Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, it’s happened again. The tech press is in full swoon, the Twitterati are high-fiving in the digital aisles, and the battery boys at Huawei are strutting around like they’ve just reinvented fire.
“Solid-state battery! 1,800 miles of range! Five-minute charge!”
The headlines practically write themselves. If you believe the hype, we’ll soon be zipping across continents on a single charge, stopping only long enough to grab a coffee while our car slurps down enough energy to power a small hospital. Here’s Huawei’s claim:
Huawei, the Chinese technology giant, has recently made waves in the electric vehicle (EV) industry with claims of a groundbreaking solid-state battery that could redefine the future of transportation.
According to reports from TechRadar, Huawei asserts that this new battery technology can deliver an astonishing range of up to 1,800 miles on a single charge while achieving a full recharge in under five minutes. If verified, these specifications could position Huawei as a formidable player in the EV battery race, challenging established leaders like Tesla, BYD, and CATL.
But, as usual, reality is hiding out in the fine print, ducking the spotlight while the PR machine does its victory lap. Nobody wants to talk about physics. Nobody asks how, exactly, you’re supposed to pour Niagara Falls through a garden hose.
Let’s start with the chemistry, because that’s what gets the headlines. Huawei, CATL, BYD, and every battery startup with a logo and a LinkedIn page are racing to show off lab results with solid electrolytes, nitrogen-doped sulfide electrodes, and energy densities that would make a Tesla blush. Yes, it’s impressive. Yes, it’s real science. Yes, the batteries likely exist, even if only in lab versions.
But chemistry is only half the story—the easy half, frankly. The hard part is what comes after: getting all that energy in and out of the battery without melting the neighborhood. Let’s do some back-of-the-envelope math, my favorite kind.
Charging a 600 kWh battery in 5 minutes isn’t a “nice to have” kind of deal. It’s a “requires the power output of a small hydroelectric dam” situation.
Energy equals power multiplied by time. So: 600 kWh divided by (5/60) hours is 7,200 kW—7.2 megawatts—per car. That’s not a typo. MEGAwatts. Per car. That’s the kind of load that would make your local substation break out in hives.
And it’s not just the grid. You’ll need:
- High-voltage wiring thicker than your wrist
- Transformers the size of shipping containers
- Power cables with active cooling, or else they’ll melt like a cheap extension cord at a Fourth of July barbecue
- Buffer batteries to keep the grid from doing a faceplant every time someone plugs in their new wonder-car
And don’t get me started on “green electricity.” The fantasy is that we’ll run this whole show on wind and solar, but unless you’re planning to build a solar farm the size of Luxembourg in every city, you’re dreaming. Fast charging at this scale is not compatible with the current “green” grid, and won’t be for decades—if ever. A couple of charging poles and a few rooftop panels aren’t going to cut it. We’re talking industrial-scale power plants, and even then, you’re right on the edge.
Here’s the cold hand of physics. Car batteries are at around 400 volts or so. 7.2 megawatts divided by 400 volts gives us 18,000 amperes. Per car. The typical US house has a 90 amp service, coming in on large overhead or underground cables. I’m sure you can see the problem …
To deliver 18,000 amps per car, you need connectors that look more like fire hoses than anything you’ve seen at a gas station. These electrical cables must be actively cooled, or they’ll turn into modern art. Cables are rated by their “ampacity”, which is how many amps of electricity they can carry safely without overheating. According to the NEC ampacity charts, the largest standard copper wire size, 2000 kcmil, has an ampacity of only 750 amps at 90°C, and we need an ampacity of 18,000 amps. (A “cmil” is a circular mil, which is the area of a circle 1/1000 of an inch in diameter. A “kcmil” is a thousand cmils. And no, I don’t know how many cmils there are in a bushel …)
A 2000 kcmil cable is about an inch and a half (3.8 cm) in diameter. Here’s a single 2000 kcmil underground direct-burial cable … and you’d need 24 of them to handle 18,000 amps.
The problem is that if you put more amperes of electricity through the cable and exceed the cable’s ampacity, it melts. Which is why you’d need a serious cooling system for charging cables if they are to be of a useable size … and if the cooling fails, you don’t want to be anywhere near the cable.
And if a few hundred cars plug in at once without a buffer? Say hello to an instant blackout.
The battery companies don’t care. Their job is chemistry. The rest is “someone else’s problem”—which is to say, yours. Or your city’s. Or your utility’s.
Who’s going to pay for the grid upgrades, the transformers, the buffer batteries, the land, the cooling systems, the huge connectors, the maintenance, the insurance? If you don’t own an electric car, are you ready to pay for your neighbor’s five-minute charge via higher taxes or utility rates? And if you do own an EV, are you prepared to shell out $500–600 per charge just to cover the infrastructure?
Here’s the bottom line: rapid charging is a lab dream, not a real-world solution for EVs. Technically, it absolutely works. Practically, fuggetaboudit. For most people, charging will still be a 30–90 minute affair—if not longer. Maybe that’s why Toyota, BMW, and Mercedes are quietly tiptoeing back to hydrogen, hybrids, and expensive e-fuels made from hydrogen plus CO2.
The electric car revolution is here, but the real revolution that’s needed isn’t in the battery—it’s in the ground, in the cables, in the substations, in the cable cooling systems, in the grid, in the generators, in the transformers, and in the cold, hard economics of power delivery. So before you run out and buy that car with “five-minute charging,” maybe ask yourself: Who’s building the grid? Who’s cooling the cables? And who, exactly, is paying for this party?
Because until someone answers those questions, the only thing getting charged in five minutes is your credit card.
My best to all, petrolheads and ampereheads alike.
w.
Yeah, I know you know, and I’ll tell you again anyhow: When you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing. It avoids endless misunderstandings.
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Well said!
A great eye opener, which could have been improved with another detail, currents cause magnetic forces. How close can you get with a pace maker. An aluminium potline works at around 300,000 Amps and you can’t go near them with anything that is attracted by a magnet. And you are expected to hold this power lead.
There is also the issue of inductance in the charging lead circuit. What happens if the lead is pulled out during the charge cycle. How big would the arc flash be? Fatal burns happen at much, much lower energy levels.
Think an MRI machine of huge proportions. You might be able to give your neighbor a heart attack by screwing his pacemaker when you plug your car in.
