Solid commuter car but not too annoying on the rare roadtrip.
But, I am guessing grid frequency regulation use cases are going to make these too expensive for a car for a long time.
And yes it's not always possible but it'll be available in enough places.
If a particular station can't get better lines, then as someone else said they could have fewer charging spots. High load per spot still works out well for them, because they can save space.
Especially because the station would want to have multiple cars worth of energy stored, which means the load is divided among more cells and they don't have to work nearly as hard.
Battery-backed charging stations are already common, because it allows use of cheaper grid interconnection, and use of cheaper off-peak or renewable energy.
So the peak would be the same, but if there were too many customers then sort of like at a busy gas station people would be waiting for a spot rather than waiting for charging to complete.
Fortunately these batteries have "an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles". Also, since there aren't super-dangerous elements in them, they should be much easier and cleaner to recycle/renew - especially with the giant recharge-station-scale ones' we're talking about, which could be designed specifically for that.
Megawatt charging system is big but doesn't seem unreasonable, and that gives you 5x the amps. In two minutes it can add 80kWh to an 800 volt battery, and the max voltage is 1250.
https://resources.news.e.abb.com/images/2023/5/12/0/Next_gen...
https://www.engineerlive.com/sites/engineerlive/files/ITM.11...
However, as more and more generation capacity shifts to renewable sources that by design have very small (wind) to zero (solar) inertia, there will be a requirement to build out frequency stabilizer units like the Tesla unit in Hornsdale, Australia [1].
Also I'd say the inertia in a normal wind turbine doesn't count because it's not tied into the grid frequency.
That's why the UK grid has been building some "high-inertia synchronous compensators", and a 2019 outage showed that it's urgently needed.
10x of charging speed of Li-ion would be in megawatts per single charging device.
One way to reduce initial costs is not to electrify the whole length but to have, say, one mile of electrified road per every ten miles of highway. To get unlimited range from that 1:10 ratio, you need the vehicles to have batteries capable of absorbing power 9x faster than the vehicle uses it to maintain highway speeds.
I could see EVs having a large lithium ion pack and, if this technology is really that good, a smaller sodium ion battery to act sort of like a capacitor to smooth out intermittent charging.
I could also see low-capacity-high-power-density batteries being used in hybrids, though those need to be able to sustain high discharge rates as well as high charge rates, and I don't think the article mentioned discharge rates.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/12/worlds-f...
Overhead cables are simpler and cheaper, but not easily compatible with cars (which would need a comically tall pantograph to connect to the cables).
(Induction is a third option, but it's not really viable except in certain special cases because it's way more expensive, can't deliver as much power, and tends to be less energy efficient.)
Electrifying highways may sound expensive or complicated, but consider what the alternatives are. We could stick with fossil fuels. The U.S. burns about 4 million barrels of gasoline and about 4 million barrels of diesel a day, most of which is used to push cars and trucks around. That's not simple or cheap, we're just accustomed to the cost.
Another option is we switch to EVs and rely on big batteries for range. That kind of works, but battery manufacturing scale isn't there. It's also kind of wasteful to have a substantial portion of the vehicle weight being batteries. It means cars and trucks are heavier than they need to be, and they can haul less cargo.
If we could get to the point where, say, someone could drive coast-to-coast without ever having to stop to charge with only 30 or 40 kwh battery, that would be huge. It would reduce EV costs dramatically, it would reduce average vehicle weight, and you might even get better performance.
(This wouldn't completely eliminate the need for some long-range vehicles for areas not served by electrified highways, but for most uses it should be fine.)
If we combine a modern EV with 100 year old tram technology, you get the ability for a car to charge itself when travelling on roads that have a compatible system of overhead power lines. Having a huge pantograph on top of the car is kind of impractical, but powering cars from underneath via power rails embedded in slots in the road, like a full-sized version of those toy slot cars that used to be popular, is another option that's been tried on some roads in Sweden.
Converting to EVs is the obvious alternative, but batteries are expensive and we haven't scaled up battery manufacturing yet to the degree necessary to replace ICE vehicles. We can get more EVs on the road though if the average EV can get by with a much smaller battery.
On some level it's an optimization problem: using the U.S. as an example, there are about 280 million cars/trucks currently registered. Is it cheaper/better to build about 280 million EVs with about 60kwh of batteries each on average, or build 280 million EVs with about 30kwh of batteries each and electrify our major highways?
If batteries cost $100/kwh, then 280 million * $100 * 30 = 840 billion dollars. If electrifying the major highways can be done for under $840 billion dollars, then it makes sense to do.
The interstate highway system is about 50,000 miles.
Sweden spent about a million euros per kilometer to electrify a section of road using the slot-embedded-in-the-road system. That's about $1.7 million per mile, or $86.5 billion.
You'd probably need to do more than just the interstates, but then at the same time you don't need to electrify 100% of the length of those highways. Maybe just 10% or 20%, as long as electrified section come at regular intervals.
This is all kind of simplistic and hand-wavey, but it seems like it passes the threshold of "we should at least consider doing this."
Maybe you mean it isn't 'sustainable'? ICE vehicles are the epitome of practical, they are used in practice all around the world.
> You'd probably need to do more than just the interstates, but then at the same time you don't need to electrify 100% of the length of those highways. Maybe just 10% or 20%,
The people who developed that project estimated they'd need to implement it on 25% of all roads. Also the project is just in a technical demonstrator phase. It is literally just a tech demo, and there are still major concerns about adoption, implementation, and maintenance.
