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[benswing]

So now that Zero has committed their 2013 line to the CHAdeMO style of charger that is popular in Japan and not the J1772 charger that we have here in the states, what's gonna happen? 

I can buy a J1772 Level 2 charger at Home Depot for about $800 according to their website.  Is there a comparable CHAdeMO charger available?  I wasn't able to find one after a cursory look.  Will Zero carry the chargers?

Is Zero looking into J1772 compatibility?  Any insight is welcome.

[NoiseBoy]

You are talking about 2 very different things.  J1772 is just a higher current AC supply with a fancy connector whereas chademo is DC fast charging.  J1772 has no real advamtage over the current IEC connector on the bike until you start carrying multiple onboard chargers.

What I see as the future is the tech Renault are helping develop as Harlan posted in another thread, where you use the controller as the AC to DC converter and the motor windings as a step down transformer.  It means you can effectively charge as fast as you can discharge, I.e. 440 amps for the sevcon or whatever the limit of your AC supply is.   Its so simple that it has to work.

[skeezmour]

You are talking about 2 very different things.  J1772 is just a higher current AC supply with a fancy connector whereas chademo is DC fast charging.  J1772 has no real advamtage over the current IEC connector on the bike until you start carrying multiple onboard chargers.

What I see as the future is the tech Renault are helping develop as Harlan posted in another thread, where you use the controller as the AC to DC converter and the motor windings as a step down transformer.  It means you can effectively charge as fast as you can discharge, I.e. 440 amps for the sevcon or whatever the limit of your AC supply is.   Its so simple that it has to work.

AC Propulsion did this YEARS ago. Lots of ticks to keep everything isolated but yes they can put out ~20kw of charging through that system.

[NoiseBoy]

Yes but renault are running with it and they claim to be able to charge from 415V 3 Phase which is far more useful than an 18KW limit when you have an 80KWh pack.

[protomech]

The cheapest CHAdeMO station that I'm aware of is made by Nissan, and costs about $10k.

Maybe there are some cheaper ones now, but they're still mostly commercial-intent units with 480 V or 3 phase inputs.

Some of the chargers can operate at reduced power on 240V, so they could theoretically be installed in a home. That's fine for the 2013 Zeros; 240V 50A would still charge the bike in an hour, or a Nissan Leaf in about 2 hours.

The Orca Mobile is one such unit. Its price? A cool $24990.

Nichicon JP announced a range of lower-power quick charger back in May, including a 10 kW charger, NQC-A102.
http://www.nichicon.co.jp/english/pr/topics_cf_ev.html

No price is available and I can't find anyone selling these yet, but it claims to be "low cost" and supports 208V 60Hz 3 phase input. Ideal for home use charging our Zero bikes, right? Not so fast - the lower-power chargers are limited by current. Even though the 2013 ZF11.4 bike could be charged in about an hour with say 120V 100A DC output (12 kW), the Nichicon range of chargers are current-limited at the 500V DC output voltage. So 10 kW supports up to 20A, 20 kW supports up to 40A, etc. I think the Zero S ZF11.4 is a 100 Ah bike.. so the smallest 10 kW charger would still take 5 hours to do a 95% charge.

Bottom line is that residential quick charging is virtually non-existent today, and very expensive. What we need to see for residential charging of our bikes is either chargers designed for lower voltage high current applications .. given that most cars are 300-400V and electric motorcycles are currently low volume, somewhat unlikely .. or redesign the battery packs to use the same high voltage charging that cars do. The way Zero builds its battery packs now (multiple modules in parallel) would need to change .. or they'd have to shift away from using large format pouch batteries back to cylindrical cells.

Edit: corrected Nichicon model number, added info about DC output current restrictions.

[NoiseBoy]

I can't envisage many situations where you would need a 1 hour fast recharge at home.  Let's say if you have an extra deltaq and can recharge from dead in 4 hours.  How many times would you get home from a 100+ mile ride and then need to go out again for another 100 miles within 4 hours?  Fast charging is really for motorway rest stops isn't it?

[manlytom]

I can't envisage many situations where you would need a 1 hour fast recharge at home.  Let's say if you have an extra deltaq and can recharge from dead in 4 hours.  How many times would you get home from a 100+ mile ride and then need to go out again for another 100 miles within 4 hours?  Fast charging is really for motorway rest stops isn't it?

Yes. Always look at it in context. So lets hope that chademo standard gains full traction and is being added to each petrol station. By the way would that leave the battery swap stations in the dust?

