Rheinmetall pilot project for curb stone chargers for EVs | Hacker News Reader

Rheinmetall pilot project for curb stone chargers for EVs

rheinmetall.com

On the one hand, I think that ICE cars should be banned from cities, the air would be much better, and these curbside chargers look like it could help with that.

On the other hand, a city filled with parked EV cars is not very different from a city filled with ICE cars. Curbside parking should be abolished or at least significantly reduced. People should just park in underground garages and walk the remaining 200m, there's no need to have parking everywhere. It's much easier to install chargers in a garage.

Cologne is a city with roots that reach back to the Roman empire. It has grown and developed over hundreds of years. Where would all these underground parking lots come from?

Why not go a step further and demand that all roads should be put underground, too, so that pedestrians can enjoy an idle stroll on green meadors above ground without all the annoyances that come from car traffic?

Streets? No, that's where people live, work.

Roads? Sure! Stroads, too (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad)

> Cologne is a city with roots that reach back to the Roman empire. It has grown and developed over hundreds of years. Where would all these underground parking lots come from?

If car parking is a worthwhile use of space, the market will provide it (and whether below or above ground is beside the point). If it's not, it won't.

> Why not go a step further and demand that all streets should be put underground, too, so that pedestrians can enjoy an idle stroll on green meadors above ground without all the annoyances that come from car traffic?

It's a good idea, but we probably have to get there incrementally.

In < 10 years or so we’ll have fully self driving cars. After some time there will smaller versions that can run on smaller roads even. By that time robo taxis won’t have to park in the central parts of cities but can simply park in cheaper parking spots further out or automatic garages.

I'll believe it when I see it. But if you're right, all the more reason to eliminate street parking and reclaim that space for more human uses.

If parking would be left to "the market", no one would do it within city limits. Parking spaces are heavily subsidized.

In Germany, until recently the costs for a residential parking spot were capped at strong 35€/year or so.

The actual "market value" of the equivalent space in cities is often around 4000-6000€/year.

Getting cars out of cities and using the space more efficiently for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport is not only a way to drastically improve safety and quality of life in cities, but also a smart economical choice (and no, building tunnels like Musk dreams of it, isn't the solution to this problem).

Especially in Cologne where the underground is already full of modern and ancient stuff!

> Why not go a step further and demand that all roads should be put underground, too, so that pedestrians can enjoy an idle stroll on green meadors above ground without all the annoyances that come from car traffic?

Don’t threaten me with a good time

Tunnels are much more dangerous to transit and vulnerable to being blocked than open-air streets.

> Why not go a step further and demand that all roads should be put underground

Like a subway. Throw in some bicycles or e-scooters for the last ~200 meters.

Good luck hauling 100lbs of groceries through the subway.

100 pounds! We'll need at least 2400 pounds of automobile to handle such an unweildy load.

I jest but people handle shopping in a myriad of ways, if you live somewhere with good transit it's really not an issue.

The Big Shop is a bit of a symptom of suburbia's unavailability problem anyway, since it's such a pain in the butt to get groceries I would optimize it all into one big shop with the car. It's really similar to living remotely, I used to live in rural Aus and the closest shops where a town over, so you drove half an hour or so to get your groceries.

Living in the city, you do more shops but less per shop, and it is totaly managable on foot with good transit or by bike with good panniers/bags.

It's super easy to get groceries where I live but I still wouldn't want to go shopping multiple times per week. I'd rather spend time on other things.

Exactly, this is why I order my groceries delivered to my door.

Costs 0€ if you're not a stickler about the delivery window and order for at least 50€ at a time.

“But we’re going to need a car” is a reason some people don’t sign up for a CostCo membership.

Definitely. A bike trailer or cargo bike could work though.

I have 4 kids and I don't think I ever bought 50kg of groceries.

Then again, I've lived within walking distance of a supermarket most of my life, so I just go shop groceries every other day or so.

I'd rather spend my time at home with my kids than grocery shopping every other day. Sure that would make it easy to transport groceries on foot, but the mental load of remembering when to buy what would be much larger than just going through your weekly routine. On a plus side, I like buying raw fish and other very perishable goods and going grocery shopping more frequently would give me more options to enjoy those over the course of the week rather than in a concentrated period after grocery day.

I do this all the time: I bought a fold-up shopping cart with 150lb capacity, and take it on the elevator to the subway platform.

Honestly, it’s even easier than doing it by car; I don’t even have to deal with hauling bags out of the trunk, I just roll up to my refrigerator and unpack everything right in the kitchen.

