Electric car charger design and manufacture done by Government agencies.

Every country in the world should set up its own Government owned Design and Manufacture centre for designing/manufacturing electric car chargers for its own country’s citizens.
This will prevent imports of huge amounts of dodgy electric car chargers by dodgy “middle men”. Such dodgy chargers will result in disappointed customers, and tons and tons of scrap electronics…since these car chargers are big items.
These car chargers are high power items, and taking shortcuts in their design , to save money , will result in disappointed customers, as well as loads and loads of scrap electronics. As such, the governments of countries should take over the design, to ensure that their country is not flooded with loads of super-cheap electric car chargers , which break down prematurely and get scrapped. For example, these units will comprise fans which will fail because dodgy designers put cheap fans in them. However, a government design agency would ensure that the right fan was used, and also ensure that units which had stopped working simply because their fan had stopped working are recycled by having their fan replaced…….ie the whole unit not scrapped just because its fan had failed. This is just one example of the tasks of such a government agency towards providing good car chargers to its citizens.
If this kind of Government agency is not set up, then loads of dodgy “middle men” will set themselves up to import loads of dodgy Far Eastern electric car chargers, making themselves mulit-millionaires overnight, and deluging their own country with tons and tons of scrap electronics. This must not be allowed to happen. Tariffs must be placed on any electric car charger that has not been purchased from the Government owned agency.
If the demand for electric car chargers outstrips the government owned agency’s ability to supply electric car chargers, then the government agency will import car chargers. But it will only do so if the schematic and hardware is provided first, so that the design of the charger can be checked out. Any profit that the government agency makes by importing car chargers, will be transparently payed into the countries tax system….ie no dodgy “middle men” will become multi-millionaires overnight by importing lots of rubbish electric car chargers.
Are we all in agreement that the above must happen?

By your bizarre logic there should also be government controlled car manufacturing. And large-appliance manufacturing. And cell phone manufacturing. And newspaper publishing (Newsprint accounts for a tremendous amount of waste in land fills).

Treez, your posts, although somewhat entertaining, get weirder and weirder.

This is somewhat reminiscent of the video recorder laws. Europe decided to impose a tariff on imported recorders so the increased price would stimulate 'home' production. It backfired dramatically, firstly a plague of incompatible 'home' designs popped up and the inability to establish a standard meant pre-recorded movies were uneconomical to market, then the mass Asian producers with mature VHS and Betamax products set up factories in Europe to bypass the tariffs. It set video technology back by at least a decade and was a total failure as a stimulant.

Yesterday I went to a car dealership to see what was available to replace my aging Mazda Diesel vehicle. There are only two dealerships within 100Km of home, both sell Japanese brands and only one sold electric or hybrid models. A check shows the nearest charging point to home is about 50Km away so electric is out of the question unless I charge at home and work in a restricted radius. A hybrid is the only viable option and even then the nearest garage selling petrol (gasoline) is 10Km away. I can't see how using government manipulation of the market is going to improve that situation. Fast chargers require 3-phase mains supplies so for home charging it would require significant cost to install wiring to the other two phases from the grid, prohibiting uptake in most cases. As a local Councilor, I have investigated installing charge points in my town as this is a major tourist area but 'out of range' for electric vehicles, it just doesn't make economical sense when considering the infrastructure costs and the time and space occupied by vehicles being charged up.

Brian.

Thanks, well yes, but with say a 3kW home charger (single phase) you could charge up at home, albeit slowly....it is these kind of 3kW chargers that i am speaking of mostly....but others too.
I hear what you say about video recorders, but they are far less power as you know, and not so ruined by "dodgy cheap" design.
Also, even I have to confess that with all the tech involved in video recorders…..a government backed campaign for them is probably not possible.
Car manufacturing too….a car has more tech in it than a electric car charger, and so even though it would be prefereable, its probably not so amenable to the kind of government backed agency to which I refer

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Also, think of the spin-offs in terms of jobs for people doing power engineering work, and how such people could be released into the country's other industry, and do good work designing power supplies for the rest of the economy

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The key is that electric car chargers are high power, and taking the usual dodgy shortcuts that the dodgy geezers do...this will result in loads of scrap electronics and dissapointed customers with chargers which failed after a year or so.
There are already a huge number of "middle men" in every country, queing up to "middle man " shedloads of dogy car chargers in to their own country, and make themselves multi - millionaires overnight....is this what you want?

