Solutions to electric vehicle charging

One of the biggest hurdles in the coming revolution of the electric vehicle is finding enough charging stations so motorists can ride and drive beyond the city limits.

Taiwanese motorcycle and scooter manufacturer has a unique idea for private charging stations that can be owned by individuals.

It could be a good way to earn some extra money.

Kymco is really thinking outside the box on electric vehicles with their plan last year for swappable batteries in vending machines.

Now they have launched a range of charging stations called NOODOE (pronounced “new dough”) which can be privately owned by individuals.

No, it’s not an April Fool’s Day prank.

The cloud-based systems could actually be a viable alternative to the inaction on the part of big business and governments to supply suitable infrastructure for the nascent electric vehicle industry.

Obviously business will be involved once EVs reach a significant proportion of traffic.

And surely governments and businesses will have final say over the placement of such infrastructure.

Electric vehicle infrastructure

In Australia, businesses and governments are working together to build charging EV infrastructure.

Chargefox is building Australia’s first ultra-fast charging stations powered by renewable energy on interstate highways connecting capital cities. 

It will cost $15m with $6m from the Federal Government and $1m from the Victorian Government.

The sites will be no more than 200km apart.

However, most electric motorcycles have highway range shorter than 200km, so they would be virtually useless to riders.

In Queensland, the state government is spending $2.5m to build an “Electric Super Highway” with 17 fast-charging stations along 1800km of highway from Coolangatta to Cairns and from Brisbane to Toowoomba.

That’s a charging station roughly every 105km, which is much more achievable for an electric motorcycle.

Fast chargers have a power output of 150kW and take about 15 minutes to charge an electric bike.

However, they only charge to 80% of a battery’s capacity and frequent use of fast charging depletes a battery’s life.