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?

Definitely not. In my experience, getting government involved in manufacturing this kind of equipment is a recipe for disaster. You seem to have lots of faith in your government so why not trust them to choose good quality chargers in the first place.

Mike.

Flyback said:

This will prevent imports of huge amounts of dodgy electric car chargers by dodgy “middle men”.

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Dodgy middle men eh?

A bit like the company which you were proposing to set up, as detailed in this thread:
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/wish-to-set-up-an-electronics-company-in-uk-how.154384/

JimB

This makes no sense. You could apply this logic to ALL infrastructure and products and you're only focusing on something so overly specific like electric car chargers.

You seem to forget there's something called "regulations" and "certification". You know...what we use right now for all those other things that this logic could apply to.

Pommie said:

Definitely not. In my experience, getting government involved in manufacturing this kind of equipment is a recipe for disaster. You seem to have lots of faith in your government so why not trust them to choose good quality chargers in the first place.

Mike.

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I have to agree strongly with Mike. They would create yet another government agency to oversee. This would add more bloat to an already bloated government making for yet more waste. This is before we even get into the bureaucracy nightmare.

dknguyen said:

This makes no sense. You could apply this logic to ALL infrastructure and products and you're only focusing on something so overly specific like electric car chargers.

You seem to forget there's something called "regulations" and "certification". You know...what we use right now for all those other things that this logic could apply to.

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I am personally pushing for more regulation of electric toothbrushes! I am also an advocate of saving people from themselves.

Ron

Reloadron said:

I have to agree strongly with Mike. They would create yet another government agency to oversee. This would add more bloat to an already bloated government making for yet more waste. This is before we even get into the bureaucracy nightmare.


I am personally pushing for more regulation of electric toothbrushes! I am also an advocate of saving people from themselves.

Ron

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Electric toothbrushes should be banned and people should be forced to learn how to brush properly with a manual brush. Too much gum recession.

Flyback said:

Are we all in agreement that the above must happen?

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Seems everyone is in agreement except you!

Mike.

It would be nice if chargers were compatible with all cars; there is some standardization but two competing systems I believe.

have you seen Russia's latest electric car? Designed by the government and looks like a Trabant with a body kit. No - leave the government to (try to) run the country and leave the electronics to us smart creatives

JonSea said:

It would be nice if chargers were compatible with all cars; there is some standardization but two competing systems I believe.

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So how's that Beta / VHS thing working out? Oh wait, never mind.

Ron

the purpose of a government is to protect the nation's borders, and protect the rights of it's citizens. anything beyond this is usurpation and should be avoided. the problem with setting up government R&D efforts is that the researchers know that when the problem is solved, the funding goes away (the Manhattan Project was different, that was a wartime project, and the scientists wanted to disband the project after the war was over).

unclejed613 said:

the purpose of a government is to protect the nation's borders, and protect the rights of it's citizens. anything beyond this is usurpation and should be avoided. the problem with setting up government R&D efforts is that the researchers know that when the problem is solved, the funding goes away (the Manhattan Project was different, that was a wartime project, and the scientists wanted to disband the project after the war was over).

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That was all very simpleminded.

Lots of R&D is needed to protect out boarders from the R&D work other nations are developing to penetrate our boarders.

When you say "government", do you limit that to federal government or include state, local, school districts?

When you say "rights of citicens", What "rights" do you include?

How was the Manhattan project different? The research didn't stop when the war ended and most of the wartime researchers stayed on - only a few left. I had a professor who worked in New Mexico in 1943 - 1968. He returned to his hometown to take care of his mother and became a professor at the local school. He would ave told you that the Manhattan project was no different than any other government funded research.

Thanks
The key point is that 3kw EV chargers are relatively big and bulky and there will be loads of scrap if its not done properly….not just by individual outfits acting alone and failing to share secrets on longlife design etc. They are simple enough to be open to a government initiative…obviously the work would be done by engineers in engineering companies….but all would be payed bonus’s depending on each others work’s success’s..to encourage teamwork.

Governements in the West are currently very much involved in running industry…but secretly as follows…

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.

Germany is the model country......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.

When the government fails to get involved, the following can happen…

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.

High power kit like EV chargers is exceptionally vulnerable to dodgy cheap design practices…

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.

Here is some of the shortcuts that get taken with high power kit…

I reverse engineered a 3kw charger some years ago and found the power fet isolated gate drives were not giving enough voltage to get into the lower rds(on) area…such slack and el-cheapo practices would be weeded out by the government monitored process. All individual companys who were taking part in this government initiative would have the info distributed to them so that all could benefit from each others knowledge….teamwork. All would be payed bonus’s if any member got good results, to encourage team effort...encourage helping each other along.

And ultimately, there is teamwork between western co’s anyway, because engineers at Ford have mates at Vauxhall..and will secretly share their secrets.

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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.

Me thinks your tinfoil hat is a bit too tight and restricting blood flow to your brain....

JonSea said:

Me thinks your tinfoil hat is a bit too tight and restricting blood flow to your brain....

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Yes, and he's got an entirely imaginary idea of what government run schemes work like - usually vastly worse than privately run schemes.

So, since you've been unable to get LED street lighting done, you're moving on to EV chargers?

gophert said:

The research didn't stop when the war ended and most of the wartime researchers stayed on - only a few left.

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actually, the project was pretty much shut down after the war. the few remaining scientists stayed behind to brainstorm ideas that might be pursued in the future. it wasn't until 1946 that the government decided to reactivate the project in order to carry out the Crossroads test. if you study the actual structure of the project after 1946, you will see that a lot of contractors (such as EG&G, Raytheon, Dow Chemical, Sandia Corp, etc...) carried on most of the research. you will find this is a common theme in much of the government funded projects in the USA. there have been some projects where the government was the entity doing the research, and those never seem to work well at all.

Flyback said:

such slack and el-cheapo practices would be weeded out by the government monitored process

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not so... many government funded programs foster "slack and el-cheapo practices". for instance, during testing of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, tests on the prototype (more specifically tests of the armor protection) were carried out with RPG rounds that were known to be ineffective against any armored personnel carrier. the reason was the Defense Department insisted that the prototype must pass all of the tests, so the testing parameters were tweaked to insure the Bradley passed.

Flyback said:

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

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this is due to a lack of emphasis on science and engineering in the educational system. nations should not rely on imported personnel to develop their technology base. what would happen if a country had brought in engineers from another country to build their infrastructure, and then that other country goes to war against the first country? the engineers would be recalled by their country, and not only are they no longer maintaining the infrastructure of country #1, but when they get home, they provide details of country #1's infrastructure to country#2's military planners. when i grew up, there was an emphasis on science and engineering in our educational system. this is because we were engaged in the Cold War, and the educational system was influenced by the government to encourage students to pursue technological skills.