[HN Gopher] Bosch gives go-ahead for volume production of silico...
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Bosch gives go-ahead for volume production of silicon carbide chips
Author : Tomte
Score : 235 points
Date : 2021-12-02 12:57 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bosch-presse.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bosch-presse.de)
| roamerz wrote:
| I saw the title and at first thought there was something new in
| the world of cutting technology - something on the order of a
| self lubricating metal cutting bit.
| nayuki wrote:
| How does silicon carbide compare to gallium nitride, another
| semiconductor that features high frequencies and low losses?
| amirhirsch wrote:
| GaN has higher electron mobility but SiC has higher thermal
| conductivity.
|
| So GaN is more efficient for higher frequencies and higher
| power and SiC is better for high temperatures and has higher
| potential power density than GaN
|
| SiC will be cheaper and probably dominate GaN in production
| volume. Epitaxial GaN on SiC (and even GaN on diamond
| substrate) are used for high power, low noise at high frequency
| RF where the applications can justify the cost.
| ridgeguy wrote:
| There are RF power devices that consist of GaN structures
| built on a CVD diamond substrate.
|
| Diamond's thermal conductivity is uniquely high. The diamond
| substrate conducts heat away from the GaN FETs.
|
| RFHIC uses this technology in some of its high power
| microwave sources and amplifiers.
| baybal2 wrote:
| GaN is way worse for higher power levels, thus absence of it
| in high power power electronics.
|
| I haven't seen GaN transistor lower than 100mOhms, SiC is
| easily there.
| baybal2 wrote:
| I am talking about relatively high voltage ones
| pwr-electronics wrote:
| I can't think of a manufacturer off-hand where even a
| majority of their 600V+ GaN power devices have a static
| on-resistance of at least 100 mO. Infineon, GaN Systems,
| Transphorm, Nexperia, and TI are all majority less.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Are you in power electronics?
| jl2718 wrote:
| Order of magnitude cheaper, not as efficient for photonics, can
| be integrated with Si through epitaxy.
| lnenad wrote:
| What do you think is that magic range figure that we need to
| achieve, which will stop all of these range related news from
| being a daily thing?
|
| Imho it's 600+ miles on a single charge, with a 300m recharge in
| 10 minutes.
| sixothree wrote:
| Serious answer I've heard many times. For anyone on the coast
| from Texas to Florida, it means being able to evacuate a
| hurricane. This means the possibility of sitting in traffic for
| 12 hours to travel 300 miles.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Good point. It is comforting to have access to a backup ICE
| car.
|
| The other thing you can get burned with is to forget to
| charge before a trip. If so, it's about an hour detour to
| drive to super charger, wait and get back.
| ksec wrote:
| >Imho it's 600+ miles on a single charge, with a 300m recharge
| in 10 minutes.
|
| In my opinion the Battery equation is already solved. Even for
| those who are at the end of longer driving range curve, we have
| a solid and realistic roadmap of battery technology. Pick Tesla
| tabless battery for example. It isn't Solid Battery like Holy
| Grail Battery, but it gets to the point where even if you are
| somewhat skeptical of EV, surely this is edging close to good
| enough?
|
| People often confuse range anxiety with battery capacity. I
| dont think that is strictly true. It is one of these things
| where engineers would come in and suggest we need bigger
| battery to solve our customer's problem. But here is an product
| person POV, what if you have fast charging station
| _everywhere_. From your car pack living in cities, to packing
| in a mall or pubic parking space. This is similar to charging
| smartphones. Once you can charge your smartphone even dinning
| in Restaurants or on a Bus. You dont get nervous about running
| out of battery.
|
| So as many comment have suggested, the biggest obstacle to EV
| isn't battery, is the abundance of Charging station. And given
| I actually believe City transport in the future should be micro
| mobility, whether that is e-bike or something else we have yet
| imagined, we need charging port for both bike and EV. And this
| needs some government planning.
|
| While this is all good discussion, I really wish we focus more
| on silicon carbide :)
|
| I wonder why they didn't jump straight to 300mm and only
| upgraded to 200mm wafers. They could have completely cornered
| the market with better economy of scale.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There are not enough range anxious people to continue to keep
| ICE manufacturers going. It's more a question of when
| production stops rather than if. There are a few holdouts of
| course that might last until they actually get banned on most
| roads. But for most manufacturers that is going to be a lot
| sooner than they are hoping right now.
|
| That will no doubt upset some ICE vehicle owners with enough
| disposable income that they could feasibly be targeted with a
| lucrative product that appeals to them. Good news is that cars
| with 600 miles and 10 minute recharge to 300 mile (50%) are
| totally feasible!
|
| E.g. the hummer that GM is rumored to be working on will
| apparently have 200kwh. Of course it has the weight of a Tank
| and the aerodynamics of barn door, so it might not be enough to
| get to 600 miles.
|
| If Tesla ever puts that kind of battery in a Tesla it would
| probably end up with close to 1000 mile range and they would
| need to make it a bit bigger. That's 20 hours non stop driving
| at 50 miles an hour. Absolutely nobody should be doing that.
| But you could build a car that does that. That's a about 3x
| what they currently put in a model 3 (75kwh). It will be a bit
| heavier of course so maybe not 3x the range. But you get my
| point. Solvable problem for people with money.
|
| For the rest of us normal people, take a break & plug in, go to
| the bathroom, eat some lunch, stretch your legs, relax, etc.
| After the 300+ miles that you can get with a few decent EVs
| that's probably a good idea. It's not the end of the world.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assume there are plenty of poorer people in nations with
| poorer electric infrastructure to keep ICE manufacturing
| going for a long time. At least a couple decades.
|
| The more fossil fuel consumption drops in developed
| countries, the cheaper fossil fuels get, which would then
| allow people who currently cannot afford fossil fuels to buy
| them and replace demand.
| [deleted]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > There are not enough range anxious people to continue to
| keep ICE manufacturers going.
|
| True in some smaller countries, but in places like the United
| States it's very common for people to do a road trip
| occasionally to visit family or go on vacation.
|
| Stopping for a 30-60 minute charge a couple times per trip
| isn't terrible, but it would mean that my annual family visit
| would become a 2-day drive instead of a 1-day drive. I can
| deal with that, but many people aren't ready for it.
|
| I doubt we'll see gigantic batteries going into small cars
| for ridiculous range. The efficiency hit would be too large
| due to the extra weight. I think fast charging and a fast
| charging network is what we need.
|
| But charging networks are the real issue at this point.
| They're out there, but interoperability issues means the
| various networks often don't work as fast as they claim or
| maybe not at all with your car. Range anxiety is bad enough,
| but when you can't even be sure the charging station will
| work when you get there it's a different level of worry
| altogether.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Depends, if you don't toad trip much in a huge geography like
| the usa or australia, and have a house, range is already
| solved.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| In the US I've driven several cross country trips (multi-
| thousand miles) in a Tesla with 300 miles of range. It's not
| only not a big deal; it's the most comfortable touring car I've
| ever owned.
|
| If you stick to interstates, recharging at superchargers is
| easy. If you travel on smaller roads you have to plan more
| carefully to find destination chargers, RV parks, etc along the
| way but so far that hasn't been a problem for me.
|
| Granted I recharge in my garage so I can commute locally
| without ever needing to think about range, but for purposes of
| long-distance driving I think range anxiety is an overblown
| issue, at least for Teslas in the US.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Looking at the trip I took over Thanksgiving, there are 3
| Superchargers on the route, 2 of which I would pretty much
| have to stop at. The 3rd one is more than 300 miles from the
| start, and the second one is more than 200 miles from the
| destination. So 2 stops, 10-15 minutes each. One stop is
| several miles from the freeway on a busy town road, which
| isn't bad, but another 10-15 minutes. The other stop is very
| close to the freeway, so pretty much just charge time.
|
| The largest gaps between gas stations on that trip are
| probably 20 or 30 miles.
|
| I would describe the Supercharging trip as very doable, but
| it requires following ~1 available plan vs just stopping when
| it is convenient (for a bathroom break or snack or whatever).
