Super long-term kernel support

Posted Mar 21, 2018 11:28 UTC (Wed) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988)
In reply to: Super long-term kernel support by arjan
Parent article: Super long-term kernel support

Some of them are already switching partly or fully into charging stations. This is huge infrastructure already in place, it would be foolish not to reuse it.

Super long-term kernel support - fuel availability for 20-year-old cars

Posted Mar 24, 2018 21:29 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (8 responses)

Some of them are already switching partly or fully into charging stations. This is huge infrastructure already in place, it would be foolish not to reuse it.

How does a corner charging station work? Doesn't it take hours to charge a car?

I have a colleague who worked on battery technology and told me that a standard gas station nozzle delivers 30 megawatts, and that there was nothing on the horizon that could match that with electric battery storage.

Except that I read once about an idea for swapping out the entire battery.

Super long-term kernel support - fuel availability for 20-year-old cars

Posted Mar 25, 2018 4:55 UTC (Sun) by songmaster (subscriber, #1748) [Link]

Tesla built and demonstrated a machine that could replace the battery pack in one of their vehicles faster than you could refuel some high-end car. I’m sure there are YouTube videos of the press demonstration available. Elon Musk was talking about installing such machines around the country alongside their super chargers, but I think they must have dropped the idea since I haven’t heard anything about it recently.

I guess the energy capacity of a gas pump nozzle is somewhat analogous to the bandwidth of a truck full of hard drives driving down a highway — wires aren’t always the fastest way to transport energy/data.

Super long-term kernel support - fuel availability for 20-year-old cars

Posted Mar 25, 2018 15:52 UTC (Sun) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (3 responses)

I think a significant difference over petrol/gas is that you can (once the infrastructure is installed) charge your car when it's parked at home, at work, at the shops, etc. If it takes 8 hours to restore the energy you used on your commute, that's good enough. It's 2-3 orders of magnitude less than 30MW if you look at instantaneous power; but if you consider the amount of time you actively spend on it (driving to the gas station every week, vs plugging in a charger at home every day), electric probably has better joules-per-second-of-human-effort.

The high-power charging stations are for rare long trips. Apparently the Tesla Model S can get 170 miles of charge in 30 minutes. (Full charge takes disproportionately longer, so it's quicker to do multiple partial charges). So it's not hours, but long enough that I guess you'd typically want facilities (shops, food, etc) for people to use (and spend money in) while waiting. I guess with that, plus the reduced demand if most charging is done at home, it's not going to be able to support anywhere near as many charging stations as there are gas stations today.

There's also the Formula E approach where the drivers get a fully-charged battery in about ten seconds, by simply swapping their entire car. Not sure how well that would work with consumer vehicles though.

Super long-term kernel support - fuel availability for 20-year-old cars

Posted Mar 29, 2018 12:09 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (1 responses)

"vs plugging in a charger at home every day"

I'm afraid many (maybe most) people don't have a home where they can plugin a cable from the car. Think about a place like this: https://goo.gl/maps/bgH6CUD7BBS2.

"The high-power charging stations are for rare long trips."

I guess cars currently spend about 3-5 minutes at the fuel pump: fill the car, go to the shop, pay, leave (maybe just to a parking slot). If cars need to spend about 10 times as much time at the plug, the motorway rest station will need 10 times more space - instead of 16 pumps, 160 parking places with plugs. Not sure all of them would have the place.

Super long-term kernel support - fuel availability for 20-year-old cars

Posted Mar 29, 2018 12:43 UTC (Thu) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link]

> I'm afraid many (maybe most) people don't have a home where they can plugin a cable from the car. Think about a place like this: https://goo.gl/maps/bgH6CUD7BBS2.

What's the problem? As demand grows, chargers will pop up in the car parks. I don't see why you can't eventually have enough chargers at the sides of the parking spaces to serve a 100 % electrified car fleet.

Super long-term kernel support - fuel availability for 20-year-old cars

Posted Mar 31, 2018 8:23 UTC (Sat) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link]

FWIW, the second generation Formula E car (used as of season 5, starting towards the end of this year) is said to have enough battery capacity that the car swap will no longer be necessary, despite delivering higher speed.

Super long-term kernel support - fuel availability for 20-year-old cars

Posted Mar 25, 2018 17:38 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

A regular (Level 2) charging station typically delivers around 2-6kW of power, so it takes several hours to charge a car completely. It's perfect for daily commute where you charge your car overnight at home or during daytime at work.

For fast charging, Tesla superchargers can deliver 150kW of power right now and 400kW chargers have been demonstrated. And you don't really need full 30MW for charging if you can drive 500 miles on a single charge.

Super long-term kernel support - fuel availability for 20-year-old cars

Posted Mar 28, 2018 3:08 UTC (Wed) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

So, summing up: there is no practical way to convert a corner gas station to a charging station, so it probably is not happening today, and such conversions are not a reason to doubt that gas will be easy to find 20 years from now.

Super long-term kernel support - fuel availability for 20-year-old cars

Posted Mar 29, 2018 18:30 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> How does a corner charging station work? Doesn't it take hours to charge a car?

Full charge, or useful charge?

These figures are from when I was looking at possibly getting a Nissan Leaf about 3 years ago ...

Time to full charge - several hours.
Time to 80% charge - 30 minutes? A decent motorway services rest break.

So, bearing in mind our daughter lives over 200 miles away, with a range of about 200 miles we could get there *easily* with one short stop at a service station to recharge. Both the car, and ourselves :-)

And while the UK plans to ban the sale of non-electric cars by 2040, I suspect we will still have small liquid-fuel engines that can provide top-up power. I'm planning for my next car to be a mixed-mode car - primarily electric with backup petrol engine for when the range is insufficient.

Cheers,
Wol