Electric vehicle charging stations with WiFi support could become commonplace. Texas Instruments, a.k.a. TI, has just published an EVSE (a.k.a. electric vehicle service equipment) reference design that includes WiFi support and an ARM-based processor. I believe many companies use these published reference designs as the starting point for products, sometimes…
This week Tesla Motors unveiled a larger battery pack for the Tesla Model S. With a 100 kiloWatt-hour battery pack they’re now up to 315 miles EPA range, and it also let Tesla juice up the Ludicrous mode for an even faster 0-60 miles/hr time and claim to be selling…
I’m working on a book meant to teach “Range Confidence” as a way to avoid letting Range Anxiety keep us from driving electric cars. The key knowing the capabilities of your car, the local charging network, the ins-and-outs of selecting between Level 2 and Fast charging, and having a car with fast charging.…
Yesterday, a post by John Voelcker of Green Car Reports noted that General Motors has no intention to invest in building fast charging infrastructure. He had been able to attend a meeting between the press and GM at CES last week. Several GM executives agreed, no support by GM to…
Earlier today Volkswagen unveiled the BUDD-e, a reboot of the venerable VW Bus that had been passed through an uglifier and given an ultra-modern electric drive train and infotainment wizardry. The most curious part of the car is its recharge time, which Volkswagen described as allowing a “80% recharge in…
Audi seems to have a clue — for long range electric cars to succeed, there must be a widespread fast charging network offering charging rates well above 100 kiloWatts. Tesla Motors has demonstrated with its Supercharger network that the combination of 70 kiloWatt-hours or more energy, and 120 kiloWatt charging,…
An announcement today from Audi tells us that the German automakers are, through the Charging Interface Initiative e.V. (CharIN), planning to extend the Combo Charging System to support 150 kiloWatt charging rates. This jibes with plans from Audi, Porsche, and others, to begin selling electric cars with 95 kiloWatt-hour or more…
Tesla Motors electric cars use a proprietary charging plug. Adapters are available from Tesla Motors allowing owners of their cars to use public charging stations built with standard charging plugs (J1772, Mennekes, CHAdeMO). Tesla Motors is also deploying charging stations, both fast charging and destination charging, to locations around the…
Poking around the Plugshare & ChargePoint maps it’s clear that a long-awaited West Coast inter-city deployment of fast charging stations has begun. Last January, ChargePoint, BMW and Volkswagen jointly announced a project to deploy two strings of fast charging stations, one on the West Coast the other on the East Coast.…
We’re now at the electric vehicle adoption stage where people are trying all kinds of crazy things. In this case, a South Africa automotive news site has posted this video giving extremely bad advice for apartment dwellers to charge their electric car. The tactic they recommend, lowering an extension cable out…
Today two different car makers announced expansion of their electric vehicle charging station programs. We applaud any increase in charging station deployments, because there is a crying need to switch to electric drive, and more charging stations is an essential necessary step. However, the charging stations aren’t being deployed for public use, but for…
I’m learning about Bitcoin and now know that it’s not a piece of techno-fluff that won’t amount to anything. It has serious technical depth, and the capability of transforming the monetary system. Maybe. One possibility is to solve for the supposed necessity of charging station networks. If applied correctly, Bitcoin based charging…
Those of us who live in multi-unit-dwellings (apartment, townhouse, or condo complexes) face a problem when owning an electric car: Every assumes electric car owners own a home, and therefore can charge at home because they have good control over their electricity supply. That’s not always true, and the fact…
Is it too much drudgery to manually connect the charging cord to your car? Tesla Motors is shown here with a prototype charging cord that, snake like, automatically opens the charging flap, automatically seeks out the charging port, and starts charging once connected. It would remove one of the tasks…
