Company will Convert GM's Electric Vans into Speedy Mobile Superchargers for Fleets (forbes.com) 145
Nashville-based Yoshi Mobility launched in 2015 to deliver gasoline to vehicle owners, reports Forbes. But this week the company announced they'll begin converting GM electric delivery vans into "mobile EV superchargers" — fast, battery-powered 240 kw DC chargers — for corporate fleets of electric cars.
"There's kind of this critical grid problem and so we think that we can accelerate towards an EV future and this is a unique way that we can do it," said [cofounder/CEO Bryan] Frist in an interview. "The mobile charger can charge and then it can multiplex all the spots. So we tell people, it can electrify every spot in your parking lot."
Each mobile supercharger can service between five and seven vehicles according to Frist. With perhaps two superchargers operating on a fleet operator's lot, one would service a vehicle while the other supercharger would replenish its own charge off the grid and they would alternate, according to Frist. "What we say is we can do that same charge instead of three and a half hours, we can do in 10 minutes, and we can move around your lot," Frist says. "You don't have to put in all the infrastructure. You don't have to build it out. You just contract with us."
The company plans to begin with a "handful" of mobile superchargers in [GM's] BrightDrop vans but expects to ramp up production and begin commercializing more widely during the first quarter of 2025... The mobile superchargers will complement Yoshi Mobility's existing offering of high-capacity mobile generators that sit on a fleet operator's lot putting out as much as a megawatt of power and can service a larger number of vehicles than the mobile units.
Each mobile supercharger can service between five and seven vehicles according to Frist. With perhaps two superchargers operating on a fleet operator's lot, one would service a vehicle while the other supercharger would replenish its own charge off the grid and they would alternate, according to Frist. "What we say is we can do that same charge instead of three and a half hours, we can do in 10 minutes, and we can move around your lot," Frist says. "You don't have to put in all the infrastructure. You don't have to build it out. You just contract with us."
The company plans to begin with a "handful" of mobile superchargers in [GM's] BrightDrop vans but expects to ramp up production and begin commercializing more widely during the first quarter of 2025... The mobile superchargers will complement Yoshi Mobility's existing offering of high-capacity mobile generators that sit on a fleet operator's lot putting out as much as a megawatt of power and can service a larger number of vehicles than the mobile units.
Who would need this? (Score:3)
I'm having a hard time understanding why anyone would need this service.
Most people charge at home. Others use chargers at work or public chargers.
But why would anyone want/need to charge from a van full of batteries? You're not only paying for the electricity but also the wear on the batteries and the driver's time.
I could see this as an emergency service, but I can't see it being used often enough to make a business out of it.
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In the UK most of the urban population doesn't have a driveway. Where electricity is about 18p ($0.18) or less per kWh domestically, you pay about 40p for an on street charger up to $1.60 ($2.04) for super fast chargers on motorways. I don't think there's a huge market for it or it should be the default (simply provide fixed chargers to many parking places) there's enough margin there for it to be useful. For people who drive to a work car park, it really makes sense to get charged there. I'd expect that fo
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In the UK most of the urban population doesn't have a driveway.
The answer to this isn't to provide batteries on wheels to charge batteries, the answer is to provide public charging infrastructure on street.
you pay about 40p for an on street charger
This proposed service will not be cheap. If the cost of charging is prohibitive to you, this will make it more so. So far you've not made a case for this service.
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I can't see it being used on any kind of permanent basis. Maybe for events out in the middle of nowhere.
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It says right there in the summary, this is intended for fleet recharging.
Get 2, one is being recharged off the grid while the other moves around your fleet parking lot recharging up to 7 vehicles at a time.
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An extension cord would be way cheaper.
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You are talking a 15A circuit? And wait 18 hours for your car to charge??
Amazon sells a 30 amp 100-foot extension cord for $150 and a 200-foot cord for $170.
240v * 30amp = 7200 watts
A typical EV uses 0.3 kwh/mile.
So, if your vehicles are driven 100 miles/day, you can recharge them in three hours.
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Again: this is a fleet recharger for companies that have dozens or even hundreds of vehicles in a yard.
They're not going to run extension cords all over their parking lot.
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Again: this is a fleet recharger for companies with dozens or even hundreds of vehicles in a yard.
Again: Who would be stupid enough to buy "dozens or even hundreds" of vehicles without a plan to charge them, other than paying an expensive outside service?
