Electric vehicles in Germany - all the ins-and-outs!

[murphaph 9,814]

There seem to be big regional variations in practice in Germany too. In the south houses typically have 3x35A supplies. Around here the standard connection is 3x100A and to upgrade to a whopping 3x250A would have only cost 2k. Even at that I could not really justify upgrading from a 3x100A supply. In Ireland a house typically has 1x63A.

[CincyInDE 3,293]

Good scare-info in German and with pictures here about charging on a household outlet.  Some of these are 10A outlets, so yeah, get proper wiring done.

 

 

[yesterday 2,022]

I cannot at the moment see, why its any more dangerous to plug in and EV via a socket or wall box so long as you keep the current low.

 

If the house wiring is bad, and you select a high current on the wall box, you may cause a fire to be started, just the same as if you select a high current from your cars battery management system. Sure if your EV cannot do this then you need ( better to have ) a wall box. It seems like its belt and braces, safety, which is not bad, but one system should be enough. If your house wiring is bad, I would get that fixed, first as your house may catch fire from other appliances using a high power load as well. I guess your friend will not know when the house cable were last changed anyway.

 

Its recommend in the UK, to have your wiring changed every 20 to 30 years, as plastics degrade, new sockets, to reduce resistance etc. would imagine its the same in Germany, but I think most people do not do this. If you set the wall box up incorrectly then you may cause a fire. Lets all remember, the wall box connects directly to the house 16 amp circuit anyway ( See installation guide here https://support.wallbox.com/wp-content/uploads/ht_kb/2021/01/Pulsar-Plus-N.-A.-Installation-Guide.pdf ) sometimes with a plug, it does not necessarily have a direct route to the house wiring, which would be recommend, if you get a wallbox

 

If you go to a friends house and need to charge, and for safety you select say 6 Amps, you are not going to get much charge over a couple hours anyway. Your probably better of going to a supper charger for 10 mins and just arrive a bit later at your friends house.

 

Having said all of that, a wall box is not so expensive anyway, in comparison to the overall costs of an EV, so if you want belt and braces, then why not.

 

You can find scare stories, all over the internet, about fires stating from bad wiring or old sockets with lots of high current devices, it not just with EVs, although EV's are a special in that they can be setup to draw relatively high currents for long periods of time, but you do not have to setup the EV to do that. Although the idea to charge your EV overnight on a 6 Amp setup, is laughable. 

 

[murphaph 9,814]

You really has no idea what's behind the socket unless you can see all of the cable run back to the distribution board and can see all of the feed to the distribution board from the HAK. My neighbour's house was extensively damaged in an electrical fire about 2 years ago. The house was not habitable afterwards. Could be the same solid core 2.5mm² cable at both ends, patched in the middle with 1.5mm² flex cable, for example. This stuff "shouldn't" happen but unfortunately DIY "repairs" by people who think "cable is cable" do happen all the time. 

 

If you are conservative and set the current so low as to rule out a fire that wouldn't have been caused by say a TV, then as you say, you may as well charge at a rapid charger nearby because well, you won't really get anything useful from say 6 Amps for a couple of hours.

 

You also have to always remember (if your car allows it) to manually reduce the current. There have been fires where Teslas automatically reduced their draw to a "safe" 13A but that was still too much (constant) current draw and the wiring caught fire anyway. It is highly error prone. It requires you to always remember to reduce the current draw to a point where the delivered charge is almost useless. 

 

We are talking about friends' houses here, primarily. In your own property you can at least theoretically verify that a given socket is fed by a given cross section of cable and that there are no other loads on that circuit-this is not a guarantee of safety however. I can do this in my HWR for example because there are three sockets in that room on their own circuit back to the distribution board. One is for the washing machine, one for my server rack and one for the Hebeanlage. I would be confident that these sockets can indeed provide 10A constant current quite safely. I know every socket in the house that is on its own circuit (rare) and which ones are shared in a daisy chain as is the norm. Most older properties have very few, if any sockets on their own circuit so you must always factor in what is plugged into the rest of the circuit in that case.

