[HN Gopher] Charging electric vehicles 5x faster in subfreezing ...
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Charging electric vehicles 5x faster in subfreezing temps
Author : gnabgib
Score : 145 points
Date : 2025-04-05 00:38 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (news.umich.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.umich.edu)
| ajross wrote:
| While the technology may be advantageous, it seems weird to write
| a whole article about it without mentioning the obvious solution:
| Just Heat The Battery. It's true that many early EVs (and most
| non-Teslas even today) don't ship with battery thermal
| management. But they won't be getting new battery chemistry
| either.
|
| This is one of those Great New Technology items that smells like
| a failure simply because it's not competing with the thing the
| designers think it is. It's not enough for this to beat a cold
| battery with a performance delta ("5x", per the article) that
| would justify its additional cost. It has to beat a battery with
| a garden variety heat pump attached, which is a much (much) lower
| cost barrier.
| givinguflac wrote:
| Heat pumps struggle to do much at the temperature range the
| article proposes.
|
| Edit: downvote me all you want, I was responding specifically
| to "It has to beat a battery with a garden variety heat pump
| attached" of which EV heat pumps are not garden variety heat
| pumps, which do struggle at those temperatures. Didn't think I
| had to be so pedantic.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Pretty sure the ones in most EVs today work fine at -10C, but
| they may lose some efficiency. The thing is, there's already
| mechanisms in some cars to generate waste heat specifically
| for this purpose. Tesla's already have the ability to run
| their motors 'inefficiently' generating waste heat, which can
| be pumped into the battery coolant and heat that. It's no
| better than electric strip heating, but it doesn't add any
| cost to the system.
|
| The real benefit, in my view, to being able to charge at cold
| temps is to improve overall efficiency. If you have to waste
| some amount of power to heat the battery then that is power
| that could have been used to charge the car instead...
| superkuh wrote:
| You bring up a great point. The battery spec is only given
| at -10C. That's a mild normal day's low temperature in
| winter in Minneapolis, USA. But it's often much colder than
| that for long periods of time. I wonder if this glassy
| layer they apply can handle -30C; a temp where above ground
| heat pumps are no better than electrical resistive heating.
| ajross wrote:
| The 5x delta is stated to be at 14F. That absolutely is
| within the reasonable operating range of a Model Y heat pump,
| not sure what you're citing?
|
| It's true that there are _very_ cold environments (Fairbanks
| winters, say) where in-car thermal management won 't be
| sufficient to keep charging rates high. But those are the
| same environments where you can't even _start_ a gasoline car
| without an engine block heater, and I don 't see many "no
| cars in Alaska" arguments on the internet. Everything has
| limits, but I don't see this battery trickery having much of
| a home.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| You can start gasoline cars just fine down to 20 or 30
| below, so long as you keep a good battery in it. Sometimes
| big diesel trucks use block heaters but gasoline cars don't
| need them.
| lstodd wrote:
| I can definitely say that old/USSR 2.7L gasoline engines
| for the military came with block heaters. But they were
| expected to start in -50C / -60F. Good luck getting
| anything out of an EV at those temperatures.
| gambiting wrote:
| There's plenty of Norwegians on YouTube testing EVs down
| to those kinds of temperatures and they work absolutely
| fine, with the caveat that they won't charge until the
| battery warms up. Discharging Lithium batteries at really
| low temperatures isn't an issue, charging them is(because
| it actively damages them) - but even then the threshold
| is -32C or around that, easily overcome even with a
| simple resistive heater.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The question is, how many people are legitimately living
| in areas where this is an actual concern in their lives?
| Outside of Alaska, Canada and Russia barely any place on
| Earth that relevant amounts of people live in, such low
| temperatures are a once-in-a-lifetime event.
| homebrewer wrote:
| I live in a region where -40degC is not unheard of (it
| happens every winter and stays for up to several weeks).
| I've also been to another region (not far off) where
| -50degC is pretty typical.
|
| Gasoline powered engines work just fine in these
| temperatures, although many cars come with auto ignition
| systems that start up the engine periodically throughout
| the night to keep it warm. Otherwise you might have to
| warm it yourself in the morning using a gasoline powered
| "torch" (or whatever it's called), which sometimes ends
| up with the car going up in flames.
|
| So it's honestly pretty funny to read that EV work "down
| to -10degC". Although probably relatively few of us are
| desperate enough to be living in such conditions.