They're not going to run extension cords all over their parking lot.
Why not? Other than being far more cost-effective, what's the problem?
A 50-foot cord can reach a dozen vehicles.
A 200-foot cord can reach 100 vehicles.
For bigger lots, connect two cords.
Of course, if you have hundreds of vehicles, trenching and installing multiple charge points is the sensible solution.
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Is your data center also a mess of random ass cables running this way and that between racks with cross over cables or did you buy expensive enterprise switches and pay a team to run structured cabling within and between racks back to your network core?
It is a lot cheaper to just run raw cables everywhere. Everyone who does structured cabling with switches is just wasting their money, right?
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Your analogy doesn't make sense.
Here's a better analogy.
Extension cord: Running a mess of cables.
Trenching: Structured cabling with switches.
Van service: Hire someone to run around with some USB thumb drives.
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Dude, you're the one who was talking about extension cords from Amazon.
At least you've now upgraded to trenching cables to charging stations from a central location. That could be a reasonable option except it does require building out a potentially huge network of trenches and cabling and charging ports across a large parking lot to serve hundreds of vehicles and then replacing the whole thing, during which time what are all those hundreds of vehicles doing during construction? Or I could just rent/lease
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You can not put more than 2 or 3 vehicles on one cord.
And the cords are not the problem. From where do you pull the cords: that is the problem. You need a power source: facepalm.
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You are talking a 15A circuit? And wait 18 hours for your car to charge??
Amazon sells a 30 amp 100-foot extension cord for $150 and a 200-foot cord for $170.
240v * 30amp = 7200 watts
A typical EV uses 0.3 kwh/mile.
So, if your vehicles are driven 100 miles/day, you can recharge them in three hours.
While these numbers are on par for level 2 AC charging, the summary is talking about DC "supercharging", where you deliver 50k-250k watts instead of 7.2k watts. The extension cords you would need would be cost prohibitive and your charge time is minutes instead of hours. From a fleet management labor point of view, it might save time (money) to move the charger between clusters of vehicles to be charged over moving the vehicles to the charger.
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Your points have philosophical merit, but you're only allowed to draw 80%, so 5760 watts. Secondly those extension cords are quite heavy. You could do a retracting system for them (motorized reel). But then, AFAIK cars don't charge on 240VAC, so you need a charger at the car. Level 2 chargers aren't small, nor lightweight, nor weatherproof. Yes you can mount them in weatherproof box, on wheels, etc. It's pretty inconvenient for what you'll get out of the effort. There's a growing large threat of theft of th
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AFAIK cars don't charge on 240VAC
They do. I charge my EV from a standard 240VAC outlet in my garage.
Speaking of fleets, Hertz lost huge $ on EV (Tesla) rentals.
I rented a car last year from Enterprise. When I went to the pickup counter, they asked me if I was willing to take an EV. I said, "Sure."
Then I went to the parking lot, got in the car, and ... the battery was at 30%.
You can't rent EVs if your employees don't understand EVs.
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But then, AFAIK cars don't charge on 240VAC, so you need a charger at the car. Level 2 chargers aren't small, nor lightweight, nor weatherproof. Yes you can mount them in weatherproof box, on wheels, etc. It's pretty inconvenient for what you'll get out of the effort.
Level 2 chargers are small and lightweight because Level 2 chargers aren't really chargers, they are really just cabling with some control electronics. With Level 2, the charger is actually in the vehicle. You are probably thinking of DCFC charging, sometimes incorrectly referred to as Level 3. One of many references [transportation.gov]
Level 1: 120v AC is delivered to the charger in the vehicle that converts to DC and charges the battery. Designed to plug into a regular outlet, slow (3-5 miles of range added per hour of cha
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Thank you for the info. So many things change so fast, and I don't really keep up with EV stuff. A good friend has a Bolt. I installed his level 2 charger- maybe 6 years ago(??). Runs on a 40 amp 240 line. It's not just cables- it has heat sink and lots of "stuff". Maybe his now somewhat older Bolt does not have 240 level 2 AC charger built in?
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If you have a fleet of cars or scooters: then they obviously do not drive 100km a day but something in the 600km range. If I drive all day with a scooter close to speed limit, I obviously do 400km or more.
