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Head of EV sales/strategy for BMW interview with AutoGuide

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Referring to their upcoming DC chargers: “I don’t think [Tesla is] going to be happy with how quickly these things roll out.”

I can't decide whether this guy's comments about their charger being a "game changer" are laughable or just sad.

True, the ability to "deliver an 80% charge in approximately 30 minutes" is pretty cool, but it's even cooler when an 80% charge can carry you 200+mi instead of the ~65mi that will get you in an i3.

In fairness, an 80% charge in a 85kWh Model S is more like 40 minutes than 30, but the same 30 min charge will still get you more than 2.5x as much range (170mi vs 65mi).

BMW Plans Tesla Motors Inc Like Charging Network
BMW Charging Station Blitz Will Target Tesla » AutoGuide.com News
 
When they tell us how many kW the charger can deliver, and how many the vehicle can accept, then I'll be really interested. Glad to see that they recognize the importance of a fast charge network, though. Let's just see what the definition of fast charge is.
 
When they tell us how many kW the charger can deliver, and how many the vehicle can accept, then I'll be really interested. Glad to see that they recognize the importance of a fast charge network, though. Let's just see what the definition of fast charge is.

Good question. Since the battery is 18.8kWh, an 80% charge would be 15.04kWh, or a average rate of ~30kW (15kWh/30min). So I'd bet either the car or this charger maxes out at 35-40kW at best.

In the same 30min charge, an S85 averages around 109kW, but that seems high knowing how quickly the charge rate starts to taper off from the 120kW max. Maybe somebody can check my math.

Math:
(170mi/265mi) * 85kWh = 54.5kWh
54.5kWh/30min = 109kW
 
Given that they are rolling out CCS @ a mere 50-60kW, it's a long term complete waste of money. At the point they hope that LG Chem delivers next generation NCM chemistry and it makes sense to put in 40-60kWh into a BMW i-series vehicle, the EVSE's will have to be 100 kW to match. So most of this money that they are putting into existing ~50kW DCFC will be wasted. Not to mention the spacing and locations of 50kW DCFC stations to support a vehicle with 50-60 miles of realistic all weather range means the locations will be skewed heavily for supporting urban and suburban commuting and not long distance travel. It's their money to waste.

If they were putting in 100+kW CCS, then we're really cooking...
 
When they tell us how many kW the charger can deliver, and how many the vehicle can accept, then I'll be really interested. Glad to see that they recognize the importance of a fast charge network, though. Let's just see what the definition of fast charge is.

Apparently 24kw. :confused: Seriously?! And that's a threat? It sounds like this release was dreamed up by a marketing guy without the foggiest clue of what he's talking about. I'm sure you've got a bunch of German engineers doing the facepalm right now. "dumm Verkäufer!" :biggrin:
 
I agree. While they only cost $6500 each, these chargers will be woefully underpowered. Bmw value prop: charge once per hour for 20 mins. Tesla: charge once every three hours for 20 mins. Tesla has 3x battery size and charger power. Also bmw touts their ccs compatibility but the i3 is basically the only car that is compatible so hardly a universal standard.
 
I wish BMW great EV success but so far I am not impressed and this DC charging announcement means little when the i3 has such a limited EV range. Even if there are chargers on the route an i3 owner wants to take (unlikely) they will be charging for about 50% of the total time of their long distance trip, in contrast to the Model S owner who spends less than 20% of their time charging during their trip.
 
I find it rather curious that this comes out shortly after the announcement that 'Tesla lied' about BMW possibly collaborating with them regarding fast chargers and/or carbon fiber lightweight parts.
And (I think) BMW putting out a announcement saying none of this was happening.
Then this piece about BMWs 'quick'(haha) charging going to topple Tesla? really?

at least BMWs (except i3?) still look decent on the outside


hahaha
BMW just can't stop itself from being arrogant. The seem to be entranced by contemplating their own navel.
good one...wonder if it is full of fuzz?
 
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While they do offer that EVSE, this announcement is unlikely to be mostly those since the 80% charge in 30 minutes can't be done with a 24kW charger. In any case, all existing non-Tesla DCFC stations are a waste of money. They will be obsolete before long. If it wre only Nissan or BMW wasting their money, that's fine. However, there is a lot of public money going into these idiotic chargers - this is Blink network version 2.
 

This can only make sense if it is some sort of modular system that can be extended over time with additonal DCQC modules when BMWs with larger batteries become available. (as Tesla's SuC seems to be constructed). Actually this box is more-or-less a Tesla Dual charger in a box.

Specially if enrolled in Europe with a CCS this would make no sense at all.