| recursive wrote:
| They work down to -10. And colder than that too.
| Apologies to Mitch Hedberg.
| lazide wrote:
| Only if they have the ability to stop charging if the
| battery pack is below freezing, and some way to heat the
| pack (and keep it) above freezing. Otherwise, charging in
| those temps will destroy the battery.
| recursive wrote:
| I think that's everything but the Nissan Leaf.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Leaf can heat the pack, just no cooling
| lupusreal wrote:
| Stock gasoline cars do _not_ do well at those
| temperatures. In Alaska most people with sense use engine
| block heaters, plugging in every cold night. Besides the
| issue of having trouble just starting the car, you will
| put excessive wear and tear on the engine doing it
| regularly.
|
| And in places like Fairbanks where -40 (F/C) is fairly
| common in the winter, even cars that merely have an
| engine block heater will have trouble. You need even more
| heating pads for the rest of the stuff under the hood of
| you want to keep a car reliable and healthy in that kind
| of climate.
| lazide wrote:
| Yes, and even then 'healthy' is not what people in normal
| climates think. It puts a lot of wear and tear on
| vehicles.
| crummyglow wrote:
| I've succesfully started my rustbucket diesel from 2009
| in -33C. It didn't sound too happy about it, but it did
| start and run and get to where I wanted
| Rygian wrote:
| https://ashp.neep.org/ for a list of heat pumps that perform
| well in cold weather.
| cyberax wrote:
| You don't even need a heat pump. You can just slightly overvolt
| the charger, so that some electrical energy is lost as heat
| rather get than transformed into chemical bonds.
|
| > This is one of those Great New Technology items that smells
| like a failure simply because it's not competing with the thing
| the designers think it is.
|
| This technology makes no sense for fast DC charging because
| there's enough waste heat to keep up the battery temperature,
| and you can just use some of the power to heat up the battery.
|
| But it can help for slow overnight charging. Keeping battery
| heated all night is wasteful, but you still want to be able to
| charge.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > You don't even need a heat pump. You can just slightly
| overvolt the charger
|
| The BMW i3 had inductive heating strips underneath the
| coolant channels in the battery pack[1]. I know our i3 had a
| heat pump, I presume both were in play.
|
| We used our i3 down to -25C (-13F) many times, didn't have
| any issues.
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/JjPIuLz5VFI?t=1124
| OptionOfT wrote:
| Heat pumps also serve for more efficient heating when you're
| driving. Just like at home where a heat pump is more
| efficient than a resistant heater.
| lazide wrote:
| That doesn't work when the problem is the battery is already
| sub-zero - lithium plating occurs when trying to charge in
| those conditions, destroying the battery.
|
| You can't just overvolt out of that - you need an external
| source of heat until you're out of the dangerous thermal
| area.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I'm not sure if that affects all chemistries and
| compositions. If you look at the spec-sheet for e.g. the LG
| E63 cells used in some older EVs (notably without TMS),
| those specify charging down to -20 degC - and the owner's
| manuals certainly have no warnings in them that the car
| will implode if you charge in the winter.
| lazide wrote:
| Which is really weird. Near as I can tell, it's just a
| pouch lipo.
|
| The charge currents for sub-zero are near zero amps, but
| are still > 0. It _should_ destroy the cell, but
| apparently doesn't?
|
| Any insight?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Well it doesn't :D
|
| At least not in a way that people complain about battery
| failures or degradation. On the other hand, the battery
| has to reach that temperature in the first place, which
| may take a couple days of constant exposure to that
| temperature.
| lazide wrote:
| Actually, it does and will in the right conditions. Look
| at page 11 of that link.
|
| I did some research, and the plating issue happens when
| charge currents exceed the ability for the battery to
| absorb them, which dramatically decreases below freezing.
|
| That is why those battery charts show dramatically
| reduced charge currents (nearly zero) when around
| freezing.
|
| That data sheet also doesn't cover cell life in these
| conditions conditions.
|
| They have _very_ high normal C ratings (hundreds of amps)
| which is why it is measurable and not actually zero, but
| reducing it to a couple amps before failure isn't much
| different.
|
| If batteries aren't failing in these conditions, it's
| because of some other protective circuit, not because the
| battery itself is special. It isn't.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > It's true that many early EVs (and most non-Teslas even
| today) don't ship with battery thermal management.
|
| That's false since at latest 2013 in the US.