The charging cables on public chargers are already so massive that they are routinely hacked off by copper thieves to sell to recyclers. Security costs are going to become another factor that someone will need to pay for.
And that’s just for one car.
A petrol station I stop at between here and Sydney has some 16 bowsers for cars (often nearly all in use) and 10 or so for diesel pumps large trucks….. and that’s just on the northern section.
Gunna need some humungous electricity supply !
There is good coal nearby though, so a coal fired power station would be possible.
LOL! I always laugh at converting fossil fuels to electricity to power ‘clean’ EVs. It’s all a charade.
My first thought was exactly the same as Willis’ and would have done the same calculations but Willis saved me the bother. What sort of current are we dealing with here ?
I designed and built a 12000A busbar run for an electroplating system – each run consisted of 10 pieces of 4″ x 1/4″ solid copper bar arranged vertically side by side with 1/4″ air gaps between the bars for natural convection cooling. (previous experience had shown that arranged horizontally without air gaps they would overheat at the same 1.2KA per square inch).
For 18000A you would need 15 such bars – per “lead” – I’d like to see that as a flexible connection system.
Fantasy engineering.
Three phase 240v 50hp compressors at one our factories run about 85-100 amps. That’s probably close to a car. My house runs around 40-50 amps single phase 220v at any given time. So you’re looking at my house typical use times 3.4 to run a car. Now I have to cram 1,800 miles worth of that through my service in 5 minutes. Lol.
The biggest (typical) average energy user in a house is electric heat.
The biggest (typical) instantaneous energy user in a house is the clothes dryer.
Surprisingly some vacuum cleaners use 10a at 120v (1.2kW)
Anything that gets hot is using power – eg an electric stove or oven. Except the microwave oven which uses less than the vacuum. when both are running full blast.
Light bulbs: 60 Watt “old school” incandescent bulb 0.5a.
6 Watt new LED style 0.05a.
The actual article by WE covers an idea that I wish everybody explored more, but especially I wish the f*&^$ news writers who publish articles about it would explore: What are basic requirements needed to make electrical things work in the real world? WE is correct about things like ampacity and power use that a lot of expert writers seem not to even consider.
Electric ovens are typically the highest intermittent users, gaming computers and consoles are surprisingly big users to 3 to 4 amps not being uncommon and can be on all day when attached to a teenager.
Teenagers attach to a hairdryer too, 1200 watts of hot air. Being bald saves a lot.
My AC uses more electricity than everything else in my house combined. I use gas to heat the house and my water. Gas range as well.
Realistically the only time a 5 minute recharge is of concern would be for a 300 mile car. An 1800 mile car could recharge overnight since no-one drives that far in a day.
Uhh, no.
Truckers drive long distances, and my understanding is that team truckers can keep a rig running a long long ways.
But aside from that, people like not waiting and waiting to refuel. If I could fill my car once and drive all month, I would.
Truckers are limited to the number of hours they can drive in a 24 hour period and must keep logs of their downtime.
A trucker can drive up to 11 hours in a 14 hour work window within a 24 hour period and must take 10 consecutive hours of downtime daily. Otherwise they could lose their license.
To drive 1800 miles in a day you’d need to travel at 75MPH for 24 hours nonstop or 100MPH for 18 hours. Again an 1800 mile car, outside of the outback, is impractical. Being able to recharge a 300 mile car in 5 minutes would be far more practical.
It depends where you are. When I got my truck licence (NSW. Australia) it was a maximum of 12 hours in a 24 hour period, with a compulsory 15 minute rest stop after 5 continuous hours of driving.
I think there was a maximum (72 hours?) in a 7-day period as well, but that was a long time ago.
Tag teams with 1 driving and 1 resting in the dog box could come close to 24 hours of driving in a day, with around 5 short stops to swap drivers.
That would play havoc with sleep, but each driver doing 2 5-hour stretches might work for really long trips.
Heavy vehicle speed limits keep changing as well, but even our highest speed open roads are a maximum of 110 km/hr.
He said team truckers. Please try to keep up.
Bryan has a valid point. A retired person that only drives 25 or so miles a day can easily deal with a decent mileage plug in hybrid and trickle charging at home on a 20 amp circuit, with an 1800 mile battery they would not need the hybrid, However the point of the post is valid, and an ev is not a great option for most, starting with evryone living in an apartment or townhome with a carport only. As to uping the grid, the post is spot on. Most apartments and townhomes will never be upped to fast charging without massive infrastructure changes and all the additional generation that would entail, and solar and wind cant do it.
Myself and a couple of friends used to occasionally do shift drives from Sydney to Melbourne and back.
That’s pretty close to 1800km.
That’s only about 1100 miles, though.
I had to re-read it as well. It’s only taken 50 years, but we think in km now instead of miles.
Studies have shown that roughly 10% of passenger car drivers, drive A LOT more than the “average” driver. Whether they are Uber drivers, Instacart drivers, Amazon drivers, salesmen, plumbers/other trademen, AAA tow trucks – it does not matter. And this 10% generates roughly 30% of the overall passenger fleet emissions.
Present day EVs are like so much else that comes out of Silicon Valley these days: sounds and looks cool but is really only 80% of a solution for problems that have already been fixed (i.e. have a 100% solution).
I, personally, think replacements should be at least 100% solutions to existing solved problems.
And I agree. At the least any possible replacement tech should be proved by demand rather than government fiat.
It’s still ridiculous at 300 mile charge
You are assuming that the 1800 mile claim is anything but marketing fantasy.
Perhaps they are making all this noise to distract from their legal problems? https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/huawei-stand-trial-us-charges-bank-fraud-sanctions-violations-theft
Alternatively, 1800 miles can be done with 3 charges of 60 litres of high octane petrol, each charge taking 4 mins and only a standard hose.
Or one charge of 150L diesel for my Land Cruiser
33.4 kilowatt hours in a gallon of gasoline. 8.9 Kwh in a liter. 534Kwh for the 1,800 mile trip. It appears it is roughly the same amount of power to get from here to there. Amazing!
Nice post!
It bugs me that the people claiming that road traffic could be powered by renewable energy have apparently never investigated what would be needed to implement that fantasy. As an example, I California was serious serious about solar energy and EV’s, the least the state could do was to strongly encourage that EV chargers would be put in place where cars are parked in the middle of the day (Operations Research is a subject that needs to be taught more widely).
Oh for sure. Renewable energy is dead already.
