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Comment by worldsayshi | Hacker News Reader

Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward and unnecessary hurdle. Especially in the coming age of self driving cars.

Every time you arrive or leave you have to remember to (dis-)connect the charger. Why not just have some kind of inductive energy transfer or I dunno... something.

Edit1: Heh, this could work I guess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI - seems it could be too expensive for mass-usage though.

Edit2: This is more what I had in mind: https://www.pluglesspower.com/

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>Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward and unnecessary hurdle.

It's a total non-issue in practice. Inductive charging has barely made an impact for mobile phones, because plugging in a cable just isn't a big chore. It very quickly becomes an automatic habit that requires no conscious effort.

Man on my old HP Touchpad, the charger dock was the best feature ever. Just set it down in the stand you were going to set it in anyway, and the whole time it's sitting there it's charging. Never have to plug it in, just set it on the stand and forget about it.

Wireless charging of phones might not be all that extra convenient because they're either in our hands or in our pockets, but at least in my house tablets spend a lot of time playing Netflix or showing a recipe or the news or a book on the counter in a tablet stand. Might as well be charging too.

My wife still uses her TouchPad every day. WebOS is a gem.

While it's obviously impractical for cars, my experience using a wireless charger with my phone is that despite being a seemingly minor change, it makes quite a bit of difference for me in practice.

Plugging in a micro USB cable is often quite fiddly, and sometimes the cable can fall behind the table and require crawling around on the floor. Not to mention the cables and ports can be quite fragile and end up breaking or becoming loose. Also if I want to use my phone occasionally while I'm sitting at my desk, I either have to have an awkward cable hanging off it, or plug and unplug it repeatedly.

For these reasons, I found I'd occasionally leave my phone unplugged by mistake and have low charge in the morning. Since I got a wireless charger that never happens.

That said, most of these advantages would come equally well from a docking station, the only problem being there's no standardisation for that.

Nitpicking can reveal a lot of issues. The argument has to be generalized to a significant fraction of the total user base to be a convincing argument.

In the spirit of nitpicking, all you have said does not bother me at all.

What am I supposed to be convincing you of by generalising my argument?

I was responding to a comment that said it was a "total non-issue", and I pointed out various reasons it was an issue for me.

While I mostly agree, my experience with wireless charging in general (with the Qi) has been finicky - if you're off my more than about 2-3mm, your phone won't charge.

The Nexus 5 charger had a small addition that more or less addressed the problem entirely: it added magnets at the corners of the chargers that would align with something (probably other magnets?) inside the phone, so you would know where the sweet spot was because it would pull your phone and hand into it. But with generic Qi chargers, I would have to fiddle around and check the charge symbol.

I'm using a generic charger, and while you do have to position it correctly, I find it fairly forgiving. Basically as long as I vaguely line it up with the pad surface it works fine, and there's an LED that turns green to let me know it's correct.

I didn't know the official Nexus 5 charger used magnets though. I passed on it because IIRC it was a weird cylinder stand that looked less stable than the generic flat pad I bought. (That and it was a good bit more expensive.)

EDIT: I just played around with mine now, and the margin for error is at least a couple of cm. I think my sense of neatness objects to the offset before the charger does.

Indeed, just today I was late to work because my phone was just a few millimeters off from the correct charging position (on a Qi charger) and I failed to triple check the charging indicators and LED lights before I went to bed and I slept through my non-phone alarms. Inductive charging is handy, but it is its own nuisance.

Uh, I must politely disagree.

The wireless charging on my beloved Nexus 7 was a technological marvel.

I dropped it and bought a Tab S2 that I now have to plug in like a pleb.

YMMV. I personally don't know anyone who uses wireless charging for anything, and I work in IT.

"and I work in IT."

Yeah that's probably the problem. I mean, fuck dropbox, because ftp mount filesystem and use svn/git, right? Wireless charging is a great improvement over fiddling with cables several times a day. Anyone who's gotten used to it doesn't want to go back.

Except when you want to use the device and charge it...

If you're in that particular predicament (which should be very seldom), you can just connect that plebeian cable... You have two charging options now.

Part of the appeal of automobile revolution is how it'll empower folks with motor control issues to become a bigger part of society versus being home bound; so I think this request has merit.

