I think this is simply tapping into existing infrastructure. It's not all bad. When I stop to charge, usually I'll find the nearest washroom and use it (why not?). I might grab a snack or something, too. A gas station satisfies both these requirements and is already grid-connected (electricity, plumbing, waste).
What I'd like to see more of is comforts -- I want a comfy place to sit and relax for a bit or a park trail to walk around. I hate when I pull into a charger and it's just a parking lot. Not stimulating at all. Nothing to do but sit there. If I'm not using the gas station amenities it's not much better than an empty parking lot.
I feel like gas stations have this "grind" / roadtrip mentality whereas I kind of want a relaxing, decompression space to charge my car. So maybe you're right...
It feels like it would make more sense to encourage installation of charging infrastructure at places where you might want to be for half an hour anyway; parks with parking lots, restaurants, grocery stores, etc; rather than encouraging it at gas stations, except for in the rural highway case where gas stations might be all that's easy to find when you're driving between urban areas.
> except for in the rural highway case where gas stations might be all that's easy to find when you're driving between urban areas.
Range is the one thing that is preventing me from looking at EVs at the moment. I own a car but I don't actually drive much in the city since I work from home and use grocery delivery services since I hate grocery shopping. When I tend to drive most it's because I'm going a long distance: 8 to 10 hour road trips up north etc. The idea of adding hours to such a trip, or turning it into an overnight trip, makes it a non-starter for me.
I bring this up because the article specifically talks about about gas stations along the Autobahn. I've never been to Germany, let alone driven on the Autobahn, so maybe it is used quite frequently for shorter trips. But speaking of freeways in general, especially here in North America, I wonder if this is another reason that looking to gas stations along a freeway is a misguided "target." If people are using EVs on freeways, wouldn't they be more inclined to exit the freeway into a city and charge at a motel or a shopping centre while they stop overnight or at least a few hours?
> The idea of adding hours to such a trip, or turning it into an overnight trip, makes it a non-starter for me.
> If people are using EVs on freeways, wouldn't they be more inclined to exit the freeway into a city and charge at a motel or a shopping centre while they stop overnight or at least a few hours?
Yes you're right on the money.
I bought an EV to drive around my home area in CA. Instead I've just used it for road-tripping back East to see family.
Each road-trip has convinced me how bad these cars are for long-range driving. Aside from "range anxiety" (going only from one supercharger location to another, and not venturing away) - the charging times are brutal for cross-country trips.
You will spend hours per day, hours, sitting in back of Holiday Inn Expresses in the middle of nowhere Kansas, or in back of a shady truck stop in the middle of Texas.
Safety as well: I've thought about if I were a female for example at some of these locations it wouldn't be safe to be alone, with nobody around, sitting in your car. You're unable to start it and drive away if it's plugged in, not without getting out to unplug it which you have to do manually (there's no emergency eject charger cable button). So if there is a Texas Chainsaw Killer outside your window you're screwed.
Having said all that. It is a perfect car for just driving around my neighborhood IF that's what I intended to. In practice, I never do it.
It's a completely different experience in a Tesla. We've done 4 3000 km trips in our Tesla (Ottawa to Saskatoon and back twice). Never any anxiety, the car tells us where to charge and we know it will work.
Being a young family, we had to stop more frequently and for longer for bathroom breaks etc than it took to charge.
Hopefully you get a NACS adapter and a proper experience soon.
Yes and no. You only stop for "hours" once / day when you're done driving. It's _convenient_ to charge overnight (and why wouldn't you do it) but it's not necessary. 90% of my charging is done during the day, during the drive.
For example, here's a 7+ hour drive from Calgary to a campground in the middle of Saskatchewan: https://i.imgur.com/GTeNnYa.png (the 5.4 hour charge is us charging up using the RV hookup at the campground)
We stopped for about an hour total. If you are a "roadtripper" -- that is, no stopping, just getting to the destination, then sure, you have a point. That's 1 hour where you could have been at your destination. From my perspective, I took that time to get lunch and stretch my legs and use the washroom... mental health stuff.
Yeah I guess I'm a "roadtripper." I don't like driving itself. I just want to get from point A to point B as fast (and safe) as possible. Typically on an 8 hour drive my wife and I will make one or two 5 minute stops for bathroom breaks and to refuel. We'll eat in the car if we actually have to eat (but I only eat one meal a day so that's not common). The mental health hit for us is knowing that we're wasting precious vacation time travelling rather than vacationing. If we loved the drive itself then maybe it would be different, but I don't.
