Unfortunately a lot of them are unusable. There are a lot of federal incentives to install them but none to keep them functional. I can find ev charging stations but they are almost always rusted connectors or simply broken.
And the ones that do work give you a max 60kw output instead of the advertised “up to” 250.
Once you open something up to the general public, they are going to ruin it almost instantly. Source: have worked in customer facing positions in the past.
Yeah people can treat public stuff like crap. However most of what I’m seeing is stuff that was made as low cost as possible and just can last more than 6 months outside without rusting the charge connector.
I don’t believe that for a minute. I can pretty much pull off of any highway in America and there’s a good chance there will be 1-3 gas stations to pull into. Whereas I’m lucky to find an EV station every 100 miles. Much less one in working order…
givn that charging takes much longer than refuelling, this isn’t even remotely as good as it sounds. And it doesn’t sound too good in the first place
What isn’t as good as it sounds?
Have you considered that you need roadside fuel stops 1% as often as gas cars?
Depends on the state. I’m in CA and they’re easy to find at least in the populated areas.
Yeah but then you’d have to live in CA.
That’s more than I would have thought. I wonder how close we are to those lines crossing, as EV chargers proliferate and gas stations dwindle?
5 years? 10 years? 20 years?
Well, considering you almost always leave home with a full “tank” (charge), you don’t need as many EV stations.
But that ignores the significant number of people that live in apartments and have no convenient access to a charger like homeowners do. If EVs are to become dominant, that problem needs to be addressed with a huge increase in EV chargers compared to what is available now
Alot of cities around the world are making lamposts with outlets you can plug in to. This would essentially mean every parking bay can become a 'charging station ’ and we don’t need to waste as much land on the equivalent of gas stations like we do today.
It also satisfies the apartment issue.
Problem with these chargers is that at least here in the UK it works out more expensive per mile than petrol. This is pretty much the only thing putting me off as I have no ability to use a home charger at my home.
Is it really ? Did you try doing the calculation ?
I got an electric car and everyone who don’t own an EV is telling me the same thing. But when I do the calculation even in expensive charger it’s still cheaper per km compared to an ICE.
However public charger will always be more expensive than a charger at home.
Edit; I’m not in the UK do I don’t know the situation there.
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Wife did the maths yes. We were looking to get one through a work scheme.
If we could home charge it would win hands down. Without that sadly not.
It’s a shame.
Is that due to the providers adding too much of a margin?
That would be my assumption without deep diving it
You have a lamppost in your apartment?
Nope, but I also don’t park my car in my apartment so win win.
So you have a lamppost for every car in your parking lot at your apartment?
This needs to be handled with a federal mandate probably. There should be a minimum (which should increase over time) percentage of charging outlets available per apartment available to rent. It is a huge issue apartment dwellers are being ignored here.
Agreed. I unfortunately don’t trust apartments to bear that burden unless they’re told to. And even then, the “lamppost” answer the other guy gave very much feels like a handwaved, non-answer. It’s a tricky problem to solve outside of just putting charging stations literally everywhere I feel.
What about apartments where they are in a dense environment? That’d be a complete waste. Should be a locale law at most.
We should be incentivizing more than just ev cars- like maybe less cars in general.
Sure, I guess ports per parking space would be better. Make sure there’s at least some percentage of parking that’s available to charge EVs. If your complex doesn’t provide parking then it’s not required.
Making it local only allows for perverse incentives to screw over people in areas where landowners have more control (which is most places).
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Battery swap stations when? China already has them for fleets of ev taxis.
Tom Scott did a video about Nio’s battery swap stations in a test facility in Europe
Link for the lazy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w
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Sweet, Nio is a Chinese company tho
Yeah? I just wanted to point out thst battery swap tech is being tested outside of China
Never. The industry would have to standardize too much. Maybe for niche applications like taxis or long haul trucking, but not general use.
It took enough fighting to standardize on a plug, and that’s not 100% there yet.
We don’t have standardized batteries for a lot of electronics, different types of lipo, lead acid but they are swappable(not interchangeable) you understand. Doesn’t mean never. But we need to start, innovation should not stagnant because people think it’s never gonna become one single standardized option. Also that sounds like a monopoly
We don’t need it. More chargers can solve the problem fine. Swappable batteries change the infrastructure build out from chargers to swap stations. It’s not going to be deployed any faster, but we already have a running start on chargers.
Also, there’s savings to be had by integrating the battery directly into the frame. You’re not going to swap that.
Trying to get the industry to standardize is a waste of time.
IMO, battery swaps are the wrong priority. To get them reasonably working you need standardized batteries and a way to identify wear on the battery to figure out the discount or extra charge (wouldn’t be fair if I could swap a battery with 30% degradation for one that’s brand new).
What we really need is more L2 or L1 chargers. They are a lot cheaper to install and for 90% of drivers they can deliver enough juice to get people where they need to be.
Put them in every office parking lot and grocery store lot and suddenly EVs become a lot more feasible as daily commuter vehicles (particularly for apartment dwellers).
Fast charging is only needed for long distance traveling.
wouldn’t be fair if I could swap a battery with 30% degradation for one that’s brand new
Would this matter if you never owned a battery to begin with? I assume degradation would affect your range, but in terms of ‘fairness’ I don’t think it matters too much.
Sure, I was thinking that too but how do you do that? You’d either need a repo rule where if you stop paying a subscription or whatever you have to return the battery, or they come take it. That or you need to pay a large fee for the cost of the battery and you get it back upon its return when you stop the service. The latter solution would lose a lot of customers who can’t or don’t want to afford that cast. The former is a huge hassle and I don’t think it’s work at all. Uninstalling a car battery isn’t simple. I guess it could just be handled as general debt?
Anyway, there’s a lot of issues with battery swapping to solve a problem that doesn’t really exist, for the vast majority at least. Most people will never need a fast charger or battery swap. They’ll charge at home or work and never have to think about running out. It doesn’t need to be complicated.
Pretty sure this is not hard to digitally manage and change payment once deployed.
Never. There’s too much efficiency advantage to making the battery pack part of the structure.
We dont need to save the gas station industry. Let them go the way of haberdasheries.
Only Gorogoro (sp?) scooters could work in the USA
Well hot damn, making some progress on EV infrastructure.
There are a lot more households with electricity running to them than gasoline.
And in densely populated areas, houses without off street parking either.
For example:
That’s a good point, though in that particular case it’s a matter of bureaucracy. I faced higher vehicle registration fees starting about seven years back when I bought my plug-in hybrid, which left me scratching my head, since if they wanted to encourage adoption, they wouldn’t institute higher fees so early on in the adoption curve. There is clear opposition by vested interests that have nothing to do with the practicality of the technology itself. Still, given the realities, both bureaucratic and practical, I feel like plug-in hybrids are the best solution for now in most cases.
NJ wants to raise the cost of the vehicle registration; to some extent I understand. I’m not paying the gas tax which goes towards fixing the roadway so they need to make that money somehow. I just wish they didn’t call it a vehicle registration (I just registered my car last year) and instead called it tax, which is what it is.
Astute observation, thanks for sharing
