by  David Herron August 11, 2015

This article can be found here

Fast Charging makes electric cars more useful because of the reassurance drivers get knowing they can quickly recharge, and the faster effective trip speed.   It seems that car owners with fast-charge capable cars, with enough fast charging stations around them, feel capable of taking longer trips.

While fast charging is often unnecessary , because the optimum charging rate varies depending on the usage scenario the driver currently faces, it sure is convenient that fast charging stations give an almost complete recharge in under an hour.  Unlike cars with 6 kiloWatt level 2 charging systems (20-25 miles of range per hour of charging), fast charging’s faster charge rate (50 kiloWatts or more) can supply 100 or more miles of range per hour of charging.  A significant fast charging network available should make electric cars more attractive than otherwise, and lead to higher adoption rates.

In some cases it means electric car drivers can take real road trips — blowing up one of the negative electric car stereotypes.   (like being be limited to driving a short distance from your home)

Unfortunately, while fast charging electric cars were available in 2011 (Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi i-MiEV), CHAdeMO charging infrastructure didn’t grow very fast.  Some automakers lobbied against CHAdeMO deployment because it wasn’t an SAE-blessed standard.  Instead the CHAdeMO was standard co-developed by TEPCO and the Japanese automakers.  Instead of adopting CHAdeMO, the SAE developed their own fast charging standard (Combo Charging System), Tesla Motors developed a proprietary fast charging system (Supercharger), and the Chinese developed a different fast charging standard.

The resulting effects were that

• Fast charging adoption happened more slowly that it might have
• Perhaps, Electric car adoption was delayed because of slow fast charging infrastructure build-out
• As of 2015 there are three (or four) fast charging standards in various stages of adoption, causing a certain amount of pain to electric car drivers – we can’t just go to the closest fast charge station, we have to find the one that’s compatible with our car

What we have in 2015 is a multi-way electric car fast charging standards battle.  Consumers are caught in the middle not knowing which fast charging standard to support, not knowing enough to know how to choose between them.   Fortunately some of the automakers appear to be acting to soften the pain of incompatible fast charging standards by deploying multi-protocol fast charging stations.

What we deserve is ubiquitous fast charging stations with a unified fast charging protocol.  Our gasoline powered brethren have a unified standard for gasoline pump nozzles, we deserve the same for fast charging.

With multiple competing fast charging standards adapters would be a useful product, to enable fast charging from an otherwise incompatible charging station.  While Tesla Motors is selling a CHAdeMO-to-Tesla adapter, it seems such adapters might have limited popularity due to expense and deployment of dual-protocol charging stations.

Charging Level & Effective Trip Speed

Before we get into the fast charging standards, let’s do a small review of why this is important and some terminology.

DC Fast Charging is the fastest (highest powered) electric car charging system currently available.  The charging station provides a high power DC current, as much as 120 kiloWatts, to the car’s battery pack bypassing any other charging equipment in the car.

Some people call this “Level 3” because the normal-speed charging generally used (240 volt AC at about 30 amps) is popularly called “Level 2”.  Both names are incorrect.

What’s popularly called “Level 2” is actually called “AC Level 2” and covers single phase AC charging at up to 20 kiloWatts in power.  In practice the highest rate currently supported by electric cars is about 10 kiloWatts, but the public charging network generally only supports 6 kiloWatts.

The DC Fast Charging we’re talking about is not “Level 3” but “DC Level 2” at power rates up to about 90 kiloWatts.

Where this becomes important is the recharge times noted in the chart.  The higher the charging power, the more quickly the car can be recharged.  Put another way, high power charging makes for a faster effective trip speed – because you gain more hours of range per hour of charging.  See Electric car charging rates, how fast, how slow, what we need, and why for more information.

• 6 kiloWatts: 20-25 miles range per hour of charging (typical AC Level 2)
• 50 kiloWatts: 120ish miles range per hour of charging  (CHAdeMO, CCS)
• 120 kiloWatts: 300ish miles range per hour of charging (Tesla Supercharger)

Taking a road trip with an electric car would be much more pleasant with 300+ miles range per hour of charging than 20 miles of range.