How long does it actually take you to charge? I'm picturing the gas stations around here and even with a supercharger I'm not sure I'd want to just sit at a gas station for 15 minutes, even if there was room on these small-footprint locations to park several cars for an indefinite amount of time.
I don't have any better ideas, mind you; maybe small local parks should have to have charging infra if they have parking spots. Great place for the family to just get out of the car and stretch their legs for a while.
Waiting 15 mins at a gas station during a road trip isn't bad. You probably have to go in and use the restroom and grab snacks anyways. Usually by the time I'm done with that, the car is ready to make it to the next charger
I see people write stuff like this, and it doesn't resonate with my experience at all. My understanding is that 20 mins is the minimum for a 10-80% charge, and that's assuming that your vehicle can charge very quickly, and that you got lucky and found an available charger that supports very fast charging.
Second, a 20-minute stop is much longer than pit stops I make. It takes 3 minutes to fill my gas tank, and then I can go for another 400 miles. I might add another 4 minutes to use the bathroom, but I never stick around for 20 minutes.
I can imagine in the future there might be plentiful supply of super-fast chargers that can add 400 miles in 5-10 minutes. But today, the much more common experience is to add 250 miles in 20-30 minutes, which is a far, far slower rate. Until things change, EV advocates aren't helping their cause by claiming that charging doesn't take much longer than pumping gas. You might be correct that "by the time I'm done with that, the car is ready to make it to the next charger", but who wants to stop at every charger? I don't gas up my car enough to make it to the next gas station — I fill up the tank so I can make it to my destination.
For the record, I own a PHEV and like it. But I don't have an full EV because it introduces too much uncertainty for road trips, and because electricity is subject to outages where I live (norcal).
> Second, a 20-minute stop is much longer than pit stops I make. It takes 3 minutes to fill my gas tank, and then I can go for another 400 miles.
Don't do this. It's extremely bad for your health, and it also results in degraded and more dangerous driving quality. The worst thing is you probably don't realize it. Unless you're a professional driver, you should take a break every 2-3 hours for at least 15 minutes (which is coincidentally about what charging requires.)
This only applies to the supercharger network, but they are so common that I don't go from 10-80. It's usually more like 20%-60%, which is 15 mins or under for me usually. I can make it to the next charger with ~20% and repeat the process
Besides, chargers are usually really far from the actual building so you gotta add another couple mins just walking to/from your car :)
So you’re stopping every how many miles? 40% of 300, so 120? Seems like that adds a significant amount of travel time, roughly 1/4 hour for every 2 hours traveled.
Maybe I'm just coping, but I personally see this as a feature rather than an issue. Sitting for long periods of time is not healthy. Getting up for 10-15 minutes every two hours is _good_ for my mind and my body.
I would agree in general, but on the infrequent occasion when I'm doing a road trip, it's more important to reduce travel time and avoid traffic backups that result from extended travel time. Most of my trips are from norcal to socal, so avoiding morning/evening rush hour on both ends is the name of the game, at least for me.
Makes some sense at highway gas stations, but hardly any in cities.
I'm not even arguing that I hardly ever do or want to have longer stops at gas stations. Restrooms only when it's urgent (so maybe once per 5h drive), food only when needed (overpriced and not good). So I'm the 90% "stop, fill tank, go pay, drive off" person, so if I had an EV this would be.. mostly as unpractical as everywhere else.
I'm sure the infrastructure will evolve over time but it currently seems like a good stop-gap. Makes dual use of current infrastructure in a transitionary period. EV adoption is still quite low. But I won't be surprised if when it increases we see the infrastructure change a lot. Like movie theaters offering deals for EV parking or far more charging stations at malls and big stores like wallmart and costco. But what to do on interstate seems like the interesting one. Do we see more casinos pop up? What entertainment or time expending industries will pop up to fill the time for people stopped in the middle of nowhere.
In Norway there’s a few charges at every mall and parking garages, a lot of grocery stores also have charges in the parking lot. Many of the gas station chains have started to adapt by installing charging stations and remaking the store inside to more of a fast food shop/coffee shop with a few tables and places to sit etc.
If you need to charge on the road then most rest-stops and fast food restaurants along the main roads have charging stations installed.