Urban speed limit: 60km/h - one some sky lanes - 80 km/h. You drive ten hours a day as a professional delivery man, you easy do 500km and much more if you do it seriously.
I know some Bolt drivers that do two things: ride from Suvarnabhumi to Pattaya. That is a 125km trip. At either destination they "idle"
Re: Who would need this? (Score:2)
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well to be fair this is Nashville we are talking about, while NES (Nashville electric service) is generally ok where I live, which is only about 15 min outside their service zone is a hand full of dumb bubba's a and couple bucket trucks. To give you an example of these asswipes, they didn't accept debit cards for payment until 2013, and online payments (and thus autopay) were impossible until 2016
I enquired to a a couple ma-pa and company electricians to up our home service from 100 amps and add a couple 22
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Get 2, one is being recharged off the grid while the other moves around your fleet parking lot recharging up to 7 vehicles at a time.
For the cost of two of these you can electrify your parking lot. Which is precisely what companies with electric fleets are already doing.
Plus you still need to move that vehicle around. If you have to move a vehicle around a parking lot, simply move the flat car which needs to be charged to the charger instead.
This is a expensive solution to a non-problem.
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I'm making no judgement on the ROI for their customers or their business model. Maybe it is better to electrify a lot. But how about a huge lot of hundreds of vehicles? Maybe they have vehicles spread across different lots in a large area? I haven't done the math and don't care because that's not my point at all.
All I am saying is these are intended for fleet service. They are not intended for emergency refueling random cars on the road or home or apartment use for random civilians who own 1-2 cars. I
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Maybe they have vehicles spread across different lots in a large area?
If a company needs hundreds of vehicles spread across multiple lots, and none of the lots have electrical service, then they ARE NOT GONNA BUY EVs.
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If a company needs hundreds of vehicles spread across multiple lots, and none of the lots have electrical service, then they ARE NOT GONNA BUY EVs.
You forget the part about them being FORCED TO BUY EVs.
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They will, and they will buy the charging trucks, too.
Are you an idiot?
Re: Who would need this? (Score:2)
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How many people buy a fleet of cars with no way to charge them?
Re: Who would need this? (Score:2)
I mean you see the guy trying to return his cybertruck and cant sell it? Wasnt even to the level of cant charge it, didnt even fit in the allotted spot. People check nothing.
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I guarantee that guy isn't a vehicle fleet manager. A fleet manager actually does check into things like "how do the 100 EVs I just authorized the purchase of not turn into inert lumps of metal after the battery is discharged".
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I'm having a hard time understanding why anyone would need this service.
Most people charge at home. Others use chargers at work or public chargers.
But why would anyone want/need to charge from a van full of batteries?
If you ignore the bit about this being intended for fleet operations - which it seems you have - then consider this: AAA, and CAA here in Canada, are still a thing. I can see Yoshi evolving into and/or working with associations like these to help 'stuck mororists', whether they need a tire changed, a tow, or merely a refill of the 'fuel' of their choice.
So there might be a business case here even beyond the fleets that they've already been servicing for circa a decade.
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A rescue service would just need to give an EV enough of a boost to drive to a charger.
So, existing AAA vehicles could include a battery pack, along with their existing equipment of tools, a tire jack, and a gas can.
There is no need for a dedicated service just for charging, nor for a truck that can fully charge seven EVs simultaneously.
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If you ignore the bit about this being intended for fleet operations - which it seems you have
No they haven't. This makes as little sense for fleet services as it does for anything else. If your can move your charger around your fleet parking lot then you can move your fleet vehicles around a fixed charger which incidentally would be far cheaper.
And as for AAA and CAA they explicitly mentioned emergency services in their post as being an edge case which would make sense. But you can't build a business case around providing a service for AAA / CAA for small volume edge cases. It's simpler, faster, an
Re:Who would need this? (Score:5, Insightful)
As others have said, fleet charging, not personal vehicle charging.
To give a little background, it's a pretty common model for mid-sized fleet operations to feature mobile mechanics for all sorts of tasks, such as vehicle washing, basic tire maintenance, basic lube-oil-filter and fluid checks/topoffs, tire rotations, that sort of thing. Since the mobile mechanic comes to the fleet, the business that uses the fleet doesn't have to spend its labor costs bringing the vehicles to a maintenance facility, and the mobile mechanic might well work second or third shift where possible, so that vehicles are maintained when it's as least disruptive to the normal business as possible.
