I’ve never seen one but I bet it becomes a thing
It wouldn’t be that hard especially if the station is already providing fuel. You could just add a “EV” ribbon in addition to the “diesel” ribbon sometimes shown below the name of the company. Since “diesel” doesn’t take up the whole space, you could even put it next to “diesel” if the place offers all three types of fuel.
Now, if a place only offers an EV charger, that might require another sign or at least another category.
Most of the charging stations are not associated with a gas station
EV chargers are also different in that you do not need significant infrastructure to install a couple. It costs millions of dollars to open up a gas station and a few tens of thousands to install 3 charging spaces in your strip mall.
At an exit, there might not be a single defined EV charging business, there may be 3 or 4 chargers, in different places, and EV charging isn’t their raison d’etre, it’s a convenience for their customers.
Fundamentally EV charging is a different business model than gas stations, it isn’t optimized to support people who only charge at a station. Most EV owners have a place they usually charge, so on the go charging is a convenience not a necessity, and the market reflects that.
I’ve seen them here in Colorado. I definitely wouldn’t rely on them to tell me where is a good place to charge. Most chargers have no signs at all, be it service guide signs or advertising.
I can’t recall where I’ve seen them, so I can’t bring up a street view picture. If you want to see what they look like, there are illustrations on page 10 of this pdf. It looks like a gas pump with the letters “EV” on it.
Interesting, thanks. Tesla Superchargers do seem to be shaped at least vaguely like a gas pump, but most of the others, from what I’ve seen, aren’t.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get an EV, but I try to keep up with some of the news about them. I guess it is true that most people who are driving them long-distance will use an app of some kind to locate a charging location. I did idly wonder if, as chargers became more common, they would start to get highway signage.
There are apps that will help you locate gas stations, too, but I’ve never had to use one because they’re so well marked on the interstates.
You don’t need a special app. It’s native to the Tesla navigation system.
Also true in every other EV I’ve been in. The car tells you where the charging stations are (and with Telsa, if stalls are available)
Electrify America “pumps” look vaguely like gas pumps. Their app shows directions and available chargers. Chargepoint, Blink, and others do the same. Google maps has - show charging stations
- as an optoin. If you’re traveling, you can filter to show fast chargers only.
That’s not something I’ve paid that much attention to, but I am pretty sure I’ve seen signs with a pictogram that looks sort of like a gas pump, but with an obvious power cord instead of a pump handle, and maybe the letters “EV” on it like @echoreply described. But like others said, I’m not sure if that’s really all that necessary, since every EV will tell you where the chargers are in the nav system.
I had a Tesla and a Chevy Bolt, and yeah, both would navigate you to chargers as needed. The Tesla charging experience was flawless and I never found I needed any more info than what the car provided (except maybe in cases where there were several options along a route and I wanted to read restaurant reviews to help me pick), but the Bolt experience wasn’t quite as standalone.
I used the Plugshare app with the Bolt, because while the car would tell you where the chargers were, unlike the Tesla, the Bolt had no real time data about availability. Plugshare is kind of the Yelp of charging stops. If someone had added a note, say 20 minutes ago, saying that the charging was slow or that some of the chargers were inop, well, that saved a ton of hassle.
My experience is a little dated now my lease for the Bolt ended a couple of years ago, but at least back then, you absolutely were going to run into broken chargers as part of the experience. Vandalism, poor maintenance and flukey payments systems were all very common experiences.
Interesting customer complaint:
I was just coming to post this. Certainly someone is in a “does not give a fuck” mode.
When Lee made his reservation—the receipts for which were seen and confirmed by The Drive —he paid for the “Skip the Pump and Save Time” option, which allows customers to bring their rental cars back without refilling the gas tank. So even if he was driving a car that took gasoline, he shouldn’t have been charged an additional refueling fee. OK—mistakes happen, and perhaps the person working at the counter accidentally checked the wrong box. However, when Lee submitted a billing question, Hertz doubled down on the refuel charge, despite the Tesla Model 3 not having a fuel tank to refill, and Lee having already paid for the “Skip the Pump” option.
Hertz, don’t it?
This idiotic error (and the “fuck off” attitude about fixing it) is consistent with Hertz’s recent practice of having customers arrested for stealing their cars, despite said customers being in possession of a valid rental agreement, or even having verifiably turned the car in:
I rented a car from Hertz a couple of years ago, and despite turning it in on time, they claimed I was a couple of days late and charged me accordingly. It was a major pain in the ass to get that fixed. There are some immensely stupid people running that company, and I don’t ever plan to rent from them again.
Well, they made up for that error with the way they handled my rental. I was in Florida for my son’s wedding. Flew in on a Saturday, beach wedding Sunday, flight home Sunday night.
I returned the car at the airport, completing paperwork and dropping papers/keys into their box. Eventually saw they’d billed my credit card for my deposit only. I kept looking month after month, but someone screwed up and my rental was free.
Every device I’ve had for years has had a USB-C port on it, but none until yesterday ever came with a pure USB-C cable. It’s always USB-C to USB-A. And even that one new device didn’t come with an actual USB-C charger. So I’ve yet to see a single one of those.
In my experience, most people do still only have USB-C to USB-A cords, as they have USB-A chargers from back when devices still included chargers in the box.
2024 Hyundai Ionics have USB-A ports front and back. Simple adapters allow Lightning and USB-C ports to charge and run things like Apple and Android Maps on the display. Not a big deal.