Originally Posted By: Shannow
4MW would make for a pretty nifty plug and play eh ?
Lots of fireworks with a dirty contact or a short to earth.
And how would you hold such massive amounts of power at a station when market penetration gets significant? There's mention of a Tesla OTR truck in another thread, to charge something that size (which will have a significantly larger storage medium, be it battery or otherwise) will require massive amounts of localized storage or you'll have small nuclear reactors with direct connection ability that you roll up to
It's one thing when this stuff is in the novelty/elitist phase that it sits at now. When we start replacing gasoline and diesel vehicles in sufficient volume, the electricity volume required will increase dramatically, which will in turn require massive upgrades in transmission infrastructure and methods of storing significant quantities of it; vast amounts of rapid discharge storage arrays for timely "fuelling".
Think of your present OTR truck stop and the amount of diesel they go through in a 24hr period, then think of supplying an electrical equivalent to that and provide sufficiently rapid "fuelling". It isn't just the connector and transmission interface that's problematic there to enable that, it is also the required infrastructure to support it.
The cost, assuming it is all doable, of all this will also be incredible. It's one thing plopping "SuperCharger" stations strategically, leveraging existing infrastructure for a small market. It is quite another when this stuff becomes mainstream.