NYC Infrastructure Hearing

The ChargePoint map of charger locations in NYC

This isn't an i3-specific post, however it is very important to the i3 and to all other plug in vehicles. The city of New York is considering legislation that would help to dramatically increase the number of public charging stations within city limits. While New York has been steadily adding charging stations in private garages and parking lots, there are currently only about 140 chargers in the entire city, and many locations account for multiple chargers so there really isn't a good spread of places to charge in New York City.

Answering questions from the Board

I was asked by Mayor Bloomberg's Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability to testify in favor of  Intro.1176. There were a few other industry experts that testified and for the most part it seems the Joint Housing and Transportation Board that would be considering the bill was definitely in favor of it. In fact, the Co-Chairman James Vacca actually called for the bill to be expanded to include curbside charging stations which the bill in its current form didn't include.

Intro. 1176, loosely called the "Charger Ready Bill" would require all new construction projects in NYC that are adding 4 or more new parking spaces to install the conduit and make sure the site has the proper electrical capacity for future electric vehicle charging equipment to be installed in up to 20% of the parking spaces added. This is a great bill because it isn't financially onerous on the owner, as it doesn't require them to install the EVSE's or even pull the wiring just yet, but have the electric raceways there for future use. It is not expensive at all to do this while you are building out the parking lot, but it becomes very expensive if you want to do it later as you often have to rip up the parking lot and trench to run the wiring. Having the parking lots and garages ready for future charging equipment will certainly lead to increased charge points as it will be quicker, less expensive and much easier to install them once the owner feels there is the need to.

Unfortunately right now New York just isn't ready for electric vehicles. I go into the City frequently and it's very difficult to get a charger that is available, near the destination I'm going to, working, and not blocked by a row of gas cars. I even did a blog post about the difficulty I had with my ActiveE once last year. Most of the time I go in there now I take my gas car because I can't be sure I'll be able to charge while I'm there and that's unfortunate for me and for the city. Instead of me driving my zero emission car there, I'm contributing to the air pollution problem that every major city has by driving my gas burning vehicle. I even have had people that live in the city email me to ask for advice about getting EV charging equipment installed where they live. It's very difficult to own an electric car if you live in the city because it's so difficult to get it charged without paying extraordinarily high installation fees well into the thousands of dollars.  Hopefully Intro.1176 will pass and we can begin to get the hundreds and even thousands of charging stations that NYC needs to accommodate the wave of plug in cars that will be on the streets of NY in the near future.

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How Long Will it Take To Charge an i3?

The i3 will charge in about 3 hours on a standard level 2 supply.

Since installing public charging stations at my restaurant in Montclair NJ, I have conversations with EV-interested folks nearly every day. One of the most popular questions they seem to always ask is how long does an electric car take to charge?

I wish I could just give a quick answer, but it's just not that easy. Nearly every EV takes a different amount of time to charge since they have different size batteries and the also have different charging rates. Then you throw in three different levels of charging (120V, 240V & 480V DC quick charge) and there isn't even a single answer for every car. For instance if I said the i3 takes about 3 hours to charge I'd be correct. However I could also say it will charge to 80% in under a half hour (DC QC) as I could say it takes about 15 hours (simple 120V household outlet) to charge and I'd still be correct. So I try to quickly explain the different methods of charging and the fact that every car is different without totally confusing the person or making it sound so complicated that they are are turned off by it all. After all, getting gas may be expensive but let's face it, it's very easy to understand!

The size of the battery, the onboard charger and the supply provided will all work together to determine how long your EV will take to charge. The vast majority of the time most EV owners will charge their car they will do so on a 240V electric supply, so I'll focus on that here. One advantage "little battery" EV's like the i3 have is since they have a small battery, they will charge relatively quickly, provided they have robust onboard charging capabilities. The i3's standard 7.7kW charger will fully charge the battery in under three hours which is pretty good compared to the other EV's on the market. Only Tesla (9.6kW charging standard) and Renault (43kW Chameleon charger) offer an EV with a faster level 2 charging rate than the i3.