Yeah these same things exist in most American cities, especially in the West. But a big difference in America is the population density. America is almost all empty. Yeah, Europe has a lot of sparse areas, but remember that the landmass of America (contiguous) is 8e6 km^2 while Europe is 10e6 km^2 while US has that between 350m people and Europe between 750m people. Lose 4e6km2 and 143m people if you want to remove Russia (which itself is sparse, a bit more than the US). I'm saying this because what happens in the US around transportation infrastructure is going to be __substantially__ different than what happens in Europe. There's always people saying "well Europe does X why can't the US" but you can't drive for 10hrs in Europe without passing through a major city while you can do that in just Texas[0]
That's why I specified the middle of nowhere ones as the "interesting" ones. The mall one, like Norway, was explicitly stated.
Is this a real scenario? Most EVs can rapid charge with the right infrastructure in 30-45 minutes. It’s stop and get coffee/stretch legs timeframes, I’m not sure it’s that much of an event.
You be the judge. It is literally an order of magnitude longer than filling up with gas (this is actually why some car companies have pursued hydrogen which is also 3-5 minutes).
Also EV: ~0 minutes because you plugged in at home/hotel last night and get to walk away.
No need to drive to a gas station, pay, and watch something flammable for several minutes. Just plug in and go to sleep. Different technologies simply have different trade offs.
Waiting 45 minutes at a charger is also really inefficient. At 350kW a 100kWh car would fully charging in 17 minutes but unfortunately things really slow down above 80% charge, optimum is closer to 10-50%. This makes longer stops wasteful unless you happen to want to stop for something else.
Optimizing for speed it’s ~10 minute stops and fully charging at night thus skipping multiple fueling stops.
Indeed, but that is still an order of magnitude slower than adding the same range to a gasoline-powered car. If everyone who, today, refuels along an interstate / motorway / autobahn took 30-45 minutes to do so, I suspect that traffic in the more densely populated areas would grind to a halt.
Parked cars don’t impact traffic. The major difference is presumably the size of parking lots devoted to charging vs pumps, but ant home/work/etc charging offsets quite a bit.
On longer trips the pay/pump/bathroom/grab a soda/hit the road cycle is probably 15 minutes. I expect many businesses focusing on capturing revenue from the captive audience of people waiting 20-30 minutes for their cars to charge.
However, this goes away if we end up with in road charging.
I am assuming a large majority who stop to refuel do not park at all, let alone for 20-30 minutes, and there would not be room for them all to do so if they wanted to.
In-road charging would render this article moot, together with the discussion about it.
Tell that to anyone who's been on a roadtrip and visited a busy rest stop. I've definitely seen long times on off-ramps as well as on-ramps for them. Given your "15 minute" time I'd take it you haven't really done a long road trip. As in multiple days of 8+hrs of driving. I did 4 days of 12hrs (split with someone) and that was rough.
I entertain myself on long trips by timing how long things take and 15 minutes is sadly common I’ve seen it take take 25 minutes when the bathroom has a line. Gas stations are much faster day to day when you just want fuel and to hit the road, but after a few hours in the car someone needs to go to the bathroom etc and nobody is racing for the car.
I do know people who try and minimize such stops. They got an extra gas tank and use a piss bottle etc but businesses optimize for the general population not extreme outliers.
> I entertain myself on long trips by timing how long things take and 15 minutes is sadly common
Honestly, seems like you have a bias. If you're timing yourself you're biasing yourself to be faster. So incorporate higher variance into your model and assume you're on the lower end of at least that 1std deviation.
And again, I'm considering a long trip as multi-day 8hr+ driving. Your legs just don't last that long. First day is usually fine. Second if you're seasoned. Beyond that is where it gets real hard.
There is a significant overap - fuel up, find the restroom, grab some snacks.
EV chargers have the benefits of being cheap, take little space, and permitting is raesonably simple. Expecting them to be way more widespread than fuel stations ever can be.
Depends on the charging density. I drove across Canada and, when I knew the next charger was under 200km away I'd "fill up" for maybe 5 minutes and get on with my journey.
Unlike an ICE, you want to keep your car between like 10% and 70% while road-tripping for charging efficiency.
There are times I'd stop for 30+ minutes but typically I'd go find a place to eat or take a walk at those stops.
Average gas station stop looks to be ~8 minutes. Tesla superchargers can do up to 200 miles in 15 minutes. So 100 miles of range in the same timeframe. And the charging technology is still in the middle of constant improvement.
In the following, "charging" means charging EV batteries or putting gas in an ICE car's tank.
