It’s not just a dumb charger. It has to establish a communication link with the vehicle before it will produce power for charging. Otherwise there would be a hazard if the charger was left energized at all times. This is already done with even USB chargers. Communicating over power buses is an established technology so no additional circuitry is needed. Even the corded chargers need to establish a link to the load before they apply high voltage and current to the load. This also how they set the charge rate.
I suspect the cost of traffic lights had to be increased in order to cost justify round abouts.
I remember reading about that in “Wired” magazine and talking with my co-workers about it. Must have been about 2009. I was sure this was the wave of the future. Wish I knew why such a good idea – getting a fully charged battery in under ten minutes – died away.
If I was an idiot I might cut the cable while a car is charging. Go for the non used cable if you are going to clip it. My phone to charge high speed wireless takes many hours, high speed usb maybe an hour and a half.
That would probably add $100 to the cost of each recharge.
There is no labor cost involve for a vehicle owner to connect a charge cable. To replace a battery, you would need to have a $25/hour technician on duty to move 600-pound batteries around, a building to store them in and a 1/2-million-dollar inventory of batteries.
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My Bolt has a couple features that help prevent this from happening.
First, and foremost, the plug for the charger is in front of the driver’s door. I think most EVs are this way, but I can’t say for certain. So if you can’t see the giant charging cable connected in front of the door you’re getting into, you should probably be calling a taxi or Uber.
Second, there’s a message that gets displayed on the dashboard that says the car is charging/plugged in and what time the charge will be completed.
Third, the car beeps at me even when I turn the car on and beeps again if I try to put it in gear.
Fourth, the car will also let me know just if my charge port door is open. A message will pop up on my dash to let me know I didn’t get the door latched properly. A loud external beep will sound if the charge door is open for a couple minutes without being charged up.
This happens when I charge at home because I have the car charger on a separate breaker and shut the breaker off when I am done charging. If I don’t get outside fast enough after I turn the breaker off, the car beeps at me to let me know the port is open- I can turn the beep off if I unlock the doors from my FOB.
After those things, if someone manages to drive off without unplugging, they deserve to have whatever happens to their car.
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The process was automated, think of a car wash.
Yes, more expensive than charging at home, but you’ll never face a $10K - $20k repair bill for a new battery and you can long distance travel without range worry had the system been adopted as a national standard.
As it is now, everyone is doing their own thing, replacement batteries are hard to find today, 10, 20 years out that car is salvage.
Can a hydrogen powered car be safe? Toyota says the hydrogen tanks they use are unlikely to break or leak in an accident. They also aren’t metal, so they won’t rust. But how do you fill them? Couldn’t there be significant leakage then? It’s one thing when qualified technicians work with hydrogen. But when millions of inexpert consumers deal with it, I’m afraid what might happen.
I admit I don’t know how the tank works. Maybe they have a one-way valve that prevents leakage… For as long as that valve works…
Could someone answer me a really basic question about electric cars: If you use fossil fuels to generate electricity, transmit that through power lines, charge up batteries, and use them to power electric motors, will the combined power losses over that cycle create less or more fossil fuel use than powering a car with an internal combustion engine?
(Yes, I know: You don’t have to use fossil fuels to generate electricity.)
I also wonder, with most of the major auto makers promising to stop making gas powered vehicles in 5 or 6 years, if 10 or 15 years from now I will have trouble finding gas stations to fuel my non-EV.
If people really wanted to cut energy usage, maybe we should create a separate road system for eBikes and e-Trikes. Such light, slow vehicles will never be all that safe sharing the road with fast, heavy vehicles, but if they had separate roads, that could change. I want fast, big, heavy vehicles for long distance driving, or driving in high crime areas but I love the eBike/e-Trike idea for local driving in low-crime areas.
Hydrogen powered cars have been in use in limited markets for about 20 years. There are also buses with hydrogen fuel cells. France recently cancelled an order for 51 fuel cell buses saying that they cost 6 times more than electrified buses to run.
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I could be wrong but the intent is to lower emissions not necessarily reduce gasoline consumption. Although there could be side benefits to that as well. There can be many millions of devices using gasoline with limited emissions controls or there can be a handful of power plants with very sophisticated emissions controls that have far less pollutants overall.
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I assume the idea is to lower CO2 emissions, to reduce climate change. But for the most part, I think you must produce CO2 when burning hydrocarbons - because that is what they should produce. True, burning natural gas (mostly released by fracking, another potential environmental issue) produces less CO2 per unit energy than burning petroleum products, but I’m not clear if it is that simple. For one thing, some of the electricity comes from burning coal, which releases more CO2 per unit energy.
Of course, refining petroleum to produce gasoline, and trucking gasoline to gas stations, also releases CO2…
Given that a roughly comparable amount of energy is spent making the motor vehicles in the first place (including mining, processing and transporting the materials that go into them), I wonder if a more effective CO2 reduction measure would be to somehow make it economically practical to keep motor vehicles (and for that matter, buildings) running longer.
The point is, they can control stack emissions from a few stationary large power plants more effectively than 500 million little power plants running around. If we stick to the premise for EV over ICE…
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True. But would it be even better for CO2 emissions if our cars all had little nuclear power plants? 
That would provide the even worse issue of what to do with all that nuclear waste.
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+1
Additionally, the weight of the lead shielding that would be necessary could be huge.
I remembered this conversation and just attempted this yesterday after I got off work and was still plugged in. But yeah, my car had a message pop up on the dash that said “the conditions are not favorable to move”, or something to that effect when I tried to put the car into reverse or drive.
Safety would be another concern. With a gas pump, I would think the flow would be cut off if the hose got ripped off when someone drove off without taking the nozzle out of their car. With a car charger, I’d imagine the current would still be flowing and could cause electrical damage if it touched something. I’m not entirely certain on either part, so I’m just guessing on it.
Our safety officer confessed that she had driven off with the hose still connected. I don’t remember if she caused a spill or not but she would know all about clean up. I suppose it depends on whether the pump was still on or not.
The charge port door wouldn’t open so this customer used a pry bar and broke the door off the car. The vehicle must be OFF before the high voltage battery charge door is released.
My car barks at me if I try to get out and it isn’t in park. It is possible to forget if the car is in drive or reverse and the regenerative charging feature is enabled. When you come to a stop the car is in hold so that you don’t need to use the brake at all.
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