[NoiseBoy]

Battery swapping seems incredibly unlikely to me for many reasons.  Mostly because the capital investment required is massive. You would need probably 50% more batteries than vehicles sold and trucks to move the batteries around to where they are needed, just like rental car companies do now.  Companies can't standardise on a charging connector so they sure as hell aren't going to standardise on an entire battery module.  Also,  a mum collecting her shopping isn't going to want to lug heavy modules around and if you make them smaller its going to be too many trips to change a whole pack.

[Richard230]

An article in my newspaper today regarding electric cars says that shopping centers with Level 2 chargers are seeing EV owners spend about four times more time shopping than the typical customer.  Apparently the Leaf owner drives up, plugs in and heads off shopping, to the food court, or goes to the cinema, for the next few hours.  Good for the shopping center, perhaps, but maybe not so good for someone else who also needs to recharge their EV to get back home from their shopping trip.  I think the number of charging stations and the number of EVs needing a charge are going to be out of whack for some years to come.   

[skeezmour]

An article in my newspaper today regarding electric cars says that shopping centers with Level 2 chargers are seeing EV owners spend about four times more time shopping than the typical customer.  Apparently the Leaf owner drives up, plugs in and heads off shopping, to the food court, or goes to the cinema, for the next few hours.  Good for the shopping center, perhaps, but maybe not so good for someone else who also needs to recharge their EV to get back home from their shopping trip.  I think the number of charging stations and the number of EVs needing a charge are going to be out of whack for some years to come.   

I drove 55 miles one way with an electric car for work for some time. Charged while working then drove home. If I needed to go an extra 10 miles or more I still had plenty of charge left so I never needed to look for a place to charge. I'm not sure why on a day to day basis we are assuming that so many people are going to be push right up on the range limit of the electric car. I bet we will see range improve by ~5 miles on average for the next several years on the production electrics. Should really not be long till a typical production electric car will have a mixed driving range of close to 150 miles.

I live in Tacoma WA and the furthest movie theater that I could see ever wanting to go to is 35 miles away on the freeway in Seattle. Even if I just had a 2012 Nissan Leaf I wouldn't need to charge at the theater to make it back home.

I'm a big fan of charging stations but in some ways we are making a very small issue seem like Mt Everest.

[lolachampcar]

Two quick comments.  First Tesla's Model S uses an on board 10KW chareger.  A second can be added for $1500.  They use ten of these to provide 1C charging of the 85KW Model S pack at dedicated Tesla SuperCharger stations (for free to Model S owners!).

At $1500 retail, the Tesla 10KW charger is not bad value.

Oh, it uses 240V 40 amp service.

[oobflyer]

CHAdeMO  (DC Fast -charging) is for the longer trips. I don't think a typical home even has enough electricity to power the thing.
I use it when I drive my LEAF on longer drives. I can charge the 21 KWh pack in about half an hour.
While I don't expect people to have a CHAdeMO charger at home I do expect them to be installed across the country so that people don't have to use their gas car (or bike) on long drives.
There is a company that makes DC fast chargers with both types of connectors (SAE and CHAdeMO) - sortof like having the same pump dispense regular gas and diesel, but with two different hoses.

[Tudor]

I think the mentioned Chameleon charger that's fitted on the Renault Zoe sounds very promising.

read more: http://www.plugincars.com/fast-charging-ev-acdc-questions-and-renaults-answers-125421.html

[NoiseBoy]

One thing that most people don't consider but which is very important is that the electricity providers are actually opposed to fast charging.  The reason being that they are already struggling to meet peak demand during daytime working hours so the last thing they need is thousands of people drawing 400A on their lunch break.

Overnight charging is a dream come true because they get demand during the night when half their power stations are just ticking over.  If everyone was charging a car at night it would level out demand and efficiency would rise dramatically.

Its significant because people will look to the power providers to put up the capital for charging stations but I know that locally at least they will heavily subsidise a charge point on a daily timer but have no interest in Chademo.

[oobflyer]

For wide-scale adoption of EV transportation it will be necessary to have charging options for longer drives. The DC fast charging  is the solution for this, but people will use them just as frequently as they use the overpriced freeway off-ramp gas stations now.
Regardless of the DC fast charging availability most people will still charge overnight at home for their daily commutes/driving needs. (It's much more convenient and easier on the battery pack).
There is no need to fear a sudden, mass adoption of EV technology that will overload the grid. Even in the best-case-scenario it will take many years to see a significant percentage of drivers make the transition - plenty of time for energy providers to modify/update the grid.