Charging Electric Cars

Power, energy and time

An interactive lesson with 6 steps, about 5 minutes: you predict, drag and solve, with instant feedback on every answer. It runs in your browser and needs JavaScript.

What you’ll learn

• Charging time ≈ energy (kWh) ÷ power (kW).
• Rapid charging needs high power, hence high currents and heavy connections.
• Many cars charging at once matter for the grid: smart charging spreads the load.

Steps

1. Filling up with electrons
2. Overnight
3. A coffee-break charge
4. Everyone at six o’clock
5. Cost of a full charge
6. Losses in the cable