It’s nukes all the way
The charging is doable.If the batteries will take it
Dr Brown had a nuclear powered Delorian time machine. The least we can do is make a simple nuclear powered car. Maybe using steam?
Why the down votes. If all the massive waste on solar and wind had gone into modern nuclear, we would have solved the generation needed but not the distribution requirements for most. However iif it could not compete in a free market, and the benefits of CO2 are cognised, it would likely not happe. Cheep abundant electricity is pretty cool, and ev cars are fun, yet only practical for some, and for even less without rebates. If I could get an 1800 mile range ev, or even half that, for a reasonable price, I would not hesitate.
.
Perhaps you should look at Norway. Over 90% of new car sales are electric and EVs now outnumber petrol cars. So it is possible and doable if there is a political will.
Ah.. You mean Norway, that gets most of its income from oil and gas from the North Sea. 😉
Did you know that basically everything in your life is there BECAUSE OF the use of fossil fuels. 😉
Quite right. Norway massively subsidised the introduction of EVs for many years using its sovereign wealth fund built on the proceeds of its oil and gas resources
One problem with using Norway as an example – they have a much higher hydroelectric capacity per capita than the US, so they don’t have the intermittency problem with renewables. California has a problem with having to curtail solar production due to a combination capacity exceeding demand for a few hours a day in spring and fall and insufficient battery storage to use the curtailed power. This could have been partly avoided had the state been more proactive with getting chargers to where EV’s were parked in the daytime.
Willis is absolutely correct in stating that 5 minute recharges are not feasible for large scale usage.
5 minute recharges are extremely feasible for large scale usage in most countries. In the UK the average trip distance is less than 5km and a network of fast chargers that could supply 200km of range in 5 to 10 minutes would work extremely well. Nobody needs to get 1800 miles of range in 5 minutes. Driving in the UK from Lands End to John o Groats is 1913km which means that if you could drive the length of the country and a substantial way back on a single charge. A small EV with 200kms of range works for almost all people in much of the world.
Izaak, you seem confused. Yes, 5 minute charging can work some places and some times. Hey, it works for my Apple Watch.
But that’s NOT what this post is about. It’s about the claim that an 1,800-mile battery can be recharged in five minutes.
So please … how about you lay off the “but, but, if you’re in a tiny country and just driving around the block it could work” kind of pitch. So what? Not the issue here. You’re just trying to change the subject. Won’t work.
Finally, DO THE DAMN MATH!!! Even a Tesla supercharger can’t put 200 km of range on a Tesla in five minutes. You’re still out in fantasy land.
w
Willis,
I was not responding to you but to Erik. Personally I completely agree with you that recharging an 1800 mile battery in 5 minutes at a public charger is a complete fantasy.
And while a Tesla supercharger can’t put 200km of range on a Tesla in 5 minutes other systems can. BYD announced recently that they are building chargers capable of adding over 400kms of range in 5 minutes. See
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/china-ev-giant-byd-soars-after-5-minute-charging-platform-unveiled/IKLHPBDEFJE3RFWBC5CPD6II7A/
So if BYD are claiming 400km of range in 5 minutes then 200km is doable. Of course it depends on the car and how aerodynamic it is.
Who’s gunna lift the cable !
….. and BDY have such a great “reputation” 😉
The electricity still has to come from somewhere, via wire. !
Thanks, Izaak. BYD utilizes a one-megawatt charger. It will provide about 375 km of charging in 5 minutes. So if you want to charge 10 EVs, you need a small industrial-sized power plant. Here are typical costs:
Component Estimated Cost (USD)
Power Plant (10 MW, gas turbine) $10–20 million
Substation (10 MVA) $2–4 million
Grid Connection & Wiring $1–2 million
Total (Turnkey, ready for grid) $13–26 million
Call it $2 million per EV …
There are some 100 million cars in the US, so the generation capacity ALONE, not including the grid, transformers, charging stations, required cooling systems, overhead and maintenance, and fuel, would cost $200 TRILLION dollars. Heck, the BYD 1-megawatt charging station is a megabuck just by itself, so there’s another $100 trillion in costs.
And you’d need to build 10 million new generating plants. Or you could build 100 MW plants, and you’d only need a million of them.
So … can it be done? Sure, if you want to impoverish the entire country chasing a green fantasy.
w.
How about a SMR?
Dont bother looking at costs, they dont even really exist yet. None of this does…but the point is that there are potential solutions to the problems being posed.
Tim, in fantasyland there are potential solutions to just about anything.
In the real world … not so much …
w.
This whole discussion is based on a fantasy.
You keep saying that, while the SMRs in China and elsewhere are powering along nicely. Need to keep up and improve your research.
From about a year ago here
“Powering along nicely” is overstating where we are with them and I stand by my statement “dont even really exist yet” in the context of EV charging.
What are the nuclear reactors that power submarines and aircraft carriers if not SMRs?
Not commercial SMRs. My comment specifically mentioned costs. If you use those examples then they’re in the billions range and not indicative of how people believe they can be used to feed the grid.
In some circumstances they HAVE been used to feed on-shore grids.
SMRs wont be a solution to the energy transition if they cost billions of dollars. Solar and wind will genuinely be cheaper even with the associated batteries at today’s prices.
Potential solutions are meaningless. When you have actual, proven solutions, give me a call. Until then, I’ll stick with what has proven to work.
You dont feel like this when it comes to unproven reserves of fossil fuels, though.
Where’s all the copper for the charging wires going to come from?
Supplied by homeless people.
Izaak,
Average commute in the US is about 40 mi/day. At 4mi/kwhr, a 5 minute recharge would require 120kw for one day’s worth of driving. To implement a typical Costco filling station with 22 pumps would require 2.9MW. Noting that renewable energy sources are intermittent, some sort of energy storage would be needed to supply power when solar and/or wind power is not available. The capital costs for that storage will likely exceed the capital costs of the wind or solar generation.
What would make more sense is having sufficient lower power charging stations to allow cars used for commuting to have dedicated chargers. Assuming 4 hours per day for charging, each car would only need 2.5kW along with not needing external energy storage. The slower recharge would also be a lot nicer to the battery.
Even easier if you use Google Maps directions for the trip=1347km
Maybe it is 1913km if you choose to drive an EV?