| ec109685 wrote:
| Yeah, planning is key. We do a Bay Area to Central
| California trip regularly and there is no super charger at
| destination, nor is there one close enough on the way back
| along the route, so you can't drive there and back and land
| at a super charger on the route. And if you use the car (or
| just let it sit) some power is drained at destination.
|
| Charging on the way there just doesn't feel right since we
| have enough juice to get there and everyone is anxious to
| reach destination, but it's the only way to ensure we don't
| have to take a detour at some point.
|
| We solved this by getting an adapter so we can charge at
| their house using their dryer plug.
|
| Yes, these are completely first world problems but it adds
| just enough hassle I could see some people just wanting to
| use an ICE car to make the trip.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Agreed. Tesla touring requires more planning than touring
| in an ICE car. But the car itself (and the Plugshare app)
| helps with the planning process. I enjoy planning; some
| people might not. In general I find the supercharger
| locations occur at about the right interval for a pee break
| and a leg stretch, and more superchargers are being added
| all the time.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Range is solved. The issue now is charger density. In some more
| remote places you may have to go 50 miles to find a charger.
| Same thing was probably an issue for gas cars a long time ago
| and it solved itself when gas stations became profitable
| everywhere.
| ec109685 wrote:
| You can't fill up a ICE car at home, so the density will be
| less as a result.
|
| I know people all can't charge at home and street parking is
| a thing, so it seems like 400+ mile range and 10 minute fill
| ups 10 minute away will be needed.
| pornel wrote:
| I don't think it needs any new inventions, only wider rollout
| of what we can do already: fast DC chargers.
|
| Current EVs need a 20 min charge per 3 hours of driving. It may
| not be ideal for pee-in-a-bottle cannonball racers, but IMHO
| it's entirely reasonable for most people. It's approaching a
| point of diminishing returns.
|
| Compare this with charging of smartphones vs brick phones.
| Daily charging used to be considered a dealbreaker, but fast
| charging made it a no-big-deal, and people got used to it.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| this will vary a lot by region. some places are more densely
| populated than others. looking up regional statistics of
| average trip length and percentiles (like the length of 95% of
| trips) could give some objective metrics to complement what
| might be primarily psychological / behavioral hangups
|
| I think what would really clinch this is not creating
| gargantuan batteries but simply making batteries universal
| plug-n-play. So if needed you just stop a _battery station_ and
| replace it.
|
| This solves also the unfortunate bottleneck of everybody
| charging their batteries during night-time, which (last time I
| checked) is when the sun is not shinning...
| alkonaut wrote:
| Depends on the available charging infrastructure. If you can go
| 6-7 hours without passing a fast charger and it's -20C outside
| then you need the equivalent of a 60L diesel tank (1000km
| range) to manage.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I wonder not so much about retail customers as _commercial_
| ones. The Hertz-Tesla deal is spectacular, but what about all
| those dirty diesel Transit vans? Container trucks? The latter
| in particular need to manage the 8-10h maximum legal shift of a
| driver with a full load.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Maybe it's less about range than having charging available
| everywhere.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well the range is shorter, towing anything reduces range
| further, charging is slow, few gas stations support electric,
| the initial car price is higher and I'm sure there are other
| arguments as well.
| _ph_ wrote:
| I do think that the required range is much less, especially
| with fast recharge. What is required is to have more people
| actually drive electric cars and of course make sure, that
| there are enough recharging spots.
| pmontra wrote:
| And trasform into electricity all the energy that we deliver
| as gasoline and diesel now.
|
| That could come from burning oil (probably new power plants)
| or from solar or whatever (new infrastructure anyway.)
| sveme wrote:
| For me personally, it is 500km range under bad conditions,
| i.e., 120km/h speed and in winter. Alternatively 300km range
| added in about 15mins. Make such a stop after three hours
| anyway.
| speedgoose wrote:
| You forgot to say that you need to pull a boat on a trailer
| and that you go uphill both ways. As they say, if an electric
| car can't do that, then they are not viable to anyone.
| ianai wrote:
| Right. The current 300 mile target is fine for cities or
| more dense regions. But I routinely drive around 250 miles
| with large uphills regions in weather that requires AC. The
| uphill parts are like a 2x range cost compared with the
| rest.
| speedgoose wrote:
| And you drive that much without taking a break?
| ianai wrote:
| In terms of parking at a charger, yes I drive that
| without taking a break. I mean I'm going shopping "in the
| city". But that city only has one or two fast chargers
| for EVs and they're very much out of the way and a little
| crime ridden for my comfort. We've also got a whole
| charging station going to waste apparently because it
| broke shortly after being built and not being brought
| back up.
|
| This isn't what the future looks like if we're replacing
| ICE vehicles with electrics. A driver needs to be able to
| pull into just about any commercial parking lot and find
| a fast charger. The most obvious would be wiring up the
| big box and grocery stores with fast chargers. But I've
| seen maybe a handful of those across three states.
|
| Oh btw I'm talking only about the US. It should be a
| known that the distances in the west US easily exceed
| those in the northeast and Europe on average.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| > This isn't what the future looks like if we're
| replacing ICE vehicles with electrics. A driver needs to
| be able to pull into just about any commercial parking
| lot and find a fast charger. The most obvious would be
| wiring up the big box and grocery stores with fast
| chargers. But I've seen maybe a handful of those across
| three states.
|
| Can you drive into just about any commerical parking lot
| and find a gas station to fill up with? We certainly need
| a much denser network of fast charging than exist today.
| But we don't even need to achieve the same density as our
| current gas refueling infrastructure because many people
| will be able to charge at home overnight. At some point
| apartment complexes will start to provide charging
| station for some or most of their residents.
|
| Remember most people will only need to charge to full
| once or twice a week.
| dmitriid wrote:
| It's a 4-5 hour drive. Yes, you may take a break (I do),
| but it will be liek a half-hour break, at most, and most
| available chargers (if they are available, in Europe),
| will give you what? 10 miles extra in that time?
|
| Add extra weight (luggage) or anything external
| (skis/snowboard on the roof rack), and boom, your
| effective range in an electric vehicle has gone down by a
| factor of 1.5 or more
| speedgoose wrote:
| Depends on the EV and the conditions of course but you
| can charge quite a lot during half an hour. Probably more
| than half a the range. It may actually be faster to do
| two shorter breaks with the current technology.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > you can charge quite a lot during half an hour.
|
| Strictly depeds on the charger. Where I live, the vast
| majority of chargers are slow chargers, and all fast ones
| are usually occupied.
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _you may take a break (I do), but it will be liek a
| half-hour break, at most, and most available chargers (if
| they are available, in Europe), will give you what? 10
| miles extra in that time?_
|
| Depends on the charger and the car. Ionity's chargers are
| 350 kW:
|
| https://ionity.eu/en/design-and-tech.html
|
| And, for example, cars on Hyundai's E-GMP platform
| (currently Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and Genesis GV60)
| can charge 10 to 80% in 18 minutes:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J46mG7I78Q
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCqcqy29ZCc
|
| The Kia EV6's WLTP range is 528km so 80% of that is
| 422km. If we say the real world highway range is more
| like 400km then 80% would be 320 km.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Ionity's chargers are
|
| And their availability is?
| clouddrover wrote:
| Excellent. And they're not the only DC fast charging
| provider. There's FastNed, EnBW, Allego, etc. Even Tesla
| has started to open their chargers to all makes (only 10
| sites in the Netherlands so far).
| dmitriid wrote:
| Define "excellent". As in "available to anyone at anytime
| at short notice"?
| clouddrover wrote:
| Nothing is available to anyone at anytime at short
| notice, except possibly disappointment.
|
| Here are examples of some of the best charging stations
| in Europe and the UK:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TVohXHjLro
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK2shbCwDYM
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoN4WCpuxHY
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yra3AsicSRY
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Nothing is available to anyone at anytime at short
| notice
|
| Funny. When I drive a regular car, gas stations are
| available all the time, at short notice. With a
| throughput of possibly hundreds of cars an hour.
| clouddrover wrote:
| Nope.
|
| Fuel shortage:
| https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/28/business/fuel-
| shortage-uk...
|
| Fuel shortage: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59059093
|
| Fuel shortage:
| https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/canadian-province-
| exten...
|
| Fuel shortage: https://www.ibtimes.com/diesel-shortage-
| amid-soaring-prices-...
|
| Things are tough all over in the real world.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Nope
|
| Yup
|
| > Fuel shortage
|
| Ah yes. Extraordinary short-term events affecting only
| some regions vs. chronic shortage of available fast
| chargers pretty much everywhere.
|
| Yup, same thing.
