Can there ever be enough DC chargers?

[Rolfe]

That would be nice! I used to live in Wishaw but it's too near where I live now for me to be looking for public chargers there. Beauly is another matter!

I like the idea of battery buffered chargers. Do they also have distributed power? (The place I really want to see lots of battery buffered chargers is Killington Lake, but I'm not holding my breath.)

 

[Jacko]

That would be nice! I used to live in Wishaw but it's too near where I live now for me to be looking for public chargers there. Beauly is another matter!

I like the idea of battery buffered chargers. Do they also have distributed power? (The place I really want to see lots of battery buffered chargers is Killington Lake, but I'm not holding my breath.)

Yeah although the charger (or dispenser as the manufacturer calls it) look like a full direct power charger it can distribute up to 300kW to any one at a time. It has half a mega watt hour battery storage in the central unit.

 

[tsedge]

I didn't have too much trouble at Dundee. When I went right to the bump stop the car's tail was practically in the trees, but the lead was easy enough to plug in. The Tesla drivers were friendly.

View attachment 26273

On the other hand, looking at that photo, I don't see a bump stop, only a kerb.

Yes, here is a photo I found off the internet that shows the problem. The bump stops are very tall and so I couldn't run the car past them. The chargers are flat against the back, not alongside as in your picture.

Because the charge port is further forward on the MG4 it was a real stretch to reach. An MG5 or ZS would be fine because they could nose in.

Even Teslas don't have much spare cable. Optimised design? Short-sighted in my view.

 

[Rolfe]

That's not a great setup. The superchargers I've used have both had the chargers at right angles to that orientation and I had no trouble connecting.

 

[Coulomb]

That's not a great setup. The superchargers I've used have both had the chargers at right angles to that orientation...

I think it's part of their quick installation system now. They manufacture a module of half a dozen or so dispensers on a concrete (?) slab, and a few of these fit on a big truck. Presumably they have a set distance between dispensers, and they can paint up the parking area to suit. They can crane these modules down very quickly, with a lot of the wiring between dispensers already in place in the factory where it's more convenient and presumably cheaper to do. They can reportedly populate a site with dispensers in a single day. I assume that the back end with the charger electronics takes a bit longer, and of course planning, permits, and getting the transformer installed still take ages.

It's a pretty clever system, but of course it's much less flexible. To put the dispensers at right angles probably takes a lot of effort digging holes in the asphalt for the dispensers and cabling. Though maybe they can eventually come up with a way to do that with the cabling above ground. You know, one day when they have engineering staff again.