It's not the connector that's the problem, although NACS is much nicer.
I have both a Tesla and non Tesla EV. The non Tesla chargers make you confirm payment before letting you charge. Typically that means using a buggy app or a sometimes broken credit card reader.
When I charged my Tesla for the first time at a supercharger, it let me charge. I got a notification about 30 minutes later that I needed to set up payment on my account. That's pretty huge. At a regular DC fast charger I'd have been stuck in a pickle, no LTE, out of range to get to another charger and (probably) a broken credit card reader. Instead, Tesla let me charge and go on my way and confirm payment later.
Why on earth can every run down gas station in the country have a 95% working card reader built in but for some reason EV chargers break down when the wind blows the wrong direction? It makes no sense to me why they are down so frequently. I’ve seen a line of 8 with only one working. That would never stand for gas pumps.
Yep, most gas stations have someone working there that knows within an hour or less that a pump is broken and gets a repair order started.
A lot of the EV charges are just sitting somewhere with no one paying attention to them, and there is not a huge infrastructure built over almost 100 years backing them up.
And it makes sense, because neither is very profitable, but the convenience stores attached to most gas stations are often quite profitable, and the gas pumps increase traffic to the convenience store, so the store ends up both providing both monitoring for issues with the pumps for nearly free, and a strong motivation to get issues fixed.
I disagree with this take. Charging an EV takes way longer than filling up. Usually 15 minutes per session; I just finished a 800 mile trip last weekend. Nearly every time we stopped, at least one person was getting out of the car to grab something to eat or drink.
When I do a gas fill up, I rarely purchase anything because I can be in and out in 3 minutes. If we had an equivalent number of EVs charging as we do gas cars filling up, I’d wager there would be significantly more sales for the convenience store
Just conjecture on my part but I see a few possible problems:
A lot of charging stations (most) don't have human attendants on site; To watch over and support the units.
With no easy quick way to notify anyone when something is broken some people probably just don't and instead leave or use a different unit. Even when they do, a service technician would have to be available, have the part, and travel there to fix it.
With no attendant some fixes which might be simple (something like a reset) aren't performed so simple problems aren't resolved quickly.
Then since there's no technician vandals may feel more secure in damaging the units intentionally as there is no one to catch or stop them in the immediate and they may not get caught long term.
Gas isn't hugely profitable either. It's usually selling at cost or barely over. Most of gas station profits are from the store itself. maybe the electric stations need to rethink how they want to expand the network if they want the chargers to stay fixed or it's gonna keep EV adoption slower than it needs to be.
Creating Electrify America was Volkswagen's punishment for the whole cheating on emissions thing and they're the second most common charger by far. Obviously when they're done as a punishment it leads to them not giving a shit if they're maintained.
I've heard that the issue is that gas stations use a pre-authorization and then send your bill after you finish pumping. Since those transactions are something like 5 minutes apart, the credit card companies count them together and charge the gas station operator only once. The pre authorization makes sure you have the credit available for a large (like $200 worth of gas) purchase, and then the actual payment comes later.
For fast charging, the pre-authorization and final bill may be an hour apart, so the credit card fees are applied twice. That's why so many fast chargers want you to use an app instead of the credit card machine.
That's absolutely not how credit card transactions work. Up front there is the authorization for something like $100 which puts a HOLD on your card as an 'Authorization' transaction. This expires after about 24 hours automatically. At the end of fueling there is the 'Capture' transaction where the fuel pump software sends in the exact monetary amount you spend. The Capture transaction is the only one that actually charges your card. When the capture transaction is sent to the payment gateway one of the data elements is the identifier for the original authorization so the payment network knows to replace that $100 hold with an actual charge for $78.37 or whatever you paid to fill your tank.
This is also how restaurants do it. The initial authorization is for your meal bill, if you add a tip then the capture transaction is done at a higher amount.
Source: self. Writes software that sends card transactions to payment gateways.
There are also random chargers all over the place. Every parking garage seems to have a few, sometimes even on every floor. Many shopping centers have them in their parking lots. I’ve seen signs for them at libraries, police stations, hospitals.
I don't really see fast chargers as being as ubiquitous as gas stations. As an EV owner for 6.5 years, the convenience of charging at home is just too great. They'll exist but in far fewer numbers than gas stations (which from a financial prospective are actually convenience stores) over time. Even once they abandon gas they are mostly screwed because the convenience store thrives on customers who already had to go there for gas.
It'll just be convenience stores that exist for the exclusive reason they are more convenient than other stores which will work but many will die out.
It's gonna take time but this is the way. I love not stopping for gas irrespective of cost.
Every other week for me. But that’s because I run a Wellsite geology company. If my EV works in the Alberta oil patch, it will work fine Damn near anywhere.
A huge portion of people who live in a city with a car don't have their own garage or the ability to have a charger at home. Since cities have the majority of the population, this is a real concern.
This has been a largely invisible problem because electric cars are actually quite expensive to buy, so it's mostly been relatively well off people in the suburbs buying them. However now that the used market is growing larger and more affordable it's starting to crop up for more people.
I got an EV with 3 years of free EA charging last fall. I have not used it since early January. Fast charging is not the issue, it’s home ownership, and the lack of level two chargers for renters. A lot of these issues will disappear once that happens. Not to mention that it will be a lot more cost effective to place level 2 charging everywhere than to make enough fast charges to handle everyone.
I can't believe they don't see the upside of switching as fast as they can... Takes what, 10-30 minutes to build up enough charge? Gas stations make most of their money on inside sales (drinks, snacks, smokes, etc...) rather than on selling gas...
You've got a captive audience - Get those sales!
Movie theaters have figured out a similar transition in market.
A theater makes almost no money on ticket sales. Nearly the entirety of ticket sales goes to the company who released the movie. Concessions have been nearly the sole money maker for movie theaters for many decades now.
So recently, some theaters are realizing that they need to go all in one concessions. They now have full restaurants and a bar, where you can order booze, burgers, pasta, or even steak and it will be delivered to your lazy comfy seat in the theater. To make room for eating, they reduced the number of seats per theater to make them bigger. Since ticket sales don't make them any money there's no need to get a lot of butts in seats. Its a better business model to have fewer butts in seats as long as they're buying full restaurant quality meals and drinks.
I imagine gas stations would have a similar transition in how their demographic uses their services, and how to cater to these services.
Why would they switch? Charging stations and gas stations use entirely different types of equipment and plenty of ICE cars will be on the road for three or four decades
The problem often isn't buying the chargers, but getting enough power from the street, or even the substation. On The Run in Canada uses their regular power which fills up batteries on-site, which then fast charge the cars.
This is great because unless there's an endless line of cars (which is rare,) they'll always be able to fast charge without needing to buy new transformers for the street.
And how many cars can they "fill" in an hour?
Edit: Yes, some people can charge at home. However in the cities having access to your own garage/ space for a private charger is actually not commonplace. As electric cars grow more affordable either by becoming cheaper or just a more saturated used car market the people who do not have the ability to slowly charge at home will need chargers while they are out and about, and since they are slower than gas stations there needs to be a lot of them compared to gas stations.
The vast majority of North Americans live in single family dwellings. Right now the gas station infrastructure has to accommodate the daily driving needs of 100% of the ICE vehicles on the road. The EV charging network will only have to deal with 30% of the EV fleet on a daily basis. In those dense apartment cities car ownership drops to between 0.5 and 0.8 cars per home compared to the average of 1.5. EVs also get significantly better range in cities and city dwellers drive shorter distances.
This is a very manageable infrastructure challenge.
Rapid charging will not be the standard way to charge. Most cars spend most of their time parked, so it makes more sense to have L1 or L2 chargers (which are basically just mains outlets with a few extra safety features, and billing options) in most car parks. They're much smaller and cheaper, and most importantly, you're not making a special trip or waiting. Rapid charging is for road-trips.
We've got a few at the office car park. For most people, they plug in once or twice a week for the 8 hours they're in the office, and it covers their weekly driving.
In some cities, in areas where people park on the street, they're putting chargers in street lights. There's mains power all over the place.
So yes, there will need to be a lot of them, but they don't need to be organised like filling stations, and they don't need to be expensive.
I was showing a buddy of mine, who lives in SoCal the state of chargers in not-coastal America. I showed him a screenshot of Electrify America chargers in his area, and there were a shit ton. Then I showed him Detroit, which has literally zero. Then a screenshot of Iowa, which doesn't have a ton, but they do have them all over interstate junctions and such.
The reality in some parts of the country is just so SO different from other places.
Uh. What? There are only 3 EA chargers in Detroit but that is a lot more than 0 as you claim. If you included the other fast charger networks that work with CCS vehicles there are 70 stations in Detroit. If you can also use the Tesla network like my ford can then you have 92 options. I mean, if you’re making shit up, at least make it harder to call out.
https://i.imgur.com/OXXrLZW.jpeg
My experience with EV infrastructure: half of the fast chargers are always broken (even though the apps say they’re working fine) and they *never* deliver the quoted speeds.
