This gets mentioned a lot, but I think the point is really over stated. First, there's a huge amount of room for growth in electric vehicle adoption even if we assume that EVs are a non-starter for people who park on the street at night. The problem is worth solving, but we're no where near the point in which it's the main obstacle to further adoption.
Second, cars that are being used will generally spend a fair bit of time parked places other than home. For some subset of street parkers, enough of that parking time will be spent at facilities with public chargers to meet their weekly charging needs. This subset will grow as electric charging infrastructure expands to more places.
My wife and I actually own a Chevy Bolt as our only car and park on the street. We don't drive especially far in a typical week (I take mass transit to work and she works from home), but we generally are able to get all our charging in from our parking when we're out and about. And that's just using Level 2 AC chargers. If we drove further each week (or parked in places with chargers less often) we could easily get enough charging in by shifting some of our grocery shopping to Whole Foods so we can use the DC fast charger there while shopping.
Now this is in a city with pretty decent public charging infrastructure (Berkeley, CA) and obviously even within my city this approach won't work well for everyone. Still, I think it shows a possible way forward that could potentially work for a lot of people without necessarily having to have chargers at every street parking space.
> we're no where near the point in which it's the main obstacle to further adoption
Sure. I'm talking about universal adoption because the article is ("take over the world")
> We don't drive especially far in a typical week
This is a good point, EV range is already long enough that many urban drivers will not need to charge every day.
> For some subset of street parkers, enough of that parking time will be spent at facilities with public chargers to meet their weekly charging needs. This subset will grow as electric charging infrastructure expands to more places.
My point exactly: to reach close to 100% EV market penetration, so will the infrastructure need to grow to 100%. Tricks like going to that one Whole Foods store that has the fast chargers won't work when a significant % of cars are EVs, there simply will need to be a lot more public chargers (or, charging time will need to decrease).
> Sure. I'm talking about universal adoption because the article is ("take over the world")
Once you reach a critical mass of users, taking over the world will be inevitable, even with some of the inconveniences. Finding a gas station, for example, will get harder for ICE drivers as EV vehicles take off (lots of gas stations will go out of business, so you'll have to drive longer to refill your car), auto shops capable of dealing with ICE will become more scarce and expensive, etc...
At some point, the annoyance of owning an EV for some of the extreme edge cases will be less intense than the annoyance of owning an ICE vehicle. Even without proper infrastructure, the switch to an EV will be the only sensible move, even if it requires changing your habits.
> Once you reach a critical mass of users, taking over the world will be inevitable, even with some of the inconveniences. Finding a gas station, for example, will get harder for ICE drivers as EV vehicles take off (lots of gas stations will go out of business, so you'll have to drive longer to refill your car), auto shops capable of dealing with ICE will become more scarce and expensive, etc
It feels like you are making them mutually exclusive, it's far more likely there will be significant overlap... Do you remember the LCD TV transition? There was a period where you could basically get TVs with huge screens for free. That period mostly passed and now LCD TVs are also more reasonably priced anyway. Something similar will no doubt happen with the EV transition, unless an outside force ban them (i.e heavy handed government regulation, like Japan's 5 year car rule or something).
For the gas stations, that infrastructure will also transition, and those huge fuel tanks sunk into the ground aren't going anywhere, i'm sure they will continue to sell petrol along side EV charging stations.
Also all those millions of mechanics with decades of experience aren't about to suddenly forget all their ICE specific knowledge. Additionally parts from breakers yards will will probably be near free.
and those huge fuel tanks sunk into the ground aren't going anywhere
You think I’m letting that pass without pointing out that the fuel tanks are a sunk cost? Gas stations are really convenience stores, they don’t make money on fuel. The only difference will be that we pull up in an EV to get our Big Gulp. Gas or no, that real estate will still be used to sell you chips and lottery tickets.
In the Seattle area, I know of at least three shops that specialize in VW vans, a vehicle last sold in the U. S. over 25 years ago. Three, for a vehicle that wasn’t that popular in the U. S. when you could buy them new. Yeah, yeah, hippy-wannabes and nostalgia, but the fact remains that more than one shop stays in business working on ICE vehicles that are old enough to have been doing keg stands for four years.
I doubt many will go out of business. At least in the U.S. the stations themselves make maybe 2-3 cents a gallon profit, which likely doesn't even begin to cover operating costs. The vast majority of their income is from the convenience store items.
All but the most poorly run will pay whatever is needed to install electric chargers and stay in the game.
I think the point is that since most people will charge at night, and capacity keeps improving, eventually if evs become really common, people will have less opportunity to buy something at a gas station.
That is definitely relevant, we don't know how much day-to-night load shifting will happen. On the other hand, there's also the probability that people who find themselves needing to charge during the day will often need more time than a gas fuelup would take, making them more likely to buy something. It's hard to predict what will happen of course, but those shop owners are going to fight to stay alive.
> Sure. I'm talking about universal adoption because the article is ("take over the world")
I'm not sure "taking over the world" is necessarily equivalent with universal adoption. Getting to a substantial majority of new car sales (currently only around 1% in the US) would qualify in my mind.
> Tricks like going to that one Whole Foods store that has the fast chargers won't work when a significant % of cars are EVs, there simply will need to be a lot more public chargers
Increased EV adoption will incentivize more investment in EV chargers. The chargers at businesses like Whole Foods are being installed with private capital because they think it makes business sense. More EVs means more demand for public chargers which will in turn justify increased investment in those chargers.
