Charging Standard Changes? Impact to M3 value?

[KarenRei]

The Porsche Mission E has been announced, with 800 V charging that likely will approach 320 kW power and speed.

How is it going to get the heat out of its pack? A HV charge cable doesn't mean that there's less heat released in the charging process inside the cells. Here's just the radiator assembly for the MS:

Ignoring the rest of the cooling system. How big are you expecting the cooling system on the Mission E to be?

It doesn't make sense to haul around ever-growing cooling systems inside the vehicles themselves. We need the chargers to have an effectively unlimited, super-chilled coolant reservoir which they provide down the cable (thus cooling the cable and keeping it lightweight at high powers) and run through a heat exchanger on the vehicle end before returning up the cable. Liquid-liquid heat exchangers are much, much more compact and efficient for a given amount of heat flow than radiators (liquid-air heat exchangers)

 

[RandyS]

Everyone loves to think about charging their EV faster....What used to be a 15 or 20 minute dc fast charge could someday be a 4 minute or 6 minute charge, say the headlines...Porsche announces an 800 volt vehicle, etc....

All I can think of is...Who is going to want to PAY for that faster charge? When you start getting into the 300 kW, 400 kW, or 500 kW range for charging one vehicle, that is some serious money on the utility side to use it...

While it's interesting from an engineering point of view, I just don't see the higher powered charging being very practical financially...

 

[chronopc]

Everyone loves to think about charging their EV faster....What used to be a 15 or 20 minute dc fast charge could someday be a 4 minute or 6 minute charge, say the headlines...Porsche announces an 800 volt vehicle, etc....

All I can think of is...Who is going to want to PAY for that faster charge? When you start getting into the 300 kW, 400 kW, or 500 kW range for charging one vehicle, that is some serious money on the utility side to use it...

While it's interesting from an engineering point of view, I just don't see the higher powered charging being very practical financially...

I'm curious to see what the pricing model for these other companies installing charging stations will be. Will they be as generous as Tesla and only pass on the cost of electricity to the consumer or will they try to make a profit?

 

[KarenRei]

All I can think of is...Who is going to want to PAY for that faster charge? When you start getting into the 300 kW, 400 kW, or 500 kW range for charging one vehicle, that is some serious money on the utility side to use it...

Except it's not. Tesla - and ultimately, probably everyone else as well - will be moving to battery buffers. With a battery buffer, you could do a 5-minute charge on a NEMA 10-15, if visitors were rare enough.

 

[Topher]

if visitors were rare enough.

Rare visitors requires a higher charger to EV ratio. Paying a higher peak power rating is likely far cheaper than building more superchargers. People claim that only California has problems with superchargers. But they have maybe 60,000
Teslas, that's a couple of months worth of Model 3 full production. Tesla will be building Superchargers to try to stay ahead of demand for the foreseeable future.

Thank you kindly.

 

[KarenRei]

Rare visitors requires a higher charger to EV ratio.

I was not in any way, shape or form claiming that it's practical to run several-hundred-kilowatt chargers off of NEMA 10-15s - at least not unless charger costs came way down I was just pointing out that higher charging powers does not imply correspondingly higher grid costs. The present "huge draw / zero draw" fluctuation from superchargers can be changed to a constant moderate draw.

Future high-power chargers will be battery buffered. Tesla has stated this, and it's the only option that makes sense. Grid demand charges are too high, while battery costs keep falling. It also means you can use large solar awnings for part of the power supply. Or other local power sources for other areas - I think it would be pretty darn nifty to pull into a station here that has its own commercial-scale wind turbine next to it, or a geothermal generator.

 

[ahagge]

Every other DCFC company puts 1 or 2 chargers at each site and then they use contract labor to maintain them. Often our non-Tesla DCFC's here in Colorado go months without any attention when they're broken, and that's big companies like nrg EVGO and Greenlots.

Try driving a Leaf or a Bolt regionally for a few years. You'll give up hope on anyone coming up with any solution that holds a candle to what Tesla is doing. They are playing a completely different ballgame in a whole other country.

TLDR: Nobody is anywhere close to having a network that even approaches the Tesla SC network.

As a 6-year LEAF owner, I couldn't agree more. Which is why my next EV will be a Model 3.

 

[AlanSqB]

Anybody think that the new 2170 cells maybe are SC V3 ready, but the info isn't released yet for the standard anti-sell reasons?

I don’t think they are “V3” ready as far as what most of us would consider V3. However, I do think they are being limited.

 

[AlanSqB]

As a 6-year LEAF owner, I couldn't agree more. Which is why my next EV will be a Model 3.

