Electric car: recharging to order
I’m walking
No reloading
© press-inform – the press office
The Aral TV commercial “I’m walking” about a broken-down driver who likes to walk a little longer with the empty spare canister to find his favorite gas station became an advertising legend in the early 1990s. But what if you get left behind with an electric car?
If the battery no longer makes a sound, the displays remain dark and the new electric car is no longer rolling towards its destination, there are not many options left. The simplest is to call the car manufacturer’s or automobile club’s service department and have them tow you at the scene of the breakdown. However, a jumper cable as with a combustion engine is not enough, because the battery not only has to be charged briefly and the alternator does the rest as a generator, but the battery pack has to be charged significantly. Incidentally, if your own electric car no longer twitches, that does not mean that the battery has been completely drained. Rather, the intelligent charging technology of the batteries ensures that the cells retain a small energy content of five to ten percent, so that there is no real deep discharge, which could be expensive.
But the battery technology also prevents you from being able to continue driving with the remaining percent in the battery. In this respect, the display in the instrument cluster, regardless of whether it is the remaining range or percentage, does not show the real battery capacity, but rather that which the driver can actually use. The bottom line, however, is that it does not change the fact that you have broken down and now have to get on the trailer or van, because there is no other way to tow an electric car. The short drive takes you to the contract trailer or to the next quick charging station – and after the overdue vitamin injection, you can hopefully continue to your destination.
Another possibility are mobile reloading services, which are not as widespread in Europe as they are in the USA. Here they have a tradition because there have been companies for a long time who came to refill when the fuel tank was empty. If you find it annoying to drive to the gas station, you can call a gas station service in the USA and they will fill your vehicle with the desired fuel without you having to lift a finger. It is very similar with reloading to order. Companies like eTree offer a service that charges your own electric car at the location of my choice. For this purpose, the service vehicles are equipped with energy storage devices and the corresponding fast-charging technology. The service itself can be requested at any time via app or phone call. Practical: the charging flap of the electric vehicle should be able to be opened safely via the eTree app in order to enable the charging service without the vehicle user being present.
The service vehicles themselves are not only electrically powered, but also extremely compact so that they can work anywhere. Thanks to a manageable width of just 1.40 meters, the models with their various charging connections can even park on narrow sidewalks to bring the empty electric car back to life. It can be refueled with up to 150 kW with all standard plugs. BMW has now discontinued its own mobile recharging service specially developed for the i3 and most other manufacturers only refer to the service offers of their mobility guarantees when the batteries are empty. The situation is different with the Chinese electronic pioneer Nio. Here the empty battery can not only be changed at one of the stations. If one of the Nio models runs out of power, the service will come to the rescue. With one click in the Nio app, the Power Mobile service vehicle comes to you and charges the car on the spot. Up to 100 kilometers can be covered in ten minutes.
The American company Spark Charge, which offers mobile recharging devices called “Roadie”, is taking a different approach. The charging package, weighing 23 kilograms, can be charged at home either in the trunk or in the holiday home without an external power connection. If desired, several packages can be combined and your own electric car can be powered up for the next 20 kilometers in 15 minutes via CCS or CHAdeMO plugs. If you don’t want to do the whole thing yourself, you can have your own electric car refueled in front of the door when shopping or the restaurant using the Spark Charge Service called “Currently” – for 25 US dollars. At the start, this service is available at least in the US metropolises of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas and San Jose – other regions are to follow. “Spark Charge started in a dorm room and has grown into a leader,” says Josh Aviv, “when the roadie was ready, there was a huge consumer demand for a mobile charger. So we created the world’s first and only mobile charging network . With this smartphone app, electric car drivers can order delivery directly to their car.”
Lightning Systems has been offering a similar service for about a year. With Lightning Mobile, the US developer of zero-emission drives now offers a mobile direct current quick charger for electric vehicles. So far, Lightning Systems has converted vehicles such as the Ford E-450 or an Isuzu FTR from combustion engines to electric drives. Now the Loveland / Colorado company is going a step further and has built a Ford Transit with liquid-cooled DC battery storage. The 184 kWh battery pack can be installed in almost any van or trailer for mobile use. Fleet customers in particular can have their vehicles’ empty battery packs recharged at the side of the road. “Every fleet with electric commercial vehicles will benefit from mobile fast charging,” says Tim Reeser, CEO of Lightning Systems, “The operating time is the be-all and end-all for fleets. The operators plan the use of the vehicles in such a way that they are charged in the depots , but there is always the possibility that a vehicle may need to be charged elsewhere or en route.There is also often a need for DC fast charging at locations or times that are not allowed or where there is demand for fast charging directly on the grid not allowed.”