Some of us want to take road trips with electric cars. Thanks to ever-more-powerful fast charging systems and ever-larger battery packs electric car road trips are increasingly possible. A year ago a friend in Romania informed me he would not consider an electric car until it could go 1200 kilometers…
Electric vehicle owners in Iowa, and those wishing to drive across Iowa, might feel frustrated with relative scarcity of charging stations. Recently while scoping out the feasibility of driving an electric car from Kansas City to Minneapolis, I found very few charging stations in Iowa. It turns out that electric…
According to a Reuters report, a small pilot study of electric car charging behavior concluded that users quickly adopt to “slow charging”. The problem with this is that the participants were given Renault Zoe’s and a 22 kiloWatt wallbox for use at home. For most intents and purposes 22 kiloWatt…
NY Times reporter Ivan Penn has Broder’d the whole concept of electric cars in an article describing his recent road trip between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Penn, whose beat for the NY Times focuses on alternative energy issues, had as a co-pilot an eVgo employee. You’d think that with…
Over the weekend Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a bunch of tweets including the above charging advice. At least these tweets did not get him in trouble with the SEC, as he has done so many times over the last year. But this particular advice seems (to me) to not…
Last week the Automotive Manufacturers and Importers Association of Romania monthly report of car sales showed a huge increase in sales of hybrid and all-electric cars in Romania. For the first 9 months of 2018 (Jan-Sep) such cars had a 2.6% market share versus a 1.9% market share in the…
Electric cars with 400 miles range are preferable, according to presenters at the CharIN Alliance 1st annual North American meeting held in Fremont earlier this week, see CharIN alliance meets on Tesla’s doorstep, presents CCS as the best DC Fast Charging system for electric cars. The main topic of the meeting was…
On Monday the CharIn Alliance (the organization behind the Combo Charging System, a.k.a. CCS) held its first North American conference in Fremont CA. The location was a Marriot Hotel directly across the highway from Tesla’s factory in Fremont, a fact that seemed pointed in the direction of trying to catch…
If the standards-based charging networks, and the automakers other than Tesla Motors, are to have a chance, standards-based high-power charging stations like what ABB just unveiled must exist. The Tesla Supercharger network is ingenious only in the forethought exhibited by Tesla Motors to invest in a widespread high power DC…
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,…
