[tuatoru]

> ... trying to find chargers with the right plug, ones that aren't broken, ones that were available, downloading various apps, etc. Then when I did find a charger I sat in the parking lot waiting for it to juice up.

These considerations are why I think we'll eventually move to battery swapping, when the market is mature enough to have standards for batteries. When there are as many battery swapping stations as there are gas stations now, the problem will be greatly diminished.

[moconnor]

I used to think this, but my car adds about 300km range in 20-30 mins on one of the many plentiful 300kW chargers in my area. A whole chain of gas stations now has 6-8 high-speed chargers on the forecourt. I plug in, take a break in the heated seat and call a friend, unplug and drive away.

On long trips stopping for 20-30 mins every few hours is ~normal anyway. Stretch my legs, use a restroom, have a drink, get back on the road.

Newer cars charge even faster. I don't think battery swapping is going to be important in the end.

[masklinn]

To me battery swapping makes no sense for consumer cars unless it’s used to significantly increase prices (possibly by removing home charging as well): battery swapping requires a ton more maintenance, space, infrastructure, and logistics, constrains vehicles enormously, and requires a very small number of standard battery formats.

[malfist]

Battery swapping is also not very accessible, not evening can lift 50+ pounds

[iruoy]

NIO now has 9 battery swap locations in The Netherlands. I'm not sure this is better than charging points, but at least we'll get some data on it. Tom Scott has made a video[1] about it.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w

[masklinn]

Oh battery swapping would be entirely automated, no way you'd do it at home (let alone on the reg).

Nio Inc. has videos of the process, and that's what you'd expect (and I assume what tesla tried at one time), you drive to a booth, the car gets locked in and the battery is replaced automatically, then you drive out.

[heavenlyblue]

Who owns the battery?

[dagw]

In the NIO case, NIO owns the battery and you pay a monthly leasing fee. One interesting feature this allows is that you can lease a cheaper low capacity battery for the 48-50 weeks of the year you drive less then 100 miles a day, and upgrade to a more expensive high capacity battery for the few times you're driving far.

[borg_]

https://www.nio.cn/charger-map

This map has real time stats on battery swap. Unfortunately it's only available in Chinese. NIO has done 35 million battery swap to date and you can see where the swap stations are located. Not quite as accessible as your gas stations but not far off especially in the large cities.

[Dylan16807]

What are you even talking about?

[chrisbolt]

The market is mature enough to have standards for charging, but is nowhere near being mature for battery swaps. The charging problem will be solved long before battery swaps get close to being a thing, especially with the recent convergence on NACS.

[brnt]

I'd call the charging market far from nature. Installing random apps, practically per charging point? Or requiring a second wallet for all the 'network' cards?

Wake me up when I need nothing more than the payment card I already carry.

[petre]

It only works with Teslas, forget the other ones. That's part of why the others have failed to deliver a useful EV: only Tesla has a reliable charging network. The others are reliant on half assed solutions made by third parties.

[nsteel]

Some supercharger stations can be used by non-teslas with a CCS port. And it seems there's a big move coming for more to adopt.

https://www.motortrend.com/features/tesla-nacs-charging-port...

Edit Although I should add, even if they work, they may not support the full power charging. My Kia works, but nowhere near 250kWh.

[petre]

Yes, that's why most of the other brands have announced the will use the Tesla port, to be able to use their charging network. There are still issues with that approach because all Teslas have their charging port on the back left side and their Supercharger cable is quite short, while other cars do not necessarily maintain this. Also they might not charge at full power. It's still a better solution than the half assed ones.

[nsteel]

> their Supercharger cable is quite short

It really is! My port is on the front centre and depending on how others have parked, it's quite tricky to get the angle required to be close enough.

But these are just niggles. We absolutely need standard hardware.

[brnt]

Im in Europe, so that doesnt matter.

And even if they had then here top, they'd be useless to me, because Teslas are too large for me.

[robertlagrant]

Maybe you'd be a 2025 Model 2[0] customer?

[0] https://www.whatcar.com/news/tesla-model-2/n25636

[closewith]

It really is a shame that Musk has tarnished the Tesla brand so much, because this looks like a great car.

[brnt]

Maybe! Didn't know that was coming!

But since Tesla is leading the bottom in reliability scores, it's still quite unlikely I'm getting one.

[petre]

Which part of Europe? See the map. If it's SE Europe, Cyprus or the Baltics, you are basically screwed. Western, Central and Northrn Europe (the populated areas) not so much.

https://www.tesla.com/en_eu/findus

Model 3 is a normal sized compact car, but if you live in Italy or on an island, it could be too big.

[closewith]

This a case where the markets are so different that the names diverge.

The Tesla Model 3 is a Medium car by NHTSA standards and a Compact by EPA standards.

