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alfadriver
alfadriver MegaDork
6/14/23 12:17 p.m.

In reply to frenchyd :

Because they can.  Not everyone will have the ability to do that unless there are good economic reasons that apartment owners add chargers to all of their parking spots.  

At some point, adding more chargers to every single place to park at home isn't that feasible unless there are some great financial incentives to someone.

As for charging a 1000 mile range in 6 min...  physics.  Good luck with that.

DocRob
DocRob Reader
6/14/23 1:33 p.m.

Toyota's high mileage and rapid recharge rate claims are from solid-state batteries, not current electrolyte-based batteries used in EVs. Those are experimental batteries, in no way are they production ready, I would guess they aren't exactly the safest things either. Their mileage claims are likely a combination of simulation and rolling road under perfectly ideal conditions. Toyota claims that they'll be production ready in ~5 years if things continue to go as they are now. We will see. 

That does not change the current limitations of electric charging stations which remain shockingly rare in many states (see what I did there?). The grid limitations haven't yet been addressed. Suburban and Rural EV use actually makes sense, where trip distances are low and vehicles are parked out front at night. 

Urban EV use remains limited to the wealthy, who can have dedicated parking spots and security for their vehicles. At least until truly rapid recharging comes online and is available everywhere. You don't park your car in front of your apartment at night in Chicago and the city isn't installing EV chargers on every block either, logistically it makes zero sense. Add in the high chance for vandalism and theft (I regularly saw EV charging station cables torn off and stolen from parking garages when I lived in Chi) and it makes even less sense. 

I'm all for Tesla opening it's charging network up, standardizing the adapters/charging protocols. Standardization IS one key to successfully transitions, but it is only one key to success. Additional keys come from infrastructural enhancement and renovation and very much future breakthroughs in battery technologies that improve safety, capacity, and recharge rates. Each successive generation has gotten better, but EV still behind the ICE vehicle in terms of many critical benchmarks. 

frenchyd
frenchyd MegaDork
6/14/23 2:27 p.m.
Jesse Ransom said:

In reply to Tom Suddard :

I didn't want to link an article to another car mag, and none of the other news sources stood out as great coverage, so I thought I'd leave it to folks to search, but that's about the size of it.

That's interesting; I guess I assumed that the proprietary connector was as good as a statement of intent to remain separate, but of course network credentials and an account are just as important. It hadn't occurred to me that Tesla wasn't withholding their advantage in infrastructure rollout as a sales tool for their cars.

I guess it makes sense that for enough money, they'd be willing to sell some of that capacity given that the others will need to invest in infrastructure anyhow. If their charging station lead is going to eventually dwindle out of necessity, why not be the ones building/selling(/branding/controlling) as many stations as possible?

Thanks!

I sat in a neighbors Model 3 and he fired up the dashboard to show me the places I could charge at if I drove from Minneapolis to Chicago.  
    My friends house in Palatine was in range without a top off of a extended range model 3.  And there were plenty of places I could top off if I worried about making it.    Since Elkhart  Lake is about 350 miles  there are even more cars capable of non stop trip and 12 places to recharge Along the way.   
      Des Moines  Iowa is 260 miles  so almost in range of the Chevy Bolt or the proposed Tesla  model 2.  
  Tomorrow I'm going up to Northern Minnesota  round trip 452 Miles  so a 15 minute top off would get me more than 100 extra miles. 
      
     According to the neighbor  he saves  over $1600 a year driving an EV  over his BMW.    

The thing that he really likes is the BMW was always a threat of an expensive repair  but the Tesla has been completely trouble  free.   
   The BMW when the lease was up it went back.  As did the Audi before and the Mercedes before that.   
        When the lease is up he's probably going to keep it or see what new  thing Tesla offers. 

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner MegaDork
6/14/23 3:25 p.m.
alfadriver said:
Keith Tanner said:

In reply to alfadriver :

I don't think all gas stations make their own fuel either. Some of the big ones, sure, but there are a lot of pure resellers. 

The electricity regulations are fairly varied from state to state. In some, only utilities are allowed to sell power IIRC, and I think Tesla is considered a utility there. I don't think there's anything stopping utilities in most states from opening charging networks. They already make a profit selling the electricity to the other charging networks. Like so many other industries, there's quite a difference between being a wholesale or retail business and many companies don't do both. 