Mr. Walton: “Nobody needs to get 1800 miles of range in 5 minutes.” Then why are these top battery folks boasting about making it?? Don’t you wonder why they are trying to build an EV battery that, in your own view, nobody needs or wants??
Careful. these questions may start you thinking……..
Because it points to the strategy of parallel fast charging being viable. How many folks here believe charging is slow and will forever be slow?
Well the fact is that charging speed is only limited by the supply and the specific charging implementation and not fundamentally limited at all. Its first principle thinking.
In this particular case its probably about marketing though.
Or maybe “it’s”.
“ In the UK the average trip distance is less than 5km and a network of fast chargers that could supply 200km of range in 5 to 10 minutes would work extremely well.”
So you can charge in 5 mins if you only drive 5km. Wonderful.
Mr. Alberts: I noticed that, too. Another EV feature nobody needed or wanted.
Izaak, Norway has lots of things we don’t have. Here’s a list. Let us know when we have those, and we can talk again. Oh, yeah, in addition, Oslo and Bergen, the two biggest cities, are only 300 miles apart … and they have a third of the country’s population.
w.
===
Electric vehicles (EVs) have become exceptionally popular in Norway due to a unique combination of factors:
Summary Table: Key Factors Driving EV Popularity in Norway
FactorImpactTax exemptions for EVsMakes EVs much cheaper than ICE vehiclesHigh taxes on petrol/dieselIncreases cost of owning ICE vehiclesLow-cost, clean electricityReduces running costs and environmental impact of EVsAdditional perks (tolls, lanes)Adds convenience and further cost savings for EV ownersStrong charging infrastructureRemoves barriers to EV adoptionConsistent government policyProvides long-term certainty for consumers and businessesNo domestic car industryEnables aggressive policies without industry resistance
In conclusion: Norway’s EV success is not due to a single factor like high petrol prices or low electricity costs alone, but rather a comprehensive, long-term policy approach combining financial incentives, infrastructure investment, and environmental goals12573649.
All of which appears to be a good answer to Erik claim that people who believed that “road traffic could be powered by renewable energy have apparently never investigated what would be needed to implement that fantasy.” Norway have investigated it and have worked out how to implement it. Which means that the reason why it doesn’t happen elsewhere is cultural not physical. If there is a political will to convert traffic to EVs then it is doable.
Izaak, you say “If there is a political will to convert traffic to EVs then it is doable”. But above it says one big reason that EVs work in Norway is:
So you are claiming that all you need is “political will” and you can run any country on 90% hydro? Really? You don’t need mountains and rain and no “greenies” blocking dams, all you need is “political will”?????
Plus, you need to be rich off of North Sea oil or some other resource so you can provide something like a 40% subsidy to EVs … and you’re claiming that just takes “political will”? You’re gonna will the oil into the ground?
Sheesh …
w.
All I am claiming is that you can shift to EVs if the country is willing to shift the resources around. Just today the US made the politcal choice to give tax cuts to the rich and pay for them by removing befits from the poor (SNAP and health insurance). Alternatively when Roosevelt was president the US taxed the rich and provided a social security net.
Countries could shift to nuclear or other electricity schemes to generate the needed electricity. Even using coal to generate electricity to power EVs produces less pollution than internal combustion engines.
No, because the limiting factors in the electric society agenda are first, generating the power – wind and solar will not supply even current demand, because they are intermittent and unreliable.
And second, getting the power to the houses and EVs though the local transmission network. It cannot be done without complete rebuild.
This is what is so idiotic about the current UK plans. Even if you could make everyone convert to EVs and heat pumps, the only way to make the wind and solar powered network work at all in the face of the increased demand would be rationing.
You may say, just throw money at it. Build out the local networks, install some kind of storage (not that there is any realistic kind available), overbuild wind to take care of calms, and it may be expensive but it will do it.
But it won’t. It will bankrupt the country. And even if it did convert UK transport and heating to electricity and power generation to wind plus solar plus storage, that will have no effect on global emissions, because no-one else who matters is even trying to do it. So you have China adding more coal power every year than the current UK total generating capacity.
The whole renewable electric society program is pure fantasy. Yes if you are Norway with huge hydro reserves, maybe it can be done there. But not if your ‘renewable’ supplies are wind, helped or hindered by summer only solar at UK latitudes, Hopelessly impractical.
What in the hell are you smoking?
And what is your definition of pollution in this context?
Like most alarmists, he just makes it up as he goes.
You still don’t get it. The infrastructure to put that power into a charging station just doesn’t exist! And If all it took was “political will” then we could have it tomorrow, correct? Don’t think so.
you can shift to EVs if the country is willing to shift the resources around
Yep, and just legislate away the laws of physics while you’re at it.
There is NO comparison between Norway and the US, not in geography, population, size, whatever.
You poor MSNBC braindead leftard. Shut off the tv and learn what is going on in reality. The loser outlook on life isn’t healthy. You people created the mass hysteria around Covid that directly led to disillusionment, suicide, and people dying from the clot shot. Hope you got all your boosters.
“Just today the US made the politcal choice to give tax cuts to the rich and pay for them by removing befits from the poor (SNAP and health insurance).”
None of that statement is true, in the slightest. Requiring that people who are able actually work, instead of just sucking off the taxpayer teat, is not “removing benefits”. And they only have to work 20 hours a week. Boy that’s tough.
Quote the bill sections that remove medical benefits from citizens, and the SS tax reduction is not to the rich, and the overtime reduction is not to the rich.
Trump’s tax cuts from his first administration were made permanent.
However, those tax cuts benefited everybody.
Socialists hate it whenever someone who has more than they do, is allowed to keep it.
The trouble is, Willis, that you make sense. To borrow from Chatty Cathy (or was it Barbie), “Physics is hard.”
Electric buses have proved to be a dud in Oslo during the Winter.
Ok Mao
“A significant portion of EV-owning households in Norway still own at least one ICE vehicle, and these are often used for longer journeys or when EV charging is inconvenient.”
And ALL of that infrastructure is paid for by North Sea OIL ! 🙂
Also, let’s not forget Norway has a total population of about 5,5 million people.
About 1/5 the population of Florida, 1/8 that of California, 2/3 that of NYC, about the same as South Carolina (our 23rd biggest state), or about 1.5% of pop of the US.
In an area about the size of New Mexico.÷
So…
Tiny population, living mostly in a few cities.
Huge in natural resources.