Miles Per Hour:

One way to condense the conversation about charging time is to simply say how many miles of range per hour of charging you get. The i3's small battery (18.8kWh usable) combined with its relatively fast onboard charger will allow you to gain about 30 miles of range for every hour you are plugged into a 240v 32 amp supply. This will be something I really welcome. My MINI-E could accept up to 12kW's and I would get about 30 miles per hour of charging. However after a recent BMW software tweak my ActiveE only gets about 15 miles of range per hour and it feels painfully slow, especially when I need to charge to get somewhere. I am
so looking forward to getting back to charging at 30 miles per hour when I get my i3. Being able to charge quickly on a standard level 2 supply is really helpful and once you've been able to do so you don't want to go to a slower charging rate. The car becomes imminently more usable when you can charge it quickly so I'm glad BMW is offering a pretty robust onboard charger. Now of course I wish it was a 9.6kW charger like Tesla uses, but that's just the part of me that is never satisfied speaking. In reality 7.7kW's is fine for a car with a 22kWh battery. It will charge twice as fast as my ActiveE and deliver about the same range, and that will really make the car much more versatile.

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DC Quick Charge: Better Than a Bigger Battery

A BMW i3 charges at the first public SAE CCS quick charge station open in the US. 

The first public DC quick charger in the US that uses the SAE-endorsed Combined Charging System (CCS) opened this week in San Diego, CA. It's located at the Fashion Valley Mall and uses a dual connector quick charger called a "Freedom Station" by EVgo.

The i3 will have a DC quick charge option that the customer can elect or pass on. The price has not been set yet but the speculation is it will cost somewhere between $750 and $1,000 extra. Having the option will allow you to recharge the car to 80% in about 20 minutes. This is an incredible advantage to have in an EV, since charging times are really what limit EVs like the i3 from being able to cover hundreds of miles without much inconvenience. Of course you can get an EV with a huge battery like the Tesla Model S which will allow you to drive a couple hundred miles between charges, but to be able to really cover long distances without much inconvenience, DC quick charge (or battery swap ability) is really needed. 

Standards War

SAE & CHAdeMO side by side

Tesla understands the absolute need for quick charging on pure electric vehicles and is rolling out their own network of DC quick chargers they call Superchargers. Since Tesla uses a proprietary connector nobody other than Tesla customers will be able to use their network. Nissan uses a different connector called CHAdeMO (short for CHArge de MOve or charge for moving) which was developed by Tempco (yeah, the power utility that runs the Fukushima nuclear power plant) for quick charging electric vehicles in Japan. When Nissan came out with the LEAF, the SAE hadn't yet endorsed a DC quick charge connector for the US so Nissan had no other option but to use the CHadeMO connector on the LEAF for quick charging, not that they wouldn't have anyway. Then, once the SAE endorsed the CCS connector, BMW, along with Audi, Chrysler, Daimler, Ford, GM, Porsche all agreed to use it on their plug in vehicles, when they eventually make them. I'm not going to go into why one is better than the other, or why some manufacturers chose one over the other here. There are plenty of articles on the internet that discuss this at nauseam; just do a simple search and you'll find them. I will say that I've talked with a few BMW engineers about this and they all basically told me there was no decision to be made. That the SAE CCS system is so technically superior to CHAdeMO, especially for future applications, that they wouldn't have even considered it. 

Personally, I really don't care which "standard" my EV has, as long as there are chargers out there for me to use. I've held both and even plugged both into cars and the SAE is a little lighter and less bulky and you only need a single charge port on the car so I tend to favor it, but honestly, I would be fine using CHAdeMO if there were chargers installed in my area and there aren't. At the i3 premier in July a BMW program manager asked me how much would I be willing to pay for the DC quick charge option. I suspect the price for the US market hadn't been finalized yet. My response was, "That depends" eliciting his curiosity. I followed it up by saying right now I won't pay a penny for a DC quick charge option because there are no chargers within driving distance of my home. However let's say there were a couple here and there in my general area, then I'd pay about $500 for it. And if there were a couple dozen of them in northern New Jersey I'd be willing to pay $1,000 for it. 