DC Fast charging standards – CHAdeMO, CCS, Supercharger, China

There are four or so DC Fast Charging systems currently being used by electric car manufacturers.  The picture shown here has four different connectors without even accounting for the Tesla Supercharger because there are two variants of the ComboChargingSystem charging socket.

 

At the current moment the leading car for each type is:

• CHAdeMO – Nissan Leaf
• CCS – BMW i3
• Supercharger – Tesla Model S
• China GB/T – ?

Let’s take a look at each.

CHAdeMO – (Nissan, Mitsubishi, Kia)

CHAdeMO Plug – Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CHAdeMO_Plug_VacavilleDavisStDC2.jpg

CHAdeMO is the trade name of a quick charging method for battery electric vehicles delivering up to 62.5 kW of high-voltage direct current via a special electrical connector. It is proposed as a global industry standard by an association of the same name.

It was defined by the CHAdeMO Association – Purpose/focus CHAdeMO Association aims to increase quick-charger installations worldwide and to standardize how to charge the vehicles. – http://chademo.com – CHAdeMO was formed by The Tokyo Electric Power Company, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Fuji Heavy Industries (the manufacturer of Subaru vehicles). Toyota later joined as its fifth executive member. CHAdeMO is an abbreviation of “CHArge de MOve”, equivalent to “charge for moving”. The name is a pun for “O cha demo ikaga desuka” in Japanese, translating to English as “How about some tea?”, referring to the time it would take to charge a car.

CHAdeMO is a form of DC Fast Charge, for high-voltage (up to 500 VDC) high-current (125 A) automotive fast charging via a JARI DC fast charge connector. The connector is specified by the JEVS (Japan Electric Vehicle Standard) G105-1993 from the Japan Automobile Research Institute. The connector includes two large pins for DC power, plus other pins to carry CAN-BUS connections.

Because CHAdeMO ports do not support AC charging, cars must have two charging ports – one for AC Level 2, the other for CHAdeMO.

AE Combo Charging System (CCS) – (BMW, GM, VW, and other carmakers)

When tasked with developing a fast charging system, the SAE J1772 committee basically took the existing J1772 plug and added on two large pins for high power DC.  The upper part is the ordinary J1772 plug used in the USA, and the lower portion are the two DC power pins.

Among the reasons the J1772 committee developed CCS are

• Single charging inlet to support slow and fast charging (versus two required for CHAdeMO)
• Use smart grid protocols to control charging
• Same connector serves multiple purposes

The first point allows car makers more design freedom by requiring only a single hole in the skin of the car (or, a smaller hole) for recharging.  The charging cord is also lighter weight than the CHAdeMO, and easier to use.

The second point – see the image above labeled “IEC DC Charging Systems” – has to do with the control protocol between the car and the charging station.  We’ll discuss this below, but CCS uses PLC for that communication, whereas CHAdeMO uses CAN.  CAN is a data protocol used between components inside cars, while PLC is part of the smart grid protocols.

Tesla Supercharger

• The Tesla mobile charging unit comes with adapters for every kind of power outlet, from 120 volt 12 amp (NEMA 5-20), through to 240 volt 50 amp (NEMA 14-50).
• Via an adapter, it can connect to J1772 charging stations
• At a Supercharger station (pictured above) it can receive DC fast charging at up to a 120 kiloWatt rate

It means a Tesla Model S or Model X owner can get rapid charging in a wide range of situations.

Tesla Motors also sells an add-on adapter allowing a Model S/X owner to recharge at a CHAdeMO station.  Tesla Motors does not sell any kind of adapter allowing owners of CHAdeMO or CCS cars to recharge at a Supercharger station, however.

 

 

 

All that was really known about the company was that it had a large financial backing, had poached some of the motoring world’s brightest minds and was working on electric cars.

However, last week the company used the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to unveil its high-performance electric car prototype.

Known as the FFZERO1, the concept car claims to possess four electric motors and 1000hp, which will propel the car from 0-100km/h in less than three seconds.

The four motors also help the concept reach top speeds of 320km/h.