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _Extraordinary short-term events_
|
| You picked the conditions of the contest, son. You
| claimed " _available_ to _anyone_ at _any time_ at _short
| notice_ ".
|
| You were straight up wrong. Deal with it.
| dmitriid wrote:
| It's not a contest, and I didn't pick conditions for it.
| This is called a reality.
|
| This all started with a discussion of a long trip. The
| reality is that, _at best_ , EVs require you to do very
| careful planning with potentially lengthy breaks
| regardless of "excellent coverage" and exuberant youtube
| ads of "best charging stations".
| clouddrover wrote:
| If your grand insight is that charging infrastructure is
| still being built out then that's no insight at all. New
| stations are going in daily.
|
| Look, if you're too afraid to think about EVs now then
| the best advice is not to worry about it. Live in the
| happy tail as a late adopter. By then all the decisions
| will have been made for you and you won't have to think.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Look, if you're too afraid to think about EVs
|
| Ah yes. "Son", "deal with it", "afraid to think about
| EVs", a couple of Youtube vidoes. The grand arguments of
| a person who pretends they have any arguments.
|
| No one is "afraid to think about EVs". Those who actually
| _think_ about EVs see what they are, and all the problems
| they have right now. Good luck to early adopters, come
| back when you have more arguments than those listed
| above.
| clouddrover wrote:
| But you plainly are afraid, kid. You've done nothing but
| argue dishonestly. You set a ridiculous standard that not
| even gas stations meet and you think you've discovered
| something. You haven't.
|
| EVs are here now, they work, and they're getting better
| year by year. No amount of whining from you will change
| that.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| 250 miles without breaks is not a big challenge.
|
| I routinely drove 400-500 kms without stopping when I
| toured Europe.
|
| Once on the highway you only have to go straight, anybody
| can do that.
|
| The only secret is to not make it a strict rule, if you
| feel like stopping, just stop.
| speedgoose wrote:
| It's actually unsafe. You have never been exposed to the
| communication campaign about taking breaks for safety ?
| You for example can see signs about this on the French
| motorways.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| it's unsafe if you don't stop when you feel the need to
| stop.
|
| Also: never drive long distances alone.
|
| I worked as a roadie in the music business, and I would
| never put in danger the 5-6 sometimes 9 people I had in
| the van with me, with all the equipment.
|
| I just drive at a regular pace around 100 kms/h and use
| the cruise control whenever possible
|
| I also set the limiter to something below the speed
| limit, to remind me to not go too fast (sometimes you
| find yourself speeding without even noticing because the
| road allows you to)
|
| I never drove more than ~5 hours straight and of course
| it all depends on the road conditions, crossing the
| Italian Alps toward Austria with snow it's not the same
| as cruising on German highways (where there's always some
| kind of fixing going on, so you aren't really going that
| fast)
|
| All in all the safest safety device right now is the
| human driving.
|
| But modern safety technologies are more than welcome ,
| you can set a safety distance from the car in front of
| you, they follow the lines on the road so they actually
| can correct you if you make a mistake or are distracted,
| it got a lot better than the 90s where I drove my dad's
| car for 9 hours from my house to go snowboarding on the
| Alps. We were a gang of four and took turns.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| At least two Tesla models have towing options (Models X and
| Y). Hills are not a big problem because you get some of the
| energy back when you go downhill again. The real issue is
| the air resistance of whatever you're towing, which you
| cannot regenerate. To mitigate this you drive slower and
| accept some range decrease.
| fallingknife wrote:
| You know that drops your range in a gas car too, right?
| Andys wrote:
| Yes, but the full-range refill takes only a few minutes,
| and generally at a station that has room for you to
| refuel while a trailer is attached.
|
| There's still a ways to go.
| clouddrover wrote:
| Towing is currently tedious with EVs. Not much range, not
| many chargers with pull through parking:
|
| https://www.thedrive.com/news/43320/how-an-electric-
| rivian-r...
|
| Just more pull through parking at chargers would help a
| lot.
| asplake wrote:
| Who says that? Most people don't pull trailers
| [deleted]
| speedgoose wrote:
| People against EVs. Though they are less and less vocal.
| People do love trailers in Norway. It's actually a very
| important car feature, even though they need to pull a
| trailer once a year on average.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| You don't need to be against EVs to be concerned about
| range. You can be pro EV and still be anxious that
| current ones won't fit your life situation. Let's not
| polarize unnecessarily.
| cycomanic wrote:
| The problem is that the range arguments are always
| brought as if they were a general use case. Most people
| will have maybe 1 or 2 trips a year that go over 500km in
| one trip. They still insist on buying a car for being
| able to do that trip, instead of buying a car for their
| general use case and renting a car for that one trip (if
| really necessary). Similar arguments for being able to
| transport 7 people, pulling a trailer, going off road
| etc.. People hardly ever need this they still buy cars
| because of this capability. Even disregarding electric
| cars, it doesn't make any economic sense.
| speedgoose wrote:
| True, but usually people asking for a lot of range are
| looking for arguments to dismiss EVs. It's very few
| people who actually need more range than what is offered
| today, assuming you have a charging network developed
| where you drive.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| In my experience this dismissive attitude you're talking
| about used to be much more common 5 years ago than it is
| now. Many people today want to go electric but are
| concerned about their own use case, and their expressions
| of range anxiety are personal concerns, not points of
| virtue. The way to ease them into it is to be a good role
| model, not to debated them on absolute terms. The
| paradigm has changed for the better.
| bluGill wrote:
| In my experience most people do pull trailers. It is a 1%
| use case, but they have a SUV instead of a sedan or two
| vehicles for a few 1% cases.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| The petrolhead press will never stop criticizing electric cars
| until their range is 10 times that of a comparable weight of
| gasoline, and then they will choose some new strawman to
| battle, like cobalt or grid capacity or whatever. These guys
| are not interested in a fair conversation.
|
| I wish that government electric car subsidies would be
| retargeted at cheap cars. I want to drive an electric economy
| car, not a luxury car. Here in Switzerland, we kind of have
| that: subsidies are in the form of a 99% reduction in road tax,
| so that every year you get a subsidy, flashy car or boring car.
| I'd like to see the kind of people who have to flash their cash
| (ahem, Tesla buyers) pay for moderate income car owner's road
| taxes.