> Tricks like going to that one Whole Foods store that has the fast chargers won't work when a significant % of cars are EVs, there simply will need to be a lot more public chargers
Sure, same as it used to be awkward to have to hunt around for a power point in a coffee shop/mall/etc or to figure out where had wifi. Now that's pretty standard fare.
Just like EV charging is today - in most countries there's quite a lot of places you can go to charge at. Soon it'll be every mall and shopping centre, because (at first) it'll be a way to attract customers, and then eventually it'll be expected.
Decreasing charging time might not be as helpful as you think. Lets say a car can be fully charged in 30 minutes: So the driver shows up somewhere and parks in one of the EV charging spaces and plugs in his or her car. They are not going to hang around for 30 minutes so they connect the car and go about their business. When they get back 3 hours later...
This is still a problem if you can charge in 5 minutes.
Not really a problem. Putting chargers in every space in a car park is pretty cheap, they are basically just circuit breakers or even just ordinary domestic style sockets.
Throw in a few fast ones for the people who need them and you are sorted. The fast chargers can be multi-head too, so even if someone finishes charging and doesn't come back someone else can still use it. Most rapid chargers are like that.
Also, if it's still a problem with a five minute charge, why doesn't it affect petrol pumps?
Charging a car requires a nontrivial amount of electricity, so it's not sufficient to add a circuit breaker / socket, you also need a payment infrastructure unless e.g. the municipality is willing to sponsor the energy costs of everyone driving.
If you are talking about pure electrical cost, the average cost per kwh in the US is about 12 cents according to NPR.
An average Nissan Leaf battery is about 24kwh (although some cars have much smaller or larger batteries). So if you assume an average Leaf is totally empty, and charging to completely full, that would be a little less than $3 of electricity for roughly 84 miles of range.
To charge a car quickly takes a lot of electricity. But to trickle charge a car takes very little electricity. You can charge cars on as little as 120 volts at 8 amps -- that's less electricity than the average plug-in space heater.
A small parking lot could easily handle 20+ cars simultaneously charging overnight, with just a single standard US household circuit. (100 - 150 amps).
It costs $1 to put 8kW (30miles) into a car, and takes about an hour (for a level 2 charger) so the cost of electricity is less than the land value (unsubsidized meter rate) of the parking space itself, in any urban area.
no because carparks don't have the electrical power availed to support charging hundreds or cars at at a time - they will have enough to run the lights but not enough to service hundreds of high amperage car chargers
Why does everything good in the world get ruined? Because some people are just dicks. Unless there are active fines for holding up the queue in fast chargers, selfish people will make it worse for everyone.
There are charges, after your car is fully charge if you leave it on the charger for more than 10 minutes you start to be charged for the the extra time you leave you car there.
And the effect on the grid and electricity infrastructure is non trivial and in the USA the grid is not as well developed as it is in the UK Europe so its even worse for the USA with its 110v standard
It seems like Tesla is at least hinting to aim for a system where you can basically send your car out to charge and have it back when you need it. Combining auto pilot with this prototype, it is at least feasible that it could work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI
Let me put it this way, I looked at buying an Electric Car but I live in a house with no driveway so there is no way I can ever own one. I would never risk the idea of driving to a supermarket hoping there is a free charging port for my car, just in case there isn't any free - it's not like I can just queue up the car. It's a huge fundamental hurdle and one that until solved will stop me from ever buying an Electric Vehicle.
In Germany (and elsewhere) the electric utility companies are working on converting street lanterns into car charging stations. This will enable people to charge their cars when parking near their homes.
Another solution (for some) would be to have a charging port in your parking lot at work.
> I would never risk the idea of driving to a supermarket hoping there is a free charging port for my car, just in case there isn't any free
Is the supermarket really the only place you don't park on the street? I realize at the present moment, it might be the only lot/garage you park in with a charger, but as EV adoption increases more public chargers will sprout up.
My point is that opportunistic charging while parked places people go already can meet the needs of at least some street parkers. I don't panic if there are no charging spots available when I park somewhere, because I'm not depending on any one single parking session to charge my car. I get a little charge here and a little there and in aggregate it meets my weekly charging needs (most of the time anyway, weeks with substantially higher mileage need special handling currently).
This is not to say it will necessarily meet your needs anytime soon; however, I think we are at a point where the relative price is the biggest hurdle to adoption. There's a lot of people for whom an EV would be practical with current infrastructure that don't have one. As more of those people buy them, there will be additional incentive to invest in public charging infrastructure. The more public charging infrastructure there is, the more practical EV ownership is for people who can't easily charge at home.
Second, cars that are being used will generally spend a fair bit of time parked places other than home. For some subset of street parkers, enough of that parking time will be spent at facilities with public chargers to meet their weekly charging needs. This subset will grow as electric charging infrastructure expands to more places.
My wife and I actually own a Chevy Bolt as our only car and park on the street. We don't drive especially far in a typical week (I take mass transit to work and she works from home), but we generally are able to get all our charging in from our parking when we're out and about. And that's just using Level 2 AC chargers. If we drove further each week (or parked in places with chargers less often) we could easily get enough charging in by shifting some of our grocery shopping to Whole Foods so we can use the DC fast charger there while shopping.
Now this is in a city with pretty decent public charging infrastructure (Berkeley, CA) and obviously even within my city this approach won't work well for everyone. Still, I think it shows a possible way forward that could potentially work for a lot of people without necessarily having to have chargers at every street parking space.