Here's our latest Tech Talk all about electric car charging. From granny cables to rapid charging we try to cover all the bases in this video. www.electriccl... / electricclassiccars / electricclassiccars / elecclassiccars
I just love this is simple clarification, had a debate on other EV channel about this set of mind: you start with a full charged car so most of daily driving or even a big part of the driving is done with a charged car and you always can find a plug at the destination while not most of friends have a petrol station at home ;) Thank you for making that clear.
This is such an excellent point that as a ‘conventional’ car driver has never crossed my mind, we are always too concerned about how long the charge will be yet it’s completely irrelevant. Most electric cars have a minimum of 100 mile range, when do you regularly drive more than that in one trip? My commute is a 45 min drive which I would consider fairly long yet it’s still only 21 miles each way. So even a 50 mile range would cover my commute until I’m back home to charge again! No need to charge mid way! Thank you!
You said most ev's have at least 100 mile range., I guess what you meant were most new cars. Out of the 400k registered evs on uk roads there's more 200k of older pure ev's on the road with less than 100 miles range. Ie leafs , Zoe's, mini's ,smarts, etc. Very few of those generation of cars have actually been scrapped.
Unfortunately not , 24kw leaf 85miles, 30kw 105miles , Zoe 22kw , about 90miles , when new, but...... after degradation and 97k miles my 24kw leaf will do 72miles. A friend has the 30kw and only get 74miles(apparently batteries are not so good). We love our leaf had it 4 years, paid 7k and we have borrowed the new leaf demonstrator from nissan dealer, but honestly for 30k it's pretty much the same car apart from range of 147miles. Infact lower spec'd So I'm looking into upgrading the battery to 40kw or an extender pack, but unfortunately the company doing the conversions in uk have been having issues with the kits
Hi Richard. Love your tech series. Just a little pointer on this subject relating to "Granny" charging. We have done this when away just out of interest with our Leaf and been very surprised, using the logic as you say of when you stop you plug in, we were easily able to cover our charging needs while on a stay in the new forest. In fact having travelled 200 miles to the destination and driven around various engagements whilst there, we had 95% charge ready for the home trip. So while granny's slow she should'nt be dismissed!
Sorry if I seemed to dismiss them, that wasn't my intention. I've often used them at destinations, like the mother in law's, who don't have a 7kw wallpod. They can be very useful. 👍
At any place in Canada or the northern US, a lot of workplaces & the majority of apartment/condos already have plug-ins for the block heater that will handle the granny cables. You'll find the odd parkade & hotel parking lot that do as well, but I expect EV charging is something hotels will start offering soon, if they don't already. The largest gas station owner in Canada is already converting gas stations in British Columbia to "premium fueling/charging destinations" with coffee shops, restaurants, kids play areas & short walking paths, & will start in Ontario in a year or two. I think the idea is to stop every hour or two to recharge your car & yourself for ten or 15 minutes, but they're foreseeing a lot of profit changing from selling gas to selling electricity.
I love the conversations, but the tech talks are giving me such a great understanding of how the various elements fit together. Your clear no BS explanations really help. Thank you.
Excellent teck talk. I like to refer to chargers in miles per hour as it relates more to daily use. So the granny charger is about 6 miles per hour, the 7kw home charger is 24 or so and the DC chargers are 150-1000 miles per hour.
I understand your preference but not all electric vehicles have the same efficiently. Other conditions such as weather, temperature and driving style have significant impact on efficiency and thus range. to put this into perspective. a V12 Ferrari and a inline 4 Volkswagen have completely different fuel consumption. if we compare fuel pumps using km/s your results will depend on the fuel consumption of the vehicle.
I believe the new Hummers & maybe Esplanades have battery packs that split into two for rapid charging and can be plugged into two rapid DC chargers at once, or one charger with two outputs or something.