However, in the EU Euro Car Segment standard, the Model 3 is a D-segment or "large car".

[DoesntMatter22]

It's solved because you just use Tedla super chargers and that's it.

[brnt]

These don't exist in Europe.

[nsteel]

Rubbish.

> The stations are primarily deployed in three regions: Asia Pacific (over 2,000), North America (over 2,000), and Europe (over 1,000).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Supercharger

Some supercharger stations also work with other cars. I used them over Christmas with my Kia. Surprisingly they were faster and cheaper than anything else in the area.

[baud147258]

1000 stations is nothing. Like there's more than 10000 gas stations in France alone, with just a fraction of a 1000 you won't get anywhere (or at least nowhere near as easily as with an ICE).

[brnt]

Those in Europese arent what they are in the US, they're just, of ten individuap, stations with the common plug, just like the other ones.

[b112]

Which is why h2 is the answer. h2 that is shown to work, regardless of all the hyperbole and reckless claims battery fans make.

[brnt]

Storage of H2 is a challenge in space and weight constrained devices such as cars. Plus, any well to wheels analysis shows H2 coming up behind the alternatives in efficiency.

There aren't claims, these are physical constraints. For heavy vehicles such as trucks and busses (and trains) there might be a market, provided the H2 is an otherwise unused byproduct of some process and needn't be produced, but for the majority of personal mobility major breakthroughs are required to make it competitive.

[multjoy]

We had a hydrogen powered Toyota in our fleet for a while and it was great, but we were also down the road from the National Physics Laboratory at Teddington where they had a hydrogen filling station…

[robertlagrant]

This could be solved by regulation. Just start tracking National Physics Laboratory deserts to ensure that no house in the US is more than 300m from a National Physics Laboratory.

[b112]

Yet there are 3 separate car manufacturers, with h2 passenger vehicles, all with 500km+ range, all being sold for 1/2 a decade. Seems like it isn't a physical constraint?

[postingawayonhn]

Being sold in absolutely tiny volumes.

The biggest issue is the need to build out an entirely new fueling infrastructure with a highly explosive fuel. EVs can piggyback off of the existing electrical grid.

[defrost]

EV's are still in relatively tiny numbers.

To replace fossil fuel transport will require an entirely new infrastructure regardless - if it's electric the existing grid will essentially have to be built out by a substantial factor.

A hybrid future is entirely feasible with long established city to city truck transport routes using hydrogen from dedicated planned end points and mid points along with lighter EV vehicles and non standard route EV trucking.

[brnt]

I did some (academic) research in a group working on storage (tanks and metal hydrides), so yeah, I know why it's only 3 and they all did it 20 years ago. Sources for such into aren't private, but I have the feeling you've never looked at them.

[b112]

20 years ago? These are sold now. Today.

So much denial in the anti h2 crowd.

[Balero]

I've seen a very good take that it is the ideal renewable fuel for large machinery such as farming or construction equipment. Batteries wouldn't work due to the cost and charging time (when you're using them you need them for long stretches), but weight (and therefore some of the complex/heavy containment). These places (at least in the UK) have their own diesel logistics infrastructure already.

[klodolph]

Just need to solve that pesky little storage problem and it will all be coming up roses…

[hedora]

H2O is a pretty robust storage solution for H2.

The bigger issue is scaling down cracking stations so you can use stranded electricity from solar and wind to generate the H2.

[klodolph]

That doesn’t make any sense at all. The point of storing H2 is to use it as a way to store energy. If you store it as H2O, you’re not storing energy any more, it’s just water.

It’s like saying, “It’s easy to ship fragile glass sculptures. You just smash them into little bits and put the bits in an envelope, I don’t see why people use all that styrofoam.”

[7speter]

>It’s like saying, “It’s easy to ship fragile glass sculptures. You just smash them into little bits and put the bits in an envelope, I don’t see why people use all that styrofoam

You’re obviously not a New Yorker

[b112]

And here we go. If the storage problem is an issue, how are all these h2 cars getting refueled? And how is the h2 getting to them? And how is it stored before shipping?

It's not a problem. At all.

[klodolph]

“It’s a problem” is not the same as “it is impossible.”

Likewise, “It’s possible to ship and store H2” is not the same thing as “it’s not a problem to ship and store H2”.

[b112]

Meanwhile, the presumed "problem" was "preventing adoption", yet my counter point invalidated your statement. H2 is a success. It's stored. It's usable, in consumer driving applications. It's being refueled by consumers, right now, world wide.

It's not a problem. At all.

[coderenegade]

I think green methanol is more likely, since that's what global shipping seems to be converging on. Methanol is really just a vector for H2, but you can make it without having to first synthesize H2 (although you can do that too if you want). Depending on the method of production, I've seen efficiency numbers around that of producing LH2, but you get a product that is liquid at STP conditions, which is a huge advantage.

