[AdhikR]

I do not own an EV yet, but did consider one very seriously last year.

The one factor I'm most worried about at this point is battery safety/fires. I know some data suggests EV fires are fewer and more far between vs ICE fires, but the fact that they are SO MUCH harder to put off is a stickling point for me. I think solid state batteries - which are surely coming in the next few years - could largely address this.

[diablo29]

Few important points in my view and in addition to what most have mentioned above is improved public behaviour towards charging infrastructure, for example;
1. Respecting EV charging spots and not parking ICE vehicles if they are vacant
2. Not keeping EV parked at charging slots well after the charging has got over.
3. Respect to the public charging infrastructure, have seen vandalism on jio ans some Tata chargers , the EV owners too need to at times treat the chargers with a bit of additional care.

The above would lead to better utilisation of the existing expensive charging infrastructure

[sushanthys]

My wishlist

- A unified app for all charging payments.
- reduce the charging initiation time. Connect the charger to the car and it should start charging.
- A street sign for fast chargers
- Fast chargers in fuel stations.Will make range anxiety a thing of the past.

For cars,
Longer range will definitely be welcome.

[aashishnb]

How about a break pedal that progressively applies increasingly aggressive levels of regen first i.e. try to get back as much energy as possible and then applies pressure to the actual brakes (disk or drum) which just lose the energy as heat.

Once pedal released, back to the selected mode by the driver.

[DarthVeda]

UPI based system for charging, it is so easy, why not implement it! what's the use of this wallet.

Give me all the nerd info of stats that I can nergasm of it.

[Kevinrevvz]

Infrastructure Improvements

1. Unified app to locate and access every charger.

2. On the spot payment interface on chargers like in abroad to avoid downloading a new app everytime.

3. More chargers at each location. I've seen upto 6 cars waiting at a single charger especially since the rapid growth in Tiago EV sales. The rate of growth in the number of EVs is much more than the rate of growth in the amount of chargers.



Charging park in Germany with a couple dozen chargers and only a single EV



Charging station in India with EVs waiting more often than not

4. Lack of high power fast DC chargers. Most of the chargers in India are 24-30kW chargers with some being 50-60kW.



Shell Recharge is slowly starting to introduce 120kW chargers at their petrol pumps.

More such chargers are required to take advantage of the peak charging speeds of Rs.20L+ EVs such as the MG ZS EV or BYD Atto 3.



The only 240kW charger in the country at Incheon Kia Kochi.

Many more of these are required to take advantage of the peak charging speeds of luxury EVs such as the Hyundai IONIQ 5 or above as charging those on a 50kW or below charger is painfully slow.

Charging Etiquette

With the growth in EVs, people should be more educated about charging etiquette and their car's capabilities.

1. DO NOT park an ICE car in front of an EV charger for any reason. This happens more often than we'd like to admit.



2. DO NOT plug a car with a lower peak charging limit into a high power charger when a lower capacity one is available nearby.

Tiago EV charging curve



Nexon EV Max / LR charging curve



MG ZS EV charging curve



Hyundai IONIQ 5 charging curve



As we can observe, the peak charging speeds of a Tiago is less than 20kW and the Nexon is 30kW. Tata owners should kindly not plug into a 50kW charger as a higher number on the charger does not mean faster charging. The cars cannot exceed their charging capacity whatsoever.

Meanwhile a ZS EV can take upto 80kW and an IONIQ5 can take upto 230kW. Hence in locations like Zeon with a 24kW and 50kW charger, kindly use the charger that is appropriate for your vehicle.

3. DO NOT charge to more than 80% on a public DC charger unless it is absolutely required.

As we can also observe from the charging curves, the charging drastically slows down after 80% SoC. More often than not it takes the same time to go from 80-100% as it does to go from 10-80%. This causes serious delays to people waiting behind. Your road-trip will also be much faster charging to 80% at every charging stop than when charging to 100%.

[privin]

Wholeheartedly agree most of the ideas for better EV experience.

We shouldn't have to physically do anything to charge. We should just park in a special area. Cars should have special DC connector at bottom. And the robotic connector should align and push themselves up. Not sure why we carried forward the same approach of ICE fuel dispenser mechanism!! More than anything, this reduces thick cables needed for charging.

In any case I am worried about business model of charging infra. For ICE, the gas pumps are assured of vehicles visiting them. For EVs, we charge at home or office. So within the city, requirements will be far less. Only visitors to city need to use them. Even they will also likely charge on highways. (Services such as cabs will have their own optimised charging infra.)

So that leaves only highway charging to be profitable. Then as well, there would be competition. Dominant app (eventually) will rule and dictate terms to providers (like Amazon fleecing the manufactures of every penny).

Anyway, we will have fun in next few years!

[Shresth_EV]

Originally Posted by airwarrior

The strong Hybrids come with small capacity batteries depending on the ICE to charge them.

a much larger capacity battery that would greatly Extend it's range on pure Electric Power

a provision for of an external charging facility.

At that point it becomes a PHEV and no longer a strong hybrid, which comes with its own issues

1. no fast charging

2. slow charging makes half the public infra useless eg on road trips you’re basically driving a worse ICE car (less mpg due to more weight)

3. no boot space (especially on the size segment sold in india — already hyry/GV has lesser space than Tiago EV boot)

4. Still needs same servicing as ICE and NOT cost effective if driven on empty battery.

Originally Posted by aashishnb

How about a break pedal that progressively applies increasingly aggressive levels of regen first i.e. try to get back as much energy as possible and then applies pressure to the actual brakes (disk or drum) which just lose the energy as heat.