Hi I have an Mg5 long range I charge at work once a week from around 40% to 80% on a granny charger and once a month I do a balance charge up to 100% on the granny charger at work So as you say the car is working for you while it’s parked up I have only rapid charged 3 times and that is when I’m on holiday from work Really enjoying these tech talks and vintage voltage on the tv Cheers Ian 😃👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Great lesson for all of us Richard, thank you. By the way, keep bringing you're amazing and innovative creations on to Carwow, and showing the broader audience just how much better, efficient, and simple the electric world is. Cheers
@@stephen_101 Thanks. I probably would have won all the drag races if the battery wasn't sub-zero. It got faster as I did more runs, as the battery had time to warm up. But I think 0-60 in 3.8 seconds is fast enough in a Land Rover. :-)
@15:20 Worth mentioning with three-phase, public charging is at 400V, and it's square root of three because of the Wye connection. 32A * 230V * 0.001 = 7.4kW 32A * 400V * √3 * 0.001 = 22kW 400 / √3 = 230 Whilst 230V is the on paper target (+/- 10%), most of UK homes are around 240V and some up to 253V (230*1.1) The cars onboard inverter is still the limitation so the extra kW isn't useful. Modern EVs opting for a 7.4 (single-phase) 11kW (three-phase) AC max and use CCS for rapid. The 11kW comes from 16A even with 32A 16A * 400V * √3 * 0.001 = 11kW Rather than the 22kW and 43kW onboard that older cars like the Zoe had.
Mate, awesome vids. I’m an auto electrician in NZ and currently studying level 5 in electric vehicle auto engineering. The way you cover off how EV’s are used and charged is something that’s missing from my studies. It’s at least as important if not more so than the technical information covered off in my studies. Thanks heaps!
Excellent video, thanks. Normally I charge the battery when it is at 30-35% up to 80-85%, overnight. Only when I have a long trip the next day, I charge it up to 100%.
Your videos are getting better and better. Thank you! Simply great to look and „learn“. And this green Defender in the back - just outstanding (hope to get such Land Rover conversations from ECC in Europe (Switzerland) soon.
I've read a few articles in the past and they're always around +90% for home charging, around 7% charging at destination and around 3% on route. co-charger.com/knowledge-base/a-simple-guide-to-charging-an-ev/
I do a lot of camping. Two of my favourite sites are quite happy to let me plug the granny charger in on the pitch. It's great waking up every morning to a fully charged car ready to go exploring. I think that sites are more and more going to find that this is a selling point.
I have a 2017 30kw/hr Nissan leaf with 3.3kw max charger. I use portable (granny charger) for 99% of my charging needs. It is plugged into cooker outlet with 30 amp wiring. It doesn’t get hot or even warm at all. There is a temp sensor in plug which reduces charge in such event. My car is parked 25 metres away from my consumer unit! I was quoted £1500 which included grant for 7kw smart charger. That’s £1500 for an extra 1.1kw charge speed! True!…..it doesn’t have pen fault detection. Leaf has a charging timer for smart tariffs.
The best explanation I've ever heard! Thank you. I've never thought of it that way about chargingspeed but as you said most people out there are comparing chargingspeed with the time it takes to fill the tank with 70 liters of fossil fuel.
People underrate the granny charger. With no off street parking we've been using that as our primary device for two successive cars over six years. Typically it charges around 7 mph (adds 7 miles range per hour of charging) which means two or three times a week we plug it in overnight and 10 hours will add 70 miles. You need to know how to look after your cables (cable protector over the pavement, rain proof 13a extensions) and understand how not to overload your ring main or overheat (always fully uncoil extension leads). Of course it's slow but as Richard says, you wake up and leave the house with a full (enough) battery for the day. Occasionally we'll use a public charger, or a free destination ( eg supermarket) Fast Charger and they are quicker, or for the 6 days a year we do a long haul we can Rapid charge (even faster) on the motorway while we stop to pee. I don't spend any time charging - the car does it ;)
Although I'm an avid follower of your content and your videos are brilliant. Not everyone has the facility to charge from home (e.g. living in a flat or have to park off road).