Honest question. Can a person who has trouble plugging in a car do a reasonable and safe job at driving?

I think the idea was that the car would be self-driving. So, Auto charging would also be important for them.

The problem with inductive charging is that it's inefficient. This means it'll take longer to charge and produce a bunch of extra waste heat. For a battery as large as an electric car's, this could be a considerable cost.

93% efficiency at 1kW and 30kW wireless power delivery (from AC plug to vehicle, not 93% only for the transmission): http://www.deltaenergysystems.com/en/Wireless-Charging-Syste...

This is very close to systems that are using cables and connectors.

The loss associated with wireless charging is in addition to other losses, so this is 7% loss on top of whatever other losses are in the production, delivery and power conversion chain.

Given the sheer amount of power used by vehicles, I would prefer we minimize losses there. Wireless charging for tablets, smartphones and other devices is less of a concern.

It's full system efficiency, not just the wireless charging.

I'm not sure of what effects you are talking about, but at home a reasonably probable 32 A 400V 10mm cable that is 8m long is about 99.75% efficient. I'm not sure about contacts but let's say it's at least 99%efficient in total.

Fast charging stations is probably worse though.

AC plug to vehicle means you are doing AC > DC conversion which is not 99.75% efficient. So, if this is 93% including AC > DC that's actually fairly good.

Off topic but...Power from solar cells is DC; to the extent these are locally supplying vehicle power you can just cut out the 2-way AC conversion, no?

I have this picture that eventually all parking structures will be fitted with solar power to charge parked vehicles. (Roads would be even better, of course.)

As EEVBlog has shown many times, road surfaces are an extremely impractical place to put solar panels on. It needs to be kept clean to work efficiently, and you also need to make a surface with similar friction properties as asphalt, which is not easy when it needs to be transparent and durable enough to take cars and trucks driving over it constantly.

Of course if you meant something like panels on the side of the road, or roofs, or something like that then that's fine, those installations would just be pretty standard solar panel installations. But covering the road surface itself is just a bad idea that would require a significant engineering effort and massive cost to work to any degree at all.

The backup is to simply add a structure over your roads and put solar on that. But, IMO that's just an implementation detail. We have plenty of land for all the solar power we need any time soon without impacting farming.

Yes, but the voltage needs boosted up to 300 or 400V, so there's still a DC-DC conversion step + control to ensure the correct current at each range.

Very close? There's no way you're losing anywhere near 2kW (7% loss in a 30kW charger) to cables and connectors.

~5+% in AC > DC is not that uncommon. Which is why wall warts get hot. But yea if this is just about replacing cables then that's poor.

PS: I do wonder about efficiency limits because transformers are effectively wireless power just at cm range.

It's in the power conversion.

Go educate yourself on the efficiency of power supplies: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143029-empowered-can-hig...

Over 90% is amazing.

The GM EV1 electric car had inductive charging back in the 1990s, using a "paddle" charger.

This is likely because people were terrified of plugging exposed high current high voltage connectors in outdoor setting.

Yes, but the point is, they had it and it worked just fine. Inductive power transmission works fine if the distance is very small (as it was with these paddles).

Agreed heat is the real problem.

I think something between Tesla's snake and a slot track car toy is the inevitable future. Drive on top of something that knows where to put two metal prongs. Very easy problem if you get to design both halves.

All modern electric cars can trivially have enough 'parking assistance' AI to line them up exactly with a charging port (which could be, for example, beside or even under the car). The car can then trigger the charger to connect, and when you get in the car and start it it can trigger the charger to disconnect.

All that is needed is standardization effort, and an up-front security review e.g. cars 'sign on' with a proper certificate when the charger connects so charging stations can decide who to bill etc.

I wouldn't imagine this replaces the conventional charging plug you can use at home, but rather augments it.

Here's hoping ;)

The other day I tried parking assistance on my Volt, 3/5 times it was flawless. 1 time it happily parked in the middle of two spaces, and another time it couldn't detect a low curb and a hollow tube sticking out and would have happily ran them over if it didn't require manual acceleration and braking...

I don't think manually plugging in a charger is a big deal

Crikey, that is so far away from the park-assist tight parallel-parking I've witnessed from Asian cars.. you tell it to park, and it drives slowly along the road until it spots a just-big-enough gap between two cars, and then it parks in the space for you. A couple of friends avoid parallel parking if they have to park themselves.