Sounds like a good idea, if the subway has working elevators and isn't too crowded.

Meadows and pastures are for pedestrians only! No mechanized devices of any kind. Only exception would be crutches and unpowered wheelchairs for those who are disabled!

> demand that all roads should be put underground

That's called subway.

>Why not go a step further and demand that all roads should be put underground, too, so that pedestrians can enjoy an idle stroll on green meadors above ground without all the annoyances that come from car traffic?

I'll do you one better!

Since the cars are going to be electric, why not put charging inside the road, so that the car would charge while rolling?

In fact, we can forgo the battery entirely, making the cars lighter, by powering them through the road!

While we're at that, we could allow cars going to the same destination to link to each other to optimize traffic.

Oh, and we could also reduce rolling friction by putting these vehicles on rails.

There you go, we could do much better with underground roads on which electric vehicles roll on rails in metropolitan areas.

We could call these system metros.

Ah, if only such utopian dreams could be implemented. I guess we'll never see it in our lifetimes.

I am begging people to realize that cars and trains have different use cases and trade-offs.

Edinburgh literally has underground cycle lanes [0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2011/jun/1...

Just for those who also thought all lines on this map are underground: most of them are not. It's just pathways with segregated traffic. I could not find out how many underground sections there are, but I assume it's just the linking sections (white with black outline)

Yes, you are right I think. I must have misinterpreted something that a friend who lives there said to me. Thanks for the correction.

> It has grown and developed over hundreds of years.

... and 95% of that time there were no cars parked in the street

> pedestrians can enjoy an idle stroll on green meadows ...

Pedestrians like walking on paved streets as well.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that cars should be banned.

Cars are super useful! Cars are useful when you need to pick someone up who is ill, if you need to transport heavy stuff, when the city workers need to collect trash, etc. In all these scenarios it would be nice if the streets weren't crowded with parked cars.

So my suggestion is to remove street parking, turn the streets into shared zones where you can stop your car anywhere for 15 minutes (enough time for picking people up and dropping them off, or for delivering stuff, or for transporting heavy stuff), and where pedestrians, bikes, and cars can travel at reasonable speeds to get wherever they need.

It would actually be nicer for most drivers -- if you park long term, you drive into a garage, if it's just a quick stop, you stop right in front of the house that you need to get to.

Do you know how much each underground stall costs? It varies a bit, depending on where you are, but they're extremely expensive.

Do you know how much each above ground car park in a city costs? It’s insane, but we make the public pay for it regardless of if they use them.

I don't exactly see what banning ICE/promoting EV has to do with controlling curbside parking. It just has to be banned. Then the issue of compatibility between EV charging and mechanical parking[0] can be addressed.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6blks7vfZog

Rather than abolish curbside parking...reserve more of it for specific uses. Every block should have at least one space dedicated to delivery, one for services like maintenance/repair workers, another for drop-off, another for municipal/emergency. Allow standing and active loading/unloading in all but the emergency spaces.

Also, we should not subsidize parking for private individuals (ie none of the uses above) in any way, shape, or form.

Delivery vehicles and drop offs double park, maintenance parks on the pedestrian path or in the no-parking alley. It's tolerated by all road users, including law enforcement. It already is this way, don't need to overengineer anything to achieve what is already there.

Many European cities (at least mine) don't have roads wide enough to double park.

You might as well ban cars entirely at that point. The biggest criticism of EVs is that they are still cars. They are still the most resource and footprint intensive form of transportation out there.

We really should ban cars from certain parts of city centres, and cities have been doing so. Changes per city of course, but we don't need to accomodate cars up to the businesses doorstep. If your business actually required car access, you probably wouldn't have survived in a city centre anyway. IKEA requires car access, and you can tell by how much parking they need. A dress shop doesn't need car access, one (taken) car spot versus the hundreds of people on foot. Give me a break.

I am salty because of all the beneficial works that get turned down by the encumbent store owners who can't let go of their measly parking affordance for the sake of hundreds of people actually using the streets.

Not accurate, short-haul flights are.

Means of Transport CO2 equivalent emissions per passenger km

Short Flight 255g

Medium Car (Gasoline) 192g

Medium Car (Diesel) 171g

Medium Flight 156g

Long Flight 150g

Bus 105g

Medium Motorcycle 103g

Gasoline Car (Two Passenger) 96g

Medium Electric Vehicle 53g

National Rail 41g

Ferry 19g

Eurostar (International Rail) 6g

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/comparing-the-carbon-footpr...

Also, electric cars with multiple people manage to beat rail:

https://www.pawprint.eco/eco-blog/green-myth-busting-train-v...

