Will EV's make electricity expensive? Need good answer.

[EricBarbour]

What needs to be hammered out is limiting battery packs to no more than three sizes and mounting configurations. A set of common standard that all manufactures can get on board with like they do with other devices.

That will never happen. At least not in the current regulatory climate. A true industry standard for fast DC charging MIGHT end up being level 3 CCS with the standard connector, but Tesla won't go along, and there will always be other automakers who want to force a proprietary design on its customers. Until recently, it was verboten to charge any other EV brand at a Tesla Supercharger.
Battery packs are worse. The EV packs I've seen to date were all deeply incompatible. Mechanical, power connection, control signalling, all different from model to model. They COULD easily be interchangeable. But unless the US government or the EU forces a standard, the industry will not cooperate to develop one.
The Nissan Leaf had four different packs during its 12-year product life--none plug-in compatible with the others. I'm afraid to ask what BMW, Porsche, VW, Ford and GM are doing.

 

[time2roll]

The swap will be better used in the fleet environment such as taxi service or possibly rental cars. The single owner can choose the specification.

 

[Supervstech]

I drive an average of 200miles a day in a large service vehicle. I think I'd need a 480V 3 phase level charging system to replenish that overnight... I refill my 27gallon tank 2 ish times a week. Averaging 450 miles per tank. Sprinters are amazing. Im in the planning stages of an electric work van, but am dubious.
Possibly I can shift jobs around to small maintenance vehicles, and large install trucks... but more vehicles seems the wrong way to go.

 

[MattiFin]

I drive an average of 200miles a day in a large service vehicle. I think I'd need a 480V 3 phase level charging system to replenish that overnight... I refill my 27gallon tank 2 ish times a week. Averaging 450 miles per tank. Sprinters are amazing. Im in the planning stages of an electric work van, but am dubious.
Possibly I can shift jobs around to small maintenance vehicles, and large install trucks... but more vehicles seems the wrong way to go.

Upcoming Ford e-Transit is roughly similar size to mb sprinter and currently only option to get around 200 miles per charge(196 miles WLTP)

charging overnight is not any problem, 11kW onboard charger takes something like 8 hours for full charge. Not expert on North American electricity but 11kW should be easily available for many domestic users with household main breakers in 100 to 200A range.

electric vans and trucks are at the moment at least 5 years behind the curve compared to passenger cars. Tiny batteries and slow chargers just added to existing ICE chassis. Ford e-transit being the most potential promise at the moment.

 

[12VoltInstalls]

^^^Cost is an object to many altruistic hopes
More vehicles? May not be a very good idea if it kills the chickens giving you the eggs. That, and not everybody wants to or can foot more than their share of the burden

 

[John Frum]

I think the answer is probably yes EVs will make electricity more expensive.
Infrastructure will likely need to be expanded and that costs money.
Some of the cost will come from taxes and some will show up on your poco bill.

 

[curiouscarbon]

That will never happen. At least not in the current regulatory climate. A true industry standard for fast DC charging MIGHT end up being level 3 CCS with the standard connector, but Tesla won't go along, and there will always be other automakers who want to force a proprietary design on its customers. Until recently, it was verboten to charge any other EV brand at a Tesla Supercharger.
Battery packs are worse. The EV packs I've seen to date were all deeply incompatible. Mechanical, power connection, control signalling, all different from model to model. They COULD easily be interchangeable. But unless the US government or the EU forces a standard, the industry will not cooperate to develop one.
The Nissan Leaf had four different packs during its 12-year product life--none plug-in compatible with the others. I'm afraid to ask what BMW, Porsche, VW, Ford and GM are doing.

some BMW EV use refrigerant flow through the battery pack so there would maybe need to be a r134a quick disconnect, lol

tesla use glycol loop and would need the circulation coolant loop to be be disconnected

very bearish on battery swapping

in theory it does sound kind of interesting but i still feel kind of uncomfortable with the thermal management quick disconnect reliability, would be impressive if it had good weather sealing too for a quickly swappable EV battery

 

[curiouscarbon]

kinda funny, brushless motors are often voltage rated in terms of how many cells in series of a given chemistry they can handle, like 2-3S LiPo

most of tesla’s packs are 96S i thought

kind of amusing to think of a full sized vehicle as being interchangeable as a rc car. system integration at that scale does seem quite challenging

 

[Supervstech]

Upcoming Ford e-Transit is roughly similar size to mb sprinter and currently only option to get around 200 miles per charge(196 miles WLTP)

charging overnight is not any problem, 11kW onboard charger takes something like 8 hours for full charge. Not expert on North American electricity but 11kW should be easily available for many domestic users with household main breakers in 100 to 200A range.

electric vans and trucks are at the moment at least 5 years behind the curve compared to passenger cars. Tiny batteries and slow chargers just added to existing ICE chassis. Ford e-transit being the most potential promise at the moment.

A large service van with a 200 mile range would be around 400KWh battery...
The vans im looking at only have a 100mile range and are over 180KWh.
400KWh overnight is a lot of power.
Over 100A single phase 240V...
3 phase would be better, 480V even better...

 

[curiouscarbon]

I think the answer is probably yes EVs will make electricity more expensive.
Infrastructure will likely need to be expanded and that costs money.
Some of the cost will come from taxes and some will show up on your poco bill.

playing devils advocate, perhaps if EVs cause a more predictable demand on the grid, in one way could lower cost from reduced need of peaker plants to meet demand? but increase overall demand and warrant new entire plants..

i’m really uneducated about how the us grid works ?‍

perhaps charging an EV at home will motivate photovoltaic adoption and lower cost over long term ?

