Range Anxiety is a myth

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Exactly. BMW i3 REx might have a bit of range anxiety, but not near as bad as BEV version. "Do I have enough gas to make the next station..." ;)
 
Quoting from the Twitter posts:

The Tesla lineup now adds roughly 150 miles of range in 20 minutes, which is totally reasonable for long-distance driving.​

If range anxiety really was a myth, then he wouldn't find the need to exaggerate. The rule of thumb for Tesla drivers on a long road trip is 30 minutes of charging for 150 miles of range, not 20 minutes.

A small group of people dedicated to a given cause may convince themselves that what the general public perceives about the focus of their cause is a "myth", but that doesn't at all help their cause. Wishful thinking and ignoring reality does not actually change reality.

We EV advocates need to face reality and deal with the fact that range anxiety is quite real, and with current BEVs is a serious barrier to BEVs going mainstream. Range anxiety is also a good reason to argue in favor of PHEVs.

Imagine a world where 350 kW charging is the norm—200+ miles in 10 minutes.
​
Certainly in the future we'll have ultrafast charging, even faster than this; I'd say we'll get to at least 300 miles of range in 10 minutes. But this will require much more powerful fast-chargers, perhaps 1 MW or even more. It will also require better batteries; cells which can be charged much faster without overheating. Will solid state batteries allow ultrafast charging? I don't know, but I certainly hope so!
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Pushmi-Pullyu said:
Certainly in the future we'll have ultrafast charging, even faster than this; I'd say we'll get to at least 300 miles of range in 10 minutes. But this will require much more powerful fast-chargers, perhaps 1 MW or even more. It will also require better batteries; cells which can be charged much faster without overheating. Will solid state batteries allow ultrafast charging? I don't know, but I certainly hope so!
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That is where we need to go. But even 210 miles, 3 hours @70 mph, 3mi/kWh, in 10 minutes would be enough to end ICE and fuel cell boondoggle. That would be ~70 kWh in 10 minutes or a rate of 420 kW.

Bob Wilson
 
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bwilson4web said:
...even 210 miles, 3 hours @70 mph, in 10 minutes would be enough to end ICE and fuel cell boondoggle. That would be ~70 kWh in 10 minutes or a rate of 420 kW.
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I hope we don't have to wait until BEV tech has improved that much before we see the end of the hydrogen fueled fuel cell boondoggle; the "hydrogen economy" hoax. I expected that to have tapered off already, but it's still going and still wasting taxpayer dollars on building new H2 fueling stations. Sadly, Big Oil's lobbying is more influential than I realized, even in California! :(
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You certainly seem to have a problem building hydrogen filling stations with only 34 for the whole country.

Fortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case in other countries where they are now beginning to appear in lager numbers.
 
There are several problems associated with charging.

The first is the time taken. Anything longer than petrochemical or hydrogen charging is unattractive to the user. Does anyone want to hang about - even for ten minutes - for a 'fast' charge. Not when there is an ICE which takes two minutes.

The second is safety. The voltages and currents involved are far too high. You can trade one off against the other, but high voltages are highly undesirable to have anywhere near people, and big currents mean heavy cables which weaker folk will have difficulty handling them. By contrast you can put 1MW into a tank in two or three minutes in perfect safety.

Third is that if ALL cars charged from the mains, you would need a much bigger grid, more generating capacity etc. which is far more expensive than - say - hydrogen stations. It is not helped by the fact that moving large amounts of energy long distance by transmission lines is inefficient. You lose at least 5% maybe as high as 10% of the energy. By contrast, a road tanker can transfer GWs of energy with losses of a tiny fraction of a percent per 100 miles.
 
While battery technology continues to improve, plug-in technology fills the gap:
ODO_100.jpg


ODO_101.jpg

Tripmeter B is reset when the tank is filled. We're looking at ~2,000 mi for 2/3 tank, ~7.6 gallons. That was an estimated 450 gas miles @60 MPG.

Bob Wilson
 
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Martin Williams said:
Anything longer than petrochemical or hydrogen charging is unattractive to the user. Does anyone want to hang about - even for ten minutes - for a 'fast' charge. Not when there is an ICE which takes two minutes.
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How long are you gonna keep beating that dead horse? Nobody is gonna keep buying gasmobiles just to save a few minutes per stop a long road trip, when they'll save much more time in a month by conveniently plugging in at home or at work. In most cases, the only time those in a BEV car would need to wait for charging is during an extended road trip, when they would generally need to visit the "necessary room" during a stop anyway. A two-minute fill-up doesn't do any good if you have to spend 5 minutes or more visiting the rest room!"

