They are not all rapid chargers of course. But the point is that mostly those are only needed if you run out of juice on a longer journey. For most normal drivers that only happens a few times a year. Otherwise you just top up at home or using one of the many slow chargers overnight or in a few hours while you are doing something else.
My parents in the Netherlands bought an EV two years ago. They live in an apartment without their own charger in the building. Mostly my father just uses one of several public slow chargers in the neighborhood; once a week or so. He checks on his phone when one is available, drives there and plugs in. They also use chargers at hotels when they are traveling and are typically booking things with chargers available. Destination charging is a thing. Drive somewhere, plug in, do what you came to do, and drive back with enough charge to get home.
They went on a longer trip to France half a year ago. That's the first time he used a rapid charger. The most stressful thing with that is figuring out the payment systems. It's getting better but there are still way too many options for that. Recently Tesla super chargers became an option as well for them (lots of those) and those seem to work best. They drive a Renault.
Anyway, this is very typical behavior with EVs. You charge when it's convenient instead of when you have to. Mostly you are not going to run out on a normal day. It's only on longer journeys that you need to do a bit of planning (make sure the car is charged up before you leave, pick where & when to rapid charge). The worst case is having to take a 45 minute break or so when it's not convenient. That can happen but mostly you can plan to combine that with lunch or something else. And my father is 75, so he needs to have breaks more frequently than the car.
This might be a very American-centric view but I usually tell people that if you have a garage or driveway then your electric car ownership will be a dream where you truly stop thinking about range.
But if you don't, I can imagine there being more stress about charging times, fast chargers, etc.
For road trips, thanks to Tesla's extensive Supercharger network, they are really great for that.
But with more standards (CCS and NACS) becoming pervasive, hopefully this becomes an issue of the past (payments, etc).
My big question is, I don't understand why the oil companies haven't gotten on board. Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?
> Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?
It's a good question. I don't know for certain, but my hypothesis would be because of what you and the OP said:
> Destination charging is a thing. Drive somewhere, plug in, do what you came to do, and drive back with enough charge to get home.
> if you have a garage or driveway then your electric car ownership will be a dream where you truly stop thinking about range
No one goes to a gas station to hang out, you know? Instead you plug in at work, or the mall, or the restaurant, or just don't bother until you get home. It doesn't make sense to spend your 20+ minute charge time at a gas station.
Tesla colocated Superchargers at grocery stores. You have to eat, right? First world problem is the car is done charging before I'm done shopping!
To your point, put chargers at existing locations humans dwell at, the only other use case is highway travel chargers. There are ~110k gas stations left in the US, and I'll argue many of those will not be needed going forward as mobility electrifies [1] [2] [3].
There are a bunch of reasons why it wouldn't be worth implementing, but it would be cool if you could tell it how long you thought you would be in the store and it could adjust the charging time to be a bit gentler on the battery.
I'm sure it wouldn't get used much (unless the UI was very front and center, and maybe recommended a time based on your previous stops at that charger), and Tesla would be somewhat disincentivized to build it anyway as their goal is to get as many unique cars through the charger as possible, but it would still be neat...
I'm unsure if there is much difference between charging at 50kw vs 150-200kw wrt long term battery longevity (I have primarily supercharged my 100D Model S for ~140k miles, and only experience ~7% pack degradation), although I do pick the V2/150kw chargers to let folks potentially under a time crunch use the V2/250kw chargers (when the station has both due to legacy posts that were expanded, which is common in the area I currently frequent). Also, better to turn the stalls over faster considering amortized capex costs (charging fast = less stalls needed).
We're somewhat spoiled that aggressive volumes of fast DC charging is immaterial on battery pack health in well engineered battery packs, as well as the rate of improvement in battery technology. Don't worry too much about it, enjoy a better UX and simply charge when convenient. Batteries are only going to keep getting better.
There are enough stories of taxi/uber drivers who basically only charge at superchargers getting 200,000+ miles out of their Tesla battery that slowing down charge speed to optimize battery life is a minor optimization at best.
What would be really nice is a better way of sharing a charger after you're done charging. My experience is that a Tesla supercharger is often too fast. On a road trip charging stops usually coincide with meals, but a charge takes less time than a nice meal does. The charge is done and idle fees start accumulating when you're halfway through the meal. It's rude to others waiting for the charger to leave it there plugged in. It'd be awesome if there was a way to have two plugs per charger, and a big green light to indicate that the first car is done charging so that anybody pulling into the second stall would get a full speed charge.