 

[Will Prowse]

My main offgrid system now has a 60kWh battery, and my 10kW array, and I am charging both of my teslas daily with it. I have more power than I need, and rarely run my pack down too low. I am charging my model Y to 100% right now for a quick road trip.

And this system should last 20 years (if it breaks, I will let you know). It just hums along all day and night. I leave the inverters on 24/7.

I am not mining crypto on this system anymore though. Now THAT takes some serious power haha! I have my miners connected to a house I bought with hydroelectric power. I won't make a video about it because some of my viewers disliked crypto mining.

 

[curiouscarbon]

nice!

the dream of self sufficient mobility?

cost of hardware and upkeep determines the power cost, then

 

[upnorthandpersonal]

My main offgrid system now has a 60kWh battery, and my 10kW array, and I am charging both of my teslas daily with it. I have more power than I need, and rarely run my pack down too low. I am charging my model Y to 100% right now for a quick road trip.

I made a similar calculation with my current 10kW array and 28kWh battery pack. I would drive for free 6 months out of the year here in the north. My next car will be an EV. I'll still double the pack this coming year or so.

 

[NwCali]

The Nissan Leaf had four different packs during its 12-year product life

Even a 2011 Leaf can use a 2021 battery pack. Its it "direct" swap compatible? Not far from it. Its one of the things Nissan got right. I agree if politicians cared they would have set some sort of standard, as well as making sure your low milleage 2011 leaf could get a battery replacment instead of going to the junk yard.

Going green to a politician means kickback$ in their pocket.

 

[curiouscarbon]

the way battery swap ability in phones went, i would be very impressed if a standard emerged in the next 5 years. welcome a form factor standardization with multiple different styles/types/shapes/formfactors.

some of the engineering on EVs has been laughably bad with overheating passive thermal management on some models. it takes a lot of engineering effort to make a good EV and tesla makes some of the best these days, especially when it comes to thermal management. the recent models can shed battery cell heat really efficiently and quickly, which is often needed when charging at higher rate.

for example the recent model y has a heat pump that can cool or warm the cabin, cool or warm the battery. it’s really harmonized thermal management. more EV should have advanced thermal management for cell lifetime assurance. fast charge is nice benefit of effective active thermal management. usually there’s a cabin climate control system anyways. besides, how awesome would it be to warm the cabin partially by pumping heat out of the battery to get it to the target temperature range?

sure beats charging at like 10kW and having the vehicle power systems become dangerously hot and cause massive cell capacity degradation and in some cases even catch on fire from charging in hot climate alone. the leaf seems like it was a cautionary tale in engineering.

humble advice to anyone interested in EV, try to find one that has heat pump of some sort. resistive heating is much less efficient than heat pump and will increase overall energy demand/reduce range.

 

[wattmatters]

Don't have an EV but did some sums on what our draw would be if we did.

For us an EV would add ~15% to our current electricity consumption. That's roughly double that of our pool pump.

Our car is at home during the day a lot so that's an advantage of being able to charge directly from solar PV and lessens the need for home storage.

I can comfortably run the pool pump from my small 2.2kW off-grid system, and it has quite a chunk of unrealised solar energy production capacity, so I expect there will be times of year I can trickle charge (1kW +/- 0.5kW) an EV via my off-grid PV system. Them's the cheapest electrons I can use. Many days that would be enough to top it off just fine.

I'd just need a smart charging solution to be able to vary the power delivered, set it to a low enough level.

At other times I can swap over to charge via my grid tied PV system which is much larger at 11kW. A Zappi charger or similar in that instance can manage charging based on how much excess solar PV is available, up to 7kW.

I don't see the need for us to have home storage to charge an EV at night. if we did have a period of poor solar PV (like we are at the moment) then I'll just suck some power in from the grid during off-peak.

So while I am looking at EV, the sad reality is it will likely be some years before we make the change because no local dealers sell, service, or support them and they tell me it'll be a couple of years before they are ready, have the appropriate licensing and training. The nearest is 450km away.

 

[upnorthandpersonal]

So while I am looking at EV, the sad reality is it will likely be some years before we make the change because no local dealers sell, service, or support them and they tell me it'll be a couple of years before they are ready, have the appropriate licensing and training. The nearest is 450km away.

This is why a view at the macro level is important on these kinds of topics. This is very location dependent and personal experiences might skew the actual data at more global levels.

 

[wattmatters]

This is why a view at the macro level is important on these kinds of topics. This is very location dependent and personal experiences might skew the actual data at more global levels.

Hence my earlier post:

Will EV's make electricity expensive? Need good answer.

There is also Nio which offers battery swap. They're currently building the infrastructure for this in Noway and other countries. This coupled with their Battery as a Service model means there will be a lower up-front cost among other things. This is something I personally would be very...

diysolarforum.com

That's the macro view for my country.

 

[upnorthandpersonal]

@wattmatters oh, yes - I wasn't singling you out, just made a general statement with your post as an example. Should have been more clear...

 

[Steve_S]

For us an EV would add ~15% to our current electricity consumption.

Did you work out how much you would spend on Petro ? You'll find that the petro cost more than the electrons. Unless you are in one of those Crazy Electrical Priced grids. There are a few that are nuts.

Also not all EV's have same battery sizes, or most efficient motors, it's quite a mix and many more coming. Charging a Tesla M3 versus a VW ID3 or 4 = significant differences, there is no general "common" metric to say "an ev takes X Hours to reach full from zero" because of all the variations, let alone how many Km's one will do (efficiencies etc)