Buried deep in the article, what the clickbait headline alludes to: Car chargers are too complicated and expensive. We can make them simpler and cheaper while keeping them safe, which would let us build many more charging stations.
Fast chargers work because they can regulate the current flowing into the battery and convert the grid voltage to allow that to happen. Batteries are charged by feeding them with a constant current until you reach a certain voltage near 100% charge, then letting the current drop to get to a complete charge (which is part of why 20% to 80% charges are much faster than complete charges). This is 100% not what you get if you just cut out the charge circuit completely, you instead get a blown fuse at best or a fire at worst. There may be cheaper options for the charge circuit if you don't need them to provide the isolation, but they don't really discuss that, they just talk as if the cost would go to zero.
(For slow charging, this circuit still exists, it's just in the car instead. But it's quite hard to fit something that can handle the power involved in fast charging into a car, which is why it's in the charger side instead).
> [If] we are to get rid of galvanic isolation [there's still a ] need to prevent mismatches between the utility’s AC line voltage and that of the EV battery.
> The solution to this problem is a device called a buck regulator (or buck converter). A buck regulator is similar, functionally, to a step-down transformer, except that it handles DC current rather than AC. In the event that the utility’s AC voltage exceeds the battery voltage, the buck regulator operates like a transformer and steps it down. In comparison with an isolation link of the same power rating, a buck regulator would cost less than 10 percent and the power loss would be less than 20 percent.
And it's pretty reasonable to explain how current chargers exist before suggesting the alternative. There are nicely labeled sections to help with skipping forward.
Wouldn’t gas cars just eliminate the middleman of fossil fuels -> power plant -> car? Like we did before EVs?
I would love nuclear power but it doesn’t appear to be happening
I like how EVs accelerate faster. Otherwise it would make my life way more inconvenient, which I surmise is a major blocker for most potential EV purchasers
I wouldn't go back either, even with the occasional 20-minute charge break on a very long trip.
And the one closest to my commute has a massive queue _every_ time.
I just rather drive home, plug in and the battery will be at 80-100% next morning, depending on how much I drove that day.
The gas stations are on the main road that passes through the town, I don't use it for my commute, I literally have to go out of my way to hit a gas station - which is owned by my uncle (small town, I know)
Plus for us at least, because we have a very low KwH _night_ rate, our EV is 10x cheaper to run than our ICE. It's a significant difference.
And that's not counting the environmental concerns.
Multi-day trips are another story. But we take very few of those.
Does that affect the calculation at all?
EDIT: I was totally wrong - it's more like 7%. Still interested whether that affects the calculation, although it's much less likely to!
EDIT: I can't find that source, and I found a load of sources around 7%. Thanks for the correction.
Since cars are more like 80% waste heat, it still works out better to generate the electricity and feed it to EVs.
However, not every country has oil or gas. In fact, only a minority does. China is investing in EVs to avoid being dependent on energy imports. Many other countries are following. Russia and the US being laggards in EV adoption isn't really surprising.
As of 2018, 94% of the US population lived in an area where charging an EV would emit less than a >50mpg car. In terms of electricity grid regions, an EV has lower emissions than a 50 mpg gasoline vehicle in 85% of them. [1] Yes, most of the US is still powered by fossil fuels, but ICE tailpipe emissions are very different than power plant emissions.
As for why switching to EVs is preferred to sticking with gas cars, aside from climate change, tailpipe emissions from ICE vehicles cause ∼200,000 early deaths to occur in the U.S. each year [2] (old data, but average MPG of vehicles in the US has barely changed, though particulate matter is better filtered, though there are more vehicles and annual vehicle miles traveled in the US has increased. Hard to pin an exact number without newer research, but without any doubt many thousands are dying from the pollution.)
As far as climate change goes, over a quarter comes from transportation in the US [3]. EVs alone won't take that to single numbers, but halving transportation emissions would still be significant progress.
As far as
> The light is weak for many months of the year, and wind power is apparently way too expensive if they remove the subsidies (weird!)
Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion or 7.1 percent of global GDP in 2022 [4]. 70% of energy subsidies go towards fossil fuels (admittedly not the case in the US though.) [5] But subsidies aside, solar and wind is very price competitive with gas (and often far cheaper than coal) [6].
There's also $24.662 trillion in externalities for energy and transport (equivalent to 28.7% of global GDP) [7]. So sticking with ICE cars and fossil fuels is unlikely to be a smart decision from a financial perspective.
1. https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2020-05/evs-clean...
2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...
3. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...
4. https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidie...
5. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-do-government-subsi...
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
7. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462962...
Even the very best experimental gasoline engines in Toyota's labs are around 30-35% efficient.
Even if all gasoline and diesel was used in massive generator units to produce electricity, EVs would still be better for the environment and the total gasoline/diesel usage would go down.
Your car just radiates it wherever, benefiting no-one (except during winter)
And most people tend to keep their cars for 10+ years. The power grid is changing all the time, and it's likely in the time that you own your EV, the sources it gets powered from will become cleaner.