Hi treez,

treez said:

Every country in the world should set up its own Government owned Design and Manufacture centre for designing/manufacturing electric car chargers for its own country’s citizens. This will prevent imports of huge amounts of dodgy electric car chargers by dodgy “middle men”.
Are we all in agreement that the above must happen?

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Your talents are truly wasted in engineering. Oh, wait, you're being serious, I thought this was some comedy routine.

How many semiconductor foundries are in the UK again? There is a capacitor factory in Wales. You can't buy British on that point for love or money. Your products must by force of circumstance include Taiwanese, Phillipine, Chinese, etc. parts made for US, etc. semiconductor houses...

All I can say is that will not happen. Government is a business and they are the first to outsource everything and anyone for profit, and gleefully so. Your remarks omit cold, hard, lifelong facts like residency by property purchase to known criminals of all kinds and nationalities and peerages by wealth and contacts to known criminals of all kinds and nationalities, reality as it stands has nothing whatsoever to do with Thatcher's failed "Buy British" jingoism that sounds good but is not heartfelt up there.

I'm sorry. I appreciate your frustration but I am unsure how these kind of threads a) can be considered elementary electronics questions, and b) genuinely will aid your career in the long-term, perhaps, friend. Keep your thinking head down/hidden and get global, man.

Thanks, I appreciate that the chargers will contain components from all over the world.
I have experience with a company that sold 5-10kw electric drives….with this type of kit, there is lots you can do to increase the lifetime…but it costs………There is lots you can do to save money and create a cheaper product that will fail quickly….……loads of cheap dodgy chargers will be imported by middle men and create loads of scrap if the dodgy stuff isn’t blocked by tariffs etc.
When I worked with 5-10kw electric drives, so many used to fail (because we made them cheap), that we used to sell the customer “contracts to supply” electric drives, instead of selling the drives by volume…this was because they failed so often, that it was cheaper to just get the customer on a 12 month contract, and within that 12 months , we would just replace every failed electric drive for free…. As you know, this is what its like in the high power game, the kit can fail in droves when you take cost shortcuts….we did take cost shortcuts, because it was cheaper to just keep replacing the failed ones and make them cheaply.
You are correct, the UK government are selling UK down the river….but at least something should try to be done to stop this.
UK should get like Germany, where the German government secretly forces the German competitor companys to teamwork with each other….The great German car companies, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen….are all just one company in reality…sharing trade secrets with each other……by teamworking together their individual strengths are greater. The German government put “mixer staff” into these car companies, to make sure that trade secrets are shared…they also encourage BMW engineers to leave and go to Mercedes etc…part of the knowledge sharing….and look how effective this is.
If the UK does take a leaf out of the German book soon (Germany is “global” isnt it?), then within a decade the UK will be a third world country…
**broken link removed**
And yes, probably we will go to the dogs…but I am holding out an invitation for change…yes, a tiny message in a bottle in a huge ocean…but if you are starving on a deserted island…..you should still throw the bottle into the sea with your message tucked in it.

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By the way, can any UK citizen answer these qu’s..
1)…how long is it since UK reported a positive balance of trades?
2)…what is the UK national debt in 2018?
3)….What percentage of UK manufacturing industry (>500 staff) is foreign owned?
4)…Did UK used to be the World’s biggest exporter of cars? (Cars designed and manufactured by British owned companies)
5)..How may cars designed by British owned companys now get exported in 2018?
6)…do you think there is a trend here?

Hi treez,

Okay, I'm no expert on many things you mention but I do like history and I am quite certain that comparing colonial times (e.g. rigged global conditons) to the present is not an especially valid argument. British industry waived the rules by holding back a multitude of countries and extracting their resources very, very cheaply... A level playing field soon sorts the wheat from the chaff, and the UK is a country of self-serving bankers and turnip growers (harvested by underpaid Eastern Europeans), like it or not.

If we need to discuss politics and history on an electronics forum (grrrr), then I suggest we look at the enemy within in most countries, no doubt all: the rentier culture of wealth extraction from all companies by the impatient shareholder bunch who do not care that you have to cut costs to compete and be paid a risible hourly rate, and be grateful for the job. They are the biggest cause of worsening standards of life on every level, from the professional vulture to the nice old grandparents who use a financial expert to invest in stocks and shares for them, so they can take the grandkids to the outlet to buy trainers made in Turkey (to increase the shareholders dividends, of course) and then have a lovely burger from a foreign franchise or a coffee and cake in some cheesy chain of "real" "British" coffee shops owned by a US conglomerate - because the parents can't afford to do these things on their indecent salaries.

