Why Korean engineering is better than German engineering 

Bjørn is getting deep into the engineering. That's what sets Bjørn apart from the rest. He actually understand the tech. It's not witchcraft to Bjørn. I like it.

Again some high level ninja investigative journalism. The kind normal car journalists can't be bothered with. Nice video :)

@Bjørn Nyland, you do not have to speculate. The manufacturer (Brusa) of the Taycan DC booster confirms it is a pure doubler. If you search for "brusa taycan voltage doubler filetype:pdf" you should find a presentation with all the technical details, and their arguments for taking this path (efficiency and low complexity)

The idea of using one component for multiple uses is smart engineering. All companies that follow this mantra will do well.

Very interesting to see the different approaches, Nice seeing Hyundai make use of already required drive hardware to serve charging duty when not being driven, It seems like everyone is racing to charge as fast as possible more than anything as that’s the number one differentiating factor between a gas car at this point. People would be more willing to buy a lower capacity car if it already has fast charging. Cost to entry becomes much cheaper.

On my taycan plus (94.3 kWh) from 01/2022 with 25% I get 45.6 kW at 32% - 45.4 kW at 45% - 46.6 kW at 62% - 48.8 kW at 64% - 49.2 kW on 50 kW chargers (400v), values ​​taken from the car, I think they have already solved this problem. good job, I watch your channel from the beginning, I don't miss a day.😅👍

A lot of wrong here. The Inverter at the engine is a DC/AC converter. You can not use it directly for DC/DC. You can modify the inverter with an additional pick-up, capacitator, resitor,… to reuse the igbt or sic modules for a dcdc. BUT: it also cost additional weight, money and a not perfect efficiency because not used at an optimal working point. You wear the inverter modules, at 800V they already have a much worse lifetime, with hours of additional load. And in a defect, and that will happen on the lifespan of the car, you need to replace the fxxxx expensive emachine inverter. And it is a breakdown of the car when this defect occurs. So in my opinion it is a cheap solution to reuse the inverter, but not as cheap as expected and overall with a lot of disadvantages. Greetings from a german engineer.

For most EV buyers, how quick and consistently they charge is going to be one of the biggest issues. I applaud the Korean tech and am very curious to see their range of 7-seaters coming out next year and in ‘24.

true. theres already 450 500v chargers for passenger cars in korea. the goal as we already know, is 800v. korea is serious with ev and hydrogen cell power.

One of the best videos! Car manufacturers should always tell you voltage of the discharged battery and the charging curve.

I love learning this sheet from you. Made a lot of sense. Thanks. Glad to see you are on the mend.

"Yo, what's up"! I always look forward to new videos and this intro and this accent. Friendly, down to earth and funny. Always makes me smile.

Love your work Bjørn. Always getting to the nitty gritty, finding the facts! 👍

The difference of 2 years in development. That's why I'm also curious to see what car manufacturers will come up with in the next few years. So that no one can say that electric cars are not right for them.

The key point is : in a 50kw station, my Ev6 is always charging at 48-49kw, from 0 to more than 90%.

Excellent video and well explained thankyou Bjorn.

A little like the MPPT (Maximum Power Point Transfer) controllers used with solar panels that adjust the loading of the panel to extract the maximum power to charge the battery. The other system was pulse width modulation which adjusted the voltage output charging the battery, a lot less efficient.

Fun Fact: the 800V Inverter and many other components of the 800v system are from a German company that Hyundai buys there.

Koreans have been dealing with electronics for very long time. Germans are great at mechanic. EVs require both. This is why we will see lots of Korean cars that are better in electronics and software.

Get a well soon ,love the vlogs.