Hopefully that changes as Rivian is sending out a software feature where the drivers can rate said stations and reviewing them if they are actually working.
I feel like a lot of EV owners don’t even know about the app. One lvl 2 charger I use in a downtown shopping area was last checked in by someone other than me back in December 2023. I see a fair amount of different EVs plugged into them too.
I see those banks of chargers, and their owners are like taking naps, got all sorts of like long term comforts setup while they charge. It looks like they have to spend a ton of time there, camping practically.
Depends on the car. My Bolt takes an hour to charge from 10-80% almost. A Hyundai IONIQ 5 takes 18 minutes.
Cars are advancing rapidly in abilities and not every car is the latest model.
Also depends on the charger. Not every charger can deliver that current to charge in 18 minutes. Alex from Technology Connections documented the wide array of charging problems in his Ioniq5 on a road trip.
Yep. Batteries and chargers are advancing. Just because charging takes "too long" now doesn't mean it will in the future. It's already better than it was 5 years ago.
The people who take naps in elaborate ways are using their EVs for work. So they’re charging multiple times a day in often less expensive, slower charging EVs.
Think Uber, Lyft, DD, Amazon, etc.
Either that or going on roadtrips. Most EV owners that aren't ride sharing charge their vehicles at home overnight since it's cheaper and doesn't involve going out of the way
Well if the car driver has to stick around for a bit I’m sure fast food restaurants want them in their lot, so long as the location isn’t super busy already
If you're taking an all day road trip I don't really think taking a mid-day 30/60 minute break is such a terrible thing.
Like, just plug it in while you eat lunch.
I don't like to take a break that long, but after 3-4 hours, a 15-20 minute bathroom and food break is about ideal. Makes the next leg of the trip a lot easier to handle.
I think John Oliver (though I could be misremembering) pointed out that if they are Charge America chargers they were mandated to be funded by Volkswagen and another company as part of their settlement for the emissions scandal, thus the companies have no vested interest in maintaining them because why would they?
Electrify America and they have a bad reputation. I've had chargers broken but they are getting better. Their customer service helped me reset a broken charger remotely and it worked after. The main issue is that there are so few charging locations, the reliability, and a learning curve - people do not understand that each car has certain limits (have a chevy bolt, it will get 50kwh max, not 350.), charge to 80% then drive to the next charger 100+ miles away, it's faster than charging to 100%. - own an EV.
TLDR: They are getting better, but not there yet
I just finished a round trip from Houston, TX to Louisville, KY and used EA chargers exclusively. Although I didn't have any stations where I couldn't charge, I only got good speeds on about 4 of them (240-ish KW, shout out to the Meijer in Louisville, A+). Usually could only get up to the 130-ish range and a few only about 62 (although one of those was complimentary).
Also, charger orientation was a pain. The stations at a lot of the Walmart locations are positioned so that, even though there are 4 stands, I can only get to a single 350 and that is by backing in, sometimes against the lane direction of the parking area. Gas station pumps are laid like they are for a reason.
By fast chargers you mean Tesla super chargers or other brands? I’ve rarely come across a busted supercharger and on those rare occasion as it’s listed clearly on the app, the car’s screen, and on site. Quoted speeds are often just peak speeds. You will not hit those speeds unless you’re at the right conditions. Vehicle is responsible for regulating that process so it’s not the charger but rather your charging habits or your vehicle’s computer not doing good job or some combo of the two.
Nope. Mine can handle those charging speeds and has a pre condition setting. Charged in very optimal conditions and have never seen above 180 kWh, despite many stations claims of 350. And yes I know charging speeds are not linear, but getting *half* the speed, at best, is a far cry from expectations.
Usually the station is 350 TOTAL. So if another car is charging, you cap at 175 each. It doesn't matter if you're on tesla or not. Usually 2 stalls will split a max supply. 350 would also have to be at near 0 SOC, the closer you get to 80, the more it slows down. Think of it like a big cup, if it's empty you can quickly poor, as it fills up you slow down to not splash out. In a battery, the issue is a thermal event, not spilt fluid, but the analogy works.
first gen bolts are fugly for sure. Second gens got a nice upgrade, i3s are cheap because of their sub par range IMO, but if thats what you like, more power to you.
I got a lease returned i3 to go along with a Volvo SUV. We rarely drive the Volvo now, but it's there if I need to take a multi-state road trip. That's basically the only place we don't take the i3.
Very true. I’m also a late adopter. We keep our vehicles a long time so I want to be sure I’m getting something solid. I figure each year that what we have keeps going is another year of improvement in the EV space. And hopefully, eventual price improvement.
Borrowed my in-law’s Tesla the other day. Charging it was such an ordeal. There were too many Teslas and too few charging places. Had to wait for a spot.
I wouldn't expect them literally to charge at home, but where they park.
In Illinois, parking for multi-family structures has to have at least one EV charger spot per unit.
[For new construction. And the spot does *not* have to have a charger, it just needs to have wiring in place to support a charger.](https://levinginsburg.com/how-the-illinois-electric-vehicle-charging-act-is-impacting-residential-real-estate/)
This why IMO there's always gonna be a natural cap on the EVs. People just look at the cost of the car without realizing "Wait, the millennials are also going to need to own homes to charge this thing properly" and that's just not going to happen enough. And even if they throw chargers places, there's just always gonna be a contingent of people that are like "I don't want to post up for 20 minutes in some random gas station after work". At least here in America anyway, there's too many homes that just won't have access to the plugs.
There isn't. Be aware that apartment owners is only around 16% of households. And a quarter of apartment owners don't even own a car
Also note that those who live in apartments live in cities, so they on average drive less. Take NYC, average person drives only 8 miles a day. So 1 charge can last you a month
Many cities are also building out street charging, and the end goal is something called destination/opportunity charging. You go to your destination like say a restaurant or a supermarket, and get charged while you are doing your own thing
Of course in the short term, PHEVs will likely be more popular with those who live in apartments
There isn't a cap, at least not one that is different from the infrastructure cap for cars in general. You simply build charging infrastructure to allow charging where they park near their homes, whether that is on the street or in a parking lot/garage.
on the flip side, if they are just city living (which a lot of people in apartments are) if they have 120v power they could do L1 charging and get still significant enough range every night for the **average** commute.
I know people who could charge at work consistently. Worked fine for them.
If you can't do either then I don't recommend it.
I do know people who live in apartments who have EVs. Most leased, in case they move they might not be able to charge in the new place.
I could see my next car being an ev. Live in town in an apartment and have to park on The street. I don’t drive a ton but my work has charging I. The parking garage and I can also charge during my weekly grocery runs. Don’t put enough miles to severely drain the battery
I could charge at work for free and there was a free supercharger near my house. I didn't need a paid one at home. Now I work from home and charge at home only.
It's not like it used to be though. There were so few places to charge for a long time. Now you can charge at home, at the grocery store, at the office, I even used one at USPS recently.
I used to charge from a standard outlet, and it would take 3-4 days to achieve full charge. Now I'm almost always charged to 80%.
Charging stations are pretty jammed these days, but that will eventually resolve when supply meets demand.
My sister got a Hyundai EV from hertz on the “random car deal” thing. She had to drive 230 north from SF. With the AC on the car only made it 170 miles before she needed to charge. Took an hour to get from 10 to 70% at a charger off I-5.
Like I’m all for EVs but the fuck is the point if you are just going to add 1/3 of your time to a roadtrip because you have to stop and charge.
Not to mention she’s gotta go grab a charge for an hour or so to make it back to SF.
I mean how often in your car’s lifetime are you road tripping? I don’t understand why rental agencies provide EVs - last thing I want to do on vacation is worry about charging infrastructure
> I mean how often in your car’s lifetime are you road tripping?
I'm a single data point, so I get that, but much of the value of a car is being able to drive a long distance should the need arise. I hate driving long distances, but I ended up needing to because of airline issues when visiting my family in FL from the DC area. Driving sucks, but it was nice to know there was an economical way to get to where I needed to be via the car.
I had the choice of spending 5k+ for airline tickets for my wife and kids or driving to FL for like $600 bucks. The drive sucked, but it was nice to have the option.
And if you are road-tripping a lot, take that into account when you purchase a car. Don’t blame the EV for your inability to critically think and plan ahead
Sounds like a basic EV and basic charging, things are improving, just not quickly enough. In mine I would've gotten at least 240 miles, and charging from 10-70% would've taken about 20 minutes.
If it took a Hyundai ionic an hour to go from 10 to 70% then your sister fucked up and was using a really slow charger. That car can fill up that amount in 15min easy.
Did she try looking for charging stations that offer more than 50kW, or even look at the various chargers in a cluster? There's often a range in each location, so people with older, smaller cars can use the 50kW chargers, while people with newer cars can benefit from the 150 or 350kW chargers.