 
I know we are many years from having DC quick chargers in accessible, convenient locations like gas stations but I also believe that day will eventually come. The West Coast has a huge head start over the rest of the country and probably has as much as 70% of the Superchargers, ChadeMO and now CCS stations installed in the entire country. Plus, with the recent NRG settlement California will get 200 more DC quick charge stations, most being dual connector (CHAdeMO and CCS) units. Tesla currently has 24 Superchargers installed and an aggressive plan to cover the rest of the US in a few years. Nissan meanwhile has committed to installing hundreds of CHAdeMO stations in the US although they haven't delivered much on that promise yet. Outside of California's NRG settlement the future is unclear how and when we'll get the SAE CCS stations installed. Without any clear plan for the area you live in, I think it would be foolish to pay up to $1,000 for the option if you don't even know if you'll ever be able to use it. I have a friend that bought a LEAF in 2011 here in New Jersey and paid for the CHAdeMO option but nearly three years later he has never been able to use a CHAdeMO station because there are none within his range. 

I had the opportunity to talk with a BMW manager at the i3 premier about DC Quick charge infrastructure and one of the questions I asked was will the BMW i dealerships be required to install a DC quick charge station. I thought that would be a great way to at least begin the roll out of compatible DC quick chargers for the i3 so customers will at least have their local dealerships to fill up quickly at. They could also look for BMW i dealerships along the route of their long trips and since most dealerships are on highways, the locations would probably be good ones. Unfortunately that isn't going to happen. The dealers will not be required to install DC quick charge stations, but they will be "encouraged to." Personally I'd like to see BMW "encourage" them by offering to supply them with the DC charging station for free, as long as they pay to install, maintain it and have it available for use even when the dealership is closed. The dealerships will however be required to install multiple level 2 charging stations though which is a start, but really doesn't help out with longer road trips.

"Quick" Level 2 Charging

Is there such a thing as quick level 2 charging? While level 2 charging (240v) isn't necessarily quick, some cars do charge quicker than others. The Model S is the king (in the US at least) of L2 charging as it can charge at a rate of up to 20kW with optional dual onboard 10kW chargers. However the real L2 charging champ is only available in Europe. The Renault ZOE's onboard "Chameleon charger" can charge at up to 43kWs! On the other end of the spectrum is the Chevy Volt that is restricted to 3.3kW charging. However since the Volt has a much smaller battery than a Model S, it can actually fully charge in about the same time as a Model S can with it's massive 85kWh battery. The i3 will be able to charge at up to 7.4kW, and since it has only a 22kWh battery, it can fully charge in under 3 hours. This delivers a rate of about 30 miles of range per hour when charging from a 240v 30 amp level 2 charging station. That's a good improvement from my ActiveE, which returns only 15-18 miles of charge per hour. BMW is quick to point out how fast the i3's battery can be replenished while charging on L2, and while it is better than any non-Tesla EV here in the US, it still pales compared to the 80 miles of range you can get in 20 minutes on a DC quick charger.

Bigger battery vs DC quick charge 

The i3's 22kWh battery will allow for 80-100 miles or range in every day driving conditions, and up to 125 miles if the more efficient ECO-Pro+ driving mode is selected (Says BMW). So if range is so important, why not just slap a 40kWh battery in there and call it a day? The i3 would get about 200 miles of range and you wouldn't need quick charge, right? Wrong. Tesla uses enormous battery packs and they still realize they need a DC quick charge network to really make their electric cars viable to the broad public. Even with 200 to 300 mile range their customers want to be able to quickly recharge so they can drive long distances. The truth is, no matter how big your battery is and how far you can drive on a single charge, people will always want more range and quick charging. This is way BMW is offering the range extender on the i3. They know that it's going to take years for a comprehensive DC quick charge network to be built out, so until we have a robust infrastructure in place, the range extender will be a very popular option and will allow the owner to drive as far as they need on the few occasions they need to travel long distances. For daily use they won't use any gas, as the ~100 mile range should be more than enough for the vast majority of the time, yet they still have the flexibility of being able to cover hundreds of miles should the need arise. I believe the range extender becomes obsolete once we have adequate quick charge infrastructure in place. In fact, large Tesla-sized batteries won't be necessary either. Why carry the additional weight around and pay for a huge battery pack when you can use one half the size and just charge it quickly when the occasional need arises? The main reason EVs cost more than conventional powered vehicles is the cost of the battery pack. A smaller pack combined with readily available quick charge is clearly the way to go, however getting the infrastructure in place is the 800 lb gorilla in the room. It's not just going to happen without the support of the manufacturers. Tesla and Nissan seem to be doing their part, will BMW and the others that have signed up to use the SAE CCS standard do their part? Only time will tell.
 

