Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

Charging ports 1

Status
Not open for further replies.

mmllmm

Automotive
Jan 6, 2011
1
0
0
PL
Charging ports will be globally unified in the future?

Charging_poorts_dqy9oq.jpg


Owner:
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

Eventually there will be a standard, and I suspect that it will driven probably by a state, like California.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
Oh, charging ports for electric vehicles??

I thought you were talking phones for a moment. For quite a while everyone agreed to use USB micro, but now we have USB C and Apple of course do their own thing....

Same with cars I suspect.

will need someone big like CA or the EU to mandate a fixed type.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.
 
I would think it'll be a bit different than phones. Given the infrastructure needed to make electric vehicles truly feasible beyond in-town commuting, I don't see it happening without the private companies coming together and creating a standard. Perhaps I'm being naive about it, but the mutual benefit and resulting faster acceptance of the technology in the mainstream seems like it should be a pretty strong motivator.
 
But there still seems to be two main power plugs ( presumably +/- or +/ neutral plus three other sensing ports.

It's simply the way those plugs are arranged around each other.

However I also believe they can operate at different voltages and charging regimes?

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.
 
mmllmm,

How do we prevent unauthorised charging of vehicles? The energy need to fully charge an automobile is significant.

--
JHG
 
phamENG,

My credit card is not accessible to unauthorised people. A unique drawoh format connector may be the next best thing to a locked down connector.

--
JHG
 
At least here in SoCal, several retail stores are providing free charging stations in their parking lots (I saw one at Whole Foods the other day). Since I don't own an electric vehicle, I'm not sure what the deal is, like is there a time limit, like an hour, which wouldn't necessarily give them a full charge, but still enough to make it attractive to shop in one place versus another.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
The last time I was at the GM Tech Center in Warren, MI, they were installing solar-assisted charging stations in the employee parking lots. Now I suspect that these might be limited to only GM vehicles and again, I don't know what the deal was, perhaps they're issued a 'card' that turns the units on so they can limit their use to only employees driving 'approved' vehicles.

They also have charging stations at the Metro/AMTRAK stations. Again, I don't know, but they might be at least subsidized so as to provide a service to their regular commuters. I can also see employers providing charging stations. After all, about 10 years ago, we had an incentive to car-pool to work where we collected an extra $40 or so each month in our paychecks. And lot of aerospace companies also provided ride-share vans which were assigned to an employee that could haul seven to nine people. It wouldn't be unexpected for corporations to be offered perhaps tax incentives to provide charging stations for employees.

This is one of the big advantages of electrical vehicles, the infrastructure is already there with just the last few feet that needs to be built-out.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
John,

I strongly suspect the "free" charging stations are somewhat restricted on power to a few kW, basically enough to go a few miles in an hours charge, but not much more. So more "optics" than an actual freebie.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.
 
I drove 16,000 miles using this nearly universal plug connector on my vehicle:

electrical_plug_duursb.png


If I lived in Europe, I'd be able to get over 3 kW from a similar plug. But here we're limited to about 1.5 kW in practical terms.

No matter, because most of us don't drive that far on a charge. Level 2 (with AC supplied at either 120 or 240 V single phase to the input of the car's onboard DC charger) is more than enough for most of us to use 90% of the time.

I plugged in at work- to a landscaping outlet- and again at night once the electricity time of use rates dropped. I charged at 240 V a handful of times in those 16,000 miles. It simply isn't necessary for commuting- it's only required for long trips.

Yes, a "quick charge" DC charger plug standard will evolve, eventually. But in an industry which can't agree on a standard for a 4 bolt wheel hub, or a headlight bulb, the likelihood that they'll voluntarily agree on a single standard plug which must work with vehicles with battery voltages ranging from 200 to 800V, with charging rate capacities via direct DC ranging from 15 to 150 kW (and higher still in future) is very doubtful. It would require cost and compromise.

And yes, this is a major problem for the industry.

There's a standard for the "level 2" AC connection to onboard chargers, limited to about 6.6 kW- it's the SAE J1772 connector that every EV on the market can connect to, either directly or via an adapter provided by the OEM with the car. It's the connector that all the simple level 2 EVSEs ("charge ports") use. The charger itself- the AC/DC conversion and current control circuitry- is onboard the car itself. The EVSE is just a mute plug with a ground fault interruptor and contactor, and overcurrent protection for the cable. There's a simple signal used to tell the EVSE when it's properly connected to a car, and when the car is "done" charging.

There were three "standards" for high rate direct DC charging: Tesla's own "supercharger" standard, ChaDeMo and CCS. I'm not sure how scaleable either ChaDeMo or CCS are to higher voltages and power levels. Tesla's own standard seems to be pretty well established and their supercharger network is a major selling feature for their cars.
 
ChaDeMo seems to be retreating to Asia. The EU has mandated the availability of CCS at charging stations although that doesn't prohibit the availability of something else, e.g. ChaDeMo or Tesla, but it pretty much means EVs in the european market will have CCS because that's what will be available everywhere. North American manufacturers except Tesla use CCS. Tesla does their own thing because Tesla. The slightly bizarre thing is that Teslas have an adapter to use a non-Tesla charging plug ... ChaDeMo. No idea why.

 
ventually there will be a standard

There's been a few different standards over the decades, J1772 is the latest.

Most every mall, large shopping center, and even many larger employers stateside provide free EV charging today. The "free" power is generally installed by subsidies and paid for by tax write-offs.
 
CWB1,

I worked at a place that had EV plug-in points in their parking lot. My drive to work was done on the highway, and typically, it took me over an hour.

I figure that one hour in my car running at twenty horsepower works out to around 54kW.hr added to somebody's electrical bill, hopefully not mine.[smile] If I am running a coffee shop, I don't mind charging your laptop or cellphone. The energy consumed by cars is substantial.

--
JHG
 
drawoh: my EV got 260 Wh/mile out of the wall socket (I measured that figure- average over 11,000 miles driven), driving mostly at highway speeds with some stop and go (where EV's energy efficiency relative to a regular ICE car goes through the roof- regenerative braking in an EV is amazing).

My 37 mile drive to work- a longer commute than most people- took about 9.6 kWh, which cost the company about $1 CDN in terms of incremental extra consumption for me to recharge via the nearest landscaping outlet to the parking lot.

I paid the company for the power I used at work via an expense report once per year. We did it on the honour system rather than by setting up billing infrastructure because there were only a handful of us driving EVs, and we trust our employees (even me!).

Providing me the parking spot, and even keeping it clear of snow and salted in winter, no doubt cost the company more than it cost to provide me with power, but fair's fair I guess- though we don't give a couple hundred bucks extra per year to staff who ride their bike or take the train in rather than driving, for saving us a parking spot.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top