 

The scare stories exist because they are real. All the reputable sources of information will strongly discourage the long term use of Schuko sockets to charge EVs and will recommend at the very least a proper "EV Schuko" socket which has improved connectors to reduce resistance at the socket (this assumes the wiring is sound!) but generally recommend just getting a wallbox fitted. Doesn't need to be a 22kW thing, but an 11kW wallbox really does make more sense than the smaller ones and are eligible for KfW grants (when the money is there again).

[Krieg 15,038]

Well, there is yet no ban on ICEs from 2035, Germany and Italy tripped everyone and said they won't sign it if ICEs running on synthetic fuel are not exempt from the ban.   

 

https://insideevs.com/news/655782/germany-italy-object-to-proposed-eu-ice-ban-over-e-fuels/

 

 

P.S, in the mean time the cost of making synthetic fuel is down to around $7 a liter.   But even if it falls to the same price as fossil fuel, it makes no sense to continue making new ICEs,  EVs are the better option even if they are still missing lots of required features for general adoption.   Synthetic fuels should be for planes and maybe boats instead.

[keith2011 2,648]

1 hour ago, Krieg said:

Well, there is yet no ban on ICEs from 2035, Germany and Italy tripped everyone and said they won't sign it if ICEs running on synthetic fuel are not exempt from the ban.   

 

Real question, are ICEs running on synthetic fuels any less polluting  than those running on fossil fuels? I'm talking about what comes out of the exhaust pipe not the overall footprint.

[Krieg 15,038]

2 minutes ago, keith2011 said:

 

Real question, are ICEs running on synthetic fuels any less polluting  than those running on fossil fuels? I'm talking about what comes out of the exhaust pipe not the overall footprint.

 

It is the same emission.  But since the CO2 used to create the synthetic fuel was extracted from the air it balances out to zero, so you are putting back the same CO2 you took.    But the bad emissions are not just the CO2, you still have NOx emissions which are nowadays the real problem.   

 

Pushing for NEW ICEs after 2035 is a really bad idea in general.     Actually they should do the opposite when the technology is ready, allowing the remaining ICEs in the market to operate ONLY with e-fuel.

[yesterday 2,022]

52 minutes ago, keith2011 said:

 

Real question, are ICEs running on synthetic fuels any less polluting  than those running on fossil fuels? I'm talking about what comes out of the exhaust pipe not the overall footprint.

Was reading this

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2021/03/27/synthetic-fuels-wont-save-the-planet-so-dont-say-they-could/?sh=470b449769a4

 

It states that cars using e fuels, save up to 85 % on emissions, if the e fuel has been made from solar, not oil.

 

Thinking about it though,, you were asking about in town emissions, I expect the overall effect to be 85 % less, but cars running on e fuels will be just as polluting as current cars running Petrol and diesel cars at the moment, so yes, you will still that smell in cities, unless we go electric or hydrogen.

 

Also

The elephant in the room comes from how synthetic fuels are made

In fact, the situation is even worse for synthetic fuel. According to Transport & Environment, hydrogen fuel cells are currently 2.3 times less energy efficient than batteries, with the deficit dropping to 2 times less efficient by 2050. Synthetic fuels are less efficient still, with the estimate being about 4 times worse than batteries and very little improvement by 2050

 

Basically e-fuels are just too little too late, there are energy inefficient and will be more expensive than solar. We all know a lower price will generally win in the end. The amount of planned e-fuel production is very very small, maybe accounting for less than 1 % of our current usage of oil production.

 

It is of course, the big European car makers, who will object the most to the ban on ICE cars, as they probably have the most to loose.

 

Having said all of that if I had to buy a new car in the next months, it still would be  a second hand ICE car, which I would hope to run until around 2035, and then probably at that time ( age wise ) I will be thinking of giving up driving. Just hope FSD will be with use soon, or at least by then

[murphaph 9,814]

I believe the market will see out the ICE, whether e-fuels are readily available or not (and I suspect they won't be, it's a niche product for use in planes IMO).

 

EVs are just better in so many respects. The only thing that EVs are still behind on is range per refuel and speed of refuelling but both are getting better and better all the time and for most drivers the current EVs are already good enough and if you can charge at home you will rarely need to go somewhere to refuel at all (only on road trips). I reckon by 2035 the range "issue" will be completely solved.