Once pedal released, back to the selected mode by the driver.

Isn’t it similar to the iVBAC system on Nexon EV? The first few degrees of brake depression engages regen and only later uses discs — the which also led to some people making the brakes feel a bit spongy.

[electric_eel]

Originally Posted by aashishnb

How about a break pedal that progressively applies increasingly aggressive levels of regen first i.e. try to get back as much energy as possible and then applies pressure to the actual brakes (disk or drum) which just lose the energy as heat.

Once pedal released, back to the selected mode by the driver.

I do not know of any BEV that does not implement it. So it is not in the wish list.

[atin001]

I dont know if anyone posted this yet.

As a prospective EV buyer, I would love a standard way to gauge health of the battery of a pre-owned EV.

Right now it seems like it depend a lot on previous owners charging habits.

[electric_eel]

Originally Posted by AdhikR

I do not own an EV yet, but did consider one very seriously last year.

The one factor I'm most worried about at this point is battery safety/fires. I know some data suggests EV fires are fewer and more far between vs ICE fires, but the fact that they are SO MUCH harder to put off is a stickling point for me. I think solid state batteries - which are surely coming in the next few years - could largely address this.

Yes you are right EV fires are much fewer than ICE fires and it is also true that battery fires are difficult to put off but that should make Hybrids even worse (which indeed are borne out in studies actually). They are more likely to catch fire (because of the ICE part) and their batteries will make them difficult to put off. One needs to see how are the odds against other risky things that we do. The chances of getting killed in a EV due to the silly traffic condition is probably much higher than due to battery fire.

Also regarding waiting for "more promising technology" please remember that the only company that seems to be betting/says they are betting on solid state battery seems to be Toyota. Despite being a great car company, their reputation in the EV world, now how do I put it politely, is patchy. I will not put too much faith in it. We know for a fact that their Hydrogen strategy is demonstrably bad. So despite not knowing much about solid state batteries I would not place my bet on them.

EVs at least the current crop are pretty practical for most of the users if you have a decent option of slow charging at home. A 200 odd km range (in real world) for a car (Tiago EV for example) is good enough for normal office-home-grocery runs and you do not have to go to the petrol station which is a lot of time saved. A 300 odd km range car (Nexon LR/Nexon Max) is good enough to do intercity travels as well (at least in south India). If the charging infrastructure grows it can only get better from here. One really needs to see what more do they put their car to before asking for ranges like 500-600.

[Sumedik]

My wishlist:

1. Common charging port for all brands' EVs(like USB).
2. Modular battery pack where one can remove a module to lessen weight for durations when the car will be used for short drives.
3. Cell level battery pack repair possibility.

[nidhikapoor]

Originally Posted by Sumedik

My wishlist:

1. Common charging port for all brands' EVs(like USB).
2. Modular battery pack where one can remove a module to lessen weight for durations when the car will be used for short drives.
3. Cell level battery pack repair possibility.

The first point is almost there. North American Charging Standard (NACS) for North America and Combined Charging System 2 (CCS2) for the rest of the world, excluding maybe Japan.

2 and 3 are not really needed in my opinion.

[DAYDREAMER]

Although charging infrastructure is quite low in north India and personally I dont any experience of ev. But my wish list is
1. Realtime update of working and fault of charging station.
2. Realtime update of charging status of current car.
3. Number of cars in queue.
4 Option to pre-book time slot with a small non refundable amount which can be adjusted towards charging amount
5. Options to link real time location or Google maps with booking ( I know know ,ready for some punching)

[sidoxic]

Charger Infrastructure related

1) FastTag linked payments. Already so convenient at parking lots - saving the hassle of managing cash with drivers. Right now my driver has to coordinate on a call to get someone to pay for a charging session. So annoying when you are middle of a work day.
Seems like a simple process - Park the car in the slot, scanner checks for balance in account and force a top up if under 500. It will deduct the exact amount at the end of the charge session.
This can be realistically achieved by competitive forces between the players or govt policy, or both.
Added advantages
- no need to even touch your phone, fully automated workflow.
- non-EV cars can get fined directly for using the parking slot & penalty for leaving the car for a long duration after charging has stopped
- way to remotely check if the parking slot is empty
- not giving away extra money to charging companies with the excuse of min balance. I'm sure residual wallet balances form a good part of their balance sheets and investor decks.

2) Variable pricing depending on max KW of charger. Especially when there are many in a cluster.
A 20 KW charger should be significantly cheaper than a 60 KW.
- Fast chargers will be not be blocked by cars which don't support it
- The setup costs are much higher for faster chargers, but the norm of having similiar rates currently means very long payback periods for these.
- will give incentive to have very fast chargers on expressways

3) auto cut off at 90% - it's not a fast charge after that. If there's a queue, causes annoyance + charging company earns less per minute, even loses on revenue if the queue moves elsewhere. Sometimes people like me misuse it for free (cheap) parking in crowded areas

Car Related

1) highway mode for nil regen/neutral like coasting on leaving the A pedal, but still regen during breaking.

2) better prediction of realtime distance to empty with the displaying showing you will arrive at X% or with X KMs left. Include info from past trips or others using the same route - so traffic, incline etc is accounted for.