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _The petrolhead press will never stop criticizing electric
| cars_
|
| No. The petrolhead press praises today's EVs for what they're
| strong at (acceleration) and correctly criticizes them for
| what they're (generally) weak at (price, range, charge time).
| When EV's come along with strong range like the Mercedes EQS
| and the Lucid Air they are rightly praised for their range.
|
| > _and then they will choose some new strawman to battle_
|
| No. This is just a strawman of your own.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| With opex being so much lower for electric, I'll believe they
| pay for themselves when corporate fleets become all electric
| on new fleet additions (e.g. delivery drivers/taxis).
|
| Right now; they seem to be going for hybrids.
|
| If they can't make the economic case for electric, I don't
| know how anyone that drives 1/5th or 1-10th as much can.
| robocat wrote:
| > delivery drivers/taxis
|
| I suspect that is an unfair comparison. Electric cars often
| don't make sense for high duty cycle uses, or for long
| distance driving around town during the time they are
| active. Every minute waiting for a charge is a minute the
| vehicle is slack and wasting the driver's time.
|
| Overnight charging works for lower km commuters, depending
| on specifics of opex and capex.
| ekianjo wrote:
| The cheapest car is the one you never change or replace.
| Subsidizing buying new cars is not environment friendly at
| all, its just consumerism.
| coddle-hark wrote:
| My local Hyundai dealer told me that buying a new car every
| 6 months is the cheapest way to own an EV right now.
| trulyme wrote:
| Of course their incentives might be a bit different than
| yours are. ;)
| kortex wrote:
| Sounds like something someone motivated to sell cars
| would say.
|
| Even with subsidies, that first leg of depreciation is
| the steepest slope. Like I don't see how that beats just
| buying and owning it.
| coddle-hark wrote:
| Supply is so constrained now (and was even before the
| chip shortage) that it can take up to a year to get a new
| car delivered, this changes the depreciation curve a bit.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Today's new cars are tomorrow's used cars.
|
| ...that is, provided that said new cars are built with
| longevity in mind instead of planned obsolescence.
| Targeting subsidies toward EVs that maximize user-
| repairability and mandating right-to-repair would hopefully
| encourage that.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Today's new cars only become tomorrow's new cars if the
| owners keep buying new cars.
|
| The purpose should be to make car manufacture a smaller
| industry, and have people buy a car once every, say,
| 20-40 years, using the same car in between.
| rincewind wrote:
| People who say "electric cars are good enough now, the
| median distance driven is just 20km anyway" act as if
| that's a good thing.
|
| If you use an electric car only for a commute, why not
| commute by bicycle or by bus? Why buy an electric car at
| all if you only ever drive short distances? Why not take
| the train if you are going long distance only four times a
| year?
|
| Why even buy a new car then?
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Public transport is never going to provide a
| comprehensive point-to-point network, and every switch
| dramatically increases the cost (in terms of time,
| effort, and finances). The only way it can be remotely
| viable for commuting is if your city is organized into a
| hub-and-spoke model where everyone commutes into the same
| city core.
|
| But that gets you _very_ congested stations (great for
| occasions like COVID!), and is murder for a city 's
| social life (since you're more than doubling the cost of
| visiting friends). I know, because I live in a
| city^Hhellscape designed like this...
|
| Bikes, you say? Well, my old 20km commute took around an
| hour by ebike, around twice the time of the car. And that
| was an unpleasant experience in the best case, that got
| virtually unviable with weather (rain, leaves, ice,
| whatever else). And again, unviable for socializing since
| nobody I'm visiting is going to have an ebike charger
| (nor is it guaranteed that I'd be staying there long
| enough for it to work).
| bluGill wrote:
| Public transit can be organized much better than that.
| There need not be one hub in a city for example. Sure it
| will never cover 100% if all cases well, but it can cover
| enough to get the majority of the people to not have a
| car at all.
|
| Most of the leaders of transit systems are not interested
| in good transit though. (The exceptions don't speak good
| English from what I can tell )
| Nullabillity wrote:
| > There need not be one hub in a city for example.
|
| That's not a solution, that's just moving to another
| point on the continuum between the downsides of hub-and-
| spoke and the downsides of point-to-point.
|
| And this kind of hub bifurcation typically only serves to
| make residential-to-residential journeys even worse,
| setting up social barriers based on which hubs people
| have easy access to.
|
| > The exceptions don't speak good English from what I can
| tell
|
| Can't really respond to this if you're not interested in
| citing which "good" example you'd like to see emulated.
| sfifs wrote:
| When you're buying a car, you're buying optionality for
| personally controlled mobility that's comfortable,
| immediately available, weather proof and able to carry
| people and cargo - even if you regularly take public
| transport, there can be major benefits to this.
|
| Today, i live in a modern mega city were this kind of
| facility is available at any time of the day with a wait
| time of < 10 mins although i have a few situations a year
| where I've had to cancel appointments because i just
| couldn't get a cab. These instances are few enough that I
| don't bother with owning a car.
|
| However in my previous city, many of these conditions
| were simply not true - so I had a car and because it was
| a low cost of living country, a driver too from the time
| we were expecting our first child to minimise the strain
| and uncertainty of chaotic traffic and parking. I used to
| get dropped at a convenient public transport point in a
| way that minimised my total commute time.
|
| Where my parents and cousins live, most of these
| conditions are not true and they're forced to own a car.
|
| As another example, in Japan, a very large proportion of
| households own a car for the optionality even though most
| commute via train to work because the places they live in
| don't have the facilities.
| xorcist wrote:
| That's 1000 km. Which is much farther than any gasoline powered
| car with a full tank.
|
| Range anxiety will stop being a thing when electric vehicles
| are common and nobody thinks of them a something special. It's
| a matter of social acceptance, and the infrastructure that
| follows.
| ec109685 wrote:
| You can always find a gas station that will get you going
| within 10 minutes, so it's a different consideration when
| charging is hard.
|
| Driving an EV would be terribly annoying if I didn't have a
| charger at home, but I know people that rely on super
| charging to keep their car going (have free super charging
| given early Tesla adopter).
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I think general familiarity is a bigger factor.
|
| The news won't stop when some technical or economic barrier is
| passed (which I'd argue has already happened) but when people
| generally believe it to be true.
|
| But the news won't stop, because battery, motor, charging
| innovations now have an even bigger market and even more people
| will be working on it. They'll just change from "this is the
| breakthrough that makes EV practical" to "this innovation will
| make your already more than adequate EV even better and cheaper
| in a relentless progress of technology".
| phkahler wrote:
| In city driving somewhere from 200 to 300 miles will be enough.
| For long trips, charge time is important and can be reduced by
| using higher voltage batteries. 10 minutes is still out of
| reach.
| ec109685 wrote:
| We did 400 miles / hour at super charger just recently on a
| 2018 car, so 100km in 10 mins. Yes, not there, but getting
| closer. 2x better than where it was a few years ago.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Range is no longer an issue for electric cars in most of
| Europe. Here in Norway 70% of new cars sold in November were
| battery electric with the Tesla Model Y being the winner. For
| the year as a whole more than 60% of cars sold are electric and
| the Model Y is the winner. Also sold are lots of Citroen,
| Renault, VW, Audi, Jaguar, and a substantial number of Porsche
| and some Toyotas.
|
| My 2015 Model S 70D has a range of 330 km in summer a little
| less in the winter. I use a supercharger to add perhaps 40%
| charge about once a week, the rest of the time I charge
| overnight.
|
| Hardly anyone needs 600 miles and no one seems concerned that
| it takes an hour to add 300 km because most people charge
| overnight.
|
| 14.8% of private cars in Norway are electric now, more than 25%
| if you include hybrids.
|
| The only thing holding most people back from buying electric is
| the cost and that is why we have so many in Norway, at the
| moment they are exempt from the purchase taxes and annual fees
| that ICE cars must pay.
| ppg677 wrote:
| Doesn't it get cold in Norway? I live in the Upper Midwest of
| the U.S. In our colder months, the range of a Tesla can drop
| in nearly half.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Do you know this from first hand experience? Or is it just
| something you heard somewhere? It is certainly not my
| experience of my 2015 Model S 70D. If it is really cold
| (-20C) and I am doing short journeys (so the battery never
| gets warm) then it might drop by 25%.
| aakour wrote:
| To counter all the whataboutism in the replies to your
| comment, I just wanted to say that I live in a flat in
| central Berlin and park on the street, and charging or range
| have never been actual issues. My car use consists of trips
| around Berlin and Germany, driving to rural Finland and back,
| regularly towing a trailer, etc.
| underscore_ku wrote:
| 74% :P https://electrek.co/2021/12/03/norway-again-shows-all-
| electr...
| thendrill wrote:
| I bet you live in Southern Norway.
|
| Good luck driving electric in the North.
|
| Also. Electric cars are slow.... Good luck holding 120 kph
| with an electric and not watch the battery melt.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| I bet you don't live in Norway at all and I also doubt that
| you have first hand experience of driving an EV. My battery
| doesn't melt at 120 kph nor does it melt at 240 kph on the
| autobahn.
| rconti wrote:
| Good electric cars are not slow any more than good ICE cars
| are slow. If you don't think EVs can handle 120kph perhaps
| you should visit California. I quite regularly hold 140kph,
| it's simply not an issue.