That's essentially what they already do. The power feed is shared between neighboring chargers which is why you should leave a space between if there's empty stalls.
e.g. a 250kW charger becomes 125 when two cars are parked next to each other.
It only takes a minute to move your car, I don't really find it that big of a deal.
In my area (a major metro area) there are a bunch of chargers in absolute terms, but very rarely within walking distance of any of my usual destinations.
PlugShare shows 18 total charging stations within a 10 minute drive of my home (only one DCFS). There are none near my grocery store, gym, doctor's office, etc. And I WFH.
If I wasn't able to install a charger at my home, I would be going out of my way for DCFS a couple of times a week and making up ways to kill time.
I hope it'll be different someday, but today is not that day. Or, as the quote goes, "the future has arrived, it's just not evenly distributed yet".
I don’t have an electric car but I watched a video of an owner on YouTube doing a roadtrip and he complained when the chargers were located at places more different from gas stations. Convenience stores are… convenient. Walmarts are almost as good. Hotel parking lots offer basically no amenities to non-guests though.
Indeed. It'll be interesting to watch the charging ecosystem evolve. I have no idea where we'll end up. Turn gas stations into... little EV charging stations with mini-attractions? Dunno!
> he complained when the chargers were located at places more different from gas stations.
I'm not sure I understand, was he complaining when they were in a parking lot, but off a road?
Personally, I see gas stations as convenient to the road, but you are also there for a short time.
If you are charging for a non-trivial amount of time, getting out and doing something else is very nice. Charging while grocery shopping is something I do frequently.
> My big question is, I don't understand why the oil companies haven't gotten on board. Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?
That will come. This is already happening in the EU. The US is just lagging the rest of the world a bit here with EV adoption and charging infrastructure.
But if you think about it: what happens when you remove 40% of the demand for petrol and diesel from the market? Because that's what happens when those driving the most and the furthest switch to electric: they stop buying lots of petrol and diesel. And early adopters tend to be the ones driving the most. So, demand takes a big hit fairy early in the transition.
What happens is very simple: petrol and diesel stations start losing a lot of business. Until they realize that they have the perfect locations for charging and that people will want to buy from their shops and restaurants while they are charging. So, of course they are going to adapt in a hurry and invest in charging infrastructure as this starts happening.
Long term, petrol and diesel are going to be a minor side hustle for rapid charging stations where most of the revenues come from people waiting for their vehicles to charge buying snacks, refreshments, and other stuff.
Even when I worked as full-service attendant at a gas station forty years ago (yes, I’m the last of them), the owner told me there was little money in gas sales, the profit came from the other stuff sold. Enough so that we got a commission on stuff like a quart of oil. And full-serve gas was priced such that it paid my meager wages.
My point being, there probably never was a lot of margin on fuel. Which is why I’m surprised that more convenience stores with fuel aren’t putting in chargers because now you’ve got a captive audience for 20 minutes. They’re getting there, though, as I see AM/PM stores with EVGo chargers now in the PNW. And at $0.45/kWh versus $0.11 at home, there is profit to be made on electrons, I imagine.
I heard the same from a close friend whose family ran 3-4 gas stations.
She said they essentially broke even on gas (something like 1-3 cents of profit per gallon), but made all their money on items inside (she/her family was Asian, so they made a killing cuz they had an asian-styled buffet in their gas station in a small town in Indiana, the only one of its kind for miles)
> "Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?"
There are many chargers at gas ("petrol") stations in the UK. There are even a few stations that have been completely converted, with the pumps removed and replaced with chargers only.
Installing high-power charging does depend on having a suitable grid connection available, of course. For some gas station locations, getting enough power to the site might be impractical or uneconomic.
Bear in mind that particular example is in one of the most expensive places in the UK to live, and is pretty much surrounded by the most expensive neighbourhoods in the country.
> My big question is, I don't understand why the oil companies haven't gotten on board. Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?
I'd guess that in the US one factor might be that a large fraction of gas stations are also convenience stores and most of them make more money from the convenience store side of the business than from the gas side of the business.
The convenience store has two kinds of customers. One is people who are there to get gas but also pick up something in the convenience store. The other is people who come specifically for the convenience store.
Space outside not used for cars that are at the gas pumps is usually used for parking for the people who are there for the convenience store.
If they add EV chargers that are separate from the pumps they will probably have to reduce the parking space for convenience store customers. So they are replacing spots currently used by people who are there for a usually short visit to the convenience store with spots for people who are there to charge EVs.