Where this potential business model may work is if the fleets are parked where there's inadequate electricity and where there's no desire to spend the money on development to install the necessary electrical service to charge new electric vehicles in this fleet en masse. This model is similar to the mobile mechanic model, where someone performing fleet-services shows up and does stuff on the lot so that the business that owns the fleet doesn't have to burden itself with this sort of thing. Or, the business that owns the fleet isn't going to be in a position to make those sort of capital improvements right away but wants electrics now, so they hire this service to bridge the gap until they're ready to spend that kind of money.
So there's a place for this as a stop-gap, and I expect that it will shift around the country as acceptance of electrics as part of fleets grows.
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Where this potential business model may work is if the fleets are parked where there's inadequate electricity and where there's no desire to spend the money on development to install the necessary electrical service to charge new electric vehicles in this fleet en masse.
The only problem with this is that you're comparing a skilled service to a utility. Keeping a skilled mechanic on staff for rare events is something ripe for outsourcing to a dedicated service provider. Having someone shuffle a car around and plug shit in is not, if you need that service it's cheaper to put someone on staff and do it yourself.
This isn't a sepcialised activity. It would be far cheaper to electrify the fleet lot and move your vehicles in and out of the charging spot than this absurd idea of p
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I worked for an entity that actually had its own vehicle maintenance department with three large facilities. In my experience with the mechanics, there were plenty that were not skilled.
They had their own fuel pumps, and did have their own staff to refuel the daily-driven vehicles. If they had bought a handful of electrics I could see them even bringing in an outside entity to charge them this way until they had an opportunity to install proper charging infrastructure.
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Is it a pretty common model for mid-sized fleet operations to bring a fuel van to their parking lot so they can fill up 7 cars, before the van has to leave and another comes in, etc. forever? Or are the yard attendants competent enough to move the vehicle to a "charger" known as a gas pump, top it off, and then go park it?
Say don't a lot of mid-size fleet operations have their own gas pumps and tanks? I wonder why that is? And would installing some charging infrastructure be the EV analog, except ridicul
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>But why would anyone want/need to charge from a van full of batteries?
why would anyone want/need to buy a taco from a random street vendor with no health inspection or permit?
Yet they seem to do quite well.
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Quite possibly a subscription service (just in case) with additional charges for actually using the service.
You're describing how people would pay for the service, not why they would need it.
I could see how a vehicle with some batteries could be useful for someone stranded with a dead battery. But they would need just enough of a boost to drive to a charger.
But this isn't described as a "rescue" service. It's described as a service for "fleets," which makes no sense at all. No one would buy a fleet of EVs without a way to charge them.
Why use batteries, a truck, and a paid driver to move electricity from one place
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Why use batteries, a truck, and a paid driver to move electricity from one place to another in a parking lot when an extension cord can accomplish the same task for 0.01% of the cost?
...and 20x the time.
What part of "supercharger" did you miss?
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It's described as a service for "fleets," which makes no sense at all. ... ...
Of course it makes sense.
Delivery service - pizza
e-Bike or e-Scooter services
Here in Bangkok Scooter Taxies a re a big thing. e-Scooters too. But e-Scooters do not run taxi services. Makes no sense to have to plan for coming home to recharge every 3h.
So have a recharging truck under a bridge under those absurd big "sky car lanes", and scooters meet there every 2h for 10 minutes ... if you charge them a few cent more per kWh, you o
I feel old... (Score:3)
I am old enough to remember when it was practical to rescue a vehicle with an empty tank by carrying a gallon or two of fuel to it. It didn't need a special service truck.
It makes me feel like Hari Seldon when he complained that "sky" panels in Trantor's domes were failing and not being repaired, and almost no one else even understood why he was complaining.
Re: I feel old... (Score:3)
You can still rescue any vehicle by towing it, and avoid needing to rescue it if the driver simply pays attention to the range/fuel gauge/remaining mileage to destination etc. A mobile charger fleet is just a stupid idea.
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It's intended for fleet parking lots. Says so in summary.
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Is a truck full of batteries better for that use case than a long power cable that provides enough juice to move a vehicle to a fixed-position supercharger that cuts a battery charge-discharge cycle out of the equation?
