Battery tech and range

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by ldjessee00

I think apartments will add charging points like they did cable and internet. Drag their feet until the competition adds it. Once people are moving to locations that have these features, then the apartments will have to add them to compete to draw back tenets.

Not going to be as quick as we all know it would be possible. Battery storage (and maybe PV if the orientation/hours of sunshine make that feasible) and some connectors, plus a connection to the grid.

I would certainly have L2 charging spaces if I were building a new apartment complex. Not sure if I'd supply the EVSE, or merely have some outlets to plug into; probably the latter to save on cost since they are expensive and most people don't need/want charging. The problem though would be billing for use, so maybe the EVSE would need to be installed along with a way to bill the user.

PV either makes financial sense now or it doesn't, regardless of EVs.

Battery storage might make sense now for those with wide swings in TOU pricing, but as I understood it, the law currently doesn't allow for charging up at night and feeding it back at peak hours. At least one could use the battery for all energy consumed during peak times and avoid that cost.

[ldjessee00]

Yeah, if they wanted minimum complexity (low upfront cost), it would be a socket tied to the unit, which would work great for those that have assigned parking... or those that are like townhomes and just put a socket on the front/back that the renter can plug into.

For 'festival' parking, without giving the power away (or spread out over all units or all units with plugin vehicles), would require additional complexity. There are charging stations meant for more commercial customers that have fobs to indicate who should be billed...

Like the JuiceBox Pro 32 (I found at this url: https://evcharging.enelx.com/store/commercial).

$1300 for the unit, have your complex electrician install it (or hire someone to)... I would only put them where I would not have to make long runs for power... or setup an area (the less popular parking spots) if I needed to run power and put the chargers all there.

Charge them a $25 to $50 'setup' fee to deal with managing the system, etc. I would guess that the JuiceBox Pro would allow me to input what I paid for power and how much I want the user to pay... and either have it billed directly to them (site they can pay with an app) or add it to their rent.

But I do not own apartments, so I am just speculating on all this.

[redpoint5]

I went from having a garage with an L2 charger I installed, to living in an apartment for 18 months. Basically in that time I let others use my plug in Prius so much, and got by without it, that I ended up selling it (last Sunday). I'm making room in my wife's mind to purchase an EV to replace it.

Anyhow, the apartment experience had me thinking of all the ways I would do things differently. Perhaps a 120v plug going to each units electrical meter and placed near the assigned parking spot would be a good way to provide a means of charging while limiting cost. People would get annoyed having to deal with their EVSE all the time, and they would either have to secure it, or be susceptible to theft.

[ldjessee00]

I do not understand that the lessons learned in designing a fuel pump was not carried over for charge stations.
1) Why is there not an easy way to pay at the charge point without an app?
2) Fuel pumps have this neat thing where they manage the hose with a spring tension reel. Why do charging stations not manage the cable with such a reel? It would keep the cable from being all over the ground (I have see this at several charging locations) and also allow a decent cable length and be more flexible (Superchargers short cable).
3) Longer EVs/trailers/efficiency ofd pull thru charging locations over parking spots. If there was a fixed flow direction and the spots were you charged were not parking spots, but pull through spots, then time would never be wasted going into and out of a spot. The flow would be much more obvious and there would be less time spent backing up and manuvering to get out of the next person's way. This is why drive thrus, gas stations, and such are all designed this way. I understand charging takes longer, but for faster chargers, like Superchargers and CCS, where the time spent will be much shorter, flow thru will be more practical than parking.... in my opinion.

Sorry, jumped on the soap box and started ranting.

[redpoint5]

I like those ideas. I've never used a DCFC, so everything is speculation to me.

Cable lengths are kept as short as reasonable (and sometimes shorter). It gets more expensive having extra length, and more length probably means it needs thicker gauge wire, which adds weight and reduces flexibility. Maybe the weight is why they aren't on a reel. Something does need to be done about cable management though.

Vehicles probably should standardize the location of the charging ports. You've got them just about everywhere at the moment. Once that's done, you can standardize the layout of charging stations. The island layout makes sense to me, so that would lend itself to drivers side charging ports, either just ahead of the front door, or just behind the rear door where a fuel tank would be.

[ldjessee00]

Yeah, gas ports got pretty standardized, usually right before or right after the rear wheelwell, on either side of the car. I have seen plugin vehicles with them in the front (like my leaf), in the back, on the sides (some Ford Plugins have them infront of the front door driver side)...