Even if 100% of EV charging customers also use the convenience store it still reduces convenience store volume because they occupy a spot longer than the people who are there just to use the convenience store. Plus there will be people who are there just to charge and will not use the convenience store.
If they add the EV chargers where the gas pumps are, then the EV charging customers are replacing gas buying customers and so again their is a reduction in turnover because EV charging is slower. Because EV charging is slower I'd guess there is a larger chance that an EV charging customer will decide to also use the convenience store than there is that an gas customer will, so that might compensate some for the lower turnover but I'd guess that it would still be a net reduction in convenience store business.
I have a garage, and I struggle with thinking an electric car would be a dream. It's an old detached garage and doesn't have the electrical infrastructure required to provide fast charging. It seems like it'd be another $10k worth of expenses (I assume something like that for the trenching and installation) on top of the car.
I'd argue most users don't need fast charging at home. 8 hours of level 1 charging gets you 30-50 miles of range, which is pretty much exactly the average daily commute. You can double that range by charging at work (which can be level 1 too).
For rare longer trips, public fast charging infrastructure is quite convenient.
You probably don't need fast charging for charging overnight. I charge my EV off a standard 120V/15A outlet and that's more than enough to keep the battery topped up.
A level 1 charger will add 3-4 miles of range every hour it's plugged in. Assuming you don't have some wildly long commute, that's easily enough to cover most people's daily driving in 8-10 hours of charging overnight.
That’s twice as much power as a US 120V 15A receptacle
.8*120*15 = 1440w vs 230*13 = 2990w
You can only use 80% of a load on a breaker in the US, AFAIK UK receptacles are fused which allows using 100% of the listed device ampacity instead of 80%. I could be wrong about that last part though.
240V/13A is significantly more power than the standard outlets in the US (120V/15A), but even here in the US I find a level 1 charger is more than sufficient to cover my daily driving by charging overnight.
I'm in the UK where every home already has 230v power at the consumer unit/breaker panel.
I don't have an EV charger, but I did have a 32A 230v power feed installed to my detached garage, suitable for a 7.4kW EVSE in the future. Parts and labour cost less than $650. It was a day's work for one man; he used armoured cable that doesn't need to be buried very deep, and could cross paved areas just cutting a 2" slit.
This was in a high cost-of-living area, a qualified and well reviewed electrician, and I didn't bother to shop around for multiple quotes.
You recoup the home charging infra expense over the life of the vehicle through lower fuel costs (electricity vs petrol), and that cost is high. I just had a Tesla high power wall charger installed in a condo building for someone, and for a 100A conduit run and conductors (~70 ft including punching through brick exterior wall and mounting conduit to a finished underground parking facility ceiling) to a sub panel from the meter pan, charger install in front of the parking spot, and 20A branch circuit for other loads off the sub panel, total cost was $6k (US Midwest). Utility and local gov incentives covered half of that, bringing the final bill to ~$3k.
As others said, level 1 charging is more than enough for a lot of people. There are also compromises in between level 1 and level 2. The car will likely take pretty much anything you throw at it. So for example if you have 2 circuits to the garage you can gang them to get 240V/15A for double the speed of level 1. Of it might be a 20A capable connection -- 120V/20A (16A continuous) is noticeably faster than 120V/15A (12A continuous).
If you look up the specs you can do your own trenching and place a conduit with a draw string ready to go. If you know the electrician is cool with it you can often pull cables and have everything ready to go (I buy my own breakers and things) and have the electrician install them. I don’t have an electric car yet but I can’t imagine having over $300 or so in labour once I do, using this strategy.
UK motorway service stations seem to have chargers, and to be expanding them in response to demand. Last time I was in one I saw the two occupied chargers next to a whole row of a dozen under-construction chargers. I'm not sure what the cost of those is, though.
> I don't understand why the oil companies haven't gotten on board
Depends on the energy company.
Some like BP, Chevron, and Idemitsu Kosan began investing fairly heavily in renewables and battery technology (eg. ownership in solar development, owning and licensing battery and charging IP, etc) for diversification reasons.
Others did not, and don't want to end up paying competitors.
Furthermore, gas stations are themselves just franchises so the franchisee might have to eat the cost of installation.
Chevron owns Chargepoint so they were able to scale charging infra to their stations, but other competitors might not want to subsidize Chevron corporate and leave it to the franchise.
L3 charging requires a ton of very specific infrastructure.
Around where I live tesla's got some co-generation going on near by where they've got natural gas -> fuel cell -> supercharger setups (bloom energy runs one and I forget the other).
