When are you going fully electric?

point is if you can only do 40miles before charging, even if charging is instant. What’s the benefit ? Solid state aren’t the magic a carwow video seems to state.
 
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I suppose the long journey of the technology is to refine the process. solid state production is expensive, even if it's cheaper to mass produce in theory, it's new tech. Having smaller capacity hybrids means they can slowly teethe in the manufacturing process and get to a state where bigger batteries can be mass produced without the expense. And if the ICE is charging a solid state pack quicker than a Lithium pack, then the need for more regular stops to charge from an outlet /should/ be less so, especially if the density vs physical space holds true in practice. Edit* Add to that the weight saving, which means longer range still.

We need to see more technical details which we should see during the motor show soon enough when the new Toyota/Lexus models are shown.
 
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Charge rate isn’t a limiting factor for a hybrid from an ICE engine. The ICE engine is also emitting carbon. The whole point of EV is to power vehicles without carbon emissions. Not use more carbon to charge a battery faster

Don’t need to wait for public motor shows if you are involved in the technology already either
 
mrk said:
Solid state hybrids existed 20 years ago? Or did you also assume I was on about regular hybrids instead of the context of solid state.
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Your sentence could have been from then, thats all.
Solid state is more of a mass change rather than charge rates - LFA would need to charge at close to 600kW to meet that spec, irrelevant anyway as no one offers that, public use of HV kit needs to be sub 1000V and CCS connectors are max 500A...

The only things close to solid state is the CATL condensed cells currently on trial in the Airbus Zephyr project which gives a clue to the price.
 
solid state seems like it might create a bottleneck elsewhere - charging station themselves needing the charge available for quickly dumping into your car , whenever you turn up.


Haggisman said:
With an EV it's not as simple as planning a route and deciding to stop at charger A on the way there and charger B on the way back. You always need a backup plan because if the charger is in use (likely if it's in a convenient location en-route) or broken (far too common), then you either need to wait (potentially for quite some time) or have a plan B.

The need for a plan B means your plan A charger should be at a point where you still have enough range to get to the plan B if needed, so you're never using the full range of the car (e.g. you can't run down to 0 miles, because if your plan A is unavailable then you're ****, so you need to leave 20-30 miles to get to plan B (and C...etc.)).
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so what is your goto app for route preparation and assessing reserve routes, remembering what you did before ....
I usually want to assess routes in comfort, at home, on laptop; on the road, for ev, app access via obd to battery stats sound useful.
 
I used Zap-Map on PC to prepare the route in both directions, making sure there were backups within a couple of miles, and also making sure to choose sites with 6+ compatible chargers to maximise the chance at least one would be available*. I then saved all of these options to the nav in the car to make sure I could find them again easily.

I had the car fully charged for when we left, made sure to check where all the chargers were within a few miles of the hotel, and also to ensure we arrived with at least enough range to get back to the closest multi-charger site.

Bear in mind this is an eNiro, which is up there with pretty much the longest range of an "affordable" family EV; ~250 miles in the real world. It's certainly not a trip I would want to do in something with shorter range, particularly the Zoe we had before which was limited to 22kw charging!

Basically quite a bit of planning, which isn't really an issue when you've been arranging the trip for a couple of months, but not ideal when you wake up early on a Saturday morning, it's a beautiful day, and you decide to take the kids to the beach.



Edit: to point out that none of the above would have been necessary if the hotel had a row of 7kw posts which could be pre-booked. We probably could have done the trip each way on one charge by dropping to 60mph.

Reliable and plentiful destination charging is (IMO) far more important than huge numbers of rapid en-route chargers. If the hypothetical 200 mile round trip to the beach ended in a carpark with a row of chargers then instead of having to waste travelling time stopping at services (and taking up rapid chargers which could be more useful for people on longer journeys), you could just plug in when you arrive, unplug when you leave with a full battery, and everyone wins.


* Well, the pub we stopped it actually only had a single rapid, but there was another site with 12x 350kw chargers less than a mile away as a backup
 
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Haggisman said:
I used Zap-Map on PC to prepare the route in both directions, making sure there were backups within a couple of miles, and also making sure to choose sites with 6+ compatible chargers to maximise the chance at least one would be available*. I then saved all of these options to the nav in the car to make sure I could find them again easily.

I had the car fully charged for when we left, made sure to check where all the chargers were within a few miles of the hotel, and also to ensure we arrived with at least enough range to get back to the closest multi-charger site.
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Plausible destinations: 0
 
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Haggisman said:
I used Zap-Map
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I use this too and is very useful for planning a journey. Also when booking hotels using Booking.com I include "Has car EV charging points" in the search then check distance to the hotel compared to range left in the car.

