Why aren't all gas station in the US buying at least a couple of timed/metered EV chargers? They are cheap in Aliexpress. Between 400 USD and 1000 USD per charger. I would assume that a gas station already has the electrical setup required to hook a handful of them since they have other equipment with high electricity consumption.
With a couple thousand you can create a small EV charging operation.
It baffles me when I see gas stations with a new car wash system that is probably expensive as fuck and not a single EV charging station in miles.
The $1K chargers that wouldn't stress an existing electrical panel aren't worth it for EV users unless they're in a dire emergency. It takes 6 hours for a full charge on one of these. Great for a hotel, but not for a gas station.
The ones that charge a car in 30-60 minutes generally have their own dedicated transformer, the size of a fridge. Two cars can pretty easily use 300KW with older tech, 600KW+ with newer stuff. If my math is right, that's 2,500 amps on traditional 240V service. My house has 100A service for comparison.
For reference, back in 2013 when there were only the 150kW superchargers, the costs ranged from $100k to $175k for the charging stalls and transformers[0]. In 2015 it was said by Tesla's investor relations manager that it cost about $270k per station (presumably gen 2 250kw chargers)[1].
I'm not sure how Electrify America installation works, but for Tesla they front all of these costs so all it would take to get them installed at stations is the landowner allowing it to be placed on their land (likely with some sort of revenue share agreement, if they don't think they'll get enough money from the increased foot traffic).
Because running a gas station is really about running a convenience store with an item sold near cost to reel people in (fuel).
It's a numbers game and it's all about throughput. You might convert x% of fuel buyers into people who buy a coffee or lotto ticket any one day. EV chargers are very low throughput so they're not very attractive. There's other better ways to improve that money widening the customer pipe or improving conversion ratio.
That doesn't make much sense to me. It's well known that fast chargers cost a lot more than charging at home on a watt-to-watt basis. Selling electricity is clearly more profitable than selling gasoline.
It's not cheap to build pumps and underground storage tanks for gas stations, so it's not as if gas station owners would be stunned by upfront costs. Lots of stations already have plenty normal parking spots that generate zero income on their own.
If anything, a longer stop would incentivize more convenience store shopping. Which would make them want to have better stock and selection, which in turn might attract nearby foot traffic. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
The extra electricity costs at DC fast chargers goes to the power utility in demand charges, for the equipment demanding so much current instantaneously.
There are more chargers than (most people) you think.
Having more is a good thing, but gas stations adding them wont move the needle any time soon.
A friend was telling me recently that there aren't many chargers. He lives in Boulder, of all places. There are a million public chargers around Boulder, but they're relatively invisible compared to a gas station, especially if you aren't actively looking for them. When I showed him the plugshare map he couldn't believe it, he thought this stuff was a decade away.
In my experience owning five EVs, public charging isn't really an issue, especially for Tesla and J-1772. If anything, I worry for chargepoint et. al. in the face of so many free chargers in the short term.
That said, there are some weird spots between superchargers if you have a tesla. And if you rely on CCS with the coming onslaught of F-150 lightnings... I wish you good luck and to reconsider. Slow charging speed and crappily maintained CCS / CHaDeMo are really going to suck the life out of you on road trips compared to superchargers. But if you can get by with J1772 then life is good.
The vast majority of those EV chargers won't be fast chargers. They're also often in parking garages where you have to pay per hour, on private (corporate) land meant for office workers, attached to hotels, etc.
So the gas station model, where you want a fast charger and for it to be ubiquitous, is anything but. San Francisco has 4 non-Tesla stations with >=75 kWh, for example. And then of course there's the Tesla vs non-Tesla divide.
Most gas stations don't have a lot of extra space. If a car sits there for an hour, they need twelve times the parking area in order to serve an equal number of gas cars, assuming the latter can refuel in five minutes.
Some gas stations may have extra room and would be able to offer up some parking spots for charging, but I'd assume that for most of them it doesn't make sense.
Another consideration is that throughput is a lot higher with DC fast chargers, and those are a lot more expensive than the cheap L2 AC chargers. And they might require some significant electrical infrastructure upgrades.
Here in Norway the main limitation seems to be cost, not for the chargers but for the connection to the grid.
Installation might require increasing the local transformer station, which whoever wants the capacity has to share the cost for. This can be very expensive, usually hundreds of thousands USD from what I understand.
Also the running costs can be significant, as there's a separate grid charge based on the peak kW used per month. This can add up to a lot if multiple chargers are used simultaneously.
There seem to be two categories of gas stations; the ones where you fill up and go, with a minor convenience store attached, and the larger ones where they seem to want you hanging around.
With the first category, I imagine they just don't want people hanging around. The dollars per car per hour ratio drops off a cliff when you have EVs just sitting there for 15-40 minutes clogging up the limited space.
Anything involving modifying parking stalls or electricity quickly becomes expensive, and these require both. Signage, striping, curb and walkway alterations, burying cable and permits quickly add up. The installation may also require security considerations since the charger is worth something.
But you are completely right; stations that become conspicuous charging destinations are going to do a lot of convenience store business. It'd be smart of well located towns to work on making it easier to add charging infrastructure so they can continue to be popular stops.
It's a different scenario. Charging vs fueling has different constraints, and a facility designed for one is not necessarily designed for the other.
Probably more effective for some restaurant franchise to add EV charging as part of their branded setup. E.g. Every IHOP in the country has EV charging.
I went on a road trip recently and charged near a Denny's. I hadn't been to a Denny's in forever (for good reason, I was reminded) but I did this time. A quick meal is great timing for a charge.
Here in Ontario I never found a bad Denny's, on the other hand I never found a great Denny's. All the Denny's I had seen here are very near other restaurants so after the first couple of them I tend to eat elsewhere.
With a couple thousand you can create a small EV charging operation. It baffles me when I see gas stations with a new car wash system that is probably expensive as fuck and not a single EV charging station in miles.
Is EV charging a regulated industry or something?