A Very Current Problem with Electric Cars
Consider this before you buy one!
There’s something that will very soon become a huge problem for electric car owners, but is anyone doing anything about it?
It’s well known that electric car usage is rising fast. They are quickly becoming cheaper, more advanced and more capable of travelling further on a single charge. So, given these reasons along with the environmental benefits and the plans that many countries have for phasing out petrol and diesel vehicles, it’s obvious why their popularity is rising fast.
At the moment, it’s pretty easy to own an electric car, and you can even cover huge distances, if you plan out your journey to find suitable charging points at the right spots along the way.
When you get to a service station, there will usually be a few spare spaces, so you can plug in your car as soon as you arrive, then go for a coffee and a snack. Then, in 30–45 minutes you can be on your way again, with a nearly full battery.
But this is going to change very soon, because all the charging points will be occupied most of the time!
“Won’t they just build more charging points?” you ask, but no — they can’t! Currently it just isn’t possible, and let me explain why.
Here’s What’s Going to Happen
I’m going to use the UK as example, but the picture will be similar in many other countries.
The UK has about 32 million cars on the road, and, currently, only about 500 thousand are plugin electric cars — a combination of PHEV (Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicle) and BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle).
The growth of electric car registrations is looking like this:
This chart shows that we are now seeing roughly a 1.5x increase in electric cars each year. So the percentage of cars on the road will go from about 1.5% now, to about 12% in just 5 years time.
So, while it’s fine at the moment to find a charging space at a motorway service station which has 300 parking spaces and about 10 electric charging points, in just a few years time they will need 30 or more.
You probably think this is no big deal, but it is. 10 charging points is fine. But having 30 or more in a relatively small space requires significant change.
The Problem
The fastest car chargers at the moment, have a power consumption of 250 kW, so if you wanted to have 30 of these in one place, you would clearly need a power supply capable of delivering 7,500 kW, i.e. 7.5 MW
To go from a 30 kW power requirement to 7.5 MW is a big deal
Just to put that in perspective, a typical house would require about 2 or 3 kW and a large commercial build, like a service station might normally require 20 or 30 kW. So to go from a 30kW power requirement to 7.5 MW is a big deal, and remember that we’re just talking about 30 charging points here. At some point we’ll need 300.
To make these leap, there will need to be significant change to the infrastructure across many locations, unless someone can come up with a clever alternative.
What Can Be Done About It?
So, what can be done, and is anyone looking for a solution to this problem?
One company trying to tackle this problem is Chakratec with their concept of using flywheels as batteries with unlimited charge cycles to smooth out the peak and troughs in power consumption.
Or is it possible for governments to make the changes required to the electricity infrastructure quickly enough to cope with the future demand?
For now though, can you be confident that this won’t be a problem you face in the near future with your electric car?