Does Charging Time for Electric Car Really Matter?
It has always been a concern that how long to get an Electric Vehicle battery charged. Fuel filling of conventional vehicle and bill payment hardly takes 5 minutes. Fuel will be always provided by public petrol bunks.
Accessibility and fastness of fuel filling make conventional vehicles superior to an electric vehicle. Electric vehicle charging is as important as fuel filling in a conventional vehicle.
Passengers would not wait for a long to get their vehicle battery charged. Charging time impacts the acceptance of electric vehicles in the automotive market.
First, let’s see different charging techniques and their properties.
Types of charging facilities
There are three types of charging facilities available for an electric vehicle — Home-based charging, charging at parking locations, and public charging stations. More details are published in another post: Electric vehicle charging: All you must know!
Home Charging Stations
Home charging stations, as their name indicate, generally install at home and the owner can charge the electric vehicle by connecting to it.
Different manufacturers give various charging options in the home charging system. Normal charging option takes around 7–10 hours to charge the battery to its full capacity.
The time of charge depends on the battery capacity and type of the charger. For example, Nissan Leaf charger specifies 0 to 100 percent charge in 9.5 hours for 30kWh battery and upgraded 30A charger recharges the battery in 5.5 hours.
Home charging stations are the most used one in electric vehicle recharging as the average trip of a person never travel beyond 100 km, which is far less than the maximum range of the electric vehicle.
The electric vehicle can be plugged into home charging stations once the vehicle returns and parked at home.
Usually charging of electric vehicles happen at night. Electric vehicle charging reduces the quality of power since they are relatively large loads.
Charging at parking locations
Charging at parking locations is another electric vehicle charging facility. Business institutions, public parking lots, employees parking places can have equipped with charging options.
Controlled charging would be possible to the vehicles at these locations with either a minimal price or free of cost.
Charging at a public place
Fast charging stations that usually installed at public places use DC charging and provide near 100 km of range in 10–30 minutes. These charging stations are installed at locations where passengers take a break on a long trip.
Battery swapping
Battery swapping is another technique proposed to reduce the charging time. In this method battery of the vehicle is replaced with another fully charged battery pack from battery swapping stations.
It would take less than 5 minutes to do the work. But the owner of the car does not own the battery in this case. Infrastructure for battery swapping stations needs large investment.
The future of swapping stations might not be that promising. Tesla motors planned to start battery swapping stations and then stopped the project and focus on fast charging stations now.
Does charging time really matter?
Let’s conclude. As far as electric vehicles are concerned charging time is not a serious drawback for vehicles that run for shorter distances.
Charging equipment at home and parking lots keep vehicle battery charged for short-distance travel that most of the passengers do every day. Since break requires in between long trips that range more than 150 kilometers, fast-charging stations at proper locations help to get the vehicle energized.
Battery technologies and techniques to reduce charging time is still in focus of vehicle manufacturers.
Conclusion
Time to charge electric car batteries reduces with the latest technologies such as fast charging. Home-based charging stations take longer to charge the battery of electric vehicles.
Time takes to charge electric vehicle becomes less critical factors since break requires for long trips and fast charging stations charges around 80% battery in 10–30 minutes.
Originally published at https://getelectricvehicle.com on January 4, 2018.
