There are 3,200 CHAdeMO stations in North America (as of April 2019) and 25,300 worldwide. It’s the standard for Japanese cars, which includes the popular Nissan Leaf. I see more CHAdeMOs than CCS stations along the I-5 corridor in the PacNW, and it’s pretty easy to find multiple options. Japanese cars tend to be more popular on the West Coast, so I’m sure CHAdeMOs are more common here than elsewhere in the U.S.
As of August, there were actually more CHAdeMO than CCS stations in the U.S., although there were more CCS connectors. Meanwhile, Tesla has a lot fewer stations, but roughly double the connectors.
You’re right that CSS is more likely to become the standard. Unfortunately, it’s going to take some time. Too many groups have too much invested in their favorite. Given all the challenges getting people to buy into EVs, multiple standards is a pain in the ass we didn’t need.
Thanks for the correction. Makes sense that there would be a bunch of CHAdeMO stations for the Leaf.
It is a bit of a mess, but I guess it’ll resolve in time. Tesla’s proprietary standard is already going away in Europe and will likely disappear in NA in several years (for new cars).
For the moment, I predict that if you limit yourself to >100 kW connectors, Tesla looks even more dominant.
I must thank everyone for the quality of posts in this thread. Good sharing of information. Unsurprising, really, as this is the SDMB.
On some other areas of the internet (shudder), we would already have multiple comments about how electric vehicles give off radiation, or how battery components come from an open pit mine (complete with photo of open pit copper mine that has nothing to do with batteries).
I’d heard about that a while back–it’s a little ethically dubious, though not exactly the worst thing in the world. In any case, I should probably have put “officially” in my statement above.
They already have the infrastructure and sufficient electrical capacity to run a few level 3 chargers.
Many already have restaurants and make more money at that than they do actually selling fuel.
E charging provides another revenue stream for station operators.
One other note is that no one’s really mentioned the hit ICE vehicles also take during very cold temps between warming the car up, defrosting the windows, and all the other factors. The 40% hit to range applies to them as well.
I’m going to have to ask you for a cite on that, I’m not sure your figure is correct under real-world conditions. Having driven my ICE many thousands of miles in sub-zero *and *high temperatures with heating and air-con on all the time I don’t think my range has been affected by 40% or anywhere near it. In fact I know it hasn’t because the first fuel stop I use on the continent is over 400 miles from Calais and a 40% drop would mean I get nowhere near it. In reality I always have well over 100 mile range when I get there and that doesn’t change noticeably winter or summer.
Yeah, I was going to challenge that stat, too. I drive an ICE and a plug-in hybrid, and around freezing (which is typical winter weather where I live and drive) there is a distinct hit to the battery range, but no noticeable hit to the ICE range. Back when I used to meticulously track mileage per gallon, I did notice that we got slightly better mileage in the summer than in the winter, but it was on the order of 29 mpg vs. 31 mpg, whereas you are suggesting more like 19 mpg vs. 31 mpg.
My garage is partially heated (only fairly solid walls, no meaningful insulation between the house and the attached garage, so it rarely drops below freezing in the garage) and I never bother to “warm up” the car. I don’t think you need to do that with modern cars until it gets WAY colder than my climate.
An ICE will take a hit in the winter when they add ethanol to the mix, but nothing like 40%.
I think there is one issue to tackle with EV that will catapult them into the mainstream. Range Anxiety. Solve range anxiety (at a comparable to ICE cost) and you’ve got it.
I figure a 500 mile range is the tipping point where a lot of people will conclude that it has ‘enough’ range for anything they realistically do. Not where it is good enough for 98% of their driving, but ALL their driving. Also not all of everyone’s driving, just all of their own personal driving.
It requires a couple of infrastructure developments, though. Widespread, robust, home charging is first. Obviously this is an individual decision, but the power companies need the ability to support this use case. Anyone who uses their car a lot will need the capacity for a full 500 mile charge overnight, even if that’s only 6-7 hours.
Second is destination charging. You go to a hotel, drive 450 miles to get there, you (and a lot of other guests) need to have charging at the hotel that will fill your car by the time you leave in the morning. Not “we have 20 chargers, pick any one that’s not being used” you need to be guaranteed a charger for your stay. A hotel with 100 rooms needs something on the order of 100 maxed out level 2 charging stations. That’s a lot of power, a couple of megawatts, on top of what the hotel itself needs, power that is all going to be used at the same time during every holiday weekend.
For me to have range anxiety I’d need the ability to drive 1,200 miles in 16 hours which is about how long it takes with Family breaks with an ICE. Back when I didn’t have a family it was 14 hours. Having good charging at night for hotels would certainly help most people but I want to refuel and get back on the road so I need to get two or three full refills in one hour. 20 minutes to add 400 miles of range anywhere in the country would solve people issues with EVs more than hotel charging since they could just fill up over breakfast on their way out.
For those of you questioning the 40% figure I should have said Up to 40%. I live in an area where -30 is common and -40C without windchill is nothing unusual during the winter months. Anecdotally, I could easily achieve 600km on a tank of gas in my 07 Legacy Wagon. That dropped to 400 during the peak cold months with the same type of driving. That does not include the money I spent on electricity for the block heater. During my deployments to Inuvik we would leave our diesel trucks running during the cold snaps as they would not start otherwise. For those of you living in milder climes, obviously you won’t take anywhere near that kind of a hit, but you won’t in an EV either and that was the point I was trying to make.
Hotels exist to provide services, they will provide those services to their clients in the form of overnight charging stations.
Supercharging stations can still be built, and used during unusual situations like yours. The technology exists, but I see it as a fill in service rather than a typical way to charge an EV.