Side note: Hacker News should support tables, and shouldn't strip emoji.

Your figures don't add up. Divide the electric car by 4 or 5 and it's still more than the electric Eurostar train, and that's a high speed train too.

Yeah but it still beats the other trains, which is very surprising. Also my second link has more info. I’d prefer better sources on all of this though.

The source is probably an older edition of [1]. The source for that is partly [2].

That splits the figures into 35.2g / passenger-km for electric, and 704.4g for diesel. The per-vehicle-km figures have a 1:3 ratio, but the per passenger figures nearer 1:20, so I think the huge disparity is due to electric trains being on much more heavily used lines. With Eurostar being 6g, they must have very high usage, or maybe the older electric trains really are much less efficient than the newest ones.

[1] https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/1843/rail-emissions-2019...

[2] https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/infrastructure-and-...

I agree, outside space in cities is too valuable to be taken up by parked cars. New multi family construction should have requirements for underground parking spaces with EV loading infrastructure.

> ICE cars should be banned from cities

> a city filled with parked EV cars is not very different

> Curbside parking should be abolished

> just park in underground garages

> walk the remaining 200m

I appreciate the humor. I certainly hope that's how it was intended.

The last part was particularly funny. I get it. Let's dig-up every city and build huge underground car garages --which require massive amounts of concrete, materials, digging, etc.-- generate monumental amounts of pollution and CO2 doing so. And then we park our electric cars underground.

And this is where you really got me: The requirement is to be able to walk 200 meters to every destination within a city. Brilliant! I mean, can you imagine the digging under every city on earth to build massive swiss-cheese networks of parking caverns every, say, 400 meters or so? What are we going to do with all the underground water lines, gas, sewer and, in some cases, power lines?

Yes, as a joke, it's really funny.

Every new development in my city already includes underground parking. The cost of land in the city is way too high to waste it on parking lots.

They are also building lots of underground garages everywhere. I don't know what they do about power lines and sewer lines, but they seem to have figured out a way to do it, considering how many garages are being constructed.

Removing curbside parking would provide some additional economic incentive to build more garages. It's absolutely doable, a single garage can provide a lot more parking lots than the curbs in a 200m radius.

Think about the environmental impact of digging-up and constructing massive underground parking caverns. I haven't done the math, yet, I have done a lot of construction projects of various types. I can assure you that building underground parking structures is probably one of the worst kinds of projects in terms of environmental effects. Not just CO2 generation. Absolutely everything conspires against you for such a project.

I would almost be willing to bet that just one of those underground garage projects generates more CO2 and other negative environmental impacts than all the electric cars you could park in there for their useful lifetimes. Remember that EV's are not environmentally neutral at all.

Start from this basis: Environmentally speaking, the least impactful place to park vehicles of any kind is where you do not have to move one gram of dirt and add one gram of concrete. The simple answer to that is: Existing infrastructure. Which, yes, means, existing streets. Do that and your baseline is mostly reduced to just the environmental impact of the EV's and not much else at the infrastructure level. Anything else --anything-- surely means increased environmental impact.

Second to that might be to go vertical. In other words, above-ground parking structures with the building on top or coexisting on every level. I was recently in Singapore and saw a building fitting this description. Imagine offices around the periphery of every floor and parking for those offices on every floor at the "core" of the building. I can't say I know with certainty how the two approaches compare. I think I can say that not having to dig-up massive amounts of dirt to build a cavern that can support an entire building is likely far worse from an environmental impact perspective.

Don't forget that the minute you place anything underground you are going to have the need for such things as 24/7 ventilation and air management, which means a constant energy load, well, forever. Not so for street parking or above ground parking.

I think this idea of hating on street parking is largely misplaced. As the world evolves towards self-driving vehicles some of the density problems will sort themselves out. You can have your vehicle drop you off at work and then go park somewhere. We can use existing infrastructure more effectively and manage density without incurring massive environmental costs for the life of a city.

Above ground parking puts a limit on density. And it causes a huge amount of traffic. On the road in front of my old office, 90% of traffic were cars circling in an attempt to find a parking lot (there were rarely free spots). And there were regularly cars honking at each other when someone took too long to get into a space.

Obviously cars are environmentally a disaster, but people like them too much to give them up altogether.

But if you drive a car, the least you can do is park it somewhere where it isn't taking away public space. (Parking cars are also in the way of other cars that try to get somewhere)

A better approach, over time, would be to create incentives to decentralize work hubs. Not only are underground garages environmentally horrible, they don't fix the root cause of the problem at all.

