Guide

Alternating Current Electricity is generated in three phases. Single phase is carried by a single wire. A three phase supply is carried by three wires, which are enclosed in a single cable. Many households are powered by a single phase wire, this is known as Single Phase. I.e. they only use one of the three available wires from the street.

Alternating Current Electricity is generated in three phases. An individual phase is carried by a single wire. A three phase supply is carried by three wires, which are enclosed in a single cable. Many new houses are being fitted with Three Phase power, which uses all three of the available wires from the street, to power the property. This is known as a Three Phase supply

Type 1 chargers charge your Electric Vehicle from a single phase AC supply via your standard AC power plug. This means that an EV can charge up to 2.4kW per hour on a 10A circuit. This is the most widely available electricity supply that is provided by every standard household power outlet.

Type 2 chargers charge your Electric Vehicle from the domestic AC supply. Generally this means that an EV can charge up to 7.4kW per hour for a single phase charger, and up to 22kW per hour on three phase chargers. These charging speeds can vary depending on the available speed of the charger, and the maximum AC charging speed of your EV.

These are typically referred to as DC Fast Chargers, and depending on the charger, can provide charging speeds of between 50kW and 350kW, or higher.

Your EV has a maximum charging rate, with many currently available EV’s having charging speeds up to 150kW. Check with your manufacturer as to how fast your particular EV can charge at.

Level 3 Charging is often used on longer journeys, or when you need to charge as fast as possible. 

Fun Fact: Generally the power supplied at higher speed fast chargers is more expensive than lower speed fast chargers.

Range Anxiety is a state of mind sometimes experienced by those new to driving an EV. Range Anxiety is a fear that your EV’s battery will run out, leaving the driver stranded.

It is equivalent to jumping into a conventional car and continually worrying about the car running out of petrol. 

Experienced drivers of both EV’s, and conventional vehicles, know the solution to this issue is to fill your battery / petrol tank up!

Experienced EV drivers will charge their car overnight, topping up their battery, which is usually enough to last them several days, if not several weeks, depending on their daily commute.

Once you get into the habit of using your EV, and charging it regularly at home, will make range anxiety a distant memory.

Braking In a traditional vehicle involves turning friction into heat to slow the vehicle down. All of the vehicles forward movement is essentially converted into heat. This heat is lost.

Braking in an EV is different as 99% of the braking is done using the EV’s motor.

As you know, feeding electricity into a motor pushes an EV forward. However, the motor can be run backward, effectively turning the motor into a generator that pushes electricity back into the battery.

This occurs when braking in an EV. 

Because an EV turns its forward motion into electricity when braking it re-generates the electricity to the battery, instead of turning it into heat like in a traditional vehicle. This allows that electricity to once again propel the EV forward when needed.

This is the beauty of regenerative braking!

Fun Fact: Some EV’s have very strong Regenerative Braking, allowing the driver to accelerate and slow the car using just the accelerator pedal. This is known as One Pedal Driving.

Every EV has a Battery Pack, which as the name implies, is a pack that contains many individual battery cells.

In most modern EV’s the Battery pack is cleverly concealed within the floor of an EV.

EV Battery packs range in size from 35kWh’s to 120kWhs, with 60kW being typical.

Generally larger Battery Packs can lead to both longer EV ranges, as well as improved acceleration, they do however increase the weight of an EV.

Some Battery Packs form a structural member of the EV, leading to lighter EV weight, improved strength and crash safety.

A Battery Cell can be considered to be a small battery. Battery Cells are often packaged with other battery cells, and encased in a sturdy enclosure called the Battery Pack.

V2L stands for Vehicle to Load. This allows you to plug a traditional household power cable into an EV and power light loads, usually around 2.4kW, though this does vary depending on the EV.

For example: this can allow you to run a refrigerator if your house has a power failure, or run an electric grill, or microwave, when out camping!

Not all EVs have V2L with only some recent EV’s having this feature.

V2G stands for Vehicle to Grid. 

This is a leading edge technology that currently does not really have any standards, nor government approvals. 

There have been many case studies and experiments by government, EV Manufacturers, Charger Companies, Electricity Retailers/Generators etc to investigate how V2G can be implemented, what the pros and cons are, as well as working out what technical, legal and legislative challenges are involved.

Every EV has a charge port. Depending on your EV make/model they can be found in one of several possible locations around your EV. It is always good to know where your charge port is located when charging your EV to ensure that the Charge Port is close enough for the Charging Cable to reach.

Energy Efficiency is a percentage measurement showing how much energy is successfully used to do something.