And I know some of the faster DC charging cables are actually liquid cooled, to help cut down on the amount of copper they use... but a hose full of fuel has to be pretty heavy as well, and I assume that since they have these reels at semi-truck pumps as well as car pumps, they can be made to accommodate a variety of weights...

I have used ChaDemo once with the Leaf, the rest has been Level 1 or 2 charging in the last 2.5 years.

[Xist]

Is this larger than Tesla insisting on doing everything their own way and not trying to learn from a century of automotive experience?

Three hundred miles of range starts getting into gas territory. While the 2018 Jaguar XF 20d should be able to go 731 miles with a 42 mpg highway rating, and a 17.4-gallon tank.

The EPA says the 2010 smrt car has 313 miles of range, the 2012 Scion IQ has 314 miles, the 2013 Fiat 500 iBarf has 315, and the 2016 Honda CRZ has 382 miles.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Xist

Is this larger than Tesla insisting on doing everything their own way and not trying to learn from a century of automotive experience?

Doing things differently than established automotive companies isn't optional if you're a new company. How could a new company survive if they simply copy what big established players are doing? There is no competitive advantage to be found there.

Tesla does things differently because they have no other choice. Either the differences will be better and they will survive, or they will be worse and fail. If it turns out their ideas are better, all the other existing players will slowly adopt those strategies, or die.

[Xist]

Munro & Associates spent 6,600 hours disassembling a Model 3 and concluded they spent "$2,000 more to produce a Model 3 than BMW spends building a similarly-priced i3."

Are you about to point out that the i3 costs more than the 3, but is the size of my Accord, and only has 126 - 153 miles of range?

Too late!

Sandy Munro says that Tesla is inexperienced with manufacturing. The body’s design is too complicated and more expensive to build. “They’re just learning all the old mistakes everyone else made years ago,” Munro told Bloomberg. The steel and aluminum frame Tesla incorporates to enhance safety is unnecessary because the battery pack already lies in the floor and stiffens the vehicle, making the added stampings redundant.

Rather than using a single piece of aluminum or fiberglass [for the trunk well], the Model 3 uses nine pieces. All the pieces are then riveted, welded and sealed together – a more complex setup than other automakers’ production models. In the end, Munro reportedly sent Tesla a free list of 227 suggestions to improve the profitability in their manufacturing process.

Tesla currently employs 10,000 people at its Fremont plant and targets 5,000 Model 3s per week. At peak production, Toyota and GM build 450,000 cars a year with 4,400 workers--9,000 a week. Tesla may do more work in-house, but do they really need four times as many employees per car made? The Tesla Model 3 Is ‘Needlessly’ Complicated to Assemble, According to Analysts

[ldjessee00]

Originally Posted by Xist

Munro & Associates spent 6,600 hours disassembling a Model 3 and concluded they spent "$2,000 more to produce a Model 3 than BMW spends building a similarly-priced i3."

Are you about to point out that the i3 costs more than the 3, but is the size of my Accord, and only has 126 - 153 miles of range?

Too late!

Sandy Munro says that Tesla is inexperienced with manufacturing. The body’s design is too complicated and more expensive to build. “They’re just learning all the old mistakes everyone else made years ago,” Munro told Bloomberg. The steel and aluminum frame Tesla incorporates to enhance safety is unnecessary because the battery pack already lies in the floor and stiffens the vehicle, making the added stampings redundant.



Tesla currently employs 10,000 people at its Fremont plant and targets 5,000 Model 3s per week. At peak production, Toyota and GM build 450,000 cars a year with 4,400 workers--9,000 a week. Tesla may do more work in-house, but do they really need four times as many employees per car made? The Tesla Model 3 Is ‘Needlessly’ Complicated to Assemble, According to Analysts

The Model Y supposedly incorporates a lot of Sandy Munro's suggestions. I am hoping that Sandy does a cellphone-like tear down video of the Model Y... and I hope there are more things like the Superbottle.

I thought it was very interesting for Elon to admit in the Third Row Podcast interview that Tesla has fallen into the trap he used to point out other companies fell into. Like how the Model 3 has modules, but they are not interchangeable and really are only there because of inertia and that there was a battery module team and a battery pack team. And admits that making that change is needed.

Maybe the Model Y gets rid of the modules and just has a battery pack and the space & weight savings (either able to add more cells or makes the vehicle lighter) is where the extra range came from? Maybe we will know by April.

I am also curious to see if they were able to keep the reduced wiring when they went to production that Tesla had planned.

Of those that work at the Hawthorne facility, how many work on making cars and how many work on software, on the machines that make the cars, etc.