 

Lindner and the FDP really just look very foolish here I think. ICEs (no matter what the fuel) are crap compared to the sheer simplicity of electric traction. Thousands more moving parts that wear out, enormous waste (the engine gets really hot, really fast-this is all entirely wasted energy, except in winter when a tiny fraction of the waste heat can heat the cabin), noise, vibration, emissions. EVs are taking over because for most drivers they are just better cars. 

[Krieg 15,038]

For sure EVs are the better option for personal transportation, but they are still not ready for massive adoption, and by that I mean to replace all type of ICEs.   Remember the ban is for all cars not just for sedans and SUVs.   I can't even find an EV that fulfill all my own needs, but I am willing to compromise, the only thing stopping me is that the best current option for my needs means giving money to Elon.   These some of the problems I see:

 

- Most EVs can't tow to save their lives.   Well, some EVs can tow the 750kg bare minimum towing entry level limit that even a tiny ICE would do.   And this can be problematic to fulfill because it seems only in Europe we tow with normal (family) cars.   But at the moment many EV trucks can't properly tow and that's embarrassing.   Not sure what the problem is, maybe chassis construction? Because in theory EVs should be even better at towing than ICEs.

 

- Winter and heating.  I think it is still mediocre, the best option is the Teslas, and while they are actually better at heating in the early stages (For the first minutes after you switch the car on), they still are not there yet in the long term. I am not sure if this can be improved, Tesla's current technology is impressive, but I think they are already close to the best that can be done on this.  In order to heat you need energy, energy density from batteries is bad, and the best you can do is a heat pump to multiply the little energy you have.  I see nothing much else you could do, except inventing something revolutionary.

 

- Vehicles for work, like vans, midsize and small lorries, and so on.   Logic says they will need even bigger batteries, so the price would be even a bigger problem for the normal people who need a vehicle for work.
 

- Roughed up vehicles, because not everyone who needs a vehicle lives in the city.  We need proper off-road vehicles.  4x4 should be no problem in theory.   But you need to replace a big range of vehicle types, from the small cheap but very off road capable (like the Suzuki Jimny and similar), to the midsize true off-roader like some Jeeps, to the big truly hardcore off-roader like the Toyotas, Nissans and Mitsubishis.   So far the only thing we have now is the big extremely expensive SUVs that might be 4x4 but they are fake off-roaders.

 

- And the most important one, the small city EV.   We have some unrealistic options like the Honda e and the VW Up, but they are too expensive for what they are and they kind of suck.

 

Of course all these options should come some day, but what if that day is way too far?  Or never?  I fear we will end up with much less options.

 

 

 

P.S., And what will happen with utilitarian vehicles?  When is the garbage collection EV truck coming?  The construction vehicles?  The heavy vehicle machinery? Bulldozers? Loaders? Tractors? Concrete truck?  Are those even included in the ban?  If the ban will make benzine not easy available what happen to those vehicles if they stay as ICEs?  So many questions.

[yesterday 2,022]

At the moment BEV's will be the player of the future, and I support that.

 

However the change over will cause problems for many people as you already said

 

-Longer charging times for many, and length of drive after a charge is much lower, which may change.

-Harder for people who do not have home or office charging, makes the difference between rich and poor bigger, may change.

-The speed of transition will cause many problems for people without much money, who may be priced out of the market, look on autoscout24, you do not find any BEV for sale at less than 30,000 Euro for a 10 year old machine, except leaf etc, how are the poor going to afford that ? and you know all the problems with a 10+ years old cars get.

-BEV production is still very low, so it will be hard and expensive to get a cheaper second hand model.

-The BEV looks better than it really is at the moment because of the taxes you pay on ICE cars and the subsidies  BEV's get, lets see what the real price is in the future. 

-There is still very little choice in BEV's, no small cars available with a decent range, etc The only mainstream cars you can buy come from Tesla or VW in Europe, there is very little else at scale and even that scale is small.