|
| The past 12 years of BMW as a counterexample all have thermal
| management. Tesla too.
|
| You may be remembering the original Nissan Leaf?
| ajross wrote:
| Almost all non-Tesla EVs offer a heat pump option. Most non-
| Tesla EVs sold do not have one. Just go to your local VW
| dealer or whatever and see what the specs are on the ID.4's
| on the lot is.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| You can easily read about your example VW MEB platform
| battery configurations, including built in thermal
| management system, online at the Munro teardown, for
| example.
|
| Perhaps you are changing the topic from your original
| thermal management to heat pump systems specifically?
| recursive wrote:
| Those are different goal posts. There are other ways of
| heating a battery.
| gambiting wrote:
| My 2022 Volkswagen e-Up has zero thermal management of the
| battery, it's completely passively cooled with no heating.
| Not that it really matters, people have tested it and
| charging speed only starts to degrade after 3-4 rapid charges
| in one day, with "rapid" in quotes(in tops out at 40kW).
|
| I believe the eGolf which was sold in the US shares the same
| drivetrain and battery.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Different drivetrain and battery for the eGolf, but both of
| these are effectively 2013 EVs.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Heating, in its various forms, has one big drawback that having
| a battery that can charge faster in low temps would be really
| nice in: Starting the day needing to charge.
|
| Ideally, you don't do that, but when traveling sometimes you
| have to stay at a place that doesn't have a charger, and it's
| really cold, and now rather than a 30 minute charge it's more
| like 90 minutes.
| jbm wrote:
| In winter, I lose 5-10% of my battery a day due to heating my
| battery. Tesla is nice enough to hide this under "You should
| keep your car plugged in all the time" messages. It's really a
| pain, especially if you have a relatively small battery to
| begin with. I have a 2019 Model 3 w/ a 50 kwh battery, and use
| 10-20 kwh on a regular basis; 5 kwh wasted means as much as 1/3
| of my energy use is effectively waste.
|
| I'd be very interested in seeing what they can provide for us.
| Improved battery chemistry for use in the far north is of far,
| far more value than yet another 5 person car for 1 person
| driving in San Francisco.
| ajross wrote:
| > In winter, I lose 5-10% of my battery a day due to heating
| my battery.
|
| Exactly! That sounds like a drawback when you state it like
| that, but what it actually means is that this magic battery
| doodad needs to provide 90-95% of the performance of its
| existing, mature competitor (assuming no other drawbacks)
| just to be break-even in the market. You don't disrupt
| markets with numbers like that.
| gopalv wrote:
| > what it actually means is that this magic battery doodad
| needs to provide 90-95% of the performance of its existing,
| mature competitor
|
| The problem is mostly that it does the battery draw when
| parked.
|
| Solid electrolytes are coming some day soon, so that we can
| let it freeze without killing the cells.
|
| Right now, the Tesla is hard to use in a winter sport
| season unless where you're driving has a charger or
| underground parking near a plug point.
|
| I can drive up hill to a nice ski resort, spend 3+ days
| taking the bus with all your shoes on without touching the
| car.
|
| With the batteries, they'll just run down when parked, so I
| cannot park it for a whole week outdoors like I can do with
| my Subaru.
|
| And with the low battery + low temps, it will not charge
| back up going downhill so the expected range drops
| massively by the time you're downhill.
|
| Once you navigate to a charger, the car starts running the
| heater and driving down range further.
|
| Watching the car battery eating its own range while driving
| to "Donner pass road" on your way out of Tahoe or Reno
| feels rather appropriately horrific.
| justinrubek wrote:
| I can't speak for a modern subaru, but I've not owned a
| single ICE vehicle that would work in this scenario. The
| battery would be dead. An electric one has the option to
| be plugged in and avoid the problem. Just because we
| haven't put the infrastructure in place for it doesn't
| mean we can't. We should do so, just like we did for
| gasoline.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| ???
|
| What kind of clunkers have you been using that lose
| charge on the 12 volt after just 3 days in the cold? I've
| occasionally left my ICE car out in the cold for a week
| without using it and it never once even crossed my mind
| to worry about whether it would start after that; I've
| never had that issue on any car built in the last 15
| years.
| rconti wrote:
| There are entire nations where this is the scenario all
| winter.
| vitaflo wrote:
| If your ICE car battery was dead after sitting a week in
| the cold you had a bad battery. I drive my car once every
| couple weeks and it regularly gets to -20 here in the
| winter and have never had an issue because the battery in
| my ICE vehicle is good.