> Average gas station stop looks to be ~8 minutes. Tesla superchargers can do up to 200 miles in 15 minutes. So 100 miles of range in the same timeframe.
But if you make a long trip, just doing ~8 minute, 100 mile charge stops, you'll be stopping about every 100 miles to charge. On a 1000 mile trip that's 80 minutes at charging stations.
With an ICE that ~8 minute gas station stop would have filled the tank, giving 500+ miles of range. On a 1000 mile trip that's 16 minutes at gas stations.
A gas station pump can pump 10 or more gallons per minute. (They are limited to 10 by regulation in the US, but I've heard that Europe allows more than that).
If a car got 25 miles/gallon, which even a big SUV can do on highways, recharging at a gas station gives you 15000 miles/hour.
Something smaller that gets 40 miles/gallon highway recharges at 24000 miles/gallon.
Even driving some giant truck or SUV in a city where you might only get 10 miles/gallon would recharge at 6000 miles/hour.
No matter how you slice it then the time actually taken to put a given number of miles into the vehicle is at least an order of magnitude more for an EV with current charging technology unless you driving a huge ICE in city conditions or you are at a very badly maintained gas pump. (And even then gas will be several times faster).
If the other things you do at a charging stop, such as paying, using the restroom, getting snacks, checking the tires, cleaning the windshield, stretching, etc., take long enough and can be done sufficiently parallel to the actual charging the impact of EV charging being an order of magnitude slower might be lessened or even eliminated.
On a long trip where you are going most of your vehicle's range between stops that very will might be the case. If I've been driving 3 or 4 hours I certainly want to stretch and walk around a bit before resuming.
But when I'm just out and about doing normal daily stuff and see that gas is getting low, I just pay at the pump with Apple Pay, fill it up, and leave. The total time at the station is rarely more than a minute more than the pumping time.
You are quite right. A typical German gas station has nothing to offer somebody who is going to stay there for 30 minutes. Their little shop is usually overpriced and beyond that there is usually a place to pump your tires and to wash your car and little else.
Chargers in the parking lots of supermarkets would make much more sense. And indeed that is already where the chargers are to be found. This is a case of the market outsmarting the stupid bureaucrats.
A big factor for women buying EVs is that they DON'T have to go to gas stations anymore.
EV chargers belong in safe, bright areas as you sit in your car or somewhere else for 20-30 minutes. A gas station parking lot is not clean and safe, in Germany or elsewhere.
I can't believe McDonald's hasn't realized the huge potential here. They have the real estate, they have the safety and could get a ton of customers eating out of pure boredom.
> I can't believe McDonald's hasn't realized the huge potential here. They have the real estate, they have the safety and could get a ton of customers eating out of pure boredom.
They'd end up with half the neighborhood using up all the parking space (which is really expensive in urban areas) to charge their EVs for hours, buying nothing at all at worst or a cheeseburger at best.
Of which quite a few already offer chargers. Software is easy to deploy at scale. Hardware isn't, and infrastructure even less so. Sometimes HNs bias for software really shows...
Gas and Service Stations have their own category as they are a significant target for crime. Unlocked vehicles, stores open at night, cash on site, etc.
CCTV prevents no crime, it exists for insurance purposes.
But hey, TALK TO WOMEN, you will learn a lot. Safety/Risk is a totally different perception and issue across gender lines. Just like why humanity agreed on separating bathrooms in the first place.
Anecdotally speaking (in a very safe part of California), my wife got robbed at a gas station. Since she was driving a large vehicle with tinted windows, the thief simply pulled up to the passenger side while she was gassing up, opened the car door (door guaranteed unlocked for gassing up), waved to my 4yo daughter in the back row, and grabbed my wife's purse, then hopped back in her car and sped away. The CCTV at the gas station was useless.
That highly depends on the franchise/gas station in question.
Gas stations are typically more dangerous because there's far more foot traffic in close proximity, and it's more socially acceptable and expected at night at a gas station than at a McDonald's (which tend to close lobbies at night).
I feel like this makes more sense for a big box store, you know, a place where you would naturally park your car for a time anyway, not a place you tend to try to get in and out of relatively quickly - or often never leaving your car at all.
That said, there are big picture infrastructure considerations (Eg, load on the grid at differing times of day). If the convention moves to charging at destinations (eg work, stores), that could see the power needs once met by gasoline now being offloaded onto the grid during day hours, and that's likely not ideal vs charging overnight.
I am not so sure about that, especially in the US.