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All depends on how long the cable would have to be I suppose, I could see this being used on construction sites where there is no formal buildings yet but just trailers for staff so this thing gets parked on the site every morning and the crew vehicles can attach to this especially if it's just a thing you can call up and contract to arrive on site when needed, pretty much like construction crews contract porta-johns.
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The argument is that this thing can shlep electricity relatively short distances. Traditional option 1 is to pull vehicles up to a big power source, typically one that can charge 4+ vehicles in parallel as long as they're parked in a line. This is selling option 2, which is to have two big panel trucks in your lot taking turns charging 1-2 vehicles at a time and swapping off to recharge after doing about 6 vehicles. They seem to think that somehow having two extra vehicles driving around is more labor- a
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Re: I feel old... (Score:4, Insightful)
They seem to think that somehow having two extra vehicles driving around is more labor- and energy-efficient than having the truck drivers just drive the fleet vehicles to the supercharger that the trucks use.
Well depends on the distance and as they say "time is money". If your guys are schlepping out 40 miles to a building site with no utility connections yet maybe this makes sense instead of renting a diesel and paying for fuel refills.
it staggers shift times by 90 minutes across sites to accommodate travel
If I can time shift 6 guys at 90 minutes each that's 9 man hours. I'm not saying this thing won't be a niche use case but niche use cases still exist.
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Connecting electricity and water are the very first things done at any construction site.
It's possible that a remote site will have to run on generators and trucked in water, but the charging vehicle in TFA is obviously not designed to drive to remote sites on unpaved roads.
The obvious solution would be for the construction company to charge their vehicles before they go to the job site, or just charge them from the diesel generator.
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Well that's just it, what if this was the diesel generator is more what I am getting at or at least a supplement. Sure you hook up utilities first thing but that's first thing when you can which isn't always immediately.
It's niche for now but if something like this we're available to rent, a few hundred kWh you can drive anywhere that is silent and smogless I think would find customers. Concerts, on location video shoots, disaster response situations. Just a big battery for rent, make a version big tires
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I'm having a hard time imagining a fleet parking lot that can't have some chargers installed, and have done the business analysis on that already, if they're buying a fleet of EVs.
Fleet managers usually aren't fucking morons.
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It's a question of capex vs opex and in the case of EV's, we know the technology is changing. You don't want to install a certain kind or power rating etc of charger and then have the industry flip on you. You want that capex to last basically forever (longer than your retirement date) but EV is a field still in flux with an unpredictable future.
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We're talking about electrical service and standardized chargers. Don't install proprietary bullshit, and don't buy cars that can only charge via proprietary bullshit.
Again, usually fleet managers are not idiots. Standards exist for a reason. Before you yell YEEEE-HAWW and buy a couple hundred EVs, you actually plan out how you're going to support a couple hundred EVs in your fleet operations, including maintenance needs and charging infrastructure needs. And if you actually do any research whatsoever,
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You know that gas vehicles are different, right?
And that those standards are still in flux? Those are just the standards today. You can't know what will happen in 5 years.
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Are you going to stop moving the goalposts any time soon?
You've already tried to claim the sky is falling with two scenarios completely mitigated through a modest amount of thinking ahead and planning. Well, here's another one:
If you...
A. are a fleet manager that isn't an idiot;
B. are replacing an existing fleet of EVs that you already built charging infrastructure for;
C. are absolutely forbidden to replace the charger plugs because ${REASONS}, even though it would be a marginal cost due to all the electri
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I thought this was a discussion.
If you want to debate then my only point is that the article was about fleet management. I've "won" that point way back. It's right there in this thread, I've said it several times.
I've never said the sky is falling or whatever you're straw manning me with. You must be thinking of someone else.
The rest of your post was tldr and completely uninteresting.
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Don't forget that, generally speaking, the electrical service is the expensive part, the charger is relatively cheap. Worst case if, for example, you bought CHAdeMO and now everybody's going to NACS, well, the electrical service has already been run, you can install a new charger without much effort.
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Yeah, and with the charging van, you suddenly have a big option more how to plan out how and where to charge.
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I saw they say it's for parking lots, but that still doesn't make much sense.
They make 480V outdoor temporary power solutions which are used all the times for events, tents, stages etc.
Servicing a bunch of vehicles that can move under their own power with another vehicle that moves under it's own power doesn't make sense. Especially if you need keys to the other vehicles to actually open charging ports and unlock the charging cables. This only seems to make sense if you are charging vehicles in lots which a
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I make no judgement as to the quality of this business model or RTO for buyers.
