The Electric Vehicle Charging Problem

Writing by Sam Denby
Research by Sam Denby and Tristan Purdy
Editing by Alexander Williard
Animation by Josh Sherrington
Sound by Graham Haerther
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster

Select footage courtesy the AP Archive

References

Musicbed SyncID:
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[RealEngineering]

I hate giving you compliments, but this was great.

[cosmo]

That giant gap of charging stations in Australia is just a massive desert. There's very little infrastructure of any kind in that area at all.

[XyukonR]

It would be awesome if you could make an update to this video to see how things are progressing.

[wabio]

"People are not going to buy EV's without the charging infrastructure." Good point. It's the same reason why many people don't buy unique or exotic cars (like rotary Mazdas) because once they break down it's hard to find parts or mechanics willing to work on it.

[marcadiusrose]

Heads up. The Chevy Volt is an electric hybrid car with an ICE. It's actually Chevy's Bolt that those statistics apply to.

[EEVblog]

CCS is now the standard here in Australia, and all Telsla's sold here have a CCS connector. So it's going to be vastly cheaper for Tesla to just admit defeat in the US and convert to CCS.

[muhnameizjeff]

Would love to see this updated with current information.

[Bobrogers]

One other factor is that charging stations are frequently out of order, and repairs are slow to happen. Additionally, some charging stations do not operate in intensely cold weather.

[wilman]

One point missed in the article is that it is assumed that charging stations will automatically be available whenever you need them. I’m sure it will be fun when you drive to a five unit charging station and there are ten cars ahead of you, each requiring a thirty minute charge.

[EER]

As an electric driver in Europe, my biggest gripe is that chargers are unpredictably broken, so you always have to stop at a charger before the last one you could reach, decreasing my already limited range. With more chargers coming available, hopefully this is a temporary problem though :)

[Ysmir_The_Ancient]

You are right about the whole charging thing, but you forgot to mention Winter Time!! If an EV Car owner doesn't have a garage for their EV, then those cars pretty much turn into a giant brick when it gets cold outside. Check out Chicago and other cold places this Winter season!!

[mattiaswieland]

Great video. As for Australia, I don't think not being able to drive from Perth to Sydney is a problem, as no sane person would want to do that anyway. Could be an issue in some other drivable parts though.

[leonhill]

Small detail: rectifier converts AC to DC while an inverter converts DC to AC.

[saablazer]

If I owned an electric car, I would want to do overnight charging at home. But I live in an apartment so that’s not an option. I think that limits many people who would otherwise buy an electric vehicle.

[randomyoutubeuser]

It's crazy how outdated this video became in 3 years which is a good thing

[pharynx]

the other big charging problem for batteries, is that the faster you charge them, and the deeper you discharge them, lowers the battery life significantly.

[ltjgambrose]

My "Electric Vehicle Charging Problem" is that I don't have a place to charge an EV.
I'm pretty sure most of the other Americans who live in apartment complexes have a similar problem.
Edit: I literally don't have a way to get even 120 V electricity out to my parking spot to run a vacuum cleaner. A lot of people would happily slow charge at home but where they park their car is not in a place where they have access to 120 or 240 V.

[ghost]

There's one more thing to consider. If you go to a gas station and all the pumps are in use one of them will become available in 3-4 minutes. If you go to a charging location and all the chargers are in use you could be waiting for 20-35 minutes waiting for your turn.

[stanpritchard]

In the UK we now need at least 30 chargers per station to be able to cope with what is out there, and most are broken down, so the time limit for recharging is approx 2 to 3 hours, so the infastructure is not working so what happens when double the amount of ev's are on the road lets say in the next two years, it will be utter chaos because with even 5% broken down station will not cope with the demand, and home chargers will be too expensive to charge at home.

[Harbringe]

The cold problem where batteries dont work as well is also a factor. I live in Canada and people here say evs dont last as long as claimed and after a few years the batteries degrade, also cutting the mileage you get.