Chevy Spark EV

In Tesla's defense, the standard wasn't finalized during design and when they went to production. The frankenplug standard was only accepted recently. It and Tesla's charging system use the same communication software, so adapters will be easy to make. I believe Tesla is already committed to supplying one to their cars owners.

Chademo was around, but the performance wasn't up to what Tesla wanted in a charger.

How do you think GM kept the base ICE price around $12k. Wind tunnels aren't cheap. Seeing how the 5 speed manual highway mpg is only 2 off from the 6 speed Sonic, the aero is likely good for an affordable city commuter.

Besides, Cd isn't what sells these cars. I saw my first privately owned iQ 2 days ago. It was out of state. I've seen 2 such Sparks. Which has been on the market longer?

The high Cd will hurt the EV's highway range. But how many highway trips will an EV with 60mile range(lowest guess I've seen) be doing? Being a small subcompact, it also doesn't have to make the pretense of being a total replacement for a gas powered car. At half the price of the RavEV, people won't have the bar as high in terms of expectations. If its EPA range is comparable to the Leaf's, I think it will do well as a compliance car.

 

Chevy Spark EV Can Be Had For Under $25,000 After Incentives - Gas 2
Small city cars will always have worse cd aerodynamics than longer cars. Its simple physics and packaging. That's why the tesla S can get a .24. The gas spark is .36

Vehicle Coefficient of Drag List - EcoModder
iq cda = 6.89
prius cda = 5.84
ev1 cda =3.96

Part of the trade off for these cars should be they are cheap - not in a good way - to build. The iQ is a 3+1, you would expect a four seater city car to have worse aero. I am not familiar with the Aygo.

I think GM got caught up in group think in making a city car an EV. Part of it may be focus with Daewoo, where city cars may be more popular in Korea. If you are staying at lower speeds cars like the prius c and the spark ev don't get the efficiency hit.

If you were building an EV from the ground up though you might do something more like the 2014 mazda 3 hatchback design. Take the ford/Tesla idea of battery pack integrated into the floor. That way you get a locking front trunk where the engine would be with a slightly higher driving position, but great low cg. Make the car longer, its going to be heavier anyway. The extra cost in body is not going to be high compared to the vehicle. You likely need to give the battery pack around 15% more energy, but the car would actually use less energy in highway cruising.

This is a good tow in the water for GM, and looks like an experience effort not a sales volume commitment. In a way it is similar to the Rav4 EV and focus EV. None of these cars will sell well, but at least it will get GM, Toyota, and Ford some experience and customer feedback. IMHO the spark EV would clobber the IQ EV, confirming toyota's decision to kill the beast at birth and go with the rav4 ev.

 

lol. He was being sarcastic. The Tesla design is technically superior, with backwards comparability through an adapter. It also works well plugging into a dryer or RV plug with an adapter. The plug was designed by a single company not by committee. The Tesla plug can work with adapters for chademo and SAE combo plug, although these may be pricy. The SAE combo plug ought to work with a tesla charger.

Its also huge and ugly as well as requiring two plugs one for ac and one for dc.

 

you are expecting too much from cheap daewoo.

 

I'd like to see the same size tires front and rear to increase tire life. Nobody likes to see their expensive tires cup and wear before their time. The IQ got this right over the Smart, no need to repeat mistakes of the past.

 

Well... you're right about that stuff, except that I want America to have one standard public charging infrastructure, based on one standard which any car can use.

Particularly MY car. All we're doing is supplying AC or DC power. We don't need it done 26 different proprietary ways.

 

I agree absolutely. Now that Europe and America have decided on combo plug, all the new charging stations should support it, and all the plug-ins sold in NA and Europe should support it.

Now these plugs do something more than just provide AC or DC power. The three pins on the bottom of the small circle on combo plug and the tesla plug allow communication between the car and charger and implement smart grid protocols. The tesla plug does a few things better than the combo plug, but requires an adapter for J1772.

