EV charging

feds-putting-the-kibosh-on-national-ev-charging-program

Feds putting the kibosh on national EV charging program

EV charging, EVs, syndication, Trump, Uncategorized / /

“There is no legal basis for funds that have been apportioned to states to build projects being ‘decertified’ based on policy,” says Andrew Rogers, a former deputy administrator and chief counsel of the Federal Highway Administration.

The US DOT did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It’s unclear how the DOT’s order will affect charging stations that are under construction. In the letter, FHWA officials write that “no new obligations may occur,” suggesting states may not sign new contracts with businesses even if those states have been allocated federal funding. The letter also says “reimbursement of existing obligations will be allowed” as the program goes through a review process, suggesting states may be allowed to pay back businesses that have already provided services.

Billions in federal funding have already been disbursed under the program. Money has gone to both red and blue states. Top funding recipients last year included Florida, New York, Texas, Georgia, and Ohio.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has spent the last few weeks at the head of the federal so-called Department of Government Efficiency directing “audits” and cuts to federal spending. But his electric automobile company has been a recipient of $31 million in awards from the NEVI program, according to a database maintained by transportation officials, accounting for 6 percent of the money awarded so far.

The Trump administration has said that it plans to target electric vehicles and EV-related programs. An executive order signed by Trump on his first day in office purported to eliminate “the EV mandate,” though such a federal policy never existed.

NEVI projects have taken longer to get off the ground than other charging station construction because the federal government was deliberate in allocating funding to companies with track records, that could prove they could build or operate charging stations, says Ryan McKinnon, a spokesperson for Charge Ahead Partnership, a group of businesses and organizations that work in electric vehicle charging. If NEVI funding isn’t disbursed, “the businesses that have spent time or money investing in this program will be hurt,” he says.

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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GM patents a dual-port charging system for EVs with vehicle-to-load

Cars, EV charging, patent / /

The battery system on an electric car can either charge—from regenerative braking or an external power supply—or discharge—powering the EV’s motor(s) or supplying that power via so-called vehicle-to-load. As a rule, it can’t do both at once, but General Motors has some thoughts about that. The patent analysis site CarMoses spotted a recent GM patent application for a system that is capable of charging and discharging simultaneously.

The patent describes a “charging system” with a pair of charging ports. One is for drawing power from an external source, just like every other EV. The second charge port is connected to a bi-directional charger, and the battery management system is able to charge the battery pack from the first port while also supplying power from the second port.

That second port could be used to charge another battery, including the battery of another EV, and the patent includes an illustration of three EVs daisy-chained to each other.

Credit: USPTO

The idea of two charge ports on an EV is not unheard of; Porsche’s Taycan (and the related Audi e-tron GT) have one on each side, and it’s an option on the newer PPE-based EVs from those brands, if I’m not mistaken. I have no idea whether GM’s patent will show up on a production EV—car companies patent many more ideas than they ever get around to building, after all.

And I must admit, I’m not entirely sure what the use case is beyond seeing how long of an EV-centipede you could make by plugging one into another into another, and so on. But I am intrigued.

GM patents a dual-port charging system for EVs with vehicle-to-load Read More »

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No more EV app folders: Universal plug-and-charge is due to launch in 2025

Cars, electrify america, EV charging, EVgo, Ford, General Motors, GM, plug and charge, Rivian, SAE international, Tesla, universal plug and charge / /

To fill a car with gas, you generally just need a credit card or cash. To charge an EV at a DC fast charging station, you need any number of things to work—a credit card reader, an app for that charger’s network, a touchscreen that’s working—and they’re all a little different.

That situation could change next year if a new “universal Plug and Charge” initiative from SAE International, backed by a number of EV carmakers and chargers, moves ahead and gains ground. Launching in early 2025, the network could make charging an EV actually easier than gassing up: plug in, let the car and charger figure out the payment details over a cloud connection, and go.

Some car and charging network combinations already offer such a system through a patchwork of individual deals, as listed at Inside EVs. Teslas have always offered a plug-and-charge experience, given the tight integration between their Superchargers and vehicles. Now Tesla will join the plug-and-charge movement proper, allowing Teslas to have a roughly similar experience at other stations.

The Electric Vehicle Public Key Infrastructure, or EVPKI, has a good number of the major players on board, and it builds on the ISO standard (15118) to make it faster and more secure for cars to be authenticated and authorized to charge at stations. A whole bunch of certificates are in place at every step of the charging process, as detailed in an EVPKI presentation, and the system includes a Certified Trust List. With an open standard and authentication system, there should be room for new charging networks and vehicle makers.

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The Juicebox and Enel X shutdown: What comes next?

Cars, Enel X, EV charging, Juicebox / /

Meanwhile, a number of companies and open source projects are working on offering third-party support for Juiceboxes. Unfortunately, only newer Juiceboxes support the open charge point protocol; older devices may need to be physically modified, perhaps with open source hardware.

Enel X

As might be expected, lots of charging solution providers are interested in helping Enel X’s stranded commercial customers become their newest happy, smiling customers. But it’s going to be up to those stranded by Enel X to find a new company and platform to work with.