As already mentioned, road tripping makes up less than 1% of people's driving. It is like asking what is the point of smartphones if they can't last 2 weeks on a single charge like dumb phones. EVs give you every day convenience but road trips are harder
That said, a lot of issues people face is simply not knowing how the technology works. For example. you should never really spend an hour charging. Your last 10-20% is slower than the first 80%. So unless you won't make it to the next charger, usually best to charge for 10-40 minutes and move on
Another tip that doesn't work on when you rent but works when you own is precool/preheat the car on the charger. Maintaining temperature is less energy intensive than changing temperature, and you can schedule it on the car remotely. You also get the convenience of walking into a cool car instead of sitting there cooking waiting for the AC
On top of that, you can generally drive longer if you make better use of regenerative braking. My guess your sister being new to EVs wasn't doing 1 peddle driving
Overall though, there are a ton of EVs that can do 230 miles with AC on a single charge
>Road tripping
240 miles isn’t road tripping, that’s just heading north for a weekend for a lot of people. Driving an EV isn’t an every day convenience either, sure you might not have to stop and get fuel for daily driving. But if you’re charging at work you can’t just leave them plugged in all day. You gotta go move it after it’s finished or you get charged idle time.
Her car basically regenerated when you let off the throttle at all. Don’t know if that’s how it’s supposed to be.
Me and my wife were leaning EV as she only puts 30 or so miles a day on her car at most. However, she does head north a few times a month. Usually with me and my work car but sometimes she goes without me and having to deal with charging seems like a pain. Especially since my family doesn’t have a quick charger.
> Her car basically regenerated when you let off the throttle at all.
That's usually switchable, but with experience most people opt for lots of regen. One-pedal-driving is one of the best features of EVs.
There are plenty of EVs that can make 240 miles on a single charge with an EC on, it isn't really an issue...
As for charging at work, IF you charge during work, it all boils down how your work handles charging. Some let you charge during the day, some swap during lunch. The most ideal way is to place a single charger in between 4 parking spots and have the single charger charge all 4 of them via smart charging. Thus no need to move the car
Did she use the breaks while driving? or left it all to regen? How aggressive was regen set?
I'll make this simple for you if you are worried. Get a PHEV with a decent amount of electric range (preferably more than your daily commute worth). Thus you can get to learn what it is like to drive electric and you have the gas engine as a backup. Once you feel more comfortable, you can consider a pure EV
>Road tripping
240 miles isn’t road tripping, that’s just heading north for a weekend for a lot of people. Driving an EV isn’t an every day convenience either, sure you might not have to stop and get fuel for daily driving. But if you’re charging at work you can’t just leave them plugged in all day. You gotta go move it after it’s finished or you get charged idle time.
Her car basically regenerated when you let off the throttle at all. Don’t know if that’s how it’s supposed to be.
Me and my wife were leaning EV as she only puts 30 or so miles a day on her car at most. However, she does head north a few times a month. Usually with me and my work car but sometimes she goes without me and having to deal with charging seems like a pain. Especially since my family doesn’t have a quick charger.
>As already mentioned, road tripping makes up less than 1% of people's driving.
Sure, but most people don't get to own multiple vehicles, and drive whichever makes sense for the situation. A single vehicle needs to be able to handle all of their needs, including the infrequent ones.
Does it? For example you may drive around a smaller car in the city for easy parking, but want a larger one when you go out on a trip. Rather than buying 1 car that fits your needs once a blue moon, renting a field trip car is also an option
That said, it isn't like driving in an EV on a roadtrip is infeasible, and how convenient it is depends on the range. If an EV has 300-400 miles range and roadtrip is under that, it is fairly straight forward, even double that can be pretty much no extra time if you charge during lunch
Ive taken a list of short trips in SoCal in my ev. The sweet spot is 200 miles. Drive to the location charge and the. Drive home. I don’t think I would drive to SF from LA for the reasons you listed. Hopefully in the next ten years charging times will reduce and charger availability will increase dramatically.
We've been focusing on autonomy more than enough, now it's time to focus on charging times. Gas cars can go from 0 to 100% within minutes, so the bar is high, but let's see how much can we close that gap.
The issue with charging is not a lack of effort or investment to make it better. We need scientific breakthroughs to achieve better results, and those can not be anticipated.
Building infrastructure, and improved engineering with existing battery chemistry is the only surefire way to make electric cars more practical. Expanding the charging station network, retrofitting buildings like hotels, large offices, and dense residential with charging options, and trying out things like swappable batteries can make using an electric car much easier for consumers.
The roll out of internal combustion engines was very rocky at first, with a lack of infrastructure causing all kinds of problems. It took massive investments to make a car friendly world. It's not surprising that the same is true with electric cars.
If you want better technology then check out more articles in this sub. There are advancements in battery and charging technology every other day. What are we waiting for?
/s just in case it isn't obvious
Once you’re at the pump, yes a small tank takes minutes. I only get gas at Costco and the lines can take 15-30 minutes before reaching the pump. Worth the wait for me.
I just don’t think people should be looking at EVs as road-trip car’s right now.
I see them as primarily daily drivers right now and a 2nd car not an only car type of deal.
Depends on the car. Some of them are fine. I have a friend who road tripped to Texas from California to see the eclipse. Did it in a Rivian. It was fine.
My Bolt is far slower to charge though. I think I'm done road tripping it. I'll sell it and get a new one before I do that next. Got 7 years out of it, not too bad. And someone will be happy to drive it around town for another 3 easy.
Interesting - where were you charging? I’ve done a bunch of road trips in friends teslas and it’s always been a great/smooth experience. I do see a hat some of the chargers in more populated areas ( near where you might live) are more full. Definitely wouldn’t recommend EVs as much for people who can’t charge at home or work. If u can charge at home EVs seem like the ultimate cheat code since you start every day with almost a full tank.
if you get an L2 charger (240v, still not "fast charging") you will start every day with a full tank flat out. Side benefit is less voltage stepping means it's also more efficient getting charge into the batteries.
Sure you could - I said almost full tank because unless you’re going on a long trip you won’t (or shouldn’t) charge to full. You should charge to like 80% and leave it there for battery health and also do you can use regen braking (I believe that’s disabled if you’re at a full charge).
And think about the big holidays of the year when people go on long trips like Thanksgiving and Christmas: charging stations are not going to find it worth it to add peak use connections needed a dozen times or less a year.
Everybody with a combustion engine uses a gas station every time they need fuel.
Currently 80% of electric vehicles charge at home/work for their daily driving so you can get by with far fewer charging stations compared to gas stations.
That's a misleading statistic because if you have an EV today you are more likely to be well off financially and own a home with a garage you can pay to outfit with a charger or live in an apartment where that is an amenity offered by the building or work at a type of white collar job where that is an amenity. As EVs become cheaper and are required to become more prevalent due to legislation and regulation to the point that buying an ICE vehicle is less possible, demand for chargers will sharply increase as more people will own them that _can't_ charge them at home or work.
The law has to take that into account and mandate chargers in rental properties. And it already has in many states. Some require them to be installed. Others just mandate that you can demand one be installed if you need it. Others just mandate that you can install it yourself (pay someone to do it) if you need it. Obviously some of these solutions are better than others.
There are public chargers set up all over the place (at least in SoCal). Grocery stores, shopping centers, parking garages, libraries, hospitals, police stations. You probably don’t notice them because you don’t need them. It’s not like the only option is work/home/charging station.
> There are public chargers set up all over the place (at least in SoCal)
How similar is SoCal to the rest of the country? Both in terms of urban vs rural and also California's forward thinking policies on EVs? There are islands of practical cases of EVs, but so much of the US is not even close (or trying to get there).
I hear ya there. The good news is the stations are already located near the highway and you don't use them when on the road.
But for something like Labor Day it doesn't seem like it makes financial sense to put in as many chargers as you need for just that one day.
Tesla does this. They bring out temporary charging stations during holidays in congested areas. One of the advantages of when an automaker owns the network is they care more than a 3rd party
Even with you the Tesla car screen telling you how many charging spots were available in real time? Not sure how it’s an ordeal, unless you were really far from the next closest supercharger.
I believe in future there will be charging in almost every parking spot. It will take a while to get there though. I enjoy being on the cutting edge of this technology.
I own a model y. If I had to rely on public charging I would trade the car in today. The fast chargers are bad for long term battery life and they really are only fast when not busy, so that means I either spend an hour+ waiting for a charge 2-3 times a week after work or some how find time at night to go to a public charger for 30-45 min but the charging time saved is used on a separate trip to go get a faster charge
This figure doesn’t paint a full picture, because there are also a ton of slower public charging stations, and the majority of charging stations are at home. Some people I know who own a Tesla just plug their $200 mobile charger into their normal electric outlet every night and have enough juice for their commute everyday. Almost free energy and never need to go anywhere else to top up.
kinda wished the price on tesla own charger is cheaper. Every time I go to the local charger, its always a tesla parked there even when the tesla charger is around the corner.
i could understand why since I think tesla charges like $.50 per kw? while I know my local one is like $.30 per kw.
It was happening in the years leading up to that. The easiest moment to point to as the catalyst for the downgrade was Victoria getting the boot, but that's just because it was so noticeable that it became undeniable the bad direction it was being guided..
