrastructure (tankers and pipelines) we already have, to be used in vehicles that we already have and that could be made flex fuel for peanuts at the design stage, and dispensed with existing equipment that can effortlessly supply hundreds of miles of fuel in a matter of minutes.
I can't use my electric car like a petrol car shock.
In other news; I can' t use my bicycle as a submarine....
Oh for the love of all that is holy.... → #
I wonder what the horse drawn carriage people said when the new fangled motor vehicles turned up. Did they mention the fact that the motor vehicles' range was limited and that drivers would have anxiety about filling up when there were no filling stations. Unlike horses which could go on and on and on and only needed a bit of hay every now and then and would be fully recharged overnight! :-)
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