Car charger

Some companies have been distributing these simple car power adapters - takes 12v in from car cigarette lighter and puts out 5v at whatever current. As they're often freely available at trade fairs, I've ended up with few.

Currently I have a specific one at hand, which appears to be distributed by a norwegian company, and promises 5v @ 700mA. And of course it, after some time of use, doesn't work anymore. Not too surprising, really, I expect these things to be really cheaply made.

After opening it up, I found pretty much what I expected. Simple buck converter, using a chip labeled AD85063. Well, at least this one is kinda honest - this chip is rated max 700mA. There appears to be quite a few of similar adapters that promise something like 2 amps, using this same chip.

The bad part; there appears to be no real protection on the chip, and no real current limit anywhere on the circuit. USB data pins are shorted, so devices can pull high currents, damaging the chip in process. And, apparently, based on few posts I've found, the failure mode of this chip isn't very pretty - it'll short the input to the output after which there's plenty of +12v coming in the USB. This can happen with buck converter if chopper transistor shorts out, which seems to be all too common failure mode. Hope the protections in phone are up to their job.

Now, I have few of similar converters around here, looking almost same but this one is with 2 ports and higher output current rating (total over 3 amps). Now I'm kinda curious to open it and see what's inside...

Certificate of Authentic Windows

Some time, around mid '00s I was assigned to handle licensing of Windows operating system for embedded devices manufactured by a company, as the person who previously handled this had left the company. The paperwork wasn't too bad (which was kinda surprising) and licensing conditions weren't too bad to read either - maybe around 10-16 pages (I don't remember exactly), and not written in too bad legalese. In other words, much easier read than common EULAs (End User License Agreement) even then - and I'd guess EULAs have gotten worse over time.

Obviously I read it through like the proverbial devil reads equally proverbial bible. There were few things that needed a bit more attention and clarifications but in general it was all well. All conditions were met so we could just install the OS, attach Certificate of Authenticity (CoA) to device and it's done. It was also very explicitly said in that agreement that 'CoA' means the license number sticker. Essentially same small holographic sticker with 25-character license code just about every windows computer has.
  
CoA is supposed to be the final authority on whether computer has valid windows license or not. As a home user one might not care too much, but I've heard stories where BSA (Business Software Alliance, who are essentially hired goons of major software publishers. Legal goons, although I am tempted to say that they are just barely on that side of the line.) has refused to accept these stickers as proof that business' Windows installation is legal - that is, Authentic. Despite Microsoft's own licensing terms saying exactly opposite here.

Granted, I have only dealt with embedded licensing, and only relatively briefly, so things might have changed before I took that job and likely also after I left. License types might be different too. But situation where license provided says that CoA is just that - Certificate of Authenticity - and hired goons can just say that it's not - well, I can't but feel a bit uncomfortable here. Although my neck is at the moment quite safely out from that noose.

PHEV vs EV

 
As previously mentioned, I got PHEV Mitsubishi Outlander last year. It has 12kWh battery and best I've gotten out of it is around 40 km, 35 being more typical, even in optimal weather. So let's say 40km to be optimistic, which puts its consumption to around 0.3 kWh/km range. And this is in summer - in winter the figure is much worse, down to 20km (0.6 kWh/km!) with heating on, or even full zero km when it's cold enough (around -25 degrees C, if I remember correctly - at that point it just doesn't use the battery any more.)  Effectively, to get anywhere with electric power, it has to be charged every night.

Not great figures, those. Not at all. So I was somewhat doubtful with full EVs. As it turns out, if you do things right, the figures are completely different.

I got Hyundai Kona Electric just few weeks ago now, and so far I've put around 800km to it (including one 300km one-day business trip, with no charging on the way). At the moment it's still early spring, so temperature hovers around 0 degrees C now, so best figure I've gotten out of this car is about 380km. The car has 64kWh battery, so this works out to about 0.16 kWh/km figure. Almost half of the Outlander's figure! And this is with heating and everything running.

And just to clarify this, right now (temperature being around 0 C) the reported range of each car, with full battery, is as follows:

	Range	Consumption
Outlander, heating on	25 km	0.480 kWh/km
Outlander, heating off	38 km	0.315 kWh/km
Kona, heating on	380 km	0.168 kWh/km
Kona, heating off	400 km	0.160 kWh/km

Aerodynamics certainly has some effect on these figures, although I can't say how big the effect is. Weigh shouldn't make that much difference, as they're near enough (around 1700kg for Kona vs 1800kg, if I remember right - battery in Kona is heavy.)  4-wheel drive of Outlander might have some effect too.

I guess the most surprising part with Kona is that the heating has so little effect to range. It apparently has system (heat pump?) that can use the waste heat from power electronics to heat the cabin, which is pretty nice in cold climates. How well it works when it's really cold is a question that has to wait until next winter though.

The primary difference, as far as I can see, is that Outlander is designed as gasoline-powered car first, and PHEV part is almost an afterthought, and thus there are too many compromises in design, each nibbling a bit away from the efficiency of the whole system, and end result is disappointingly mediocre. It's not horribly bad, but when comparing these two, the inefficiency is obvious. I can't help but wonder how the system would work if it were designed as electric first, but just with small battery and small gasoline engine put in some corner to function purely as a generator when needed.
Not to say that Kona is designed as electric first (as there are gasoline powered Konas available), but I am certain that requirements of EV have played significant role in design.

There's also battery life I'm kinda concerned about. With my current driving, I charge Kona once a week, or once in two weeks. Hyundai gives pretty amazing battery warranty of 8 years (or 200 000 km), and unless something goes horribly wrong, so I don't see issues there. Except possibly long wait for battery replacement, if things are as I fear they are.
Outlander, however, needs to be charged daily. As battery life typically is primarily set by charge cycles, this daily charging requirements is kinda bothering me. And of course Mitsubishi doesn't have as generous warranty as Hyundai either.

Now, a question many might ask: How does the Kona EV work as a car?

In short, I like it. Long range makes it perfectly fine for normal weekday driving, and since I find that I only need to charge it on weekends, longer charging period isn't really an issue either. My main gripe is that it's small. There's no way we could go for a weekend trip as whole family, dogs and all, without having some serious space issues (roof rack excluded; I don't like them, but I might have to reconsider). But if I go to business trip alone, or with just one or two persons with me, it would easily carry me, although longer recharge times between 300-400km of driving will change pacing of such trips in future.

So for now, when packing heavy, Outlander is the car of choice, simply due to its size. But I will be seriously considering switching immediately when similarly-sized all-electric vehicles become available - at reasonable price, of course.