How does public-available charging of electric vehicles work?

Factual Questions
1

Not meant to be a pro/con argument on the value of an EV, but more on the question of how those new charging stations work . . .

Three weeks ago was on a business trip through Las Vegas, NV where my rental car company had a dozen EVs ready to rent to me, but due to where I was going (:alien: ), I had to stick with gas power for right then & there–I might try it next time though. This weekend I did start to notice that a few charging stations have sprouted up 'round these parts of New Mexico. This got me wondering . . . They appear to be credit card-based, which generated a few questions:

  • What are the units of billing? By kilowatt? By time?
  • How long does a typical ‘full charge’ take (lots of assumptions here, but assume you’re down to 5% battery).
  • How much, on average (again, a lot of assumptions here) does it cost for a ‘full charge’?
  • Are all of these new connectors standardized bewteen Tesla, Chevy, Ford, Subaru, etc.?
  • Are there any reliable apps to help me find charging stations?
  • I seem to notice there’s no clear signage from the road offering “$5 per Kilowatt” similar to how gas/diesel is advertised per gallon. . . Is that a problem of sticker shock “at the pump”?

ETA: Is there a time limit on how long you can park at one of these stations while you charge?

Tripler
Unfortunately, Hertz does not yet offer 'Mr. Fusion" power on its rental fleet.

2

I don’t have an EV, but I can answer this one because I looked it up a while ago.

There are two types of billing, energy based (by the kilowatt-hour) and time based. I believe most are energy based.

Tesla chargers are energy based, but they will start charging you for time connected once your vehicle is fully charged. This is to discourage you from just leaving your car on the charger any longer than necessary so that someone else who needs to charge their vehicle can use it instead.

3

There’s also a difference between a standard charge and “full charge”: It slows down when you start getting close to full, so usually, you only take it up to 80ish%. You can go higher, if you know you’re about to go on a long road trip or the like, but that last 20% will take a lot longer.

4

IANA expert, but …

AIUI that part is a bad assumption.

In an ICE, people tend to fill it to completely full then drive it until it’s as empty as their comfort level permits (in my case about 1 pint of gasoline remaining :wink: ), then fill it to full again.

That is NOT the way to properly operate an EV. It charges slowly when nearly full and wears the battery excessively when nearly empty. The smart way to operate is fewer partial little charges with the battery level kept in the 20%-90% full range. Which is easy if you can plug it in at work or home.

That sounds pretty awful for a road trip, but the darn things charge pretty fast in the mid-charge range which ends up saving time over all.

5

how many of the various charging companies require you to set up an acct or even worse, downloading an app & setting up an acct before using vs. swiping/tapping your CC.

I only download apps that are useful to me. There are about 47 million different parking meter apps; it seems each city uses a different one. I’m not gonna download an app because I’m in your city once.

6

There are a limited number of national networks:

And a new big one being developed:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a46728807/ionna-ev-charging-network-announced/

7

Thanks guys–this helps!

I’ve got a couple more business trips coming up soon, so I think I might give EVs a try!

Tripler
Thank Og for rentals–if I don’t like it, I’m not stuck with it. . .

8

And what’s the deal with the wireless charging roads? I see there’s a street in Detroit that charges EVs, and they’re thinking about building a stretch of highway in Kansas.

9

Which one depends on which state/province the charger is in. I understand there are some juristictions that forbid non-public utilities from charging for power by the kWh. So in those places, unless the charging network has jumped through the hoops to become a utility, they have to charge by time. I don’t know which states/provinces still have this restriction.

The way to go is to plan the trip ahead of time in terms of which chargers you will use. And then only charge enough at any one stop to get you to the next charger. So a long trip turns into 2-3 hour drives punctutated by 20-25 minute breaks. One advantage is that you arrive much more refreshed than typically is the case with ICE vehicles, where you drive straight through for 8 or more hours, with only short 5 minute-ish breaks every 4 hours.

The Tesla app will do the planning for you. I don’t know about other apps.

10

They’re a terrible idea. You end up with something that doesn’t work very well as a charger, or as a road, and costs much more than both combined.

11

Sadly, part of how public charging works is the behavior component of other people. I’m only aware of one public charging spot in my usual haunts, and it’s often occupied by big diesel pickups with rightist advertising on them. It looks like this is their idea of a joke.

I think an electric car is in my future, but it’ll depend on how the particulars shake out over the next few years. I anticipate my usage would be charging at home unless unplanned circumstances forced me to do otherwise.

