Infrastructure for Personal Electric Vehicles (non-autonomous) in Boston

Could this charge-while-driving technology be a game-changer here?

www.nytimes.com

Could Roads Recharge Electric Cars? The Technology May Be Close.

But challenges await, including technical issues, regulatory barriers and many miles of highway.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

EDIT: here's another (non-paywall) source on this topic:
www.ttnews.com

State DOTs Explore Roadway Charging to Support Electric-Powered Vehicles - TT

Magnetic concrete that charges electric vehicles as they drive over it could be coming to an Indiana roadway in the next few years.
www.ttnews.com www.ttnews.com
 
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I... just don't see that as scalable or feasible. Always thought the hot-swap battery concept a while back was a good answer - basically drive up to the charge station, and it would simply swap out your existing battery pack for a fully charged one in minutes. Also seemed to solve the problem/risk of having your battery pack go bad in a few years, as they are pretty expensive to replace. No need to worry about that if they are basically a commodity you are constantly swapping.
 
bakgwailo said:
I... just don't see that as scalable or feasible. Always thought the hot-swap battery concept a while back was a good answer - basically drive up to the charge station, and it would simply swap out your existing battery pack for a fully charged one in minutes. Also seemed to solve the problem/risk of having your battery pack go bad in a few years, as they are pretty expensive to replace. No need to worry about that if they are basically a commodity you are constantly swapping.
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Shai Agassi's late, lamented Project Better Place. I thought he really was onto something. It would have been thousands of drive up stations with sunken floors where robots would swap out the batteries from underneath within 5 minutes. IIRC, Carlos Ghosn at Nissan was big supporter.


A decade later, it now looks like a company called "Ample" is taking the idea again:

 
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Wasnt there a plan to implement battery swap out in.....Denmark?
 
Vagabond said:
Battery swaps have been very popular in SE Asia, and anywhere where 2-wheel transportation is the norm. Check out Gogoro if you're interested https://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwan...goro-to-go-public-in-spac-merger-11631786636?
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This raises a good point. I think, up till now, society has been conceptualizing personal vehicles in a similar manner for suburbanites and car-owning city dwellers. Given the shift to electric, however, we might see vehicle types diverge substantially. City dwellers (who for some reason must have a car) might gravitate toward much smaller vehicles with swappable batteries, while suburbanites stick with their beloved large SUVs plugged-in in their garages/driveways. This, sadly or otherwise, might further amplify the divide between these types of people.

As a side note: all of the enticing <4-wheeled vehicles that are popular in cities in other parts of the world perhaps don't catch on in Boston because of the winter weather. I'd still imagine that a small-scale/winter-weather-compatible vehicle for cities with swappable batteries is possible though, just perhaps not in a format we've seen much of yet.
 
bigpicture7 said:
This raises a good point. I think, up till now, society has been conceptualizing personal vehicles in a similar manner for suburbanites and car-owning city dwellers. Given the shift to electric, however, we might see vehicle types diverge substantially. City dwellers (who for some reason must have a car) might gravitate toward much smaller vehicles with swappable batteries, while suburbanites stick with their beloved large SUVs plugged-in in their garages/driveways. This, sadly or otherwise, might further amplify the divide between these types of people.

As a side note: all of the enticing <4-wheeled vehicles that are popular in cities in other parts of the world perhaps don't catch on in Boston because of the winter weather. I'd still imagine that a small-scale/winter-weather-compatible vehicle for cities with swappable batteries is possible though, just perhaps not in a format we've seen much of yet.
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Or just ban individually owned and stored vehicles within cities. On-demand only. Car storage depots around beltways. Think of the trillions in real estate dollars that opens up. Think of the trillions of dollars of human hours saved from traffic jams. Money talks. This is coming. 2035 perhaps.
 
Well, looks like National Grid is going for the EV market by deploying pole mounted chargers for EVs up in Melrose, which it's marketing bumpf claims to be the "first deployment of elevated, pole-mounted EV chargers by an investor-owned utility in the United States." Now, hopefully that deployment goes well bc I can't wait for them to show up across Boston and Camberville.

Admittedly, NG announced this in April 2021, when the chargers were physically installed and it took until 2 days ago for the press to catch it...

National Grid Installs Pole-Mounted EV Chargers In Massachusetts - CleanTechnica

National Grid is installing EV chargers in Melrose, Massachusetts, that are mounted on light poles to reduce installation costs.
cleantechnica.com cleantechnica.com

National Grid

National Grid - Here with you. Here for you.
www.nationalgridus.com www.nationalgridus.com
 
www.bostonglobe.com

Under pressure from Trump and manufacturers, Mass. punts on electric vehicle mandate - The Boston Globe

The state announced it will delay enforcement of a rule to speed up adoption of electric vehicles, following action in Congress and opposition from dealers and the car industry.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
The state will delay by two years the enforcement of a a rule that would have required 35 percent of cars sold to be electric and plug-in-hybrid starting with 2026 models. From there, the percentages had been set to increase annually until all vehicles sold in the state are fully electric in 2035.
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themissinglink said:
www.bostonglobe.com

Under pressure from Trump and manufacturers, Mass. punts on electric vehicle mandate - The Boston Globe

The state announced it will delay enforcement of a rule to speed up adoption of electric vehicles, following action in Congress and opposition from dealers and the car industry.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
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Especially given how much of Mass' VMT is likely Boston-area commuting-hour traffic, a hybrid mandate seems like an easier place to start. Honestly, hybrids should be >50% of sales, everywhere, considering what a difference hybrid systems can make in stop-and-go traffic (their impact is less over highway miles, where modern 8+ speed automatics can be very efficient, albeit the difference is still in favor of hybrids).