448 is amazing, even on the nastiest limited chargers, which sometimes are 110 amps locked, it still would do the trick to get to 50kw

It is indeed a very interesting idea. I don't know what exactly they are doing, but some sources also mention the motor is being used in that conversion somehow (but maybe it's just inaccuracy introduced somewhere on the way). As for the limit of the power being the limit of the inverter ‒ I suspect it might be just „recuperating“ from the DC instead of the motor (or something close enough), so the power limit would be similar to what the car can recuperate. I wonder if the idea could be pushed even further. Could the inverter be used as an AC charger too? While recuperating, it is converting the AC produced by the motor to the battery. In theory it should be possible to „recuperate“ from the grid AC too. That way the car wouldn't have to carry a specialized AC charger, it would be running the inverter way below it's max capacity, so it shouldn't eat up its lifetime much and it would not be limited to 11kW AC charging (which would be a nice benefit ‒ many places here have 22kW AC charges with 2-hour time limits on them ☹, there are even some 43kW AC chargers, still with AC prices, private fleet charges could be just these 43kW AC, much cheaper than 50kW DC ones, so an advantage to a fleet manager to pick Hyundai over something else). Does anyone know a Hyundai engineer? To suggest them the idea? I'd really love that to be in the next car I would be buying.

So Kempower listened to your advice, added more parameters to charging screen, nice!

And the question would be: how these different charging methods and the engineering behind these ideas affect battery life/temperature/ discharge etc etc as well as long life operation of the sub-parts? Is there any explanation? Usually Germans don’t do things just “becase.. especially on a Porsche I would get “suspicious”: they offering a less efficient car than way cheaper competitors? I really don’t know. But now we need one more video explaining that as well Bjorn 😁 On the other hand, I don’t think I understood anything 😂

My understanding is that the rear inverter is also used for the vehicle to load capabilities, so it has lots of capabilities for dc-dc, dc-ac and ac-dc conversion and voltage modification. Not sure if it is also for the on-board charger for AC charging but I wouldn’t be surprised. To be clear, I doubt that the exact same circuitry that conveys the dc to 3 phase ac to drive the motor (or opposite for regen braking) is also the circuitry that steps up the charger voltage and/or provides the ac power at the charge port for V2L, but it all in the same “box.”

Very interesting video!

Good sheeet man! Hope you feel better soon.

This feels like a casual rambling and conjecture, my impression was the Taycan pack simply splits the pack into two half’s for 400V charging. Hence the 2x observation. The upgrade pays for the larger current contactors etc to manage the switching mechanism hardware for 150kW DC.

Thanks again, Bjorn

Fantastic video

I charged Ioniq 5 last weekend and it pulled 56kW from 50kW Kempower, maybe it takes 450V and 125A all the time?

Wow Very interesting, looking forward too get my Ioniq MY23

When do you get your Model S Bjørn?

Wow! Good to know for the Porsche, is it good for Thailand? Slower charging speeds?

Please review the megane e tech!

I am having a simalar issue with my MG5 and in particular Osprey chargers if I arrive with a low state of charge I get a very low rate charging. Typically around 20 KW! I only get above 35 KWh at 65% then it cuts back above 75% back into the 20's again! This makes the 40 min 10 to 80% a laughable joke! I have also noticed the charging rate on Ionity and Gridserve chargers has become slower too. When new I was getting 75+ KW at around 40% today I am caped at a maximum 50KW throughout my charging time. Any clues why this will be?

Very interesting indeed. Porsche should learn from this. Maybe they will change something in the future. It is a pity that Volkswagen does not implement the 800 volt system in the MEB platform. I would love to see an iD4 and the Q4 Etron with an 800 volt system.

Good shiiet Bjørn 👍

Thank you for going into details like in this video. At least I wonder now which solution has more loss and why they don't use high power electronic switches (Mosfet ie) and switch each half of the battery in parallel for 400 V? The Porsche solution sounds rather like "ups, didn't we forgot something?" On the other hand I assume that a Porsche buyer does not drop his decision because of 500€ extra 😉

I agree with Bjørn that it would be better if the Taycan’s DC-DC converter was variable output so it could request a constant 450-500v to maximize power; however, the pack on the 94kW pack is much higher voltage than the 79kW pack of Powell and I believe 80%+ of Taycans have the larger pack. Also 800V/1000V chargers will soon be the standard and this is quickly becoming a non-issue.