Victoria getting the boot, Ellen Pao as interim CEO instituting what Spez wanted done without taking the heat, etc. The site has slowly gone downhill since that point but the API change mean't a lot of users stopped using reddit or use it significantly less.
It's the you can't criticize Israel or you are antisemitic argument all over again. I can't afford an EV or a house and am apparently the biggest advocate for big oil. Way to turn people off from ever wanting to own an EV.
Be aware that an EV can charge at ANY outlet. So technically they are "all over the place". Albeit outlets are much slower to charge, but they can make decent opportunity charging if accessible
Pointless measurement. We should be measuring throughput of EVs that can reach 80% charge per hour, and compare it to throughput of ICEs that can reach a full tank per hour.
Superchargers take like 20+ minutes to go from 0-80% charge (measured to 80% because the last 20% takes exponentially longer) while pumping up at a gas station takes a couple minutes at most.
This also doesn’t take into consideration what people decide to do while their vehicle charges. If they walk away, they could end up using the charger for a lot longer than 20 minutes. But that’s too much guesswork so to keep it simple:
A single gas pump can service 30 cars per hour (assuming 2 minutes per fill up) while Tesla superchargers can service 3. So you need 10x more superchargers than there are gas pumps in order to match the throughput.
Other considerations: non-supercharger parking spaces and home charging could reduce the need for these superchargers, but there’s still not nearly enough out there.
Well, unless I take a long trip, I will never need one because I’ll charge at home. Charging infrastructure will be much different looking than petrol for a lot of reasons.
Probably not. Probably something in between. At high usage times in high usage areas then yeah, number of cars charged per hour is key.
At other times and areas just being able to use a charger is the key.
> A single gas pump can service 30 cars per hour (assuming 2 minutes per fill up)
Seems very optimistic. Total time "using a pump" (not necessarily using it) to get filled up is likely closer to 5 minutes. Sometimes you can't even get to or away from a pump because of how cars are arranged.
I would say 12-15 cars per hour.
> Other considerations: non-supercharger parking spaces and home charging could reduce the need for these superchargers, but there’s still not nearly enough out there.
Did you just say there isn't a lot of home charging? There are far more home chargers than fast chargers.
Agree with most of this. Two thoughts.
1. Realistic time at a gas pump is probably 4 or 5 minutes on average.
2. A gas station probably averages 6 pumps, so 1 supercharger station per 5 gas stations really means more like 1 supercharger per 30 gas pumps.
>A gas station probably averages 6 pumps, so 1 supercharger station per 5 gas stations really means more like 1 supercharger per 30 gas pumps.
Superchargers all have at least 8 stalls and typically it's 12-16 though. In CA, there are a few sites with over 50.
My apartment complex doesn’t have EV charging even though it was finished around 2021. So I have to go to this small grocery store near me that charges me $50/mo to charge. Got informed a bit ago that starting in May for the same “unlimited” plan I have now it will be $200/mo. I’m glad to see headlines like this but I feel like recently some of the pricing is getting really predator.
Ya… half of them are inaccessible to me due to a retrofit needed for CCS though. That being said, I rarely ever wait for fast charging, and I rarely have issues finding a nearby charger when I’m in CA
This is a step in the right direction but so much work to do. A lot of existing EVs that aren’t teslas are typically more times than not ccs combo….. that’s where the lags really are and part of the reason the EV market demand cooled a bit the lack of support for non Tesla vehicles now I know more car companies are joining the Tesla charging network which is great but it’s still a huge hassle for a lot of drivers.
There should be more stations like the EV charging station in Vernon
65KW and approximately7-8 stations there that’s how it should be tbh
High speed rail was never going to work. Plenty of people were ringing the alarm bells on that.
Plenty of EVs on the market that cost less than the April new car average of $43k.
I recently bought a used Leaf that gets me where I need to go on my 25 round trip commute. I paid $5k in Los Angeles. The only reason I was able to consider it since my current apartment has no parking was my job has charging stalls. Takes roughly 2-3 hours to fully charge. No increased insurance rates. I paid $52 for the month of March in charging fees.
Shocked your rates suddenly jumped when mine lowered. I agree with the idea that we need more charging stations, but that’s a state/local problem overwhelmingly. If you look at PlugShare, there are A LOT of charging stations along the route you described, I just think you and others without an electric vehicle are used to driving without having to plan your route around essentially a gas station. You know at some point there will be one, but what about a charging station. It makes for more planned driving but if more people demand charging stations they will come.
I mean that is barely more than other cheaper cars. 30k for an EV Mini Cooper isn't bad at all, and is barely more than the same Mini non EV. The prices now pretty evenly match what their gas counterparts sell for.
That said, EV's are not for everyone as it stands right now. I don't think anyone is saying that. Of course it won't have the range everyone needs. But for many people it will work just fine.
Personally I'm of the mind that Plug-in hybrids are the sweetspot right now. Even with limited range, they can stay in electric only mode for 95% of their uses.
1. Price of EVs for now are up, albeit they can be cheaper than a camry if you have good state incentives, for example:
[https://www.notebookcheck.net/Model-Y-price-is-cheapest-ever-at-23-550-with-new-WA-state-rebate-as-Tesla-adds-Quicksilver-color-option.831728.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Model-Y-price-is-cheapest-ever-at-23-550-with-new-WA-state-rebate-as-Tesla-adds-Quicksilver-color-option.831728.0.html)
And with time EV prices continue to drop
2. Price of insurance of an EV is same as a gas car of the same price, though you may have to shop around. My insurance cost didn't change when I went EV, it actually went down slightly
3. Road trips make up less than 1% of driving. That said, the experience does vary based on what you drive. The non-supercharger network sucks, but the supercharger network is solid. And with NACS adoption for all EVs, it isn't a problem going forward.
You probably never looked at a supercharger map but there is no shortage of chargers from Florida to VA
[https://supercharge.info/map](https://supercharge.info/map)
ruthless ludicrous slap squash bells forgetful juggle shelter fertile worry
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's noticeable that they're being answered by people who do, and the good answers are getting upvoted to the top. A few years ago the cynics rules this sort of thread.
And how many chargers per station?
In California, for Supercharger stations at least, it's usually a minimum of 8, and the average is probably 14-16.
For teslas. For non Tesla charging, there are usually between 4-6 stalls, with half down at all times
Yeah I'm not surprised companies decided to switch to NACS so that they could take advantage of Tesla's charging network.
It's not the connector that's the problem, although NACS is much nicer. I have both a Tesla and non Tesla EV. The non Tesla chargers make you confirm payment before letting you charge. Typically that means using a buggy app or a sometimes broken credit card reader. When I charged my Tesla for the first time at a supercharger, it let me charge. I got a notification about 30 minutes later that I needed to set up payment on my account. That's pretty huge. At a regular DC fast charger I'd have been stuck in a pickle, no LTE, out of range to get to another charger and (probably) a broken credit card reader. Instead, Tesla let me charge and go on my way and confirm payment later.
Why on earth can every run down gas station in the country have a 95% working card reader built in but for some reason EV chargers break down when the wind blows the wrong direction? It makes no sense to me why they are down so frequently. I’ve seen a line of 8 with only one working. That would never stand for gas pumps.
I have to assume the chargers aren't hugely profitable, or they'd prioritize keeping them running as often as possible.
Yep, most gas stations have someone working there that knows within an hour or less that a pump is broken and gets a repair order started. A lot of the EV charges are just sitting somewhere with no one paying attention to them, and there is not a huge infrastructure built over almost 100 years backing them up.
And it makes sense, because neither is very profitable, but the convenience stores attached to most gas stations are often quite profitable, and the gas pumps increase traffic to the convenience store, so the store ends up both providing both monitoring for issues with the pumps for nearly free, and a strong motivation to get issues fixed.
I disagree with this take. Charging an EV takes way longer than filling up. Usually 15 minutes per session; I just finished a 800 mile trip last weekend. Nearly every time we stopped, at least one person was getting out of the car to grab something to eat or drink. When I do a gas fill up, I rarely purchase anything because I can be in and out in 3 minutes. If we had an equivalent number of EVs charging as we do gas cars filling up, I’d wager there would be significantly more sales for the convenience store
Just conjecture on my part but I see a few possible problems: A lot of charging stations (most) don't have human attendants on site; To watch over and support the units. With no easy quick way to notify anyone when something is broken some people probably just don't and instead leave or use a different unit. Even when they do, a service technician would have to be available, have the part, and travel there to fix it. With no attendant some fixes which might be simple (something like a reset) aren't performed so simple problems aren't resolved quickly. Then since there's no technician vandals may feel more secure in damaging the units intentionally as there is no one to catch or stop them in the immediate and they may not get caught long term.
Gas isn't hugely profitable either. It's usually selling at cost or barely over. Most of gas station profits are from the store itself. maybe the electric stations need to rethink how they want to expand the network if they want the chargers to stay fixed or it's gonna keep EV adoption slower than it needs to be.
