One of Europe’s leading energy consultancies has estimated that Tesla’s electric haulage truck will require the same energy as up to 4,000 homes to recharge, calculations that raise questions over the project’s viability. The US electric carmaker unveiled a battery-powered lorry earlier this month, promising haulage drivers they could add 400 miles of charge in as little as 30 minutes using a new “megacharger” to be made by the company. John Feddersen, chief executive of Aurora Energy Research, a consultancy set up in 2013 by a group of Oxford university professors, said the power required for the megacharger to fill a battery in that amount of time would be 1,600 kilowatts. That is the equivalent of providing 3,000-4,000 “average” houses, he told a London conference last week, ten times as powerful as Tesla’s current network of “superchargers” for its electric cars. Tesla declined to comment on the calculations. National Grid, which oversees Britain’s electricity system, has suggested that in the most extreme scenario, electric vehicles could create as much as18 gigawatts of additional demand for power at peak times in the UK by 2050. This is the equivalent capacity of nearly six nuclear power stations on the scale of the Hinkley Point project under construction in the south-west of England. Industry experts believe strains on the system could be reduced by using “smart chargers” that only re-boot vehicle batteries when the grid is able to cope, rather than at peak times, such as after work.
FT 27th Nov 2017 read more »
Royal Dutch Shell has accelerated its drive into the electric vehicle market by teaming up with Europe’s fastest charging network. The collaboration with Ionity, which is backed by major carmakers, will roll out across 80 of Shell’s biggest European petrol stations to allow drivers of the latest generation of electric cars to charge up in as little as five to 10 minutes. The Ionity joint venture was formed in recent weeks by BMW, Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen with Audi and Porsche to create a network of 350kW chargers next to major highways in Europe.
Telegraph 27th Nov 2017 read more »