My point is incentives to build more "pumps".  The oil companies have a good reason to make sure there are almost 150,000 gas stations around the country, all of them have at least 4 pumps to fill up vehicles with gasoline- as they all make really good money selling their product for vehicles.

Right now, the companies that make electricity don't have that incentive- electricity is electricity.  And I think there are "utility" limits on them being able to sell their product at enough of a premium to saturate the US with charging stations.  Otherwise, they should be doing it, as well as upgrading the infrastructure as the future is seemingly pretty obvious where they can make billions of dollars selling electricity to EVs.  

Right now, the vehicle makers are the ones who are deciding on how their vehicles get charged.  If the utilities got together and said- "this will be the way because we plan on putting in 100,000 charging stations"  every maker would quickly adapt that and the problem would be solved.

The purpose of the various governmental incentives is to solve the chicken and egg problem. Profit-driven entities won't build charging networks until there are users - but the users won't buy the cars until the networks are in place. Tesla saw this pretty early on and it was a significant sales advantage to them. If we want a high level of EV adoption*, then we need a good high speed charging infrastructure across the country.

Those incentives usually specify CCS, which was looking like it was going to be the winner for a universal charging standard in the US. Pretty much every non-Tesla uses it, and Teslas since late '19 can also use it with an adapter. So that basically made the decision on how the vehicles got charged. 

But the networks taking the money dropped the ball by doing a half-assed job. It was a land grab and they didn't bother with quality work or maintenance. This has hobbled EV adoption. Ford basically said "you guys suck, we can't sell cars to people in good faith, only Tesla has done this right" and added support for the NACS (the Tesla connector). GM followed suit immediately and a bunch of networks saw the writing on the wall. The dominoes fell fast. It helps that the NACS connector is superior even when it's not attached to a Supercharger, and that Tesla also engineered their stations to be efficient to build - roughly 20% of the cost of other networks. So they seem to have won the standards race by being a better design, better implemented for a lower price and being more reliable. All good.

Since this will very likely lead to the Tesla chargers speaking the CCS protocol as well as the Tesla protocol, it's doing the same thing as your fuel pumps that dispense fuel that (almost) every gas vehicle can use. The physical plug might be one of two options - and there are ways for cars to accept either - but the actual communication and all the back end will be standardized. The actual fuel, of course, is all the same.

There are a variety of price structures in place for charging networks now. It's difficult to come up with an average because there are differences across states in how electricity can be sold. It's quite likely we'll see some evolution here to allow utilities to profit off charging stations, but since it's at the state level it will be very fractured and inconsistent. It's happening in Canada at least, where several of the largest networks are owned by power generation companies. Two others are owned by major gas companies. Rundown

 

* take that as a given for the purpose of this discussion, we have already been over this particular "if" quite enthusiastically

alfadriver
alfadriver MegaDork
6/14/23 5:14 p.m.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

As far as I can tell, the OEM's have clearly noted that EV's are the future.  So there's clearly profit potential to sell electricity to EVs.  You can even slowly phase them in where the cars are mostly sold.

Which tells me that there's some issue with who is going to profit from selling EV electricity.  Given the profits that oil companies enjoy from gasoline sales, this is a massive, massive amount of money- potentially.  Far bigger than most tech companies when scaled up to even half of cars.

thatsnowinnebago
thatsnowinnebago UberDork
6/14/23 6:48 p.m.

I can tell you that the power companies aren't giving away the electricity uses by chargers for free. Chargers are connected to the same network at everything else so someone is paying for the power. 

Electrical utilities are generally pretty highly regulated as to how much they can charge per kW, so I don't see a world where they can pull in huge profits like oil companies. There's no way to throttle production to raise prices like OPEC likes to do. 

frenchyd
frenchyd MegaDork
6/14/23 7:09 p.m.
alfadriver said:

In reply to frenchyd :

Because they can.  Not everyone will have the ability to do that unless there are good economic reasons that apartment owners add chargers to all of their parking spots.  

At some point, adding more chargers to every single place to park at home isn't that feasible unless there are some great financial incentives to someone.

As for charging a 1000 mile range in 6 min...  physics.  Good luck with that.