 

yes I would totally agree, BEV's are just more efficient and we need to move towards them  but I would also like people to think after the people that will become negatively affected as well.

 

Looking at this German argument not to ban ICE in 2035 in Europe, Porsche want to be able to use e fuels for there cars to power them, if it gets this concession, why cannot Toyota say the same thing and every other car manufacture, so in the end every ICE car can use e-fuels, so a ban would never be set in place. I think bans on ICE cars should be incremental, so from 2030, no ICE cars over 2 litres should be made, then every 5 or 10 years, that get reduced by another 500cc.

 

We should all remember we had a fix for the environment 15 years ago, it was called diesel, and look how that turned out. BEV's are the best way out at the moment, but lets not just assume they will get better and cheap, it will take real work to do it.

 

 

 

 

 

[murphaph 9,814]

Restricted towing is (IMO) just the manufacturers afraid of having to quote the range which would obviously be far worse when towing say a caravan (with all that wind resistance). Tesla allows up to 1600kg behind the model Y. The new Megane allows 900kg. Towing capacity is important for me. I have a braked trailer with a DGVW of 1200kgs. Our current car however is not allowed to tow it fully laden. It is allowed to tow ca. 1000kgs braked so I cannot load my trailer to the max as it is. I could live with the 900kg braked limit of the Megane but if a Tesla Y can tow a trailer of 1600kgs then I don't buy it that the Megane (or any other similarly sized EV) couldn't really manage that. I do not believe it has anything to do with the drive train. Electric motors have more torque and there's no clutch to burn out. It may be a weight limiting measure to reduce the mass of the chassis but I really think it's mostly down to manufacturers just not liking the "negative looking" range figures. 

 

I use my trailer almost entirely within a 10km radius for transporting building materials and garden waste so range is of almost no importance to me as long as the EV can tow the trailer legally with a reasonable load. Up until last year I had said that EV's were not there yet for me because almost none of them except the Tesla allowed towing at all. That seems to be changing fairly quickly now as well. The Volvo C40 also allows enough towing for me. I am not going to scrap our cheap petrol car prematurely but I believe we could now transition to an EV when it dies of old age. I was previously thinking we'd need to buy another ICE vehicle next but I don't believe that anymore and our next car will be an EV.

 

I don't think HGVs are included in the 2035 ban at all. I am pretty sure petrol and diesel will be available to buy for many years even after 2035. You could buy leaded petrol for years after cars were mandated to run on unleaded.

[HEM 11,160]

31 minutes ago, Krieg said:

P.S., And what will happen with utilitarian vehicles?  When is the garbage collection EV truck coming?  The construction vehicles?  The heavy vehicle machinery? Bulldozers? Loaders? Tractors? Concrete truck?  Are those even included in the ban?

 

E-Panzer anyone?

 

Quote

If the ban will make benzine not easy available what happen to those vehicles if they stay as ICEs? 

Such heavy things run on diesel.

[Krieg 15,038]

12 minutes ago, yesterday said:

I think bans on ICE cars should be incremental, so from 2030, no ICE cars over 2 litres should be made, then every 5 or 10 years, that get reduced by another 500cc.

 

That would be too easy to circumvent.  Your can turbocharge or supercharge the engines.   You can even do both at the same time, like in some small VW engines.

 

8 minutes ago, murphaph said:

Restricted towing is (IMO) just the manufacturers afraid of having to quote the range which would obviously be far worse when towing say a caravan (with all that wind resistance). Tesla allows up to 1600kg behind the model Y. The new Megane allows 900kg. Towing capacity is important for me. I have a braked trailer with a DGVW of 1200kgs. Our current car however is not allowed to tow it fully laden. It is allowed to tow ca. 1000kgs braked so I cannot load my trailer to the max as it is. I could live with the 900kg braked limit of the Megane but if a Tesla Y can tow a trailer of 1600kgs then I don't buy it that the Megane (or any other similarly sized EV) couldn't really manage that. I do not believe it has anything to do with the drive train. Electric motors have more torque and there's no clutch to burn out. It may be a weight limiting measure to reduce the mass of the chassis but I really think it's mostly down to manufacturers just not liking the "negative looking" range figures. 