A glass roof will come as standard to offer a clear view to its white carbon fibre interior containing a smartphone mount in the centre of the steering wheel, a helmet used to supply the driver with water and oxygen, and a safety system designed to support the driver’s head and neck.

The company teased that there would be “limited production” of the vehicle, but it is a distinct possibility that the FFZERO1 will never see the light of day.

The concept is being used to showcase the potential of the vehicle’s underlying platform, known as the “Variable Platform Architecture”.

Faraday Future senior vice president Nick Sampson said the platform would be highly customisable.

“That platform is done on a very modular and flexible basis such that we can change the size,” he told The Verge.

What this means in the company’s vehicles could chop and change the power of its cars on a day-to-day basis to suit the needs of drivers.

 

The original article inclusive of an interview video is available here.

 

The future of electric vehicles doesn’t have to look like Tesla sedans and Faraday Future race cars; it can be something much simpler and city-friendly. At least that’s what the people behind Arcimoto are betting on, an electric love child of a commuter’s bicycle and a multi-ton car—just don’t call it a golf cart.

“I was looking for something that could get me to work without getting wet or that I could take out for a night on the town but that wasn’t a full-size car,” says the company’s president, Mark Frohnmayer. “If you look at how people drive today, it’s one person sitting in 4,000 pounds of steel to pick up a bag of groceries. It’s totally insane.”

The Arcimoto team first started molding metal and plastic in Eugene, Ore., in 2007, after Frohnmayer sold his software company and decided to pursue the goal of a more sustainable method of motorized transport. Since then, they’ve created a number of prototypes and concept vehicles, starting in the middle of 2008. The model we saw is prototype generation eight, and it’s what the final production model will be based on. At first glance, the tube-and-panel construction makes it look a little like a three-wheeled golf cart or ATV. But don’t call it that, unless you want to see Frohnmayer try to remain polite while grimacing a bit.

This isn’t a vehicle meant to be taken out just on weekend joy rides. The two-seater is completely electric and can travel up to 80 miles per hour, going from zero to 60 in 7.5 seconds. It takes a few hours to juice up, and you can get up to 70 miles on a single charge, with an upgrade in the works that will nearly double it to 130 miles. It’s already fully street legal across the U.S. and is considered a motorcycle, so it may require a separate certification in some states.

With prices starting around $12,000 (going up to a little more than $20,000 if you pack on all the upgrades at once), the Arcimoto’s a total bargain next to a Tesla Model S, but that’s not far from the starting price of a Toyota Prius. What Arcimoto’s betting on is that you either already have a standard car and are looking for something different or that you don’t want to bother with a traditional car at all.

After nearly a decade of development, a few hand-built beta vehicles will be shipping to customers the first part of 2016, and by the end of the year the 350-plus customers who have preordered the Arcimoto will start receiving full production versions of their vehicles.

Frohnmayer is very clear that the Arcimoto is meant to be much more than a novelty device and that eventually he thinks people will come around. “You might think of this as your second vehicle and that your primary car is a seven-seater that goes 300 miles or whatever, but that’s the one that’s just going to sit unused in your driveway three or four weeks every month,” he says. “But this is going to be the one you actually use for all your daily needs.”

This article is obtained from this link

(This image is taken from here )

Posted on December 14, 2015 by James Bushnell

I work at UC Davis, a University with at least two (that I know about) centers devoted to research “aimed at developing a sustainable market for plug-in vehicles.” I run into a lot of researchers and environmental advocates who are completely dedicated to the mission of accelerating the deployment of electric vehicles. They view electrifying a large share of the transportation fleet as one key piece of the climate policy puzzle.

I am also an economist.   The research coming out of the economics community haspretty consistently demonstrated that electric vehicles currently have marginal (at best) environmental benefits. I run into a lot of economists who are perplexed at the hostility these findings have generated from pockets of the environmental community.

I have followed and pondered these clashes for some time now, in part for the entertainment value, but also because of what this conflict reveals about how the different disciplines think about climate policy.