[toast0]

I don't think the US is ready for a compressed gas powered car. Natural gas vehicles are basically gone except for some fleets, and there was already extensive distribution of natural gas. The fuel tanks on compressed gas cars expire, and chances are it won't be economical to replace them; it certainly wasn't economical to replace natural gas tanks when I was looking circa 2016. When cars are lasting longer and longer, having a 15 or 20 year ceiling on the life of a vehicle that's not connected to the amount of use is a problem. EV batteries might wear out over time, but that's more connected to number of charge cycles than how much time has passed.

Maybe it took too long, but we've got a single standard for high powered charging going forward, and I think J1772 is universal for PHEVs and slow charging of EVs. Eventually, people running charging networks will figure out how to keep their machines working and add card readers. My favorite broken charger is the wireless ones --- someone has run off with the cable, but hey the advertising display still works.

[wenyuanyu]

Honestly, H2's got a long long way (if viable at all) to go as the future of clean cars. There is not much natural H2. In a way, H2 acts like a battery as well using electricity to produce from H2O, and discharge as electricity to H2O. Producing it cleanly, like with green power, isn't efficient yet – it's only around 70% efficient. Plus, getting H2 from the factory to the customer is way way pricier than just using our current electricity grid for charging stations... Converting it to electricity is only about ~30% efficient(?) It will cost a few times more than electricity in the foreseeable future. It will be definitely much harder than have charging stations everywhere.

Not to mention the technical challenges (assume we can handle) of the low volume density, low temperature..

[b112]

There's no clean power for cars at all. Every extra joule of energy used by cars, should be considered coming from the dirties of fuels... because the first thing we do, when we have an excess of power generation, is turn off the dirty plants.

But outside of that, these things will improve, although your numbers are a bit out there.

[tonyedgecombe]

> There is not much natural H2

There may well be, we don’t really know because we haven’t been looking for it at any scale.

[andoma]

One of the biggest upsides of an EV is that you charge at home. Always start in the morning fully charged. No "Dang, need to go to the station". H2 is definitely not a step in that direction so for me it's DOA.

[b112]

Indeed, for you this seems to be the case. For many, it's a royal pain to charge an EV. Maybe your apartment doesn't have plugs, for whatever reason. You work from home. You have to go somewhere to charge, and then wait.

For such people, and there's a lot of these people, h2 is less work (quicker fill up) than electric charging.

Right now, electric cars are targeting the wealthy. Wealthy people tend to have houses. That could certainly change, but even if it starts to target those with less fiscal fortitude, many such live in apartments with no charging infrastructure.

What then?

[tsimionescu]

That is one of the least efficient solutions possible - making hydrogen gas from water is at best 50% efficiency, and then you get to burn that hydrogen in a thermal engine with 30% efficiency.

[brohee]

Fuel cells have much better efficiency no?

[b112]

This is the problem with the anti-h2 crowd. It's almost all based upon lack of understanding.

One person in this thread, was talking about cars, with no knowledge or understand that 3 separate manufacturers have h2 products on the market. Not 3 cars. 3 manufacturers. Another was discussing things as if it's an insurmountable task, that having h2 in cars is "really hard", yet these cars are being sold and used all over the world, with loads of adoption in Japan.

People make up weird claims about efficiency. About storage. About where h2 comes from. On and on and on. It's so ... absurd.

This isn't a 'my team your team' thing, yet it seems like, especially americans, are wired this way. "It's not thing $x, thus evil! wrong!! We must, absolutely must destroy any hope of this other thing existing.

h2 is the future for many application and usage spaces, and I can see batteries the same way too. It's not either or, and made up claims won't help the green movement at all.

[tsimionescu]

They're a maximum 85% efficiency, with a range of 40-60%, and then you're supplying electricity to a 90% efficiency electric motor. So, overall, you have 90% of 85% of 50% of the generated electricity going into moving your car, so at best around 38.5%.

In contrast, an electric car uses electricity to charge a 99% efficient battery, and discharge to the 90% engine. So, 89% efficiency - much, much better.

[forgotusername6]

I wonder if it would be easier to switch to say a part swappable battery, rather than try and make the whole thing swappable. Something smaller, but with a reasonable range, say 50 miles, might allow for a smaller ejection port on the car and possibly even light enough to handle by a person.

[_heimdall]

Batteries are still surprisingly heavy. I'm sure someone here has a more accurate lb/kWh figure, but my first gen Chevy volt can do about 35 miles on a charge and the batteries weigh several hundred pounds.

[forgotusername6]

Ok, so we are still looking at some kind of power assisted mechanism if not completely automatic.