12

Sorry, this can get a bit complicated, but only because there are new terms and stuff:

  • Two kinds of public chargers
    • Level 2 is a slow charger
      • that provides a similar charging rate to what people would get charging at home by plugging into a 220 volt outlet
      • Expect many hours to completely fill a battery from empty
      • Sometimes level 2 chargers are free
      • Sometimes level 2 chargers will have a cost associated with them
        • The cost might be just for the electricity
        • The cost might also including a parking fee, or only cover the parking fee and the electricity is “free”
      • Level 2 chargers might be associated with a network (Chargepoint, Blink, etc.) that require an app to activiate
      • Level 2 chargers might be a “dumb” plug that will provide power to any car plugged into them
      • Level 2 plugs can be two shapes, J1772 or NACS (Tesla)
        • Converting between the two standards requires an adapter
        • The adapter is “dumb” in that it doesn’t contain electronics, just changes the shape of the plug
        • For now, most public level 2 charging is J1772
        • Unless it is a Tesla destination charger (mostly found at hotels), then it is NACS
    • Level 3 are fast chargers
      • High voltage DC, that require additional infrastructure
      • Depending on the car and charger, can go from 20%-80% battery in 15-20 minutes or 200 miles in 10 minutes
      • Almost always are going to cost money, though “free charging” incentives are available on some cars
      • Level 3 chargers are always going to be associated with a network
        • Some networks will require an app to start charging and setup payment
        • Some networks may simply accept a credit card at that charger, but almost always at a premium over downloading the app and creating an account
      • Level 3 chargers come in various shapes
        • CHADemO is an old standard, that will go away, but there are still chargers with this connector
        • CCS1 is the most common non-NACS fast charger, and is a J1772 plug with two high voltage DC pins below it
        • NACS is the Tesla plug, and the new standard that North American cars will be using going forward
      • Which chargers will work with any particular car is something the user will have to know
  • The fee for charging is also variable
    • In most places it is charged per kWh, so based on how much electricity used
    • In some states only utilities can sell by the kWh, so the fee is based on time connected to the charger
    • Many places have an additional time based fee for staying connected to a busy charger after charging finishes, which Tesla calls an “idle fee”
  • Finding chargers
    • The best website and app to find chargers is probably PlugShare, because it allows searching by charger type and network, and both connects directly to some of the charging networks, and contains crowd sourced information
      • PlugShare usually provides information about the charging fee
      • PlugShare might also provide local information (“chargers on north side of lot”, for example)
    • Google maps also has chargers
    • In car navigation will usually also find chargers, at least on Tesla, with information about cost, speed, and availability
  • The future of NACS
    • In North America, this should get much simpler over the next few years, because everyone is standardizing on NACS
    • Existing CCS1/J1772 cars may be required to carry an adapter to connect to a NACS plug
    • Older Teslas will need a $200-400 hardware upgrade to use non-Tesla fast NACS chargers
13

Yeah, that was my thought on hearing about it. The Detroit road seems like a proof of concept, as well as a fun marketing gimmick in the heart of Motor City. The Kansas highway seemed like a massive waste of money, considering how much wear and tear roads get.

14

Echoreply has pretty much summed it up. I suppose the mandate for electric utilities disallowed others to resell kWh because they did not want some subdivision developer or whatever to set up their own electrical grid - quality unknown - and resell the power at a premium to their local homeowners, or other such schemes. Apparently the rules changed recently to allow resale by the kWh for car chargers.

My home charger (Tesla Wall Charger) is on a 50A circuit breaker, but code says only countinuously run at 80% of top rating, so 40A. With 40A/240V I get about 58km/hr added to the battery. Recommendation is as much as possible to keep the battery between 20% and 80% or 90%. So I have it set to automatically start charging at 1AM if plugged in - when I’m no longer using the dryer, hot water, oven, etc., AC demand is less, since the house only has 100A service. At 58k/hr (34mi/hr) I’ll be full by morning.

For similar (L2) charging, there are assorted locations that provide it either for a fee or free - I stayed at a few hotels with a complimentary L2 charger or two, but it’s a toss-up whether they’re already taken nowadays.

Plugshare.com lists the plug-ins available in North America. Supercharge.info is a list of Tesla chargers.

For L3 (fast) charging, I don’t think I’ve every charged more than half an hour. I’ve run across chargers that will add - when the battery is around 20% - up to 1000mi/hr, but it gradually slows down to about 200mi/hr or less as you approach 90%. I have had a few instances, especially in the Toronto area, where the chargers are full during a busy time and I’ve waited 10 or 15 minutes for a spot. I’ve rented Teslas from Hertz a few times and had minimal hassles. The car’s computer will tell you where the nearest Tesla fast chargers are, and even how much charge will be left in the battery when you get there.

Some juridictions now make it a ticketable offense to block an EV charger with a non-EV car (not unlike tickets for using handicapped when not qualified).

The portable charger that used to come with a Tesla (now an optional accessory) also has an option to charge from a stadrd 110V/15A circuit (L1), but that will only add about 3mi/5km an hour, so it’s a “limp home” last resort to get to a good charger.

Home charging works out to about 1/10 the equivalent of gasoline (YMMV depending on kWh charges) whereas fast charging seems to work out to 1/2 the price. The real savings is, of course, in typically charging at home unless you’re on a road trip. You start each day with a “full tank” which is a different mentality from a gas car.

I’ve never worried about non-Tesla chargers. I’ve tried ny ChaDemo adapter once. As an older standard, it charges to a max of 50A (350V?) whereas CCS1 is alleged to be able to provide 350A and most Tesla fast chargers are 150A or 250A. CBC Marketplace program did a bit on driving an EV Toronto to Ottawa in winter (yes, your mileage is worse in winter) and how it was difficult to find chargers, they often did not work or did not connect. (And then they took the Telsa to a Tesla charger and “no problem”.) Although why they thought it was a good idea to try to go 420km without charging I don’t know…

Tesla, BTW, you have yor credit card on file with them, and it gets charged when you charge - the car identifies itself to the charger automatically.