As the Paris climate summit concludes, the spotlight has been on goals such as limiting warming to 2 or even 1.5 degrees Celsius, and how the agreed-to actions fall short of the necessary steps to achieve them.  There has been much less focus on where targets like 2 degrees Celsius come from, and what the costs of achieving them would be.   A lot of the policies being discussed for meeting goals like an 80% reduction in carbon emissions carry price tags well in excess of the EPA’s official “social cost of carbon,” one measure of the environmental damages caused by CO2 emissions.   It is quite likely that these different perspectives, about how to frame the climate change problem, will define the sides of the next generation of climate policy debate (if and when we get past the current opposition based upon a rejection of climate science).

To be clear, the research on EVs is not (for most places) claiming that electric cars yieldno environmental benefit. The point of papers like Mansur, et. al, and Archsmith, Kendall, and Rapson  is that these benefits are for the moment dwarfed by the size of public and private funds directed at EVs. Some have criticized aspects of the study methodologies (for example a lack of full life cycle analysis), but later work has largely addressed those complaints and not changed the conclusion that the benefits of EVs are substantially below the level of public subsidy they currently enjoy. Not only that, but Severin Borenstein and Lucas Davis point out that EV tax credits are about the most regressive of green energy subsidies currently available.

Another common, and more thought provoking, reaction I’ve seen is the view that thecurrent environmental benefits of EVs are almost irrelevant. The grid will have to be substantially less carbon intensive in the future, and therefore it will be. The question is, what if it’s not? It seems likely that California will have a very low carbon power sector in 15 years, but I’m not so sure about the trajectory elsewhere. This argument also raises the question of sequencing. Why are we putting so much public money into EVs beforethe grid is cleaned up and not after?

This kind of argument comes up a lot when discussing some of the more controversial (i.e., expensive) policies directed at CO2 emissions mitigation.   Economists will writepapers pointing to programs with an implied cost per ton of CO2 reductions in the range of hundreds of dollars per ton. One reaction to such findings is to point out that we need to do this expensive stuff and the cheap stuff or else we just aren’t going to have enough emissions reductions.   Since we need to do all of it, it’s no great tragedy to do the expensive stuff now.

It seems to me that this view represents what was once captured in the “wedges” concept and is now articulated as a carbon budget. Environmental economists call it a quantity mechanism or target. The underlying implication is that we have to do all the policies necessary to reach the mitigation target, or we are completely screwed. So we need to identify the ways (wedges) that reduce emissions and get them done, no matter what the costs may be.

According to this viewpoint we shouldn’t quibble over whether program X costs $100 or $200 a ton if we’re going to have to do it all to get the abatement numbers to add up.   Sure, it may be ideal to do the cheap stuff (clean up the power sector) first and then do the expensive stuff (roll out EVs), but we’re going to have to do it all anyway.

At the risk of oversimplification, many environmental economists think of the problem in a different way. Each policy that reduces emissions has a cost, and those reductions create an incremental benefit. The question is then “are the benefits greater than the costs”?   From this framing of the problem, a statement like “we have to stick to the carbon budget X, no matter what the costs” doesn’t make sense. Any statement that ignores the costs doesn’t make sense.

It does appear that to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050, we will have to almost completely decarbonize the power sector and largely, if not completely, take the carbon out of transportation. That’s just arithmetic. How does one square that with research that implies such policies currently cost several hundred dollars a ton?

In particular, how do we reconcile this with the EPA’s estimates of the social cost of carbon that are in the range of $40/ton?  In their paper on the lifecycle carbon impacts of EVs and conventional cars, Archsmith, Kendell, and Rapson, using $38/ton as a cost of carbon, estimate the lifetime damages of the gasoline powered, but pretty efficient, Nissan Versa to be $3200. In other words, replacing a fuel efficient passenger car with a vehicle with NO lifecycle emissions would produce benefits of $3200. That puts $10,000 in EV tax credits in perspective.

Many proponents of those policies no doubt believe that the benefits of abatement (or costs of carbon emissions) are indeed many hundreds of dollars per ton. Or they could believe that costs of many of these programs are either cheaper right now than economists claim, or will become cheaper over the next decades.  Some justify the current resources directed at EVs as first steps necessary to gain the advantages of learning-by-doing and network effects.  Others make the point that the average social cost of carbon masks the great disparity in the distributional impacts of those costs.   Perhaps climate policy should be trying to limit the maximum damages felt by anyone, instead of targeting averages. How do residents of the Marshall Islands feel about the US EPA’s social cost of carbon?

