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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 19 2020, @06:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the electrifying dept.

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)?


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by KilroySmith on Wednesday August 19 2020, @09:01PM (7 children)

    by KilroySmith (2113) on Wednesday August 19 2020, @09:01PM (#1039042)

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 19 2020, @09:44PM (3 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday August 19 2020, @09:44PM (#1039056) Journal

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2020, @10:18PM (#1039073)

      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

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @01:07AM (#1039151)

      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

      by krishnoid (1156) on Thursday August 20 2020, @09:29PM (#1039543)

      "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)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday August 19 2020, @11:35PM (#1039106) Journal

    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

      by KilroySmith (2113) on Thursday August 20 2020, @12:27AM (#1039137)

      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

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2020, @12:44PM (#1039325)

    Aren't the Supercharger stations level 3 chargers? In other words, the ones in the article won't work anywhere near that fast.