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Electric car makers hindered by long charging times
The good news is that charging times will decrease to as little as 10 minutes as technology improves. The bad news? That won’t happen for several years.

An oft-cited reason people don’t buy electric cars is “range anxiety” — if batteries struggle to take you as far as gas and charging stations are limited in number, the thinking goes, who would want one?

But there is another obstacle: charging time trauma. Compared with a five-minute pit stop at your local gas station, charging an electric vehicle is a glacially slow experience. Modern electric cars still often need an entire night to recharge at home, and even at a commercial fast charging station, a fill-up can take an hour or more.

“Driving long distances and stopping for one to two hours is not something I would want to do,” said Mark McNabb, the chief executive of Electrify America, a Volkswagen subsidiary that is installing charging stations across the United States as part of the German automaker’s settlement for cheating on diesel emissions tests.

The good news? Charging times will eventually shrink to little more than 10 minutes. The bad news: That won’t be for several years.

Still, there is help is on the way. Manufacturers are installing more charging points across the country, and technological improvements are already allowing for charging times to improve.

Two levels of charging are typically available in residential settings. Level 1 is a standard AC outlet that provides between 1 and 1.5 kilowatts of electricity. It takes a Level 1 charger about 30 hours to fully charge the electric version of the Ford Focus, which has a range of 185 kilometres. Level 2 uses a professionally installed charger connected to a 240-volt AC outlet — the kind used by some large appliances — and delivers between 7 and 9 kilowatts, lowering the charge time to about 5.5 hours.

Some commercial charging locations offer more advanced technology, employing so-called fast chargers. These offer about 50 kilowatts of DC power, enabling the same Ford Focus to reach 145 kilometres of range in 30 minutes (battery chemistry causes charging to go more slowly after a battery is 80-per-cent full). The electric carmaker Tesla has a proprietary “supercharger” for its vehicles that provides 120 kilowatts of power, adding 483 kilometres of range in 75 minutes.

Toyota introducing in-car tech that can read drivers’ facial expressions
The automaker will be at the Tokyo Motor Show later this month, where it will unveil experimental technologies aimed at improving safety and anticipating drivers’ desires.

TOKYO—Driving sleepy? Hungry? Toyota will be highlighting an array of experimental technologies aimed at improving safety and anticipating drivers’ desires at the Tokyo Motor Show later this month.

Toyota Motor Corp. manager Makoto Okabe told reporters Monday that the use of artificial intelligence means cars may get to know drivers as human beings by analyzing their facial expressions, driving habits and social media use.

Such a vehicle might adjust drivers’ seats to calm them when they’re feeling anxious or jiggle them to make them more alert when they seem sleepy. It might also suggest a stop at a noodle joint along the way.

Despite concerns over potential intrusions into privacy, many automakers will be displaying prototypes of such technologies at the auto show, which opens to the public on Oct. 28.

Toyota’s Concept-i series of models, on display at the show, is based on the Japanese word for “love,” or “ai,” which sounds like “I” in English. The idea is that your car will become your friend, “more than a machine,” Okabe said.

Using cameras to analyze images of drivers’ faces, a car can deduce if they are feeling happy or irritated. It might expand and contract a seat to simulate the rhythm of deep breathing to calm a driver who seems jittery, he said.

Since people tend to make certain movements such as yawning or scratching their cheeks when they’re tired, a vehicle could detect if a driver is getting drowsy. It might wiggle the seat or trigger an herbal scent known to be invigorating, Okabe explained.

Toyota said it plans to have some of the technology ready for road tests by 2020.

Japanese rival Honda Motor Co. is also showing several concept models with similar technologies. The NeuV can determine stress levels from drivers’ facial expressions and voice tones, learning their lifestyles and preferences. So it might make suggestions, “realizing natural communication between driver and mobility,” a company release said.

Despite such futuristic talk, the most vehicles around the world now can do with automated technology so far is using sensors to change lanes or back safely into parking lots or stopping before crashing.

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