| detaro wrote:
| that, or you have some broken thing connected that draws
| way to high idle current.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| When I bought a Model 3 last year I knew full well the issues
| with charging, temperature capacity loss, battery heating,
| etc. What I was surprised by was loss of regen! If the
| battery is below 20F or so then the firmware will only give
| it a trickle of regen braking. After all, it's effectively
| very fast charging, which a frozen battery can't handle.
|
| I wonder if regen braking going to zero is behind some of the
| horror stories of sudden unexpected range loss in cold temps.
| bdcravens wrote:
| > (and most non-Teslas even today) don't ship with battery
| thermal management
|
| Some do but don't enable it immediately, but do so with a
| software upgrade. (such as what happened with Kia EV6/Hyundai
| Ioniq 5)
| jve wrote:
| I mean this is an incremental improvement that would be very
| welcome. Why be so negative? Look around the products that have
| lived through decades of incremental improvements and compare
| them. Like the phone in your pocket or computer you are using.
| hinkley wrote:
| How much more expensive will this solution be than putting a
| "block heater" into the battery to warm it up to room temperature
| faster while charging?
|
| If the charge rate is reduced by battery temp and chemistry,
| shunt the surplus supply into changing the battery temp, no?
| homeless_engi wrote:
| Many EVs (Teslas) already contain a heat pump to warm the
| battery. I presume that improved battery chemistry would
| supplement this -- but maybe replacement would be possible?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyGgrkeds5U
| gmac wrote:
| Not only Teslas: my Renault has this as standard, and many
| brands have it at least as an option.
| edaemon wrote:
| The battery can be large enough that it takes a long time to
| heat it, but that's usually what an EV is doing when it
| preconditions the battery for charging. My car (and pretty much
| all EVs) will precondition the battery if the next navigation
| stop is a charging station, for example.
| xattt wrote:
| This assumes that nav data is current or a telematics
| subscription is active. As Alec Watson of Tech Connections
| fame recently pointed out about his first-gen IONIQ 5, this
| needs to be feature accessible to the driver.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Even then, it still assumes that users understand that it
| is a problem in the first place and that they are willing
| to take steps to solve it.
|
| For most people, a car is at least the second-most
| expensive thing they'll ever own -- as well as the most
| expensive machine they'll ever own. It is also something
| that many are very unwilling to RTFM for, often to the
| point of irately defending this unwillingness and the
| resultant ignorance.
|
| An improved battery that can charge quickly when cold
| (while maintaining safety and longevity) solves many
| problems, including some that may be self-inflicted.
| close04 wrote:
| > it still assumes that users understand that it is a
| problem
|
| 3 decades ago everyone with a mobile phone knew that you
| should never charge the battery unless it's empty. They
| knew "it has memory" and if you charge it when it's half
| full it will "remember" that new charge as its capacity.
| A decade or so later with LiIon or LiPo everyone knew the
| opposite, never let it go to empty.
|
| Nobody knew why, how, they just knew this is how you
| should do it.
|
| This would work for EVs too _because_ they 're expensive
| to buy, expensive to replace batteries, and range or
| charging speed are super huge deals.
| subscribed wrote:
| Yeah, and this myth of never charging until empty has
| persisted through the 3 decades of the battery technology
| changes.
|
| Not sure what would work for EVs too? I'd suggest
| education from the ev manufacturer is better (eg by
| repeating to the driver the first 50 times how and why to
| prepare for changing), and by the technical means (doint
| it automatically if possible).
|
| Creating yet another "rule" that will then persist as the
| downright counterproductive or maybe even harmful myth
| decades later is not a good solution IMO.
| xattt wrote:
| The general population is now more tech literate than a
| couple of decades ago. They'll be fine.
| LoganDark wrote:
| > Even then, it still assumes that users understand that
| it is a problem in the first place and that they are
| willing to take steps to solve it.
|
| No it doesn't. All it assumes is that some users may want
| to take steps to solve it and that those users deserve
| the option. Literally nothing needs to happen to the
| existing behavior, the automatic preconditioning can
| still stay.
| Clent wrote:
| People who experience range anxiety have an internalized
| incentive to seek out these options.
| tirant wrote:
| Indeed. For example in most cars, if you decide to use the
| navigation from Apple's CarPlay or Google's, the vehicle
| will not pre-heat the battery before charging.