[petre]

NIO (Chinese brand) has solid state swappable batteries and a battery swapping station in a shipping container.

You still need standardisation between all manufactureres for it to work.

[tonyedgecombe]

Or hook up a battery in a trailer for the occasional long journey.

[forgotusername6]

This is a good idea. Why carry round all that weight 100% of the time when you can only take it when you need it.

[masklinn]

One of the issues with that idea is you need very heavy duty connectors, EVs are hundreds of amps coming out.

[ssl-3]

A trailer mounted auxiliary battery doesn't need to supply hundreds of amps of current.

It can supply energy slowly, perhaps at dozens-of-amps.

The only time when an EV gets into hundreds of amps territory is when it is doing real work: Work like accelerating, or going uphill (or both).

Maintaining a speed on a straight stretch of highway is not a huge burden in terms of work, and that is where I think that a trailer-mounted battery might shine brightest.

The car's internal battery can take the brunt of rapid acceleration tasks and get filled back up over time, just like it already does in normal charge-daily EV use.

So to put some of this into real terms:

20A at 355V is 7,100 Watts, or about 9.5 horsepower. That's a ton of real work.

100A at 355V is 35,500 Watts, or about 47 horsepower. Way more than plenty to keep a portly EV heading down the highway.

The connection for the trailer APU doesn't need to handle the peak current draw of hundreds of amps. It just needs to be able to (slowly) pick up some slack and thus provide greater range.

Like the BMW i3 with the gas-fired range extender: The EV drivetrain could consume a ton more peak power than the built-in genset could produce, and that's OK.

It's not like people are using these in endurance racing or something. Most real-world driving is pretty mundane, with only occasional instances of rapid acceleration.

[theptip]

With enough market penetration you just plug in to the nearest street light.

https://www.evstreetcharge.co.uk/

[robaato]

We have them locally - but parking is generally not easy - so getting to chargers isn't either...

[imtringued]

What makes you think complicated swapping stations are going to be ubiquitous compared to chargers?

[kylebenzle]

I thought batteries being built into the frame was the direction things were going, right?

[datavirtue]

My wife and many millions of others will not be lifting any batteries.

She asks me to deal with the batteries in the TV remote.

[otabdeveloper4]

Swappable batteries are a huge fire hazard. They stopped doing that even for scooters. Too dangerous.

[hnbad]

There's a difference between user-swappable and battery-as-a-service. There is a company called NIO that seems to be successfully doing battery-as-a-service in China right now and is trying to expand this platform to Europe. They're also in talks with other manufacturers who seem to be interested in developing a common standard to make the batteries interchangeable so the stations can service other brands too.

There may be safety concerns (e.g. if I understand it correctly, the swapping process is fully automated and the car locks the doors and takes over steering, so I'm not sure how this deals with emergency scenarios where the driver might need to leave the car or intervene) but as far as the driver is concerned they never touch the battery so the risk of accidents from improper wiring is significantly reduced.

[SargeDebian]

Who's they? There were thousands of shcooters with swappable batteries riding around Taiwan when I was there in November.

[ddeck]

Correct.

Gogoro currently do more than 400,000 battery swaps / day, primarily in Taiwan, but are expanding into other Asian countries.

https://www.gogoro.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gogoro

[otabdeveloper4]

Never heard of these guys before, thanks. Insteresting. But it looks like they have severe limitations on the kinds of vehicles they support and their parameters. Would never use this as a daily driver for personal use.

[donatj]

We’ve literally got people right now open air pouring liquid gasoline. It’s not uncommon to even get some on yourself.

My point is it can’t be much more of a hazard.

[klodolph]

This is gonna sound crazy but gasoline is not that much of a fire hazard. I’m speaking comparatively.

I used a gasoline stove for a while and it is bonkers how hard that thing is to light. You can spill the gas or do all sorts of things—the only thing I could do to get a fire out of it was to follow the instructions, exactly, and keep the stove perfectly level. I later learned that gasoline only burns if you keep the gasoline / air mixture within a narrow range. I know that gasoline is implicated in a lot of fires, but it’s also just so damn common and people are careless with it.

Powerful batteries scare me more, to be honest. Not a lot more, just a little. Not trying to fearmonger here. It’s just that I love those sparks and that fire, and have spent time playing with batteries and playing with gasoline or other flammable substances. If you short a battery, it will basically dump as much energy as it can, as fast as it can. It’s easier to accidentally short a battery.

Properly stored & maintained batteries are fine. I just get a little nervous holding a wrench, sometimes.

[petre]

Sounds like you haven't seen a lithium or a sodium fire yet. After you've seen one, you'll handle batteries like you do explosives..

[otabdeveloper4]

Gasoline is not much of a fire hazard. (Compared to other things like a 32 ampere spark right next to a lithium battery, at least.)