Five Problems with Electric Cars Charging

Finance minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz said that the Government sees the potential of EVs to help reduce air pollution. To support the development of the local EV industry, the Government is proposing that EVs be completely exempt from import duty, excise duty and sales tax.

EVs will also benefit from a road tax exemption of up to 100% under the proposal, while an income tax relief of up to RM2,500 will be provided on the cost of purchasing and installing, renting or taking up hire purchase facilities, as well as subscription payments of EV charging facilities.

The proposal also involves 100% duty exemption for CBU electric cars up to 31st December 2023, and 100% duty exemption for CKD electric cars up to 31st December 2025. Clearly the plan is to kickstart the industry with CBU cars and hopefully local assembly activities can begin from 2024 onwards.

Source: https://www.motorist.sg /Yahoo News Singapore

Electricity has a major advantage over fossil fuel: it’s everywhere already. Just about everywhere you go, you could plug in and top up your car when it needs it. Your car will charge while you’re away doing what you need to do, whether it’s shopping, visiting friends or just relaxing at home.

Having said that, there are 5 problems for using electric cars:

1. Accessing Public Chargers

There are currently more than 30 charging networks across the UK. Unlike petrol stations, in the vast majority of cases you can’t just park up and charge. Long journeys in an electric car currently require an element of planning, followed up with a downloading of apps and setting up of accounts, either in advance or when you reach the charger. In the U.K., only a minority of charging points allow you to pay directly by credit or debit card without going through an app or website. According to figures from Zap Map, just 8% of chargers in the UK are both rapid (quick to charge) and accept contactless payments.

Some chargers that can accept contactless payment will charge you more for using your bank card as opposed to using the network’s dedicated app or web interface. In effect, it’s punishing you for paying by card. All the while, the network-specific apps that many people will be reliant on are some of the most poorly rated apps on the Google Play store.

Universal access is challenging, but it is essential. We need one app, one RFID card and one account that allows you to access all networks wherever you. This isn’t to stop networks having their own apps, cards and membership schemes, it’s to make sure there’s a universal default. Ideally, that RFID card (or similar) could top up an account with actual cash via, say, the Post Office, in the same way some people pay utility bills or top up electricity meters.

2. Rapid-charging Plugs

Most electric cars can receive rapid charging via DC and this is the fastest way to top up your car’s battery. The issue is there are two entirely different DC plugs – CCS or Chademo – both of which require their own socket. 

Most cars that can receive a rapid charge today with CCS socket. The outliers being both generations of the Nissan Leaf and the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, which have a Chademo socket. 

The same problem existed with multiple AC sockets until the EU decreed in 2014 that all new plug-in cars should have a ‘Type 2’ (or Mennekes) AC socket.

Nissan’s new Ariya SUV will have a CCS connector, which many have taken as a harbinger of the imminent demise of Chademo. 

3. Charging by Time

Some charge points and networks charge per minute, rather than by kWh (the electric car equivalent of ringgit per litre). This makes it difficult for you to compare prices.

Charging by time only makes things complicated. Charging by kWh makes rates easier to understand and possible to compare.

4. Brand-specific Networks

Tesla is a trailblazer and a market challenger. The Tesla Model S saloon and its mind-blowing (for the time) range proved that electric cars weren’t just meant to be secondary vehicles. And a crucial way Tesla made its cars even more convenient was to establish its own supercharger network and destination charger network. 

Unique to Tesla, the supercharger network uses a Type 2 plug that’s capable of delivering rapid DC – it’s the only Type 2 plug to do so. Each supercharger unit also has a CCS charger, which means other electric cars could use it.

Tesla’s superchargers aren’t open to other brands of car. Tesla superchargers have power levels from 120kW to 250kW, and charge their owners just 26p per kWh. So one of the fastest, most prolific and affordable set of ultra-rapid chargers is locked off to one brand.

Destination chargers can be unique to Tesla, or open to all with a Type 2 plug. Tesla says it advises hosts that ‘wherever two chargers are installed, we encourage one to be universal and one to be Tesla only’. All Tesla destination chargers could be open to all cars.

Having charging points that most electric car drivers can’t use is almost as bad as not having them at all. Imagine if Ford had its own branded pumps at petrol stations. Only Ford cars could use it, but Ford cars could also use all other pumps on the forecourt. How happy would you be as a non-Ford owner? 

As we rapidly approach the point of mass adoption of electric cars, single-brand networks belong in the past. We need more charging points, but there’s currently nothing to stop more single-brand networks such as Tesla’s from popping into existence.

5. Charging Speeds

All slow and fast chargers (so all 3 to 22kW chargers) provide AC current, which your electric car’s onboard charger converts to DC so it can then be channelled into your battery. But just because a 22kW charger exists, this doesn’t mean your car can actually receive a 22kW charge. The Renault Zoe is the one of the only cars of that can make full use of a 22kW charger. Most cars on the market are limited to a maximum AC charge rate of 7.2-11kW – although you can still connect to a 22kW charger, as the car will manage the rate of charge and take what it can. Any car capable of rapid charging also has an entirely separate maximum DC charge rate. The problem is that drivers could choose a charger with a higher rate of power when it’s of no use, potentially taking it away from another driver who could make better use of it. Faster charges are also more expensive.

The solution? There’s something simple that car manufacturers can do to make life easier: just as some cars have ‘diesel’ or ‘petrol’ labels on their fuel caps, a car’s maximum AC and DC rates could quite simply be printed next to its charging sockets. 

It will encourage drivers to pick an appropriate charger, freeing faster ones up for those who can take advantage of them, and may save them money. But until initial problems of infrastructure, network, rapid charging plugs and charging speeds are resolved, the EV phenomenon will not progress very much even with incentives of tax and subsidies. The Government must get its priorities right and make the roll-out on infrastructure with TNB or Petronas and then move forward with sales and manufacturing of EVs. We can’t put the “cart before the horse” so to speak but we are damn good at it!

Reference:

Five problems with electric cars charging and how to fix them, Adrian Porter (https://www.which.co.uk)