All these are legitimate viewpoints. However, there is also the fact that the quantity targets we are picking, like limiting warming to 2 degree Celsius increase and/or reducing emissions by 80% by 2050, are somewhat arbitrary targets themselves. It’s hard to claim that the benefits of abatement are minuscule if we fall slightly short of that target and suddenly become huge if we make it.   This encapsulates the economists’ framing of the climate problem as a “cost-based” one.   Under this viewpoint we should keep pushing on abatement as much as we can, and see if the costs turn out to be less than the benefits. If not, we adjust our targets in response to what we learn about abatement costs (in addition to climate impacts).

This motivates so much of the economics research focus on the costs and effectiveness of existing and proposed regulations. That community doesn’t view it as sweating the small stuff. Under this framing of the issue, maybe having a fleet of super fuel efficient hybrids makes more sense, even if it results in higher carbon from passenger vehicles than a fleet of pure EVs might.

Or maybe EVs do turn out to be the best option. The two sides will have to recognize where the other is coming from, or the next round of climate policy debates may be as frustrating as this one.

This article is taken from here

People often think of switching to battery operated vehicles, but it becomes a nightmare for the drivers to look at the low battery sign on the dashboard with no means to recharge it again.

Maybe there is a way to release this fear. What if battery-operated electric cars work far better and don’t have to lug around huge and expensive batteries?

The researchers at Korea’s Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have developed a technology to solve both the conundrums. They have created first-of-its-kind on-line electric vehicle (OLEV) system, that can recharge electric cars or buses while they are on the go.

In the city of Gumi, South Korea, a seven-and-a-half-mile stretch of asphalt roadway has been constructed with power sources periodically embedded in the road. As a bus approaches and leaves, these power sources connect to the grid and are turned on and off selectively. According to KAIST, only 5% to 15% of the already existing road needs to be rebuild to make it a wireless charger.

The batteries used in the buses are almost third the size of a normal electric car battery, yet the buses don’t need to stop for charging and are more cost effective. This technology being eco-friendly can curb the increasing carbon level, hence solving many pollutions related health issues.

The following article is found here.

 

A report from research firm IDTechEx entitled Electric Vehicle Forecasts, Trends and Opportunities 2016-2026 says the market for electric vehicles is set to explode over the next 10 years, creating nearly a half trillion dollars worth of new business along the way.

“Batteries, supercapacitors, energy harvesting, wireless charging, power electronics and structural electronics are all evolving and breakthroughs are appearing more commonly in other vehicles such as boats and planes, before cars,” IDTechEX says. “This is driving progress across the whole EV market and now many profitable niche markets are emerging just as there’s been a shake-up in the leading sectors.”

IDTechEX expects the market for electric vehicles used in construction, agriculture, and industrial watercraft to experience compound annual growth of between 20% and 65% over the next ten years. Outdoor power equipment like earth movers and lifting vehicles are expected to to switch to hybrid electric drivetrains, which require less maintenance and insulate companies from future spikes in the cost of fossil fuels.

Hybrids perform better because they have more torque available at low speeds. They also are able to supply electricity to other equipment on a job site. Another plus is that they are quieter in operation, which reduces operator fatigue, and they create less pollution, too.

The market for electric buses is expected to top $72 billion a year by 2025 as cities push for more emissions free vehicles on their streets. Right now, China’s BYD is the leading manufacturer of short and long range electric buses in the world, but Proterra is also competing for that business in the US. It features carbon fiber construction for its vehicles. Lighter weight means greater range.

“The size and growth of the industrial and commercial sector is less dependent on government funding and tax breaks than the more fragile market for electric cars, particularly pure electric ones,” the report says. “Excitingly, most of the electric vehicle technologies are changing and improving hugely and innovation often comes here [the commercial and industrial sector] before it is seen in the more publicized electric vehicle sectors such as cars.”

It just may be that the transition away from fossil fueled vehicles will be led not by Tesla and other car makers but by the makers of construction equipment, buses, trash hauling vehicles and the like, whose customers are persuaded more by the economic benefits of electric vehicles than by styling or cool technology.

