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Around the world, support is growing for electric cars. Automakers are delivering more electric models with longer range and lower prices, such as the Chevrolet Bolt and the Tesla Model 3. China has set aggressive targets for electric vehicle sales to curb pollution; some European countries aim to be all-electric by 2040 or sooner.
Those lofty ambitions face numerous challenges, including one practical consideration for consumers: If they buy electric cars, where will they charge them?
[...] Mr. Romano says there's no exact ratio of the number of chargers needed per car. But he says workplaces should have around 2.5 chargers for every employee and retail stores need one for every 20 electric cars. Highways need one every 50 to 75 miles, he says. That suggests a lot of gaps still need to be filled.
Automakers and governments are pushing to fill them. The number of publicly available, global charging spots grew 72 percent to more than 322,000 last year, the International Energy Agency said. Navigant Research expects that to grow to more than 2.2 million by 2026; more than one-third of those will be in China.
Tesla Inc. – which figured out years ago that people wouldn't buy its cars without roadside charging – is doubling its global network of Supercharger stations to 10,000 this year. BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, and Ford are building 400 fast-charging stations in Europe. Volkswagen is building hundreds of stations across the United States as part of its settlement for selling polluting diesel engines. Even oil-rich Dubai, which just got its first Tesla showroom, has more than 50 locations to charge electric cars.
If range anxiety and the availability of charging stations remain a barrier to EV adoption, then for Tesla it seems like it's nearly a solved problem. Will a reliable supply of batteries or the self-driving features piggy-backing on EV platforms like the Teslas or the Nissan Leaf prove the real differentiators in the market?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @08:37AM (27 children)
Charge time needs to come down, way down, before electric cars can really be replacements for fossil fuel powered cars. When you can get a decent charge in ten minutes, you can build the infrastructure using the same for-profit system that works just fine today for fuel stations. Tesla, being on the bleeding edge, might want to build charging stations to relieve anxiety, but the idea of manufacturers building charging stations isn't any better than the idea of manufacturers running gas stations. Or every manufacturer needing its own blend of fuel.
The faulty assumption seems to be "charging takes forever, and it's supposed to be free, so we need to require people to install them in random places even though they don't actually care about them." Instead, make the charging efficient, and let the cost of a quick charge, at a for-profit charging station, be set by the market. Gas stations are the canonical example of successful market competition, and they're strongly incentivized to adopt electric quick-charging as soon as they're able so they can stay in business as the demand for fuel transitions to electricity. No need to assume a market failure here. Everything is going to be fine as long as the different manufacturers can all agree on a charging standard (requiring such a standard, one that is capable of delivering sufficient power for a decent rapid charge, would be one appropriate role for regulators - just as they set standards for gasoline and diesel fuel).
Putting slow chargers in random places is never going to be enough. If you use street parking both at home and work, you won't ever have access to a charging station where you can slow-charge over many hours. And that's a whole lot of people. Everybody who has a garage, or even their own driveway, can just charge at home. So all this infrastructure really only serves people who only have street parking at home but parking lots at work and never worry that they might change jobs at some point. That's not going to really help. Before everyone can have an electric car, everyone has to be able to charge them - no matter where they drive.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 07 2017, @09:04AM (11 children)
(note to myself: buy copper miners' stock).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday September 07 2017, @04:14PM (10 children)
I just read yesterday that the new model Leaf will go from a "low battery" warning to 80% charge in 40 minutes.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Thursday September 07 2017, @04:48PM (9 children)
Ok, lets accept that as fact and see where it gets us. Imagine a big station on the Interstate. Normally people pull in and fill up in five minutes, ten or fifteen if they go in to pee and get a snack. There are non-pump parking spaces most people have the courtesy to move to when the station is busy. Triple the "pumps" plus keep some gas / diesel during the transition and enlarge the building to handle all those people trying to kill a lot of extra time. Now calculate the power drain to keep all those chargers humming and pump up the power delivery all the way back to the generating station. No fair assuming actual new generating capacity can be permitted in under a decade though. Now bonus, lets model what that does to somewhere like FL or TX in an evacuation.
See the problem yet? Fifteen minutes to go from 20% to 80% is more like what is needed.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NewNic on Thursday September 07 2017, @06:12PM (8 children)
What's your point here? 40 minutes is too long because it puts too high a load on the electrical infrastructure? What happens when you put the same charge into a car in 15 minutes?
Perhaps you should stay away from commenting on articles that require basic knowledge of physics.