In Europe very many standard industrial 3-phase connectors are available that can deliver 22 kW AC charging, and Tesla's on-board dual charger supports that.
So why offer 24 kW DC chargers when 10.000's of such 'red' 22 kW sockets are already installed everywhere at hotels etc ??

Also there are many standard 22 kW Type-2 AC chargers already. This would be no quicker and only help for cars with small low-power on-board chargers.

BTW: 24 kW is the INPUT power. So substract 5-8 % from that spec.
 
If I understand the German combo plug pin-outs correctly, it looks like they are basically J1772 with two DC prongs added. If this is correct, it seems like an adapter from this to our Teslas should be super easy and cheap. Am I missing something?
 
So basically he's saying: "Sure, Tesla has Superchargers that charge really fast, but they'll be shaking in their boots when they realize we can quickly canvas the world with MUCH slower chargers."

What a potential customer hears is "With Tesla, you have to stop every 200 miles or so for an hour. With BMW, you have to stop every 50-75 miles for 45 minutes. But don't worry, there are lots of places to stop."

That's supposed to win me over compared to Tesla's offering?
 
It really bugs me when BMW etc. talk about DC fast charging in terms of x% charge in y minutes. Because, x% of WHAT? It's a meaningless number. I don't care about percentage, I care about miles. This is why Tesla talks about charging speed in terms of miles of range per hour of charge. A much more useful metric, but one that the rest of the industry doesn't seem interested in adopting. Perhaps because their products would look half-hearted by comparison.

I tried to have this conversation with a BMW salesman when I test drove an i3 recently. He was telling me that BMW was going to roll out these DC fast chargers, and I asked about the power of the chargers in terms of kW and he had no idea what I was talking about. The salesman was well versed in BMW's talking points about the i3 but he didn't really understand EV's in general or what advantages Tesla's approach might have. He also thought that all of Tesla's superchargers were in California and was very surprised when I told him that the closest one to San Antonio was just up the road in San Marcos. So, BMW's sales training was already out of date.
 
The unfortunate part of all this is how much knowledge is needed to know this is garbage. The average person is only going to hear that BMW is putting out chargers that charge just as fast as Tesla's, and assuming BMW pulls it off, are even more common place. BMW for the win... until they try to drive somewhere on them...

I guess BMW has stopped ignoring Tesla, and started fighting, they still don't take the whole EV thing seriously, but they obviously have started being scared enough to lash out.
 
I think that is correct. Much easier than the Chademo adapter anyway.

JB Straubel has commented in 2013 that Tesla's SC protocol is more or less directly compatible with the protocol CCS DC uses. So likely only a mechanical adapter would be needed?

See this article: Tesla Motors CTO talks future batteries and charging protocols - SAE International

"Q: Tesla sat on the SAE J1772 charge-connector development committee, then your company introduced its own hardware set, the Tesla Supercharger. Walk me through your decision making for this.

JB: We’ve been working on DC and fast-charge capability for a long time. I feel that’s transformational for EVs. It totally untethers an EV. You can go on trips like a normal car.

There still is no really good standard on this. The SAE committees finalized the new Combo Connector standard, which I’m a little frustrated with because the new combo-standard plug doesn’t have the current-carrying capability of our existing DC plug, in terms of current on the DC pins. I feel that a standard needs to project out at least five, ten years.

Q: What about the communication protocol of the Combo Connector? It’s considered essential for V2G.

JB: That’s fine. We’re definitely commonizing with all of that. The only thing that’s up for debate in all of these standards is the physical geometries of the pins and sockets. Everything else is pretty easy to adapt to. The communication standards are pretty universal. We’re 100% compliant with all the J1772 communication levels, signaling, voltage, everything.

We provide adaptors for all the charging types. The challenge we didn’t want was two plugs. That really left us to differentiate from the physical pin-and-socket combination."


Anyhow, such an adapter will be of little interest given the low kW rating of these chargers and the pace at which the Tesla SC network is being expanded.

I'm not impressed with BMW on this one...
 
such an adapter will be of little interest given the low kW rating of these chargers and the pace at which the Tesla SC network is being expanded.
I don't know... the pace at which the Tesla SC network is being expanded here is so incredibly slow and behind schedule, and they don't even have any plans at all to cover the majority of the country, so I think anything that would adapt to one of these would be quite welcome until Tesla decides they actually care about Canada.

That said, seeing the fact that the Chademo adapter has been shipping in Japan for several months, and how Tesla refuses to let anyone in north america have one, and that it is already more than a year late, I wouldn't hold out hopes for an adapter for this either. Tesla seems intent to limit people to superchargers for all DC charging.