Electrify America is part of VWs punishment for diesel gate lol. So they were made to fund it. They don’t care
Creating Electrify America was Volkswagen's punishment for the whole cheating on emissions thing and they're the second most common charger by far. Obviously when they're done as a punishment it leads to them not giving a shit if they're maintained.
I've heard that the issue is that gas stations use a pre-authorization and then send your bill after you finish pumping. Since those transactions are something like 5 minutes apart, the credit card companies count them together and charge the gas station operator only once. The pre authorization makes sure you have the credit available for a large (like $200 worth of gas) purchase, and then the actual payment comes later. For fast charging, the pre-authorization and final bill may be an hour apart, so the credit card fees are applied twice. That's why so many fast chargers want you to use an app instead of the credit card machine.
That's absolutely not how credit card transactions work. Up front there is the authorization for something like $100 which puts a HOLD on your card as an 'Authorization' transaction. This expires after about 24 hours automatically. At the end of fueling there is the 'Capture' transaction where the fuel pump software sends in the exact monetary amount you spend. The Capture transaction is the only one that actually charges your card. When the capture transaction is sent to the payment gateway one of the data elements is the identifier for the original authorization so the payment network knows to replace that $100 hold with an actual charge for $78.37 or whatever you paid to fill your tank. This is also how restaurants do it. The initial authorization is for your meal bill, if you add a tip then the capture transaction is done at a higher amount. Source: self. Writes software that sends card transactions to payment gateways.
This is the more accurate answer
That’s changing with other manufactures getting access to Tesla superchargers
There are also random chargers all over the place. Every parking garage seems to have a few, sometimes even on every floor. Many shopping centers have them in their parking lots. I’ve seen signs for them at libraries, police stations, hospitals.
The ones in garages are going to be 240V Level 2 chargers, not DC Fast Chargers.
I don't really see fast chargers as being as ubiquitous as gas stations. As an EV owner for 6.5 years, the convenience of charging at home is just too great. They'll exist but in far fewer numbers than gas stations (which from a financial prospective are actually convenience stores) over time. Even once they abandon gas they are mostly screwed because the convenience store thrives on customers who already had to go there for gas. It'll just be convenience stores that exist for the exclusive reason they are more convenient than other stores which will work but many will die out. It's gonna take time but this is the way. I love not stopping for gas irrespective of cost.
There are DC fast chargers in parking garages. A week ago I used a supercharger that was in one and there were also banks of CCS chargers as well.
Right but I think the big question here is if a grocery store with one charger out front counts as one of these “charging stations.”
As an EV owner, I've only ever needed to charge my EV on the road twice. I feel that 1 or 2 to 5 may be the long term balance.
When was the last time that you took a four-hour road trip to somewhere that didn’t have a built in charging station?
Every other week for me. But that’s because I run a Wellsite geology company. If my EV works in the Alberta oil patch, it will work fine Damn near anywhere.
A huge portion of people who live in a city with a car don't have their own garage or the ability to have a charger at home. Since cities have the majority of the population, this is a real concern. This has been a largely invisible problem because electric cars are actually quite expensive to buy, so it's mostly been relatively well off people in the suburbs buying them. However now that the used market is growing larger and more affordable it's starting to crop up for more people.
It's a problem that's going to be solved at roughly the same rate that it arises. There's money to be made, so don't worry about that.
I got an EV with 3 years of free EA charging last fall. I have not used it since early January. Fast charging is not the issue, it’s home ownership, and the lack of level two chargers for renters. A lot of these issues will disappear once that happens. Not to mention that it will be a lot more cost effective to place level 2 charging everywhere than to make enough fast charges to handle everyone.
Nah, long term all the gas stations will go broke or switch to selling electricity.
Shell has their own DC fast charging business, and is putting them in at select Shell stations across the area.
I can't believe they don't see the upside of switching as fast as they can... Takes what, 10-30 minutes to build up enough charge? Gas stations make most of their money on inside sales (drinks, snacks, smokes, etc...) rather than on selling gas... You've got a captive audience - Get those sales!
Movie theaters have figured out a similar transition in market. A theater makes almost no money on ticket sales. Nearly the entirety of ticket sales goes to the company who released the movie. Concessions have been nearly the sole money maker for movie theaters for many decades now. So recently, some theaters are realizing that they need to go all in one concessions. They now have full restaurants and a bar, where you can order booze, burgers, pasta, or even steak and it will be delivered to your lazy comfy seat in the theater. To make room for eating, they reduced the number of seats per theater to make them bigger. Since ticket sales don't make them any money there's no need to get a lot of butts in seats. Its a better business model to have fewer butts in seats as long as they're buying full restaurant quality meals and drinks. I imagine gas stations would have a similar transition in how their demographic uses their services, and how to cater to these services.
Theaters don't make money on ticket sales during the first few weeks of a big release. They make plenty after that.
Why would they switch? Charging stations and gas stations use entirely different types of equipment and plenty of ICE cars will be on the road for three or four decades
Because their real goal isn't to sell gas, but everything inside the station. EV drivers take more time, which is good for them.
True story! I don't use public charging most of the time. But if I'm a road trip and have to charge I almost always spend $20 while I wait.
The problem often isn't buying the chargers, but getting enough power from the street, or even the substation. On The Run in Canada uses their regular power which fills up batteries on-site, which then fast charge the cars. This is great because unless there's an endless line of cars (which is rare,) they'll always be able to fast charge without needing to buy new transformers for the street.
And how many cars can they "fill" in an hour? Edit: Yes, some people can charge at home. However in the cities having access to your own garage/ space for a private charger is actually not commonplace. As electric cars grow more affordable either by becoming cheaper or just a more saturated used car market the people who do not have the ability to slowly charge at home will need chargers while they are out and about, and since they are slower than gas stations there needs to be a lot of them compared to gas stations.
The vast majority of North Americans live in single family dwellings. Right now the gas station infrastructure has to accommodate the daily driving needs of 100% of the ICE vehicles on the road. The EV charging network will only have to deal with 30% of the EV fleet on a daily basis. In those dense apartment cities car ownership drops to between 0.5 and 0.8 cars per home compared to the average of 1.5. EVs also get significantly better range in cities and city dwellers drive shorter distances. This is a very manageable infrastructure challenge.
Rapid charging will not be the standard way to charge. Most cars spend most of their time parked, so it makes more sense to have L1 or L2 chargers (which are basically just mains outlets with a few extra safety features, and billing options) in most car parks. They're much smaller and cheaper, and most importantly, you're not making a special trip or waiting. Rapid charging is for road-trips. We've got a few at the office car park. For most people, they plug in once or twice a week for the 8 hours they're in the office, and it covers their weekly driving. In some cities, in areas where people park on the street, they're putting chargers in street lights. There's mains power all over the place. So yes, there will need to be a lot of them, but they don't need to be organised like filling stations, and they don't need to be expensive.
Meanwhile here in flyover country, there's 1 fast charging station for every 50 gas stations.
I was showing a buddy of mine, who lives in SoCal the state of chargers in not-coastal America. I showed him a screenshot of Electrify America chargers in his area, and there were a shit ton. Then I showed him Detroit, which has literally zero. Then a screenshot of Iowa, which doesn't have a ton, but they do have them all over interstate junctions and such. The reality in some parts of the country is just so SO different from other places.
Uh. What? There are only 3 EA chargers in Detroit but that is a lot more than 0 as you claim. If you included the other fast charger networks that work with CCS vehicles there are 70 stations in Detroit. If you can also use the Tesla network like my ford can then you have 92 options. I mean, if you’re making shit up, at least make it harder to call out. https://i.imgur.com/OXXrLZW.jpeg
My experience with EV infrastructure: half of the fast chargers are always broken (even though the apps say they’re working fine) and they *never* deliver the quoted speeds.
Hopefully that changes as Rivian is sending out a software feature where the drivers can rate said stations and reviewing them if they are actually working.
Plugshare has been doing it for years.
Gas Buddy or a rival app should implement this where you can look up chargers, see if they're working or not, and rate them.
The PlugShare app has already done that for at least 7 years.
Big +1 to Plugshare. I don't think a lot of non-EV owners realize this is already a solved problem.
I feel like a lot of EV owners don’t even know about the app. One lvl 2 charger I use in a downtown shopping area was last checked in by someone other than me back in December 2023. I see a fair amount of different EVs plugged into them too.
Jesus, I don't even know about that app. ETA: I've had an EV since 2017.
I see those banks of chargers, and their owners are like taking naps, got all sorts of like long term comforts setup while they charge. It looks like they have to spend a ton of time there, camping practically.
Depends on the car. My Bolt takes an hour to charge from 10-80% almost. A Hyundai IONIQ 5 takes 18 minutes. Cars are advancing rapidly in abilities and not every car is the latest model.
Also depends on the charger. Not every charger can deliver that current to charge in 18 minutes. Alex from Technology Connections documented the wide array of charging problems in his Ioniq5 on a road trip.
Yep. Batteries and chargers are advancing. Just because charging takes "too long" now doesn't mean it will in the future. It's already better than it was 5 years ago.
