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Electric car charging stations head to Love's Travel Stops across the US:
[Electrify America] announced Tuesday a new collaborative effort with Love's to install charging stations at its stops across the US. Five locations are already open as of today in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Utah and Florida. Crucially, the stops now open helped complete a nationwide charging route from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.
The new stations will charge at rates up to 350 kilowatts and can add up to 20 miles of range per minute. Ultimately, Electrify America's goal is to continue chipping away at America's range anxiety about electric cars. With more places to charge, it will be mighty difficult to run out of juice. Of course, the company's also bound to invest the cash as part of a Volkswagen dieselgate settlement here in the US...
Will such partnerships vanquish range anxiety for electric vehicles (EVs)?
(Score: 5, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday August 19 2020, @07:31PM (15 children)
For EVs, typical recharge rates for the so called "Level 2" 240V charging station, which can be considered a base line of sorts, have been 20 miles per hour. (Level 1 is 120V and roughly twice as slow.) It's like refilling a gas tank through the needle of a syringe. If you do have faster options, such as CHAdeMO, it comes at the price of shortening your battery life, it can't maintain the relatively high charging rate past 80% capacity, and it still takes half an hour.
There is really no point in putting a Level 2 charging station at a travel stop. No one wants to sit in a travel station for 3 hours while their car recharges. If this report is correct, if it hasn't been exaggerated, if they aren't leaving out a bunch of limitations such as being unable to charge past 80% at that rate, and it will massively shorten your battery life, it may be good enough to make the EV a viable road trip vehicle. I note that they are using slippery language such as "up to". Oh, 20 miles per minute is the maximum, huh? What's the average?
What does it take to fill a gas tank, about 3 minutes? 15 minutes to gain 300 miles of range is still not as good as that, but it's tolerable. This, however, sounds more like it will take 30 minutes to gain 300 miles of range. Still tolerable, but it will be a tougher sell. 30 minutes to gain 100 miles of range, to that I'd say "no". Not good enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2020, @07:46PM
I was thinking the same thing. Assuming their "up to" language is meaningful, and one actually got 20 miles per minute of charge rate, then that is at best about 22 minutes, just to charge, to gain the range a hydrocarbon fill-up can give in about 3-4 minutes.
Of course, few will sit in their car waiting out 22 minutes of idle charge time, so this sounds like a bonanza for the quck-e-mart store where they will sell you a soda for 250% markup or a slim-jim for a 350% markup.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by KilroySmith on Wednesday August 19 2020, @09:01PM (7 children)
You asked. I own a Tesla Model 3 with 300 miles of range.
It takes 20-30 minutes to add about 200 miles of range to the car, and another 30 minutes to add the remaining 100 miles, if I pull into a Supercharger with a fully discharged battery. On long trips, I never charge to 100% because of that time penalty - it's faster to charge to 200 miles, and pull into another supercharger 3 hours down the road with a low battery. The Electrify America network will be equivalent to the Tesla Supercharger network eventually, both in ubiquity as well as speed. Note that most modern EVs (including mine) charge at about a 1C rate, which has been the standard rate for Lithium Ion batteries forever, and is seen as safe for the battery. User experience from the Tesla Model S indicates that Tesla battery packs will last over 200,000 miles before degrading to 90% of their original capacity, pretty much regardless of whether the owner uses Supercharging exclusively, often, or seldom.
I drive from Phoenix to the Los Angeles area 3-4 times a year. It takes me about an hour longer (5.5 vs. 4.5 hours) to make the 350 mile trip compared with an ICE. But, IMHO, leaving home in the morning the other 361 days a year with a full charge makes up for the slower trip times a few times a year. And never having to grab ahold of a gas nozzle that the previous user somehow covered in gas (leaving my hands smelling like gas for the rest of the day) is just the cherry on top.
As a point of comparison, the current record for an EV Cannonball Run (Long Beach, CA to New York, NY) is about 48 hours in a stock Tesla Model 3. This compares with perhaps 35 hours for a stock ICE car, and about 25 hours for a prepared ICE car (60 gallon gas tank, observers on the route looking for cops, etc) averaging 109 mph.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 19 2020, @09:44PM (3 children)
Another consideration for the EV vs. the ICE for a long trip is the Teslas are getting closer to self-driving. It will make for a more pleasant journey to be able to enjoy the scenery, read a book, or snooze. In that scenario a little extra time for recharging passes quickly.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2020, @10:18PM
There is no reason that self-driving must or will be restricted to EVs. It happens that Tesla is ahead of other manufacturers right now, but I wouldn't expect that to be permanent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @01:07AM
Self driving is orthogonal to the powerplant driving the car forward.
An ICE vehicle can be just as much, if not more, self driving than an EV.
So "self driving" isn't a benefit nor a curse of an EV or an ICE. Eventually the remaining ICE vehicles will gain self driving abilities as well.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Thursday August 20 2020, @09:29PM
"How you doing? You getting tired of driving, want to take a break?"
