For people who intend to purchase BEVs, the convenience of charging should be one of the biggest concerns. The most ideal situation is to charge with the home charging port next to the parking space in off-peak electricity rate rather than searching public charging ports; however, the building committee or other residents might not agree to wire another power cable, and also temporary charging is usually needed when driving in other cities, which will increase the difficulty of using BEVs. To view from the aspect of carmakers, they made lots of effort to install low-cost batteries with acceptable capacity in cars, then sell them desperately to the customers (Because most of key battery technologies are not owned by carmakers, they can only fulfill the basic requirements). As for the convenience of charging for car owners, carmakers might cooperate with companies to help owners applying for home charging ports installation, and give away the stored-value cards for public charging system. But let’s get back to the core of the issue… How could the charging method of BEVs become really friendly as the refueling of ICE cars?
Nio is promoting directly battery pack swapping.
Apart from the fast-charging and slow-charging widely known by the public, wireless charging, portable charging, mobile charging (undergrounded induction coil along the road for car charging while driving thru), or directly battery pack swapping promoted by Nio, all these are various charging services for try-out worldwide. In addition to the battery swapping that needs to unify the battery specification from brands, which involves more complicated business competition concerns, the other options are just related to the consideration of technology and profit model respectively. Technically, the wireless charging is similar to mobile charging, but the latter needs to put high-power charging pad under the asphalt road and the cost is extremely high. There is a one-kilometer road in Italy that had been experimented with this method for more than one year. When BEVs drive through this road, the battery capacity level will increase a few percentages, and the chassis of the corresponding cars must be installed with receivers; Furthermore, Japan is in consideration of installing wireless charging in the tens of meters of road sections in front of traffic signals (according to statistics, 25% of urban driving time are wasted on waiting for green light) to save the cost compared to Italy’s case As far as we know, Taiwan’s LiteOn had been developing this technology for a while, which is expected to have concrete achievement. As for the portable charging that needs to haul the mobile power device that is very heavy and has only a few kWh of capacity to the sides of the car, which is not suitable for everyone.
There is a one-kilometer road in Italy that had been experimented wireless chraging for more than one year.
From these charging methods mentioned above, the charging models of BEVs in the future can be generally summarized as below…
- In addition to fast-charging and slow-charging, every BEV will be equipped with wireless charging receiver as standard.
- The concept of undergrounded road wireless charging is ideal, but the cost of construction is high that isn’t easy to popularize in a short term; designated-spot wireless charging will become another mainstream of charging methods, and it won’t incur the same 20% electricity loss as wireless charging on cellphones. The energy transfer efficiency can be up to 90%, which is similar to plug-in charging.
- The socket of fast-charging, slow charging will finally be unified, and the functions of APP service platforms that help searching for the location of public charging ports will be gradually more diversified … Cellphones can be connected with designated charging ports and register to queue for charging, so that distant cars can prioritize charging ports that is available or have shorter queue. In addition to the situation that the technology of charging and battery design hasn’t been significantly improved that each fast-charging takes at least half an hour, the business opportunities of coffee shops nearby charging stations will emerge to become another trend.