In some cases that might mean migrating existing hardware over, but as SAE notes, Enel X has done little to make that migration simple. And many businesses may find what were functioning level 2 chargers today are just beige-colored bricks tomorrow. For example, with Enel X gone, there are no contracts in place for the SIM cards embedded in each charger that provide the connectivity those devices expect.

“When that goes dead, the only way you can really get those chargers going again is you physically send someone out there, or you ask the person on the property to take out the SIM card, replace it,” said Joseph Schottland, CEO of EV+ Charging. “It’s a big ask, because they’ve got to get the screwdriver out, take the back of the charger off… They’ve got to know where to look.”

The Juicebox and Enel X shutdown: What comes next? Read More »

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EVgo and GM reveal their new fast charger experience

Cars, EV charging, EVgo, General Motors, GM / /

opens next year —

The layout and canopy are similar to a gas station.

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A GM Energy/EVgo charging station

Enlarge / Are you getting gas station vibes? Because I’m getting gas station vibes.

GM

Several years ago, General Motors and EVgo teamed up to build out a network of fast chargers for electric vehicles. As Tesla proved, giving your customers confidence that they won’t be stranded on a long drive with a dead battery really helps sell EVs, and GM’s sometimes-shifting target currently stands at deploying 2,850 chargers. Today, the two partners showed off their concept for an improved charging experience, which they say will come to a number of flagship charger locations around the US.

The most obvious thing to notice is the large canopy, co-branded with EVgo and GM Energy, similar to those found at virtually every gas station across the country. The gas station vibes don’t end there, either. Ample lighting and security cameras are meant to combat the sometimes sketchy vibes that can be found at other banks of (often dimly lit) fast chargers after dark, located as they often are in the far reaches of a mall parking lot.

And the chargers are sited between the charging bays the same way gas pumps are located, allowing a driver to pull through. Most fast chargers require a driver to pull in or back into the space even when the chargers are located to one side, a fact that complicates long-distance towing with an EV.

The chargers will be rated for 350 kW so that 800 V EVs can minimize their charge times. And while the announcement did not mention charging plugs, given GM’s adoption of the J3400 (originally NACS) plug from the next model year and EVgo’s embrace of the new connnector, it seems likely to expect both J3400 and CCS1 plugs on each charger.

“The future of EV charging is larger stall count locations, high-power charging, and designing around features that customers love—such as pull-through access, canopies, and convenient amenities. Through this next evolution of EVgo and GM’s esteemed collaboration, the future of EV charging is here,” said Dennis Kish, EVgo’s president.

“Ensuring that our customers have seamless access to convenient and reliable charging is imperative, and this effort will take it to the next level,” said GM Energy VP Wade Sheffer. “Through our collaborations with industry leaders like EVgo, we continue to innovate and expand customer-centric charging solutions that will meet the evolving needs of EV drivers across the country.”

The first site opens next year

There won’t be a fixed number of chargers at each location—the companies say most sites will have “up to 20 stalls,” with some locations featuring significantly more. We also don’t know where the sites will be—GM and EVgo say “coast to coast, including in metropolitan areas in states such as Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York, and Texas” and that the first location should open in 2025.

2025 was the original time frame for the full deployment of the GM Energy/EVgo fast charging network, which was also supposed to total 3,250 plugs by then—at least, that was the goal when Ars wrote about it in 2022. It appears as if the reduction in plugs freed up funds to pay for these fancier flagships.

That said, the network is not vaporware. EVgo and GM Energy deployed their 1,000th charger last summer and say they’ll reach the 2,000th by the end of this year. Additionally, the two are working together with Pilot Travel Centers to deploy another 2,000 chargers across the US at Pilot and Flying J travel centers—by the end of 2023, the first 17 of these were operational, with the goal of 200 sites by the end of this year.

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ev-fast-charging-comes-to-condos-and-apartments

EV fast-charging comes to condos and apartments

ADS-TEC, Cars, dc charging, EV charging / /

30 min and go —

A battery-buffered DC charger is an alternative to a bank of shared AC chargers.

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A woman plugs a Rivian SUV into a fast charger.

Enlarge / The Marina Palms condo development in Miami recently added an ADS-TEC ChargeBox DC fast charger for its residents.

ADS-TEC

Right now, the electric vehicle ownership experience is optimized for the owner who lives in a single-family home. A level 2 home AC charger costs a few hundred dollars, and with a garage or carport, an EV that gets plugged in each night is an EV that starts each day with a 100 percent charged battery pack. Plenty of Ars readers have told us that a 120 V outlet even works for their needs, although perhaps better for Chevy Bolt-sized batteries rather than a Hummer EV.

However, about a third of Americans live in large multifamily developments, often in cities that stand to benefit the most from a switch to electrification. And electrifying the parking lots of existing developments is often easier said than done. Some developments will allow individuals to install their own dedicated charger, and newly built developments may even have planned ahead and put conduits in place already.

For many others, the parking spaces will be owned by the condo association or co-op, complicating the idea of giving each EV driver their own plug. Here, shared solutions make more sense, perhaps starting with one or two shared level 2 chargers as a pilot—often this won’t even require extra work to the electrical panel. Costs are a little higher than for a home level 2 charger—between $7,500–$15,000 per charger, perhaps.

