Hacker News Reader

can you explain what you mean by ev architecture?

Hyundai and Kia use an 800V high voltage electrical system. The upshot is their vehicles charge scary fast, peaking in the mid 200kW's

Exactly. It makes a DC fast charge session (on a reasonably spec'd charger) take 20 minutes, not an hour like on competing EVs that peak at 150kW.

EV companies haven't quite figured out that the only two things consumers care about are range and charge rate (well, and cost, but there's an untapped market of people willing to pay if the featureset is there). Everyone has settled on 300mi range, which in my opinion is a little low but workable (at 80mph you'd have to stop every 3.5 hours), but for some reason nobody can get their act together on charge rate. Consumers need to purchase a car for their 99th percentile use case, which for much of America includes at least one road trip per year. The DC fast charge experience is basically the whole story there.

Obviously better charge rate would be better, and would be a bigger improvement than more range, but I've found that long road trips (10+ hours total driving time) with my 2023 Hyundai Kona, peak charge rate of ~70kW, is tolerable. I'd like my next EV (whenever I get it), to have a higher charge rate, but if I'm being honest, I'd care more other features such as V2H capability and physical media/HVAC controls. Now, fundamentally there is no reason that I should have to choose between these options. They are orthoganal, but if I was choosing between different vehicles, I'd give up charge speed to get those other features.

Agreed, but just a nit: cars that charge at 150kW peak tend to 10-80 in about 30 minutes, not an hour.

Source: my ID.4

Lucid and Porsche also have comparable internal voltages, but of course they are much more expensive than Hyundai and Kia.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com