It's very important to reduce weight and pieces in a Porsche, especially if they want to release an electric 911 in the future. That will be a challenge with this german brick tech...

I wonder how much of that technology is neither German nor Korean but actually Croatian. Porsche and Hyundai Motor Group have both invested a lot of money in Rimac.

I do not charge my Taycan on 50kW chargers… not a typical use case… more important is a fast charge in winter ;-)

Lets see how long the Hyundai/Kia inverters last, redundancy sometimes has its advantages.

I like what I hear, because I just got my EV6 :D Love the car!

I think you are wrong on a few points, but the main one is the battery charging would be constant current, rather than constant voltage. Therefore it wouldn’t matter about the charge voltage, as long as it was higher than the battery plus losses.

Inverters don't change voltages, they just convert it to AC (and back to DC),.DC to DC converters change voltages, which is what BOTH cars are using, Hyundai's is just a slightly better implementation.

I believe it was 2011 when Kia introduced on the car shows the new, redesigned Kia C'eed by the team of Peter Schreyer, I read that after VW kept their own show, the whole german delegation moved over to KIa's stand and frantically started to check through the cars which the media translated as some sort of a worry over competition quality. For several years it has been seen that Korea stands its ground when it comes to fine engineering.

Now that I know this is possible, I’d like to request Tesla does the reverse. Hold 900V and convert it down to pack voltage to give us V3 charging speed on all CCS 800-900V chargers 😁 🙏

Kudos to Korean, I can attest their engineering is much better than the German

In a Taycan delivered in November 2021, the data on an Easycharger charger in Spain with a cold battery and without preconditioning was 7.61 kwh in 10 minutes = 45.7 kwh. Has anything changed?

Actually I think that 800V-inverter tech came from Rimac. So there is a lot of Croatian engineering iin it as well :)

Are there any other 50 kW chargers outside Norway?

Does this affect how it can preheat the battery?

Wait so the e-gmp charging speed for 400v is almost the same as 800v ?

Lo mismo que le comentaba a Calero de @carwao cuando probó el Taycan y preguntaba por qué la potencia de carga era tan baja...

Just shared with Munro Live...☺️

I'm confused, how would an _inverter_ actually helps wrt to stepping up voltage for DC charging? 🤔

I think you should ask an elektro engineer from Porsche to give you an explanation. Anyhow. In the future all the cars will have an 800 volt system.

At 10:10 the limitation in charging speed on the Taycan is due to the 300 A max current on Kempower chargers, one of the lowest among HPC chargers.

huh..so the fastcherger is making ac-dc and the car converter does dc-dc??? why? you wil loose a lot energie.

Then let's hope that the electronics of the Electric motors of those Korean cars are easily serviceable. So when the converters dies from the additional wear of charging batteries, you will not have to replace the entire motor.

It will be interesting to see how Lucid have gone with this.

How do BMWs (bigger than i3) do this?

Very good one Bjorn.

What were the reasons for ev6 to beat ioniq5, basically same car 😂

Haha. Shots fired!

I heard that the e-tron GT don't has this converter the Porsch has, which meas that they did it different. How was the speed with the e-tron GT on 50kW? There are tons of charging videos on YT on HPCs, but i didn't found a video on 50kW. And on your Arctic circle video you also didn't mentioned the speed on the 50kW sessions.

Why did you choose to go with the English/American pronunciation of the word Porsche, after the video about how to pronounce words?