For example, if I had a light that was 65% efficient, it would mean that 65% of the electricity it used was converted into light, with the other 35% lost. Energy Efficiency is very important with EV’s as the more energy efficient and EV is, the further it can travel.

The main elements that affect energy efficiency are:

• Motor(s): These are typically 85+% Efficient
• HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning): Heat Pump HVAC’s systems are known to be several times more efficient than non Heat Pump systems
• Aerodynamics: The better an EV is at slipping through the air the less energy it needs, enabling it to travel further.
• Tyres: Low Rolling Resistance Tyres can improve energy efficiency, and hence range, by up to 15%
• Battery Chemistry: There are a variety of battery chemistries out there, and they charge/discharge at different conversion rates. However most batteries lose less than 10% when charging or discharging.
• Inverter: This is what EV’s use to converter the batteries DC power into AC power used by modern AC motor powered todays EV’s
• Charger: Used when charging from your homes AC power supply, and converts the household AC power supply to DC power needed by the battery. These are typically around 95+% efficient.

The more efficient these items are will improve both the range of your EV, as well as reduce the electrical cost needed to power it.

Fun Fact: The least energy efficient EV is still around three times more efficient than the most efficient traditional petrol powered vehicle!

Charging Speed is measured in Kilowatts, or kW for short.

The First Generation of EV’s charged via a homes traditional AC power points, charging at 2kW per hour.

The Second Generation of EV’s had a larger on board charger enabling them to charge at up to 7kW per hour. This AC power was delivered through a new CCS plug standard. This generation also had the ability to “DC Fast Charge”. DC Fast Charging enabled speeds of up to 50kW’s in an hour, which was a boon for EVs traveling longer distances.

The Third, and current, Generation of EV’s will usually be able to AC charge via a CCS cable at rates between 7kW and 22kW per hour. This is dependent on the EV’s in-built charger and the premises EV Charger supplying the power. The Third Generation can, depending on the EV, charge between 50kW and 350kW per hour! As you can imagine the faster charging speeds can dramatically reduce charging times when on a long trip.

Fun Fact: An EV’s Charging Speed represents the Maximum speed that a specific EV can charge at, however a typical charging session will often hit the EV’s maximum charging speed for around 30% of the charging session, then be at lower speeds for the other parts of the charging session.

A kWh is short for Kilowatt Hour. Think of It is a measurement of Electrical Storage.

It is the amount of instantaneous power that can be provided over an hour.

Let’s look at an example.

Assume your EV has a 60kWh battery, and uses 15kW consistently for an hour, to travel 100km. That 15kW over an entire hour can be expressed as 15kWh.

This also means that it’s easy to calculate how far the EV can travel on a full battery. Just divide the 60kWh battery by the 15kWh to get 4, or 400km. But what happens if your EV is not very efficient?

Let’s assume it uses the same 60kWh battery, however the EV uses 30kWh’s to travel 100km. This means that the EV can travel only 200km! (60kWh / 30kWhs = 2, or 200km)

EV’s generally aren’t that inefficient, however to get around the range issue, those types of vehicles will often have larger battery packs, usually 80+kWh

Fun Fact: Some EV’s combine high efficiency with large batteries to deliver greater ranges. So Imagine an EV with a 100kWh battery pack, yet it uses only 13kWh’s per 100kms. That would give you a range of 100kWh divided by 13kWh’s, which is 7.7, or 770kms!

A Kilowatt, kW, represents electrical power at any point of time, and as the “Kilo” name suggests is one thousands watts of power.

EV power is typically expressed in tens, or even hundreds of Kilowatts.

A Charge Point is a location that has one, or multiple, EV chargers.

These are often located near eateries, retail locations, public restrooms and main roads/freeways.

Charging time is the time taken to charge an EV’s battery from a specified low battery level to a specified high battery level at the maximum charger rate for that EV.

For example, an EV manufacturer may say that when using a 150kW charger, that the time it takes to charge their vehicle from 10% to 70% battery is 20minutes.

Keep in mind that charging times assume ideal conditions and may vary.

You will notice that charging times do not directly reference an EV’s battery capacity, even though battery capacity is one factor in determining charging time.

Fun Fact: Don’t get hung up with getting your battery to 100%! Generally the last 20% of battery charging takes longer than the first 80%. EV veterans know that on a long trip it’s quicker to charge an EVs battery to around 75%, and have slightly more charging stops, than trying to travel a bit further on a 100% charged battery and having slightly fewer charging stops.

OCPP stands for Open Charge Point Protocol: It is the communications standard used for EV Chargers communications. It ensures compatibility between charging devices, the systems that support them, and communications between an EV and the charger.