CBS News: Electric vehicles fall drastically short of Obama's 1 million goal

You probably charged to over 80% But either way, the ChadeMO is limited to what your car can do or 62.5 kw, which is bellow what current requirements appear to be.

Other benefits of frankenplug are here
Electric car fast charging feud between SAE and CHADEMO, who will win?

CHAdeMO has a max of 125A@500VDC. Frankenplug does not have a definition for highest charge but is designed for 400A@600VDC. You simply can not charge a CHAdeMO car as fast following safety protocols which the physical design. Wiring and pins could possibly be beefed up while having a similar form factor in a CHAdeMO2 protocol. Fraknenplug uses three of the L2 pins for disconnect sense, communication, and ground only adding the two high powered dc connector. You could shrink Frankenplug if you wanted a lower rating like CHAdeMO has, but that doesn't seem to be the way we should be going.

 

Level three chargers would be ideal for large gas stations on highways and service areas on toll roads. Imievs with chaedaemo can charge to 80% in 15-20 minutes... and they're here now.

 

ya, the higher the starting SOC, the slower it will charge. now i have a GID meter which measures battery capacity and started one charge at 58.7% and ended it at 79.5% and it took 15 minutes (actually charged to exactly that and unplugged. got a hair over 5 Kwh according the AV unit (which is way off on SOC in my cases)

i then charged again with SOC at 24% and charged the same 15 minutes but this time put in 7.234 Kwh so nearly 50% more charge.

so how fast does it really take to go from zero to 80%? it is supposed to be 30 mins but who pulls up at zero %?

 

Do you think that lack of L3 chargers is slow adoption? IMHO its just a initial adopter thing, where the newness of the technology along with the range and looks of the BEVs will be naturally slow even with the tax credits. Leaf sales may pick up when they are being produced in the USA, and there is more word of mouth and availability.

 

actually, no i dont think that L3 chargers are slow on the build out. there were great plans made that were not fully thought or executed well. CA has by far the largest plug in contingent but the least friendly EV charging environment with its various PUD's.

what we really lacked is legislative changes to make the planned public charging infrastructure a much smoother process. there is a private business owner in CA who paid for a quick charge station out of his own pocket but then shut it down when he found out what the demand charges would be.

later he was able to turn it on but at a lower rate. sure still much faster than L2, but his best intentions were way-laid by the status quo which is currently steeped and funded by Big Oil.

 

Two quick comments:
1) Every administration has made grand claim about how they plan to get off foreign oil in a couple of decades. Each with it's own fantasy of how that is going to happen. This administration just happened to fantasize about electric cars being the magic answer.
2) California regulated that all automakers had to have a percentage of non-polluting vehicles available for sale in the 1990s. That worked. Every major auto maker designed and provided EVs as their answer. If this had been allowed to continue we would be much farther along with the automakers doing real R&D, instead of the government funding R&D optimized to obtain more government funding.

 

I am staring at a brochure of the WCGH (West Coast Green Highway) Project. Printed in Feb 2012. On it is where DCFCs are supposed to be by Summer 2012. Actually half were supposed to be there by Spring and "most" of them are there. The WCGH was supposed to allow an EV to drive from Canada to Mexico. DCFCs were supposed to be positioned every 25-40 miles along I-5. It was a very ambitious program and we anxiously waited for these stations to turn on. Despite the fact that WA, OR and CA were able to agree AND get funding for the project, the "ease" of execution between each state was amazingly different. in order;

1) Oregon; as explained. OR has no oil or refineries so buying gas is a 7 Billion dollar leak in their economy. they have virtually no one in the state against EVs. they also have PUD's that were immediately on board (they themselves installed DCFCs last summer being first in the country) so outrageous demand charges were not part of the process. Based on their population, State budgets, etc. theirs was by far the most comprehensive adding 23 DCFCs that more than covered the entire western part of state including the Coast highway. Their part of the Highway is nearly complete including additional help from the PUDs

2) WA despite having MUCH more area to cover only funded 11 additional chargers, less than half of OR despite being nearly twice as large in population and covering 50% more roads. Our DCFCs have been on about a week (OR turned theirs on in Feb) Private Concerns (thank you Paul Allen!) has stepped up to install one DCFC (as opposed to the 5-6 OR has) none from PUDs or such. Now WA has 2 refineries and so does have a very strong Oil Lobby to fight against so there is no favorable legislation to smooth the road or cut any red tape. This might be the reason that we have a 70 mile gap in our Highway along with several other missing areas and a completely forgotten Coast here.

3) last but not least. CA which is largest, most challenging area to cover but just as broke as OR and WA. here "demand" charges rule the day. this states that if there is ever a draw above a certain point during the month, you pay a cost per Kwh. for example. suppose demand charges start anytime you draw more than 25 KW (DCFCs can go as high as 60 KW and the Leaf up to 48) if that happens you are charged so if you charge to 50 KW you pay demand rates on 25 KW over your max draw of 25 KW. in some areas, demand rates can be as high as $300 so you would pay an extra 25 KW* 300 or $7500 on top of your normal electric bill.

there was a gas station owner near San Bernadino who paid to install a DCFC to do it because he wanted to contribute to the EV movement. consider his surprise when he got his first electric bill! he turned the station on in Jan/Feb 2012 or so, turned it off in Mar. Now there were some EV advocates that talked to the station owner and were able to dial down the rate of charge so he would avoid the demand charges but it now takes a 80% charge an hour instead of 20 minutes.

Another DCFC sat idle for extended periods of time because...well, not sure why. it was on for a time, then turned off. it "might" be on now. Mitsubishi has a DCFC that is open to the public during business hours that has worked very well. Walgreens and Fred Meyer have also installed them (Both in OR i think) but private interests are actually wanting to help the EV community but are held back by archaic PUD red tape and Big Oil.

the "other" project is Federal and covers several states is the "EV Highway Project" which was also paid for and a company Ecotality is responsible for the DCFCs and L2 charger infrasstructure. they have hit a brick wall consisting of regulations and partially execution. in WA, they were to have installed 25 DCFCs in the Seattle Metro area. to date; zero locations have broken ground on this project...