Looking at early morning and evening traffic on Google maps for lots of cities around the world shows just how badly we have done in this regard.

If thats the problem to solve: - remove cars from the sidewalks/streets - get to a store not more than 200m of walking

If think the concept of public transport within cities does not work so bad: metro/tram etc. at least here in Europe.

The problem is the integration of them. I lives in Belgium for a while and was happy to use park&ride parking and hope on a tram with the same ticket.

If we want to do this, lets create parkings in and outside the city with a seemless transit - direct exit of the parking to the right perron/app parking with included fare for the public transport. I am up for this (even with a stroller).

If I've learned anything living in central Amsterdam, it's that a healthy city has a mix of all transit options almost everywhere. Cars, bikes, motorcycles, scooters (the vespa kind), mopeds, buses and trams all mix with pedestrians at street level.

Sure, some areas are closed to cars and trucks, but it is just as common that non-cars and pedestrians are simply overwhelming cars on a street by sheer numbers. This means that most places are still accessible to a car or truck, it's just not the most convenient option for most use cases.

I get that not everywhere is going to be like Amsterdam, with high density, narrow streets and a consensus that bicycles are first class vehicles, but the notion that cars have to be eradicated to make a city livable is ridiculous.

Do note that Amsterdam is working slowly but surely to get rid of street parking.

I think this is cool, but as the owner of a (non-Tesla) EV, I'd just be glad for chargers that usually work. People ask me sometimes if I have "range anxiety" - I don't really have range anxiety so much as charger anxiety.

When I'm not at home my options are pretty much Chargepoint chargers, and there is an Electrify America DC fast charging station about 20 mins away. I'd say about 50% of the time the Chargepoint stations are non-functional in some way (either totally busted and have been for years, or the station just says "offline" or some such). I haven't had problems with the EA chargers but going by online forums my experience seems to be unusual - for a lot of folks their EA experience is even worse than my Chargepoint success rate.

If all these other car companies plan to go 100% electric in the near future, they really need to invest in better charging infrastructure. Say what you will about Tesla but they understood the criticality of solving this problem early on, and their network is currently far better than anyone else's.

The other car manufacturers will probably negotiate deals with Tesla to gain access to the supercharger network. Ford has already done this.[1]

1. https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2023...

I live in a high EV density region and it’s already a complete non issue. We have a good number of providers around here, and they are all mostly extremely reliable. Most of the time when I go to charge it will be a bank of 6+ chargers. Occasionally one isn’t working, but that’s not much different from a gas pump being out of service. Worst case I can always drive down the street to another bank.

Like a lot of stuff with EVs, it’s just a question of demand reaching a certain level- which it will- before the services really hit their stride. It’s already happened in a good few places, and it will happen where you live in time.

When I lived in Seattle I survived on my 30 mile range plug in hybrid without using gas almost ever because I could charge at work and at stores. This was commuting from the suburbs to downtown. And it’s only going to get better.

Even in the Midwest I could do it but it would be slightly more of a hassle. Many grocery stores here already have free level 2 chargers. The distances are longer so I would definitely go full EV here if given the choice since at home garage charging is a given

Not having charging at home would make me not want to own an EV. The constant management of battery charges with the possibility to do permanent damage when charge gets too low would just be too much of a hassle.

There should be a law requiring chargers to fallback to "free for all" when they have a data connectivity problem. Or implement some kind of offline payment protocol. Heck, your car or mobile phone could handle the payment and present a code to the charger. The charger doesn't need to be online at all, it just needs to prevent replays by remembering the last used code.

It's quite simple to imagine a better state of things for EV chargers. It's however impossible to convince all companies to adopt the same protocols, unless you have a quasi-monopoly (e.g. Tesla) or the government steps in.

Chargers that pop out of the curb. Yes please.

Here in DC we have a lot of food trucks, and their fumes and noise is a sad mark upon the area. I dream of a law where these things could be connected to the grid instead. Right now that's just a fantasy as there's not a real way to accomplish that objective, but tech like this is exactly what it would take! And more inverters setup to be powered off EV voltage levels.

Since US failed to standardize chargers, Tesla will decide whether anyone is allowed to build such infrastructure. Will they allow it?

Eh? Pretty much all US electric cars these days have CCS charger ports, don't they?

All non-Tesla cars except for Nissan use CCS.

Not any more. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36079236

Looks like their current electric vehicles use CCS; I'd imagine the future ones would probably have _both_, or some sort of adaptor.

That’s correct, there will be an adapter & there already is

I assumed these fords would have both. But I guess I haven't seen anything concrete about it.