There will start to be.  Here in Minnesota already the slightly better apartments have parking garages.  Most of them have power for the lights  because it's dark in the winter mornings and it's dark in the afternoon when they get home.   
   Typically they add $80-$100 a month for those parking spots.  Some of which already have electricity for block heaters. Adding another $100 /month  for electricity to charge  your car. Would be profitable for the landlords and appreciated by the Tenet. 
       Since Tesla already has several cars that qualify for the IRA tax breaks  ($7500) as does Ford. & GM.  That is a very big incentive.   Even bigger in some states. Minnesota has a mere $2500, Colorado has $5000. California $7500 and Oregon is even more!!!! 

   On top of that, many  EV's are well below the average price paid for new cars.  Prices as low as $25,000 before tax considerations.  True to get a new Tesla at that price you'll probably have to wait until 3/4 of next year. 
 But between that and the lower operating cost.  Plus, and this is just my humble opinion, a significantly longer life.  I can see  the average college student buying one and driving it their whole life.  Especially up here in the rust belt where the aluminum body won't be attracted by the dreaded tin worm. 
   Regarding Toyota's claims. You are right to be skeptical.  They made the exact same claim back in 2017. So based on their repeat pattern can we expect another claim in 5 years?  
      That said it is realistic to expect 500 mile range soon.   But why in the world would you pay extra for that? 
  At most people take one vacation a year where they even travel 300 miles in a car.  Most vacations are done on planes.   They average 35 miles per day with a car capable of 250 miles 

STM317
STM317 PowerDork
6/15/23 7:47 a.m.
frenchyd said:

On top of that, many  EV's are well below the average price paid for new cars.  Prices as low as $25,000 before tax considerations.  True to get a new Tesla at that price you'll probably have to wait until 3/4 of next year. 
 But between that and the lower operating cost.  Plus, and this is just my humble opinion, a significantly longer life.  I can see  the average college student buying one and driving it their whole life.  Especially up here in the rust belt where the aluminum body won't be attracted by the dreaded tin worm.

....


Regarding Toyota's claims. You are right to be skeptical.  They made the exact same claim back in 2017. So based on their repeat pattern can we expect another claim in 5 years?  
 

It's hilarious to me that in the same post you can be skeptical of Toyota's claims while simultaneously touting an imaginary Tesla Model 2.

frenchyd
frenchyd MegaDork
6/15/23 10:29 a.m.

Fair enough.   But Toyota continues to advocate for a battery that supposedly had 5 years to develop and bring to production  and even their statement claims another 5 years before it will happen.  
   As for the Model 2?   Well they are building the factory as we speak  and you don't spend all that money for a publicity stunt.  
 When Musk says that factory will produce 2 million a year I believe him.  

alfadriver
alfadriver MegaDork
6/15/23 10:36 a.m.

In reply to frenchyd :

All your post suggests is that the EV market will remain in the fringe area if you can only point toward a few higher end apartments that have garages and therefore potential home chargers.

If you want to have everyone charging at their residences, you need charging stations literally everywhere.  Not just new apartments, but old ones that don't have garages.  And at 20-30% of the spots for now.  And to do that, the electrical system of the apartment will need to be scaled up, since a 50A-120V service is only 6kW of power- which will take a while to charge a 100kw-hr battery system.  50A x even 10 stations is another 500A of service to an apartment.  

I remember working at a "restaurant" and being rather astounded how much scaling up of food is required even when you are just serving 100 people.   This is another couple of orders of magnitude than that.

STM317
STM317 PowerDork
6/15/23 11:09 a.m.
frenchyd said:

Fair enough.   But Toyota continues to advocate for a battery that supposedly had 5 years to develop and bring to production  and even their statement claims another 5 years before it will happen.  
   As for the Model 2?   Well they are building the factory as we speak  and you don't spend all that money for a publicity stunt.  
 When Musk says that factory will produce 2 million a year I believe him.  

But you could say the exact same thing about Musk/Tesla and their timelines.

- Weren't they supposed to have a million autonomous taxis on the road by now?

- The Semi and Roadster were unveiled in 2017, and were supposed to be rolling out of factories by 2019 and yet the Semi is essentially handbuilt with less than 100 of them in customer hands and the Roadster is completely MIA.

- The Cybertruck was first shown in 2019 with production to begin in 2021. Still waiting...

Perhaps the factories they're building around the world are going to be busy with those projects? Or a replacement for the aging Model S and poor selling Model Y(Woops! I meant Model X)?

I'd say you've got a minimum of 5 years before the mythical Model 2 is easily available. If it exists at all.

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner MegaDork
6/15/23 11:18 a.m.