Things are just getting started. As OP mentions, there are still plenty of places, especially remote, generally out of range. So many chargers have been added and not maintained. The charger networks are getting more common, and eventually they will likely be as common as gas stations are now. However, unlike gas stations, they can be everywhere with minial support; no big tanks, no attendant, single charger or large bank.

The major problems are obvious - if an apartment building wants to put in a charger curcuit for everyone -first the wiring has to be able to handle that; no guarnatee that all the occupants will respect “please charge at night”. Apartment garages (or worse, outdoor parking) are not wired for that level of power. it becomes expensive to accomodate and not something that can be done piecemmeal beyond 1 charger. There are areas of the city - townhouses, no garages, no parking - where there’s nowhere to put a charger. My house could accomodate one charger, but not two. For two cars, i would have to alternate or run out and move the plug in the middle of the night. (Or, with two Tesla wall chargers, apparently they can be connected so they cooperate and share the total load. )

Like most tech, the future looks better than today.

15

I think you mean kW and not A on those charge rates.

16

How the heck do you figure that?

A road trip is going to be longer in the EV because of longer charge times.
There are tons of gas stations today but less recharge stations, which probably means a further detour off route to refuel, coupled with more refueling stops since you don’t charge to full in an EV, which means more total miles driven. That will change over time but will take years.
If I want to stop for 20 mins every 2 hrs in an ICE, I can but it’s not required. I can also stop for those breaks at more places, a random roadside attraction or scenic overlook that doesn’t have any fueling.

How does the test road built work? I assume it’s a channel in the road where the power is laid? If so, that’s going to be a magnet for potholes as water gets into the channel & then freezes over night. It won’t be the first year or two, but once potholes start forming they’re going to be harder to repair as you don’t want the wireless charging buried under asphalt patches.

If it’s third rail style, I don’t believe standards would allow it along side the travel lane unless it’s mounted on an existing guardrail/Jersey barrier, which also means anytime there’s an accident that section of the road is OOS until repairs can be made because someone just scraped out just a couple feet of powerline.

17

I was going by a video I saw about 5 or 6 years ago. I don’t remember enough details to do a search for it. It was the opinion of the guy who made it. He was driving a Tesla and even back then, they had a good Supercharger network, with chargers every couple hundred miles along Interstates. Also, not all stops would be for 20-25 minutes; some might be for only 15 minutes. Depends on how far it is to the next charger.

18

Pretty clearly the whole idea of arriving fresher is that you have no choice about taking breaks. Which is probably a real thing with many people who, even if they have the choice, won’t. But it is a pretty thin argument. It just tries to make a virtue of a necessity.

The charging road is sci-fi - something I read about as a kid, one idea was to use inductive coupling to cars to keep them charged as they traveled. There is so much wrong with that idea it is a problem to know where to start.

A simple idea is that roads present unused area, that in overcrowded regions might be pressed into dual service, with solar power generated under the surface. More sci-fi level ideas, with so much wrong it is silly.

When it comes to charging, continued use of level 3 at huge power delivery, has to be balanced against battery life.

Here in Oz pretty much all cars and chargers use CCS2 plugs. Even Teslas. The charging station infrastructure isn’t great. We have lots of long distances with very little on the way. So much so that driving between nearly any pair of capital cities is an exercise in planning. I’m very new to the game, so don’t have any first hand experience. I currently tend to charge overnight. The car came with an 11kW 3 phase charge controller, but only with a domestic single phase 10amp tail, limiting delivery to 2.4kW. I ordered a 3 phase 32amp per phase tail. They imported the tails with a Euro style plug. Groan.

Charge stations here vary a lot. The lower the power delivery capacity the cheaper the energy. Some will charge the car cheaper than I can at home. At some point I will have the systems setup at home for charging from excess solar. But working through the various issues of compatibility of the different bits is challenging. Just supporting OCCP is only a first step.

19

While this is true strictly speaking, it may be unnecessary to obsess over it, either. Unlike phones, many people won’t be deep cycling their car batteries every day.

So while regularly going to 100% or dropping below 20% may be worse for battery life, on average, it’s turning out that a lot of people just don’t hold onto their cars long enough for it to make much of a difference.

Now that we have a couple decades of hybrid and almost as much on full battery EVs, we’re finding those batteries (depending on manufacturer) are lasting at least 8 years or more on average and holding onto most of their ability to charge by the end of it. Those figures do get a bit worse by regularly fast DC charging past 80% but not as much as people seem to fear.

20

All true.

I was aiming my comment at @Tripler who seemed to be laser-focused on “drive it til it’s nearly empty.” Which may be appropriate for ICEs and may be necessary in teh wide open western spaces he frequents. Since he was talking about renting one on a trips and driving an EV for the first in an unfamiliar location, I thought it useful to recalibrate his ICE-centric unnoticed assumptions in very clear and simplified language.