Most US working charging infrastructure is Tesla plugs. Tesla also started pushing companies like Ford to adopt their proprietary charger.

It's no longer proprietary. As of last year the standard is open and anyone can adopt it without paying Tesla a dime.[1] Of course car manufacturers will have to negotiate access to Tesla's charging network, but that's also true of Electrify America. Considering the advantages of Tesla's connector (much more compact, much more popular than CCS in the US), I hope it wins. Now that Ford[2] and Aptera[3] are adopting it, I think it will.

1. https://www.tesla.com/blog/opening-north-american-charging-s...

2. https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2023...

3. https://aptera.us/tesla-charging/

Considering the Tesla patents pledge of 2014, I find it hardly surprising that manufacturers don't immediately jump at "open since 2022".

No, most US electric cars are Teslas and they use the better NACS port. Which is an open standard now. Ford will use it in the future.

There's nothing better about Supercharger connectors.

CCS is now twice the voltage and supports 25% more current; the common max CCS charger power is 350KW, whereas most superchargers are at best 250KW, and often that power is shared among several stalls.

Teslas use CCS2 in Europe where (ahem) they were required to, so by opening up their network, millions of cars there are out there able to use the stations since it's largely a software change.

No mass-produced car uses Supercharger plugs except Teslas, so them opening up their network means only some Fords, produced at some time in the future, will be able to use them - and it's really not a plus, given the slow charging speed, and how oversubscribed many of the stations are. It's going to be fun when people with 100k Teslas can't charge because there's someone with a $35k electric Ford using a charging port...

The entire mass-production auto industry save Tesla has standardized on CCS1/2. The only downside to CCS is that the US and Europe use different CCS connectors, which is a giant facepalm.

> There's nothing better about Supercharger connectors.

The size, usability, and industrial design is clearly better.

> CCS is now twice the voltage and supports 25% more current

The max NACS/Tesla current is 1MW.

> The entire mass-production auto industry save Tesla has standardized on CCS1/2.

China has a different (and way crazier) plug.

Right. And CCS1 sucks, mostly just used in America where there are more NACS plugs anyway.

Adapters aren't a huge issue, but the base plug should be the most compact and simple one. NACS.

The CCS2 plug is fine, although not as good as NACS. CCS1 sucks and should just be abandoned in favor of NACS. There are huge downsides to using CCS1 especially. It costs more.

Also, Superchargers are not massively oversubscribed. Tesla is really good at installing enough stations. It's true that superchargers are actually used while many others tend to rot or sit broken, but overall the Tesla experience is far better.

Additionally, there isn't a problem with slower charge speeds. There are still a lot of 50kW CCS chargers where I live, all slower than even old Supercharging stations.

Aren't food trucks licensed? Surely the municipality could've placed a power connection point when they gave out the license for a food truck location?

I think in DC the food truck locations are first come first serve, they're just using street parking to do their thing.

There's other practical challenges of deploying high power charging here. The power connection is only part of the system. How we do metering, how we get get power to the area, how we convert it are all complicated challenges. Doing it at scale would be non trivial.

Are we really thinking food trucks need more than the 3.3-6.6kw that a typical outlet can deliver? Just make them EV chargers as those companies already exist and have the stuff figured out. No reason to run an ICE.

It's probably different from place to place, but in my city mobile food trucks can operate on any non-residential private property with no additional permitting requirements and can operate on public streets with a permit for up to two weeks. Presumably private property can figure out their own power infrastructure and the 2-week limit on public streets would seem too short of a time for installing power to make sense.

Most food trucks in DC are illegally parked. For example, the perennial "food court" on 7th street crossing the National Mall

I don't think the DC municipality is very interested in enforcement of arbitrary HOA-style laws.

Likey really ? They just have an engine running, not even an external generator ?

Around here in the Czech Republic they hook up to the grid (they often have regular spots they visit, so often arrange a connection to be available) or cook on gas from gas bombs anyway, so don't really need electricity when cooking.

> cook on gas from gas bombs anyway

Ok… either this was a typo or I don’t understand what a gas bomb is.

Maybe 'propane tank'?

In a couple of languages, things like portable propane tanks are commonly, although not officially, referred to as "gas bombs" (literal translation)

Most US food trucks have a generator unless they're operating in a location that is planning to accommodate them (I've been to several where the host business provided some circuits.) The quiet generators are pretty expensive, if you want one that lasts.

That said, OP's "I don't like noise and smelly stuff, it's ruining my city" is laughable.