|
| In my BMW EV we recently got an update and it's now
| possible to manually pre-heat the battery, not only from
| within the car, but also even remotely via app. You can
| even lookup now the battery temperature.
| officeplant wrote:
| Yep, I refuse to pay for Ford's navigation. As of now
| neither carplay, nor android auto, can turn on battery
| preconditioning in my van. I've been monitoring the battery
| heater state in an app just in case it starts working in a
| future update. Recently an update finally allowed carplay
| to read my E-Transit's SOC when connected.
|
| It would be nice if I could figure out some way to just
| force it on with a switch/aftermarket module talking to the
| canbus.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| This pre-conditioning isn't free. It costs you range. So,
| doing less of that helps. And it takes time. The worst case
| for an EV is a short journey to a fast charger. Both heating
| the vehicle and the battery from ice cold takes energy.
| hinkley wrote:
| Which the charging station has in spades. You should be
| able to run the heat pump at full bore when attached to a
| charger. And a regular heating element. Modern heat pumps
| have both, why not cars?
| officeplant wrote:
| >You should be able to run the heat pump at full bore
| when attached to a charger.
|
| That's how EV's currently work. Even those without heat
| pumps. I can see my E-transit's coolant heater[1] pull up
| to around ~5-6KW at full tilt battery heating mode when I
| plug into DC fast charging and its not sufficiently
| warmed. Cuts off once the HVB hits around 98F.
|
| [1]https://www.proxyparts.com/car-parts-
| stock/information/part-...
| ethagknight wrote:
| Not a battery expert but part of the challenge is too much heat
| in some places, not enough in others, so heat management is a
| big challenge, but coolant routing is complicated. The heat
| pump is a big deal and far more efficient (4x?) than a 'block
| heater', and resistance heat is the old solution that the
| industry moved away from.
|
| I believe the "microscale channels" are a better solution that
| reduces the amount of heat generated at the connection points
| of the battery, and also reduces the high temperature gradient
| at high voltage charging at low internal temps (high internal
| temperature delta), which I understand to be a primary cause of
| battery degradation.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| At least in my car, fully preconditioning the battery can take
| an hour or two when it's really cold. If you're still on the
| way to the charging station, it can also impact your range. My
| car is annoyingly conservative about when it uses and disabled
| the preconditioning
| eatporktoo wrote:
| Tesla already heats the battery in this way- it essentially
| just puts opposing fields into the motor to generate excess
| heat even when not moving.
|
| https://electrek.co/2017/08/24/tesla-model-3-exclusive-batte...
| ellisv wrote:
| Link to the research article:
| https://www.cell.com/joule/abstract/S2542-4351(25)00062-5
| Animats wrote:
| Company web site.[1]
|
| The real claim is 10 minute charging of lithium-ion batteries
| with a process which is a minor mod to existing battery
| production.
|
| There's no product yet.
|
| Batteries with good low temp behavior have many specialized uses.
| Things that have a small solar panel, a battery, and no grid
| connection could benefit from this. Even flashlights could use
| this.
|
| [1] http://arborbatteries.us/
| cuu508 wrote:
| > Things that have a small solar panel, a battery, and no grid
| connection could benefit from this.
|
| As a side topic, what are the currently available options for
| this?
|
| I've heard about sodium ion (safer but still not sub-zero
| charging friendly, also no easily available solar charging
| controller boards), lithium titanate (same), and plain old
| deep-cycle lead acid.
|
| For small solar-powered projects, it would be nice if there was
| a power bank on market which supported solar charging, and
| could either be safely charged in freezing temperatures, or had
| built-in temperature sensor and reject charging when it's too
| cold.
| nicolaslem wrote:
| Most consumer LiFePO4 power stations have this sensor and cut
| charging below 0C, still allowing discharge up to around
| -10C.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| For completeness sake there are also many LifePo4 battery
| options that have heating pads that will activate below a
| certain temperature. Even Amazon have about a dozen brands
| with heating pads.
| cuu508 wrote:
| Can you point to any specific examples? Do they support
| solar charging? And what wattage panel would be needed to
| support both charging and heating?
| lazide wrote:
| Just look for 'self heating'
| cuu508 wrote:
| I'm searching for "self heating power bank" on amazon.com
| and get various random crap (self heating lunch boxes,
| regular noname power banks, heating pad for pets...).
