Who wrote this article, Oil and Gas Inc?
No joke. This is a crime problem not a “EV bad, gas good” thing. I’m sure gas stations get ripped off / vandalized all the time, too.
“BREAKING: Staffed gas stations have been robbed at gun point, scaring drivers into buying EVs so they can charge alone safely instead”
Yeah and gas stations often have an employee and cameras around which probably makes theft occurrences less likely compared to a charging station that has no one around and likely no dedicated cameras in place.
If copper thieves are stealing charging cables, the solution is dead simple…
Keep the cables on the car side, not the charger side. Provide an outlet on the charger, driver supplies their own cable.
This could work, but it would be extremely wasteful. Instead of one cable serving dozens of cars per day you’d have dozens of cables, one for each car, used only once that same day
Each driver carrying their own cable wouldn’t have to worry about the quality of the cable on the charger.
If they were compatible with the charger they use at home, it wouldn’t be nearly as wasteful as they’ll need one there anyway
Pretty sure Europe does this already.
Nah, make the cable retractable, and only release it after a payment method has been approved. Also post security or put charging stations near police departments.
retractable
I can tell when someone hasn’t used a DEF pump for diesel vehicles. The hose not retracting on DEF pumps happen pretty often. They also try to retract while pumping making filling DEF a 2 hands required operation.
I hope that whoever designed DEF pumps will step barefoot on a lego block daily.
It would need to be a better design than that! Even a hanging loop behind a door would be better than that.
The level 2 charge point chargers that are retractable I’ve seen twisted and turned into knots. Sometimes the retractor on those are broken and the car parked in the neighboring stall parked on top of the cable I wanted to use.
As EV adoption increases, the amount of asshole and indifferent behavior is also increasing. Any design with moving parts will need to take that into account
That would work for Level 2 charging, but Level 3 DC fast charging requires a recirculating liquid cooling jacket inside the cable close to the conductor to allow the high current fast charging.
I mean, it looks do-able, you just need something like this with a plug on both ends:
“150 max amp @ 600 volt DC”
Those are the older style cables that aren’t liquid cooled.
Cost would be a big issue too. You see that replacement cable is listed at $575 as is. It would be even more for the double ended version (and I’m not sure two connectors is allowed in the CCS 2 spec).
The car already has water cooling anyway. But the cable could also just be not hanging around freely.
The car already has water cooling anyway.
Car cooling cools the car, not the cable. If you’re removing the cooling requirement from the cable you either burn up the cable or downrate the charging session to be significantly slower.
But the cable could also just be not hanging around freely.
Where are you proposing the cable go if not hanging/attached to the charger?
The cable is with the car in this proposed case, why should the existing cooling not be able to cool it?
I’m the other case, of course it is connected to the charger. Just not freely dangling around outside for everyone to grab it. The same way the hoses of a fuel station mostly stay in the pump. Now just add a little bit more protection to this existing system and boom done.
This is why we can’t have nice things… s/
This is the best summary I could come up with:
DETROIT (AP) — Just before 2 a.m. on a chilly April night in Seattle, a Chevrolet Silverado pickup stopped at an electric vehicle charging station on the edge of a shopping center parking lot.
The scene that night has become part of a troubling pattern across the country: Thieves have been targeting EV charging stations, intent on stealing the cables, which contain copper wiring.
The price of copper is near a record high on global markets, which means criminals stand to collect rising sums of cash from selling the material.
Broken-down chargers have emerged as the latest obstacle for U.S. automakers in their strenuous effort to convert more Americans to EVs despite widespread public anxiety about a scarcity of charging stations.
America’s major automakers have made heavy financial bets that buyers will shift away from combustion engines and embrace EVs as the world faces the worsening consequences of climate change.
Two years ago, according to Electrify America, which runs the nation’s second-largest network of direct-current fast chargers, a cable might be cut perhaps every six months at one of its 968 charging stations, with 4,400 plugs nationwide.
The original article contains 1,234 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
just do wireless charging
https://witricity.com/ it does exist lol