The poor selling Model Y? ;)

Tesla promises about future vehicle products can't really be taken seriously, but I do expect a small car is pretty high on the priority list and I'd expect to see it in a couple of years. It's an important car, especially in other markets than the US. The Roadster and truck aren't really important so they're lower priority, but good for getting attention so they get trotted out once in a while with crazy spec sheets.

However, this discussion is really about the charging networks and what this implies, so let's not let Frenchy derail it too far. The charging network changes are actually happening right now.

GIRTHQUAKE
GIRTHQUAKE SuperDork
6/15/23 1:15 p.m.

Also factory and production space. Tesla is limited there, same with Subaru.

As for charging... charger density is an odd one, because many of us (like myself) haven't really needed them in our day-to-day just because the car was charged the night before. It'll ALWAYS be needed, but it's not a game changer and there's lots of options; I think in another particular thread that went to pot we realized parked EVs could trickle-charge off airport parking lot light fixtures with them going LED using the freed up amps.

We have time. EV adoption keeps increasing but there's a lot of chances to keep it all in lock-step with improvements.

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner MegaDork
6/15/23 1:41 p.m.

EVs with a charger at home don't need access to charging unless they're roadtripping, so high speed charging near where you live isn't really important. That's why you see chargers in odd location, such as Blanding, UT - pop 3400. Not many people live there, but people heading across Hwy 191 need it. I think most of us have realized this by now, but not everyone has. It's a leftover from ICE thinking where you can't refuel from home, so you WANT a fuel station that's convenient. I've never used a fast charger that was fewer than 100 miles from my house.

EVs without a charger at home would probably be pretty well served by mid-speed chargers at places where cars are often parked for a while, like shopping malls and movie theaters. I'm pretty sure this is EvGo's plan. You don't really want a very high speed charger in these locations because you'd have to go move the car before you were finished. I think Tesla has an urban Supercharger that's around 75 kW for this purpose. This ends up bring closer to the urban ICE concept, you go refuel the car once in a while. The difference is that the EV gets to refuel while you're doing something else, so the actual refuelling becomes a background process. I think of this as "opportunity charging", similar to the way that we'll plug in if we're stopped for food on a road trip even if we don't need it.

I like the idea of parasitic chargers on light fixtures that have been upgraded to LED, that's clever. The light fixtures could even disconnect the charger when the lights are on, so the charger only works during daylight hours when there's no power demand by the lights. For an airport parking lot, that would probably still be sufficient as you're probably parked there for at least 24 hours.

frenchyd
frenchyd MegaDork
6/15/23 10:08 p.m.
STM317 said:
frenchyd said:

Fair enough.   But Toyota continues to advocate for a battery that supposedly had 5 years to develop and bring to production  and even their statement claims another 5 years before it will happen.  
   As for the Model 2?   Well they are building the factory as we speak  and you don't spend all that money for a publicity stunt.  
 When Musk says that factory will produce 2 million a year I believe him.  

But you could say the exact same thing about Musk/Tesla and their timelines.

- Weren't they supposed to have a million autonomous taxis on the road by now?

- The Semi and Roadster were unveiled in 2017, and were supposed to be rolling out of factories by 2019 and yet the Semi is essentially handbuilt with less than 100 of them in customer hands and the Roadster is completely MIA.

- The Cybertruck was first shown in 2019 with production to begin in 2021. Still waiting...

Perhaps the factories they're building around the world are going to be busy with those projects? Or a replacement for the aging Model S and poor selling Model Y(Woops! I meant Model X)?

I'd say you've got a minimum of 5 years before the mythical Model 2 is easily available. If it exists at all.

But Toyota is a long establish company.  And Tesla's the new kid.  
    My wife wants one of those model X  because she loves the doors. 
ah well! 
  

frenchyd
frenchyd MegaDork
6/15/23 10:23 p.m.
alfadriver said:

In reply to frenchyd :

All your post suggests is that the EV market will remain in the fringe area if you can only point toward a few higher end apartments that have garages and therefore potential home chargers.

If you want to have everyone charging at their residences, you need charging stations literally everywhere.  Not just new apartments, but old ones that don't have garages.  And at 20-30% of the spots for now.  And to do that, the electrical system of the apartment will need to be scaled up, since a 50A-120V service is only 6kW of power- which will take a while to charge a 100kw-hr battery system.  50A x even 10 stations is another 500A of service to an apartment.  