|
| By the way, where are you going 120kph? I think I averaged
| 80kph between Bergen and Oslo. I was shocked at how slow
| typical road speeds are in Norway.
| vegardx wrote:
| I know several people that live "in the north" that have
| BEV. They seem to be doing fine.
|
| I regularly drive for 4 hours straight on highway speeds on
| a single charge. The battery doesn't melt. I don't know
| where you get that idea from, certainly not reality.
| throwawayay02 wrote:
| But how can people living in cities charge their cars
| overnight? Does each private garage spot have it's own
| electricity meter?
| xbmcuser wrote:
| Why does it need to be overnight though. Cars are also
| parked 9-5 when people are at work easily long enough for a
| full charge also with the added benefit of cars getting
| charged with solar in many places. As more electric cars
| get on the road the charging infrastructure will get built.
| At night charging will get expensive in the future as more
| electric cars and start charging at night.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| People living in cities don't need cars. At least, that
| should be the goal.
| [deleted]
| avianlyric wrote:
| Use charging point in the street, if it a communal or
| private garage install a charging point.
|
| A basic charging point capable of charging a car and
| accurately measuring consumption for the purpose of
| charging costs about $700.
|
| Electricity meters are extremely simple and cheap devices.
| There's literally nothing probative about installing one in
| every parking space. While your at it, might as well
| integrate a proper car charger.
| cowl wrote:
| nothing excet economics. And I'm not talking only about
| the huge cost of having 1 charging point for each parking
| space, but I doubt current utitlity pole lines can handle
| the power needed to charge every car so every city must
| invest in completly new Electric infrastructure too.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| In Amsterdam when you have an EV you can ask the city to
| install a new charging point near you:
| https://oplaadpuntaanvragen.amsterdam.nl/
|
| Also EV owners are spoiled in several other ways:
| https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/parking/electric-charging/
| Starlevel001 wrote:
| If you live in a city you shouldn't be using cars.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| As a fellow European you are grossly overstating the
| convenience of electrics based on a very special experience
| of living in Norway.
|
| Western Europe (where I live) relies on street parking and
| has very little capacity for overnight charging. I regularly
| see people camping out for chargers in mall parking lots. I
| can't imagine the situation is much different in urban
| Romania, Poland or Lithuania.
|
| I wish we had a charging grid that allowed for most private
| cars to be electric without any range anxiety, but that's
| just not true right now. You might also wish for street
| parking to go away (I do) but that's not happening either.
| Krasnol wrote:
| It's still hard even in Germany and than you have broken
| charging stations on the Autobahn or fossil cars parking on
| charging spots (even though it's punishable now). Your
| employer won't have charging station at his place
| "because". You don't have one at home because you don't
| live in a house and so on.
|
| We're seeing just another dividing line going through our
| society here. An fully electric car says a lot about your
| income. It's like a huge new IPhone everybody can see.
| trulyme wrote:
| Interesting thought... If those with higher income, who
| presumably can charge overnight, keep buying new electric
| cars, will the market for used electric cars saturate
| because others don't have this privilege (that much) and
| other infrastructure is not good enough yet?
| Krasnol wrote:
| We'll see about that. Right now most of them buy hybrids
| they never charge.
| fpoling wrote:
| The first paragraph describes the situation in Norway
| that was like 5-6 years ago.
|
| The second is less applicable in Norway due to zero tax
| policy on electric cars and like 100% in total taxes on
| ICE. So even 5 years ago it could be sensible to get an
| electrical car for a family with kids. Still at that time
| people complained in Oslo that electric cars were for the
| rich folk that got them as the second car to drive in bus
| lines and avoid traffic jams.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Unfortunately I don't believe much will change with the
| new German government as the green party gave away the
| Ministry of Transport to get the more prestigious Foreign
| Ministry....yeah.
|
| Btw...did you see the new BMW SUV? So awesome!!111elf
| llampx wrote:
| A country gets the government it deserves.
| cyann wrote:
| > So awesome!!111elf Ha, I see what you did there! (elf
| is 11 in german)
| dtech wrote:
| In a purely electric car world, all street parking will
| have charger stations like they would have analog parking
| meters a few decades ago. In my western European city of
| ~100k people there's hundreds of such spots already.
| Capacity is rapidly being added too.
|
| On the scale of obstacles, this one is pretty minor, just
| requiring enough (political) willpower to achieve.
| Febra33 wrote:
| I don't know where you live but I live in western Europe
| and almost every household owns a car that they park
| somewhere on the street. There almost no charging
| stations around. Now I just can't imagine a universe
| where every street has enough chargers for EVERY single
| household. That's just utopic.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Is there a gas pump for every street parked car? No.
| Contention for EV charging is trivial to charge with a
| combination of home, workplace, public parking, and
| street parking charging.
| Swizec wrote:
| You don't need a gas pump for every car because gassing
| up doesn't take hours.
|
| In many places there isn't even enough street parking to
| reliably park your car every night. You often have to
| park illegally and wake up early to move the car before
| the ticket comes.
|
| If there isn't even enough parking how is there going to
| be enough overnight charging?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Are you telling me the car is never parked legally
| anywhere and is in constant motion?
|
| Charging exclusively at fast DC chargers is feasible and
| done by many Tesla owners.
| Swizec wrote:
| No I'm saying that "I will have a place to charge
| overnight every night" is unfeasible.
|
| Whether that's good enough depends on what you're doing
| and your car's range.
|
| edit: I remember renting a Tesla once in San Francisco
| and when we got home with very low charge after a fun
| trip (on which we had to visit a random small town for an
| hour just to top up a little), we couldn't find a place
| to charge. Everything the Tesla map showed was a locked
| garage with no public access. After a frustrating hour of
| searching and the car increasingly panicking at us about
| permanent damage, we resorted to going back to the only
| place we knew for sure it could charge - back where we
| rented it from.
|
| We then ubered home for $20 and back to the Tesla next
| morning for another $20 (we rented for 3 days).
|
| It was easily one of the frustratingest cars I ever
| rented.
| tzs wrote:
| Fast DC chargers are still more than an order of
| magnitude slower than refueling an ICE car for an
| equivalent amount of travel.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's fast enough for Tesla to sell almost a million EVs a
| year and to be unable to build vehicles fast enough to
| keep up with demand. Those who argue the problems haven't
| been solved are ignoring the very clear market forces
| demonstrating that they have been.
|
| Sometimes my Tesla charges "too fast" (~20 min) and I
| have to move the vehicle before my shopping or rest stop
| is complete. It helps to colocate fast chargers at
| businesses people patron anyway (supermarkets, for
| example), where they'll naturally take longer than the
| vehicle will take to charge. These are solved problems,
| it's install and equipment colocating logistics at this
| point.
| tzs wrote:
| My point is that with current EVs you need to be able to
| overlap charging with other things. For those who can
| have a charger at home they can overlap charging with
| sleeping. For those who have chargers at work, they can
| overlap charging with work.
|
| If there is parking lot charging where you shop you can
| overlap it with shopping, although most efforts I've seen
| in that direction only have a handful of charging spots.
| Maybe someday there will be enough of those spots that
| people who don't have home or work charging will be able
| to do much of the charging while shopping.
|
| But as long as we are still at the stage where many
| people would have to specifically go to a charging place
| much like they currently refuel their ICE, the speed
| difference will be noticeable.
|
| For a person that drives the average amount in the US it
| is about an hour a year sitting at gas stations vs about
| 11 hours a year sitting at fast charging stations.
|
| (Of course there may be offsetting time savings. I
| believe some places allow EVs to use HOV lanes regardless
| of the number of passengers. If you have a solo commute
| during times of high traffic, the HOV lanes might save
| you more than 10 hours a year).
| bsder wrote:
| > On the scale of obstacles, this one is pretty minor,
| just requiring enough (political) willpower to achieve.
|
| Copper wiring to deliver that power is expensive. It's
| also a really good theft target.