While some gas stations may be in badly lit areas, a lot of gas stations are in pretty well-lit and well trafficked areas.
In addition, with pay at the pump and the speed of filling a car, you can basically tap your credit card, fill up your car, and be out of there in 2-3 minutes. Even a minute’s with of pumped gas will probably give you a 100 mile range.
And if you have kids, in the car, maybe sleeping, they can remain in the car while you pump gas.
An EV charge will take at least 15 minutes minimum maybe more. You likely have to go find somewhere nearby where you can sit and wait for your car to charge.
> I can't believe McDonald's hasn't realized the huge potential here. They have the real estate, they have the safety and could get a ton of customers eating out of pure boredom.
I’ve seen multiple MacDonald’s already in the Netherlands and Germany with one or two charging spots. My guess is that they are measuring return on investment and will go for it once the return looks good. Same for Shell. They also have a few chargers at various locations.
I just finished renting an EV in Italy, and infrastructure was better than expected.
However, oil companies that should be protecting their moat and putting plugs at every freaking station, especially the rest stops and stations that have coffee bars or places where people socialize.
The franchisee system makes it that they dont really own most of the properties out there, and gas stations mostly make money on the attached shop, and the gas is a marketing draw to get traffic in the store. The shops might expand into cafe services if charging stays a long process in 5 to 10 years
Italy has had that expensive electricity issue for a while. Their grid is reliant on local labor and local supply chain by design, for better or worse.
The electricity prices still beats nearly $10/gallon petrol, and one friendly Airbnb let us charge on their property’s solar+battery installation, making their power half the market price.
What advantages does this measure have over fuel taxes?
As far as I know, (higher) fuel taxes are more effective, much more fair, create better incentives and have more scientific evidence backing them up than this, but I may be missing something.
Advantage is through the coupled mechanism. There's a chicken and egg problem for consumers of EVs. People are less likely to buy EVs because there aren't many charging ports so they take on extra risk and cost while betting that the future will allow them to regain similar conditions to their ICE vehicle. Filling stations are also at a similar risk investment situation as they don't want to build charging stations when there aren't enough EVs on the road to justify their costs.
So consumers and filling stations are stuck in a Nash Equilibrium because neither wants to take on the market bet. Both will actually suffer losses for moving first and realistically will not receive rewards for investing early (i.e. there is little to no opportunity cost). So Germany is shifting the risk away from the consumer.
But this is just a guess and I'm sure there are naive aspects about it. But it is also naive to just assume that everything can be solved with taxes and incentives. Though I hope this policy has some aspect that creates opportunity costs for not installing charging stations (i.e. gov will subsidize stations installing them at a decreasing rate)
Germany already has 0.65€/liter ($2.60/gal) fuel taxes, and on top of that there's the regular 19% VAT.
One issue the German state is trying to solve is that even charging stations that aren't economically profitable can be valuable to the overall system. Something along the lines of "you barely ever need that charger, but having it available solves range problems that would otherwise prevent you from getting an EV".
> What advantages does this measure have over fuel taxes?
It's about the order of operations.
Ubiquitous fast charging infrastructure makes it much easier for people to make the switch to EVs, especially for people who don't have the ability to charge at their homes.
Lacking that, increasing gasoline taxes will just anger people who don't have access to a practical electric fueling option.
Ensuring infrastructure is available everywhere is one of the most important roles of governments. Imagine buying a car if there were only roads in some cities instead of everywhere, doesn't make much sense. This ensures you will have charging stations everywhere, and that greatly increases the value of electric cars.
Fuel taxes don't address the same issue. Availability of chargers is a blocker for EV adoption. The measure directly helps with that problem, while fuel taxes is a more indirect push. In other words, even if you are heavily pushed by fuel taxes, if you have a blocking barrier with charging infrastructure, buying an EV won't be feasible to begin with.
> The legislation indicates that the German government is getting serious about EV charging, having identified that the industry needed a push. If the move proves successful, expect other jurisdictions to follow the example in short order.
This is just the place where they are not needed, except perhaps on the Autobahn.
When you stop to fill your car with melted dinosaurs, the time is so short you can just wait for it to complete. If it's crowded you can even wait for one or two people to finish so you can start filling -- the overall time is not terrible. OTOH, it takes longer to charge your car with electrons, so you want to overlap it with an errand or excursion you'd make anyway.