I remember working at a "restaurant" and being rather astounded how much scaling up of food is required even when you are just serving 100 people.   This is another couple of orders of magnitude than that.

You are right.  More chargers will be needed. But right now in my state only 1% of cars are EV's.  
        My Dad had a garage back in 1952 as did most of the houses in the suburbs.   Many of the homes in the city.  That's what alley's were for, so you could drive into your garage in the back yard.   The big houses in up scale neighborhoods had "garages" back before the turn of the century.  Even in the late 1800's the carriage  and horses needed someplace to stay. 
 Out on the farm cars were first kept in the barn with the rest of the equipment ( except they were mostly pickups )
      Parking garages are semi normal here. Even for apartments. 
    I dare say most homes have garages. 
     Now if you are talking about very low end apartments. Where people park on the street?   Yes it will be a while before they are buying EV's.  I suspect not until EV's are 50% of the market. 
  Big cities like New York,   Boston,  San Francisco.  Land is too expensive to keep cars there.   But in the suburbs around them?  Garages. 

alfadriver
alfadriver MegaDork
6/15/23 10:55 p.m.

In reply to frenchyd :

To get to 2%, the number of chargers needs to double.  Just pointing that out. 

And walking around my neighborhood, most homes don't have garages.  There are plenty of wealthy neighborhoods that people have cars but no garages.  Not poor areas that you assume.  BTW, even though land is expensive, there are cars all over New York, Boston, and San Francisco.  All freaking over.  So much so that parking is really hard.  So get over the assumption that large cities are car deserts.

The reality of this deal is that the available chargers for Ford products went up a huge amount, just making it easier to own one.  I don't keep track of the number of high power chargers out there, I just see a silly non standard system like VHS and BetaMax. 

frenchyd
frenchyd MegaDork
6/15/23 11:08 p.m.

In reply to alfadriver :

Yes $50. So a Tesla power wall  charger is now $475 
     I didn't say cars weren't in Big cities.  I said cars were in the suburbs around the big cities. So yes they go downtown.  But the nurse on the 5th floor probably doesn't own a car.  And the young couple on the 22 nd floor don't own a car. Nor do many of the people who live in those big apartments own cars. 
  As for me?  When I take delivery of my New Tesla  I'll also buy a power wall charger. 
 

  But every Target parking lot has the stretch of Tesla superchargers.  I'm hearing about other stores getting them as well.   
   There are 12,000 in  the USA  and a factory in New York pumping them out. As fast as possible. 
      

frenchyd
frenchyd MegaDork
6/15/23 11:34 p.m.

In reply to DocRob :

 In some respects some EV's may lag behind ICE's.  But in others I think they are solidly ahead. 
       Those Giga presses make 100parts in a typical rear end into one stamping.  
      Not only does that save time in assembly but makes the whole rear end  stronger.    
    The computer learns and self adjusts to inputs from around the world. It does that automatically when charging. 
    

frenchyd
frenchyd MegaDork
6/15/23 11:41 p.m.
Keith Tanner said:
alfadriver said:
Keith Tanner said:

In reply to alfadriver :

I don't think all gas stations make their own fuel either. Some of the big ones, sure, but there are a lot of pure resellers. 

The electricity regulations are fairly varied from state to state. In some, only utilities are allowed to sell power IIRC, and I think Tesla is considered a utility there. I don't think there's anything stopping utilities in most states from opening charging networks. They already make a profit selling the electricity to the other charging networks. Like so many other industries, there's quite a difference between being a wholesale or retail business and many companies don't do both. 

My point is incentives to build more "pumps".  The oil companies have a good reason to make sure there are almost 150,000 gas stations around the country, all of them have at least 4 pumps to fill up vehicles with gasoline- as they all make really good money selling their product for vehicles.

Right now, the companies that make electricity don't have that incentive- electricity is electricity.  And I think there are "utility" limits on them being able to sell their product at enough of a premium to saturate the US with charging stations.  Otherwise, they should be doing it, as well as upgrading the infrastructure as the future is seemingly pretty obvious where they can make billions of dollars selling electricity to EVs.  

Right now, the vehicle makers are the ones who are deciding on how their vehicles get charged.  If the utilities got together and said- "this will be the way because we plan on putting in 100,000 charging stations"  every maker would quickly adapt that and the problem would be solved.