|
| Everyone adding a mere window air conditioner is enough
| to cause new electric lines to be needed. Electric car
| charging is way worse than that.
| emptyfile wrote:
| If putting the equivalent of a functioning high grade
| electrical socket in every parking space is a minor
| obstacle I don't want to see a major one.
| FredPret wrote:
| How about removing millions of tons of certain gases out
| of the planetary air
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| Sure, we have a few outdoor charging spots here in Lisbon
| as well. I can tell you exactly what will happen here:
|
| -politicians made a big deal of building said spots when
| there were close to zero electric cars on the street.
| Many tv spots were bought. -people start buying electric
| cars en masse because hey, insfrastructure! Two free
| chargers per street! -no more easy PR to milk. Turns out
| scaling street charging will be expensive and bring no
| extra popularity. -Five years later, we'll still have two
| chargers per block but a hundred times more electric
| cars. Back to step zero.
| zachkatz wrote:
| Meanwhile, you can charge 12+ e-bikes in the space of one
| car. That's the real infrastructure we need.
| eecc wrote:
| No the real infrastructure change we need are different
| urban zoning plans to eliminate single-use neighborhoods.
| We need to drastically cut down on commuting and switch
| to diffused co-working and telepresence.
| [deleted]
| imchillyb wrote:
| > Meanwhile, you can charge 12+ e-bikes in the space of
| one car. That's the real infrastructure we need.
| @zachkatz
|
| Next downpour:
|
| @imchillyb: ::waves to silly biker as I pass them:: Hey
| guys, pipe down, we're almost home.
|
| @zachkatz: ::Grumbles about rain, snow, sleet, and more
| recently hail. Looks behind at Timmy, Sally, Sue, and the
| dog all miserably following them home; drenched and
| shivering-cold on their e-bikes, and dog's paws on wet-
| cold-concrete.
|
| Glad you're gonna fight for that e-bike spot, I sure
| won't!
| Tostino wrote:
| They are not a replacement for every situation, but they
| work amazingly well when they do. I don't think you are
| making a good faith argument here.
|
| I've been in towns and cities all up and down the east
| coast of the US with my bike, and they range from
| absolutely terrible for any bike traffic (stroads
| everywhere) to fantastic. The biggest obstacle to bikes
| being more usable is simply not designing our
| infrastructure in the least human/bike friendly way
| possible.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| It rains more on average in the Netherlands than it does
| in the USA and the vast majority don't stop cycling. 30%
| of children under 12 ride their bikes to school year
| round in Oulu, Finnland, where it gets as cold as -30C.
| Cycling is faster, cheaper, healthier and even if you
| never want to ride a bike cycling infrastructure means
| less congestion for cars.
| dash2 wrote:
| That might apply more in Chicago than Lisbon, though.
| rwj wrote:
| I've been biking in -20oC, and it wasn't a big deal. You
| need the right clothing, but otherwise it's fine. Part of
| the issue is that people who drive never buy decent
| winter clothing.
| asimpletune wrote:
| So, wouldn't building more then reap political benefits
| in that case?
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| Not when you have to ask people to pay for them. Which is
| why we haven't built a hospital or school in 10 years.
| smt88 wrote:
| Adding millions of chargers to city streets is an insane
| way to solve charger shortages.
|
| It makes much more sense (and would be much cheaper) for
| the govt to mandate interchangeable batteries, so you
| could just go to a gas station and swap out a battery
| instead.
|
| The stations already exist where you need them and only
| need one charger for all the batteries.
| FredPret wrote:
| That would also remove range anxiety for me.
|
| However, this will only work if batteries become smaller
| and more energy-dense - because they are huge and heavy,
| electric cars today are built around them. This causes
| two problems:
|
| You can't easily remove them because they're big and have
| to be built into the structure of the car, and are
| sometimes lod-bearing, and each car model has a different
| shape of battery.
| blincoln wrote:
| > In a purely electric car world, all street parking will
| have charger stations like they would have analog parking
| meters a few decades ago.
|
| Will it? Every city parking spot in every city in the
| world potentially pulling ~220V @ ~60 amps overnight
| seems like an awful lot of electricity to generate, to
| say nothing of the expense of running all of the
| necessary cabling and charging stations. Are there cities
| actively implementing that strategy?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Why on earth would you need 60 A? My Model S add a
| kilometre for every amp-hour at 230 V. Charging from
| 18:00 to 06:00 adds 120 km at 10 A.
|
| Residential streets already have cables for street
| lighting, adding extra cable or uprating the existing
| cable to support charging posts can use the same cable
| ducts.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Drumwhirl.. Cue.. a robot-cabledrum, hiding beneath a
| manhole cover- they only come out at night to charge you -
| but hey at least they charge you for it.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| friendly reminder: Norway represents Europe same way Alaska
| is representative of USA.
| xorcist wrote:
| Well, nothing really is representative, is it?
|
| Norway is a sparsely populated, thin country over a vast
| distance, and the northern half has some pretty harsh
| winter conditions.
|
| Put another way: If Norway can, surely Germany and Spain
| can.
| emptyfile wrote:
| Really, Spain? The european country with one of the
| lowest number of houses and highest number of apartments.
| rconti wrote:
| I agree that "If Norway can, surely Germany and Spain
| can", however the population centers in Norway are
| relatively temperate (for Norway!) and relatively close
| together. I was quite surprised at how small and slow
| even major roads were.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| it's the opposite
|
| I park on the street and live at the fourth floor, I
| can't charge overnight at home.
|
| Even if there was a charging station, there are at least
| 100 other cars in the parking spots below my building. So
| you'd need dozens of them.
|
| If Norway can, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium,
| Austria, etc have to solve a ton of problems Norway
| simply doesn't have.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Plenty of people living in Oslo have exactly the same
| problem. The fact that some, even many, people are unable
| to use something doesn't many that a large number of
| other people in the same country can't use it.
|
| In my travels in Germany, France, Italy, I saw plenty of
| houses with off street parking. Not the majority of
| course but a significant minority.
| ZeljkoS wrote:
| I beg to disagree. South Europe is not like Norway:
| https://svedic.org/tech/daddy-did-you-really-need-
| electric-c...
| freshpots wrote:
| A lot of that is bad preparation/understanding of an EV.
| They didn't plan well nor bring their charging cable on a
| road trip.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Hardly anyone needs 600 miles and no one seems concerned
| that it takes an hour to add 300 km because most people
| charge overnight.
|
| Yes, hardly anyone needs 600 miles, but if you can't find a
| place to charge overnight, boom, you wake up to 80 kilometers
| left in your charge, and you need to find a fast charger
| somewhere in the vicinity, and high chances are, it wil be
| occupied by other cars.
|
| You grossly overestimate availability of chargers in Europe
| (or anywhere, for that matter)
| dtech wrote:
| Considering that you can (slowly) charge an EV even with a
| normal socket, this overnight road trip problem seems
| vastly overstated to me. A socket and cable reel you should
| be able to scrounge up anywhere you can reach on asphalted
| roads.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Others have brought up how unlikely it is to find a
| parking space close enought to an apartment building (you
| know, the kind of place the vast majority of people live
| in, at least in Europe). There's also the matter of
| charging 30 cars at the same time from the electrical
| infra designed for an apartment building - I very much
| doubt adding this type of load would be safe.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| I live in an appartment, as do many others. Good luck
| reeling your cable from the 4th floor to your car which
| is 100m away and with a sidewalk between. Even if you can
| do it, not sure whether you will get fined for it.
| llampx wrote:
| Cute that you think everyone can find parking in front of
| their apartment and that the cable won't be a trip and
| fire hazard.
| avianlyric wrote:
| I think you're grossly underestimate the availability of
| chargers in Europe.
|
| They're far more common than people expect, but you won't
| see them unless you're looking for them. 90% of the
| chargers are just posts with a cable, or just little black
| box on a lamppost with a socket. (There's about 5 within a
| 10min walk of flat in London, that are hardly used)
|
| Certainly it can be tricky in more rural areas, but if
| you're spending most of your time around towns and cities
| you'll be fine. If you live rural you'll have the space to
| install your own private charger.