| Could you point me to some specific examples?
| lazide wrote:
| Self heating lithium iron phosphate battery [https://batt
| lebornbatteries.com/shop/products/batteries/heat...]
| cuu508 wrote:
| Thanks. These are a little big (100Ah, 200Ah, 50Ah...),
| heavy and expensive compared to what I'm looking for. For
| reference, I'm currently using a 5W panel, and a single
| 18650 element, costing a few dollars from AliExpress.
| Works fine for my usecase (Meshtastic nodes) except for
| the charging below 0degC thing.
| wongarsu wrote:
| At that scale you are probably better off building your
| own solution: a low-power microcontroller with a
| temperature sensor, a small heating element (search
| "heating foil"), some voltage sensing with the ADC on the
| battery and solar panels, and a bit of simple logic.
|
| If you are mostly concerned with low-temperature charging
| you could even power all that from the charging side
| only.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| To answer the question look for "lifepo4" and "heated"
| [1] but it sounds like that's too big for your use case.
| In your case just use a regular and smaller deep cycle
| battery in a _very_ waterproof enclosure. Bury the
| enclosure at least 6 feet under ground to keep it from
| falling below 50F / 9.9C without heating pads. _At least
| 4 feet deep with 2 feet of gravel under the enclosure to
| keep water from pooling around the enclosure._ Fill the
| bottom of the enclosure with desiccant pouches to absorb
| condensation. Use rodent-resistant cabling in conduits
| and a lot of sealant where the conduit is fastened to the
| enclosure. The enclosure should then be inside a rodent-
| proof vault. This could be pressure treated redwood or
| synthetic material rated for burial. Lay a foil marker in
| the hole above the vault and keep it centered as you bury
| the vault so that you can find it again.
|
| Being under ground will prevent both over-heating and
| freezing assuming your circuit is per spec designed to
| run cool. This can also reduce tampering. If you are not
| concerned about serviceability of the circuit board then
| you can put it in a small enclosure and fill it with
| epoxy so that the entire thing is water proof. There are
| epoxies designed to conduct heat but not electricity.
|
| This assumes of course that your setup is meant to be
| stationary.
|
| [1] - https://www.amazon.com/s?field-
| keywords=lifepo4+heated
| hgomersall wrote:
| According to this sodium ion battery product, it still charge
| quite happily at -20 degrees C:
|
| https://midsummerwholesale.co.uk/buy/eleven-
| energy/4-5-kwh-s...
| malchow wrote:
| Not for cars yet, but Enovix has short-ion-path batteries
| intrinsic to its lithrographed 3D design. Performance is quite
| something: https://www.enovix.com/products/
| throwaway41029 wrote:
| The big news on EV charging is from BYD in late March when they
| announced (and it caused TSLA to fall by a few percent) that
| their new line of superchargers will be able to charge cars to
| give them a range of 400 km in just a few minutes. This is the
| state of the art in production
|
| https://www.ttnews.com/articles/byd-5-minute-charging-rivals
| indemnity wrote:
| I mean, this is great, but BYD has pretty much zero installed
| charger footprint in markets where the Supercharger network
| exists.
|
| Is that going to change?
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Considering current politics: not in the US, at least not for
| the foreseeable future.
|
| Europe remains to be seen, but also unlikely short term as
| we're also slapping lots of tariffs on chinese EVs to protect
| local industries
| LoganDark wrote:
| Countries really need to stop unfairly penalizing Chinese
| EVs. If they aren't allowed to compete, local industries
| will never have an incentive to improve. No argument about
| safety has ever had any merit - Teslas burst into flames
| all the time.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If they aren't allowed to compete, local industries
| will never have an incentive to improve.
|
| Neither Europe nor the US can compete with the level of
| disdain for the environment, labor laws and poverty that
| China brings to the table. Wages alone make anything made
| in China so cheap that, for mass-market goods, competing
| against China (or its upcoming competitors in the race to
| the bottom) is impossible.
| LoganDark wrote:
| So what if someone living on Chinese wages wouldn't be
| able to afford American goods? The equivalent Chinese
| goods are perfectly affordable for them. You seemingly
| forget that China is a self-sufficient economy. It's not
| like people are working 16 hours a day to afford an
| apartment like in the US. Apartments in China can be as
| low as USD $400 a month or less. Try running your wage
| and poverty calculations with that?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Neither Europe nor the US can compete with the level
| of disdain for the environment, labor laws and poverty
| that China brings to the table_
|
| Why haven't western governments and companies brought
| this up as an issue when they moved our jobs to China 30
| years ago forcing us to buy our stuff but made in China
| while their profits skyrocketed? And bear in mind Chinese
| pollution, wages and living standards were way worse back
| then than today.
