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The losses appear to be incurred in the AC to DC rectification and are invisible to the end user with rapid DC charging where the rectification is done upstream. It will be there in real time from the grid and also from the rectification performed in charging buffering batteries. Where it becomes a visible number is as BTB500 suggests:
Maybe 60p/kW.hr isn't price gouging but a reflection of incurred losses (or more likely - a bit of both).
You can but few EVs can take AC charge at higher than about 7kw - my model 3 will do 11kw, and some early Model S cars could do 22kw (so maximum on 3 phase). But the charging pattern means it really isn’t necessary - even restricting charge to my cheap 6 hour overnight I can get from 20% to 70% overnight assuming as much as your 20% charging losses. And in practise with a flexible EV tariff such as Inteligent Octopus I can charge for even longer at the cheap rate. The upside for 3 phase really wouldn’t make it worth it for car charging.I assume you can run a more powerful (i.e. faster) charger from a 3-phase supply:
Single-Phase vs. Three-Phase Power Explanation | Fluke
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Thanks - granny chargers are I believe less efficient than 32amp wall boxes - from what I’ve read, the percentage loss using AC charging is higher with lower currents (and granny chargers are typically only run at about 10 amps). So I could believe Adac’s 20% loss if it included a decent amount of that kind of charging - but that doesn’t therefore indicate a generic 20% loss applicable to general EV charging, as it is dependent on the mix in their calculations.ADAC's data is aimed at cost to the owner, so total mains AC kWh consumed for a charge (what you are actually paying your energy supplier for). The figures I've seen relate to domestic wall boxes and 'granny cables' where you can easily measure the kWh taken from the mains supply. Not sure how it would work with commercial fast chargers ... presumably they report the kWh they output and total cost (free chargers excepted of course). Unless the charger calculates and reports its own internal losses you'd have no way of knowing what it consumed in converting to DC - I assume that would just be factored in to the pence per output kWh rate you pay. Losses in the charge cable (potentially quite significant at high currents) couldn't be identified unless you reconciled what the charger output against what the car received. Losses from the input socket on the car onwards could be tracked and reported by the car's systems, but I don't know whether this is done or not. Apart from the extra complexity involved it presumably wouldn't really be in the car maker's interests to highlight the internal charging losses that occur.
And 20% VAT rather than domestic 5%
That last part about onboard... chimes with PXW's comments about efficiency being greater at higher currents (wall box) - which is the opposite of what is generally found with current.
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You need 3 phase for 11 or 22kw charging - but relatively few cars can take 22kw. Loads can take 11kw, but personally I would question whether the uplift from 7.4 to 11 was worth the infrastructure change.