| emptyfile wrote:
| Oh, wow, _five_ chargers in 1000m of walking in London.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I used to live in different town. One way trip 160km. Mix
| of freeway and highway. Could charge at work there. No such
| luck at other end. My cheap b-segment car managed trip both
| ways and some weeks of regular use with one tank.
|
| But I have read from news that electric-cars can't do
| similar round-trip all the way at highway speeds. So in
| addition to having find charging point somewhere, I would
| have had to spend extra half-an-hour driving slower... Not
| to even think of winter case...
|
| And no public-transport would be even slower than electric
| car with some charging...
| cosmodisk wrote:
| What's the infrastructure like in Norway for the car owners
| who live in flats? As others commented, it's not the range
| that is an issue( I could cross my entire country with one
| charge in most EVs) but rather the charging infrastructure.
| Also the purchasing power in more than half of Europe makes
| EVs prohibitively expensive.
| fpoling wrote:
| At least in the capital it is unproblematic. The charging
| places on the streets that supplies at least 3KW are
| common, parking garages advertise that they have many
| charging places (one near me states over 100 spots for
| about 300 parking places in total), there are a lot of fast
| charges with at least 50KW chargers. Still you may need to
| park the car 500 meters or father from the apartment on
| unlucky day when all the spots nearby are taken.
|
| On the other hand outside the cities the situation became
| worse during the last year based on my anecdotal
| observations. One may need to wait at charging stations for
| another car to leave. Clearly the pace of building those
| lags behind the number of cars.
| lodovic wrote:
| >Hardly anyone needs 600 miles and no one seems concerned
| that it takes an hour to add 300 km because most people
| charge overnight.
|
| I could do with a 200km range for my daily commute, but I
| also have a camping trailer that I'd like to use at least
| once every year for a 1000km+ trip. This is just not feasible
| with the current generation of EVs. I could imagine loading
| up the camping trailer with batteries to give me that 1000+
| km range, though that will increase the weight and recharging
| at the destination is usually impossible.
| nickspacek wrote:
| This isn't the convenient answer we want, but I keep
| thinking that personally I should invest in a vehicle that
| suits 90% of my transportation needs, and plan to rent for
| the other 10%. It is likely the better financial approach,
| although it's definitely not a silver bullet.
| speedgoose wrote:
| I think we started to pay some of the annual fees last year.
| Your insurance probably increased a little bit because of
| that.
| macinjosh wrote:
| In America 600 miles is a short road trip.
| rakejake wrote:
| Haha, while relatively common, I wouldn't call it "short".
| That's like going from SoCal all the way to Norcal, or
| Atlanta to Miami. 10+ hours of driving.
| pfdietz wrote:
| One application for bulk (not IC grade) silicon carbide would be
| high temperature storage of energy. Use SiC bricks as resistive
| heating elements and heat an insulated pile to 1800 C. Any
| industry that uses high temperature heat could heat the bricks
| during times when electricity is cheap, and draw the heat out
| later by passing air (or some other fluid) through the bricks.
| elric wrote:
| Can someone elaborate on why this seems to be limited to electric
| vehicles? Or is that merely where Bosch's focus lies?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| EVs contain the by far highest power consumer electronics and
| are set to become a commodity. Though non-Si power devices
| aren't limited to EVs, some phone chargers use GaN FETs. In
| industrial stuff SiC switches are used in some VFDs as well.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I wonder if this will hit power tools too. They have high
| watt needs and SiC might play here.
| skykooler wrote:
| Especially given that Bosch is also a power tools
| manufacturer.
| momenti wrote:
| Probably lack of talent. Low-power, small-scale chips require
| more complicated manufacturing processes.
| ganzuul wrote:
| Category of power electronics and https://www.ipcei-
| me.eu/partners-power-semiconductors/
|
| Stopping short of looking up EU grant numbers, the wording seem
| to be meant to address a target audience and not meant to
| educate the public.
| [deleted]
| dhruvrrp wrote:
| I'm having trouble understanding from the article how do these
| chips help with faster charging/longer range? Saw the hackaday
| article but that doesn't really explain it either
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| Because silicon carbide has a wide band gap, you can use it to
| switch higher voltages. This means lower current losses through
| wiring.
|
| It also can operate at higher temperatures more effectively, so
| it can be driven harder than a silicon transistor.
| zbrozek wrote:
| It's a pretty incremental and small opportunity, but one worth
| seizing nonetheless. SiC devices have a better figure of merit
| (Qg * Rds) at high voltages than Si devices. The lower gate
| charge (Qg) means you can switch them more quickly, spending
| less time transitioning between fully-on and fully-off (where
| the device is inefficient). And the lower drain-to-source
| resistance (Rds) means that when fully-on it's generating less
| heat as well.
|
| In a motor controller you will probably bank that as an
| efficiency improvement, probably on the order of 1-2% at cruise
| and maybe a bit more during heavy acceleration or deceleration.
| In a charger you will probably change your optimization to
| reduce its size and weight for a given power delivery
| capability. In case that's on onboard charger, that means you
| haul around less weight and further improve vehicle efficiency
| a bit. That improved figure of merit also reduces the cost of
| having more power handling capability, which is how it might
| incrementally speed up charging.
|
| To my mind, the biggest thing we can do to improve cars
| generally is to figure out how to reduce their weight. It's not
| obvious how to do that without either cutting back on passive
| safety or dramatically driving up the structural cost (e.g.,
| with metallic foams for energy absorption in crashes).
| ec109685 wrote:
| With Tesla Super Chargers, it delivers DC to the car, so the
| onboard charger is bypassed, so it doesn't do much for saving
| space there.
| _ph_ wrote:
| The idea is, to minimize losses in the power electronics. That
| should give a bit of range increase (but not too much) but
| mostly It reduces the heat produced while operating. So they
| can be smaller, need less cooling. Being smaller helps with
| production costs, as wafer space is the main cost driver.
| raverbashing wrote:
| You can work with higher voltages, at higher frequencies (also
| faster switching speeds). All this mean lower losses (= higher
| efficiency)
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Not An EE, But(tm): A lot of engineering in electric vehicles
| is in managing the heat in the high voltage electronics. These
| transistors could be used in the traction inverter and the
| charging systems to get better efficiency and higher heat
| tolerance.
|
| If you open up an electric motor controller you'll find it's
| full of MOSFETs, and they get _really hot_ the harder you push
| them. The ones in EVs usually have liquid cooling and /or fans
| and lots of heat sinks.
|
| So with this chemistry it sounds like less energy spent
| cooling, and more energy spent driving or charging.
|
| Also sounds like they're more efficient at higher voltages in
| general. So again, more range or more power, or both.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| > it takes several months for a single wafer to pass through
| several hundred process steps
|
| I knew that semiconductor manufacturing was complex, but this
| fact surprised me.
| iwwr wrote:
| These chips, at least in IC form, could enable the long-term
| exploration of Venus from the surface. This is because SiC can
| work at 400C or higher temperatures.
| kitten_mittens_ wrote:
| Wikipedia has the surface temperature of Venus at 464C, would
| SiC be able to handle that?
