Electric cars are doomed if fast charger reliability doesn’t get better
I was about to submit this article, but PaulHole already did: I hope it will not be a problem if I compose here the abridgement I would have composed for mine.<p>Subtitle: <i>If every driver has a horror story about charging, adoption is going to stall</i><p>&gt; <i>In many regards, electric vehicles are clearly better than the internal combustion engine-powered relatives they will eventually replace. They&#x27;re quieter, they rattle and vibrate less, they accelerate faster, and they&#x27;re much more efficient because they can recover energy under braking. And their batteries should last for the life of the car. &#x2F;&#x2F; [But] even the biggest EV enthusiasts can&#x27;t ignore the fact that it takes a lot longer to recharge a battery [...] Stopping to charge every 150..250 miles becomes an impediment to... freedom</i><p>&gt; <i>Finding a charger isn&#x27;t actually the problem [in the USA], though, even if it adds another 50 miles to your road trip [...] No, the problem is whether or not any of the chargers will be working when you arrive</i><p>&gt; <i>Man plans, universe laughs: A few weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal published a piece...: &quot;I Rented an Electric Car for a Four-Day Road Trip. I Spent More Time Charging It Than I Did Sleeping&quot; [...] A few weeks later, [...] despite plenty of planning, I still spent almost as much time stationary, arguing with charging machinery, as I did actually pulling electrons... throughout the 600-mile journey. &#x2F;&#x2F; At each charging stop, in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, I ran into problems. A five-minute wait to see if the car and charger would establish communications was invariably the case[; w]aiting 10 minutes was not uncommon. Even then, there was no time to relax; more than once, an error somewhere in the loop shut everything down after just a few kWh. &#x2F;&#x2F; Only one of six charging stops was painless [...] &#x2F;&#x2F; Then there was the problem of whether or not all of the chargers at a given location were even functional [and review ratings will not help]</i><p>&gt; <i>I think a lot of these communication errors come from the plug weighing down and one or more pins losing their connection [and it seems the issue is not restricted to the vehicle model]</i><p>&gt; <i>97% is the uptime requirement for chargers that will be built as part of the federal government&#x27;s Interstate charging network</i><p>The article may include other useful information (names software applications for road trip planning), together with many links to further explore the matter.<p>--<p>Incidentally, as a free comment: the article further specifies the statistics about the average trip in the USA to be less than 30 miles per day (less than 50km&#x2F;d). But it should be clear that the problems lie in the exceptions, not in the norm. Hence, the need for the preservation of options. And will that lossfully compressed number hide uncontiguous realities and potential clusters - with different needs - such as city dwellers vs commuters vs rural dwellers (more telling clusters could be found)?<p>By the way: think of emergency ops vehicles depending on &quot;careful planning&quot;... From the very car of a doctor to specialized vehicles...