PiP and the Future of Home Charging

... and on the battery.

For grid friendliness, drivers should be opting for slow charges spread out over the whole night.

 

220v at 200 amp = 44kw. You'll destroy the battery. The nature of the rechargeable batteries is the charge rate is much slower than the operating rate. A Tesla could use up all of it's charge in 1 hour or less. Do you really think you could give a Tesla a full charge at the same rate? A PiP could use up all of it's charge in 15 minutes. No way you could recharge to full in that same amount of time. Even if you had the power to do so, you'll destroy the battery.

 

Sure, with the existing batteries. But there is no reason, in the future, you couldn't charge 2, 4 or 8 batteries in parallel given proper cooling.

Mike

 

Keep in mind that we are talking about batteries that go into cars that manufacturers hope to sell. We are not here to talk about what could be done in a laboratory. Of course they could reduce the size of each batteries and put more of them in parallel. Currently, it takes 90 mins to charge a PiP assuming you're using 220v at 10 amps. If we just do straight math without consideration of possible physical limitation that I don't know about, they would have to reduce the battery size to 1/6 and put 6 of them in parallel. Each battery would consume 10 amps for a total of 60 amps. Mathematically, it works out but the problem is, if you reduce the battery size to 1/6, can it still handle 10 amps? What about the cost. Making 6 smaller batteries instead of one big one will certainly increase cost to a point that consumers are not willing to pay for it.

 

I think you just need to shift from 'size of the battery' to 'size of the commute'.
I don't care if the battery pack gives me a range of 2000 miles. I only need to charge the amount of the battery pack I have depleted.

We have two Teslas charging on 24 amps each off a 60 amp circuit. Our average day is 50 miles although once or twice a week we go over 80 and once every other week we go over 150.
The only time we haven't fully charged the car overnight was when we drove 280 miles in one day. The following day we were at about 200 miles of range, drove it about 40 and topped off the following evening.

Yes, there are some people that may drive 200 miles every day and need more than 24 amps. 40 amps will get you about 280 miles overnight. In a two car family, if both cars are being driven 500 miles a day, sure, they will need a monster circuit panel, but I don't think that is realistic.

 

I do not know, maybe it's because in today's economy, you take the job you can get, even if it means 50 miles of travel to work? Moving isn't simple with a wife and children.

 

How fast does the battery get filled going down a steep decline during regen? Can someone theoretically do it in 20 minutes? That can't be good for the battery.

 

This whole thread seems to be about future things. The current PIP can only take 10 amps, so any talk of 50 or 100 amps is some future idea. The battery in all EVs and PHEVs are already made up of many smaller batteries. And having multiple groups or clusters of batteries that each get charged from a seperate circuit is a simple thing...but more complex from a user perspective because you have to plug in multiple connectors...or have a standard that allows multiple circuits within one plug (which means more expensive for everyone who has that plug.)

By coincidence, two days ago I met Terry charging his electric motorcycle:
Terry Hershner Sets Record, First Across America on Electric Motorcycle | All Electric Vehicle Rally

He can take 3 L2 cables at once.

Mike

 

This is cool and I'm sure that we'll be seeing a lot of cool things coming in the near future. However, at the current time, cool is expensive. Electrical vehicles are nothing new. They were in production before petro cars became popular. With EV, the limitation is always at the battery. The cost/performance is still too high. Let I said earlier, I'm sure they could make things work in the lab or prototypes, but I'm more interested in can they make it affordable.

 

I seriously believe that we will, because Elon Musk, who gained over $400 million in net worth this year from Tesla, just taught the industry that its worth it. People will pay more for EV's. Economically, the battery doesn't replace gas, it adds revenue to the car and battery makers. The companies who can mass-produce these batteries can make billions of dollars.

Add $5,000 of battery to a million cars a year and that's $5 billion a year. This is not small potatoes. And 60 million cars were produced in 2012. Could twenty percent of those sell for $5,000 more if they never needed gas? That's Sixty Billion Dollars per year.

That's R&D worth investing in.

 

Toyota is already doing that with PiP. They added the $5000 battery to the car and I was ready to buy one until I found out that it only could hold enough charge for 12 to 15 miles. $5000 for 15 miles per day? I made more money by using the $5000 to trade Tesla stocks. It's ok. I'll buy the gas for now instead of the battery.

 

For me it was only about a $1k premium. I figure I will make that back within a couple years pretty easy, especially considering the PiP gets slightly better MPG even just in HV than the regular Prius.

 

Assuming I was qualified for the tax credit, it would have been a $2500 premium for me. Still, I couldn't save enough since I couldn't charge the car at work. After paying for the electricity, I would end up saving only 40 cents a day. I could easily make $125 per day trading Tesla stocks using the $2500. $125 could buy me a lot of gas.

 

You misunderstand me. Let's say that $10 billion of R&D gets you to where you can create a $5,000 (retail) battery that powers a car for 250 miles reliably, for 10 yrs/150,000 miles. For that $10 billion, the annual revenue is about $60 billion. It may take five or ten years... but if you think about it, a battery is just metal, chemicals, and a few cheap semiconductors. Seriously, there's nothing intrinsically expensive about a battery, it just needs more technology and volume to get where it needs to be.

 

Throwing out a non-related fact is called a red herring. You could have just as easily purchased a used Prius and saved a similar amount. For that matter, you could have purchased a Prius C instead.

Think about how people justify the upgrade of a model. There's quite a price difference between the base model and one with lots of creature comforts.

 

Well, it is related somewhat. Maybe I should be a little more clear. I was comparing a PiP with a standard Prius. Of course I could have gotten a used car or maybe something much more cheaper. My target is a Prius and I was stick to that. The decision was whether I should pay extra for the Plug-in feature that is going to cost $5000 before tax credit. I felt it wasn't worth to me to pay that amount. I'm certainly not knocking PiP nor EV's. I always said they are great cars but I don't like the cost/performance ratio.

 

Ok I get what you're saying. Basically you're saying if they could reduce the cost/performance ratio, people would buy EV's. Yes, of course they would. I would to. The $64k question is...can it be done. Battery technology advancement has always been slow and yield poor cost/performance ratio. With EV's, we also have to consider the energy/weight ratio and this ratio doesn't look too good either. Do you happen to know what is the total weight of the batteries in a Tesla?