Those questions are valid only from the prism of the UK and vested interests, I feel. The (I'm trying not to laugh using this expression) whole of the "first" world has the same issues. Third-world? Shouldn't that be developing country or more modern still, "emerging market"? What is US national debt? - They absolutely love the stuff, the more trilliony it grows, the better. Do you think they have any intention of paying it off? What is Argentina good at: debt. What is German national debt? This world is built on the premise of indebtedness, without it banks do not work and their owners will become very, very angry, and then I doubt any of us will have time to gripe about the good old days of a captive Asia and Africa serving Blighty.

Look at how humanity allegedly went from a sharing society of hunter gatherer teams with gender equality and everything decent and fair (add pinch of skepticism) to one of feudal lords using violence to amass wealth for themselves and whoever served them. Nothing has changed, only the clothes and the veneer of civility employed to continue the pattern. Violence takes many forms, including financial violence as societal control.

Anyway, I don't want to lose more points. If you wish, let's join a political forum and continue this discussion there, but let's not spoil what is ostensibly a space to discuss things related to engineering and hope.

Honestly the car market is mostly an example of free market success. My Honda has had one unscheduled failure (AC) in 11 years and 160k miles. For a mechanical machine that lives outdoors and operates on a principle of controlled explosions I think that's remarkable.

Car companies have warranties and reputations that are heavily tied to reliability and already, apparently, have great processes in place for ensuring that.

Standardization is a separate issue and I see value in government pushing companies towards that.



On a somewhat related note I'm kind of surprised to watch cordless electric tools advance quickly (lawn mowers, weed wackers, glue guns, fans) but without any hint of industry standardization. I understand the name brands are trying to lock you into their tools but there is incentive for smaller brands and outsiders who want to make a cordless product or two to band together. Lithium combined with brushless motors are a powerful combination that's applicable to many industries and for many of those industries the burden of engineering their own battery solution should push them towards some standard.

I think our budding problems with electric cars will grow into an ever-present mountain just like our problems with car engines. As the automobile population grew so we need an ever-present support industry. It's too much to expect for ordinary consumers to carry around a charger, along with an assortment of charger workarounds. Backup charger, adapters, extension cords? People tend to put off plugging in their car 'til later'. I imagine governments will rather watch the industry for a time, waiting to see which equipment is favored by consumers. Whoever makes charging easiest, or automatic, or wireless, wins market share.

OK thanks, keeping things technical , the point is that due to the high power nature, there are a very very wide variety of ways to design electric car chargers…cheap and nasty to good ones….we need a proper series of government answerable companies to responsibly do it….Electric car chargers are just about simple enough for this to be possible for a government agancy run thing.
Regarding America’s national debt…the difference is that America has a big industrial base from which to pay off its national debt, Germany too…the UK has sold off (and is rapidly selling off the remainder) its industry overseas.

Having lived and worked in the USA, I can explain to Treez that the situation is slightly different there, simply due to the scale of supply and demand. Few European countries have the ability to source all the raw materials needed for most industrial processes because they are too small. The logical solution is to share resources and markets and that's exactly what they do. It doesn't mean one is selling out to another, it means they cooperate although I'm sure that to each individually they wish they could 'go it alone'. The US is huge geographically, it does have the resources and more importantly, it is quite isolated. It has Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, only two widely spaced land borders to easily trade across and a massive home market. All EU countries are smaller, most have more borders and neighbors so the obvious solution to ignore the borders, at least from a trading point of view.

Treez, you might be surprised how many world companies are British owned. I'm not going to count them or name them but just as you are critical of UK being sold off, you should see the other side of the story and see how many non-UK companies are exploited to the UK's benefit.

Brian.

The logical solution is to share resources and markets and that's exactly what they do.

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Thanks, yes , a simple trade group, like what we thought we were joining in 1973, is a good idea....not a European superstate with Army etc etc.

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Treez, you might be surprised how many world companies are British owned.