I only said this is not for home users, or emergency charging on the highway or random apartment dwellers. As per the summary, it is for fleets.
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That's just one person being stupid.
A typical commuter drives 50 km (30 miles) per day.
A typical EV uses 0.2 kwh/km.
So that's 10kwh.
If your mom plugs in when she gets home and unplugs 12 hours later, that's 800 watts.
A hairdryer uses more power than that.
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the limit is instantaneous power the charger uses
That's programmable from a dropdown menu in most (all?) EVs.
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If a circuit is frying from 50% continuous load, then it is deficient and I'm pretty sure that the landlord needs to fix that at their expense.
And as the person said, a standard 15A circuit can keep most EVs going.
If it's been tapped off of and is powering other things, well, that's also a code violation (my brother's an electrician, you should hear him complain about code at times).
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Generally American people don't understand electricity. Like it often blows their mind to realize you can use a thinner extension cord on a 240v outlet and charge at the same speed as the 120v outlet... or use the same size cord and charge twice as fast by doubling the voltage with no negative impact... which actually speaks to the wiring in your house...
It blows their mind that in most of Europe they have 220v outlets as standard for everything so everything generally has thinner wires...
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I don't remember ever rescuing a car with an empty tank. I had a car with a bad transmission that had to be towed. A few dead 12V batteries that each needed a push start or a jump. Everything else I could limp into a repair shop to get fixed. But I never experienced an empty tank.
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We have had this for years in the UK. Breakdown services will come out and give you a kilowatt or two, just enough to limp to the nearest rapid charger. The batteries aren't huge.
It's almost impossible to run out of charge in an EV without being some kind of idiot, because they all warn you multiple times and in increasingly loud and attention grabbing ways. Most have a sat nav that will find a charger and tell if you if have the range to get it to as well.
The only exceptions are due to failures (car or cha
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I did actually run my electric car out ~1km from a charger and I was an idiot that day. We had just had a major storm and our power was out for the last 20 hours at home. The station I was going to charge at was 20km away (we live in a rural area) and I had ~30km of range. The L3 station was closed/disabled when I arrived (car dealership) and the next nearest L3 was an additional ~10Km away. I should have stopped at one of the 20 or so L2 stations on the way but risked it and ended up coasting into a parkin
The losses make this inpractical for general use (Score:2)
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"There's kind of this critical grid problem" - so we're moving the load from the primary consumer to a higher-consuming intermediary with less efficiency!
It remains nuts.
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That's just called convenience and convenience usually correlates with sacrificing something else like efficiency.
This probably should not be looked at as a primary charging source, considering the capital cost of the vehicle itself there's almost no scenarios where this beats a grid charger on total energy costs but considering all factors like installing a fleets worth of chargers or having access to charging in an area where this no infrastructure to support it.
And efficiency is relative since it's not f
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Yeah I am not sure if the article is describing what I would consider the best uses cases but this basically a big battery on wheels so I can see it competing more with uses cases for big mobile diesel generators.
I can see uses in other industries like entertainment where even in my own job there are often times we have to rent a diesel generator to run a temporary show as the venue does not have the capacity or the right hookups so if I need 30kw for 3 days so 40 hours, I need 1200kWh of energy. Will this
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Will this have that capacity and then some instead of having CAT drop me a diesel unit and possibly paying for a refill service call? On top of that there were plenty of times I've had to schlep feeder hundreds of feet because the diesel is noisy hot and smoggy (to be fair many of the modern diesel units are amazingly quiet, it's really impressive).
This is a good point. It can substitute for temporary generator systems, you could indeed have it much closer to the "action", with no emissions and hopefully no noise.
I know that there are already lighting systems that amount to a battery pack with attached lights in trailer form.
I think that everybody ultimately agrees that this would have to be a niche product though, I remain completely unconvinced that he'd be able to sell or rent of these on a ongoing basis to justify a production line, profit, and a
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Charging efficiency varies with rate, but you are ostensibly also only charging as much as necessary to get the vehicle to the next charging point.