 

Hugh? Last time I bothered to look at the meter while using it, the Chademo was feeding 400v at 125amps appx 50,000watts. So don't EVEN think it's about performance. It's all about proprietary rights. THAT's why Tesla went their own way, and THAT's why SAE invented a QC format, for a non-existent car.

Soon the SAE QC will have a home though. And -if you've ever been to South Korea, they call it the Daewoo:

But ... slap a Chevy badge on it and then you can call it a spark.
There's a ton of these already running around the landscape west of the Pacific. But that's ok ... an import by any other name. It's pretty popular over there in its ICE version.

So now it's a Chevy. Except for having a back seat, GM will finally start to have something on par with their own EV1 that they crushed, about a decade ago. Not as much power, or range ... but with the Fed's stock ownership and Fed stock/money that never seems to get paid back ... the Spark EV will hopefully go somewhere. But it will NOT go much on Q.C.

So Cal electricity users take an unimaginable hit when they install a unit that pulls 50kW's. You need to almost dedicate your own transformer to pull that kind of juice. You have to have a BIG company willing to take a big hit for the electrical fee, and already be paying 4 figures per month (in some instances) just for the privilege of even possibly pulling that big a load, in addition to your other power draws. That's why So Cal has virtually no Q.C. infrastructure - TWO YEARS after the Nissan Leaf landed. GM only plans on sales/leases in Oregon - a bit of Canada - and CA. Yea, good luck with SAE QC. It's just like Chademo QC infrastructure in our densly populated area ... virtually non-existent ... a BS marketing ploy. It surprised me with Nissan, but it won't with GM. That's all I'm sayin'

.

 

You're correct about the rights. It had its role to play with Nissan asking a little too much for entry. Tesla did want something that could pump more juice for the 80kWh pack though.

The main knock against Chademo, imho, is that it's a totally seperate plug. The single plug method saves on construction costs and user training.

 

The problem w/SAE J1772 combo plug (Frankenplug) is that many existing J1772 cars don't have room at their inlets for the extra pins (see right side of My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - SAE Officially Approves New Fast-Charging Combo), including IIRC, the Chevy Volt. So, there will need to be two plugs anyway.

I could see it these as choices:
- one connector w/both portions and another w/just the AC L1/L2
- AC L1/L2 section and the the two pin part detachable/able to be pushed aside

 

The combo plug is an extention of the AC L2 J1773 plug. That means AC only chargers will continue to use only the top portion of the combo plug.

In the case of DC fast chargers that can also do AC, I would expect for the next few years they would have both combo and AC L2 J1772, it adds little to the cost of a DC fast charger that also does AC. They may also have chademo. Further years out though the legacy cats - those 100,000 or so sold before the changeover can have an inexpensive adapter that plugs in to the top of a comboplug and extends it to the car.

CHAdeMO General Assembly Contemplates SAE Plug Competition | Hybrid Cars

 

The spec goes to 62.5kw, but the current implementation is 50 kw. That's only half of combo plug, meaning that fast part of the charge takes twice as long. Performance is definitely part of it, and chademo is now looking to change its spec to upgrade the performance. The bigger issues are single outlet on the car and PLC greenphy communication for smart grid that is the same as AC SAE J1772

The only group that charges to implement is chademo, which is a mainly Japanese consortium lead by the Nissan COO.

Tesla needed higher performance, and without a standard they created a technically superior plug. They also built it so that they could create adapters for chademo and combo plug.

SAE looks like the german and american automakers did not want to pay nissan money and wanted a superior plug. They could have done better by adopting/modifying the tesla one.

The important thing is now there is a standard.

It is a daewoo/gm collaberation hey with an american battery maker. That is if JCI actually gets A123 from the bankrupcy court.

big improvement over the geo metro, but pretty unexciting cheap car.

Son of EV1 -> leaf
GM's real electrified car volt
spark is going to be low volume like the ev1, not a high effort like the leaf and volt.

