I would guess it will jump to a grounded conductor inside the charging cabinet or the grounded case of the cabinet itself before it goes to the car that is sitting on rubber tires

Lightning can strike cars directly, and when it does, the couple inches of air and rubber between the car and the ground mean nothing (the tires sometimes explode, which looks neat when caught on video, if nothing else). Remember, the lightning travelled for thousands of metres through the air before reaching the car - another 4” of “insulator” isn’t going to stop it.

Now, if lightning were to strike the charging cabinet itself, I imagine that most of the surge current would go through the cabinet into the ground. If any were to make it to the chassis of the car through the charger, it would probably (“educated” guess) be at a low enough potential to not jump through the tires, but rather off some other low-hanging metal components. If it’s below the ~dozens of kV needed for that, charge will build up for a good fraction of a second, and dissipate over the next few seconds (or close to instantly if the ground wires don’t melt in the charging cable).

Really, the level of isolation in either the current case or proposed case doesn’t do that much to help with lightning strikes. They’re both designed to mitigate shock hazards measured in the hundreds to single-digit-thousands of volts. When the arc distance is measured in kilometres rather than centimetres, a 3” galvanic isolation transformer isn’t going to save you.

The solution for lighting is the same as it always has been: ideally, don’t get struck by lightning; otherwise, install a lightning rod nearby.

There was a cases of a Tesla getting struck by lightning while supercharging. It killed the electronics in the car and the charger, but otherwise nothing particular happened.

The lightning discharge won't create a potential difference across the battery terminals, it'll flow around the battery through the car's body into the ground.

> Nope. The lightning current won't go through the battery, it'll just melt the conductors in the charging cable.

This strikes me as a direct consequence of galvanic isolation provided by isolation link stage in prevailing architectures, something the article proposes to eliminate.

I'm struggling to imagine how a magnitude of surge energy sufficient to "melt the conductors in the charging cable" while directly coupled to a charger and without galvanic isolation leaves an EV's battery unscathed in such an event. What exactly isolates/protects the battery again?

Lightning is still electricity. It technically follows _all_ the paths, but most of the current will go through the low-resistance paths.

For the battery to explode, the lightning will need to cause a potential difference across its terminals. But why would it? The paths _around_ the battery cells (through the battery and car body) have much less resistance.

The conductors in the charging cable can melt, because the path from the car, though the cable, and through the EVSE body to the ground is another relatively low-resistance path.