My trip today was courtesy of a fairly new DCFC set up by ChargePoint and our ExpressToll authority. I have to say it was very fast and very free. Not changing my mind though.

 

[jsmay311]

Anybody think that the new 2170 cells maybe are SC V3 ready, but the info isn't released yet for the standard anti-sell reasons?

No.

I don’t think they are “V3” ready as far as what most of us would consider V3. However, I do think they are being limited.

All cells are limited for their own protection. If Tesla wanted to pump a 120kW into a 50kWh battery pack (whether it was with 18650 cells or 2170 cells), they could. But it would be bad for the cells and it would cost Tesla money on battery warranties, so they don't.

As pointed out by @drees above, Elon has publicly stated that the Model 3's 2170 cells were optimized for cost and not performance. This whole idea that the 2170's were going to have some amazing, game-changing chemistry that would allow for double or triple the existing charging rates was always a pipe dream with nothing but wishful thinking to back it up. In fact, the 2170's larger size and lower surface-area-to-volume ratio would, if anything, reduce its ability to shed heat and therefore reduce its maximum safe charging rate.

Furthermore, just to explore this theory a bit deeper... if Tesla/Panasonic had come up with a breakthrough battery chemistry, they wouldn't have waited to put it into their cheaper vehicle (Model 3) and then "artificially" limit that vehicle's charging rates so it wouldn't embarrass the flagship S and X models. That would make no sense. Instead, they would've started using it in their S's and X's 18650 cells first and reaped the performance and PR benefits of doing so without creating a competitive disadvantage with the cheaper Model 3.

There's nothing magic about the 2170's 21mm or 70mm dimensions in terms of what type of chemistry can be packaged inside of it.

 

[diamond.g]

Do you think they are using the same chemistry as the 100 pack in the 2170’s?

No.



All cells are limited for their own protection. If Tesla wanted to pump a 120kW into a 50kWh battery pack (whether it was with 18650 cells or 2170 cells), they could. But it would be bad for the cells and it would cost Tesla money on battery warranties, so they don't.

As pointed out by @drees above, Elon has publicly stated that the Model 3's 2170 cells were optimized for cost and not performance. This whole idea that the 2170's were going to have some amazing, game-changing chemistry that would allow for double or triple the existing charging rates was always a pipe dream with nothing but wishful thinking to back it up. In fact, the 2170's larger size and lower surface-area-to-volume ratio would, if anything, reduce its ability to shed heat and therefore reduce its maximum safe charging rate.

Furthermore, just to explore this theory a bit deeper... if Tesla/Panasonic had come up with a breakthrough battery chemistry, they wouldn't have waited to put it into their cheaper vehicle (Model 3) and then "artificially" limit that vehicle's charging rates so it wouldn't embarrass the flagship S and X models. That would make no sense. Instead, they would've started using it in their S's and X's 18650 cells first and reaped the performance and PR benefits of doing so without creating a competitive disadvantage with the cheaper Model 3.

There's nothing magic about the 2170's 21mm or 70mm dimensions in terms of what type of chemistry can be packaged inside of it.

 

[KarenRei]

My trip today was courtesy of a fairly new DCFC set up by ChargePoint and our ExpressToll authority. I have to say it was very fast and very free. Not changing my mind though.

How long do you think it'll be before it first goes down? And how long before they bring it back up?

 

[AlanSqB]

How long do you think it'll be before it first goes down? And how long before they bring it back up?

I don’t know. These are the first ChargePoint DCFCs in the state as far as I know, and I keep up on PlugShare.

They sure are pretty though.

 

[McRat]

Paying a higher peak power rating is likely far cheaper than building more superchargers. ...

In California, my new SCE industrial 'demand fees' runs up to $17.32 kW. That means, no matter how many kWh I buy, the peak draw is charged at $17.32 per kW during afternoon hours in the summer, with lower demand taxes in other seasons. This occurred with our Governor's approval last month when he added solar production taxes and EV taxes. Jerry is to blame, 100%.

So to operate a 350 kW charger would cost $3724 per month more in demand fees when delivering the same amount of kWh to the cars as a 135 kW.

You can see how quickly you could burn though $100,000 extra at an SC station. Solar and storage can only help a little, since it's brief high demand that is causing the huge jump in electrical costs for non-residential customers.

We reduced consumption 22% from July 2016 to July 2017 by spending $20,000 in LEDs, high efficiency AC, high efficiency rotary air compressor, etc. There were NO incentives for this. I did it to reduce power consumption. So this July? My bill jumped 8% over 2016.

