Understand Different Charging Methods of Electric Vehicles

EV charging system provides energy supply for the operation of electric vehicles. It is an important basic support system for electric vehicles, and it is also an important link in the process of electric vehicle commercialization and industrialization. With the rapid development of electric vehicle industry, charging technology has become one of the key factors restricting the development of the industry. Intelligent and fast charging method has become the trend of EV charging technology development.

There are different ways to classify EV charging devices. Generally, the EV charging devices can be divided into portable charger for EV and non-on-board portable charging device. There also exist many charging methods such as slow charging and fast charging. In this article, we will mainly take a look at the two different charging methods of electric car chargers.

Slow Charging of EV Charging System

Slow charging is known as conventional charging or on-board charging.  It mainly relies on the portable charging equipment equipped with the car and the household power supply or special charging pile power supply can be used. This charging method is the most common one we use for electric cars today. To conduct slow charge, one can use both on-board chargers and household wall-mounted charging piles. The charging current of the on-board charging is small, which is usually around 16-32 A. The current can be DC or two-phase AC or three-phase AC, so the charge time is normally 5 to 8 hours, depending on the battery pack capacity.

The disadvantages of conventional charging mode are very obvious: The charging time is long. However, the charging requirements for this method are not high, and the costs of charging and installation are low. The charging cost can be effectively reduced by making full use of the cheap electric consuming period. The most important advantage of this charging method is that it can realize the battery depth charge, thereby improving the charging and discharging efficiency of the battery and extending the battery life. The long charging time can greatly meet the requirements of vehicles that operate in the daytime and rest at night. As a professional manufacturer of electric car chargers, AG Electrical can provide you with a wide range of car chargers and charging plugs, such as the latest type 2 EV charging socket, EV charging cable type 2 and so on.

Fast Charging of EV Charging System

Fast charging is also known as ground charging. As the name implies, it is a charging method that can fully charge the vehicle quickly. The battery can be directly charged by a large current through a non-on-board charger, so that the battery can be charged to about 80% of the power in a short time, therefore, it is also called emergency charging. The current and voltage of GB fast charging mode are generally 80-200 A and 200-750 V. This kind of charging normally uses DC power supply mode. The ground charger has high power and wide range of output current and voltage.

The charge speed of fast charging is so high that the charging time is close to the time it takes to fill fuel into an internal combustion engine. Pulse fast charge is adopted in this method. The biggest advantage of pulse fast charge is that the charging time is greatly shortened. Moreover, it can increase the battery capacity appropriately and improve the startup performance. However, the current of pulse charging is large, and the installation requirements and costs of charging equipment are very high. Meanwhile, since the current and voltage of fast charging is very high, it will also bring great impacts on the battery in a short time, which is easy to cause the active substance of the battery to fall off and make battery become heated. Therefore, there are higher requirements for battery protection and heat dissipation, and not every car model can use fast charge. No matter how perfect the battery is, long-term fast charging will eventually affect the life of the battery.