But for larger developments, scaling up level 2 chargers can quickly become prohibitively expensive. Older buildings may well need their electrical infrastructure to be upgraded, and running copper wiring across parking lots starts to add up fast.

Faced with the install costs for a dozen 2 chargers, a battery-buffered DC fast charger starts to look like an attractive alternative. These use an existing electrical feed to trickle-charge a lithium-ion battery pack that can then DC fast-charge an EV, rather than requiring hundreds of kilowatts. Instead of taking 6–10 hours to recharge with AC power, about 30 minutes is usually sufficient to return most EVs to 80 percent state of charge with a DC fast charger.

A condo building in Miami, the Marina Palms, recently made just this decision after a boom in the number of residents with EVs created a need for more charging capacity than its six existing level 2 chargers could offer. It went with a ChargeBox from ADS-TEC Energy, which is capable of charging at up to 320 kW.

“That was one of the biggest appeals, that we didn’t have to work with the electrical infrastructure of our development or grow it or whatever, just to get this charger installed. I think we have 200 kW in the power grid on that side, and we’re using 100 kW. The other way [with multiple level 2 chargers] we would be using a minimum of 140 kW, if not the whole thing, and then we have no buffer for something else we might be doing like—for instance a car lift or that type of thing,” explained George Barriere, general manager for the Marina Palms.

If the costs are comparable, there’s another benefit to picking a DC fast charger in place of a bank of AC plugs—it takes up less room. “We didn’t use anything from our inventory of parking, which is the biggest problem for condos—lack of parking. So, we would have to have 20 parking spaces for 20 level 2 chargers in order to service the same number of vehicles that we’re doing with two parking spaces [with a single level 3 charger],” Barriere told me.

“Our deployment at the Marina Palms Yacht Club and Residences serves as a model for other large condominium and apartment complexes in Miami and elsewhere in the US,” said Thomas Seidel, CEO of ADS-TEC. “The lack of charging infrastructure is still a deterrent in driver adoption of EVs. ADS-TEC Energy is solving this problem with our solution. We look forward to rolling out additional installations across the US this year. The advantages we provide will be a huge step for the US in building a strong and reliable charging infrastructure.”

EV fast-charging comes to condos and apartments Read More »

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An EV that charges 30% faster? Volvo and Breathe think their tech can do it

Breathe Battery Technologies, Cars, EV charging, volvo / /

software-defined battery —

Real-time battery-management algorithms on an embedded processor? Yes, please.

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An illustration of a Volvo EV powertrain

Enlarge / Volvo’s electric powertrains are going to get a bit smarter with Breathe’s new real-time battery-management system.

Volvo

Would you like an electric vehicle that can charge up to 30 percent faster than the current breed? If so, you’re not alone—Volvo Cars thinks that’s a desirable outcome, too, which is why the carmaker has invested in and partnered with a British startup called Breathe Battery Technologies. Consequently, Volvo will be the first automaker to add Breathe’s new battery management technology to its EVs, although, before too long you should see Breathe’s tech show up in other EVs, as well as consumer tech devices.

A spinoff out of Imperial College in London, Breathe wants to add some extra brainpower to battery management.

“The frustration that everyone feels is that cell manufacturers brute force and empirically test batteries until they die,” explained Ian Campbell, CEO of Breathe. “They ship the data sheet alongside those batteries that has some numbers baked in, that says “control it according to this A4 piece of paper,” and that significantly underutilizes the complex electrochemistry and materials in the system that they built and shipped.”

Instead of having prebaked charging data that governs that battery pack throughout its life, Breathe instead has developed a dynamic battery management system that provides much more granular control over the pack as it charges. Consequently, it says it can improve charging times by 15–30 percent over current packs.

It seems an intuitive idea—instead of benchmarking a battery at the beginning based on cell specs, why not constantly monitor the pack to know exactly how much charge it can or can’t accept right now?

“It is insanely difficult to take a battery model that is a complicated piece of maths and modeling electrochemistry, to take that to an embedded application processor like the integrated circuit in a Volvo car or any car in the world or any laptop or smartphone,” Campbell told Ars. “That is then fundamentally what enables us to take physics, take equations, algorithms, maths, and electrochemistry, from what’s traditionally been on high-performance computing environments to integrated circuits. By running that real-time, we have the fidelity of control that… enables us to deliver, then, the end-user experience that we really want,” he said.

One can see why an automaker like Volvo might find that attractive—Breathe’s tech requires no hardware changes to Volvo’s EVs, and it’s agnostic of cell chemistry. And since it can run on low-power embedded processors, it’s reasonable to expect it to show up eventually on smaller devices than cars. But Volvo gets to be first.

“For us it’s not important that we have exclusive rights, but it was important for us to be the first mover and with volume as well. Because this is a technology that solves part of the customer pain points with electric cars today,” said Ann-Sofie Ekberg, CEO of the Volvo Cars Tech Fund.

Volvo is keeping coy on exactly which new EV will be the first to feature Breathe’s software, but Ars will keep an ear to the ground to try to find out.

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