It's nicer to add plugs to lamp posts. If you can retrofit existing posts, there's less electrical/digging work involved. If not, you are adding lighting at the same time.

E.g. https://ubitricity.com/en/charging-solutions/ac-lamppost/

Lamps use a specific voltage and amperage useful for lighting, not charging cars. You’d have to completely overhaul electricity to lamps, while also having a transformer for the lights, and at that point you might as well do something purpose built. Lamps are also not built next to each spot you’d park a car.

London has something like 1300 lampposts which can also be used to charge cars.

You can slow charge with very little amps (eg 5A/1.3kWh). Some charge is better than no charge and it’s not too much of an issue if you are street parking for an entire day or night.

I wish I lived in a community where these wouldn’t get fucked around with left out in the open…

I’ve been renting an EV for the last two weeks while my hybrid awaits repairs and it’s been a wonderful experience. I look forward to more charging options!

I was very surprised by the company they chose for it, but from this perspective, it's definitely a great choice. If someone knows how to make things indestructible, it's them.

(Rheinmetall is generally known as a military supplier, think "General Dynamics" or "BAE Systems". I didn't realize they made anything for civilian use.)

> (Rheinmetall is generally known as a military supplier, think "General Dynamics" or "BAE Systems". I didn't realize they made anything for civilian use.)

Yeah, I read the title and thought "is it for tanks?"

Heh, like how Teledyne makes showerheads and Honeywell makes thermostats.

My thoughts exactly. In my downtown, those charging leads would be unplugged in 10 minutes and sold at the nearest scrap dealer.

We don't need difficult to fix, hard to clean chargers in every curb. We need maintainable chargers which are gauranteed to work in some convenient location. Ideally 11kW to 22kW chargers at work and shopping places and proper fast chargers at every highway stop. This will cover most drivers needs, as daily charging is not needed. What is important is to have every location always have free charging spots, since arriving to find a single charger occupied or broken is one of the most common frustrations of finding charging spots.

Source: I drive an EV all the time.

I slow charge at home, which covers my need for ~340 days per year. The remaining couple days, instead of dealing with broken chargers, I pick hotels with chargers and/or pick a reliable charging network to fast charge along the way (such as Tesla or Ionity).

My experience so far is: - some hotels require you to unplug once you are done -- which can be annoying if you arrive in the evening and your car will be done charging at 4am. - some apps under report the number of charging spots. I noticed this on a recent, it showed 4 chargers when there were 4 physical chargers with 2 plugs each (effectively allowing 8 cars to charge at the same time). - winter vs summer makes a huge difference in EV range. I wish car makers published data for each season. - I wish car makers published the car charge graph for different types of chargers. My car consistently mis-predicts how long its going to take to charge (usually over-estimates the time, sometimes by a couple hours).

> some hotels require you to unplug once you are done -- which can be annoying if you arrive in the evening and your car will be done charging at 4am

Doesn't the connector unlock when the car is full? I don't charge very often since I only use car sharing now, but I've peeked through a charging car's window, seen it's at 100% and unplugged their cable a couple of times now and it always worked.

These spots either have a “cars not charging will be towed” sign or charge $/min once you are full. I doubt anyone would call a tow truck in the middle of the night. I haven’t bothered testing what happens if the car unlocks the cable, the thing will probably still charge the overages. I end up finding a time to charge during the day.

What about a small hot-swappable battery compartment in EVs that give you enough kms to get home (like a jerry can of petrol). I'm not sure if the size of battery needed for a car would be prohibitive though. How big would a ~30km battery be?

Then instead of charging points, you could have something more like a petrol/filling station. Pop in, swap your pack, and drive off. (You could even plug the car in for a fast charge while they do the battery swap).

My model for this is the hot-swappable battery packs that the electric scooter networks in many Asian countries employ. [0]

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/battery-swapping-tech-gives-elec...

>How big would a ~30km battery be?

25-50kg depending on the efficiency of the vehicle. Not really something most people can comfortably handle or walk a few hundred meters with from the battery pickup point to their car.

That's not too bad. That's something the could conceivably be automated at a station.

You'd need a user-safe way to plug and unplug a 400V to 800V battery if you want to directly supplement the main battery. Otherwise you are looking at additional hardware to convert the voltage.

I would argue a common scenario in a German city is the following: You live in an appartment building without a garage and your workplace is closeby, i.e. you do not take your car to work. You use the car to visit family on the weekend, appointments out of town, etc.

You can get by without curbside charging in this scenario, but it sounds like a huge annoyance.

Great idea to put things where dogs pee and poop.

German dogs prefer trees and corners.