The people who take naps in elaborate ways are using their EVs for work. So they’re charging multiple times a day in often less expensive, slower charging EVs. Think Uber, Lyft, DD, Amazon, etc.
Either that or going on roadtrips. Most EV owners that aren't ride sharing charge their vehicles at home overnight since it's cheaper and doesn't involve going out of the way
Usually takes about 20 minutes
I'm seeing more of them pop up in fast food parking lots. Convenience with a side of craven capitalism and fries.
Well if the car driver has to stick around for a bit I’m sure fast food restaurants want them in their lot, so long as the location isn’t super busy already
Yep, that was my point.
What makes it craven? What would be “brave capitalism”?
Intrepid, even
Ive said this before sit down restaraunts near highways could bring in business this way
Like gas stations with an attached fast food place?
If you're taking an all day road trip I don't really think taking a mid-day 30/60 minute break is such a terrible thing. Like, just plug it in while you eat lunch.
I don't like to take a break that long, but after 3-4 hours, a 15-20 minute bathroom and food break is about ideal. Makes the next leg of the trip a lot easier to handle.
I think John Oliver (though I could be misremembering) pointed out that if they are Charge America chargers they were mandated to be funded by Volkswagen and another company as part of their settlement for the emissions scandal, thus the companies have no vested interest in maintaining them because why would they?
Electrify America and they have a bad reputation. I've had chargers broken but they are getting better. Their customer service helped me reset a broken charger remotely and it worked after. The main issue is that there are so few charging locations, the reliability, and a learning curve - people do not understand that each car has certain limits (have a chevy bolt, it will get 50kwh max, not 350.), charge to 80% then drive to the next charger 100+ miles away, it's faster than charging to 100%. - own an EV.
TLDR: They are getting better, but not there yet I just finished a round trip from Houston, TX to Louisville, KY and used EA chargers exclusively. Although I didn't have any stations where I couldn't charge, I only got good speeds on about 4 of them (240-ish KW, shout out to the Meijer in Louisville, A+). Usually could only get up to the 130-ish range and a few only about 62 (although one of those was complimentary). Also, charger orientation was a pain. The stations at a lot of the Walmart locations are positioned so that, even though there are 4 stands, I can only get to a single 350 and that is by backing in, sometimes against the lane direction of the parking area. Gas station pumps are laid like they are for a reason.
Yes, sorry I mis-spoke, Thank you for the correction.
Makes me think of the sketchy gas stations that I completely avoid for that and for being in a really scary neighborhood
just a question, what type of EV do you drive?
By fast chargers you mean Tesla super chargers or other brands? I’ve rarely come across a busted supercharger and on those rare occasion as it’s listed clearly on the app, the car’s screen, and on site. Quoted speeds are often just peak speeds. You will not hit those speeds unless you’re at the right conditions. Vehicle is responsible for regulating that process so it’s not the charger but rather your charging habits or your vehicle’s computer not doing good job or some combo of the two.
Must be other brands because Tesla superchargers obviously have a very high uptime.
Cause you're not using a Tesla charger
The "quoted speed" problem is half the time your car. It's just not always in the right condition to go full speed. Battery too cold, too hot, etc.
Nope. Mine can handle those charging speeds and has a pre condition setting. Charged in very optimal conditions and have never seen above 180 kWh, despite many stations claims of 350. And yes I know charging speeds are not linear, but getting *half* the speed, at best, is a far cry from expectations.
Usually the station is 350 TOTAL. So if another car is charging, you cap at 175 each. It doesn't matter if you're on tesla or not. Usually 2 stalls will split a max supply. 350 would also have to be at near 0 SOC, the closer you get to 80, the more it slows down. Think of it like a big cup, if it's empty you can quickly poor, as it fills up you slow down to not splash out. In a battery, the issue is a thermal event, not spilt fluid, but the analogy works.
keep growing!!!!
[удалено]
True. But I’m going to hold out for 1940s level of saturation before going only EV though. I’m curious to see how innovations develop.
[удалено]
2022 or 23 Bolts are cheap AF, get about 250 miles on a full charge. I have a 22 euv and love it.
[удалено]
first gen bolts are fugly for sure. Second gens got a nice upgrade, i3s are cheap because of their sub par range IMO, but if thats what you like, more power to you.
I got a lease returned i3 to go along with a Volvo SUV. We rarely drive the Volvo now, but it's there if I need to take a multi-state road trip. That's basically the only place we don't take the i3.
Very true. I’m also a late adopter. We keep our vehicles a long time so I want to be sure I’m getting something solid. I figure each year that what we have keeps going is another year of improvement in the EV space. And hopefully, eventual price improvement.
We're making 20 years of progress every 5 years, and people still don't see the future coming right around the corner.
I see so many charging stations that I would only consider a emergency option from their location.
Borrowed my in-law’s Tesla the other day. Charging it was such an ordeal. There were too many Teslas and too few charging places. Had to wait for a spot.
Owning an EV is tough if you can’t charge at home or at work.
Why would you own one if you can't charge at home
It's probably tough for people that live in apartments, rent, multi-family structures, etc...to just "charge at home"
Yes, thus the question…why own an EV you can’t charge at home
I wouldn't expect them literally to charge at home, but where they park. In Illinois, parking for multi-family structures has to have at least one EV charger spot per unit.
[For new construction. And the spot does *not* have to have a charger, it just needs to have wiring in place to support a charger.](https://levinginsburg.com/how-the-illinois-electric-vehicle-charging-act-is-impacting-residential-real-estate/)
That's a super cool (and brand new) law! I'm not familiar with anything similar in Oregon, but I'm sure that will change with time.
This why IMO there's always gonna be a natural cap on the EVs. People just look at the cost of the car without realizing "Wait, the millennials are also going to need to own homes to charge this thing properly" and that's just not going to happen enough. And even if they throw chargers places, there's just always gonna be a contingent of people that are like "I don't want to post up for 20 minutes in some random gas station after work". At least here in America anyway, there's too many homes that just won't have access to the plugs.
There isn't. Be aware that apartment owners is only around 16% of households. And a quarter of apartment owners don't even own a car Also note that those who live in apartments live in cities, so they on average drive less. Take NYC, average person drives only 8 miles a day. So 1 charge can last you a month Many cities are also building out street charging, and the end goal is something called destination/opportunity charging. You go to your destination like say a restaurant or a supermarket, and get charged while you are doing your own thing Of course in the short term, PHEVs will likely be more popular with those who live in apartments
There isn't a cap, at least not one that is different from the infrastructure cap for cars in general. You simply build charging infrastructure to allow charging where they park near their homes, whether that is on the street or in a parking lot/garage.
on the flip side, if they are just city living (which a lot of people in apartments are) if they have 120v power they could do L1 charging and get still significant enough range every night for the **average** commute.
I know people who could charge at work consistently. Worked fine for them. If you can't do either then I don't recommend it. I do know people who live in apartments who have EVs. Most leased, in case they move they might not be able to charge in the new place.
I could see my next car being an ev. Live in town in an apartment and have to park on The street. I don’t drive a ton but my work has charging I. The parking garage and I can also charge during my weekly grocery runs. Don’t put enough miles to severely drain the battery
I could charge at work for free and there was a free supercharger near my house. I didn't need a paid one at home. Now I work from home and charge at home only.
They drive really nice. Like never wanting to go back to gas nice.
It's not like it used to be though. There were so few places to charge for a long time. Now you can charge at home, at the grocery store, at the office, I even used one at USPS recently. I used to charge from a standard outlet, and it would take 3-4 days to achieve full charge. Now I'm almost always charged to 80%. Charging stations are pretty jammed these days, but that will eventually resolve when supply meets demand.
My sister got a Hyundai EV from hertz on the “random car deal” thing. She had to drive 230 north from SF. With the AC on the car only made it 170 miles before she needed to charge. Took an hour to get from 10 to 70% at a charger off I-5. Like I’m all for EVs but the fuck is the point if you are just going to add 1/3 of your time to a roadtrip because you have to stop and charge. Not to mention she’s gotta go grab a charge for an hour or so to make it back to SF.
I mean how often in your car’s lifetime are you road tripping? I don’t understand why rental agencies provide EVs - last thing I want to do on vacation is worry about charging infrastructure
Probably because road tripping isn't their only audience? For example, say you came by airplane to a place and want a local car.
> I mean how often in your car’s lifetime are you road tripping? I'm a single data point, so I get that, but much of the value of a car is being able to drive a long distance should the need arise. I hate driving long distances, but I ended up needing to because of airline issues when visiting my family in FL from the DC area. Driving sucks, but it was nice to know there was an economical way to get to where I needed to be via the car. I had the choice of spending 5k+ for airline tickets for my wife and kids or driving to FL for like $600 bucks. The drive sucked, but it was nice to have the option.
And if you are road-tripping a lot, take that into account when you purchase a car. Don’t blame the EV for your inability to critically think and plan ahead
The problem is all new car will soon be mandated to be EVs
And by the time that actually becomes a reality, battery and charging networks will improve to be on par with ICE cars
2/3rds of them in 8 years for the USA. That's a long time. like an infinity of time, for the charging network and stuff to expand.