The thing, too, about crediting plug-in hybrids as "EVs" is that unless they're plugged in regularly, they can be less efficient than regular hybrids--meaning barring a change in consumer behavior (respecting a plug-in's electric range as the one that matters; "filling up" on two different energy sources in two different types of locations), they're not guaranteed to be as efficient a change as would occur from, say, a regular ICE car to a hybrid to an EV.

In theory, plug-ins are great: they enable a lot of emissions-free travel on a relatively small battery. In practice, we're relying on a change in consumer behavior that neither hybrids nor EVs (which only have one energy source to "fill up", and like an ICE or hybrid car, and can't be driven without doing so) require. An EV mandate is probably going to be essential for, say 2040, but there are a lot of interventions--raising the fuel tax, an interim hybrid mandate, maintaining registration/tax incentives--that could get us a lot of the way there.

Living as I do in Oregon, now, and seeing the cars that a lot of people drive, I know that more expensive gas is a key change.
 
-This is very good to hear since the US rammed so many highways right through the downtowns of all our major cities.

Another way electric cars clean the air: study says brake dust reduced by 83%​

clear-blue-sky-clouds-avess-berge-ua2IF9HNaXs-unsplash-e1748369914818.jpg


“A new study is out which quantifies just how much EVs help not just in cutting harmful exhaust emissions, but also cutting other types of pollution that come from personal vehicles. But of course, public transport, biking and walking are even better.


We’ve seen plenty of studies showing how the benefits of shifting to EVs translate to the real world, for example in California and London, where higher EV shares and regulations aimed at cutting down the excesses of polluting vehicles have produced significant air quality benefits already.

As it has become more and more untenable for anti-EV propagandists to deny the air quality benefits of EVs, a common refrain from them has become “but tailpipe emissions aren’t everything, what about brakes and tires, huh?!”

Putting aside for the moment the clear concern trolling involved in this response, it’s always been easy enough to point to regenerative braking as a reason that EVs improve that problem too – since they rarely use the brakes, they obviously wouldn’t emit as many brake particles.

But now we have proper quantification of that, and not only is the reduction in brake dust from battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) quite high, its also much higher than the benefit gained from either conventional gas-only hybrids or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs)………”


electrek.co

Another way electric cars clean the air: study says brake dust reduced by 83%

Exhaust isn't the only impact of cars, they also emit tiny brake particles. Thru regen braking, EVs reduce that (but bikes are even better!)
electrek.co electrek.co
 
The NY Times has a story on the growth of EV fast-charging stations across the country. While Mass. has the most stations, Vermont has a lot more stations per capita:

Number of fast-charging EV stations per capita (Total stations):

Vermont 12.75 (82)
Maine 6.24 (85)
Mass. 5.04 (354)
N.H. 5.00 (69)
Conn. 4.44 (160)
R.I. 3.09 (34)

www.nytimes.com

See How E.V. Road Trips Went From Impossible to Easy

There are a lot more fast chargers than there used to be. Look up what that could mean for a route near you.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
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This is disappointing, but honestly not that surprising. Most people don't take climate-related issues seriously, especially when it involves reducing pollution from cars and trucks.
commonwealthbeacon.org

Massachusetts agencies never followed a 2017 rule to cut emissions from state vehicles, court documents show

The rule was issued under Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and followed a landmark court ruling that found the state needed to issue more specific and stringent regulations in order to meet the 2050 climate commitment.
commonwealthbeacon.org commonwealthbeacon.org
NO AGENCY SUMBITTED reports to comply with a 2017 rule requiring cuts to the emissions produced by state-owned vehicles — and environmental regulators didn’t aggressively enforce the rule, either, according to new court documents filed last week.
Massachusetts agencies that own or lease at least 30 passenger vehicles, from the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs to the Department of Transportation, are compelled to reduce the pollution stemming from that vehicle fleet each year by specific amounts and submit reports to the Department of Environmental Protection in order to show compliance.
But MassDEP has no records of these reports and didn’t follow up with the relevant agencies to receive that data for each year going back to 2019, when the reports were first due, according to the court documents that are in connection to a lawsuit the state brought against oil giant Exxon Mobil.
[...]
But Exxon, believing that the state was withholding additional information, pressed the state for more. That’s when, in defense of the state’s motion to dismiss the records case, DEP admitted last week that “no agencies had submitted reports under the fleets regulation.”
Conservation Law Foundation, whose lawsuit gave rise to this regulation requiring emissions reductions from state-owned vehicles, said the court documents are concerning.
“CLF is still reviewing the record, but we fought for these [Global Warming Solutions Act] regulations to ensure real climate action,” said Seth Gadbois, staff attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation. “All levels of government are bound to follow them. When they’re ignored, it’s a step backward for the climate goals Massachusetts is legally required to meet.”
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