Hydrants, lamps, bicycles, tires, ... anything that looks different from a standard curb. Not sure if doggy will be attracted by the cover when in ground, but by a nice oversized plug sticking out for sure.

People will shame dog owners who allow their dogs to pee or poop on chargers. Which won't completely eliminate the problem, but should limit it.

Not sure that would work in the US though.

Right, because shaming dog owners has proven time over time to eliminate bad behavior effectively /s

In the US they will be cancelled.

Just once

I foresee some UX challenges with ice and snow during winter.

In Cologne, like many German towns, ice and snow is an issue about two weeks a year (in a cold year). And even then, that's what the city's road clearing services are for.

Yea Climate Change already solved that one.

I certainly remember proper Winters, but I understand they are a thing of the past.

It's just a plug... in the ground.. well, in a curb... Why is this innovative?!

I was expecting some kind of automatic system, where you just park near it and it charges automatically... like an indentiation where you stop your rear tires in, and an automatic system takes over and plugs the car in as you leave.

More EV chargers is a good idea, but having to bend down so far looks uncomfortable and may even be a problem for some people.

I think if the goal is large scale electrification we're designing our electric cars wrong.

Personally I'd love to have an electric car for the 99% of the driving I do. It could even have a small battery. ~25KWh would do, but on the other hand 1% of the time I do need to go few hundred km and back within a day without spending hours on charging. It seems silly to lug a huge ~100KWh+ battery just for this 1% of uses, then there is the issue of extra car cost and weight.

What would be really cool is some sort of standardisation in removable battery tech. Imagine electric cars had only ~10-25KWh built in batteries and an ability to slot in "something" that could be another 75KWh of battery, a hybrid power unit, or anything else we might develop in future. Motorway services could have companies that lease out those batteries.

The idea is good; but this implementation will not work.

Curbs take a lot of kinetic knocks from cars, trucks and other vehicular traffic. If you have a snow season, these will get torn up. They have to be at least a meter high on sturdy posts --like the guard posts at service stations.

You seem pretty confident that no one can design a robust... plug? Set in concrete? Because of car tires and snow? Try having a little bit more faith in mechanical engineers pls

Garbage trucks, delivery lorries loading and unloading in crowded places really wear and tear curbs. Have you ever seen pristine curbs in busy places (such as those where this would be practical?). Also very often people misjudge their car's clearance when pulling up and from time to time scrape the curb hard with the bottoms of their cars.

And if it snows, a big snowplough coming through at night with diminished visibility almost invariably ends with torn up curbs. Maybe they plan on doing a lot of maintenance, otherwise this will end up not working.

Road salt alone in a city with actual winters will destroy these things... Not to mention that they'll be pretty thoroughly encased in ice and buried under feet of snow for months on end.

Add onto that it is a completely inaccessible design from a disability accessibility perspective, and you have a nice proof of concept for something that wouldn't pass muster in many places.

It needs to go back to the drawing board on pretty much every level before it could be considered for deployment where I live, at least.

I can't be certain, but it appears that the plugs are embedded in the curb stone and face directly upwards. What prevents water from collecting in them and causing a short?

Short is actually better than the other more common failure mode - oxidation and creation of additional resistance in the connector to the point of not working at all (better case) or melting and catching fire when used (worse case)

Wouldn't you design it so water drains through?

I worry we're replacing polluting ICE cars with just as many, polluting EVs. EVs pollute less than cars, but they produce a lot more tire dust and road wear, since those things scale exponentially with the weight of the vehicle.

Tire dust has been shown to damage salmon populations and disrupt endocrine systems.

Yes, improving infra for EVs is an incremental improvement, but we are decades too late for iterative improvements, we need to take more radical action.

Interesting idea. Likely complex to solve for the various accessibility issues introduced from floor placement.

I would like to by a curb stone charger for my EV. Rheinmetall: Here, got you! Do you have any idea where I could buy a smoothbore tank gun? Rheinmetall: You won't believe it, but...

What are the core “limitations” of a charging pole? Is it aesthetics? Being able to drive over it? These look neat, but I’m a little vague as to the problem that is being solved?

Having the pavement obstructed by charging infrastructure. It's already hard enough in many places to navigate on foot (and even more so with a wheelchair or pushchair) without having additional obstacles to contend with.

I actually think that could be a good thing. EV chargers as bollards to protect pedestrian pathways.

How would this work with the new regulations requiring the ability to offer at least two methods to pay for charging?

NFC A or NFC B?

RFID payment cards by various networks, app on the phone with NFC.