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Directly probably not but the higher the working temperature
| of your electronics is the easier it would be to cool it to a
| working temperature.
| snek_case wrote:
| That would allow survival for a few hours or days at most I
| imagine.
|
| I'm sure it's possible to build something that could
| operate at these kinds of temperatures permanently, but it
| would probably need an RTG (nuclear battery) and may be
| hard to test it on earth and also allow for thermal
| expansion and shrinkage (hard to keep the probe at this
| temperature for the entirety of travel to Venus). We'd also
| need to design lubricants for gears, cameras and sensors
| that can tolerate a wide range of temperatures, etc.
|
| The upside of all this is that there are probably legit
| industrial use cases here on earth for electronics that are
| resilient in extreme temperature ranges, and in satellites
| as well.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I don't see why it would be hard to test it on Earth.
| Pretty easy to construct a 500C room.
|
| But you're right - just because the silicon can go to
| 500C doesn't mean there aren't a gazillion other
| problems. You can't even use normal solder at that
| temperature.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| That's awesome, although I was kind of excited to see how far
| we can get with clockwork.
| freemint wrote:
| Normally i would suspect that mixed solid is more sensitive to
| heat (lower melting point) then a pure material. Why isn't this
| the case for SiC?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Chips aren't a single piece of Si or SiC crystal, but a
| superbly complicated arrangement of doped regions,
| insulating, metal and plating layers, so the melting point of
| the base crystal doesn't matter here (Si melts at ~1500 degC,
| C depends, and SiC seems to sublime at very high temperatures
| like carbon, instead of melting - corrections welcome). The
| limit to sustained high-temperature operation of ICs is due
| to all of these things starting to diffuse around and getting
| into places they're not supposed to be.
| Koshkin wrote:
| I'd be more worried about the solder used for the mounting
| of the chip and other components.
| jl2718 wrote:
| It does have a lower melting point than diamond. The bond
| strength is determined by the electro-negativity of the bond
| pair. In this case, it is between silicon and carbon.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Crystals are conceptually very different from "mixed solids".
| Eutectics, e.g. solder, count as mixed solids.
| aeleos wrote:
| There are many cases where mixed solid materials are stronger
| than the sum of their parts. Heat tolerance is all about high
| bond strength between the materials, and strategic mixing of
| materials can enhance that property or others
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Keep in mind that SiC is a substance, so a pure SiC crystal
| is not a mixed solid.
|
| Mixed solids are more sensitive to temperature variations
| (there's no change on the melting point), but actual chips
| are already full of mixed materials, and temperature
| variation isn't the bottleneck. A SiC chip has actually a bit
| fewer kinds of materials on the mix, but still, probably not
| enough to make a difference. (Anyway, we are talking about
| discrete transistors here, so the material count is exactly
| the same.)
|
| You are probably thinking about pure substance (the ones that
| only have a single kind of chemical element). If so, you are
| completely wrong, pure substances usually have a very low
| melting point, and very few reach as high temperatures as you
| can get with composed ones.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| SiC is a wide band gap semi conductor so it takes a much
| higher temperature for the intrinsic carrier concentration to
| rise to the point where it is no longer a semi conductor and
| just a conductor - it was 12 years ago since I finished my
| PhD in SiC and related devices so I can't explain in much
| more detail but that's the crux of it
| kortex wrote:
| Been a while since I was in the chemistry game, but my guess
| is lattice structure and packing. Pure Si has relatively long
| bonds compared to carbon, so the intermolecular forces are a
| bit weaker. Apparently SiC has over 250 polymorphs, but the
| most common is the alpha.
|
| ... ok I'm reading about the material properties of SiC and
| it's insanely complex so I'm just going handwave and say that
| a-SiC has tighter packing with stronger bonds because of the
| alternating Si and C atoms.
| Zenst wrote:
| Not just Venus, the whole cost of cooling chips and cost of raw
| material extra's like heat-sinks could be reduced and that in
| itself would make a huge saving thru volume. Some IC'c on this
| type of silicon wouldn't need that extra cooling cost and that
| is were the big saving will come in, even with the extra cost
| of the IC's factored in.
|
| That and if you can remove all cooling, not just cost savings,
| but in some cases being able to remove active cooling and less
| moving parts is always an engineering win win.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Unless you're changing the underlying currents or
| resistances, you'll still have heat losses that need to go
| _somewhere_.
|
| I don't think it's that a 700C chip doesn't need cooling the
| way a 90C chip does; it's that the delta between 700C and
| room temperature means that a much smaller and much more
| passive cooling apparatus may be sufficient.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Besides the thermodynamic advantages with conduction /
| convection / radiation, you can also use boiling points.
| Strap a pan with water to it. The pan won't heat up past
| 100 unless all the water has boiled off. You still need to
| remove the same number of Watts, but this is potentially
| easier to manage.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Makes sense, though you can get that with contemporary
| automotive spec (120-150C) parts.
| dognotdog wrote:
| As radiative cooling is a temperature to the 4th power
| (T^4) process, vs. linear (T^1) for conductive and
| convective cooling, one could certainly increase power
| density for general electronics, though the danger of
| setting something on fire, and actually needing higher
| temperature packaging / soldering / bonding processes might
| put a crimp on that.
|
| However, space craft would be where being able to run
| hotter would significantly reduce the size and complexity
| of cooling systems, as they can only use radiative cooling
| bleed off the heat they generate into space.
| ridgeguy wrote:
| I think SiC devices will be a way station on the road to
| diamond devices for extreme environments. GaN devices will be
| the next after SiC, then on to diamond.
|
| I've seen a diamond FET operating at 700degC. Devices like that
| could use the Venusian atmosphere for cooling.
| jl2718 wrote:
| GaN is only really good for applications requiring direct
| bandgaps like LEDs and extremely high electron mobility like
| plasma micro-antennas. I believe that SiC will eventually
| replace the photonic applications with direct-band gap
| strains and dopants, but not the high-mobility applications.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| What kind of semiconductors are being made using silicon carbide?
|
| And what is the process node being used?
|
| Will silicon carbide be useful for general computing appliances,
| CPUs, GPUs?
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Unlikely, it's a wide band gap semiconductor so has very
| different end applications that it's suitable for and would
| never compete with silicon, unless you want a radiation/heat
| hardened device - the processing would be very costly though
| and getting good wafers is challenging
| detaro wrote:
| It's more relevant for power applications than computing. Motor
| drivers, charge controllers, voltage converters, or the
| switching parts driven by such, that kind of thing.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Nothing about actual numbers like transistor density, gate width
| etc. Just bragging about having a larger wafer which is a useless
| metric without density if the number of transistors per wafer is
| lesser.
| kragen wrote:
| Although it's ambiguous, I don't think they're talking about
| making integrated circuits, but about making discrete power
| transistors. Usually we say "chip" for "integrated circuit" but
| transistors and diodes are chips too.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| This is about power electronics. Density is 1-2 transistors per
| package.
| laserbeam wrote:
| Isn't wafer size the production/cost bottleneck? In my
| understanding these chips are meant for higher energy/power
| management, not necessarily fast compute. I get what you want
| would be interesting, but I also find them less relevant in an
| article about production.
| vba wrote:
| Outside of the car, will this allow residential EVSEs (the
| 'charger' on the side of your house/garage) to become a lot
| smaller?
| viernullvier wrote:
| As others said, conventional EVSEs are just spiced-up power
| switches, so there's not much to gain from SiC. It does however
| open up a pathway to smaller / cheaper / more efficient
| residential DC fast chargers which can also enable a widespread
| rollout of V2G.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| There's no power conversion in an EVSE, it's just an RCD and a
| contactor.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Why do they need to be smaller? The Tesla EVSE is about the
| size of a loaf of bread. And I doubt it needs SiC because it's
| just a smart relay for 240v anyway; it's not switching power at
| high frequencies or getting hot.
| rusanu wrote:
| A quick intro into EVSE and why there is no power 'charger' in
| them, and the space they take is just empty air
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMxB7zA-e4Y
| view wrote:
| Not related to semiconductors but I've recently bought a ring
| with a lab made silicon carbide moissanite crystal.
|
| They're incredibly beautiful and I think a good alternative to
| diamonds:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite
| thomasmg wrote:
| I bought one for my wife's wedding ring as well. The local
| jeweller (who made the rings) tested it with his diamond tester
| device -- and the led light said 'diamond'. He was a bit
| surprised :-)
| trulyme wrote:
| Wikipedia agrees... :)
|
| > As some of its properties are quite similar to diamond,
| moissanite can be used for scams. Testing equipment based on
| measuring thermal conductivity in particular may give
| deceiving results.
| jackhodkinson wrote:
| This is a good article on the background
| https://hackaday.com/2019/11/25/new-silicon-carbide-semicond...
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| This is fascinating! I only know of silicon carbide as thc
| heating cups that are easy to clean, didn't think of them as
| computer semiconductors!
| moontear wrote:
| The longform articles on hackaday are always very informative
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