The following article is taken from this link.

Last month, representatives from 200 nations around the world gathered in Paris to address the issue of climate change. Many of them believe the only hope for mankind is if the entire world transitions as quickly as possible to electric power and electric vehicles. They think the best way to get more people to buy electric vehicle is to give them significant financial incentives to do so. For them, the size of the incentive is irrelevant.

How much of an incentive should be given to promote the conversion to electric cars is one that many economists have strong opinions on. James Bushnell is an economist at the University of California – Davis. In December, he posted a long and carefully researched article on the Haas School of Business at Berkeley website. Bushnell’s primary question for environmentalists goes like this: “Is society getting good value for its money when it provides such generous incentives?” That’s an excellent question and one that has as many answers as the number of people who ask it. In general, the answer is, “It depends.”

His article is entitled Economists Are From Mars, Electric Cars Are From Venus and it’s an interesting read. The substance of his argument is as follows. “[Economists] Archsmith, Kendell, and Rapson, using $38/ton as a cost of carbon, estimate the lifetime damages of the gasoline powered, but pretty efficient, Nissan Versa to be $3200. In other words, replacing a fuel efficient passenger car with a vehicle with NO lifecycle emissions would produce benefits of $3200. That puts $10,000 in EV tax credits in perspective.”

Obviously, no economist worthy of the name would advocate for incentives that exceed their anticipated benefit by a factor of three. To an economist, that is just crazy talk. But who says the the cost of carbon is $38 a ton? The EPA sets it at $40, but may other researchers say it should be much higher. They think $200 to $400 a ton is more realistic. If that’s true, that makes a $10,000 incentive to drive a zero emissions car look like an absolute bargain.

David Roberts, writing for Vox on December 31, raises some cogent and troubling questions. “How much is a human life worth? You can’t calculate the benefits of saving one without a number. How much is it worth to avoid a sickness? How much are intact ecosystems worth? How much are other species worth?

“How much is a life this year worth compared with a life ten years from now, or 50 years from now? How much weight we give future costs and benefits relative to the present is measured by our “discount rate.” Discount rates are particularly important in climate change discussions, where the connections between cause and effect are measured in decades, sometimes centuries. The choice of discount rate can make the difference between a model that counsels urgent action and one that counsels delay.”

In other words, the answer to how to address climate change is all in how you frame the debate and what questions you ask. Roberts tends to favor more rather than fewer EV incentives. His justification is that EVs have intangible benefits that are difficult to put a dollar value on. More EVs mean the electric grid gets greener, faster. Since electrification of everything is the only possible way to avoid climate disaster, let’s stop arguing over numbers and get busy, he says. After all, there won’t be any economists left to argue about these things if we are all dead from breathing poisonous air.

Roberts last point is that electric cars are popular with voters and politicians. Greening the electrical grid is not. Since EVs enjoy a high approval rating (thanks in large measure to the constant drumbeat in favor of them by Elon Musk), why not put all of society’s eggs in the EV basket, since EVs will necessarily promote the other worthy but less sexy measures the world needs? In other words, isn’t it ultimately better to swim with the current rather than against it?

Max Weber said “Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards.” Roberts calls it “a draining and frustrating business.” If the winds are blowing in favor of electric vehicles, isn’t it wise to take advantage of those breezes, he asks, even if the precisely correct amount of incentives cannot be calculated down to the last penny?  His final word to practitioners of  economics, which Thomas Carlyle calls “the dismal science,” is this: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your economics.”

Source from here

 

A Tesla Supercharger station has been put in operation in the parking lot of the Sullivan University School of Pharmacy off Bardstown Road near the Watterson Expressway..

The Supercharger is a direct current,  fast-charging station that is for use with the Tesla Model S sedan, Model X SUV and eventually the Tesla Model 3 — Tesla’s lower-cost model — that is due to be unveiled to the public in March.  The Louisville location has the capacity to charge eight vehicles at a time.

“The Sullivan University system supports advancing technologies.  This charging site for Tesla vehicles is but one example,” said Glenn Sullivan, president of Sullivan University.

