How do you account for people who can’t do home charging; maybe an apartment complex can add many chargers but what about city dwellers? An area with row homes/browstones that were turned into three apartments; that building might have four EVs yet they can’t all park in front of their property. Some people in popular areas may have to park *blocks *from their home currently; that doesn’t change because of what’s under the hood.
Even if a hotel is at max capacity, with everyone driving an EV, not everyone will get in at the same time so they won’t all be charging at the same time, nor as it’s pointed out will everyone need a charge every night. Also remember, overnight rates are less expensive in areas where they have time-metered rates because there’s less people using power; most offices are closed & most people are asleep. Yes, we’ll need more total electricity but not necessarily more peak electricity.
No locks on J1772. CCS has an active latch, but can be released at the charging unit. I lifted this idea from some site selling these and made my own, so I have these dry erase placards I can leave that on my dash that have various messages. Like, “Feel free to unplug me at 80%” and gives my phone number if someone needs me to move.
I rarely charge at public places long enough to get anywhere near full so at least so far, I’ve always cleared out well in advance of being rude.
A bed and breakfast doesn’t need a Supercharger. L2 chargers are fine for overnight charging, and should be around $1000 per bay.
And really, it almost makes more sense to just install a bunch of outlets and let customers bring their own charge cables. That’s only a couple hundred bucks of materials per port. RV parks already manage to do this on the cheap (and are sometimes used by EV drivers when nothing else is handy).
At Seatac airport parking they have spots you can plug in (110 volts) for as long as you’re there. No additional charge. It takes me 30 hours to fully charge after my 62 mile trip to airport. There is a supercharger at the cell phone lot for those in need
Maybe super chargers are expensive, but level 1 and level 2 charging cables aren’t. I think our level 1 cable was about $100. A quick Google turns up this level 2 charging cable for $300.
It also costs something to have an electrician wire a new outlet, but that’s not a major infrastructure cost.
Yeah, that’s not good enough for a “gas station” replacement, but it’s plenty for a hotel, where guests can leave the car plugged in over night.
I get really tired of hearing how a charger “costs $270,000” so therefore it is impossible for a hotel to put one in. NOBODY needs a level 3 supercharger for an overnight stay at a hotel.
I recently stayed in Vancouver at a downtown hotel - they had several 110V plugs in the underground parking and directed me to one. Then when I left, they waived the parking fee because I was driving an EV. Guess which hotel I am going back to, and which one I direct anyone with an EV to?
Fair enough, but actually the figures seem to suggest that even those in milder climates will see 40% drops in real-world EV range (where the test was done at a fairly modest -7) and those are exactly the sort of conditions where I have driven ICE’s and seen nothing approaching that.
Heck worst case scenario, last January I drove back through Austria and Germany in -10, heavy snow, crawling at 20 mph in many places and snow chains on for 80 miles. A normal 4.5 hour journey to Stuttgart took 11 hours and my average MPG was 50 when normally it would be 60.
No universal etiquette, no. In Québec it’s now illegal to park a car in a designated charging spot if it’s not charging (and also, of course, if it’s not pluggable at all). Most of the level 2 and level 3 stations charge by the minute but the billing continues when you’re finished charging, which motivates people to remove their cars (especially on level 3).
Depending on where the charger is located, it may or may not be physically possible to unplug the charger from another car and connect it to your own. But it does happen, and as a Volt owner (with a petrol engine as backup) I couldn’t really fault somebody for unplugging my car if they really needed it. (As long as I’m not paying for their charge, and they’re not physically blocking my car.)
The electric vehicle owners’ association offers a little card you can leave on your dashboard with your first name and phone number and an paperclip indicating the time you expect to be finished charging. It’s an imperfect solution, as not everyone likes having their name and phone number viewable in public.
This is another hurdle that hopefully infrastructure expansion will help with.
As it stands, I never have to wait to refuel my car. To have a potential half-hour wait is a deal-breaker for me and many others. I’d need confidence that I can pull up and refuel immediately at a place of my choosing.
#1 is clearly an issue. It could be that big cities will be bastions of ICE infrastructure, or go headlong into widespread quick charging, or valet charging/parking services. It’s likely going to be a slower and different implementation than in the suburbs, given the high cost of infrastructure changes.