That's totally correct. Only 75% of car owners in the UK have access to off street parking the other 25% have to charge at publicly available chargers. My father lives in a flat and chargers up at Tesco when he shops, at public car parks and at other free chargers. We call him the Plug Pirate, because if there's a free charger, he's there. I can't remember many free petrol stations back in the day. 😆😁👍
@@ElectricClassicCars , ye there are a lot of retired ev owners who just seem to leave their ev's plugged in on charging points for hrs it seems!!! Podpoint seems to have prob with this, why do people insist on charging to 100% when they are on 90% on a 200mile range car
That first bit must pertain to the UK for sure. Where I live most people can’t charge at home, nor work and the chargers are concentrated in the capital city and are either full or inoperative.
Hi Richard. Loving the tech talks, thanks. An idea for a future episode is to show us what goes on at the other end of the CCS cable, inside the car. There must be a normal(ish) AC charger for a type 2 connection, but what kind of electronics handle the DC? Or is it an expensive combined unit?
I like to say a basic wall outlet, here in the states that's 120v @8 amps, will get you 3 miles per hour into your battery. A dryer or other large appliance outlet, or an installed charger, will get you around 30mph. And a DC fast charger will get up to 300mph into your battery. There's a lot of simplification in that, but it's easy to say and clear enough. I've owned my Bolt for about a year and a half, still don't have a fast charger installed at home. Do almost all of my charging on a 'granny cable'. Only need public charging on road trips. 3mph overnight, plus sometimes more at the destination, is plenty for 90% of the trips I make.
I really like your explainations on why charge speed is not as important as most people that haven't had an EV think it will be. My only bugbear is referring to an EVSE (charger interface cable) as a "Charger" and the fact that there is no such thing as a "Home Charger". There are higher rated EVSE's/granny cables that can do 7kw no problem. The bigger wall mounted box's are just more expensive non portable EVSE's. We have a 32amp power point with an up to 7kw adjustable portable EVSE. To be honest we very rarley use it at 7kw and 90% of the time have it turned all the way down to 8AMPs (1.8kw). The bonus is that they are way cheaper than a non portable version and we can take it with us!
When I tell people about charging an EV on longer journeys (we have a Tesla Model 3) I say the method is to do "top ups". Travel a couple of hours and have stretch, loo break, or a coffee, and do a charging top up at the same time. Apart from long journeys, we never have to stop for a charge.
You are right about charging, it's definitely a mindset shift and the analogy I use when talking to people is that you leave home with a full 'tank' of electrons. I very rarely use public chargers and I suspect that's true for most EV owners who can charge at home.
An episode on optimal battery placement when doing a conversion would be interesting. Many conversations have batteries in boot spaces, or too much battery weight over the front wheels (in place of the engine). The low mounted under floor placement of the batteries is optimal but is it possible with a classic conversion? Has anyone out there attempted this? Super Fast Matt’s ol’ Jag is one that I’m aware of but the modern car is quite a different challenge.
We don't often have a lot of choice. Superfast Matt has the ability to install Model 3 batteries because of his huge Jag. The rest of us are just cramming them in where ever they fit.
As far as I gather, provision of rural charging points is still rather sparce, and I have friends who have encountered charging points out of order. Also in rural areas single points can often be occupied. Even at filling stations you can ending up queing at times. So overall theprovision of charging points remaind a problem in many areas. Thanks for the videos.
Hey Moggy. I'd love to know how the ac and heating systems works. Please do a video. Does the batteries require their own heating and cooling separate from the occupants of the car?