DC fast chargers don't get installed in homes for now. Price needs to drop first, and then they will be part of the smart grid, and hopefully peak shave.

For public chargers NRG is putting in 200 in california. Its likely these will be chademo and combo plug. Tesla is also building some fast chargers, and I hope will include the combo plug as well as their own connector.

 

An unfortunate affect of time between product availability and standardization. No technical reason going forward that 2014 models couldn't accept a frankenplug for any level of charging. Not to do so is almost as foolish as continuing to sell HD DVD.

AG points out that another plug on the charger isn't a large increase to cost. No one seems to be bemoaning the fact that vapor capture gas pumps are pointless for the majority of cars on the road today. I don't think anyone will do so when the second plug on these chargers will be obsolete. Same for for detachable adapter for the prestandard cars. For those pre-standard cars in the future, when chargers might not support their receptables, an adapter will surely be available to owners. But with most charging taking place at home, it will likely be a non issue.

 

The Aygo is Toyota's competitor to the Spark. The Aygo is older and equally priced, but still sports vastly superior aerodynamics. People outside of USA drive these cars on highways where they benefit a lot from good aerodynamics (which do not play a role when measuring fuel economy). I'm simply commenting on how comically poor this advertised stat is.

And what does sales of the iQ have to do with anything? It was never meant to be a sales leader, hence the price...

 

The EPA test protocol does take aerodynamics into account by varying the resistance of the dyno rollers. The incentive for manufacturers to tweak aero on eco trims wouldn't be as high without that.

The Spark's is poor, but the manual still manages 38mpg rating on the highway. The automatic get 37mpg, same as the CVT iQ(the only one we get). Since the Aygo isn't available here, the iQ is what cross shoppers of the Spark will look at.

Back to EVs. The iQ EV is rated 138/105/121 city/hwy/combined MPGe. Since the ICE versions have similar fuel economy, the Spark EV is likely in the same ballpark.

 

Ok, so what Frankenplug supporters are going to actually sell Frankenplug cars in any decent quantities?

Here's Tony's latest list: My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - SAE combo plug/Frankenplug EV/PHEV car list. For some context, My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - 2012 Nov Plugin Sales Discussion : Volt 1,519 ; Leaf 1,539 has last month's US plug-in vehicle sales. Since there are some gaps, October 2012 Dashboard | Hybrid Cars is the previous month's data.

 

If Nissan was smart they would be the biggest supporter of combo plug cars That might speed up fast charging stations. I'm not sure if the government will want to fund chademo/combo plug fight. That leaves votes to cut off funding for quick chargers. For Tesla, that isn't much of a problem, as they have longer range and expect to build the charging infrastructure for their cars themselves. They also will have an adapter. Nissan is most dependent on government largess. Arguing that betamax is better and continuing to fight is a losing proposition. If fast chargers start getting popular, at $7 a charge like the one in palo alto for leafs, I'll be very surprised.

I expect that if costs for a 6.6kw AC / 100 kw DC combo charger in a car come down, then volts and c-maxs, smarts, rav4 evs, spark ev, focus ev, etc will all get them in 2014 or 2015 plus whatever comes down the pipe. Until then NRG who is building the most public chargers will likely offer both plugs.

SAE Releases EV Quick Charging Standard, But Debate Continues | PluginCars.com

Society of Automotive Engineers adopts J1772 combo plug as standard for electric vehicles

 

How many EVs are getting sold in any decent quantities?

It's a new market. Most available now are just being offered to meet Carb regulations. Even if few to none will have the combo plug now isn't a sign of failure. Getting the standard finalized now will ease things for the future.

Yes, the Leaf is the most common EV now. Yet not all of them are Chademo capable. Even then, Chademo should of had an edge. Why didn't Nissan win out? Because of greed. They charged to just experiment with the protocol. With the costs of batteries hiking up the EV price over an ICE car, manufacturers aren't going to shell out cash to a competitor for an optional system, exterior to the actual car.

Nissan is to blame for Chademo's failings in the market place.