AUA. HTH. HAND. AC? GTG.

Unless you force His Royal Highness Elon the Magnificent to open up the Supercharger network to all right now, this proposal is as good as a wet paper bag is for holding anything other than hot air.

I thought he has already done (or at least started) that.

https://www.electrifying.com/blog/article/it-s-official-tesla-opens-up-uk-supercharger-network-to-non-tesla-drivers

There are about 40 UK Supercharger locations that are now open to any CCS-equipped EV.

As Tesla add new locations and upgrade existing sites with their latest v4 chargers, more are switching from Tesla-only to fully-open.

Which is a problem. We don't have Ford petrol and Nissan petrol and Vauxhall petrol..... the same stuff works for every car.

We went through all this with USB standards for charging devices : the choice is to waste lots of time and money on supporting different standards, or biting the bullet and just going straight to a universal standard for all electric vehicles.

For most of the chargers I use, the situation is better than this suggests. I carry my charge lead with me and the Type 2 connector is the equivalent of the USB-A socket that is on the other end.

Which is why the EU mandated CCS for all electric cars, including Tesla.

That bit isn't a problem. The problem is the 15 different apps you need to get all the chargers to work, and that a mobile signal isn't guaranteed to be present at the charger site.

And also the fact that 6 chargers per service station is nowhere near sufficient. Every single parking space needs to have a charger.

Mobile app requirements should be banned, simple credit/charge card, mobile wallet is all that’s needed

Yes - you can buy petrol anywhere, any brand with the same debit/credit card. Actually most fast chargers on the main roads now support debit/credit cards. RFID cards & apps will soon be a museum piece except possibly for local 7kW charging.

CCS is a problem for us pioneers with Chademo. Cars last a long time and Chademo cars are still sold in the UK so mandating their support for the foreseeable future is necessary. Though I can't see Elon (who castigated the EU over CCS) providing it on his superchargers.

Chademo cars are indeed still sold in the UK, but no longer will they be made here.

Nissan are about to shut the Sunderland factory, to convert it to build the Leaf's CCS-equipped replacements.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/reports-nissan-leaf-production-end-sunderland-week

+1 for app-less, bank-card operated chargers. They should all be usable to anyone, without sign-up. Same as unmanned 'pay-at-pump' petrol forecourts.

As for charging speed though, according to Prof David Bailey of Birmingham Business School (who knows all about electrochemistry and electrical power systems, of course) [1]Solid State Batteries are complete game-changer, going to enable "much quicker charging"! Hybrid cars are doomed! (which is sadly a load of bollocks of course) (talking at the end of yesterday's radio 4 you&yours @ ~48mins)

Even if SSBs could charge faster (they can't) the limiting factor is usually electricity supply. So I can't see EVs 'filling up' in minutes at megawatt rates any time soon

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001wxmm

I direct your attention to Chinese company Li Auto's "MEGA" luxury e-MPV, which has been tested charging at over 500kW, adding 70kWh to its battery in 10mins!

https://youtu.be/Sf9P-jdla6U

" the 15 different apps you need to get all the chargers to work "

Why need an app at all? I buy petrol at a service station and go to the kiosk counter to pay (cash or card). Suppose a disabled person physically can't use a "smart" phone, does that mean they'd never be able to charge (and therefore own) an EV? Surely that breaches disability discrimination legislation.

You don't any more - because chargers are required to accept contactless.

Even Tesla are introducing contactless on their V4 chargers.

Of course you're welcome to use an app if you want, and some distribution networks might offer you a better rate for doing so.

I have a couple of charge cards in my car, but they're just RFID tap and go - paying on an app isn't the biggest issue facing disabled EV drivers, the obsession with kerbs to "protect" the chargers is far more difficult for far more people.

The other is the lack of accessible spaces around chargers, and the solution is either to provision enough that only blue badge holders use the accessible ones, or they are *all* accessible.