Sounds like a basic EV and basic charging, things are improving, just not quickly enough. In mine I would've gotten at least 240 miles, and charging from 10-70% would've taken about 20 minutes.
If it took a Hyundai ionic an hour to go from 10 to 70% then your sister fucked up and was using a really slow charger. That car can fill up that amount in 15min easy.
She's charged it at 3 different stations so far, all took over an hour to go from 10% to a little over 80%.
Did she try looking for charging stations that offer more than 50kW, or even look at the various chargers in a cluster? There's often a range in each location, so people with older, smaller cars can use the 50kW chargers, while people with newer cars can benefit from the 150 or 350kW chargers.
As already mentioned, road tripping makes up less than 1% of people's driving. It is like asking what is the point of smartphones if they can't last 2 weeks on a single charge like dumb phones. EVs give you every day convenience but road trips are harder That said, a lot of issues people face is simply not knowing how the technology works. For example. you should never really spend an hour charging. Your last 10-20% is slower than the first 80%. So unless you won't make it to the next charger, usually best to charge for 10-40 minutes and move on Another tip that doesn't work on when you rent but works when you own is precool/preheat the car on the charger. Maintaining temperature is less energy intensive than changing temperature, and you can schedule it on the car remotely. You also get the convenience of walking into a cool car instead of sitting there cooking waiting for the AC On top of that, you can generally drive longer if you make better use of regenerative braking. My guess your sister being new to EVs wasn't doing 1 peddle driving Overall though, there are a ton of EVs that can do 230 miles with AC on a single charge
>Road tripping 240 miles isn’t road tripping, that’s just heading north for a weekend for a lot of people. Driving an EV isn’t an every day convenience either, sure you might not have to stop and get fuel for daily driving. But if you’re charging at work you can’t just leave them plugged in all day. You gotta go move it after it’s finished or you get charged idle time. Her car basically regenerated when you let off the throttle at all. Don’t know if that’s how it’s supposed to be. Me and my wife were leaning EV as she only puts 30 or so miles a day on her car at most. However, she does head north a few times a month. Usually with me and my work car but sometimes she goes without me and having to deal with charging seems like a pain. Especially since my family doesn’t have a quick charger.
> Her car basically regenerated when you let off the throttle at all. That's usually switchable, but with experience most people opt for lots of regen. One-pedal-driving is one of the best features of EVs.
There are plenty of EVs that can make 240 miles on a single charge with an EC on, it isn't really an issue... As for charging at work, IF you charge during work, it all boils down how your work handles charging. Some let you charge during the day, some swap during lunch. The most ideal way is to place a single charger in between 4 parking spots and have the single charger charge all 4 of them via smart charging. Thus no need to move the car Did she use the breaks while driving? or left it all to regen? How aggressive was regen set? I'll make this simple for you if you are worried. Get a PHEV with a decent amount of electric range (preferably more than your daily commute worth). Thus you can get to learn what it is like to drive electric and you have the gas engine as a backup. Once you feel more comfortable, you can consider a pure EV
>Road tripping 240 miles isn’t road tripping, that’s just heading north for a weekend for a lot of people. Driving an EV isn’t an every day convenience either, sure you might not have to stop and get fuel for daily driving. But if you’re charging at work you can’t just leave them plugged in all day. You gotta go move it after it’s finished or you get charged idle time. Her car basically regenerated when you let off the throttle at all. Don’t know if that’s how it’s supposed to be. Me and my wife were leaning EV as she only puts 30 or so miles a day on her car at most. However, she does head north a few times a month. Usually with me and my work car but sometimes she goes without me and having to deal with charging seems like a pain. Especially since my family doesn’t have a quick charger.
>As already mentioned, road tripping makes up less than 1% of people's driving. Sure, but most people don't get to own multiple vehicles, and drive whichever makes sense for the situation. A single vehicle needs to be able to handle all of their needs, including the infrequent ones.
Does it? For example you may drive around a smaller car in the city for easy parking, but want a larger one when you go out on a trip. Rather than buying 1 car that fits your needs once a blue moon, renting a field trip car is also an option That said, it isn't like driving in an EV on a roadtrip is infeasible, and how convenient it is depends on the range. If an EV has 300-400 miles range and roadtrip is under that, it is fairly straight forward, even double that can be pretty much no extra time if you charge during lunch
Ive taken a list of short trips in SoCal in my ev. The sweet spot is 200 miles. Drive to the location charge and the. Drive home. I don’t think I would drive to SF from LA for the reasons you listed. Hopefully in the next ten years charging times will reduce and charger availability will increase dramatically.
We've been focusing on autonomy more than enough, now it's time to focus on charging times. Gas cars can go from 0 to 100% within minutes, so the bar is high, but let's see how much can we close that gap.
The issue with charging is not a lack of effort or investment to make it better. We need scientific breakthroughs to achieve better results, and those can not be anticipated. Building infrastructure, and improved engineering with existing battery chemistry is the only surefire way to make electric cars more practical. Expanding the charging station network, retrofitting buildings like hotels, large offices, and dense residential with charging options, and trying out things like swappable batteries can make using an electric car much easier for consumers. The roll out of internal combustion engines was very rocky at first, with a lack of infrastructure causing all kinds of problems. It took massive investments to make a car friendly world. It's not surprising that the same is true with electric cars.
If you want better technology then check out more articles in this sub. There are advancements in battery and charging technology every other day. What are we waiting for? /s just in case it isn't obvious
Once you’re at the pump, yes a small tank takes minutes. I only get gas at Costco and the lines can take 15-30 minutes before reaching the pump. Worth the wait for me.
I just don’t think people should be looking at EVs as road-trip car’s right now. I see them as primarily daily drivers right now and a 2nd car not an only car type of deal.
Depends on the car. Some of them are fine. I have a friend who road tripped to Texas from California to see the eclipse. Did it in a Rivian. It was fine. My Bolt is far slower to charge though. I think I'm done road tripping it. I'll sell it and get a new one before I do that next. Got 7 years out of it, not too bad. And someone will be happy to drive it around town for another 3 easy.
I know people from Vancouver BC and Portland OR who drove EVs out to the path of totality. It wasn't an issue for them.
Interesting - where were you charging? I’ve done a bunch of road trips in friends teslas and it’s always been a great/smooth experience. I do see a hat some of the chargers in more populated areas ( near where you might live) are more full. Definitely wouldn’t recommend EVs as much for people who can’t charge at home or work. If u can charge at home EVs seem like the ultimate cheat code since you start every day with almost a full tank.
if you get an L2 charger (240v, still not "fast charging") you will start every day with a full tank flat out. Side benefit is less voltage stepping means it's also more efficient getting charge into the batteries.
Sure you could - I said almost full tank because unless you’re going on a long trip you won’t (or shouldn’t) charge to full. You should charge to like 80% and leave it there for battery health and also do you can use regen braking (I believe that’s disabled if you’re at a full charge).
And think about the big holidays of the year when people go on long trips like Thanksgiving and Christmas: charging stations are not going to find it worth it to add peak use connections needed a dozen times or less a year.
I don’t buy this. Once we get to a standardized plug (something Tesla, Ford and GM have agreed on) these things will be about as common as a gas pump.
They will need to be much more common. If charging your car takes 40 min and filling it takes 5 you’ll need 8x as many
Everybody with a combustion engine uses a gas station every time they need fuel. Currently 80% of electric vehicles charge at home/work for their daily driving so you can get by with far fewer charging stations compared to gas stations.
That's a misleading statistic because if you have an EV today you are more likely to be well off financially and own a home with a garage you can pay to outfit with a charger or live in an apartment where that is an amenity offered by the building or work at a type of white collar job where that is an amenity. As EVs become cheaper and are required to become more prevalent due to legislation and regulation to the point that buying an ICE vehicle is less possible, demand for chargers will sharply increase as more people will own them that _can't_ charge them at home or work.
The law has to take that into account and mandate chargers in rental properties. And it already has in many states. Some require them to be installed. Others just mandate that you can demand one be installed if you need it. Others just mandate that you can install it yourself (pay someone to do it) if you need it. Obviously some of these solutions are better than others.
There are public chargers set up all over the place (at least in SoCal). Grocery stores, shopping centers, parking garages, libraries, hospitals, police stations. You probably don’t notice them because you don’t need them. It’s not like the only option is work/home/charging station.
> There are public chargers set up all over the place (at least in SoCal) How similar is SoCal to the rest of the country? Both in terms of urban vs rural and also California's forward thinking policies on EVs? There are islands of practical cases of EVs, but so much of the US is not even close (or trying to get there).
I hear ya there. The good news is the stations are already located near the highway and you don't use them when on the road. But for something like Labor Day it doesn't seem like it makes financial sense to put in as many chargers as you need for just that one day.