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From what this says is that from the well to the fuel pump losses are 25% for gasoline so that's the number "to beat" when looking at just getting energy into the vehicle itself. Do those totals for the EV setup beat 25% in total?
https://understand-energy.stan... [stanford.edu]
Let's assume they don't and the EV has more transfer losses, next question is does the EV make that up in total when that power is put to the wheels? I imagine it does simply because ICE vehicles, for as good as we can make them today, are just pr
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How does it compare to the typical efficiency of an ICE, which is something between 15 and 17%?
It compares irrelevantly given the energy density and portability of fuel. Please consider the context of what is being discussed rather than just seeing percentage sign and throwing in another percentage sign.
People will buy the dumbest shit (Score:2)
Just don't plan on keeping this up for long.
Wait till they do the math and figure out (Score:2)
they can charge even more cars towing a 500 hp generator, and they won't even have to shuttle back to recharge after doing 7 cars.
how about a semi? (Score:2)
I wonder if there would be any interest in an 18 wheeler that's a portable supercharger? That'd be able to charge several vehicles at once, many times.
Maybe for events that are expecting the limited chargers to be overwhelmed, or events where the only chargers nearby are NOT superchargers? Or to fill in gaps temporarily where the only chargers/superchargers are down for repair?
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That's what I was thinking, this is just a big mobile battery. Thinking about something like a music festival which sometimes are out in the boonies so you're just parking in a field, now you can have the option to charge up.
Plus the promoters get another option to upsell, they love that, they love it so much.
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eh, even a city bus puts on an enormous fire show when it loses its batteries. It's already a "10" on the Bad News Meter. Those things can shoot blow-torch grade fire for 20 feet in three directions.
Sort of like comparing how much more dangerous a gas tanker is compared to the semi trailer (with its twin 50 gal tanks) that's hauling it. Most of us have been around those from time to time, either at the gas station or driving down the highway. Either way you don't want to be around it if it goes off.
Compare this to repowering ICE vehicles (Score:2)
Each mobile supercharger can service between five and seven vehicles according to Frist
Not at all useful for 'Fleet' operations.
Compare that to the cost of and refueling capacity of a common fuel tanker that (per wikipedia) carries from 5,500 to 11,600 US gallons.
Need to remotely charge those short range electric vehicles that keep getting range stranded then you send out a powerful dinosaur powered generator.
Why? because you will die of exposure or old age before the government will send out their portable
Oh jeez (Score:2)
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You just drove all day to your final destination, a small town where you're wife's father just passed away and your EV's battery is near empty. Your motel has a charger but its broken.
How far away would this truck be from a small town with only one motel and apparently no other charging stations? Remember, the truck also needs a base station to charge from. How much will the recharge cost to cover wear and tear on the truck, and the truck driver's labor?
Or, you drive 300 miles to watch your pro sports team play. So do several thousand others.
A truck that charges 5 to 7 vehicles at a go is not going to help very much in charging hundreds of vehicles.
Mobile chargers, I think
Objection: Assumes facts not in evidence.
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Why are you underestimating the intelligence of so many people?
Do you drive to sporting events and park your car with the engine sputtering as you run out of fuel? Are you not aware that it's an option to fill it when you still have say, 1/4 tank left before you arrive?
It's amazing how a hundred thousand people can go to college football games all across the country every Saturday, and we don't hear of mass shortages of fuel and miles-long lines of stranded vehicles in the small college towns hosting large
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You could do that, but then you miss however long it takes to charge of being at the track. You could instead be walking the pits, taking pix, having a beer and a hot dog. You don't want to sit and wait for a charge while missing that.
So leave earlier and build that time into the travel schedule?
You could do that if chargers were as numerous as gas pumps, and charged in the same amount of time as a car takes to gas up.
And if you plan adequately, it's still not a problem. Evidence: literally every single EV driver that drives to a popular destination and doesn't have a flat battery when arriving.
Once again, you're pointing at "problems" that are not problems if you tap into common sense just a little bit, and plan accordingly. It's amazing that literally millions of people have figured this out, and you're still reaching for it.
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Why are you driving your EV all day with a plan to arrive with a near empty battery? Do you go park at a stadium parking lot with the needle on E?
If you're driving 300 miles, you know you're going to have to charge at some point, so drive 220 miles or so, charge up then, and then continue to the stadium / small town / whatever. Then when you leave you've only done 80 miles on your battery and you don't have to deal with overcrowded / non-existing infrastructure at the destination at all. Which, by the wa