Love these tech talks, you make things sound so simple. I would love it if you could cover how you would go about deciding what the optimal system is to install in the classic you are converting. So, how do you calculate the motor size, the battery pack etc is it just based on power the client wants or the range, or both?
granny cable is more than enough for most people. unless you drive more than 150 km per day. overnight charging via granny cable covers that up nicely. say you come home at 8 pm and have to leave at 7 am. thats 11 hours of 2.5 kW, will give you 27.5 kWh > more than enough to cover 150 km however, you have to make sure that your wall outlet can support that load for extended periods of time
Thank you for another great, informative discussion and demonstration... Your passion and dedication is a real credit to the EV transport transformation.. Great job.. looking forward to catching up on your next Tech Talk.. BR, many thanks :-)
You can’t say that people need to stop worrying about how long they take to charge. If someone’s driving 250 miles a day they need to know how long they’re going to be stuck at the service station for on the way home. It’s a very important factor if you’re not going to be charging overnight
Another great tech talk. Could you add in the approx costings of the chargers / batteries and ancillaries as this would be very interesting to know too. Thanks 😊
Nice explanation! You didn't cover the Toyota self charging system. They do one that you don't need to plug in, it just magically charges. I'm being facetious 😏
Great video thanks. I looked up charger efficiency after seeing all the cooling fans and heat sinks. They appear to be around 93%. This should be considered in overall EV efficiency.
Great series of talks. I'm interested in the control side. What you use to replace the old ignition switch, dials etc and can you read more specific information in the way that you can get information out of an engine management system today.
Thank you, loving this in depth dive tech talks. 400v vs 800v be interesting plus grounding as I near some cars can be picky about the chargers they use (eg. Zoe). Why can some cars charge at 50kw and others at 300kw? Keep up the good work, really enjoying these.
Before my Tesla came in, I made notes of fueling times. A refuel for me was a 14 minute detour from my commute home. That was about 5 minutes detour each way and about 4 min at the pump. Over the last three years gas free, I haven't spent 3 seconds a week plugging in my Tesla. That's less than 10 minutes over three years. I would have spent over 35 hours fueling my car at a gas station over the last three years.
Yep, that's something that I would never have guessed when I was a petrolhead but it's true. I drive past petrol stations now and laugh at the old days. 😂👍
I’ve been binge watching your excellent shows, just having found it (after many years of following EVs!), but was hoping this one had to do with the various BMSes & how they actually handle battery charging & protection, over time. If you haven’t done such, you might want to start, historically with the memory constrained NiMhs, from how Honda engineers caved to bean counters & marketing to sacrifice battery life for temporary range by allowing discharge/charge beyond 20%-60%, while Toyota took the high road (& won!) by paying for more efficient drive systems that could perform well using a very conservative BMS profile. I understand the Leaf fell into the same trap, & many have yet to learn that EV engineering gives no quarter to “cost saving,” as S. Munro famously said, “Do me a favor & DON’T try to save me any money, I can’t afford it!” Recently, I saw an R1T/F150e comparo the showed Rivian with a analog based conservative & progressive charge profile with Ford having invoked a rather artificially imposed one that appears to be marketing based.
Thanks a lot for these Tech Talk, highly appreciated!! couple of questions on charging; - Does speed of charging impact battery life? - The battery of my PHEV is limited to ~80%, apparently to warrant battery life, is that a charging issue of battery issue?
Thanks so much for another tech talk! Love these, they are very good at braking it down to basics, we all need refreshers on those. What i would find really interesting if you could go into, is 1. How do you make battery boxes……more importantly what do you put in them and what do you put outside of them, ei contractors, fuses etc. Also 2, but still goes with the battery box questions, is how do you run the cables through the car, so what type of grommets do you use in and out of the battery boxes, and generally in the car? When do you use bus bars and when just cables…….. So i would love to Hear you do a deep dive on these questions:-). Thank you
@@ElectricClassicCars yeah it’s going great even though as always I wish I had more time!! I am now finally done with all the air suspension prep (tanks electricity manifold and air hoses are all in) and now I am changing out all hardware under the car, really fun and good quality stuff from LimeBug:-))
I’ve been driving a home conversion since 2015 and have never had to charge my car anywhere other than in my garage. I’d love to get some insight into how you manage to keep the controller cool..
