Bloomberg: BMW’s Electric Mini Rollout Yields ‘Painful’ Lessons

Looks like BMW is learning a lot. It's a good thing they are experimenting with a limited roll out instead of a full, large scale sale of the vehicle. It is because of problems like this that Toyota is experimenting with a limited rollout of the PHV Prius prior to releasing the vehicle on a large scale.

 

This will be a repeated lesson with 'plug in' cars, household electrical outlets are a very thin straw to draw power through.
From the Tesla Site

240v/90A 4 hours
240v/80A 4.2 hours
240v/70A 4.7 hours
240v/60A 5 hours
240v/50A 6 hours (new Dryer outlet)
240v/40A 7.5 hours
240v/30A 10 hours (older Dryer outlet)
240v/20A 14.5 hours
240v/15A 19 hours
120v/15A 30+ hours (typical household outlet)

Tesla Motors - Charging Solutions

These numbers make refilling your gas tank in under ten minutes seem astounding.

The Plug In Prius is citing 1.5 to 3 hours to recharge, an 'advantage' of it's 13 mile range. Tesla cites a 244 mile range, charging times are proportionally longer. Employers who allow charging at work will sure seem attractive, especially for those with no access to electrical power at home. (It will be interesting to see how many folks buy a plug in car before they realize they have no plugs outdoors)

(Employers: if you offer outdoor plug ins at work to employees with no outdoor plug ins at home, they can never quit. Think of the mark up you can charge for electricity on payroll deduction if they have no other good choices. In the Tesla Example above, if you only offer 20 Amp outlets, you get 14.5 hour work days! Catbert would have a field day)
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catbert"]Catbert - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

Nailed it. And that's even after we have a lot of experience with RAV4EV.

Doug Coleman
Prius Product Manager
Toyota Motor Sales, USA

 

At this time the charging at work seems not to be a problem. There are simply too few EVs and PHV and ER-EVs to be concerned about. But at some time in the future there will be a lot more and that means a lot more draw on the grid during peak hours. Charging at work may not even be allowed.

Employers with their own electricity-generating systems may be very attractive. Otherwise people may have to wait til they get home to power up during offpeak hours.

 

At least on our local grid, daytime during hot days are the peak power. This is the most expensive power, and extra demand will require the building of more capacity. At least locally, plug in during peak demand hours is worse than the normal hybrid.

I don't think many pihv owners would have trouble plugging them into a dryer circuit. but this needs to be disclosed before sales. That requires trained sales people, that bmw did not seem to have.

 

This table vividly illustrates the level of energy consumption we all take for granted in driving around as we so blithely do using gasoline with its huge energy density advantage over current battery technology. Take the first line in the table above; 240V with a current flow of 90 amps for 4 hours for a full charge. That's 86.4 Kwh, which equates to around 2.4 gallons of gas. You can pump that much in less than a minute at your local favorite gas station.


With the ratio of energy storage density still around 100:1 in favor of gasoline, battery technology has to vastly increase its ability to store energy in the same space that gasoline occupies before it has a hope of replacing the latter as a personal transportation energy source; I hope it can eventually happen, but I have yet to be convinced.

In the meantime, I still believe the hybrid solution as pioneered in a modern context by the Prius will provide the most viable interim solution, because it is a major step forward in efficient use of energy using the existing infrastructure. It will continue to improve as battery and electrical storage alternatives develop.

 

That Tesla site provides some awesome charging info...

Using a normal 115v outlet, if you could plug in at work, you would add 40 miles to your vehicle's range.

If your place of work had a 240v outlet, you could add 192 miles to your vehicles range!

Either way, plugging in at work would allow at least MOST people to charge up enough to get home, and if they have 240v outlets, people could not only go home, but drive around the city a few times as well...

I can't wait for a plug-in vehicle!

 

Wait until the company you work for hands you a bill for the energy taken aboard. It will not be a trivial amount.

 

Yeah, it will.

Let's assume that for some crazy reason you commute 100 miles each way. You drive a typical EV which goes about 4 miles for each kWh of electricity stored in the battery. So you've used 25 kWh of electricity.

Current rates for renewable wind energy are about 15c / kWh, or about $3.75 for 25 kWh.

Your Prius at 50mpg and current gas prices of $3/gallon will use 2 gallons, for a fuel cost of $6.

The EV will save you $4.50 / day in fuel costs (driving 200 miles/day).

 

Sorry, you forget the charging and discharging efficiency. It will take more than 30kWh to charge the 25kwh usage.
Second you also need to add the replacement cost of the battery in 3-5 years time, ~$20K. In a hybrid the battery can last 10 year but not in EV usage.
The operating cost of EV is much higher.

 

I wasn't trying to take into account total life cycle costs, just what it costs to re-fuel or re-charge. At worst, charging losses are about 10% - not very significant.

Batteries will last significantly longer than 3-5 years - most manufacturers will be aiming for 150k mile lifetimes, or up to 10 years. And even then, the battery won't be useless or dead, it will have lost about 20% of it's capacity, it will still be very usable for other applications, like grid-storage and stabilization so the pack will still have value.

$20k will buy you a very big battery pack - most manufacturers are going with packs that will cost about half that (for cars coming to market in the next couple years). By the time those packs might need replacing, costs will have dropped even farther.

 

OH! I'm sorry ... it seems I forgot to take my empathy pill


So ... the but kissers that snuck onto the front of the line for one of these EV's are whining? And that's because . . . they don't have every feature that a corvette has? Or a suburban has? or a Harley has? or an F-150 has? Gee! you mean EV's aren't the same as internal combustian cars? So ... they went into the transaction knowing all that ... and now they cry? Tell you what. I couldn't even get on THE LIST! ... and even though the lease (only) fee is OUTRAGEOUS ... I'll be glad to take one off their hands ... any takers?

Bueller?

Bueller?

Bueller?

(crickets)

.

 

Good data. But this is for a complete recharge. The lowest level (120V, 15A) recharges at a rate of about 5 miles range per hour. So if you drive 15 miles a day for your commute, that's only 3 hours recharging every night, a 50 mile commute (R/T) would take ten hours recharging (YMMV, I'm sure).

 

$4.5, drees

 

My daily commute is about 110 miles, so I could recharge in 22 hours, using 120v/15A. (Actually I have 8 220v/60A outlets in my garage, just in case some one gives me a fleet of Teslas. So I could recharge in 3 hours each day) A 110 mile commute makes a Prius a much wiser vehicle than a 15 mile commute would.

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