It's an added consideration which I don't find particuarly onerous, so far at least.
 
This is one thing Tesla does really well - I reckon the supercharger + integration into the nav + car is the "killer app" of EVs so far.
Route planning automatically takes you to a supercharger, and tells you how long you need to charge for to continue or finish your journey - it tries to keep the battery as low as possible because that's when the charging happens fastest, which also results in quick turnover at charging points. The idling cost is also a great deterrent imho. You get a push notification on your phone as soon as you have enough charge to continue, if you're not at your vehicle.
Last trip I needed a supercharge on, took 10 minutes to top up 26kwh (mine's the slowest charging tesla), and that got me home on 18% battery - so it worked out perfectly.
 
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chanjy said:
Think Haggisman said he was driving to Cornwall from Birmingham I can think of a few spots where there are multiple sites fairly close to each other. M5 near Cribbs Causeway has a few, Ionity Cullompton and Moto Exeter are also not far apart.
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Yup.

On the way there we stopped at "Blue Ball Inn" off J30 of the M5. As a backup, there's a Gridserve site with 12x 350kw chargers at the Moto services on the other side of the motorway.

Arrived in Falmouth with ~80-90 miles left (can't remember exactly).

There's a 50kwh charger at the "Merchant's Manor" hotel, 10 mins walk from where we were staying. This is where I left the car to charge for an hour while we got ready to check out.

Quite a few rapid chargers nearby in Redruth in case of "emergency" (~10 miles away).

First charge stop on the way home was going to be Cornwall Services, between Indian Queens and Bodmin, another Gridserve site with 6x 50kw chargers, but we didn't actually need to stop here in the end, as got enough from the morning charge to get to the 2nd planned stop which was....

Mollie's Diner at Cribbs Causeway, with 5x 100kw chargers (there are actually a ridiculous number of rapid chargers at Cribbs, 25 public ones within a mile or so, plus another 18 Tesla superchargers!).

30 min stop here (charging at 70 kw :D) was plenty to get us home again
 
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Haggisman said:
I used Zap-Map on PC to prepare the route in both directions, making sure there were backups within a couple of miles, and also making sure to choose sites with 6+ compatible chargers to maximise the chance at least one would be available*. I then saved all of these options to the nav in the car to make sure I could find them again easily.

I had the car fully charged for when we left, made sure to check where all the chargers were within a few miles of the hotel, and also to ensure we arrived with at least enough range to get back to the closest multi-charger site.

Bear in mind this is an eNiro, which is up there with pretty much the longest range of an "affordable" family EV; ~250 miles in the real world. It's certainly not a trip I would want to do in something with shorter range, particularly the Zoe we had before which was limited to 22kw charging!

Basically quite a bit of planning, which isn't really an issue when you've been arranging the trip for a couple of months, but not ideal when you wake up early on a Saturday morning, it's a beautiful day, and you decide to take the kids to the beach.



Edit: to point out that none of the above would have been necessary if the hotel had a row of 7kw posts which could be pre-booked. We probably could have done the trip each way on one charge by dropping to 60mph.

Reliable and plentiful destination charging is (IMO) far more important than huge numbers of rapid en-route chargers. If the hypothetical 200 mile round trip to the beach ended in a carpark with a row of chargers then instead of having to waste travelling time stopping at services (and taking up rapid chargers which could be more useful for people on longer journeys), you could just plug in when you arrive, unplug when you leave with a full battery, and everyone wins.


* Well, the pub we stopped it actually only had a single rapid, but there was another site with 12x 350kw chargers less than a mile away as a backup
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That's a right faff!
 
If you just want a straight route from place to place, ‘a better route planner’ is far better than zap map.

Put in your starting point, car and destination, hit go and it will give you a fully optimised route.

You can tweak things like starting and ending SOC and wanted SOC at your destination.

Zap map is more helpful for finding slow AC or alternate rapids if you need them but I’m not inclined to bother planning for alternates these days unless I’m relying on a standalone charger somewhere.

I’m going a road trip around Belgium later in the year and I’m not even going to bother planning it, there are rapid chargers everywhere and most hotels and public car parks have charge points.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
If you just want a straight route from place to place, ‘a better route planner’ is far better than zap map.

Put in your starting point, car and destination, hit go and it will give you a fully optimised route.
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Yeah I did look at ABRP as well, but for this trip I was trying to combine charge stops with nice places to stop for lunch, vs the most optimised route which would probably result in chewing on a dry burger and soggy chips whilst watching HGVs try to park :p
 
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