Re: Lighting the way for electric vehicles by using streetlamps a chargers

Yikes. Complex.

I gas up my Audi about every two weeks. It takes less time than squeeging the windows.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

MA has some of the highest EV adoption in the US, public chargers aren't used that much here. It's a small state and EVs have relatively big batteries, people just charge at home overnight and it's more charge than you could ever use doing the things people usually do with their personal vehicles in a week.

More market-rate public stations would encourage renters to have EVs, as as it is right now property owners get all the nice incentives from the state like discount chargers and discount solar panels and discount this and that, for renters the fine print on those programs have is "Ask your landlord if they would consider installing..." which amounts to bubkis for them in practice.

It's IMO an unfair fashion of wealth transfer as implemented here, renters are paying taxes to give handouts to home owners. But that's not too much different than everywhere in the US where the State only really considers you a first-class citizen if you own property and all you have to do is pay property taxes to get them to kiss your ass 90% of the time.

Most non-Tesla public chargers here are overpriced, more expensive than gas for whatever reason, even though I'm pretty sure there's plenty of room for arbitrage selling bulk rate electricity at a markup that would make people want to pay it but still save money vs. the alternative /shrug

And there are now fast chargers around which will do just that. They have to have a big battery on site - the mains usually won't deliver

You don't want to drive long distances without a break and a refueling stop can let you sit down, relax and get a cup of coffee.

As has been pointed out repeatedly most private cars spend 95% of their time parked, and recharging time is rarely an issue.

It's not the electric car that is the problem, but the recharging station. Lots of people are buying them - 28.3% of the cars on the road in Norway are electric, and 88.9% of new cars are electric. Norwegians aren't all that weird, and they don't seem to share your misgivings.

None. The Mercedes 180B my wife bought in 2012 is still running nicely - it did have a bad moment a few years ago when it ran over an engine-block that had fallen off a truckload of scrap travelling in front of it, which took out the sump of our engine block, so it now has a slightly newer second hand engine, but it is still running fine.

If I were to buy a new car it probably would be electric, but the Merc will probably keep on going longer than I will.

There were four pumps at that station, that's over 100 Megawatts when they are all in use (which is quite often). It would need an electricity sub-station all of its own.

I prefer to stop at places of my choosing. If I have to drive a long distance I don't want to be forced to stop at inconvenient and unsalubrious places for longer than I need through lack of fuel. A tank of fuel will run my van for the whole day, so I just make sure it is fuelled-up the night before and I don't have to think about it.

(The diesel also runs the heater and the cooker.)

That's all right if they are charged at home. What happens if you try to park overnight at a refuelling station or have to park in a street some distance from your house?

Norway has hydroelectric power, Australia has reliable sunshine - Britain has neither and people who need cars for their work live in crowded cities with only street parking. Electric cars are impractical for the majority of people.

And how is that different for people who drive electric cars?

As will an electric car battery.

Modern recharging stations get the car's identity from the recharging connection. You will get the bill for the recharging where-ever you park, if it offers a charging connection. My apartment block has parking for 80 cars in the basement, and the management committee is making a meal of installing charging points for the half-dozen electric cars that are regularly parked there, and we will eventually have to pay a capital levy to put in the hardware (which isn't all that elaborate - it won't be fast charging).

What a load of cobblers. What does Norway having hydroelectric power or Australia "reliable sunshine" have to do with providing charging points for cars that are parked on the street?

They can't drive for a whole day on one charge and then fill up in 2 minutes.

If you want to run the battery down quickly. The heater gives up to 5kW heat output and is needed in sub-zero temperatures when the battery is least efficient. It may have to run all night for several consecutive nights when the van is parked in the countryside.

Nothing, you have failed to notice that I was making two separate points.

Like this ...?

piglet

With one of the fancy new fast chargers they can come remarkably close, and two minutes isn't anything like an adequate break, and faster than any refueling stop I've ever done.

If you want to be stupid you can run through all your diesel in the same way.

Which were? How you get the electric power to charge a car doesn't make any difference to the arrangements you put in place to let people charge their cars, ideally in the places where they are normally parked (which isn't an option with internal combustion engine cars - which do catch on fire much more often than electric cars on a car by car basis).

Since electric cars don't have catalytic converters to steal, the boys can cut over to selling copper.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

The charging cables can be armoured, and the metallic part of the armour might be hooked up to a kilovolt source. Put bolt-cutters through the insulating sheath into the armour, and you'd regret it (and fire up a loud alarm). Capacitative proximity sensors might be useful too.

Killing looters, that's an original idea.

Make it illegal to possess rubber gloves.

google

do people steal car charging cables for copper

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

A killing shock needs to be several milliamps,sustained for an appreciable portion of a heart-beat. Design your kilovolt source carefully and it won't kill, if you have those kinds of design skills.

More kilovolts could deal with that.

Why bother? People steal anything with an appreciable copper content, if they can get away with it. There are lots of ways to make it difficult for them to get away with it. Steel-cored aluminium wires are pretty effective substitute for copper in a lot of applications. This might be be one of them.