One anecdote was a friend had parked and another car parked too close in front of them, and they were basically stuck. And then they remembered the new parking-assist, and they flipped the switch and the car inched backwards and forwards and basically extricated itself by moving sideways like a crab!

Does the Volt get updates over-the-air etc?

My comment was assuming parking-assist was a solved problem! ;)

Parallel parking might be better, this was for reversing into a space

I noticed it did fine when two cars were present for it to use as a guide, maybe being able to use the cars as markers helps?

And as far as I know the car is "connected" via 4G (ODB data and remote controls are available in an online portal) but I don't think it's used for OTA updates (The last update I saw was for Android Auto integration and that was done by visiting a dealer)

Yeah, that's right. Making the car do the "hard work" is probably the way to go!

Have you felt how much heat your average 10W Qi charger puts out. While that energy loss is acceptable for a smartphone or tablet with a 10Wh battery your average BEV stores kWh of charge.

2 slabs of metal can move way more electrons than an electromagnet.

A charging connector on the bottom of the car with some kind of self-aligning plastic shield could serve the same purpose.

Park in a parking space, and the spring loaded charging connector built into the road surface springs up and connects the car and charging begins.

Then you get into the whole how do you design a better mousetrap problem. Floors get dirty. Roads get dirty. Car bottoms get dirty. Electrical contacts like to be clean. When they are not they get hot, carbonize, and then enter a chain reaction until it fails or catches fire.

Whatever solution you can conceive is going to be too expensive simply because you have to protect a high voltage/high amperage connection from the elements.

I'd choose bmw's charger http://www.bmwblog.com/2017/04/27/bmw-wireless-charging-530e...

If self-driving cars ever actually work, then a robot arm that can plug the charger into the whatever car will not be a significant engineering challenge.

I'm thinking that a robot arm with moving parts would be kind of expensive considering how ubiquitous it should be.

Inductive charging isn't really a feature. It is so easy to plug-in, and inductive charging has a lower efficiency than using cables.

they had battery swapping stations, it would mean a "charge" in under a minute. but it needs a much greater infrastructure.

Storing that many batteries in one place... Seems dangerous.

Now imagine they'd store thousands of gallons of a liquid that produces flammable vapor :)

It'd take flammable vapor over explosive pack of batteries :)

And the majority of cars have batteries as part of the chassis. Swapping it is nearly impossible.

A Tesla battery weighs 550KG. It's an insane amount of space, energy and equipment - and obviously can't be standardised between different shapes and sizes of car.

I remember in movies about old times, you would arrive with your horse-powered cart at a such station, they changed the horses, and off you go.

I guess this is similar. Make batteries standard shape and size, just the power may vary. After all, the gasoline/diesel is the same all over the world and is made after some international standards.

I think we are looking wrongly at the energy source of an electric car. If we assume electric power as raw oil, then the battery is a refinement of this electric power in form of an chemical power. Then in this case the unit of "power" is not the electricity but the battery holding the power to run the car.

If you look from this angle, then the battery is obviously the unit that you need to load/unload from the "gas" station.

and you'd rent batteries in watt/hr, whatever's available at the station.

A rental company could do this with full teslas. just hope into a fully charged one and leave the old one to charge.

Actually this sounds really interesting and could be a good business model.

What if the charging station could roll to your car and plug in while its parking? Basically a cable drum drone, with a little lair somewhere below the street.

If you need to modify the environment to install it it wont be ubiquitous. Also, moving parts means more maintenance.

Regarding the charging stations & related accessories, wait till Apple make its own electric car and I absolutely P_R_O_M_I_S_E you that action #1 on their agenda is to ensure that they use their own cables and fuses!!!!! (that will cost x20 the competition's accessories of course).

Joking apart, this is good news for Humanity and planet Earth!

But will they include strain relief on the cable?

Actually a magnetically holding cable would make sense in the context of a loading station for electric cars.

Some stupid guy will drive forgetting that the power cable is still attached.

I've been that stupid guy in my own garage. Thankfully, a Nissan Leaf has helpful lights and noises to tell you you're forgetful, meanwhile the car refuses to energize the motor until you fix the problem.

Manufactures could easily make it impossible to drive away while still charging.

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