(Image Credit: Road and Track)
New technologies are being unveiled at a break-neck pace that could speed up the entry of electric vehicles (EV) coming to market. One of the biggest drawbacks to owning an EV is the charge time. If you max out your batteries out on the road, you may have to wait hours while your EV charges back up. This issue, along with price, has held back the EV industry significantly, but this may all be changing soon.
Home charging units can come in several flavors to enhance charge time. Fast charging is dependent only on the charging system with fast chargers taking as little as 30 minutes for a full charge. Even if you are stranded, you likely will not need a full charge to make it home or to your destination. So having fast chargers handy in public places is critical to allaying consumer concerns.
Enter the Department of Energy (DOE) and ECOality. Using the DOE fund of $115B and a private fund of the same amount, ECOality is rolling out 14,000 publicly available fast chargers – the first of which are hitting cities like Portland, Los Angeles, and other large markets. The best part of the deal is that these fast chargers are free to use! Granted, you have to wait in line, but an 80% charge takes only 25 minutes with most people being estimated to only need 10-15% charge to make it to their destination.
(Image Credit: GCR)
Another new technology was introduced this week at the Consumer Electronics Show by Qualcomm which enables wireless re-charging of an EV battery. Just park the EV over the top of the charger and that’s all you have to do. Several versions are available to include fast-chargers. These can be installed in parking garages and other locations to allow re-charging of your EV while you work or even while you shop. Small versions are being prototyped now that are no larger than a laptop handbag.
Even solar energy is being tapped into for charging options. While not of the fast-charging flavor, these systems will allow for remote charging and drive down the cost of electric costs for public services who want to provide free electricity, such as the ECOality system. The University of California, Riverside will be implementing such systems to include powering a new electric trolley on campus.
Speaking of lowering costs, DOE’s Secretary Steven Chu announced this week that the cost of batteries for the EV field to drop from a staggering $12,000 per vehicle to as low as $1,500 per vehicle no later than 2020 with significant drops in price as early as 2015. This announcement is based upon recent breakthroughs in batter technology to include lithium-air and lithium-sulfur designs that are much less expensive to develop.
With fast-charging and price reductions in the near future, the success of the EV is becoming more likely in the U.S., where the industry has had cause for concern as consumers have shied away.
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