Rapid Charging Electric Cars: From Oahu To You
Editor’s Note: This topic was also covered on Gas 2.0: Hawaii to Get Electric Car Battery-Sharing Program
Perhaps nothing has been perceived as a greater weakness for electric vehicles than charge times — spending 6 hours recharging every hundred or two miles is enough to readily ruin the idea of taking a cross-country trip.
To work around this, some groups such as Project Better Place propose to standardize battery packs and pack-replacing infrastructure. On one hand, it seems an easy solution to the problem; yet battery technology is an ever-moving target, as anyone who has witnessed the dramatic shrinking of cell phone and laptop batteries in the past decade can attest. But, as the stereotypes go, batteries can’t really take a charge as fast as you’d need, and you couldn’t deliver it that fast if you wanted to.
Or could you?
When automaker pressure killed off California’s ZEV mandate in the early ’00s, it seemed a death knell for electric vehicles. Research funding largely dried up, and the advances into fast charging seemed to have gone down a dead end. However, another industry was prepared to pick up where electric car consumers left off: forklifts. In some locations, forklift operators found that fast charging forklift batteries was both faster and safer than swapping batteries out to keep their lifts running. Since then, driven by burgeoning demand and a renewed interest in electric vehicles, as well as batteries like titanates, phosphates, and spinels which can be recharged in 5 to 15 minutes, research has continued.
The Hawaii Electric Vehicle Demonstration Project may well be considered Ground Zero for rapid charging technology in the US. With a network of eleven 60kW Aerovironment PosiCharge rapid chargers across the island, and with eighteen more to come, the island has already reached a state of EV infrastructure development that many today still believe is impossible. Yet 60kW is just the start; Aerovironment alone makes chargers as big as 250kW. Edison, EnerSys, Epyon, and Norvick are all in the fast charger business.
To put it another way, your typical 200Wh/mi EV could be charged up with 208 miles of range in just ten minutes with a charger like that.
How much do these chargers cost? A very high powered one may cost $125,000 today. In 1999 prices, a 60kW Aerovironment charger cost $40,000; a 120kW one costs $80,000; a 35kW Norvick Minit Charger cost $35,000; and a 250kW Norvick Minit Charger cost $125,000. These prices certainly may sound high, but so is the price of building a gas station; a typical 8-pump gas station can easily run you $1-2 million dollars. Thanks to how cheap electricity is, paying off such an investment should prove trivial with even a modicum of electric vehicles on the streets.
Image Credit: Hawaii Natural Energy Institute
Source: Hawaii Electric Vehicle Development Program