The purpose of the various governmental incentives is to solve the chicken and egg problem. Profit-driven entities won't build charging networks until there are users - but the users won't buy the cars until the networks are in place. Tesla saw this pretty early on and it was a significant sales advantage to them. If we want a high level of EV adoption*, then we need a good high speed charging infrastructure across the country.

Those incentives usually specify CCS, which was looking like it was going to be the winner for a universal charging standard in the US. Pretty much every non-Tesla uses it, and Teslas since late '19 can also use it with an adapter. So that basically made the decision on how the vehicles got charged. 

But the networks taking the money dropped the ball by doing a half-assed job. It was a land grab and they didn't bother with quality work or maintenance. This has hobbled EV adoption. Ford basically said "you guys suck, we can't sell cars to people in good faith, only Tesla has done this right" and added support for the NACS (the Tesla connector). GM followed suit immediately and a bunch of networks saw the writing on the wall. The dominoes fell fast. It helps that the NACS connector is superior even when it's not attached to a Supercharger, and that Tesla also engineered their stations to be efficient to build - roughly 20% of the cost of other networks. So they seem to have won the standards race by being a better design, better implemented for a lower price and being more reliable. All good.

Since this will very likely lead to the Tesla chargers speaking the CCS protocol as well as the Tesla protocol, it's doing the same thing as your fuel pumps that dispense fuel that (almost) every gas vehicle can use. The physical plug might be one of two options - and there are ways for cars to accept either - but the actual communication and all the back end will be standardized. The actual fuel, of course, is all the same.

There are a variety of price structures in place for charging networks now. It's difficult to come up with an average because there are differences across states in how electricity can be sold. It's quite likely we'll see some evolution here to allow utilities to profit off charging stations, but since it's at the state level it will be very fractured and inconsistent. It's happening in Canada at least, where several of the largest networks are owned by power generation companies. Two others are owned by major gas companies. Rundown

 

* take that as a given for the purpose of this discussion, we have already been over this particular "if" quite enthusiastically


 Question;   I head one of the non Tesla  power companies was putting chargers in major trucks stops.  
  Have you heard or seen anything yet on that score?  
  Would you expect to see gas stations with chargers in them any time in the future?

  I can see where it would be a natural. They only make a nickel  a gallon on gas.. most of their profit comes from inside sales.   Having to sit there for 15 minutes or whatever would provide a lot of beside sales. 

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner MegaDork
6/16/23 10:23 a.m.
alfadriver said:

In reply to frenchyd :

To get to 2%, the number of chargers needs to double.  Just pointing that out. 

And walking around my neighborhood, most homes don't have garages.  There are plenty of wealthy neighborhoods that people have cars but no garages.  Not poor areas that you assume.  BTW, even though land is expensive, there are cars all over New York, Boston, and San Francisco.  All freaking over.  So much so that parking is really hard.  So get over the assumption that large cities are car deserts.

The reality of this deal is that the available chargers for Ford products went up a huge amount, just making it easier to own one.  I don't keep track of the number of high power chargers out there, I just see a silly non standard system like VHS and BetaMax. 

You don't need a garage to charge, you just need a parking space with access to electricity. A number of people on the forum charge EVs outside in their driveways. And there are ways to build street-side chargers. Or you treat your EV exactly like an ICE and charge it when it gets low, which gets back to the idea of urban chargers at places where people go with their cars. I have a friend in SF who could easily install a charger at home (in the garage beside his McLaren) but finds it just as easy to stop off at a charger on the way to work and get 15 minutes of power while he's picking up coffee. It's no extra effort on his part.

VHS vs BetaMax is a bad comparison, as they're totally incompatible. That's gas vs diesel. Think something closer to VHS vs VHS-C - you can play a VHS-C tape in a VHS machine with an adapter. The reality of this deal is that with Ford throwing their weight behind the NACS connector, all of the networks and GM are going to make their chargers and cars cross-compatible between CCS and NACS. That gets rid of your silly non standard systems -we're finally seeing the convergence.

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner MegaDork
6/16/23 10:41 a.m.
frenchyd said:


 Question;   I head one of the non Tesla  power companies was putting chargers in major trucks stops.  
  Have you heard or seen anything yet on that score?  
  Would you expect to see gas stations with chargers in them any time in the future?