Indeed -- Here in the US, fuel pump nozzle form factors are dictated by the government (largely to discourage the drunk,or distracted from dumping a load of diesel into their gasoline vehicle) , And pay at the pump with a credit card is ubiquitous. I can't recall the last time I had to seek out and pay an attendant/cashier. It was years ago. There is often a provision at the pump for those who belong to the vendor's exclusive club to log in and receive some sort of benefit -- a small discount? Brownie points of some sort? Why on Earth, other than utter regulatory idiocy, should EV chargers be different?

And while we are on the subject of regulatory lapse, should not all this have been hashed out and settled years before legislators set out on a probably futile quest for "Net-Zero" using a tool kit (only wind,solar -- neither of which are dispatchable -- and a handful of minor technologies are the proper shade of green apparently) that certainly appears to be quite inadequate? FWIW, I expect that Net-zero will prove to be as elusive as the Holy Grail was in Arthurian times.

Why can't chargers work like ATMs?

I don't need an account with every bank to get cash from their ATM. The money is taken from my home account.

The electricity companies could issue an electricity debit card; energy I extract from a roadside charger is added to my home electricity bill at the same cost as if I had plugger the car in at home.

Obviously the charger supplier will have to be paid, this could be done on a time basis in the same way as car parking.

They do.

Your bank already issues you with such a card. The amount would be added to your credit card bill rather than your electricity bill, but is that a problem?

It mostly is. CCS is the predominant connector, trailled by Chademo and proprietary connectors (early Tesla, mainly). Tesla and the USA are mucking about trying to establish a new standard there (NACS, I think it's called) for no obviously important reason (except perhaps N-I-H syndrome).

In the EU and UK at least, any new model launched today will have CCS.

All the CPOs are deploying CCS chargers now (some with Chademo as well, but in fewer and fewer numbers).

NACS IS the early Tesla connector

In UK/EU, older Teslas use a bastardised type2 to do DC rapid charging. They have an extra bit to prevent you plugging it intio a non tesla

UK/EU has CCS2, an improvement on CCS1, which is what they have in the US, and are gradually dumping for Tesla's 'NACS' connector

And payment is the next pain-point.

With hydrocarbon based stations, you can pay cash, using your bank card or by credit card.

The charging cables will get nicked. Even at a quid a cable at a scrappy, I reckon a team of 4 can bag 1.5K GBP each over an 8 hour shift if they go at it.

Fast-charging stations use cables that are firmly bolted onto the charging station, so nicking those means robbing the entire charger. Good luck with that, given the power it is connected to.

Low-power cables (your typical 11k-22kW or less cable) are usually locked to the car. You can probably (given enough force) rip them from the connector of the car, but it is not something that you just pick up when passing by.

Cable theft from rapid and ultra-rapid chargers is a problem, mainly in the north-west of England. Thieving sods are just hacking or chopping the cables off, rendering the chargers unusable. The cables are not live until an EV is plugged in, so unfortunately the scrotes are not at risk of electrocution.

Slicing through an active 50kW (or even 7kW) cable may be the last slice you do. Petrol pump hoses may be safer for non-smokers ;-)

Type 2 are locked safely in the boot when not active. And in 5 years fast charging and seeing many dead chargers I've never seen one without a cable.

Then you haven't been looking.

The cable is only energised when charging a car, so there's no electrocution risk for thieves.

"It is still not as simple as pulling up in a forecourt and filling up a tank"

Except that it kind of is. It might require a minimum of planning on your part, but nothing insurmountable.

EV's are more common in Norway than the GB, so we have more infrastructure, but even long drives are not really a problem.

Eg this summer me and my friend drove almost 800 km to visit our other friends cabin. He picked me up at my house which is about 6 hour in to the 12 hour drive.

We charged his Kia out of my wall charger, which topped it off over night. It didn't require charging before the return journey, and the charging was done while we went grocery shopping at the local store.

It did not require charging before he got home, some 8 hours and 650 km later.

My father has an EV and a hybrid, he's not been at a gas station for months.