The Tankstelle on the Autobahn often have a cafe, sometimes a playground, so you could make an actual stop on a trip. But usually when you are running errands you don't want to be stuck in some random location for an extended period.
Question for EV charging -- how does the economics work at a charging station? If I was an EV owner is it cheaper to charge at home -- and do I pay a premium at a station for fast charging? Are stations subsidized by say a Home Depot who just wants people to come to their business?
1. It's cheaper to charge at home, and we do have a Level 2 charger in the garage. But with a new Hyundai EV, you get unlimited free charging (albeit, 30 minutes at a time) through Electrify America. There's one down the road from us at the local Target. So when one of us goes to Target, we get the "free" fill-up. In fact, just this morning I was driving by from some other errand, and figured, hey, I've got fifteen minutes so I'll throw the car on the EA charger and save a few bucks. But it only takes like five or six dollars to charge the thing at home, so did I save anything even if I didn't go out of my way?
Otherwise, L3 is for road trips, especially if it's coming out of my pocket. And partly because one of the reasons we bought our second electric car is because you don't have to go out of your way to a special place just to keep the thing running.
2. I've not seen free charging at places like HD. What I have seen are Level 2 chargers at Safeway grocery stores that are subsidized by the advertising on the giant-ass (a meter tall?) screen. Advertise all you want on that screen, I'm in the store not seeing it. Other places you'll swipe a credit card or summat.
That pretty much nails it, yeah. I expect we will see some shaking out of what works and what doesn't in the next five-ten years, but for now we get a hodgepodge of various schemes. OTOH, my wife and I been driving EV for over 12 years now (OG, pre-ordered Leaf), and though there are many more chargers, I don't know that the business models have made much progress.
It is cheaper to charge at home for sure, especially if we are talking about L3 vs. L1 or L2 charging. L3 charging (the one that gets done < 30 minutes) is more expensive to set up and power. It is meant for people on roadtrips, but a lot of people who live in apartments or use Tesla for ride shares also use them.
But if you have access to home charging and don't drive a lot, you'll rarely ever use a charging station. But when you need access, e.g. on a memorial day road trip, the L3 chargers you find will be swamped while the L2 chargers are too slow.
How frequent do you actually think chargers will be used? I understand that there are a lot of market dynamics but I would imagine that if we swapped to EV -- home charging/office charging would be the big ones with few people going to gas stations/convenience stores.
EV is partially sold as not having to go to convenience stores/gas stations to recharge.
Ya, probably. If most people are charging at home (or office) for most of their usage, chargers won't get used a lot except on holiday weekends when you travel a long way from home.
When you do charge, you'll be stuck at the charger area for ~20-30 minutes, so colocating them with restaurants and other things to do during that wait would be useful. You definitely can't structure them as drive through and out like a gas pump.
It is usually dramatically cheaper to charge at home at night.
For example, in Alameda California I pay:
* 15.17 cents per kWH during off-peak times (nights and weekends)
* 50 cents per kWH during peak times (5pm-9pm)
The Supercharger down the road charges:
* 51 cents per kWH from 12pm-11pm (the time you're most likely to use it)
* 41 cents per kWH from 11pm-4am
* 32 cents per kWH from 4am-12pm
No one is going to leave their car at a Supercharger overnight though. So more realistically you're paying over 3x the cost if you use public Superchargers.
My Model Y has a 75kWH battery so its about ~$11 to charge it from zero to full at home vs about ~$38 at a Supercharger during the day.
A month or so ago I did a comparison between charging a Chevy Bolt at home, with just a level I charger, and putting gas in a Nissan Versa, Hyundai Elantra, or Kia Forte.
The Bolt will be cheaper per mile if G/E > 9.4, where G = price of gas in $/g, and E = price of electricity in $/kWh
I looked at average gas prices and residential electrical rates in all 50 US stats plus DC, and in all of them G/E > 9.4.
This comment has a table showing G and E for all states and DC at the time [1].
Compare that to gasoline at ~$104 to fill a tank of gas on an Audi Q5 (rough equivalent of a Model Y. It has an 18.5G tank and premium gas is $5.65 here). The Q5 does get far more range though. Something like 450+ miles vs the 330 of the Model Y.
Maybe it is better to judge how many miles a dollar gets you? 8 miles per dollar for the Model Y vs 4.3 miles per dollar for the Q5.
If you charge at home during off-peak hours, like most people do, the numbers get a ton better.
