Charging Electric Cars Are Wasting More Power Than You Think

[Yardbird]

Charging Electric Cars Are Wasting More Power Than You Think​

Written by Camilla Jessen


Charging your electric car might be costing you more power—and money—than you realize.

A surprising amount of electricity is lost during the charging process, and some models are much worse than others, according to a new study by the German automobile group ADAC.

Testing over 90 electric cars currently on the market, ADAC found that, on average, 14.5% of the electricity used at charging stations never even makes it to the car’s batteries.
That's energy—and cash—disappearing into thin air.

The worst offender?

The Mini Cooper SE, which wasted a shocking 30.1% of its charge. The Volvo XC40 wasn’t far behind, losing about 20% during charging. Other notable energy guzzlers include the Dacia Spring, Mustang Mach-E, Nissan Leaf, MG 4, and Xpeng G9.

Not all electric cars are culprits of massive power waste, though.

Volkswagen ID. models fared much better, with energy losses hovering around just 8%. The best performer in the test was the Aiways U6 Prime, but with the company currently pausing production in China, getting your hands on one might be tough.

So, what’s causing all this energy loss?

It all comes down to the need to convert alternating current (AC) from the charging station into direct current (DC) to store in the car's batteries. That conversion process is where a big chunk of the power goes to waste.

ADAC suggests that electric car owners factor this hidden energy loss into their calculations when figuring out how far their car can truly go on a single charge.


https://www.dagens.com/autos/charging-electric-cars-are-wasting-more-power-than-you-think

 

[Docwagon1776]

I think ADAC is sort of Germany's equivalent of AAA mixed with a car club.

The article doesn't make any sense. Any energy conversion has a loss, and electricity transmission is not exempt from that. Even transmission lines "leak" energy. Losses in the charging station don't affect the range of the vehicle on a single charge, it only effects how long it takes to charge (and the cost). I'm also extremely skeptical of claims that VW is somehow making the charger more efficient.

 

[skates15]

Probably see a lot more of these paid articles as the euro car makers campaign against EU EV mandates which both parties know they won't meet.

EU bureaucrats will get rich with all the penalty money they are about to get from the automakers.

The only question is, who will blink first, the automakers or the unelected EU bureaucrats?

 

[Hootbro]

All I know is if you had a ICE vehicle and came out on a cold winter day to find 25%-30% of your gas dissipated overnight, there would be riots in the street. Yet with EV's that is a perfectly acceptable state of charge loss.

 

[Aircommuter]

It’s about agenda! You only show the details that support the agenda. You don’t talk about battery raw materials extraction, processing, shipping to and from processing facilities, electricity line losses, charging losses, transformer losses, battery degradation, rising prices as more power is used and more. You must understand that agenda corrects physics, electrical engineering and even nature.

 

[chri5k]

All I know is if you had a ICE vehicle and came out on a cold winter day to find 25%-30% of your gas dissipated overnight, there would be riots in the street. Yet with EV's that is a perfectly acceptable state of charge loss.

The batteries are not losing charge like gasoline evaporating out of the gas tank. A better analogy is the gas pump hose has a pinhole leak and gas you are being billed for is ending up on the ground and evaporating.

The charging station is billing the customer for AC kilowatts consumed to charge the battery. The charger itself as well as the vehicle do not convert all of the AC kilowatts to DC kilowatts going into the battery with perfect efficiency. For example, the AC kilowatt meter on the charging station says the customer is being billed for 100 kilowatts of AC power. The 85 kilowatt DC battery is now full. Fifteen kilowatts AC that the customer paid for did not make it into the battery.

Most of this loss is likely due to the components of the charging system turning some of the AC kilowatts into heat. Energy just doesn't disappear into thin air as the article mentions.

 

[Longhorn1500]

A little clarification. Level one and two EVSEs supply AC current to the car and the charger in the car converts that to DC to charge the battery. Level three EVSEs supply DC to directly charge the car battery, so the conversion loss would not be car dependent (for level three only).

 

[Docwagon1776]

All I know is if you had a ICE vehicle and came out on a cold winter day to find 25%-30% of your gas dissipated overnight, there would be riots in the street. Yet with EV's that is a perfectly acceptable state of charge loss.

Wait until people find out about 70-ish% of the energy from their gasoline isn't doing anything but creating waste heat.

No energy transmission or conversion is lossless, but from most efficient to least, electric - diesel - gasoline is beyond intelligent debate, even figuring in supply chains, refining, transmission, etc. Now if that efficiency is worth the loss of utility in other metrics (fueling time, total range, etc) is a different question with more individualized answers.

 

[Bighorn_Brown]

Just read an article this morning stating VW is in trouble as it has numerous (30,000 or so) EV cars sitting around with no buyers. This, and other issues have their future in question. Many people are targeted for lay-off. They are trying to make provisions either elsewhere in the company, or training for another job.

Ironically, the article leans towards the VW in a time where it apparently needs the spotlight casted on it to draw interest.

Yes, as stated earlier the article seems confusing as it associates battery longevity to power wasted during charging; that makes no sense to me.

What would make sense is if they stated that over the life of the car battery performance may degrade; not give you as many miles as it did when new. In conjunction with that there may also be a noticeable degradation in the time it takes the battery to get to full charge. Kind of like the old NiCad batteries we used on our cordless tools.

Fact is, that’s not how I took what I read in the article. The way I understood it was it’s costing us more in electricity to charge EV than most think. Due to the process of transforming and rectifying AC to DC power. That I get. Don’t understand how that eludes to shorter distances on a single charge.

Doesn’t matter because I’m not even the least bit interested in the EV bullish!t.