Once again Chevy Bolts hogging chargers

Well it will be interesting to see how the availability to charge at a Tesla station changes things. It may affect EVgo, as their stations are more expensive.

However, like selling gasoline, selling electric charging for cars hasn't been a huge money maker, even at $0.80 CAD.

If Volta/Shell can make money from advertising, then maybe at least we will see the stations in good repair. So far I haven't seen it.

 

It's a great time to buy a used low mileage EV. Shop nation wide and have them ship the car to you.

 

I understand your frustration, I've had had to wait for a charger on a trip before, but don't get sucked in to the idea that the infrastructure problem is going to magically go away by legislating how fast a car has to charge.

So you are inconvenienced and the government is going to fix the problem somehow by creating legislation that tells someone making electric cars how they must make them, potentially adding a couple thousand dollars to the price of the vehicle? Assuming the legislation passes tomorrow, for the next few years you still won't have a DCFC available when you are traveling because there still are not enough chargers, because these same governments have passed legislation mandating that we have electric cars, without having the electric infrastructure and charging stations to handle it. So we create a problem, with legislation, and the solution to that problem is more legislation that doesn't even fix your problem?

Your problem is lack of charging infrastructure, not how fast the cars charge. If there were 20 stalls there with 10 bolts all charging, and 10 empties. You pull in and it won't let you charge over 50KWH because there is too much demand at this time. Hmm, I think it would be REASONABLE to create legislation that says if *I* pull up at a charging station, and my car charges at 300 (I can charge faster), my car should get priority, they should have to turn off charging to 5 other vehicles charging at only 50KWH, so I can charge in 20 minutes and be on my way. After all anyone who drives for a living would not be inconvenienced by taking an extra 20 or 30 minutes to charge, they should buy a better car if it's a problem.

The auto industry was well on it's way to solving a number of issues thru engineering in the 70's. Engine lifetimes, fuel economy, and weight, had been shedding from vehicles for some time, which created safety issues, which were also being resolved. The CAFE standards actually made it WORSE, by requiring things like AIR PUMPS which dramatically lowered fuel economy. Further unleaded fuel exacerbated the issue, because the materials science was not yet in play to handle the lubrication and temperature issues of unleaded fuel. Now for California, it was really bad, they needed to do something, you couldn't breath in LA for a while there, but even at the time the automotive engineers were saying that with a few small breakthru's in materials science they could improve the efficiency of burning the fuel, thereby reducing tailpipe emissions naturally by improving the combustion process. This was going to happen with or without CAFE.

The giant boost in economy occurred first in the trucking industry. Let's just say they are in general very sensitive to the cost of fuel, and fuel consumption. Literally overnight, Mercedes came up with a reliable way to increase the pressure and atomize fuel in the injector system on the big diesel trucks. This caused a 25-50% improvement in fuel economy, and improved emissions. I worked for a trucking company at the time, they replaced every tractor, the bulk of which they had just purchased at 150K a pop, over the course of the next six months. (60-100). It paid for itself in fuel savings over the six months that followed. The tech trickled over into cars. OTR Trucks were/are exempt from fuel mileage standards, it's the "loophole" that lets the car companies sell big diesel pickup trucks.

 

I think this is really key. Amortizing the cost of putting in charging stations that cost $100K a pop is pretty tough, and in many places don't get that much use. It's going to take a while for the Tesla move to bear any fruit. What would help is better software to smooth the stop for power. To the legislation point, if the vendor had software where you could reserve a slot with a window, maybe with a code, say 30 minutes out. Someone else could pull up, but get notified, they are going to get booted when the reservation arrives. Make it part of a premium service package. You pull up, notify you are there, they get booted, that station doesn't work until you activate it after you plug in. Simple, no government involvement required. Pay an extra fee if you are going on a trip or something.

 

So while we are legislating, I mean it's stupid to make it 100KW, it really needs to be 300KW, if you are going to make a rule, you might as well make it so everyone can get in and out of a stall. While we are at it, a station must be a minimum of 10 stalls, that way if it's really busy I stand a better chance of getting into a stall in a reasonable period of time (Like in Quartzite AZ on the way to/from LA). I mean that seems pretty reasonable, it's not like 10 stalls is a huge number, smaller than the average sheetz/qt/kangaroo/wawa. Also legislate that they can all do 300KW charging. Solves all your problems.

