I seldom hear anyone say that we don’t have the electrical infrastructure to handle recharging 100 million electric cars every day.
Nobody ever talks about that we are many years away from having such an electrical grid.
At some point ,there is going to be a collision between these plans for more and more electric cars, and the realities that we don’t have the electrical generation capacity for all these vehicles.
Why new battery technology WON’T solve EV charging problems | MGUY Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkPDh022XnE
“I seldom hear anyone say that we don’t have the electrical infrastructure to handle recharging 100 million electric cars every day.”
That’s because 100 million cars won’t need to be charged every day. Virtually no one drives 300+ miles per day. The vast majority of Americans are in cities 75% of the population. 96% of all trips are under 30 miles. The typical urbanite will need a charge one a week or less. The avg total yearly distance is 13,500 miles in a large Tesla S the full size not the smaller model 3 a person would need 3375 kWh over a years time to cover that distance or 9.3 kWh per day on average. That’s equal to running a home A.C. Unit for one hour or a large cloths dryer for the same hour. Think 50 amp 240v load for 45 mins.
The real issue is the top 20% of drivers by miles per year use 48% of the gasoline. That is where the bulk of the use is.
I was recently in Shanghai a city where 99% of people live in high rise , condos or apartments single family homes are nonexistent. Half of all new car sales are EVs because density plus short commuting distances means electricity is much cheaper than petrol.
There was L2 AC chargers everywhere all down the rows of parking deck spots and all over the apartment complex and condo lots along the outer rows. The Chinese like the Europeans use 220v single phase and 380V three phase directly to every point of use not the 1800s era 120/240 split phase the USA is cursed with. Each one of those L2 poles was just a dumb terminal that turns the relays on via an app to bill the user the cable was carrying 380v three phase or 230v single phase natively.
This is a super cheap set up the BYD we were in recognised 3 phase and chose the 22.2 Kw rate that’s a full charge in 4 hours or less overnight. DC fast chargers were also all over the place with 250 kw that will take a BYD from 20/80% in 20 min or so. The BYD we were in looked just like a BMW 5 series they copied the design shamelessly.
The point is the argument there is no way high rise,condo or apartment people can have EVs is flat out false the Chinese prove that wrong in spades. The ingredients for success are density, short trip distances <100km and access weekly to a L2 or HVDC charger.
Here in the USA while single family homes are cursed with the archaic 120/240 split phase. Every post 1980s apartment and condo building by code has 208v WYE three phase which conveniently phase to neutral is 120v single phase. Those same super cheap L2 poles can be run at 22.2Kw off 208v WYE already on site by code. If the apartment or condo has an elevator then it will also have by code 277/480v 3Ph that’s what the elevator motors run off. Every office building in the USA also will have by code 277/480v 3Ph things get interesting once you have 277/480 on site L2 dumb poles can use single phase to neutral 277v for 22.2kw up to 80amp limit of CCS standard there is no three phase in the USA L2 EVSE plug standards. China makes 30,50,60 portable fast DC chargers that use 380/480v 3ph natively of course Tesla and EVGO et al. Have pedestal superchargers that start at 50kw and go to.350kw all eat 480v/3Ph at the mains.
So every condo,apartment has at least L2 voltages on site and every office building with a elevator has 480 on site and a good number of high rise condos do too. For urbanites having access once a week to a L2 is enough for their needs. An avg driver will need 63kWh per week to cover the average 13,500 miles they drive a year or less. That’s three hours a week at an L2 or 15 min at a 250kw fast DC. This is nearly identical to the usage pattern of a ICE car for the same person who goes to the gas station once a week. This means a condo unit with 100 residents each having a EV could share 15 L2 spots each using one of those spots over night once a week. Given it only takes 3 hours at the L2 spot you could have a price incentive to move the vehicle after it is at 80% for NMC or 100% for LFP. Then you get eight charge opportunities per L2 spot per day not one. This is exactly what I saw in China once the car is full the app buzzss and move or pay by the minute for the spot.