IOW, unlike most every country on Earth.
Don’t forget Norway’s population density in cities is much greater than any of rural towns in the US.
Without high population density, distances to be traveled are much further.
Exactly.
The US has tens of millions of people who drive hundreds of miles a day.
When a hurricane approaches, places like Florida have millions and millions of people who need to top up at the exact same time.
Someone run that math for a laugh.
From post:”So it is possible and doable if there is a political will.”
What this is really saying is if a government is willing to use any force available to make you do what the government wants done.
Absolutely no choices allowed.
Besides Norway has hydro out the wazoo.
I once had “hydro out the wazoo” after filling my water bottle from a swamp and forgetting to add the purifier tablets.
That’s a rookie mistake you only make once in your life, believe me 🙁
IE, it’s doable assuming your government is totalitarian enough.
Willis, great article which has information most people including our very own Mad Ed Milliband don’t understand.
Great destruction of all the hype and you didn’t even touch on the problem of where all the copper and other materials are going to come from.
In the UK we have a large number of transformers ready the burst into flames.
Milliband ought to understand, he has A-Levels in maths and physics. I can only conclude that he is deliberately deceitful.
Certain ‘entrepreneurs’ in the UK are helping themselves to copper cabling taken from remote wind farms. Ideal solution to this charging conundrum don’t you think? 🙂
Of course, one could use 4000 volt charging, and reduce the amperage to 1800 amps. Which would require a cable every bit as ludicrous as 400 volts at 18000 amps.
We use 13,200 volts at my building. Wire s about 2” in diameter, delivers 1200 amps at 240v after the transformer. Get any where near that and you will look like a piece of bacon. But heck we are at least with in an order of magnitude.
Exactly. This is a challenge, not a magic unicorn. Safe way would be to have the semi or whatever drive over a section where something like rails are set to mate with contacts under the vehicle. UK electric trains used that at 630VDC many years ago.
The idea used in some scifi books, years ago, was to have a buried cable in the highway lanes. The cars would have a pickup coil underneath them, picking up the needed energy to run the car and it’s onboard electronics. The car would have a small engine (gas, diesel or hydrogen) to make shorter trips, off of the ‘grid’. I still see nothing wrong with this idea, other than the infrastructure. Oh, and the cars themselves were ‘self-driving’, on the grid.
That at least is a plausible idea although the pickup coil will have to be pretty chunky. The auxiliary engine won’t be using hydrogen, hydrogen for fuel is a non starter
You’re describing inductive chargers, like those used for hearing aids and cell phones. It’s much more difficult to do that for moving cars. It doesn’t require a cable in the roadway, it requires continuous coils of wires in the roadways, and the trillions of $ of money to get the copper as well as rebuild all of the roadways to install them.
They also lose efficiency as the distance between the coils in the car and the coils in the roadway get to be larger. At least the efficiency loss will help melt the snow and ice on the roads in the winter.
I think they have tried that as an experiment. The roadway was very expensive and the cars actually beat it up with normal driving. Have you seen how often they repave highways?
We have something very similar already – I believe they are called “trains”. Something like that anyway
You can only get a few watts from such an arrangement. Not enough to power the electronics, much less move the vehicle.
How many people roast themselves on those charging system each year
lol, so the train needs a constant flow 630vdc to run? So how high would that volatage need to be to store up up for the whole run? You seriously have no idea how dangerous very high voltage is.
“Get any where near that and you will look like a piece of bacon.”
Miliband likes bacon !!!
25-125Kv would be better. The sort of voltage a spark plug runs at. Insulation is reasonably OK for that sort of level and cable size is probably not too fat.
Obviously at home charging would be done in 8 hours, not 5 minutes.
I think that the batteries themselves are more pie in the sky than the charging infrastructure.
The idea of some old lady or some teenager handling a 125 kilovolt cable makes my hair stand on end …
w.
I was also thinking about how to handle the very large connector.
There would also need to be an equivalent size cable within the vehicle to handle the current, increasing both the size and weight of these already heavier-than-ICE vehicles
Pish posh. That’s only enough to jump about a two inch air gap…if it is dry.
When the insulation fails, your hair will be standing on end. Literally.
Great idea. And with that 25kV system, you would need to use transistors and a switching circuit to transform it down to battery voltages.
Have you, (or anyone), seen a transistor rated for 25kV? As a bonus question…. one that can be economically installed into a car?
A quick search on the Mouser website lists high voltage Mosfets that can operate at 4.5kV. That sounds like a good start until you see that they are around $100 a piece and have an internal ON resistance in the order of 80 Ohm. At one amp, they’ll generate 80W of heat. So not a cheap solution. How many, (in parallel), would you need to pump a 1000A through without boiling the kettle?
Note that silicon MOSFETs need to be operated at half the breakdown voltage to avoid getting destroyed by cosmic ray induced neutrons. SiC MOSFET’s can operate at 2/3rds breakdown voltage.
Do me a favor, hold that spark plug cable in your hand. With your other hand grab the engine and have someone crank the engine. Enjoy.
The tech press is in full swoon
The punters are about to have the rug pulled from under them.
Sadiq Khan to scrap electric vehicle congestion charge exemption as prices to rise
https://www.itv.com/news/london/2025-05-27/londons-congestion-charge-to-rise-what-could-you-be-paying
The electric revolution is pricey.
It’s like drug dealers who virtually give away samples early on; then, when you’re hooked, the price goes up. Nothing new under the sun…
PR!
I guess I’ll be sticking to diesel, then.
There are over 280 million passenger cars on the road in the US. Almost all using gasoline. The US consumes an averages around 9 million barrels/day or about 380 million gallons/day. That’s an enormous amount energy to replace with electricity!
And the gasoline is doing a terrific job, too. WHY would anyone want to replace it with something that is SO EXPENSIVE to implement and use? AND dangerous as well?
Because petrol reserves are finite and the internal combustion engine is appalling inefficient with more than 1/3 of the energy being wasted as heat. Electric motors are over 95% efficient and have much better torque than internal combustion engines.
Generating the electrical energy remotely transmitting it to a charging station, and charging a heavy battery is also appallingly inefficient.
That “waste heat” you refer to contemptuously comes in very handy in cold weather for heating the interior of the vehicle.
ICE efficiencies have improved since the 50’s. Perhaps if you looked at some modern data.
Motors are about 95% efficient but getting the electricity to the motor losses about 2/3rd of the energy.