Great question! I don't know. I assume that Tesla pays the owner a flat monthly fee for spots but who knows. Likely some spots are more valuable than others. In some places Superchargers might bring in more people to the local businesses, but in others it might cost the owner limited parking spaces and hurt foot traffic.
This seems quite broken? Passenger car gas stations in the US, and my limited experience in Germany, are designed for cars to stop for 5 minutes to get ~300 miles of range. Truck stops are designed to accommodate quite long stays but those are much less dense and only on major freeway routes.
The original (and HN) article title is clickbaity. This isn't a "will". It's not a law yet.
About half of all gas stations along the Autobahn are also "rest stations" with a parking lot and restaurant. Of course one of their big demographics are truckers who stop there for their mandatory rest periods. That also means that during the day there's often also a lot of surplus capacity for extended stops.
Arguably those chargers are most important along the Autobahn to fix the long-distance chicken-egg problem, and the gas stations along the Autobahn are mostly set up like "truck stops" where you can hang around for an hour or more, have a proper meal and do some shopping.
If the legislation forces them, they'll probably install one 150kw station somewhere off to the side. There will be a market for the cheapest, smallest one which meets the rule.
To recoup the money would they be allowed to up-charge for it? "I was forced to install this, I am getting my money back in 2 years..." kind of an idea.
A gas station company might know how to make money selling gas, but they might not be very experienced with making money on EV charging, and they often don't want to partner with a car company whose goal is to sell cars rather than make money on charging.
> If the stations can make money, they will install as much of them as possible. Capitalism.
Of course. However, if they can make money they'd already be installing them and there would be no need for the legislation. So, perhaps, if they are allowed to charge extra to recoup the cost, or perhaps the government would give out some credit or tax reduction plan, it might work.
ev charging takes longer, the design of a gas station doesn't fit the time you'd need for EVs. and most gas stations are probably too small too incorporate enough charge ports to make their inner traffic easy imo
1) And how exactly is that energy generated?
2) Will the grid be swamped because the utopia of "green energy" can't keep up with the additions to the grid?
Since the summer months see the highest traffic on the Autobahn due to school holidays and vacation, this might actually be a clever solution to store surplus "green energy" into car batteries instead of letting it go to waste ;)
1. Currently it's about 50/50 for renewable vs fossil fuels. However the trend is that renewables are growing and fossil fuel usage (mostly coal) is declining. You can see some cool graphs on the Wikipedia page for energy in Germany
they shut down their nuke plants and the nordstream pipelines were destroyed by Biden (an act of war btw, but somehow Russia's their enemy and we're their ally)
I don't know the nature of that website or it's audience, but the comment section if full of people desperately seeking out any minor objection they can come up with to. What about crime! And space! And the cost! I'll never understand this knee-jerk opposition to these kinds of changes. Do people really think pumping stinky, flammable liquid into their car and setting it on fire is the ultimate transportation solution? I feel like the same people who complain about not having flying cars are the same people who would complain if we did.
I'm opposed to gas station chargers because, at least in Canada, gas stations aren't designed for people to just park their cars for however long it takes for their vehicle to charge (longer than filling a gas tank, as I understand it).
I think about the gas stations nearby here, and there's no room on their small footprint for two cars to park for any length of time without everything getting much more difficult for everyone else trying to use the station. If they could remove half the pumps it would free up space to park several cars to charge, but that also seems impractical and overreaching.
I'd love to just eliminate gas stations entirely and replace them with charging stations and a nice little park to sit and eat lunch in, but when you have these cramped situations on these tiny footprints, it just doesn't seem like it's the most optimal place to charge.
I only drive carsharing and rental vehicles occasionally, so I probably have more limited exposure than most, but most German gas stations that I can think of have quite a lot of free space. There's usually room to park a couple of cars for a short while even while they are not taking gas (to go to the store, to use a coin operated vacuum, ...). Maybe it's regulations?
I think this person was referring to the process of transferring that stored energy into thermal energy which drives pistons to generate mechanical energy and move the car.
Since nobody will be selling new ones come 2030 latest, it is the car OEMs that took them away. And, well, nobdy ever mentioned making existing ones illegal. Not even the evil Greens...
That being said, I am all for that. The sooner the better. And I say that as the owner of a 1982 3.5l V8.
I see a lot of "government shouldn't interfere with the free market", but this is par for the course for Germany. After the world wars, they were in a do-or-die economic situation. The government started to heavily regulate and direct the industry that made Germany the power-house it is today. It's not perfect, but it has been working well for them so far. Enough to make them world recognized in many areas.
