B) You're bored b/c you have to stand next to the pump waiting for it to finish. This isn't a problem with EV charging. Go get a coffee or read a book.
(Then you end up having to go unplug the fully-charged car long before they finish eating!)
We did the following: a. Fueled up the car from about half a tank to full b. Used the restroom. c. Bought two fountain sodas
We timed the stop from when we parked to when we got back in the car. It was fifteen minutes. I would expect that any family that stops at that stop is there at least that long, if not longer. ---
Going back to in-town charging though.. You need to realize that all you need for a charging station is a parking lot, and you can leave the car while it charges. Put DC fast chargers in a grocery store parking lot, and people can charge while they do their weekly shopping. I doubt anyone with young kids is spending less than 30 minutes at the grocery store each week.
So instead of getting a coffee or reading a book, they can go buy cereal and frozen chicken nuggets.
It's likely that the reason you can't find a seat in most coffee shops already is because it isn't profitable to provide a two-hour seat to everyone.
Imagine for a second of what compensating good could be done for the world if people put the same time, thought or effort into something else with more immediate (and urgent payback).
I can personally choose to buy an EV, I can't personally choose to convert the power plants in my state to nuclear.
Obviously supporting multiple policies that improve emissions and sustainable energy is the way to go, and supporting one does not mean I don't support the others.
Then you don't have to make an extra stop or trip just for gas. It sounds way better than the current situation with gas.
> It sounds way better than the current situation with gas.
Seriously? Where do you live and where would you get gas? This is a non issue for most people.
Also, from a selfish perspective, EVs are almost infinitely more fun to drive. Don’t even get me started (as someone who has a parking spot with a charger) about this ridiculous historical idea of going to buy my fuel at some “gas station” instead of having it delivered to my house while I sleep.
EV charging (except specifically for long distance travel) is less about "Let's sit here while the car charges" and more "Let's plan a thing we were probably going to do anyway at a place that also has EV chargers".
Obviously that gets a lot easier as more chargers get installed. Electrify America is installing fast chargers in a large number of Wal-Mart parking lots across the US.
It makes perfect sense that in this less than ideal scenario where chargers are sparse and inconvenient that you change up what you do for entertainment to center it around car chargers. But it has to stop being a requirement for it to make sense for "everyone" to switch from gas to EV.
For "everyone" to have EVs we will need chargers at apartments and work places, or for fast chargers to get into the 80% charge in ~5min range.
That problem is not solved yet but is being tackled from both sides.
That's already a concern for road trips, but day to day that'll be a nightmare. Just hang around the charging station for an hour while your car recharges.
If a person is driving 30 miles or less a day they only need less than 10 minutes charging to get by.
Not everyone, but most people drive less than 250 miles a week.
Both of my local Tesla chargers are near grocery stores. Electrify America is installing chargers at Wal-Mart.
Charging an EV is less like going to a gas station and more like picking a place to go that happens to have EV chargers while you do other things.
How close? Can you push your cart back to them?
> Electrify America is installing chargers at Wal-Mart.
How many? If we want this whole "electric car" thing to take off, you're looking at, what, 50% of the whole parking lot? Not a half dozen stalls right beside the store.
I imagine Electrify America is installing a number that they believe will meet the current demand of electric vehicles. They don't need to fill the parking lot for the hypothetical future where everyone has an EV. That will still take some time and they can easily scale up as they need to.
It doesn't cover everyone yet, there's no way that we're going to have infrastructure to replace 100 years of gasoline infrastructure in a handful of years.
Also you only need to cover those who can't charge at home, which is a lot of people but not all of them.
Anyway, I would dispute there are people that can't find the time, they may not want to spend 2 hours a week filling up the car, but just like you don't find cars abandoned at the side of the road now, because owners can't find to time to fill up, the problem isn't going to be appreciably worse in the future.
You're not going to be waiting around constantly for your car to finish charging. In reality, you're charging at night while you're sleeping. Or charging at work while you're working. Or charging at the supermarket while you buy your groceries.
Shops would do it because money and footfall.
Because people are talking about how it only takes a short time to recharge enough to offset one day's commute. That only works, though, if you charge every day. If you only charge weekly then you're stuck waiting to recover 200 miles' worth of charge at a time in preparation for the next week. If you're using a fast-charger near somewhere you need to be anyway for an hour or two every week, great. Otherwise that adds up to a lot of wasted time—and human time is the least renewable resource we have.
So yes, I agree.
The electricity grid already extends to most workplaces, most urban streets, most parking lots. Destination charging, where you're plugging in for hours rather than minutes, doesn't need a huge industrial grid connection like super-fast charging hubs do. Sure, infrastructure needs to be developed, but it's manageable and it will happen easily enough once the demand is there.
[1] https://www.pluglesspower.com/learn/tesla-model-s-charging-h... [2] https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/MarinaAvetisyan.shtml
The newest chargers being installed today go up to 350 kW, so the charging infrastructure is being future-proofed for even faster charging as the cars improve.
The outlets can be built to share and distribute available power, so the grid connection required is not as huge as you might think. In practice this isn't an issue, as it's unlikely that every outlet will be drawing the maximum current at the same time.
https://www.pluglesspower.com/learn/tesla-model-s-charging-h...
You certainly don't need to run separate circuits over long distances for every individual outlet. You can run one higher-power cable to a hub unit which then breaks out to many (maybe dozens) nearby outlets.
Doesn't this re-introduce the original problem? If less power is available, you have to spend longer charging.
Not a realistic concern, at present, because the chances that a large parking lot will be filled with even 10% EVs is small. At any given time, most stalls will be occupied by fossil cars, cars not needing charging, or will just be empty.
In the future as demand increases, if you start to hit the limit then you can look at upgrading the electrical supply.
Also, let's not forget that these chargers aren't there for everyone to use, but for those who cannot charge at home. For those who can charge at home, that will be a much simpler, cheaper solution.
Can it really? I saw something more like 130 kW when it started charging, because it was pretty low. It tapered off steadily. Still only took about 45 minutes overall, but I doubt the hardware could actually sustain 1000 miles/hour charging levels for more than a few minutes.
You need to be using the new V3 superchargers, which are just starting to roll out, to get the 250 kW rate. V2 superchargers top out at ~130 kW.
The charge speed does taper off as state of charge increases, but reaches 70% in 19 minutes. This is well over 200 miles of range, hence "decent" charge.
The Model 3 is also compatible with Ionity CCS chargers in Europe, and gets about 190 kW on those.
Just saying "people without a garage" seems perfectly adequate to me & does not require manufacturing new terms.
Apparently The Globe And Mail thinks it has value.
So if one has an EV, and it doesn't charge quickly, you'll be dinged through the nose.
Had the charger been charging for the kwh + a margin, then sure. But as is, EVs are off the table for me.
How else would you set up incentives so that many workers can share one charging station?
In other states without those laws, many of the networks charge by the KWh.
Other posters here are mentioning ~40 miles of charging in an 18 hour period. That's pretty dang restrictive.
And that's usually not charging from 0 to 40 miles of range. The car's battery starts each morning at 90% (a limit set in the car), and ends the day at 90% minus 25 miles. So even though it's only charging 25 miles each night (which doesn't take all night), it's ready to go 300 miles whenever I need to.