#2 I like your point about not everyone needing a full charge every night. It may turn out to be a wash with day/night electric usage, which would make it easier to implement.
Based on what we’ve talked about in this thread I don’t think a L2 charger will be an acceptable substitute for people who have range anxiety. The original scenario was someone with a 500 mile range who showed up to a hotel 90% drained and was able to charge over night. It looks like best performance of a L2 charger is 70 miles per hour so they would get a full charge in 7 hours but there would be no sharing and they would need one electrical port per space. But I think people are going to still have range anxiety if they drive for 6 hours and then stop for 7 hours. This would only work for people who are driving to a destination for their vacation but don’t drive (less than 50 miles) once they get to their destination.
To beat range anxiety you’re going to need to be able to either have virtually infinite miles and the ability to recharge them reasonably (anything more than 560 miles makes level 2 impractical) or they need to be able to add on miles quickly. In my mind either of those require super charger speeds.
Isn’t that just the sort of thing the OP was initially complaining about? “Here’s a hypothetical edge case where EVs might not be quite adequate, therefore something something.” These “people who have range anxiety” of which you speak should just be viewed as irrelevant. As EVs make inroads into the market serving those portions of the populace who are already well-served by current offerings and the current level of infrastructure development, that infrastructure will continue to be expanded and EVs will continue to improve in performance until a huge portion of the public will find EVs entirely sufficient to their needs. There will remain a few niches where EVs legitimately won’t have the required performance, and a few larger niches where EVs would be entirely adequate but stubborn people will insist they do not. There is no reason to attempt to address the concerns of the latter.
In your example, while a few people at a hotel might have need for supercharger-level speeds, that doesn’t mean that hotels are going to have to plan for a supercharger bay for every room. L2 charging through most of their lot and a couple of faster stations (or even just proximity to third-party fast chargers) is likely to be perfectly adequate.
Also, Tesla normally doesn’t sell its superchargers, so if it thinks there is a need for some at a hotel, it can pay for them and the installation costs. Or it can set up a bank of them in a spot near multiple hotels.
Plus as said above, only Tesla EVs can use the superchargers, so if I operated a hotel, I’d spend my money on chargers that can be used by various types of EVs.
Inexpensive chargers located at home or on every block
Yes, the above describes every single ICE vehicle. If you’re argument is that EV are only useful for niche users then I guess I should move on from this thread. On the other hand if you are arguing that EV could receive widespread acceptance and be more than a niche short commute vehicle then if should have basic car functions.
I think range anxiety is a large reason that people are not buying the current crop of EVs. Most people drive for vacations in the US and most people don’t like staying at a hotel within 8 hours of their house. So at a minimum to be useful for 25% of americans EVs need to be able to go 600 (8 x 70 with a 40 mile buffer) miles on a charge during normal vacation times like Christmas (when its cold), or they need to be able to fill up along the way in a reasonable time, or they need to be so cheap that the hassel of renting a car just for vacations is acceptable to people as a normal cost of owning an EV.
I’m not saying that people who either fly if its more than 3 hours or never leave their city are wrong to own EVs but I think that that is the niche use case and its why that only 2% of people find that use case a good fit for them. To expand that to 20% of the population EVs do need to be better then they are. If the range anxiety problem is solved and the median car price stays they same I would expect EVs to capture 80% of the market in 10 years.
I was using super charger generically. You’re right very few business like that would install a proprietary hardware and hope it meets their customers needs but I doubt Tesla is charging a huge markup on the superchargers and so the generic one is probably a very similar cost to buy.
I also agree the a supercharger station in the middle of a bunch of hotels is much more likely which is exactly what I was proposing.
You quoted a cost of $270,000 for a Tesla supercharger, which does sound like a ridiculous amount. Here is a stand-alone charger for $40,800. Even if you figure a few thousand more for installation costs, it’s substantially less than the Tesla charger, and it can charge two cars at the same time. There are other, less expensive chargers at the same site.
There are a lot of people who live in rural areas, far from any gas station. It’s not practical to insist they drive 10-20 miles just to fill up their tank. Therefore, ICE vehicles are too niche.