Bjorn is the best EV reviews. I am looking for Alex for Autos to have similar approach, but I think AA has to dumb it down for the murica audiences

Concerning your video title: „Koreans beets german engineering“ If you do research on the charging patents you will find a patent of Rimac discribing exactly the functionality of a dc booster using the induction and windings of the electric motor of an electric car. Due to the cooperation between hyundai and Rimac this charging system is sold exclusively to Hyundai. So its a very clever invention of the Croatian Engineers not German nor Korean. A big big honour that the descendant of Nicola Tesla (sad how history treated such a genus) rules at the moment the market for hyper cars and sell their intellectual property to the world. See also: newsylist kia-ev6-2021-electric-car-with-rimac-charging-system

Classic LiPo charging works by adjusting voltage to control amps flowing into the battery. So the Germans did nothing wrong. They used a well proved designed. Now - using the motor to step voltage up might be good or bad. It gives faster charging. But how about losses and motor wear ? This is a new unproven way to do things. Let’s hope it will last

And if you combine Korean and German Engineering... Lookin at you Hyundai N😏 Can't wait for Ioniq 5 N and Ioniq 6 N

I would be driving EV6 today if some st.pid engineer did not remove the back wiper!!!

First! 🤜

Kia/Hyundai also has several years of knowledge advantage due to their earlier ioniq/soul etc models. So taycan was a great first model, but clearly things can be improved.

as you know korea's manufacturing semiconductor, display, battery is top in the world.

The Taycans can be easily fixed with a software update to the inverter in my opinion. The Dc/dc converter can be relatively easily reprogrammed to ask for a higher voltage instead of half the pack voltage.

The key lies in Croatia and not in Germany or South Korea! Both have Rimac technology Porsche has just launched the car at an earlier stage of development

I just saw the charging curve of the BMW i4. Far away from Hyundai Corp.

What about the Ioniq, Kona, Niro reduction gear bearing failures as they don't have magnets on their filler/drain plugs to collect swarf?! That's a pretty basic engineering mistake to make..even the Leaf has them! Their maintenance schedule says to just 'check' the reduction gear oil..not 'change' it! ICE cars only have one set of reduction gears, EV's have two..so more swarf.

KIA🎉 Currently owning xceed 1.5 tgdi 160hp 3 years in future few years looking for kia EV 😮

Bjorn, now that Kia are better engineers lol will you be going to the Kia event in a few weeks?

Germans have been in the lead for so long they forget about the competition. Amazing how bad it is with such an expensive car.

Kia and Hyundai have shown themselves to be fast learners. If anyone catches up to Tesla's engineering it will likely be them.

Cuz is korean engineering is not overhyped and overpriced

But does it have diamonds!!? Probably not

But this also means that the Koreans have 400 volts on the motor, not 800. So they probably have a lot more heat loss there...

Korean engineering is better than Japanese too.

I wonder why Porsche would have picked a fixed rate inverter vs a variable inverter on the Kia, maybe they were hoping for more standardized charging… Hm.

It's not so much Korean engineering vs. German engineering since the EV6's 800V system was developed by Rimac, the EV hypercar manufacturer from Croatia. At least that's what it says on the internet. I have to admit that reusing the inverter as a boost converter is much smarter, though. Still, I do not understand why Porsche would develop a fixed boost converter because the additional effort to make it adjustable does not add much complexity in my opinion.

1. I am a bit surprised, because I thought that both of them buy the technology from Rimac, Croatia. 2. the Porsche was launched a year and a half earlier, so it will have a different stage of development. 3. even if the powertrain is probably developed in Korea, it is important to mention that Kia and Hyundai also have development centers in Germany, Rüsselsheim. In this respect, I find the headline inappropriate, populsitic.

Except I think Kia are using German electronics ... Vitesco Technologies

In the end Porsche Taycan charges fasteron this Kempower charger.

Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?

VW take note

Poosch Teikæn

Porsche is a small part of German car industry.

I enjoy watching your video's Bjorn, but please note to pronounce "PorschE", so with the e at the end. For the rest : keep up the good work 🙂

Why would the Korean Engineering be better when the Ioniq is charging below 80kW for the first 15 mins whereas the Taycan is at 100+ kW pretty much all the time? Also the maximum charging power is higher on the Taycan…