Tesla is the Apple of the car world.

I hope not, its bad enough having one company like them, but imo all charging stations should have a universal plug/sockets, otherwise it means stations will need seperate plugs for different cars

Part of the Tesla attraction is the almost certainty of a vacant slot at one of their chosen MSA's for recharging and a rapid charge, they arn't daft enough to open them up to all and sundry.

Who can blame them, their cars are expensive and people paying for them expect a bit of special treatment, i would, if you had to join a queue of other cheaper cars (maybe not able to accept such rapid charging) then one of the main reasons for buying into Tesla has gone.

If some quango is created that forces the adaption of these MSA charging points for all and sundry to use then i fully expect the rapid building of Tesla only charging stations at strategic points on private land, it would be commercial suicide given the cost of their cars not to provide exclusive service.

Edited by gordonbennet on 09/03/2018 at 02:18

Part of the Tesla attraction is the almost certainty of a vacant slot at one of their chosen MSA's for recharging and a rapid charge, they arn't daft enough to open them up to all and sundry.

True - although 'exclusivity' can also be a drawback. There have been several reports of scuffles between Tesla drivers in US urban areas as argue over who has 'dibs' on a charging point, which amuses me.

I do understand that Tesla is trying to accelerate development of battery tech, electric motors and infrastructure, but I don't think it would hurt the brand to offer a range-extender option too. Personally, I reckon they'd sell more cars that way. But that's Tesla's / Musk's decision.

Selling more cars probably isn't something Tesla needs at the moment, as they try to catch up with the backlog of Model 3 orders!

Manufacturers seem to have a lot of hype around rapid charging. In many circumstances rapid charging is a bit of a red herring.

The reality is that the car will often be plugged into a charging point close to a workplace, railway station, park and ride, tourist attraction. In these circumstances it doesn't matter if it charges in 15 or 30 minutes. The car will be occupying that charging point all day, no one else can use it until that car drives off.

People aren't going to wait 20 mins for their car to charge, then move the car (to a normal parking space) to free up the charging point.

The EV for daily commuting makes sense as long as you have an alternative for other trips - range/recharge time is the big barrier to EV sales where longer journeys are needed, even if only once/year.

The "real world" for many people includes countryside which has no EV charging points.

Surely the only way electric car recharging can work is to have easily changed batteries. You pull in to a "recharging station" and swop batteries. No need to worry about batteries becoming worn out. Some form of built in metering would confirm charge and physical state of the battery. A monetary charge would allow for recycling of the units.

A review of the H&S implications coupled with the knowledge of how long it takes a mechanic to change a 12V battery says it 1. will take a LONG time and 2. require a competent person to do it.

I find it incredible that in an era where most motorists never open the bonnet or check their tyres that people are advocating changing batteries as a practical way of refueling electric cars.

Any careful look at what is involved - the weights, the size, the position and the electrical connections associated with any battery would suggest it is utterly impractical. Someone will be bound to screw it up and blow the electrics.

Edited by madf on 14/03/2018 at 14:15

Surely the only way electric car recharging can work is to have easily changed batteries. You pull in to a "recharging station" and swop batteries. No need to worry about batteries becoming worn out. Some form of built in metering would confirm charge and physical state of the battery. A monetary charge would allow for recycling of the units.

I wonder how that would work. The batteries aren't like slotting a couple of AA's into your radio, they will be heavy. Maybe it's time to go back to attendants wheeling them around in sack barrows.

Surely the only way electric car recharging can work is to have easily changed batteries. You pull in to a "recharging station" and swop batteries. No need to worry about batteries becoming worn out. Some form of built in metering would confirm charge and physical state of the battery. A monetary charge would allow for recycling of the units.

As has been said, the weight of the batteries would require some form of mechanical assistance maybe a forklift truck device. This then would mean that the batteries had to be readily accessible and could not really be tucked away to maximise space in the car.

I don’t see this as a DIY operation so there would need to be an operative thus increasing costs and waiting times. In the end I can see the operation taking as long as a fast charger.

I think with electric cars we are still on a 1985 Vodafone unit complete with 30 minutes call time and 5Kg weight.

10 years later we were down to 300g and about a day's standby time and 15 years later we were down to the 6310i with 7 hours and just over 100g weight.

I don't know what the future holds for electric cars but I'm pretty sure the electric car of 2033 will be very different in terms of charging time, capacity and range to the ones we currently have.

Edited by pd on 15/03/2018 at 09:21

The most advanced electric car in semi production should be the Tesla 3 which has a "85 kWh battery pack weighs 1,200 lb (540 kg) and contains 7,104 lithium-ion battery cells in 16 modules wired in series (14 in the flat section and two stacked on the front)"

tinyurl.com/ycgjhtqx

So the Renault Zoe at around 300Kg is a puny lightweight..

Edited by madf on 15/03/2018 at 11:49

If half of the cars in the uk were scrapped and their owners bought a Nissan Leaf we would need to build 50 additional 100MW power stations to charge them all over an 8 hour period at night. And what fossil fuel would we burn to achieve this? Would they hold all of that charge especially as the batteries age? How much resource is consumed making these batteries etc etc...We would get as far as a service station and join the queue to plug in so that we could then just go home again! I don't think 10 charger points are quite up to the job.

Would we? Back of an envelope calculation:

40Kw Nissan Leaf charged over 8 hours comes to about 5kw/h.

So, 13 million cars charging at 5000w comes to about 65Gw.

A lot, yes, but that assumes every single car would need to fully charge every single day. In reality, they wouldn't, as most people do not drive 35-40k miles a year.

At night, we currently use about 25Gw out of a capacity of somewhere around 70-80Gw. So, yes, whilst it is a huge logictical challenge and couldn't cope with everyone at once we probably could cope with about 1/4 of the electric cars being charged at anyone time over night so I'm not sure it is quite as dramatic as you suggest.