Of course 300*10 = as much as 3MW of demand. The Palo Verde nuclear power plant is one of the largest in the nation, it can meet ~1.2GW of demand. Thus such a trivial amount of power can be had for about 400 locations at the cost of gobbling up 1/2 the electricity used in the state of Arizona. Plus 1000 KCMIL cable is relatively cheap to run, each location only needs enough demand to run a small town.

This bears repeating. 400 stations, 4000 stalls 1/2 the current electrical demand of Arizona. There are things we can do to mitigate some of this, but charging EV's creates a HUGE demand on the grid, and we are talking daytime charging at these stations during peak consumption times. In China, farmers have legislated quota's of what they need to produce. The quota's are somehow all met but that same amount of food never reaches the marketplace. The bureaucrats managing the quota's all seem to be living better than their salaries would predict. I wonder . . .

Grizzle-E sells a 25KW charger for under $15K. Suppose I had a place to charge my Bolt on a 25KW charger for 1/3 less than a 300KW unit. Someone get's into the market, puts up 15 stalls, with a truck-stop style infrastructure, maybe a lounge with Wifi, Coffee shop, snacks, convenience store. Electric demand would be fairly low ~400KW if you were full up, make it a convienient place to stop between fare's or to top-up. Do something similar on a smaller scale at shopping plaza's, places where people may be for a short time. Now those of us willing to pay the premium for the car and the power, get use of the super fast chargers allowing the decisions to stay with the consumer, instead of the bureaucrats.

The short term answer to this problem is to simply charge a premium at a pedestal capable of higher output.

 

They are still taking a bath. Discussed in another thread, none of them are actually making any money. As the current batch of charging equipment falls over and dies, the bleeding will get worse, though the equipment is finally improving, and the cost of same is stabilizing, ie better equipment for the same or less money. Some of the push we see now is because some of this equipment is finally stable enough to amortize for more than a year.

 

The simple solution is to charge more for the higher kW power chargers. That way a Bolt or other slow fast charging vehicle will be incented to use the lower kW chargers instead of the higher power ones that they can't take advantage of anyway.

Here in BC, I know the 350 kW chargers cost a lot more per min than the lower power ones, which makes sense. And BC Hydro will be going to per kWh rates starting June 1st. They will actually be the cheapest, although I don't think they have any 350kW ones yet, mostly 50kW, but some as high as 200 kW, which is decent. Here are the new rates. All in CAD, of course.
Currently per min charges are:
https://electricvehicles.bchydro.com/how-use-our-fast-chargers/how-much-does-it-cost-use-ev-charger
And the per kWh rates will be 28.28 cents for L2s, and 34.34 cents for all L3s.
https://bcsea.org/elementor-13328/

 

Grizzle-E Specs:

• Model number GRK1-IN3-PED-CCH
• Material metal
• Country of origin CA
• Type Charger
• Weight 138.00 kg / 304.23 lbs
• Dimensions L - 500 mm / 19.69 in
  • W - 250 mm / 9.84 in
  • H - 1250 mm / 49.21 in
• Type DC Level 3
• Enclosure 4.1ft x 1.6ft x 0.25ft
• Max power 25 kW
• Protection IP55 / IK10
• Connectivity Ethernet, cellular
• Smart function Touch Screen, OCPP
• Operating temperature -25C .. +50°C (-13F .. 122F)
• Plug options CCS-1 and CHAdeMO (NO!)

When they offer CCS-1 and NACS, I'm interested.

Bob Wilson

 

I wonder how many DC chargers there will be needed in the future. While the majority of charging can happen where people park overnight, it requires people to have that option installed where they park overnight. I think EV infrastructure would need about a quarter of the what the ICE infrastructure has to meet everyone's needs.

Yes, hybrids will eat into the savings that people would get from EVs. Switching from a ~50mpg car to an EV would potentially only save you half in fuel costs, maybe less depending on how much long distance travel is done. It also means the person would be taking less trips to the gas station too, so it gets even harder to sale based on convenience. And the range would be really long, like 600 miles between fuel ups.

 

That won't happen.

This will backfire. You only think this because you are temporarily inconvenienced by existing cars using the stations because they dont have overnight charging. The problem won't go away until they have home charging nor will it go away until all those existing EVs are off the road a decade from now. The problem is access to home charging, not explicitly the charge rate of the EVs.

Requiring this rate will make EVs more expensive because it would require adjusting the most expensive component to the vehicle itself - the battery.

Also, how long is an EV supposed to charge at that rate? Hit 100kw for 1 min minimum? 10 min minimum? The more you require with legislation like this, the more expensive the cars will become.

