Hey, here’s a question of complete ignorance: how does charging on these paid chargers work? Does your car know your credit card and exchange that info with the charging network during an initial handshake? Can you tell the charger to stop at 80% or $N or something? Do you use a phone app to do all of this (including pay)? How does the particular charger identify itself?
I’m sure das will give you a more detailed explanation, but my understanding - because everyone on YT complains about it - is that you have to sign up for an app and provide a credit card. I believe the apps use a combination of GPS and you entering the charger number to identify you and the charger to bill you for the juice.
Good initial explanation, @Limey. It’s all largely app based with a CC tied to the app. You pull up, hold your phone against a pad on the “pump”, plug in and it starts. Kind of like a gas pump. Most EV’s made today have the ability to “plug and charge” where the phone is taken out of the middle. You pull up, plug in and your car acts as the payment engine. Most charging networks are just now starting to upgrade to have that ability that matches what’s in the EV’s. In the next few years, that will be the standard. Just pull up and plug in.
In the next 5-7 years, I would expect that the plug part will be removed as well for a completely hands-free operation through inductive charging. Pull up over a “pad” and away it goes.
The final iteration will be inductive charging laid in roadways so the car charges as it drives. That is being piloted in Europe, Asia and North America for small stretches of road.
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How lossy is inductive charging? And how long before hysteria about being in the vicinity of such fields takes hold?
Right now, massive. Imagine pushing 250kW or more through the air 2-3 feet. Some random cat walks under your car and… poof. The slower trickle of inductive roadways is more reasonable. But, as you can imagine, much more expensive due to scale. Most of the research is focused on dual (or more) capability. Using roadways as transmission replacements (to overhead lines) with charging as a secondary revenue stream.
As much as I love to geek out on shit like this, adding inductive charging to roadways seems a little bit like overkill. I can see the benefit for electric 18-wheelers, city buses and CyberTrucks (obligatory dig…check!), but for everyone else it seems a little unnecessary to me.
Better to put down rail lines because, while EVs are an improvement over ICEs for the environment, swapping one for the other does nothing to alleviate congestion and the drive to build more and bigger highways - which themselves are highly carbon-intensive. You can also use rail lines for transmission and it may even be easier because they’re already dealing with high voltages.
Rail is immensely scaleable without having to add “lanes”, you just run trains more frequently. The ultimate goal should be to make it so that as many people as possible choose to not use their cars because there is a better alternative.
Does it charge via MP3?
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You mean it will solve my stray cat problem? Thanks das!
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Just unreasonable Brian Seltzer hate there.
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I remember seeing an article about how someone is working on wireless electricity to do things like power TVs hanging on a wall without any wires whatsoever.
My immediate thought was that the word we usually use for “wireless electricity” is “lightning”.
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Tesla’s (the man, not the company) original vision for a powered world.
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Mind you, having your TV surrounded by arcing nodes so that it looks like a reanimation rig would be pretty cool.
How do you think the Highlander got his mojo?
Don’t know if this was posted earlier, but here goes.
I really enjoy these guys. They review a wide range of cars and are pretty entertaining. Here’s their 500 mile Cybertruck experience.
It’s long, but at least skip to the tunnel and stick around for the carrot thing (around 22:30 mark).
This cannot be real.
I’m afraid it is. Musk’s dick is weirdly shaped and he makes love in the most disgusting way possible.
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Musk feigning to be an “everyman” tops Musk feigning to be pro free-speech which tops Musk feigning to be anti-globalist which tops everything else that has ever existed in terms of farce. Musk was born into unearned privilege and made his first fortune as a moneychanger with PayPal then made his second fortune with every dollar coming from the taxpayers. X is a Honey Pot with the Deep State lurking and the people posting there believing otherwise and in Musk are fools.
Bill Murray would be proud.