Absent that you need the power company to pipe in some serious power feeds and those aren't always convenient to trench into where you've already got a gas station.
> I don't understand why the oil companies haven't gotten on board. Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?
Oil companies’ involvement with gas stations is only to the extent of selling their brand to the gas station operator. I don’t think I have ever heard of an oil company itself operating a gas station, I doubt they even own a single one.
they also got into fear and panic mode thinking that their investments in oil will be at risk.
Many of them have existing oil infrastructure that they want to put value on. If they are to become obsolete, their net worth and buying power will be threatened. And so they go into fear/panic. The koch brothers.
No but they can get into electricity generation and sell it wholesale (by the kilowatt or megawatt hour) to gas stations like they do with liquid gasoline.
They have the massive amounts of money to make those investments and sell them to gas stations the same way they do now.
Note that most US homes actually have 240 V split phase service. Power is typically distributed to a neighborhood at 13.3 kV (but there is a lot of variation), and stepped down by a 240 V center tapped transformer outside your house.
The center tap of that transformer is connected to ground and neutral. Normal residential outlets are connected between that neutral and one of the two hot outputs, giving 120 V.
Connecting across the two hots instead of across one hot and neutral gives 240 V. Many houses have one or two 240 V outlets. Typically there is one where the builders expected you to put your washer and dryer, to support an electric dryer. Often there is also one in the garage.
It's easy for an electrician to add more 240 V circuits4 and, assuming you don't need a new electrical panel, fairly reasonably priced. Googling is claiming typically $250-800.
It's still way way way cheaper to "fill" an EV tank in the US because the corresponding electricity charges are also low (in many regions).
It's something like $5-7 to fully charge an EV from 0 where I am (Washington DC suburbs), vs about $50 to fill a tank of gas.
I recently spoke to a cabbie in Madrid that was driving a Tesla, and he said the economics were a no-brainer. He charges at home overnight and once mid-day and his monthly electricity bill was 130 euros. Before that, he was spending over 1,000 euros a month on gas.
That more than makes up for the additional initial cost of having an EV.
> the corresponding electricity charges are also low (in many regions)
Those of us lucky enough to have PG&E in California have a different calculation though. As of my latest bill they charge 88c/kWh and I heard they just approved yet another rate increase. We'll probably be paying $1/kWh pretty soon.
It's a bit cheaper after midnight, but still more expensive than nearly everywhere.
>It's something like $5-7 to fully charge an EV from 0 where I am (Washington DC suburbs), vs about $50 to fill a tank of gas.
If you drive 5k to 10k miles per year though, a hybrid Camry or Prius or equivalent is still going to be cheaper per mile over 20 years compared to an EV due to the huge depreciation in the EV due to battery replacement cost.
L1 charging is not horrible; if the battery is flat, I get a complete charge (volt, 50 mi) in 10 hours. If I had L1 destination chargers 80% of the time, I'd be okay. I believe we could use combo L1/L2 charging to reduce the grid load and service more cars if one could spread the energy among the sockets depending on usage. small number of cars, L2 speeds, large number of cars, L1 speeds.
Where I am in the UK, the unit rate at home is ~10p, while it's 40-50p at a public charger. I can get the home rate even cheaper (5p/kWh) with good timing.
If majority of them are not rapid chargers, and once they all become rapid chargers, won't we have too many chargers then? the time it takes to charge a vehicle will be 2 hours vs 8 hours of slow charging occupying the same spot.
My parents in the Netherlands bought an EV two years ago. They live in an apartment without their own charger in the building. Mostly my father just uses one of several public slow chargers in the neighborhood; once a week or so. He checks on his phone when one is available, drives there and plugs in. They also use chargers at hotels when they are traveling and are typically booking things with chargers available. Destination charging is a thing. Drive somewhere, plug in, do what you came to do, and drive back with enough charge to get home.
They went on a longer trip to France half a year ago. That's the first time he used a rapid charger. The most stressful thing with that is figuring out the payment systems. It's getting better but there are still way too many options for that. Recently Tesla super chargers became an option as well for them (lots of those) and those seem to work best. They drive a Renault.
Anyway, this is very typical behavior with EVs. You charge when it's convenient instead of when you have to. Mostly you are not going to run out on a normal day. It's only on longer journeys that you need to do a bit of planning (make sure the car is charged up before you leave, pick where & when to rapid charge). The worst case is having to take a 45 minute break or so when it's not convenient. That can happen but mostly you can plan to combine that with lunch or something else. And my father is 75, so he needs to have breaks more frequently than the car.