"We're over-engineering our public charging infrastructure. If we want to speed up the electric car era, we should put aside the apps, doodads, and expensive fast chargers and embrace the cheap dumb plug." https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/nema-14-50-mobile-charger-lucid-air
EV Chargers Should Be Dumber
Plugging in a Lucid Air at a campground was a revelation.Kevin Williams (Heatmap News)
Randy Orrison
in reply to kottke.org • • •Sean Davis
in reply to kottke.org • • •Gene Cowan 🏳️🌈
in reply to kottke.org • • •Darwin Woodka
in reply to kottke.org • • •Nazani
in reply to kottke.org • • •MatthewToad43
in reply to kottke.org • • •Content warning: Cars
Smart charging is essential for home charging, because it can automatically charge when there is more green energy.
This reduces carbon emissions, reduces costs, and makes balancing the grid easier. And it's available today in many countries.
Unfortunately when talking about charging at a petrol station, or even the one charger in an office car park, that isn't so easy.
(PS Electric buses would be even better)
ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘
in reply to kottke.org • • •Nice that you can get 50 amp charging from a carpark in America. In Australia it's 15 amp. But you're right about the complexity. Reminds me of the early days of PCs, juggling fiddly plugs and X not being compatible with Y. Now at last we have the USB plug.
I guess each of the many charging companies hopes their system will ultimately become the dominant one, and if a bit of technology is good, more must be better. (It isn't).
#EVs
Alex 🔧🔮🌎:honk:
in reply to kottke.org • • •Agree with the unnecessary app, but the Level 2 doodad does an important job in letting the car know how much power is available on the circuit. Giving everyone free access to 14-50 outlets potentially could have the same effect if you had a dinner party where everyone brought their own toaster and plugs it into your kitchen outlets.
50A (for context) is half of my house's entire 100A service. This isn't quite a trivial cheap dumb solution. A line of cheap 50A outlets would be similar to overbuilt parking lots around strip malls, sized for that theoretical peak usage, but overkill for most of the time.
For a Lucid to charge at 19 kW you need 80A (and an electrical circuit sized to 100A).