Because while there is some benefit to people who stop at appropriate sized hotel. I think giant casino or resort hotels will have trouble building the infrastructure to charge 5 or 6 hundred cars over night and small bed and breakfast hotels will also find it hard to afford to 6 charging stations.
On the other hand if refills become super fast then as people stagger out of or in to the hotel the charging will be staggered requiring a lower number of stations. Also people will be able to top up for a variety of reason besides getting a hotel room.
We can do some napkin math to see how tenable this is. This page says that hotels spend $2196 per year on energy per room per year. It’s possible that some of this includes gas costs but it’s likely to be mostly electricity. Assuming $0.10/kWh (which is probably high–industrial users are likely to pay less than this), that means about 22,000 kWh per year, or 60 kWh per day. Which, if we assume one car per room, means 60 kWh per car per night.
60 kWh is a pretty good number for a mostly full charge on an EV. It’s about that on a Bolt, Model 3 SR, or Leaf. Somewhat less than a Model S or eTron, but people aren’t going to be doing full charges every night, and there will also be cars with <60 kWh batteries.
So at worst, that means a rough doubling of electrical infrastructure for a given hotel. But that’s incredibly pessimistic, because most energy use is during the day whereas cars charge at night. So the EV charging is mostly going to just use existing infrastructure more efficiently.
It’s also pessimistic with the raw numbers, because there’s almost certainly less than one car per room on average (out of town people) and if anyone is staying multiple nights, they probably aren’t needing a full charge every single night.
I don’t see any showstoppers here even with nearly 100% EV penetration. Hotels might have to beef up their infrastructure by 25-50%, say, but that’s not a huge deal. It’s not like it’s 10x the load or anything silly.
A bit of a side question: Is there any agreed upon etiquette among EV owners regarding how long is appropriate to leave a car parked at a charging station after it’s fully charged? Where I work there are more EV drivers than charging stations, so the EV drivers all have sort of an unwritten rule that thou shalt move one’s car ASAP when it’s finished charging, so someone else can have a chance to charge. But does it work like that elsewhere?
A few scenarios:
In the case of hotels, at least as long as a full charge takes a couple of hours, people are going to want to check in to the hotel, plug in their car, and go to bed. Except that will leave the charger tied up for 8 hours or so, even if it only takes say half that time to actually charge the car. Now in this case it might be unlikely someone will show up at 2 am needing to charge their car, but it’s possible, and the charger is being blocked unnecessarily by another guest when they need it.
From my home, a trip to San Francisco and back is just barely within the range of something like a Tesla Model 3. But if I owned one what I’d more likely do is to drive to a BART station, plug in to a charging station there, take BART into the city (I hate driving and parking in big cities), enjoy the city for the day, and return maybe 8 hours later. That’s not too different from the hotel scenario, but during the day. I’m not sure if EV owners would consider it rude to tie up a charger for that long. Is it preferable in this sort of situation to park in a regular space, then move to the charging station upon returning?
Admittedly this is really extreme. The airport has a bunch of EV charging stations in the long term parking lot. I’m almost certain they wouldn’t allow people to plug in before leaving for their trip and leave the car at the charging station the entire time. I assume what you’re supposed to do there is to park in a normal spot, and after returning from your trip move to the charging station if you need to top up your battery to make it home. I admit I would find that a little inconvenient since I usually want to get home as quickly as possible after a long trip, though as charging becomes faster it will become less of an issue.
This hotel debate is based on slow charging batteries. I think it’s highly likely that Li batteries are not the future. so a parking lot full of chargers is probably not going to be the norm.
Superchargers have added idle fees (and rather high ones at that), so there’s a strong disincentive to leaving your car plugged in. Though the fees only kick in if the station is above a certain occupancy.
For our work chargers, the usage is so high that we have a valet service to move cars in and out. It’s pretty ridiculous, honestly, since installing a bunch more stations has to cost less than the valet’s salary for a couple of years. Or just get some extra-long charge cables and move the cables instead of the cars.
I’d say it’s generally rude to tie up a slot when there’s a reasonable expectation that someone else might use it. That’s pretty context-dependent, though.
I believe that J1772 chargers don’t generally have locks, so under some circumstances, someone could take your now-idle charger and use it on their car in an adjacent space. If there are few chargers but plenty of empty packing spaces, I’d say that workaround makes idleness substantially less bad.
At least according to wiki a single super charger bay costs $270k even for a 6 bed bed and breakfast that’s $1.5mm that is the infrastructure investment I was referring to. With a 12 year estimated life that will increase operating costs by $10k/month. While I’m sure costs will come down over time increasing the cost of a room by $50/night seems like a big ask not counting electricity. On the other hand if that cost was spread over 5 drivers per hour 16 hours per day your under a dollar per user so again the stations make more sense.
I have an idea for how hotels and perhaps other places could charge more cars than they have charging stations without bothering their guests to move their cars at inconvenient times. It involves using the Summon feature that Tesla recently introduced. A modified Summon, that is.
When a Tesla (or other EV with the Summon feature)-driving guest reaches the hotel, they park in certain designated spots or perhaps turn the car over to a hotel employee with the job title of EV-attendant. This would not be total control, though. Just the ability to move the car between a charging station and another parking area and back using the Summon feature. The car can be locked during the entire time. Also the EV-attendant would need to get the notification when the car is recharged.
So the EV-attendant just has to unplug cars that are fully charged, tell them to return to the parking space, Summon the next car, and plug that one in. Since the cars have Summon, the charging stations and other parking area don’t even need to be very close to the hotel front door. They could be at the far end of the parking lot.
They could call this feature EValet just to be cute. I better patent this idea or Elon is going to steal it.