Martin Williams said:
The second is safety. The voltages and currents involved are far too high.
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"Too high" for what? Electrical engineers solved the problem of making high voltage connections safe more than a century ago.

Martin Williams said:
You can trade one off against the other, but high voltages are highly undesirable to have anywhere near people, and big currents mean heavy cables which weaker folk will have difficulty handling them. By contrast you can put 1MW into a tank in two or three minutes in perfect safety.
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Seriously? Your argument is that working with always leaky hydrogen fuel lines is "safer" than high voltage systems engineered to be fail-safe?

How sad that this is the best FUD can come up with, dude! :rolleyes:

Martin Williams said:
Third is that if ALL cars charged from the mains, you would need a much bigger grid, more generating capacity etc. which is far more expensive than - say - hydrogen stations. It is not helped by the fact that moving large amounts of energy long distance by transmission lines is inefficient. You lose at least 5% maybe as high as 10% of the energy. By contrast, a road tanker can transfer GWs of energy with losses of a tiny fraction of a percent per 100 miles.
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OMG I can't believe you're actually trying to claim that the ~7% transmission loss for the electrical grid is somehow worse than the massive amounts of energy lost in the supply chain between generation and dispensing, for hydrogen fuel! Altogether that's what? 35-40% or perhaps even more?

If it will be expensive to upgrade the grid to support every road vehicle being a BEV, then imagine how much more expensive it would be to install H2 fueling stations to support every vehicle on the roads!

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Pushmi-Pullyu said:
. . . Nobody is gonna keep buying gasmobiles just to save a few minutes per stop a long road trip . . .
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All time is not equal. As a plug-in owner who has done multiple, cross-country trips, these trips are often taken during weekend and leave. It is precious time we've earned and husband for our relief and enjoyment. That could slightly bias a purchase decision against either a BEV or plug-in. Still, the purchase price is a bigger driver combined with FUD.

Bob Wilson
 
bwilson4web said:
All time is not equal. As a plug-in owner who has done multiple, cross-country trips, these trips are often taken during weekend and leave. It is precious time we've earned and husband for our relief and enjoyment.
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I think you've lost track of the context of the argument. I'm not arguing that the waiting time for a 30 to 45 minute charge en route is insignificant. It is significant for the average driver. I'm arguing that when future EV ultra-fast charging reaches the level of 10 minutes or less for 300 miles worth of range, then the few extra minutes (as compared to filling a gasmobile) will be insignificant.

This will be doubly true for family vacations. Based on personal experience, I can state without hesitation that the rule of thumb is that the more people in the car, the longer every stop takes at a "rest stop" or convenience store. If you have a car with four people in it, you can nearly always forget about getting back underway in less than 10 minutes!
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True that!

Being severely married, I forget there is a difference when I'm solo trying to get back home and when 'she who must be obeyed' is with me.

Hummm, perhaps we could sell EVs to ladies who like a more 'casual' recharge and rest.

Bob Wilson
 
Well, if you DO suffer from range anxiety, you can always buy a Hyundai Nexo. It has a range of 500 miles and takes under 5 minutes to recharge - with hydrogen of course.

I can't see it getting a lot more than that. Bulky tanks are the Achilles heel of hydrogen and I can't really see them getting any smaller. You might pick up a bit of extra range by increasing the efficiency, but the Nexo is claiming to be 60% efficient already, so I can't see it making a lot of difference. Even an impossible 100% will only give you a bit over 800 miles.

As to the time taken in stops with passengers aboard, I suspect that the time taken by them will be in addition to the charging time. Filling stations in the UK are usually remote from the rest facilities, the idea being that you fill up after you've had a bite to eat or used the other facilities.

It's also worth noting that if you are going to take 30 minutes rather than two to fill/recharge your tank, in order to handle the same throughput, you will need not 24 or 36 pumps - the norm for UK motorway facilities but fifteen times that, or 360 to 540 charging stations. It may be quite a walk from your charging point to the restaurant! On a typical UK summer day (a howling gale and driving rain) you need a tough constitution to enjoy it.

This assumes the range of battery cars is equal to that of ICEs. If it's shorter, the number of charging points needed goes up proportionally.
 
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