It doesn't make sense to shoot a young industry in the foot with legislation like this, especially when you want people to buy them. This reminds me of when some people were demanding legislation for a minimum range when the average EV barely had any range.

The more efficient ICE gets, the harder it will be to sell EVs.

 

This is a good point too. The only way that EVs would "collapse the grid" (or really just require major upgrades that is) is if the charge rate at each station requires more and more power, it can create a potential peak power issue on the grid. The solution to deal with this, of course, would be to install batteries at each station with that type of charge rate, which would increase the cost of each station.

The problem that OneEV is seeing is more or less due to a lack of overnight charging, or L2 infrastructure at apartments etc.

 

I found one more spec on their website: $12,669 USD for the pictured 480-Volt CCS wall-mount Kodiak DC.
How much will it cost to bring three-phase 480 Volts AC to my house?

 

that seems like a power utility question because they would be able to give you a better answer to that question, but I imagine the price wouldn't be cheap.

 

When I was waiting for delivery of my SE in 2020 I was very close to trying to order 3-phase service for my house, because MINI's meager charging documentation at the time said 11 kW charge rate (which is true in UK/Europe). It was only upon learning the J1772 plug didn't support 3-phase that I figured out upgrading service would do me no good.

 

LOL, me, too! After reading the same meager charging documentation while waiting for my SE, I upgraded from a 40-Amp EVSE to a 48-Amp EVSE. I had installed the more powerful EVSE before learning that the MINI Electrics that would be coming to NA wouldn't be equipped to accept 11 kW, 3-phase AC.

 

I've said it before. Realistically, you don't really need to charge that fast at home. A decent 30A circuit (24A charge) at 5760W will charge most vehicles overnight in all but the most extreme cases. You want to sell this stuff, put up an incentive for apartment complexes to put in 32 or 24A L2 overnight chargers, with appropriate subscriptions at rates more in line with a single family home cost. As a resident you get a prox card, you get a bill or pre-pay or ... you can charge based on TOU, maybe a slot reservation system,... Unless you are driving a RIVIAN or Lightning with 150KWH batteries that are fully depleted it's just not that big a deal. I have solar, I plug my car in whenever I'm at home, and let software allow charging based on SOC of my solar batteries.

As far as the Grizzle-E, they have a single phase 240v unit, it requires a 150A breaker, sucks down ~115A while charging full blast. If I had more money than sense, ... the software should support adjusting the rate. . . I'll be adding another 50A of inverter capacity bringing my solar output to 150A, still a little light, however if you have 200-250A service at home, there is no reason you could not install one of these. If it gets down to $6000 instead of $13000 I would give it serious consideration. It would be nice to have a 15KW DC unit, you could put that on a 75A breaker, or just put this one on a 75/80A and limit the output. More batteries first, but it would make a great dump load, when solar is kicking 25KW and the batteries are full.

 

It's not just the cost to install the station. You have demand charges too.

As you stated, you need to get a lot use from these stations. One way is to charge different rates depending on the time of day. EVgo does this and so does Tesla. I've seen rates below $0.20 USD per kWh at Tesla stations between midnight and 5am.

The Freewire charging stations get pass some of the demand charge and installation costs. The offer a 25kW DC charging station that uses single phase 240 volt. So that lowers the cost right there. They also offer a 50kW charger that uses 208 or 480 three phase with energy buffering. This is also a lower cost installation and operation station. Some of the mini-marts are installing them.

https://freewiretech.com/pro-series/

 

The if/when convenience store type fossil fuel stations see the tipping point on EV’s and put in charging banks may help straighten out some issues. First they have staff on hand, actual people that can help report inoperable charging units. Because they stand to extract more than just your E-juice commission via food or other products, they will have to provide a quality consumer experience. As it stands now where I live in southern MI I find chargers in ridiculous areas and fully open to the ravages of weather.


Sent from my iPad using Inside EVs

 

I think that tipping point will be when about 10% of the cars driven on the road regularly are EVs. I have no idea what number of cars that may be since we only can see the total number of registered light duty vehicles. I think there are 250 million registered cars but there is no way that there are 250 million cars that drive regularly on the road. Maybe about 180 million or something.

 

Back in 2019 when we got our first BEV, but still had one ICE, the BEV got driven 90% of the time. Took several months sometimes to gas up the ICE car. Same with my son who got his Tesla in 2018. That was their main drive. So it is not just about registrations.