Only one EV charger at home?!

Modern charges are meant to have a randomised start and end time facility (of, I believe 10 minutes) so the likelihood of them all switching at the same time along a street is minimised. It is well known that humans, when programming timers, say, for central heating, the majority will set a time on the exact hour, quarter or half hour.

Balancing the network loads when a large number of people are charging is possibly the reason that is is recommended that charging is limited to 7.4kW in a domestic property with a single phase supply.

The seals on my fuse is blank and this was from the meter change.

But you do that much less frequently than daily except on a long trip.

Are you sure about that? I’d had my car for two years before realising that the actual flap isn’t part of the central locking system.

Every time? I just have mine set to charge for the same four hours every night. No fiddling with apps involved.

If I’m charging away from home I just press the schedule override button inside the charging flap to start charging immediately (on AC). On DC it sensibly just ignores any set schedule.

Tim

There are inductive chargers. At maybe 85% efficiency. They vary by the distance they work at. That's a style of home charger, where the owner can drive off and no harm done.

There are various formats of battery trailer.

In Quebec, the auto association there has a couple Ioniq 5 capable of giving other cars a boost charge. Enough charge must be left in the AA vehicle for it to "return to base". They use V2L kit. The purpose of this, is getting you a couple miles to the nearest charging station, rather than loading 300 miles of range into a car at a pitiful rate. This is roughly the equivalent of the smallest red plastic petrol can at the hardware store, in terms of practical capacity. It's intended to take the place of towing, especially when some cars don't have good tow characteristics. For the AA this is an "experiment", rather than a commitment to BEV owners. They're seeing how much it sucks.

This was the previous device of interest. It's unclear this is in production though.

There are "city cars" (the Not-A-Car category), that as a concept, have a removable battery pack in them. One of them, cost only $6,000 but would not be useful/valid for my entire city (capped speed limiter). This one though, for some reason, is able to operate on 80km/hr roads, so could be driven here. It depends on country regulation, as to whether there is a category for these or not. There is a particular eBike which costs $12,000 and yet someone was able to make a four wheel car-like vehicle for $6,000. The Yoyo is unlikely to be a $6,000 vehicle, because it's a little too capable for that class. It's almost usable.

The packaging still needs a re-do on that thing, but eventually they'll get these city cars fixed up enough, to allow people without a driveway, to have an electric cart.

What's interesting about the city cars, is the pricing, rather than the capabilities. It shows how much effect that impact resistance and endless bullshit safety features have on vehicles. It's an attempt at an end-run around regulation. And it's the only style I know of, where people are experimenting with battery packs you can take in the house. The $6,000 vehicle from the Netherlands, you really can take the two packs into the house. But that one doesn't have exactly the same range as the Yoyo.

Paul

Definitely.

You can turn off everything without locking the car, but that involves a few layers into menus - and then opening the door to get out powers everything back up again!

It uses the driver's seat being occupied and the door open to power up.

I could do that, but at the moment, I want to correlate energy consumption, what's in use at the time and how long the large loads are likely to remain on for. And that means separate apps for the car.

I also don't have a schedule set, as we don't yet have an EV tariff for cheaper overnight charging and, as it costs the same at any time of day, I want it charged, in case of a sudden emergency call from my son in Leeds (he's a student there) or my sister in Carlisle (she's living alone and undergoing Chemo).

Once things are settled and our supplier adds our car model to their supported list, there will be ANOTHER app, allowing for low priced charging whenever the supplier has excess capacity available.

That needs either the car's app or access via the cars own menus. There isn't an override button. Plugging in and locking the car doesn't lock the cable in or start charging, so accessing the cars own screen or using an app is necessary.

If I'm in the office, I "pass" one on my way. That does mean turning off route to reach the road that it is on; possibly wait to get on a pump, wait to pay, then struggle to turn across the lanes of a busy road, then the original road, to get back on route. All in all, 5 or 6 minutes ... on top of a 15 minute drive.

On a long trip, I would take my petrol car. But for now, the EV is covering all my needs. I have driven my petrol car once in the last two and a half weeks - and that was to make sure that the battery didn't end up flat.

UK pumps cannot be operated unattended. They have the lock-on facility disabled due to safety legislation.

Filling time is simply wasted time, as you have to stand there and hold the nozzle.

It will be interesting to see where V2L goes.

Our EV is documented as permitting 2kW V2L, however people have tested it and found that it can deliver 6.7kW. If that can be safely sustained, it would be viable for getting just enough into a friend's or family member's car, in a reasonable time.

On this car, the flap is just tied in to the central locking, as on many petrol cars. It locks and unlocks with it.

We pay more because using more means using more units. We don't pay extra to have a supply rated to a different power.

Depending upon the capacity of the supply cable and main fuse, UK houses typically have 14.4KW or 24KW supplies, as standard. We don't normally have to worry about being able to use the electric oven and electric hob while the dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer are on - even with an EV charger. On time limited boost, a single ring of the induction hob may take 4.2KW!

"Features related to your preferences

Amperage

Level 2 chargers are available in models that deliver between 15- and 80-Amps. <=== hmmm. The higher the amperage the faster the charging."

They seem to relate capability, to 80% of the incomer (part of regs). So a 100 amp panel can have a load of 80 amps at 240V as a total.

I could find a reference to inserting a 50 amp breaker into a panel, which is presumably a 100 amp panel, and the 50 amps is less than the

80 amps total load. And there are fittings that allow 50 amp plugs, without relying on hard wiring for the charger.

So that probably means, at least an 11kW charger with dual ports could be fitted to a puny panel. And perhaps something bigger could be fitted to a 200 amp panel.

If an 80 amp charger (multi-port) exists, then there must be some sort of home configuration available from a panel perspective.

And apparently large homes here, have more than one 200 amp panel in them. And that might even mean, they get their own pedestal transformer on the front lawn, rather than sharing a pole transformer with the poor people.

*******

So maybe that's a way to answer the question for the UK, is keep searching to see if anyone answers the question without going "22kW requires three phase" as an answer.

OK, so now we need to figure out, what they fitted this to :-) A guess would be, one mother of an incomer.

Paul

Back in the '70s as stations started going to self-service and the nozzles didn't have locks, someone came up with a simple plastic widget to put on your key ring.

The original device was a flat piece of plastic to wedge under the trigger.

Much more annoying are the 'vapor recovery' nozzles that have sort of a spring loaded foreskin that has to be peeled back to enable flow. They're a real joy with a motorcycle tank. California, of course, perfected the design to be a maximum pita.

Yikes. Battery packs catch fire.

and a car-size pack will be a lot worse than a scooter battery.

Strange that there is a perceived safety issue. The auto shutoffs are smarter than the average citizen.

We don't have to hold the nozzle here. One latches the valve thing and it shuts off when the tank is full. Meanwhile, wash the windows or reorganize the junk in the car or buy a bag of Cheetos.

I think there are states where you still can't fill yourself, and an employee does it for you.

I suppose having two cars gives you more options.

Soon every hammer, every screwdriver, every chair, every stove will be automated and need a paid subscription app to operate. Mind the updates!

So do gas powered vehicles, at a much higher rate per 1000 vehicles.

(0.3% for ev, 1.05% for gas cars).

Joisey and Oregon are the only two