Impractical on so many levels:

- You have to bend down to use it- not good for grandpas or other people with accessibility problems.

- Water and grit ingress will be a problem.

- In Winter it will be covered in snow

- The gravel they spread on the sidewalk will scratch the glass in no time.

- When it is wet it will be all dirty and nasty.

- Will have to withstand cars stepping on it and wheels rubbing against.

Yes lets second guess German engineering.

It's generally a prudent idea to do just that, and buy a Toyota.

Yes. I'm in Germany and working on chargers and I see as many good ideas as I see awful ones. Another thing I can tell you is that there is a tendency (i.e. "generalization that does not apply to individual cases") to over-complicate stuff.

Looks great for those without back problems. Esthetics before function.

I think that in the next iteraton, such curb stone chargers should be such that no interaction like manually plugging in a cable would be required.

Sounds efficient! Totally doable!

Isn't that awfully inefficient and wasteful power transfer?

Perhaps with today's technology, but not with the technology of the future (tm).

Wireless charging for some devices such as phones is 60-80% efficient. For cars, it seems to be in demand per "Several Companies Developing Wireless EV Charging": https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/1235/tesla-is-developing-i...

If we can dream of self driving cars, we can dream of self-connecting cars. Something a bit like a toy slot car?

94% grid-to-battery efficiency, according to this article on the SAE J2954 standard.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1130055_wireless-ev-cha...

Nice find and that's not bad actually! Still wasteful though, it adds up quickly with the amount of future EVs.

Wouldn't some kind of dock with a flexible MagSafe-like (MacBook version) robotic arm extending from the vehicle be viable?

If convenience is the goal then there must be another solution without all this waste.

Does it become useful to carry your own charging cable?

Yes but it’s not a big issue, EV owners should already carry a charging cable inside the car for safety.

How is safety increased by carrying a cable?

Most Type 2 (AC charging of 3,7 to 22kW) chargers expect you to have your own with the car. Pretty much everyone has one in their car.

In what country? I've never seen a bring-your-own-cable charger in the US.

Ya, me neither. Public L2 chargers are either CCS or Tesla destination chargers.

This is a pretty common type of streetside charger in Ireland: https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/iri...

The ports on the side are for people to plug their charging cable into; charging cables aren't supplied.

Here's one in use; note the non-matching cables: https://www.theaa.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/iStock-14421...

OTOH, there are lots of outdoor 110 vac outlets in the US if you look. Level 1 charging is terrible, but it's not nothing. Mostly tongue in cheek, I've never charged with a random outlet, but I've seen a lot.

I'm in NE-EU. Here the state is:

- fast chargers: CCS cable is with the charging stations.

- many more public chargers (supermarket parking spots, office parking, IKEA) are usually Type 2, I'd say about 90%+ of those don't have cables attached.

- home chargers are also usually Type 2 and you either have cable attached permanently or use the same that is in the car.

In Europe all EV drivers bring their own cable for low- to medium-power chargers. Only the high-power superchargers have permanently attached cables.

In the US it is not common. In EU the majority of EVs carry a cable in the vehicle for level 2 charging. At first I found it strange, but if you provide the cable instead having it built into level 2 EVSE (charger) its one less thing that can be broken or vandalized.

If I have to bring my own, it's one more thing of mine that can be broken or vandalized.

In the car?

This is about parked cars. If you park you car and leave leave it with a removable charging cable connected to a socket in the curb, someone will just unplug it and walk away with it.

My back hurt just by looking at those images

Is this basically for cosmetic purposes?

Existing pedestal chargers are large enough that they'd block the sidewalk.

Does it rain there?

I wonder if outdoor outlets exist in places where there is rain?

Generally not facing upwards.

I expect to see a lot of cronyism and scams related to green tech

My biggest problem with all these public ev chargers is that there may be a chance they are no longer fit for purpose in a few years. All the installations for this “green” tech will need to be replaced.

Why? The most significant part of the investment is to make some kW or MW or power available at many locations. The chargers themselves are replaceable, that's fine.

This isn't wrong (Electrify America is replacing thousands of chargers) but it's also a generic contrarian dismissal that could apply to any new tech.

Why would you do this when you could hit a supercharger, conveniently next to a Starbucks or a Whole Foods, stop for 15 minutes and get a full charge? These look ridiculous and give EVs a bad look (Plugged into a big ugly yellow cord science experiment for hours). My back hurts just watching the lady in the promo bend over to plug it in.

It’s like techies never bothered to consult a normal person, or attempt basic marketing.. which pretty much describes most electric cars and EV infrastructure, unfortunately.

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