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Thanks, yes I would be, so too would the writer of this book….
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Britain-Sale-British-Companies-Foreign/dp/1847940765
and this one….https://www.amazon.co.uk/British-In..._rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=JWZB7W7WAWW1S4W7C1AE
And I am sure you would agree that The Euro currency doesn’t make sense…different countries, with vastly different economies, cannot be equally served by the same currency with a single interest rate…that’s basic economics…..Greece joined up (without a referendum), and went bust……..Greece would never have been able to borrow itself into bankruptcy if it had stayed with the Drachma.
But anyway, keeping things technical, Electrolytic capacitors, their lifetime, and their temperature in service, is another feature that dodgy imported products will fall foul of.
Another point is that things could be modularised, so eg if the main converter failed, the PFC and Mains input filter could be re-used.
I am sure Samsung even do this with their TVs

Your remarks omit cold, hard, lifelong facts like................

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Thanks, yes, but I sense that you are actually on my side of the fence here as you lamentedly shared your condolences…..also, Germany , France and the USA do not need to have such a government scheme because they are responsible enough without it……so why cannot UK be like that?...this is our golden question.

Anyway I depict the participant companies will share “secrets” on longevity and value of design for this application…….for example there will be no skimping on transient protection…and units that have merely blown a fuse because the mov was old and battered will be brought back into production and not scrapped….or rather, bits of them will be…eg the mains filter, or the heatsinks, etc etc.

Recently, the UK government invested huge amounts of money into producing smart meters for domestic and industrial energy useage in UK (charging for electricity)……the contracts to build the small offline power supplies for the smart meters were spread around about five companies based in UK…none of these companies were actually British owned. These 5 companies worked totally in isolation from each other, and did not share secrets on their work with each other…neither did they check each others work…as a result, there were many incidences of huge amounts of products having to be recalled because either they were electrically unsafe, or the transient protection had a problem, and resulted in premature failure of the PSU’s. This is one of the reasons why a proper Governement backed teamwork operation must happen for 3kw electric car chargers.

Your reasoning is ridiculous- I don't know where to begin.Apparently, you haven't a clue about how business works in the Western world. Companies may share standards, but they don't share Intellectual Property; otherwise, how would they differentiate themselves? There is zero incentive to invest in innovation if everyone else is going to profit from your work. What you are proposing is the Communist model of business. Tell us which of the 'fabulous' Russian cars you would drive?

you haven't a clue about how business works in the Western world.

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Thanks...but please see this..

Having worked in the public and private sector, trust me when I say that they they're in competition as to who can do the worst job. Worst might be measured slightly different in different aspects of the implementation, but they both Mess-up equally.

also this...
Govt run industries in vital areas like communications & utilities ran efficiently for many years in Australia, until, in an orgy of "Ideological Purity", most of them were sold of to the Private Sector, who continue to scoff away at the public teat, whilst supplying an inferior grade of service.

In USA, all the big semicons are known, behind the scenes, to be in bed with each other…the USA Government enforces this (albeit secretly)…because the success of all the American semicons, is crucial to the success of the American military machine.
China of course is another example…the worlds biggest exporter by volume….and a truly amazing rate of advancement in technology in a short time….all Chinese co’s are owned by the Chinese Government…and with a network of UK middle men that they have cultivated in UK for example, they have pretty much dismantled loads of the UK electronics industry..nobody can say for sure thats what they meant to do..but thats what happened.....amazing operators.

We would also like to see heatsinks in failed units going back into new units, rather than sent for melting down...lots of stuff like this.

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There is zero incentive to invest in innovation if everyone else is going to profit from your work.

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Engineers get payed to innovate as you know.....engineers dont tend to get a pay rise when they innovate something good, because its "their job"....but it does go down on their CV...whether or not its public or private sector.

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but they don't share Intellectual Property

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Engineers at Ford have mates at Vauxhall..and will share knowledge with their mates behind the scenes, no matter what their company says.

Hi treez,

... ... ... To be blunt, I often do not agree with or always have the background information to understand the majority of things you say here that are not circuit-related.

An aside: I see China produce absolute and utter tat that often breaks before you get it home from reverse-engineered (i.e. stolen) ideas, subsidised by the State presumably, and exported to Europe and sold at preposterously low prices that the average underpaid European (thanks to the stocks and shares value extraction culture and those guilty of offshoring) is forced to buy rather than quality goods they may prefer to - manufactured in the UK, the US, Germany, China or Timbuktu, who cares where - as they are unable to afford anything better; I doubt Joe Schmoe, Hans Schmidt or Tommy Smith care where things are made or designed. Why are we plagued by this invasion of substandard rubbish? I guess China has a softly, softly (read very aggressive but exceptionally shrewd) approach to business and finance and IS well on its way dominating the world on many levels, like it or not. And you expect your government to do anything but give themselves a hefty pay rise each year? With all due respect, that is magical thinking and they are not your parents or your friend, they are middle managers for those who purchase their services.