Question for you: why are there zero (or perhaps very few) Supercharger locations in gas stations? Answer, because no one really wants to stop at a gas station. A much better location is near a coffee shop or a restaurant.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Friday September 08 2017, @02:52AM (6 children)
Absolutely nothing. Math, learn it. Unless more cars are on the road, the fact they recharge in 15 minutes vs 40 makes zero difference to the quantity of energy they must store. There just wouldn't be as many doing it at any one time, on average. Work the problem. Imagine you have an exit on the Interstate where a hundred people per hour exit to recharge. If they must stay 40 minutes there will be about 66 of them piled up at charging posts vs 25 for fifteen minute charging, but those 25 will be drawing exactly the same energy at any one instant from the huge power main coming in as the 66 lower rate ones.
And we all know a desolate Interstate exit in Montana is a perfect place for a cozy little coffee shop. There is a good reason a gas station is what it is, people just want to fill up, take a whizz and perhaps grab some snacks before getting back on the road. Easy off, easy on is the catch phrase you want on your billboard a few miles out from one.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday September 08 2017, @05:33PM (5 children)
I will merely quote what you posted earlier:
You highlighted a lack of generating capacity, then said the solution was to reduce charging time to 15 minutes.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Friday September 08 2017, @10:27PM (4 children)
Dude. You clearly aren't smart enough for this ride! I worked the problem for you and you still can't understand? That isn't even typical innumeracy, you have been failed in a more fundamental way by the government schools.
The problem to the grid comes from a conversion to electric cars, whether they fast charge or not. The grid simply can't handle a conversion to electric cars. It can barely keep up with growth in demand now and any attempt to build new generating capacity that is economically viable and actually works, i.e. fossil or nuke, gets bogged down in decades of lawsuits and regulation. And the grid itself has teh same legal and regulatory problems adding carrying capacity. Electric cars on scale of anything but egoboo for 1% coastal liberals is a bad joke.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday September 08 2017, @10:43PM (3 children)
Please explain how your proposed solution ("Fifteen minutes to go from 20% to 80%") solves anything.
Failure to answer the above question directly will show that you are just full of sh*t.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Friday September 08 2017, @11:56PM (2 children)
Fifteen minutes is about the max most people will put up with for a pit stop, after you go to the potty, grab a Dr. Pepper and a convenience store burrito, not much left to do but stand around and bitch about the stupid car that won't charge. Meaning it is the last electric car you will own. The 20-80 charge is basically a spitball estimate that is in the ball park. Most people start getting jumpy and looking to fill up if they hit the 1/4 mark. Batteries seem to have problems fast charging that last little bit so trying to be reasonable there. That gives a good 60% of label capacity or enough to probably go for two solid hours of steady Interstate driving, even with the A/C and entertainment system going. Unless we are envisioning a car with only adult males in it, by two hours any females or children probably need another potty break so the car won't be the limiting factor.
Oh, just to be an asshole, doing 20-80 charging vs 10-100 with fewer stops also does nothing important to the impact on the grid. Only average fleet efficiency (how many miles per KW/Hr + charging losses) and how many miles per year are being driven in electric vehicles matter, modified by peak demand.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Saturday September 09 2017, @02:05AM
None of which has anything to do with the problem you stated: grid capacity.
Please explain how reduced charging times can help grid capacity. That was your original claim in post #564643. You are now dancing around other issues in a failed attempt to deflect from that original claim.
You insulted my math skills, but all of this is just an attempt to deflect from a nonsensical post that you made.
If you want to admit that what you wrote in post #564906 ("Fifteen minutes to go from 20% to 80% is more like what is needed.") was clumsily expressed and you did not intend to mean that shorter charging times were a solution to the problem you posed in the prior paragraph (grid capacity), that's fine, admit it. Otherwise, explain, exactly how changing charging times affect grid capacity. Otherwise, you just proved what a shit you are.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Saturday September 09 2017, @06:32PM
Your failure to respond shows that you accept that you screwed up and you threw accusations around about my education, whereas in fact, you are the person whose education or intelligence is lacking.
Or you are simply a shit whose objective is simply to insult.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @05:12AM
Supercharger stations aren't near gas stations because the land isn't cheap enough there.
A lot of Supercharger stations are near -absolutely fucking nothing-.
They list them as being 'near a Cracker Barrel' but it's a 20 minute walk and involves crossing a five lane highway.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @10:37AM (5 children)
This is the part I despise about the current electric car owner. Why do they think they are entitled to free energy when the rest of us have to pay for the energy we consume. They should be paying for the watts consumed from the mains every time they charge their electric car.
Where is my free gasoline to make up for their free electricity?
(Score: 5, Informative) by theluggage on Thursday September 07 2017, @12:03PM (3 children)
Really? Why should you get free servicing for a year with your new BMW when the rest of us have to pay for servicing? Why should you get a free pen with your new life insurance policy when the rest of us have to buy pens? Why should you get 50GB of free DropDrive cloud storage wth your new Bambleweeney 5000 laptop when the rest of us have to pay for it?