What is it about you climate alarmists and your utter inability to tell the whole story?
something else that isn’t addressed in his article is that by 2028 AI is expected to consume as much as 98+% of the electricity we now produce. Even if that figure is high, imagine what that additional demand will do to our electricity grid.
That 98% figure seems to be rather high. The IEA expects data centres worldwide to be using around 945TWh by 2030, slightly more than the electricity consumption of Japan today.
In the US they estimate data centres to account for 50% of demand by 2030 when they will consume more electricity than the production of aluminium, steel, cement, chemicals and all other energy intensive goods combined.
Estimate global data centre electricity consumption of 1200TWH by 2035.
IEA ‘Energy and AI’ (April 2025)
Good article, properly math done…I’d like to add the theoretical size of the connector the car battery must have to handle the quick charge without melting. The trunk would probably do, and the cables from there connecting the battery…ehm made of unobtanium or something like that.
Sadly all those believers and ecotards clinging to a straw will neither listen nor reason. Well let them buy into that crap, Northvolt part II 😉
Vibranium would probably work
Willis has not recognize the ability of high voltages to lower cable sizes and transmit exceptionally high power, which makes his analysis… Um. useless?
As I say, the battery may well be pie in the sky. Charging it is not.Can be done.
OK, Leo. How about you provide your full analysis of such a system, including the size of the cables, their voltage, and the weight of the in-car transformer to get from the high voltage down to what’s needed to charge the battery. Also, consider safety concerns with amateurs handling kilovoltage lines …
Best regards,
w.
I’ve been around high voltage equipment enough to know it’s a non-starter for this mundane, day to day, any weather, end user stuff. It simply won’t be.
Agreed I did a stint in a 250 KV switching station and it was so dangerous that everyone would hide in the bunker when we would switch. No one wanted to be anywhere near the switches or even on the same floor when they were being cycled even in a blast suit. We wouldn’t point at them while walking by as electrical arcs are attracted to pointy things. 250 KV is scary stuff. I often wonder what working at a 750 KV or 1.2 MV sub would be like. 😱
I love the image. Everyone would have to wear a full arc-flash suit to recharge their EV!
Any weather is a good point. What happens if there is water near to the charging socket, or it’s done in driving rain?
Blimey!
I think we can forget high-voltage EV charging after this video.
It means charging with high voltages in the megawatt range isn’t going to be anything like the charging we’re used to with an outdoor cable.
It means charging at 7MW is going to be a controlled, precise operation using appropriate connectors in a safe space that wont have any human interaction.
Also by the time any of this comes true, the cars involved will be autonomous and take care of charging themselves as, and when needed.
Tim,
That control is driven by software, not hardware.
When there is a glitch, you better hope that it fails safe. Since software has a habit of doing what software does. Could anybody guarantee to ALL end users, for ALL uses, that the high voltage will NOT be present at the terminals when Mr Average, wearing ZERO PPE, plugs it in?
And that’s the problem. Any safety system relying on software as the final interlock is bound to result in fatalities. Watch the video and tell me where a safe place to stand would be when you plug in that lead.
I dont think you’re getting the idea. In the world of megawatt charging, the car autonomously drives into the charging area where an automated charge connection is robotically established.
This isn’t happening tomorrow. It doesn’t exist yet. None of it does.
It doesn’t have to be off, a marginal connection for any reason after it’s plugged in will explode like a handgranade.
For the application of fast charging an EV, the charging rate doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing thing. It would be sensible to electronically “test” the connection before starting charging (eg resistance/temp) and ramp up the current relatively slowly.
In other words, the charging station itself will be so expensive that only the super rich will be able to afford to drive.
Don’t forget the cost of the circuitry needed inside the care to convert that high voltage down to something usable.
It doesn’t cost enormous money to engineer a safe process. Think automatic car wash.
I worked a plant where a production manager replace a 100amp fuse in a 480v disconnect, turned it on with cover open. It blew up in his face and burnt 75% of the skin off his body. He lived in a lot of pain for 2 years.
Willis writes
On this point alone, why do you expect a viable charging solution in the megawatt range involves people at all, let alone “amateurs”. How about you stop with the strawman arguments?
They don’t have to involved, again even a slightly bad connection would catastrophic.
I have high voltage connection to transformer. When doing that you spend 10 minutes cleaning the connection point with solvent before you make the connections to make sure there is zero chance of tracking. This for a permanent connection point that is bolted together. Typically when you finally flip the switch gear on you stand back 6 feet and use a pole to switch it on.
I suspect connections to the car would be no higher than the total battery voltage, maybe around 400V DC and probably less. For super fast charging the current would be enormous so the connection surface would need to be large. Much larger than your transformer connection.
Oh right. So you’re gonna charge using very high voltages and mount the transformer on the car, right?
Trouble is… a 10MVA transformer will weigh as much as at least several cars.
BINGO! And it would require a much larger car. More like a panel truck – maybe a semi – with all the support equipment required. Imagine getting that into covered parking at the airport! Actually, there are so many more problems not even being discussed. Not a well thought out idea.
Leo
just to work around “high voltage” you have to wear protective rubber and sometimes chainmail suits. This OSHA requirements. So have fun getting read to charge your car.
Leo,
Willis is right. His overall analysis is correct.
You say –
Using unicorn farts and unobtainium, of course. Yeah, right.
I think we might be stressing about the wrong things.
My wife just bought an EV. We had to do a 600 mile road trip in it within a week to 10 days after buying it. What surprised me was that there are a lot of 350 KWhr charges out there. The new EV could only charge at a max rate of 200 KWhr however and they recommend that you keep the battery between 20 and 80% charged. So our 80 KWHr battery only has a usable capacity of 48 KWhr so if you get 4 miles per KWhr that’s a usable range of just under 200 miles between charges. The charging time is less than 20 min. Additionally the cost to charge is 3-4x more per KWHr than what you’d pay at home. In essence, using public commercial charges, the cost to charge is the same as the cost of regular gas per mile. And the 600 mile round trip required 3 stops to charge rather than 1 to fill up a gas tank.
Regarding the wire gauge size, Mr Smith has a point. Wire sizes can be smaller with higher voltages. The power you get is Volts x amps while wire is sized using amps only. That’s why supercharges run at 400 volts and some at 800 volts. Upping the voltage by 3.5x gets you 3.5x the energy for the same wire gage.