The BMW EV infrastructure team was well represented at the grand opening event for the first public CCS quick charging station. Will they continue to be involved in assisting CCS station deployment, or wait by the sideline and watch?

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BMW i Selects Schneider Electric as Strategic Partner for Electric Vehicle Charging Equipment

The Concept i3 charging from a custom made BMW i branded EVSE. Will this custom wall box be available?

BMW i announced today they have formed a partnership with Schneider Electric and The Mobility House to provide electric vehicle charging equipment for BMW i customers.

From The Mobility House website:

Munich. BMW i is continuing its strategy of customer-friendly electric mobility consistently. These now have a far-reaching partnership with Schneider Electric and the Electric Mobility Services The Mobility House (TMH) was closed. The agreement includes services such as testing the house wiring at the customer site, supply and installation of the charger (wall box) as well as maintenance and other services. Future owners of BMW i3 and i8 can connect their vehicle safely and quickly charge it at home or at work. The partnerships support the overall goal, at launch of the BMW i3 customer-friendly and efficient charging options offer by allowing a convenient store in the garage. The BMW i3 will be the first electric car in the market, which was conceived from the beginning as such. The launch is planned for late 2013. Alexander Efthimiou, Director of Product Management drives kits and e-mobility project, said: "With BMW i, we adopt a holistic approach to electric mobility. Our offer will not be limited to the sale of the BMW i3. In our numerous global pilot experiments with electric vehicles, we have been listening carefully and offer from launch of the BMW i3 under the umbrella term of "360 ° ELECTRIC" solutions for all customer requirements of future electric motor home, such as. Also an easy access to public charging infrastructure The professional installation of the wall box to load the BMW i3 and i8 at home is in our view one of the key factors for the successful market introduction of electric vehicles. We are pleased with Schneider Electric and The Mobility House found the two internationally experienced partner in the electric mobility in implementing our strategy to have. " "With this partnership, Schneider Electric offers all BMW customers with an efficient, customer-friendly and sustainable charging infrastructure," said Philippe Delorme, Executive Vice President, Partner Business, Schneider Electric. "BMW and Schneider Electric share the same vision for electric vehicles, and we are confident that this collaboration includes the right way." Raffeiner Thomas, CEO and founder of The Mobility House is convinced: "With BMW i electric vehicles to customers globally to a serious alternative. The consistent focus on a holistic approach to electric mobility will not only set in Germany necessary, important momentum and accelerate the uptake of electric mobility. With BMW as a partner, we set this target to the different markets and provide customers with tailored solutions for electric mobility from one source. "

For the MINI-E program BMW chose Clipper Creek EVSE equipment and moved on to use equipment from AeroVironment for the ActiveE program. The switch to Schneider Electric demonstrates how the electric vehicle charging equipment is still in it's infancy and how manufacturers are still trying to figure out who to partner with. I'm sure BMW put a lot more effort into sorting out who would offer their customers the best products and services this time around since they will finally be offering a production EV to the public as compared to the relatively small pilot programs of the MINI-E and ActiveE. Instead of a couple hundred customers that need EVSE equipment, they will be catering to tens of thousands of new customers every year.

There is no word yet as to whether BMW i will be offering a custom designed wall charger as seen in the picture (presumably made by Schneider Electric) or if that was just for show and BMW i customers will use the standard EVSE's that Schneider Electric currently offers.

The one thing I like about the current EVSE they offer is the option to wire it to a 240V plug and install a 40amp 240V outlet in your garage. This allows you to unplug the unit and take it with you. You can then install a similar 240V outlet at a destination you frequent, say like your parents house and you wouldn't have to buy another EVSE, you would just take it with you when you visit.

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New i3 "Driving Experience" Video

BMW i just posted a new concept i3 video that shows how the i3 will integrate into the owners day by coordinating charging needs with available public charging infrastructure that is along the route the person will be traveling for various appointments in the day. It doesn't reveal anything specific, but it does show you what BMW is thinking about for the car.
Perhaps more details information will be available at the Born Electric World Tour events.   

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