Unfortunately, there is very little chance of a commercialized solid state battery come to market in 2021. The best projection are targeting 2025 timeframe for the first versions of a pilot. I hope the projections are wrong as solid state would really disrupt many industries.

 

I think the title of this thread is confusing. How can it be broke? Charging stations are at its infancy and growing. I'm more concerned with States that don't allow EV sales like Michigan. You have to go to Ohio to buy a Tesla.

 

It’s close to the title and topic of the article that was quoted in the first post.

I think the biggest obstacle to the build of ev infrastructure is the EV manufacturers using / planning to use proprietary charging infrastructure. Certainly there will be generic available but the more advantageous fast chargers are proprietary like the Tesla supercharger feature. Sure you can charge a non Tesla car there if you buy an adapter but you can’t use the supercharge part.

Imagine if you wanted to fill up your ICE car with gas but only a handful of stations did it at full tilt and the rest just drizzled fuel.

I believe there needs to be a universal standard approach defined and agreed to for fast charging and soon before EV vehicles become more widely accepted. Maybe saying only cars that have the universal fast charging infrastructure get incentives would make for a change

 

It is the home of the big three who probably aren't fans of Tesla and their business model

Charging station rollouts aren't really being supported all that well by OEMs. They haven't begun investing in them yet excluding efforts by VW. The manufacturers should have all rolled out their solutions using CCS and then cross licensed each other so that the network rolled out much faster in aggregate. Or they could have all just took equal owners of Electrify America and significantly expanded their funding. Unfortunately, range anxiety is the single biggest deterrent of EV adoption.

Tesla's network is really good and more than sufficient for their cars but not everyone wants or can afford Teslas. Hopefully, government subsidies drive more chargers rollouts. I'm also hoping Tesla offers CCS adapters officially so that I have more choice in where I charge.

 

I don't think anyone is deviating from using CCS as the official standard for charging. Tesla in Europe uses standard CCS too as it's forced to. In the US, I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla also changes it's ports to support both their standard and CCS and over time, may completely switch to the standard if all cars use them. The only issue right now with the CCS chargers from 3rd parties has lousy software in terms of the handshake between chargers and the cars. This is actually improving rapidly so I expect that most handshake issues will resolved in the next year or two.

The only reason Tesla used a proprietary connector is that it released its network before all the others had time to standardize to CCS.

 

Yep, I voiced this concern many times before. Not only the infrastructure isn't standard, but they can implement protocols into charging ports that check brand/make and even VIN number before enabling charging. Until there is a coherent charging standard, or better yet standard swappable batteries, EVs are going to remain viable only for the well off people who own garages.

 

Over 70% of people in the US live in detached homes and have access to their own charging. It's not just the wealthy that have houses. poor people can have houses too...have you ever lived in the Midwest? Doesn't take much wealth to own a house there.

 

Curious, did you pay an electrician to come and make changes to your house to charge yours? How much was that? Did they also have to bury a cable? How much was that?

I don't think 70% of American's can afford that sort of thing, right now you've pretty much got to be (relatively) wealthy. Rolling a long orange 110 extension cord to charge these things out on the street isn't going to work well.

 

i know a couple of people who installed a dryer outlet in the garage (nema 14/50 i think they are), and it probably cost them less than $50 and wasn't hard. No doubt tons of youtube videos to do it too.

Ha, not to mention it taking DAYS to recharge at 110v.

 

Costs vary widely. If you have the breaker in the garage, it's like $50. Mine was $1000 because it was all the way at the back of my house so they had to pipe the wires through the house into the garage. I could have used my dryer outlet which charges much faster than 110 but I bought the Tesla wall connector which is a $500 L2 charger. This is optional of course but I like nice things.

Right now, EVs are more expensive for sure but as costs come down, people will realize that spending a little upfront to avoid expensive gas is a nice compromise.

 

what is the difference in charging speed between the dryer connector and the tesla wall connector?

 

A Tesla wall connector will do 44 miles an hour vs 30 miles an hour with a Nema 14 connector. My dryer outlet will probably do 15-20. The Tesla Wall Connector comes with its own charging cord so I can leave my Portable cord in the car in case I need it somewhere. Most people just install the Nema 14-50 outlet and just leave the portable connector in the garage. The Wall Connector is very nice though and comes with a way to store the wire when it's not in use vs the portable connector just lying on the floor. Overall, it takes about 10 seconds to remove the cord from the wall connector and plug it in the car.

There are other solutions now so plenty of non Tesla boxes to choose from.

 

Could be, but there are nuances. Plenty of people in NYC live in detached houses, but they don't have practical garages or driveways. People who live in the suburbs or in rural areas often have multiple cars, and charging several EVs at home is going to involve serious and expensive upgrade to your service. Most homes have 100amps of power, and maximum you can upgrade to is 150-200amps. Each 240v Tesla charger draws about 50amps.

No matter how you slice it, for EVs to become viable its not as simple as adding a dryer outlet in the garage, its going to take some serious and expensive upgrades to the electric infrastructure and upgrades to each individual home.

 

thanks for the great info. obviously i thought a dryer outlet and nema connector were the same, but guess not. so what i don't get is how can different connectors deliver different charge speeds when i presume they're all 220v and obviously all delivering power coming from the house supply?