High Peak happens from EVSE, compressors, AC, machinery. Brief high power use will exceed your solar production, which is the goal of the new tariffs.

 

[gregincal]

In California, my new SCE industrial 'demand fees' runs up to $17.32 kW. That means, no matter how many kWh I buy, the peak draw is charged at $17.32 per kW during afternoon hours in the summer, with lower demand taxes in other seasons. This occurred with our Governor's approval last month when he added solar production taxes and EV taxes. Jerry is to blame, 100%.

So to operate a 350 kW charger would cost $3724 per month more in demand fees when delivering the same amount of kWh to the cars as a 135 kW.

You can see how quickly you could burn though $100,000 extra at an SC station. Solar and storage can only help a little, since it's brief high demand that is causing the huge jump in electrical costs for non-residential customers.

We reduced consumption 22% from July 2016 to July 2017 by spending $20,000 in LEDs, high efficiency AC, high efficiency rotary air compressor, etc. There were NO incentives for this. I did it to reduce power consumption. So this July? My bill jumped 8% over 2016.

High Peak happens from EVSE, compressors, AC, machinery. Brief high power use will exceed your solar production, which is the goal of the new tariffs.

Sure solar might not help, but isn't this the exact problem that storage solves? It makes sure there are never any peaks, because short term high demand is fed from storage, and the draw from the utilities is constant.

 

[Saghost]

I doubt you have much to worry about, at least in the short run.

As I understand it, most of the increased charging power in these next-gen DCFC chargers comes from increasing the max operating voltage from 500V to 1000V, which means that only EVs with similarly high battery pack voltages would be able to take advantage of these chargers' increased capability.

But a hypothetical EV with a ~800V battery would then not be able to use any of the existing 500V DCFC infrastructure -- unless such an EV was designed with a battery pack that could switch its voltage depending on which charger it was plugged into. (I would guess that this is doable from a technical standpoint by switching 2 halves of a pack from series to parallel, but I have yet to seen any news suggesting that Porsche or any other automakers are currently planning on going down this path. And there may well be some technical hurdles to doing this that I just can't think of.) Without this capability, any 800V EV will be a pretty awful value if they can't use any of the existing chargers.

Furthermore, even if you had a higher pack voltage and/or special liquid-cooled cables and connectors that allowed much higher amperages, you'd still likely be limited by how much power today's cells can handle. Between Tesla and GM (the only automakers currently making 200+ mile EVs), neither seems willing to expose their cells to much more than 1.2C or so (and, in GM's case, not even 1C) for more than a few minutes. So until automakers start building long-range EVs with cells that can handle significantly higher charge rates, the next-gen DCFC infrastructure basically a moot point until then. I'm sure this will happen eventually as cell technology continues to advance, but presumably today's high-C-rate cells come with some other disadvantages, like cost or energy density, that make them undesirable for long-range EVs.

Over the longer term, of course, today's EV's resale value will suffer as new EV technology continues to improve and costs continue to come down. But that's pretty much inevitable. You'll find yourself waiting forever if you worry too much about that.

The only exception I'm aware of that's in actual production is the Proterra buses. The current generation is designed to accept overhead charging at up to 350kW even on the 79 kWh small pack version - 4.4C sustained.

Of course, they do that for operational reasons, so the bus can charge at one or two stops and operate continuously, and they use more expensive, heavier Lithium Titanate based cells to make it practical.

As far as I know, the only real advantage of that chemistry is the faster charging, and it pays for it in both a lower cell voltage and a lower energy density as well as a higher cost.

 

[jsmay311]

Do you think they are using the same chemistry as the 100 pack in the 2170’s?

I have no idea TBH. But I would guess that it's only slightly different / tweaked.

 

[McRat]

Sure solar might not help, but isn't this the exact problem that storage solves? It makes sure there are never any peaks, because short term high demand is fed from storage, and the draw from the utilities is constant.

If it engineered that way, it will work. But something like EV charging would take a massive amount of storage to kill the peak. Solar runs into a similar issue, since to have enough solar to cover the peak would make you a net negative kWh consumer. However, the peak fees still occur, so you'd get a power use bill while being a supplier for the month.

I'm looking at our charts from yesterday. We are in a heat wave. If somebody would have plugged 10kW of EV charging in at 3pm, it would have cost $173.20 above whatever electricity they used since yesterday was our August peak at 3 pm.

You can run a separate EV meter and it stays off your Peak Demand, but we only have 2 x 3.6kW EVSE's here so far. So we just don't allow charging after 11:59am.