> This is all kind of simplistic and hand-wavey, but it seems like it passes the threshold of "we should at least consider doing this."
I agree it should be tested further, but there are likely significant barriers that will prevent it from being useful, particularly in less dense areas.
For trucks on the highway, it is a much better idea, but for many of those cases, you'd be significantly better off investing in more rail.
Have short charging strips at traffic lights then prioritize lanes with cars that dont need much charge.
Where people are more likely to need the extra charge is on the long country roads between major cities. Probably a high priority could be on the major highways going into and out of cities, as those are the roads people are likely to use for long daily commutes.
I really have dozens of strange ideas. If the charging stations need to be equiped with similar batteries we might as well make all cars into charging stations. You can charge your much to large 3x per year road trip battery with your much to large solar array. Park it some place (preferably in need), flag the car in the app as wont move for x hours and has y kwh availble then charge your 40km range coworker premium tarif while you work.
A rail with a towing cable could also charge batteries while also usable for ic engines.
If it's just the former, the slow steady march of EV mindshare might solve your needs before the "L4" super-fast-charging battery. I am starting to see L2 chargers pop up in apartment parking lots, for example. IMO, "always charged" is significantly more convenient than short stops at a station, so it would still be desirable in a world where "L4" batteries and stations were common.
Keep in mind that EVs charge unattended, so you only spend a minute plugging in, and can leave to get a coffee, etc.
There are setups that have their max rated power per dispenser (“pump”), and halve it if two cars are plugged in to the same dispenser at the same time. Good chargers can do 300kW. If that splits to 150kW it’s not too bad - maybe 5 min slower, rather than double. That’s because the max speed the car can take is a curve, and that only flattens the peak.
However, for the 18-min charging the biggest gotcha is the temperature. In Hyundai/Kia it requires the battery to be at 20-25°C. That’s easy in the summer. In the winter the charging speed can drop as low as 80kW.
We would have walked to a nearby restaurant if needed.
I still have a gas vehicle but I never want to use it for long trips.
So on a road trip that I only wanted to charge twice for, one of the stops didn't work. Oh, and on the way back we had to wait for access to the faster charger. Maybe not so overblown.
Think of it like modern SLC backed QLC flash storage. As long as the usage profile fits inside of the cache, it runs as though the entire system is cache.
That system also allows you to participate in oil futures as an end user, not to mention it lets you keep your generator up and running for a very long time.
Downside is, modern e10 gasoline tends to adsorb water from the air over time, so fuel isn't stable long term. Most guys doing this are running diesel cars/gensets for that reason.
The model is, go to a truck depot with a 300 gallon trailer, fill up trailer and truck, park the trailer at home. Then fuel the truck off the trailer until it needs to be filled again, repeat. Do understand that, you can get a larger tank, but anything over 1000 gallons requires a placard/permit to haul around. That's in a single tank, so, in theory, a legal length 5th wheel trailer could have multiple tanks under that and be compliant. If you want the tanks attached to a vehicle itself, the maximum size is 150 gallons, hence why semi trucks have multiple fuel tanks that are smaller than that.
Really the only difficulty is finding a place nearby that is willing to sell that much fuel to an individual.
Either way, people forget about this, because if you have any sort of power generation, doesn't matter the method, if you go over capacity, you have brownouts/blackouts/grid failure/etc. What is deployed now, for the most part, is sufficient genset capacity to ramp into peak load, and most of it is under-utilized the majority of the time. Batteries eventually pay for themselves because of this, as they allow for peak load handling in addition to allowing generating capacity to stay online and remain profitable outside of peak load events. It really is revolutionary.
More or less, gridscale batteries are what dams/reservoirs were to water systems, and if you consider the impact of us as a species being able to save water for later use at-will, the promise we're looking at is going to really change the way we live.
Not sure I follow here. Can you elaborate?
Are you saying the the demand for sodium batteries for power grid backup is going to be high vs supply such that they're not going to make it into cars anytime soon? Isn't one of the Chinese EV makers starting to use sodium batteries?
Having said that - if we can get cheap and safe batteries installed within the charging stations, this would make for an awesome improvement
A lot of people tend to think of the ideal charging station as a gas station, where lots of cars go to quickly add range. But gas stations have large capacity because of their disadvantages. Ideally if they were safe, cheap, and compact, wouldn't you want gas stations everywhere? I'd love to have a gas station at home, in every parking garage, and at every scenic viewpoint on the road. The reason we don't have that is because gas stations emit toxic vapors and have giant tanks of combustible liquid. They need tanker trucks to regularly refuel them. Charging stations don't have those problems, which is why you can make them much smaller and put them almost anywhere. You don't even need a grid connection. Solar + batteries works in places where land is cheap.
Needs say 720kW delivery for those two minutes (need higher if counting inefficiency losses).
Note that Tesla 's V3 Superchargers provide a maximum of 250kW. I've assumed a 30kWh battery charged to 24kWh (80%), because the spec for a new Nissan Leaf is 59kWh battery for 385km driving range.
But I am definitely not expert on this.
You are almost certainly not charging from 0->100%. It's probably more like 10%->90% which gives you 32kW to charge. We currently have 350kW chargers on the market, they'd do that in ~6 minutes.
At some point trying to get 2 minutes vs 6 minutes is just silly nit picking.