The only time he needs to use a fast charger is when going on vacation. A quick 15 min stop at a service station every 4-5 hours is a good idea anyway.

So, introduce a British Standard 1-ph and 3-ph car charger; mandatory for fitting to all UK plugins.

The same approach worked well for domestic plugs.

We probably already have such a thing from the milk floats; though I rarely need to dive into BS standards when IEC dominates my own particular field.

We already use the almost global CCS2 connector.

If that's true, why do charging terminals have 4 or 5 different plugs on em.

Establishing standards is the only way to get uptake. See VHS / BetaMax or HD-DVD/BD-ROM for examples of what happens when you DONT set up a standard.

Sometimes the only way forward is JFDI and you end up with competing standards. In the longer time scale things sort themselves out.

They don't.

There are typically only two plugs you might find in the UK (and all across the EU):

- Type 2 CCS This is DC fast charging, and is the standard

- Chademo This was an early DC standard, still widely used in Japan, but only used by (some) Nissan vehicles in the UK

You might rarely see a Type2 tethered cable at some of the older gridserve units - these tend to supply high power AC charging, effectively only used by some early Renault Zoes.

The final option is a type2 socket, for destination charging - low power AC charging for use when you are actively doing something else.

There at most 3 types, type2, (AC) CCS2 (type2 + 2 chunky dc pins) and chademo. That's all.

Type2 and CCS2 are the standard

That would be type 2 - which has pins for both 1 and 3 phase AC.

We even have the CCS extension, which adds two beefy pins to take care of DC charging at up to 350kW.

The only other cables really seen in the UK are chademo, which has some benefits (built in bidirectional charging being the main one), but it's going extinct.

There will continue to be a few chademo equipped chargers at many locations for a long time yet. The trick is to choose a CCS only charger if you can, then the chademo driver can access the appropriate charger without you having to move.

At the moment, most cars out there are ICE. None of my neighbours have EVs. I hardly ever see one. For every EV out there in the UK, there are more than 30 ICE vehicles. And they are not evenly spread. In some parts of the country there may be 1 EV to 100+ ICE.

If EVs ever do actually become universal, that means millions more of them. The ratio for cars : charging points would become much more problematic, not less.

Slightly OT. I'm about to get a plug in hybrid so I thought I'd research tariffs and home chargers. Conclusion, its a complete and utter shit-show.

Octopus and OVO are the only ones that seem to offer a proper EV tariff. Everyone else does a sort of Economy 7 style offering where your whole house gets some cheap electrons overnight and your EV benefits as a side-effect.

The problem seems to be communications between the different bits. Octo/OVO only offer their tariffs to those with particular cars or chargers. Presumably the ones they have built a back-end link into.

Ohme seem to be one of the better supported charger manufacturers but their chargers *only* communicate over 3/4G, which they subsides for 3 years (then what?). If you don't have a signal in your designated charging spot then you are stuffed. No cheap charging for you. Would it be that hard to put wifi on it?

But fundamentally *why* does the charger need to call home to report its usage? Isn't this exactly what Smart (sic.) Meters were supposed to solve? Isn't this what the open standards, like OSCP, are all about? Why do the charlatan energy retailers even need to be involved? Then there are limitations like you can't use the solar charge function when you are on one of these tarriffs. Why not have both? This is all fucked up at a really fundamental level.

A home charger is not a cheap piece of kit (although it ought to be because there is basically *nothing* inside it, its not a charger, its an on/off switch, the charger is built-into the car). Inevitably there will be consolidation in the market so a non-zero risk you end up with a white elephant in the not too distant future when the horse you backed goes out of business and your "smart" charger becomes a "dumb" charger and your cost to run your car goes up several fold.

And yes my new, to me, car has a ChaDeMo connector for public charging. So, great, those will soon be like rocking horse poo since the chances of new build charging infrastructure being backwards compatible with the existing user base is approximately zero.

Just a couple of the many insanities in the frantic rush to net-nothing. Our esteemed masters demonstrating their usual level of critical thinking.