Topic: State of Charge: BC Green Car Rebate Returns April 2015

[Autos_Editor]

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[EV Dan]

Great news for EV buyers for sure. But I wonder why hydrogen cars should be subsidized. Last time they trucked hydrogen for their experimental bus fleet and IIRC they were later scrapped. I'd see the point if there were a natural source of hydrogen, but as it stands, most will be made from natural gas and it's a fairly inefficient process, and in the end you've got a car run on CO2 producing fossil fuel.   

[EV Dan]

Hydrogen production also wastes water:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production

[Guy]

Yes Great News! 

[Noto]

Leaving aside the argument for who should be funding part of individual persons' vehicle purchases, I praise the author for a thorough article highlighting more than just "yay, BC is offering rebates."  Thorough praise, actually.
, Michael!

[EV Dan]

^^^ IIRC public transit is paid for using tax dollars of ppl some of whom never even use it. Just sayin'. While I understand how crediting a $150,000 luxury car purchase may be frowned upon, it is what's given EVs a big push and such a Tesla was possibly bought in place of a 15 mpg super car. As unfair as it seems sometimes to taxpayers, transition to EVs, while favoring a select few along the path,  serves a greater common good.

[Neromanceres]

A very well written article.

A couple of notes.  The new 2016 Volt will have a 3.6KW on board charger a slight improvement on the 3.3KW on the current generation.   And while some have wanted a 6.6KW option. 60% of Volt drivers are only charging using 120V L1 charging.  So it's a small vocal bunch that want the 6.6KW charging.

6.6 KW is nice as many public L2 240VAC stations are 6.6KW+ as stated in the article.  The other benefit is that the Volt's on board heater can draw up to 6KW of power.  So on a cold day remote start the heater draw's 6KW and 3.3KW comes from the wall and the balance is from the battery.  You then might have to wait for ~5min after a remote start to fully charge the car again.  With 6.6KW charging the battery would never need to be used during a remote start while plugged in.

Also of note some of the Suncountryhighway SCH100 L2 240VAC stations go up to a 19.2KW charging rate.  The maximum allowed under the SAE J1772 standard.  A Tesla with dual chargers can utilize this charge rate but not much else.  Hopefully future pure EV's will have chargers that can utilize this capacity.

For DC fast charging there is three charging standards.
Tesla supercharger (Tesla only)
CHAdeMO (Japanese/Korean car makers [for the most part])
SAE Combo (The rest of the automotive world)

Most of the new (non Tesla) DC fast charging stations that are going in are dual CHAdeMO and SAE Combo stations that have two separate plugs that cover both standards.