Worldwide, there are 576 Supercharger stations with 3,321 Superchargers able to provide “fuel” for these electric vehicles.

In addition to the new Tesla chargers, Sullivan officials said they are exploring adding a Level 2 charger that will charge other makes and models of electric cars there as well.

The Supercharger is available 24-7 and is free to Tesla owners.  Users don’t have to make prior arrangements to charge vehicles, officials said.

Stuart Ungar, president of EVolve KY, Kentucky’s electric vehicle group, said local interest in electric vehicles appears to be growing.  He noted that TARC started use of its new ZeroBus all-electric vehicle fleet.  EVolve KY sponsored its first Drive Electric Week, and the group held a ribbon-cutting for its first Adopt-a-Charger location at The Green Building on Market Street in NuLu.

Source: Bonges, H.A. and A.C. Lusk. 2015. Addressing electric vehicle (EV) sales and range anxiety through parking layout, policy and regulation. Transportation Research Part A doi:10.1016/j.tra.2015.09.011.

Retrieved from this website.

An electric car owner’s biggest fear is running out of juice — and not being able to find an available charging station. One of the main reasons that electric vehicles (EVs) haven’t become more popular is that drivers worry they won’t make it to their destination and back.

In a new report, researchers have identified some of the hassles involved in EV charging. People hog the charger parking spots, and drivers often aren’t allowed to unplug another person’s fully-charged car. To bring EVs into the mainstream, the authors say, charging stations need to be designed to encourage turnover, and people should be able to unplug without fear of rousing another driver’s ire or breaking the law.

The report authors visited charging stations at four locations in Vermont, where an unusually high percentage of drivers own EVs. The team also gathered information about the issue from academic studies, trade market articles, and online searches.

A few problems emerged. Some businesses placed EV charging stations in the corner of the parking lot, where only one car could reach the cord. Others gave EVs the best spots in the lot, which encouraged unscrupulous drivers to grab those spots even when they didn’t need a charge.

Etiquette dictates that owners should unplug their cars once they’re charged to free up the cord. But “observation of etiquette is likely to decrease” as EVs become more common, the authors note. And some stores forbid customers from unplugging another customer’s vehicle out of fear of liability. In some states, unplugging another person’s car could cause the owner of that car to face fines or towing.

Common-sense solutions? Put the charging stations between parking spots so they can reach two to four vehicles, the authors suggest. Even better, install an “octopus” charger that charges multiple cars one after the other, in the order that they were plugged in. Don’t give the prime parking spots to EVs, and charge a small hourly fee to discourage drivers from occupying a spot for an unnecessarily long time. (Setting time limits may not be fair, the team says, since some EVs take longer to charge than others.)

Some drivers display courtesy cards on their cars that give others permission to unplug the vehicle at a certain time. But it should be legal and acceptable for another driver to unplug a fully-charged car even if a courtesy card isn’t present, the authors say. Without these changes, EVs may remain a niche product: tolerable for an enthusiast, but too much of a pain for the ordinary consumer. — Roberta Kwok | 29 December 2015

Throughout the world there has been an ailment caused by the lack of a united charging standard, but a temporary cure may be provided by the multi-standard charger.

ABB recently announced a three-head 50 kW Terra 53CJG installation in Brazil – “the first universal vehicle charger” in the country, which interestingly powers up a Renault Fluence Z.E in the promo shots.

Renault is strong in Brazil, so it’s not too strange that from time to time they deliver some EVs there (such as the Kangoo Z.E. and Twizy), but none of those cars use DC fast charging – which is probably the reason for the Fluence ZE’s appearance at the station.

For DC-ready cars, Terra 53CJG offers both CHAdeMO and SAE Combo (CCS).

For AC, there is the European Type 2 plug (which is different than Type 1, aka J1772). It seems that this Fluence Z.E. is Type 2 ready, in contrast to those sold in Europe with J1772 .

The source of the above article can be found  here.

In our research, we are trying to avoid this situation where you have three heads to charge the different EV requirements.  We are working on having a universal charger that can detect the type of EV and charge it accordingly, insyaallah.