You're thinking of the Pilot/Flying J/EVgo/GM project. Since EVgo is on board with NACS, these chargers will likely be able to charge both NACS and CCS.  I don't know the status of the rollout. We know who will be building the chargers - that's a difference between EVgo and Tesla, the lack of vertical integration. They've also said they're going to build pull-through chargers to deal with both trailers and inconsistent charging port locations, and they acknowledge that charger reliability has been a problem. Having the truck stop company own the chargers will definitely improve maintenance, as there's no passing the buck.
https://pilotflyingj.com/press-release/19335
https://www.cstoredive.com/news/pilot-ev-charging-initiative-convenience-stores/632091/

Chargers at gas stations are already a thing. The ones I use most often on the way to/from Denver are at gas stations, and one of those stations has added a little lounge, fresh fruit etc to make it a nice place to hang out. They also have a dog water dish which is a very Colorado thing. Petro-Canada has deployed chargers at gas stations all the way across Canada. Ontario's OnRoute rest stops (all of which include gas, food and rest areas) are adding chargers.

Here's an interesting read from the point of view of the fuel retail business. One stat that jumps out in the actual report is that 95% of the respondents in their 2022 survey said they were planning on adding chargers. There's also some info in there about what's happening outside the US.
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2022/reimagining-service-stations

Independent gas stations are also able to install chargers, the problem will be getting the word out - which is, of course also a problem for independent gas stations selling gas. A new Mazda comes with a nav system that knows where the major gas stations are, but may not know about the small fry.

alfadriver
alfadriver MegaDork
6/16/23 11:27 a.m.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Fair enough on the tape comparison, but I'm still frustrated that the OEM's didn't have many multiple sessions at SAE conferences to define a single charger and a path to move forward.  I know everyone has been experimenting, and my experience is that eventually (like F1), the solution converges to a very few choices.  

As for non-garage chargers- sure they can be made.  Who is going to pay for them?  Who is going to fill the apartment building with chargers so that the random renter will have a charger that is convenient to their home?  Who is going to put parking meter chargers in?  

These questions have been out there for a long time.  And other than "it's possible"- there has been little advance.  There's a home charger at the apartment near us, 3 of them, in fact.  All near the main office.  And a long way away from 90% of the apartments- most of which have assigned parking.  So it applies to the very specific renter.

As for your point how to treat the low EV's- you point out that there are still more questions than answers at this point.  And that there's not just one solution- which complicates things a lot.  Someday, we will hopefully solve these problems that go along with the physics limitations.

1988RedT2
1988RedT2 MegaDork
6/16/23 12:04 p.m.

Many of you are overlooking the fact that Tesla superchargers provide a higher quality electron than the crappy electrons that GM EV's need to run. 

But seriously, as a TSLA shareholder, all I need to know is that Tesla stands to pull in a cool 3 Billion smackeroonies as a result.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-09/tesla-charging-deals-said-to-bring-3-billion-at-rivals-expense?leadSource=uverify%20wall

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-teslas-charging-partnership-ford-and-gm-works-consumers-2023-6?op=1

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner MegaDork
6/16/23 12:05 p.m.

It definitely would have been best to have a single industry standard, or a federal one, which would have been easier to implement. But the CCS standard - the one that followed the path you wanted - wasn't ready when Tesla started building the Model S, so they rolled their own and then proceeded to outbuild the rest of the industry in both vehicles and chargers. That gave us both an official standard and a defacto one, which are now merging. Things worked a little differently in Europe. Also note that there has been a standard for Level 2 chargers all along, it's only the high speed DC charging that's had the problem.

Who is going to pay for non-garage chargers? Well, if the car is parked in front of your own home, you'll probably pay for it yourself. Like our forum members have done. But there are incentives out there, so it'll depend on where you live. There's already a market in used chargers too.

If you're talking about apartment complexes, I know that new construction in Colorado is required to have EV infrastructure. I think it's 20% of new spaces, and it may also apply to significant renovation of existing buildings. I think the market will have an effect here as well, apartment buildings that offer charging will be in higher demand so the landlords will respond. It's another chicken and egg setup, people who are living in a place without chargers won't be as likely to buy an EV. But people looking for a new place to live may already have one, so they'll have it as a priority. Or, as noted, they'll treat it like an ICE which is completely possible.

These are all societal problems, not technical ones. The solutions will be uneven across the country and even in different locations, as that's how the US works. The answer to "who will?" is going to be "that depends". But I have faith that we'll get there, and I know it'll be slow. Which is okay, because the changeover of the fleet is slow.

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