Also, I think you need to cease requesting people affirm your theories here, like a broken record, it doesn't make anything you say any more or less valid if I or any other member agree or disagree with you. Do you agree with me? ( - See what I mean...?)

The time wasted - wasted - writing these posts and answering them is depressing and futile. Write to your local politician or start a petition on change.org or something, dude. You shout into the wind here day after day after day. Why? A good persuader researches whose ear they need to bend and then chooses his target appropriately and schmoozes them to acquiescence when the time is right, not take potshots at innocent passersby all the time when the target audience will never be present... People use Twitter, Facebook, etc. to discuss these things, not pages on websites where people discuss what value pull-up resistor they need...

I think you are a nice guy with serious ideas and firm beliefs of your own. Focus these ideas into a coherent theory, structure your argument with facts - researched facts - and address the appropriate audience in the right arena, please.

treez said:

Thanks...but please see this..

Having worked in the public and private sector, trust me when I say that they they're in competition as to who can do the worst job. Worst might be measured slightly different in different aspects of the implementation, but they both Mess-up equally.

also this...
Govt run industries in vital areas like communications & utilities ran efficiently for many years in Australia, until, in an orgy of "Ideological Purity", most of them were sold of to the Private Sector, who continue to scoff away at the public teat, whilst supplying an inferior grade of service.

In USA, all the big semicons are known, behind the scenes, to be in bed with each other…the USA Government enforces this (albeit secretly)…because the success of all the American semicons, is crucial to the success of the American military machine.
China of course is another example…the worlds biggest exporter by volume….and a truly amazing rate of advancement in technology in a short time….all Chinese co’s are owned by the Chinese Government…and with a network of UK middle men that they have cultivated in UK for example, they have pretty much dismantled loads of the UK electronics industry..nobody can say for sure thats what they meant to do..but thats what happened.....amazing operators.

We would also like to see heatsinks in failed units going back into new units, rather than sent for melting down...lots of stuff like this.

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Engineers get payed to innovate as you know.....engineers dont tend to get a pay rise when they innovate something good, because its "their job"....but it does go down on their CV...whether or not its public or private sector.

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Engineers at Ford have mates at Vauxhall..and will share knowledge with their mates behind the scenes, no matter what their company says.

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Nonsense, (or rubbish, or drivel) or whatever you say in the U.K.

You make proclamations based on zero information. 'Ford shares ideas with Vauxhall'. What ideas? Where'd you get that?

'Engineers don't get a pay raise when they innovate'. I've gotten numerous bonuses for innovations or exceptional performance. My raises are tied directly to my performance.

'In the US all the semicons are KNOWN to be in bed'. Gee, I must have missed that memo.

d123 said:

Write to your local politician or start a petition on change.org or something, dude..

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EEK! - Not me please, I'm only at the lowest level of government and work entirely voluntarily and unpaid!

Brian.

betwixt said:

EEK! - Not me please, I'm only at the lowest level of government and work entirely voluntarily and unpaid!

Brian.

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:laugh: :smile:

Ok thanks, by the way, this thread was never meant to be political…it was always supposed to be about discussing technical ideas toward 3kw EV chargers that the government could do in a big team effort between government sponsored companies…for example…

No private company would bother to do the following excellent methods…

Transient protection, Mains input filter, PFC, isolation stage, current regulator stage….these should all be modular…..if one of them gets a fault….then it gets sent back to the repair centre, and the one module that has the fault is replaced…all the other modules will be re-used…..saving on scrap.
Also, proper temperature sensing throughout the converter, including elec’lytic cap cases…..no private co’ would bother with this…power would be pegged back till the temp went down to good level. A private co would just shove one NTC in there and try and do it from that alone…loads of scrap would result.
MOVs will be used…and if done by private sector, units which blew a fuse simply because the mov blew up will be totally scrapped…..not so with the government led thing………….MOV units will be replaced and the unit sent back out after some advisory testing.

This government led project will also massively help bring on power supply engineers in the UK or whatever country.
There is a massive shortage in uk...plus other countries.
I appreciate that if any individual is making a ton of money through working in the private sector, then you’re not going to be interested in any government backed project, period……but just think of all the government money which gets poured into UK co’s at the moment…in terms of “development grants”…this amounts to billions of pounds of wasted money every year…wasted by private UK companies doing “waste of time” things with this taxpayers money.