|
| It feels incredibly hypocritical for western companies to
| cry about these things _NOW_ , right when the Chinese
| companies have started eating their lunch on their home
| turf, while they rode the gravy train for 30 years. It's
| almost as if they wanted to have their cake and eat it
| too but now have to reap what they sow and they don't
| like it.
| hulitu wrote:
| > It's almost as if they have to reap what they sow and
| they don't like it.
|
| They do reap what they sow. The automotive industry is a
| victim of its own stupidity. They lobbied for features
| until the cars became so expensive that nobody buys them.
| LoganDark wrote:
| > They lobbied for features until the cars became so
| expensive that nobody buys them.
|
| Dealerships still try to sell people on financing and
| that makes them so much money.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Why haven't western governments and companies brought
| this up as an issue when they moved our jobs to China 30
| years ago forcing us to buy our stuff but made in China
| while their profits skyrocketed?
|
| Our people loved it for the first few years because a lot
| of stuff became cheaper (or affordable at all), our
| governments loved it because now someone else would have
| to deal with toxic waste, and our companies and
| especially their owners made untold billions of profit
| that they were allowed to keep.
|
| By the time China was strong enough to begin the
| "extinguish" phase of their 20 year economic plan, and
| the Western nations could no longer hide or deny the
| issues, it was far too late.
| fransworst wrote:
| China has lower levels of extreme poverty than the US: ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percenta
| g... (percentage living off of less than 2.65USD a day).
|
| They also have lower per capita emissions than the US: ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_d
| i...
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| > Neither Europe nor the US can compete with the level of
| disdain for the environment, labor laws and poverty that
| China brings to the table.
|
| The issue is entirely subsidies at this point.
|
| Labour costs have been steadily rising for the past
| decades and significant poverty hasn't been an issue for
| a long time. Emission wise, China is strictly ahead of
| the USA when you look per capita (unsurprisingly, they
| are not an oil producer).
|
| China is not in a race to the bottom. Their hdi has been
| steadily climbing. They are economically more or less in
| the same position that Japan was in the 80s before the
| Plaza accord but with less prosperity, on the verge of
| becoming a developed country.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> The issue is entirely subsidies at this point._
|
| Which is a moot point because European manufacturers also
| received insane subsidies form their governments in the
| past.
|
| The issue is China has been innovating in EVs hardcore
| for 15+ years while European manufactures kept pushing
| diesels and cutting costs with their suppliers and were
| only making EVs to shut up the green hippies, but were
| never committed to them, and now they've been caught with
| their pants down unable to compete on price nor on
| technology.
|
| They got fat, lazy and complacent thinking their brand
| names would carry them.
| bojan wrote:
| Nothing unfair about it, it is easy to build a car for
| cheaper if you don't care about worker rights and the
| environment.
| LoganDark wrote:
| It's not about price! As an example, China has had
| _battery-swap stations_ for certain models of EV for
| years (see Nio). In just over a couple minutes (depending
| on the station), they automatically drop the battery out
| of the car and install a new one that is fully charged.
| It is even faster than DC charging in the US and Europe.
| But because those cars are either illegal or
| prohibitively expensive to import and use, there is no
| incentive for domestic industries to compete with it. As
| far as they 're concerned, anything that makes a Chinese
| EV compelling is some sort of strategic threat against
| the US, rather than the product simply being better.
|
| How cool would it be if instead of having to slowly
| charge the same battery in my EV over its lifetime, I
| could (say) subscribe to a network of well-kept batteries
| and easily get a fully-charged one whenever mine gets
| low? Too bad China is so out of reach for me; though even
| if it weren't, those battery-swap stations don't really
| exist here - though I'm sure that's just another artifact
| of widespread sinophobia.
|
| That's only one example. See these article (or honestly
| any article) for more:
|
| https://www.investors.com/news/chinese-electric-cars-
| america...
|
| https://www.carwow.co.uk/electric-cars/chinese
|
| Dismiss it as propaganda if you wish, but it's not like
| it's fake. The cars they show are real.
