1MW is 20x the maximum draw of a standard house, and 800x the average draw of a US house. The hydro plant down the road generates 5MW.
It just sounds crazy to plan to pull that much power charging a car at a time.
I assume this will become more ubiquitous as charging speeds continue to increase.
(You're right that a megawatt is a high power draw in the context of normal household electricity usage, but keep in mind that if you can pump ten gallons of gas in a minute you're effectively drawing the equivalent of something like 20MW, so in the context of vehicle refueling it's not so crazy.)
If 15 Teslas pass through a stretch of road per minute with full 100kWh battery packs, you could also describe that as 90MW of current, but it's also not really.
It’s overall a net positive.
The odometer shock that will start hitting low wage earners forced to migrate to EV may have less important but similarly surprising unintended consequences.
That's the area of a trench you have to dig along your path if you want to supply your car from the trench instead of your gas tank.
It'll take decades to bring our infrastructure up to where it needs to be to support this - yet people act like we're already there. Some states still struggle just to keep the lights on during major parts of the year...
Obviously, if we're going to move to cleaner energy we will need infrastructure investment. Worrying that it's not already there makes no sense. The demand for improved electrical infrastructure will be a forcing function. There's no need to wait for it. But again, most charging isn't fast charging and likely never will be.
(Charging for apartments and stuff still has a bit of a way to go, so sometimes those people use fast chargers as part of their regular routine, but the solution to that is easy and underway: just put chargers in the apartment parking lot and/or on the streets.)
It is very unclear whether electric vehicles actually are more environmentally friendly. They sound great - but if you dig into where all the materials come from, it's shocking how externalized we've made that problem. It might be cleaner by time you get to drive it... but it's not cleaner to produce and operate, and in fact may be worse in some cases. Emissions aren't just from the tailpipe after all - yet that appears to be what most people focus on.
> Worrying that it's not already there makes no sense
It makes a lot of sense when the government (both state and federal) are pushing initiatives and incentives to force EV's into commonplace. Our infra just cannot handle it, even with trickle chargers like you've claimed. Which means it will be a net-worse experience for people, and they will resist future clean energy pushes as being disingenuous.
No, it is extremely clear. Including manufacturing they are cleaner than gas cars. And they will get better over time as the grid greens and as batteries become made out of more recycled materials. The batteries are 99% recyclable into new batteries and so there is a point where new materials never need to come out of the ground. Also, if you only focus on the most pressing thing, greenhouse emissions, the story is even better.
> Our infra just cannot handle it
Yes it can. There have been ~zero issues with the grid as a result of EV adoption.
https://electrek.co/2022/03/04/light-duty-evs-have-64-lower-...
EVs still win.
The major points have already been refuted by another poster. I want to just add that I can't comprehend how anyone could think taking a dump on all our lungs at every road is a good idea. In the future, people will look at it like the middle ages dumping all their human waste on the streets out their windows. In that same future, lung-related problems will nearly disappear as these toxic emissions cease to exist.
Centralizing dirty energy generation allows better regulation and control of it. It also allows converting that dirty energy to clean energy without any friction from consumers. You can power an EV using coal. You can also power it using nuclear or solar. What options to power a gasoline car do you have?
EVs also force the improvement of the power grid to be more resilient and modernized, instead of stagnant and lazy, to be sucked dry.
It is shocking how externalized the costs are with our reliance on oil -- technological stagnation, toxic fumes everywhere, literally heating of the entire planet, funding of backwards authoritarian governments, and the NOISE! Only a fool would support the continued usage of oil when EVs exist now.
No, it really isn't. Google it, and ignore right-wing sources, which are more often than not complete garbage these days.
Suure... because 80% of people own a home where they can do heavy electrical modifications, and can afford the permits and the work.
Not sure where you think that is, but in USA that it not even remotely true.
Do you have a 120v outlet? Congrats, you can charge at home in ~40 hours for a full charge.
Do you have a 240v outlet? Congrats, you can charge at home in ~7 hours for a full charge (otherwise know as while sleeping).