You forgot that the insulation is VOLTAGE dependent. 1kV will require a couple of mm. 4kV, designed to flex will likely be multiple layers, each several mm.
20kV…. well that’s going to be thicker than your arm, even for a few amps.
It used to take three electricians nearly a full day to splice a 2400 volt cable for a gantry crane. The cable carried 100 amps at 2400 volts and was about 7 inches in diameter. A high voltage cable is very complex and a bear to work with particularly in the cold. Each joint must be carefully built up to keep the proper isolation between the conductors you also have keep the grounding even on all conductors carefully balancing the grounding field to complete the protection. Concentration of the ground at any one spot will progress to a short and cause the splice to fail. The hardest part though, was it also had to fit back into the giant cable reel to be wound up as the crane travels. Thank God for Raychem heat shrink splice kits, they made the job much easier. 👍😉
Every time you fast charge like that, you are reducing the life expectancy of your very expensive battery.
The cost of that gasoline is about 1/2 to 2/3rds road use taxes, which you aren’t paying. Yet.
You have zero idea what you are talking, voltages as high as you would need are incredibly dangerous. One marginal connection can cause a truely frightening explosion.
Arc blast. Vaporized metal in a millisecond..
Extreme heat, huge explosive overpressure.
Scary.
And I do not scare easy.
We had a pothead let go on an oil filled lead sheathed 13.8 KV cable inside a screened enclosure. The pressure wave from the short turned the screened rectangular enclosure into almost a ball shape. I always wondered how high the pressure had to hit to blow a screen into a ball, and really glad I wasn’t standing beside it when it happened.😰
Even a tiny mass of a solid becomes a very large volume of gas when it vaporizes. This is, after all, why explosives explode.
When it happens faster than the speed of sound, it is called a high explosive. Because molecules of gas are accumulating faster than they are moving away to make room for the new ones. So you get a shock wave.
I am not sure how fast an electric arc vaporizes metal, but I would not be surprised if it is far faster then the reaction front propagates in a high explosive. IOW faster than the speed of sound.
Like, maybe a lot faster.
In any case, regular old air molecules are zipping around at about 400-500 meters per second. Speed of sound is 343 meters/second.
In an arc flash, copper, which boils at over 2200C, flashes to vapor at a temp of over 35,000F in under a millisecond.
Yeah you read that right…four times hotter that the surface of the Sun.
Those coppers hit you hard and fast and HOT.
Like I sez, Scary. AF.
BTW, the expansion factor of copper in an arc flash is about 67,000x the original volume.
For comparison, gunpowder expands about 300x, and 2,4,6 trinitrotoluene by about 1000x.
For gunpowder the overpressue is about 23,000 atmospheres.
The connectors will be the biggest problem. Generating stations with high voltages and currents use breakers that are mounted in metal enclosures, and have very special designs to make and break the connections. To do that with automobiles you will need breakers that are much larger in size than current fuel dispensing stations. These are very non-trivial to engineer, and leaving them out in the open for grannies to operate, even remotely, will be a challenge.
And this is before you get to the actual connection to the vehicle. Right now, fuel nozzles can be used in wet conditions. High power connectors will be a a nightmare as they are used frequently, and the contacts gradually open up, increasing their resistance, and heating up. Eventually you will have one connector that will be only marginally connected, till the breaker is closed and the arc across the contact will make life very exciting for all of the people around it.
This proposal is so far beyond fantasy that it is literally unbelievable. .
The higher the voltage, the thicker and more expensive the insulation gets. Also the consequences of the failure of that insulation get more severe.
Thank you for waking this quite old, long-retired EE, who would have read about this fantastic battery and merely said ‘Ho-hum.” Coming from the power generating and transmission substation part of the industry, I’ve long recognized what a subdivision full of EVs would do to the system, but I would never have completed your analysis to see the impossibility of serving up 5 minute EV charges. You’re analytical genius, but you probably already know that.
Thanks for your kind words, rb.
w.
WE points out the insurmountable infrastructure problems such an EV ‘battery’ as Huawei claims would entail.
Having basic issued patents in energy storage materials, I have been very familiar with the field for many years. So did some quick research before commenting, because the Huawei claims are commercially dubious by themselves, even before infrastructure issues.
The Huawei claims are based on a newly published patent application, taken by the media way out of context. Some relevant context.
Thanks for the informative post – point #4 was particularly interesting.
Yes Willis, but apart from
the grid upgrades, the transformers, the buffer batteries, the land, the cooling systems, the huge connectors, the maintenance, the insurance
it’ll still be goer in California, won’t it?
Good luck getting the transformer, even at todays demand you can wait 8 months
You sound very rational, but don’t forget that Gruesome has been bragging about California’s high speed rail performance, despite the reality that not a single rail has been laid. Somehow, he can’t recognize that Florida has an in-service high-speed rail that actually connects real cities and is successful enough to be under expansion. Gavin hasn’t even connected the original two farm towns that were supposed to be connected years ago. They were the easy part.
So, delivery problems with transformers? Just blow it off. Most voters there are too stupid to realize they’re being scammed. He’s a Democrat, which sounds like he believes in democracy, and he promises free stuff (at a cost only to the super wealthy), so why doubt him? Performance needn’t be considered.
Yep.. The IEA notes that investment in grids is already struggling to keep pace with power demand and renewables deployment and that grid materials have nearly doubled in price in the last 5 years as a result of increased demand for cables and transformers.
IEA ‘World Energy Investment 2025’ (June 2025)
Don’t worry about it, Wallace – I mean, Ed Milliband – will get right on that as soon as HS2 is finished.
…any time now.
Wilis, you forget about the fusion reactors that are going to be powering Microsoft from 2030 and beyond./sarc The claims about both of these are getting to the point where we need a few examples to show the general population real science! Boom, big boom!
Fission is here now technology that is competitive with fossil pricewise. No need for fusion for a few hundred years
Dump coal. Embrace arc reactor technology / zero point energy.
Or, to borrow a phrase from the late Robin Williams with a slight tweak,
I’m kidding there, guys, should have put the “sarc:on/” “sarc:off/” tags at either end of my photo image link which illustrates the utterly unreal cartoonish notion that unlimited energy is created out of the blue.