I live in an Edwardian Mid Terrace house with no off street parking. Also parking outside my front door every day is a challenge. So this results in me not being able to consider an EV as having cables going from my houdse into the road pavement to charge the car is Verbotten
Once again Richard has hit the nail on the head. People are still very slow to understand that EV driving is DIFFERENT to fossil driving and that includes topping up. Not only do fossil drivers never drive their cars to empty (on purpose at least) and then fill them completely before even thinking of driving off again, but they almost never (if ever) drive the full range of the car in-between times. EV drivers fill up WHEN IT'S CONVENIENT. They can go somewhere, leave the car to fill and get on with OTHER THINGS in the meantime. Get a few miles in when you shop, get at least 80% while you go to the cinema, stop at a service station for lunch or plug in at home and charge overnight while you sleep. All things that are difficult or impossible with fossil cars. As Richard says, most fossil (ICE) drivers fuel up on the way because they never have a petrol station at home and petrol stations are never their final destination. EV drivers can fuel up at home, on the way AND at their destination. And even the most expensive chargers will be no more costly than petrol with many chargers being free altogether. Another hands down victory for electric vehicles.
You didn't cover which DCFC controllers are available for conversions! I know about the kit from Zero EV, are there other options? I've heard people re-use OEM hardware with reverse-engineered protocols as well. All options still seem very costly for something that "just" needs to talk from the BMS to the DC charger. Other fast charging question just out of curiosity: are you able to get AutoCharge to work on your conversions? (like Fastned/EnBW). As I understand it uses some sort of unique identifier that is part of the CCS protocol, I wonder how this value is set when using a CCS kit, and whether it will be whitelisted in Fastned and other's databases.
Damien Maguire has got the BMW i3 CCS module working on his BMW conversion ( details at the openinverter forums, fast charging section). Autocharge uses the MAC address of the CCS controller ( similar to ethernet addresses), which is factory programmed into the GreenPhy comms chip firmware in the CCS controller AIUI for autocharge, cars are enrolled via a charger, which records the address and associates it with your account.
I've always been frustrated by how people think about EV charging in the same sense as combustion engines. The way I explain it is every morning you start with a full tank.
Because some people need to drive 500+ miles in a day for a long trips which in many parts of the world make an EV an impossible choice making EVs options only for the rich or those who only need a city car. I love EVs but refuse to have one because of the limitations and ICE superiority. EV recharging in 10 minutes would be a different paradigm.
When I first started my EV project my mum said 'What if you have to drive to Perth (4,000km)?' I asked when was the last time she had driven Sydney to Perth. 1974.
That "not charging enroute" may be true in a tiny little country like the UK, where the absolute maximum from top to bottom is 300km! In Australia, I can't even get to the next state in 300kMs!
Very informative thanks. Question- is there any benefit to letting the battery run down and then recharging to full (or near full) ? Would that preserve the battery life ? Also do you think there will ever be a model where the battery pack is so small that you will pull in, unload your used battery and plug a fresh one in? Like a closed loop of batteries just being swapped around between vehicles.
There’s a couple of Chinese car companies working on battery swap technology and have stations that can automatically change a battery pack in a couple of minutes. Being an authoritarian country helps because the government can tell different companies to cooperate in designing a universal battery standard. That would never work under our capitalist system.
Very good content. One question. I have an electric motorcycle that is 87.6v 160Ah for a total of 14kwh LFP and I really want to be able to charge in a station unfortunately I know DCFC is out of the question but being able to charge in a AC ~20kw station would be a total win. How I could achieve it?
Great explanation and history of the charging. Am I right in thinking that you can use a type 2 charger on the CCS too?..... it just won't charge at the DC higher rate..... just "normal" type 2 (or phase 3) All we need now is for petrol stations to have as many charging points as petrol pumps..... and all car parks to have 50% (eventually 100%) of the spaces to have charging points too. 👍😉
Rich, I am thinking of putting together a mobile charging mobile truck what do you think about that? as a business, I live in L.A. ca. The USA. good or bad.? I'll need seed money...
I'm interested in that as well but I assume the cables are just thicker in the car since they don't have to be handled and bent during operation like the charging cable. But I might be wrong about that.