Sure is difficult to get around town waking up with ~300 miles of range everyday!
Probably not. The modifications aren't that heavy, and aren't even always necessary.
But 80% of EV owners probably do.
Why is it cheap in the middle of the night? Because there's near zero demand.
Fast forward 10 years and everyone has 1-2 EV's to charge each night. Is there zero demand still? No... and now it's expensive to charge at night.
People really need to be realistic about these things. Pretending these issues do not exist only harms EV adoption. People buy expensive EV's and find out it's a major PITA to keep it running, it's expensive to charge, it takes forever to charge, etc.
Very few people have done this. After people buy EVs, most of them learn how easy it is in comparison to ICE cars.
You're very optimistic if you think "everyone will have 1 or 2 EVs" in 10 years time. New ICE cars will still be available until at least 2035. Not accounting for non-new cars.
The way Tesla Supercharging works is by using a large bank of batteries for the heavy bursts of power draw (>100kW) during the initial periods of charging when the battery is warm and at a low percent. The batteries at the station are backfilled with less current from the grid in the background during periods of low use. At least that is how I understand it.
but yeah, maybe trucks with huge batteries may be able to take advantage of it down the road.
Power grids are quite large, so any fluctuations across the grid is going to be minimal. They are quite good at modeling these things, otherwise we'd have rolling blackouts quite often. For homes it's the last mile that's usually the biggest limiting factor.
But I agree with what you said, for /most/ people anything more than 2kW (so 240V/10A) is more than enough to charge up overnight. A perk with CCS2 is the support for 3-phase power delivery. With very simple wiring and some smart(-ish) electronics you can opportunistically deliver around 11kW to a single car, or divide it with other house appliances or other cars. It's fairly common with 400V TN-system in some parts of Europe, which makes the support of 3-phase in CCS2 very handy.
Many people travel regularly. Many people don't. That's how we ended up on the average being 50km.
Definitely not on the route to where my family lives. I checked last year when I was looking at EV, there's like a single L2 charger at a hotel on the whole route. I expect it will be several more years before the millions of us with family in the country can reasonably buy an EV.
Chances are that you don't even need to charge on your 150 miles trip. Most modern BEVs will be able to take you anywhere from 300-350 miles on a single charge. In your scenario you could literally do a round trip and have a comfortable level of charge when you get home again.
The solutions aren't particularly nice, there's the Quick220, a device which does all the safety checks of manually combining 2 circuits on opposite phases so you can actually get 12A at 240V. But it requires 2 circuits on opposite phases, neither with GFCI (which most outdoor outlets have).
Second option is a NEMA14-50 extension cable, which obviously carries it's own risks but if there's a dryer outlet on a 30A breaker, that gets you 24A at 240V.
But yes, either solution requires a bunch of bulky cords running out the door, and the assumption that the houses' electrical wiring was done properly and is in good condition.
So far the only less-invasive alternative is hoping they have a 20A circuit somewhere convenient, rather than just the kitchen plugs, then you can get an extra 33% charging speed (16A @ 120V) with the proper 5-20 adapter.
I think the more practical solution will be private plug-sharing, there's already a few apps and startups advertising I can earn money by allowing others to book my home charger, and a proper home install can do 11kw.
But it's mainly to try to get EV fillups to be gas-station like. If you can recharge a Tesla to 80% in 5 minutes, you've won.
I think that Ford just wants to switch to 800V anyway, and 400V is just a stopgap.
Many others have standardized on 800V, for example the Koreans.
For comparison, a normal gas station pump is like about 4MW of power (fuel).
OTOH the only batteries that can absorb 1MW of electricity are those in some Class 8 trucks, and Class 8 diesel trucks are usually filled with pumps a lot faster than a standard gas station pump.
Typical railway locomotives used for freight trains in Britain can draw a maximum of around 5MW.
Ordinary-speed electric trains (for commuters, regional trains etc) with a limit of about 180km/h (110mph) draw 1.5-2MW.
Presumably the full power is only needed when starting off on a hill.