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posted by martyb on Thursday September 07 2017, @07:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the plugging-BEVs dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by theluggage on Thursday September 07 2017, @12:03PM (3 children)

    by theluggage (1797) on Thursday September 07 2017, @12:03PM (#564517)

    Why do they think they are entitled to free energy when the rest of us have to pay for the energy we consume.

    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.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @12:24PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 07 2017, @12:24PM (#564523)

    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

      by theluggage (1797) on Thursday September 07 2017, @12:49PM (#564531)

      With "free" public charging stations, everyone else pays for it.

      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

      by hemocyanin (186) on Thursday September 07 2017, @02:22PM (#564576) Journal

      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.