Tesla sells "free" charging as part of the deal when you buy their eye-wateringly expensive EVs. Some of the cost is Telsa taking a short-term hit for the long-term advantage of growing the EV market. Some of it is probably subsidy from the owners of shopping malls, restaurants etc. who like the idea of people in the $100,000 car-owning bracket having 40 minutes to kill at their establishment. Some of it may come, directly or indirectly, from government/taxpayer subsidies - but the existing gas-guzzler industry has already had shedloads of pork from government. If you do the math, you'll find that you have to do a helluva lot of miles to make up the difference between current EV prices and comparable gas-burners.
That, and the whole idea is to encourage people to switch to EVs which (even if it doesn't single-handedly save the planet) will help improve air quality around cities and major highways. Evangelists aside, current EVs are far less convenient than gas burners on long trips, and "free" charging is there to sweeten the deal. It won't last: ISTR part of the deal with making the new Model 3 "affordable" is that you don't get the lifetime free charging any more.
Also, I'm sure that you'll find that the majority of EV drivers get most of their energy from overnight home charging - for which they do pay. The biggest hurdle for mass EV adoption is probably not building a charger network for long trips (that seems to be in progress) but finding an alternative to home charging for all the people without a driveway, garage or private parking space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @12:24PM (2 children)
If you get free service when you buy a new car, you paid for it, they just didn't itemize the bill. With "free" public charging stations, everyone else pays for it.
Not sure how much, though. With current usage rates, the cost of the charger almost certainly dwarfs the cost of the electricity, because it's pretty uncommon that I see a car actually connected to a charger. Only two establishments near me have chargers, a pizzeria and city hall. At city hall there's always the same car connected to one, they must work there and be pretty happy. Most of the others are typically unused. Only once have I seen a car plugged in at the pizzeria.
(Score: 4, Informative) by theluggage on Thursday September 07 2017, @12:49PM
Where are these free public parking stations of which you speak? Public doesn't automatically mean free
Superchargers are only "free" to Tesla owners (and I believe, going forward, Model 3 owners will need to pay a subscription). Other charging networks require a subscription - maybe you'll get this bundles when you buy or lease an EV but it isn't free.
If a supermarket offers free EV charging in their car park then they'll have done the math and decided that free charging is a viable loss-leader that pays for itself in extra sales.
If an employer offers free charging, they'll surely have done the math to justify it as an "intangible benefit".
Or maybe, just maybe, some governments will subsidise charging because it is in the public interest to reduce pollution in cities. TFA mentions China, where pollution in cities is a huge public health hazard.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 07 2017, @02:22PM
How much do you pay for the non-point source pollution (much harder to manage than point-source pollution) you exude? Oh yeah, you drip that oil and spew that smoke out into the environment without paying anything and instead shift those costs to everyone else. Please fuck off.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday September 07 2017, @07:40PM
Well, they don't consume the barrels of oil that their taxes pay to secure.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Whoever on Thursday September 07 2017, @03:03PM (5 children)
Yes, it's not like cars typically spend 8 hours parked at work, or parked at home overnight, when they could be charging at a relatively slow rate.
The gas station model doesn't work for EVs. No one with an electric vehicle wants to go to a gas station: they want to plug in when they get home or when they get to work. Most of the time, as long as the car recharges in 4 hours, no one needs faster charging.
Longer journeys are a different matter: so DC charging needs to be along the highways to enable long distance driving, and even then, most EV drivers would prefer to stop near a coffee shop or restaurant instead of at a gas station.
People need to stop projecting their experiences with gas-powered cars onto electric vehicles.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday September 07 2017, @05:40PM (4 children)
Well, I wouldn't agree with the above. Especially not with "No one with an electric vehicle wants to go to a gas station".
There are many people who say things such as, "Most people, for most uses, only commute n miles/kilometers per day, so the smallish range of many electric cars and the long recharge time is totally no problem at all even with no essentially no recharging infrastructure." Now, this is not an especially bright nor logical thing to say, but many still say it.
Even if a high percentage of people, in a high percentage of locations, drive a short commute a high percentage of the time, then that would mean that a nonmajority-but-significant percent of drivers, in a nonmajority-but-significant percentage of places, drive more than $SMALLRANGE a nonmajority-but-significant percentage of the time.
Put more simply, a significant number of drivers in a significant number of places need to drive more than their range a significant percentage of the time.
And those drivers need to refuel their conveyances (or be stranded), just as do any other drivers.
