Prime destined to be doa?

What do you mean by equivalent? Please try out the evtripplanner.com for yourself. It is easy to use and you'll have all of the data in front of you to criticize the route and time. If you like to drive 12 hrs straight and eat in the car, then EV is definitely not for you. I would take a plane if I didn't want to get out of the car.

 

Or those that decided BEVs won't work because they don't work for them.

The robot is also an answer to those wanting inefficient wireless charging.

 

I can't imagine pumping more than 1/2 MegaWatt into a car which would be a cable 4x as heavy. Now into a semi, ok, now I could see the semi requiring a megawatt or two, and yes, the cable would begin to be a bit heavy for the average strength of a typical human.

 

Ummm...
Tesla Model S owner builds homemade autonomous ‘metal snake-like’ charger [Video] | Electrek

This would rule me out, even if I had robots to build my robots because I don't have a garage. Unless robots could first build me a garage.

 

maybe the point of post #720 got lost. Water-cooled charge cables are water cooled because the cable is made light & thin enough to remain wieldable. It's the same as many welding cables that are water cooled. They can be made thin and flexible & much lighter because their water cooled. That's what keeps the thin and light charge cable from getting hot.
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just tried it, 11 hours charging time, compared to 1 hour gas up, unless there are superchargers at hotels, it turns a 3 day trip into 4 days. and then, the hotels would have to be at the right mileage at the end of the day.

for instance, where i can drive from here to fredericksburg, va, without gassing up,(although i do in jersey cause it's cheap) the website has me charging in hartford, ct. for over an hour.

they do have a charger at the molly pitcher service area on the jersey turnpike, which is nice, cause we sometimes stop there to use the bathroom.

 

Very good. Which car model did you pick? That is an important factor in charge time. The default car is a 60 KWh car. I'm guessing you picked that one. Your charging time should not be over 7 hrs, some of which can be done at the end of the day. EDIT UPDATE- should have added: "if you get/use the 90 KWh battery".

 

correct. but it's just an exercise in fantasy. my original point has long since been forgotten, but you can't even say that a bev is just not right for you yet, even though you want one, without someone jumping down your throat.

 

Back to the topic on hand, looks like the DOA arrival time might be postponed - but I'm not sure if the article is saying North America is still on schedule, but Japan gets to wait or if everyone gets to wait. The other bad news is that they are planning on producing fewer of these. I'd sure like to see the profit margin on their entire car line up. If the Prime has a lower profit margin than the average Toyota car, I can see them not wanting to sell more of them.

Toyota Prius Prime Launch Delayed In Japan

 

it's only saying japan, because they were first. we're still waiting for the n/a announcement. i wonder if the japanese feedback was as virulent as it was here.

 

Actually, that was really fortunate that you picked the 60 KWh model, because it points out to me that I wouldn't make the drive you describe in a 60 KWh EV either. 85 KWh makes a huge difference over the 60 KWh model which is about 200 miles of range which both the Bolt and Model 3 are touting. If I get a model 3 and expect to drive it cross country, I'd have to make sure I got the big battery option if there is one. If that option is not available, then the model 3 won't be making nearly as many long road trips as the model S. Something definitely to ponder.

 

A commercial BEV truck doesn't have to be limited to one charge cord.

 

agreed. if it was my intent to do a lot of long distance driving, i would want the most range possible. unfortunately, that's currently too far beyond most people's financial comfort zone. that's why time will keep bringing more advances and ev drivers.

 

I haven't been following the whole thread, so my comments are based on the last few posts...

Water cooling is not practical for consumer use, and reduces charging efficiency. The voltage of DC quick charging could just be increased, reducing the amp requirement, which reduces cable size.

If it was my intent to do a lot of long distance driving, I would drive my Prius. Why do people feel that EVs must be a practical vehicle to drive coast to coast before they will "work" for them? Even if I didn't own a gasser, I'd just trade cars with my parents for the trip. Failing that, I would trade with neighbors or friends. Failing that, I would rent... we are entering an increasingly sharing society.

 

so why would water reduce efficiency .... are you saying liquid reduces efficiency ? Or the reduced wire diameter necessitating the water....
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you're asking people to change their life long experience and attitude toward driving. obviously, that doesn't work in most cases. it will all change in a generation.

 

That's exactly it - the reduced wire diameter increases resistive losses (inefficiency), which increases heating, which requires the water to cool the wire.

If the inefficiency weren't there (the wire were thicker), the water wouldn't be necessary.

 

The Tesla DC chargers are already charging their 90 kWh packs at 120 kW about as fast as the packs want to go with existing battery technology. The newer (but original) 60 kWh packs will charge at a peak of around 100 kW. I'm not sure what the peak charge rate is for the really new 60 kWh pack that is really a 75 kWh pack with a software restriction. In other words, today's big batteries with energy-dense cells peak at around a 1.5 C rate.

Unless there is a big battery chemistry change, we won't really see 500 kW charging on a normal car anytime soon. We might see 120 kWh packs that charge at 180 kW within 5 years. That would imply 450+ Amps at today's charging voltages which may be more than the existing charge plugs can handle even with water jacketing.

That's why there is a move to double the charging voltage from a peak of 500V to 1000V. In reality, most battery packs today are designed to charge from around 320-420V from empty to full. That means a future 120 kW Tesla could charge at 180 kW at around 240A and 640-840V which they could comfortably do without water jacketing.

CHAdeMO and CCS could also do 240A without water-cooled cables and plugs although CCS vendors say they need cooling to go much above 250A for long periods of time (I'm not sure about CHAdeMO).

Water cooling introduces an additional reliability failure point so I suspect that most charging stations will stick with conventional cables except perhaps in extremely hot climate areas like Nevada and Arizona etc. or premium high speed charging locations. Larger vehicles like heavy duty trucks or EV RVs with even bigger batteries would begin to make a case for water-cooled cables at both high voltage and high (250A or higher) current.

The higher voltage spec updates are targeted to be finalized in the next year or two in time for some initial cars from European makers and perhaps Tesla by 2020.

We haven't seen the details on these future cars and stations but I assume the high voltage cars will be able to open an internal battery pack contactor (high current relay) to reconfigure themselves into a regular voltage pack when charging at older charging stations. Likewise, I expect that new high voltage chargers will still be able to charge at lower voltage for older cars so that everything remains compatible and everything uses the same plug and socket.

 

And the wire would be too thick and heavy for a typical Tesla owner to handle. Perhaps that is what the robot cable is for.

Redpoint5 was suggesting just upping the voltage carried by the charge cable and leaving the amperage the same. The length of a typical cable is short enough that voltage drop shouldn't be an issue, and thus you don't need thicker wire. The insulation needs to be upgraded though, and likely the noise shielding.

 

I can't see home charging getting any faster than about 10 kW, which is already 1/4 of typical home service capacity. Perhaps it will go as high as 20 kW. At 10 kW, you're looking at about 12 hours to fully charge a 120 kW size battery!

I suggested higher voltage DC quick charging to reduce the diameter of the cable needed to charge the vehicle, not only so that it can easily be handled by the customer, but also to reduce line loss.