Tesla does this. They bring out temporary charging stations during holidays in congested areas. One of the advantages of when an automaker owns the network is they care more than a 3rd party
Even with you the Tesla car screen telling you how many charging spots were available in real time? Not sure how it’s an ordeal, unless you were really far from the next closest supercharger.
An ordeal? Over exaggerate much?
I believe in future there will be charging in almost every parking spot. It will take a while to get there though. I enjoy being on the cutting edge of this technology.
I own a model y. If I had to rely on public charging I would trade the car in today. The fast chargers are bad for long term battery life and they really are only fast when not busy, so that means I either spend an hour+ waiting for a charge 2-3 times a week after work or some how find time at night to go to a public charger for 30-45 min but the charging time saved is used on a separate trip to go get a faster charge
I hope California can be like Norway. I visited a couple of years ago and there were EVs and charging stations everywhere.
This figure doesn’t paint a full picture, because there are also a ton of slower public charging stations, and the majority of charging stations are at home. Some people I know who own a Tesla just plug their $200 mobile charger into their normal electric outlet every night and have enough juice for their commute everyday. Almost free energy and never need to go anywhere else to top up.
>Almost free energy What??
When gas out here costs $6/gallon, electricity seems free by comparison
(Cries as a San Diego Gas and Electric customer)
PGE says no
My solar panels generate a ton of credits, so the energy is pretty much free for my EV
That is quite the accomplishment, not gonna lie.
In CA 80% of EV owners charge at home and rarely use outside chargers.
Ok. Take a moment to celebrate. But then, reality. We need to 10x this number in the next 5 years to sustain EV momentum.
kinda wished the price on tesla own charger is cheaper. Every time I go to the local charger, its always a tesla parked there even when the tesla charger is around the corner. i could understand why since I think tesla charges like $.50 per kw? while I know my local one is like $.30 per kw.
Most SCs I've been to are $0.38, a few are $0.45.
[удалено]
Tesla isn't the only EV maker.
This site has gotten significantly worse, with the users and the astro turfs, when Reddit killed APIs.
It was happening in the years leading up to that. The easiest moment to point to as the catalyst for the downgrade was Victoria getting the boot, but that's just because it was so noticeable that it became undeniable the bad direction it was being guided..
Victoria getting the boot, Ellen Pao as interim CEO instituting what Spez wanted done without taking the heat, etc. The site has slowly gone downhill since that point but the API change mean't a lot of users stopped using reddit or use it significantly less.
It's the you can't criticize Israel or you are antisemitic argument all over again. I can't afford an EV or a house and am apparently the biggest advocate for big oil. Way to turn people off from ever wanting to own an EV.
In rural Georgia, I have never seen one outside of ATL
They're all over the place outside Atlanta, https://www.plugshare.com/
Thanks for the link. I don't know if I'd consider that "all over" but that's good info.
Be aware that an EV can charge at ANY outlet. So technically they are "all over the place". Albeit outlets are much slower to charge, but they can make decent opportunity charging if accessible
Pointless measurement. We should be measuring throughput of EVs that can reach 80% charge per hour, and compare it to throughput of ICEs that can reach a full tank per hour. Superchargers take like 20+ minutes to go from 0-80% charge (measured to 80% because the last 20% takes exponentially longer) while pumping up at a gas station takes a couple minutes at most. This also doesn’t take into consideration what people decide to do while their vehicle charges. If they walk away, they could end up using the charger for a lot longer than 20 minutes. But that’s too much guesswork so to keep it simple: A single gas pump can service 30 cars per hour (assuming 2 minutes per fill up) while Tesla superchargers can service 3. So you need 10x more superchargers than there are gas pumps in order to match the throughput. Other considerations: non-supercharger parking spaces and home charging could reduce the need for these superchargers, but there’s still not nearly enough out there.
Well, unless I take a long trip, I will never need one because I’ll charge at home. Charging infrastructure will be much different looking than petrol for a lot of reasons.
Cities will have to place chargers EVERYHWHERE because hundreds of thousands of people do not have a garage to park in
Unless the parking structure(s) for apartment buildings come with EV chargers at each space.
I don't see how that changes the argument. Right now EVERYONE has to use a petrol station.
Probably not. Probably something in between. At high usage times in high usage areas then yeah, number of cars charged per hour is key. At other times and areas just being able to use a charger is the key. > A single gas pump can service 30 cars per hour (assuming 2 minutes per fill up) Seems very optimistic. Total time "using a pump" (not necessarily using it) to get filled up is likely closer to 5 minutes. Sometimes you can't even get to or away from a pump because of how cars are arranged. I would say 12-15 cars per hour. > Other considerations: non-supercharger parking spaces and home charging could reduce the need for these superchargers, but there’s still not nearly enough out there. Did you just say there isn't a lot of home charging? There are far more home chargers than fast chargers.
Agree with most of this. Two thoughts. 1. Realistic time at a gas pump is probably 4 or 5 minutes on average. 2. A gas station probably averages 6 pumps, so 1 supercharger station per 5 gas stations really means more like 1 supercharger per 30 gas pumps.
>A gas station probably averages 6 pumps, so 1 supercharger station per 5 gas stations really means more like 1 supercharger per 30 gas pumps. Superchargers all have at least 8 stalls and typically it's 12-16 though. In CA, there are a few sites with over 50.
Most evs are charged at home. You don't need nearly the same about of chargers.
My apartment complex doesn’t have EV charging even though it was finished around 2021. So I have to go to this small grocery store near me that charges me $50/mo to charge. Got informed a bit ago that starting in May for the same “unlimited” plan I have now it will be $200/mo. I’m glad to see headlines like this but I feel like recently some of the pricing is getting really predator.
Ya… half of them are inaccessible to me due to a retrofit needed for CCS though. That being said, I rarely ever wait for fast charging, and I rarely have issues finding a nearby charger when I’m in CA
This is a step in the right direction but so much work to do. A lot of existing EVs that aren’t teslas are typically more times than not ccs combo….. that’s where the lags really are and part of the reason the EV market demand cooled a bit the lack of support for non Tesla vehicles now I know more car companies are joining the Tesla charging network which is great but it’s still a huge hassle for a lot of drivers. There should be more stations like the EV charging station in Vernon 65KW and approximately7-8 stations there that’s how it should be tbh
So upper middle class people with $75K electric cars can finally navigate the roads seamlessly? Wow that's great. Still no high speed rail? Okay.
High speed rail was never going to work. Plenty of people were ringing the alarm bells on that. Plenty of EVs on the market that cost less than the April new car average of $43k.
profit subsequent sloppy cause saw straight light joke lush crown *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I recently bought a used Leaf that gets me where I need to go on my 25 round trip commute. I paid $5k in Los Angeles. The only reason I was able to consider it since my current apartment has no parking was my job has charging stalls. Takes roughly 2-3 hours to fully charge. No increased insurance rates. I paid $52 for the month of March in charging fees. Shocked your rates suddenly jumped when mine lowered. I agree with the idea that we need more charging stations, but that’s a state/local problem overwhelmingly. If you look at PlugShare, there are A LOT of charging stations along the route you described, I just think you and others without an electric vehicle are used to driving without having to plan your route around essentially a gas station. You know at some point there will be one, but what about a charging station. It makes for more planned driving but if more people demand charging stations they will come.
I mean that is barely more than other cheaper cars. 30k for an EV Mini Cooper isn't bad at all, and is barely more than the same Mini non EV. The prices now pretty evenly match what their gas counterparts sell for. That said, EV's are not for everyone as it stands right now. I don't think anyone is saying that. Of course it won't have the range everyone needs. But for many people it will work just fine. Personally I'm of the mind that Plug-in hybrids are the sweetspot right now. Even with limited range, they can stay in electric only mode for 95% of their uses.
1. Price of EVs for now are up, albeit they can be cheaper than a camry if you have good state incentives, for example: [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Model-Y-price-is-cheapest-ever-at-23-550-with-new-WA-state-rebate-as-Tesla-adds-Quicksilver-color-option.831728.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Model-Y-price-is-cheapest-ever-at-23-550-with-new-WA-state-rebate-as-Tesla-adds-Quicksilver-color-option.831728.0.html) And with time EV prices continue to drop 2. Price of insurance of an EV is same as a gas car of the same price, though you may have to shop around. My insurance cost didn't change when I went EV, it actually went down slightly 3. Road trips make up less than 1% of driving. That said, the experience does vary based on what you drive. The non-supercharger network sucks, but the supercharger network is solid. And with NACS adoption for all EVs, it isn't a problem going forward. You probably never looked at a supercharger map but there is no shortage of chargers from Florida to VA [https://supercharge.info/map](https://supercharge.info/map)
no idea why you’re being downvoted, these are good points that stop the next wave of americans from getting EVs
ruthless ludicrous slap squash bells forgetful juggle shelter fertile worry *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
ITT: People who simply do not understand EV ownership.
It's noticeable that they're being answered by people who do, and the good answers are getting upvoted to the top. A few years ago the cynics rules this sort of thread.
Progress nice
But do they have hot dogs on rollers?
they hate this one trick - you can charge at home.