| officeplant wrote:
| As an EV owner I just don't see the benefit in the
| battery swap method. I spend a lot of time monitoring my
| battery's health and keeping the cell balance from going
| too far out of line.
|
| Maybe its short sighted of me, but I don't want some
| abused battery from another owner swapped into my EV. The
| amount of trust I'd have to place on a battery swap
| station to give me a battery that's just as
| reliable/healthy as my own managed battery is far too
| great. Would they just reject people who try to swap
| faulty battery's or just take it as an operational loss
| and recycle batteries that fall out of spec.
|
| Of course a lot of this ties into future ownership/rental
| financial models, however the world works with everything
| going towards subscription in the future. If you're just
| subscription/leasing a car as a service the vast majority
| of people won't care of give a shit anyway.
|
| As for now I own my EV and when the battery needs
| replacement ten years from now I expect to be able to buy
| another one, hopefully larger/more capable, and continue
| on my merry way.
| xeromal wrote:
| There's a lot to unpack in your statement but China
| kneecaps their own purchasing of their goods in order to
| have cheap exports at the expense of their own civilians.
| Each country should act in the interest of their own
| civilians and industries. We can already see from Ukraine
| that having self-capability to produce your own weaponry
| is a good though. Producing vehicles is an aspect of
| that.
| bgnn wrote:
| They are expanding in Europe rapidly, and in China of course.
|
| In the Netherlands they are partnered with a local green
| electricity provider (Vattenfall) and Shel for their charger
| network. Shell owns the most petrol stations along the
| highways, so they will have their chargers there for sure.
|
| I'm expecting the tariffs on Chinese EVs to be rolled back in
| EU after the US tariffs. They might want BYD to open local
| factories, like NIO is planning to do.
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| > I'm expecting the tariffs on Chinese EVs to be rolled
| back in EU after the US tariffs.
|
| I doubt it. This would likely have a significant negative
| impact on domestic EU car companies, most of which are
| considered cornerstones of their local country's economy.
| Now, whether this _should_ happen (to benefit consumers
| /the environment) is another argument.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Then again, the most protective germany, has manoveured
| itself into a corner, with its production proxxy ungary
| loosing the "in-between-empires" heat gradient and
| annoying everyone.
| tonfa wrote:
| > I doubt it. This would likely have a significant
| negative impact on domestic EU car companies
|
| They want to pair that with technology transfers, similar
| to how China forced other companies to do technology
| transfers when opening factories.
| Peanuts99 wrote:
| Isn't their plan to sell them to charger operators?
| notahacker wrote:
| Yeah, would have thought if BYD played it smartly and the
| tech is that far ahead, they could get a lot of market
| share from batteries and chargers even if Europe's car
| brands remain strong and protected.
| timerol wrote:
| The state of the art (not just for BYD) is to make sure you
| don't have to charge a cold battery by getting it to the right
| temperature before charging. One of the reasons that Tesla (and
| others) has navigation integrated into trip planning integrated
| into the vehicle is so that the battery temperature can be
| optimized in the 10 minutes before you start charging, to
| maximize charging speed.
|
| BYD would not pump 400 kW into a battery at -10 C. This
| research helps in the situation where you have a cold battery,
| and need to start charging it before it can warm up.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| That requires 1 megawatt chargers. For each charger.
|
| Not saying it's impossible, but that won't be easy.
| michaelt wrote:
| The US consumes 376 million gallons of gas per day. Which is
| equivalent to a continuous power draw of 500 gigawatts.
|
| Megawatt chargers? We'll need the generation capacity to
| support 500,000 of them.
| saurabhshahh wrote:
| can we do it for the smartphones first? without turning them into
| a furnace
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| How often are you charging your phone in sub-freezing
| temperatures?
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| We already have smartphones charging at 240W: Realme GT3 and
| Realme GT5.
|
| 9.5 minutes from 0 to 100%.
| wolfi1 wrote:
| it seems a little bit dubious to me. You can't beat the Arrhenius
| Law, not in Electrochemistry, anyhow. The ion mobility would be
| very very low, you'd have to rely that the temperature in the
| battery itself is above 0degC
| byyoung3 wrote:
| now they just have to figure out how to make it charge while
| people are lighting them on fire
| RKFADU_UOFCCLEL wrote:
| Nice to see that they require minimal changes at the battery
| manufacturer. Too often people come up with good ideas like this
| without accounting for other factors in the supply chain.
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