"Woof!"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday August 19 2020, @11:35PM (1 child)
Sounds like a road trip is very doable, in a Tesla. And that is about what I expected, half an hour to get 200 miles of range. 20% to 33% longer travel time is not thrilling, but livable. It's the other electric cars that are unacceptable.
I own an old Nissan Leaf (2011) I got used, for cheap. The batteries are due for replacement, having degraded to the point that the car has only about 40 miles of range when fully charged. I love the low maintenance and ultra quiet ride. No emissions testing needed. No idling, and no fumes to breathe while idling with door open or window down. But the severely limited range makes it useless for anything other than very local trips.
I don't even try to use charging stations any more. I've learned they are not reliable. They might be turned off after hours, disabled, out of order, the wrong type, occupied, or, most likely, nowhere near my destination. Take a trip that you can't finish without a recharge, and you've put yourself at the mercy of the vagaries of these public charging networks. They don't take credit cards like gas pumps do, no. You have to set up accounts with each of whichever of the half dozen networks are in your area, and then you need their special card, or their app on your smartphone. Even when they are "free", they still insist you have an account. A charging station halfway to your destination is mostly useless, because it takes way too long to recharge. Even when it is at your destination, you might not want to stay that long. Oh, and Tesla gives other electric cars a giant middle finger, by not providing any means to connect them to Tesla's chargers. So I do all my charging at home. If it's too far for the electric to do the round trip on one charge, I take a gas burner.
To make that Phoenix to L.A. run in my old Leaf would take days, of course. Or not be possible at all, if there's a gap of more than 40 miles between charging points.
(Score: 4, Informative) by KilroySmith on Thursday August 20 2020, @12:27AM
The Leaf was a great city car, hobbled by Nissan choosing not to actively cool the battery (the Tesla will turn on the A/C to cool the battery if it gets too hot outside, even sitting in my garage) which caused a lot of battery degradation, especially in hot areas. They were also really early in the EV game, and it turns out that the Chademo charging standard they chose is going to end up on the trash heap of history. Unfortunately, I expect the Tesla connector to end up there eventually, also - eventually there'll be enough other cars with CCS connectors, and enough CCS charging stations, that Tesla will have to change (they already use CCS in Europe, because the EU decided on a single standard, and it wasn't Tesla). Bummer because the Tesla connector is smaller, sleeker, easier to manage, and identical in every market, unlike CCS.
I really wish that a few of the new EVs would take Tesla up on their offer and join the Supercharger network. Tesla has asked that, to do that, they sign a free patent license, and contribute to the cost of building the Supercharger network. But the old car companies are wedded to the idea of "We don't build gas stations, why should we build Charging stations".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @12:44PM
Aren't the Supercharger stations level 3 chargers? In other words, the ones in the article won't work anywhere near that fast.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MostCynical on Thursday August 20 2020, @12:19AM (5 children)
most people don't drive 300 miles at a time.
Daily US average is about 26 miles per day [statista.com]
most trips in the US are under the average EV range - actually up to 95% [greencarreports.com]
Anti-EV logic in SN seems to follow these options:
"EVs don't suit some of my trips, so they are useless technology"
"EVs don't suit one trip I do once a year, so they are useless technology"
"EVs don't suit one type of transport model, so they are useless technology"
"EVs don't suit every possible transport requirement, so they are useless technology"
replace "EV" with "motorbike", or "Box van", or "Milk cart", or "Mazda Miata" to demonstrate logic fail.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @01:09AM (2 children)
Very much depends upon location. Typical city/surburbia folk, yup, they don't drive anywhere near that on a typical outing or a typical day. A rancher out on the plains of Oklahoma, they very well may drive 300 miles at a time (or in several bursts throughout a day).
(Score: 3, Touché) by MostCynical on Thursday August 20 2020, @02:17AM (1 child)
hence most, not all
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday August 20 2020, @08:41PM
Maybe you should have thanked him for proving your point!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @10:03AM
Most people also don't have a Miata. Not practical enough.
Unlike EVs, though, nobody is saying everyone has to get rid of their current car and switch to a Miata.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday August 20 2020, @12:45PM
That is correct: most drivers don't cover much distance on a daily basis. Even EVs with range on the low end can cover the typical driver's daily needs.
EVs with longer ranges can manage road trips; there are many videos online of people doing just that, in Colorado (harrumph! EVs can't work in a place with mountains...), in Norway (harrumph! EVs don't work well in cold places...), etc. It takes about 30 minutes to recharge at a fast charger, which puts the pacing of the trip about in line with what the AAA recommends for safe practices on long trips (ie., "Take a break every 4 hours to stretch your legs and refresh").
Energy storage and recharging speeds are about to get better, though. We've seen a lot of stories come through SN on researchers trying different battery chemistry and structures; it's a matter of time before they cross the critical threshhold with energy density and recharge rates. The cool thing about that is it will sweep across all our civilization, not just cars.
Washington DC delenda est.