Good catch. Of course, one could go to a much higher voltage to reduce the amps, but that creates certain hazards for users and for operational staff as well as practical considerations. The practical limit for most commercial power services today is 480 volts, and for residential services 240 volts. And then one would have to drop the DC voltage down tremendously to power a typical 24 VDC power pack.
To deliver 7.2 MWe at 480 VAC would carry 15,000 amps, while at 240 VAC double it to 30,000 amps.
A typical regional or municipal electric power plant generates somewhere in the neighborhood of several hundred MWe up to 2,000+ MW e. The largest plant in my area has a capacity of around 2,600 MWE. In smaller rural areas the plants can be much smaller, down to around 50 MWe or less. The average regional or municipal power plant in the US has a capacity of roughly 500 MWE
So that means that charging a single vehicle at a rate of 7.2 MWe would use 7.2/500 of the capacity of that average local power plant … or that plant’s capacity would be fully consumed by charging just 70 vehicles at one time. How is that going to work, even if the cabling, transformers, voltage, etc. could be upsized?
Think it through. High voltage is mandatory, but we know how to deal with that – the grid runs up to 450kV for large power distribution. We have 25kV inside a microwave. Or under a car hood. 220v will kill you easy, so its no worse than that.
It is likely that a facility for rapid charging of e,g long haul trucks would have its own power station- Ideal application for a small nuclear reactor. 450MWe would charge about 60 vehicles. That’s a decent sized truck stop.
The more sane approach to this level of power is not to have the driver plug into anything. He parks. over sliding contacts that lift up to make contact with the vehicle. A short ‘conversation’ establishes that the car needs a certain voltage and it gets powered up,
This is the way BEV will go,if suitable batteries can be developed, but 20 years on we dont have any…
But there is no rush. Forget climate change, this is really about rising fossil fuel prices and energy security. The USA doesn’t need BEVs yet but places like Japan do, so they will introduce it first.
Those same contacts under the car are also connected to the battery. What happens when you run through a puddle?
What happens if there is debris under the car when the contacts try to make a good, low resistance contact and instead of a perfect zero ohm contact you instead get a 0.01 Ohm contact. Using Power = I^2xR, at 10,000 A, that will generate a heat source of 1MegaWatt.
Since welding can be done with a domestic power outlet, say 1000W, Do you have any idea what the underside of the car will look like after that?
And I’m yet to find ANY plug connector that has a contact rating anywhere near 1000A without it being LARGE. Very LARGE.
You obviously don’t know what you are talking about with high voltage.
The voltage used in a microwave oven is internal to the machine which obviously can never come in contact with human operators, while the power involved is typically only 1-1.2 KWe, which is one seventh of one one-thousandth of the 7+ MWe of power to rapid charge the vehicle battery at the claimed rate. Microwave ovens operate from standard 20 amp circuits at 120 VAC.
High voltage at high current – ie high power/high energy transfer is a killer for humans. The idea that nimrods would be plugging in a 7+MWe charging cable at thousands of volts and thousands of amps is truly impossible to imagine.
There is a very good reason why overhead high voltage power transmission lines are run at the tops of towers upwards of 50-180 feet above ground.
To put things into perspective … a power draw of 7.2 MWe is equivalent to 9,600 hp. That is more than double the power output of a typical diesel electric train locomotive!
And finally, voltage DOEs make a BIG difference in the potential risk of fatal electrocution. Human skin has relatively high resistance, which limits potential current flow through the human body. 50 volts is generally the threshold for potentially fatal electrocution, subject to circumstances (like wetted skin, skin cuts or abrasions, etc.). So while 120 VAC can kill you, 220 VAC kills you much quicker. 480 VAC even more so, and so on. When you get into thousands of volts death occurs instantly, and is also accompanied by extensive burning of skin and body parts.
At extreme high voltage a human does not even have to contact the power source to get electrocuted, via arcing through the air. And getting sparked like that will almost certainly cause severe burns, as in it burns off the fingers or arm that comes in contact, as well as immediate cardiac arrest.
Yes, we do know how to deal with it. The first requirement is that nobody without weeks to months of specialized training and without 10’s of thousands of dollars of specialized equipment is allowed anywhere near them.
You are proposing putting them out in the open for every Tom, Dick and Harry to mess with.
Have you actually bothered thinking through your proposal?
Great summary and explanation, thanks.
Now explain it to the idiot Miliband.
No one can explain it to the idiot Miliband, he is a close minded zealot, & anyone who disagrees with his views is removed, so he has surrounded himself with ‘yes-men’.
Here is another way of looking at it. 1800 miles in 5 minutes is 21,600 miles per hour. That is more than fast enough to get into earth orbit. I am guessing that in order to get to those speeds you need a multi-stage rocket.
I like that
It’s doable. using HV AC. Simply put 25KV down the wire. 7200/25
Something like 300A. Of course every truck stop charging point will ned as small nuclear reactot to power it, but its doable.
What I doubt is the range.
Leo, what do you figure the weight of the in-car transformer for that would be?
w.
I am guessing around 8 tons
Have a large contact surface that immediately splits off to individual wires that connect to different areas of the battery. Each wire carries a lot of current but “in spec”.
You can think of possible solutions or you could push an agenda. Your choice, but we’re here assessing where you’re coming from and understanding how valid your argument is, based on how willing you are you address the possible issues.
What is it about EV enthusiasts that causes their brains to shut off?
Just switching out the battery is looking better and better.
Is another viable option but I suspect people will want to keep their own battery.
There will be a commercial solution to that problem. Buy the car but lease/rent the battery pack.
Also possible, but most people by far will simply charge at home overnight.
An option with its own, huge problems that are even more unsurmountable.
Why?
Including a few thousand gallons of cooling oil.
When you talk about cables capable of handling 18,000 amps, remember that every electron that goes in, has to come out as well.
You are going to need two of those cables.
Or in the case of the 40 MW electric arc furnace at my old work it is “18 water cooled cables” each over a foot in diameter. 3 phase to three 24 inch carbon rods. The arc is unbelievably loud.
There must be some grain of truth behind the “astonishing” claims of Huawei, but I missed the memo. What, pray tell, are they talking about? 🤔
Hydrogen as a fuel has similar problems. Over 20 years ago, Baldur Eliasson and friends summarized the engineering limits of hydrogen gas in “The Future of the Hydrogen Economy: Bright or Bleak.” You can find it at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232983331. Read it. It’s bleak.