 

I use my trailer almost entirely within a 10km radius for transporting building materials and garden waste so range is of almost no importance to me as long as the EV can tow the trailer legally with a reasonable load. Up until last year I had said that EV's were not there yet for me because almost none of them except the Tesla allowed towing at all. That seems to be changing fairly quickly now as well. The Volvo C40 also allows enough towing for me. I am not going to scrap our cheap petrol car prematurely but I believe we could now transition to an EV when it dies of old age. I was previously thinking we'd need to buy another ICE vehicle next but I don't believe that anymore and our next car will be an EV.

 

I don't think HGVs are included in the 2035 ban at all. I am pretty sure petrol and diesel will be available to buy for many years even after 2035. You could buy leaded petrol for years after cars were mandated to run on unleaded.

 

Yes same, towing is critical to me too.  But in the worst case scenario I could live with the bare minimum 750kg towing allowance, just for my small trailer with my motocross bikes.

 

But I thought the Tesla Y can only tow 750 kg.    And remember that whatever the car can actually do is irrelevant, what matters is what the COC says and that's what will end up in your car papers.

 

I mentioned chassis construction because in modern EVs the battery is now part of the "chassis", which is very clever and save a lot of weight.  I am not sure if that creates a problem for towing because you will have tons of horizontal forces.

 

 

Just now, HEM said:

Such heavy things run on diesel.

 

Replace benzine for fossil fuel then.  

[yesterday 2,022]

7 minutes ago, Krieg said:

 

That would be too easy to circumvent.  Your can turbocharge or supercharge the engines.   You can even do both at the same time, like in some small VW engines.

 

 

They would be banned from 2030 in my book. Remember a turbo will force more air into the engine, which makes more CO2. And that is bad

 

 

 

 

Quote

 

Replace benzine for fossil fuel then.  

Benzine is a fossil fuel

 

 

I think the 3035 ban should only be introduced if say at least 70 % of cars on the road are electric, so there is a second hand market for poorer people to buy from otherwise a lot of people will find there life qualify go down hill

[Krieg 15,038]

8 minutes ago, yesterday said:

They would be banned from 2030 in my book.

 

What do you mean?   Turbocharging cars should be banned?   Making them more efficient should be banned? I do not follow.

 

 

Quote

 

Benzine is a fossil fuel

 

 

 

You don't tell me.

 

I meant to replace "benzine" with "fossil fuel" in my previous comment.  

 

Edit:

 

You edited your comment:

 

8 minutes ago, yesterday said:

 

They would be banned from 2030 in my book. Remember a turbo will force more air into the engine, which makes more CO2. And that is bad

 

 

Turborchargers make the engines more efficient and reduce emissions.

[murphaph 9,814]

The Model Y can tow a fairly hefty trailer alright, 1600kgs is the figure I read somewhere. The Volvo C40 is also allowed to tow heavier trailers.

 

Expensive tow hitch at that price but Tesla actually updates the firmware of the care when they fit the tow bar and the vehicle detects that the tow bar is inserted and "woks around" the trailer (rather than thinking you are about to crash into something when reversing, for example)

 

I reckon all the manufacturers will soon be forced into making trailer towing just a normal thing like it is for all ICE cars. It's already a reason for me to rule out an ID.3 and take the Megane and these cars are in direct competition with each other. How long can VW afford to not have a car in this size that can tow a trailer? 

[Krieg 15,038]

Yes, I just checked the German Tesla website and now it says 1600 kg.  I am almost positive it said 750kg before because this is important to me.   I actually think 1350 EUR is a reasonable price.

 

P.S. And the Tesla 3 says 1000 kg.

[murphaph 9,814]

The thing I don't like about the Tesla is the inside. I just don't like that minimalist vibe. I like buttons. For towing capacity hard to beat....for the moment.

 

I doubt Tesla has made any design changes to the Y to enable towing of heavier trailers, so it was a "just because" thing. I wonder can owners of older Model Ys have their Fahrzeugschein updated with the new towing limit.

[murphaph 9,814]

The Ioniq 5 in the bigger battery variants can tow 1600kg as well it seems.