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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: 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.
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(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.