Whether the fuel is diesel-fuel, electricity, gasoline-petrol, jet fuel, coal+water for steam, unicorn wishes, pixie dust, whatever--if your method of locomotion runs out of it, and you can't go on without it, and you aren't "there yet", then you need to REPLENISH IT, whether or not your now-distant employer and your now-distant home have seventeen thousand turtle-slow four-hour chargers to spare.
This leads to wanting to go to the gas-or-other-fuel-as-appropriate station a significant percentage of the time. If I can't do that, and any trip farther than work or the grocery store leaves me stranded like an idiot, then I don't want the car that runs on a fuel with no distribution system.
When I do get to a gas-or-whatever-fuel station, I would prefer not to sit there and play solitaire for four hours. Even an hour every n miles or kilometers is a huge average-speed and time-of-trip killer.
Thus, I believe that the things under discussion here (recharge station network and charging time) are probably issues that the EV world should at least address, if not solve.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Thursday September 07 2017, @06:18PM (3 children)
If your EV has a 200+ mile range, then you probably want (or should) sit down and have some food (or at least a coffee). That makes gas stations a poor choice for placing chargers.
With a 200+ mile range, for most people (not everyone), the vast majority of their drives are going to be within range of home, so the most convenient charging option is at home, overnight. Unless you have owned an EV, I don't think you can understand how convenient this is.
Gas stations are horrible, smelly places, frequently with disgusting toilets. People go there out of necessity, not choice.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday September 07 2017, @06:39PM (2 children)
Or possibly it could make gas stations a great place to put restaurants, not just convenience stores. "Travel stop" type gas stations near major highways do this already [ta-petro.com].
I see how it would be terrific to leave the car at the end of the day depleted and find it first thing in the morning full of energy and ready to go... But even though the vast majority of my driving is within range of home, there are no charging points in the apartment complex where I live, and I can't install one (I asked).
Well, sure, they have a captive audience--practically no one would go there if not for the need to refuel a vehicle. But whether they are well-maintained or not is a function of the surrounding culture, and of the ownership/management's respect for and adherence to same. Most (not all) gas stations near me are clean and inviting except for the fuel smell, and the shift from hydrocarbons to electrons might mitigate that somewhat.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Thursday September 07 2017, @10:15PM (1 child)
My city (and other around it, I think) is requiring new construction to include wiring for chargers. Apartment complexes are adding chargers because it adds value to the complex. But I don't make the claim that I live in a typical location: we probably have the highest density of electric vehicles in California nearby.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday September 07 2017, @10:40PM
I would really like that. I live about ten miles from the beach, and at the beach, I have seen chargers pop up among public beach parking within the last year, but ten miles is kind of a long walk to/from your parking spot.
(Score: 4, Informative) by anotherblackhat on Thursday September 07 2017, @03:03PM (1 child)
Yeah I know, don't feed the trolls...
Electric cars don't need to replace anything.
Electric cars make sense, right now, just as they are, for some percentage of the population.
Improving charge speed would increase that percentage. So would extending range, or increasing durability.
Personally, I think reducing cost would have the biggest impact.
But there isn't a single "magic bullet" that will fix everything, nor do we need to have a perfect, one size fits all "replacement" for fossil vehicles.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday September 07 2017, @06:01PM
I agree--everyone will naturally end up using whatever best suits their needs and their budget, whatever approach it takes and whatever power source it might use.
But I do also believe that just as in many countries, gasoline-powered cars are the overwhelmingly most common personal conveyance, so in the future there will probably also be a runaway favorite, albeit one not powered by gasoline.
I also believe that at some point that runaway favorite will be of the clean energy variety. Things like Waste Vegetable Oil, Biodiesel, Methanol, and Ethanol are alternatives to petroleum, to be sure, but you still set them on fire and burn their hydrocarbons, so their cleanliness is debatable.
"Clean energy" candidates have included things like Hydrogen/Fuel Cell [thinkprogress.org], Electricity [bcsea.org], even Compressed Air [zeropollutionmotors.us].
Of these, compressed air is potentially cleaner* than hydrogen, which is potentially cleaner than electricity--but Electricity is the worldwide leader in clean-alternative and it has the momentum.
Do you think that there will be a clear leader, or that it will be a mix of technologies as it suits drivers' needs?
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* With a compressed air system, it would be possible to have a wind-compressor filling a pressure tank that in turn fills vehicles' air tanks--a completely mechanical, zero-chemical-zero-emission-ever system... Chemical and electrochemical systems can't compete with that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @05:12PM
> Gas stations are the canonical example of successful market competition,
Really? Where do you live? Many places I go (smaller towns in USA) there are a few stations, but the prices are all the same. When I've asked, it turns out they are all owned by the same company.