Interestingly, earlier this year, Tesla dragged Tank & Rest, a large gas station corporation in Germany, to court over its monopoly over service stations along the Autobahn, as the company has the right to decide where chargers can be installed. Tesla feels that it should be allowed to install Superchargers where they're most needed. With this new law, Tank & Rest may be pressured into working with Tesla to save on installation costs for mandated chargers.
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The actual Reuters article has even less information though:
Why forced? Tank and Rast can still install whatever they want as soon as they install enough. Tesla has nowhere near the lobbying power in Europe to turn that law into a monopoly.
Sometimes I wonder if people with your opinion are purposefully ignoring the fact that the grid's power composition is easier to change than the car fleet's. Isn't it obvious to you that decoupling the cars from direct fossil fuel usage is a necessary step, even though the grid might not yet be perfect?
What makes you think the GP doesn't fully understand this?
Put another way, the GP comment is a pretty damning comment about the failure of lawmakers to pass laws modernizing the electric grid. It doesn't really matter much if the fuel used to produce all of this electric energy happens to be worse and more destructive to the environment than gasoline.
When people refuse to have intellectually honest conversations about this, it dramatically undermines the stated objective and gives detractors legitimate evidence of bad faith dialog.
Electrification is a necessary condition to overall improvement. Without electrification of most all sectors, it's the same as having an economy without money, only barter.
Improving the grid's mix is also very important, of course, but it's something that can be done in parallel or lagging of electrification. Improvements to the grid are amplified by electrification. When everything is electric, there's only one thing to focus on and it becomes electricity generation. But without this, improvements to the grid are much less impactful.
Also it's to be noted that grid scale non-renewable power plants are orders of magnitude more efficient than the same power sources at household scale.
That somewhere some government replaced wind with coal doesn't change this.
The article posted above can also be seen via a proxy here: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Feuobserver.com%2Fgreen... - the point being, there is a throwback in the quality of energy production, in fact right the anedoctal example is a wind farming taking damage in order to expand the dirtiest type of coal (Lignite contains 25%–35% carbon and has the lowest energy content of all coal ranks.)
The most outraging piece to me, is the that in large part the push against modern safer nuclear energy production (that could have mitigated this situation) comes from the Green Party. All mentioned so far comes off political nature, so if your point is the grid is easier to change... i haven't seen a single fact pointing in that way.
There is also the engineering appreciation for reducing energy loss vs. pollution it creates; which low quality coal -> high voltage transmission -> EV is an insanely ineffective method all along. Any EV being charged by coal is a pathetic attempt of green wash.
That is a valid point, but is there a reason to not change the grid first? As it stands the EV campaign slogan of "environmentally friendly" is missing a "... eventually".
Sounds like someone in the German government has a lot of money invested in the EV industry then, eh?
I constantly hear about Germany forcing private industry to change. It sounds like absolute hell to live there. If there's a demand for EV charging and gas stations don't adapt, they'll simply go bankrupt and be replaced by a newer, more forward-focused fuel company. Regulation is necessary, but an industry shouldn't be forced by government to adopt specific products, the industry should perform market research, determine demand, and then decide to put out a product or not.
EV demand is held back by charging infrastructure. And we can’t keep letting the market decide when it does not account for climate change.
And it’s not exactly “hell” to live in Germany. In fact, I don’t know why gas stations being forced to install EV chargers would affect life quality at all.
Given the prominence of GHGs as the source for climate change, we won't free-market our way to a solution. Things have to change drastically, and rapidly, and regulation is probably the only reasonable avenue for making that happen in time. And more to the point: we need a lot of coordinated regulation across industries, multi-nationals, and countries to baseline our efforts. Almost all our GHGs come from fossil fuels, food and transportation industries. These stretch beyond borders, and we don't yet have enough momentum to stave off irreversible damages, tipping points, and unacceptable human suffering.
And for every reminder from someone that "fossil fuels are convenient", I'll respond with "regulations are powerful".
Sounds like a bill made by misinformed politicians.
The future of EV charging is that every parking spot is a charging spot. Almost all charging will be destination charging.
Even the small amount of charging needed in the middle of a long trip will be done differently - nobody wants to spend 30+ mins in a gas station. The design of the station need to also be different, more like a Tesla supercharger which essentially located inside parking lots.
Who is paying for it? Not only in terms of the chargers themselves but in terms of land usage. Installing EV chargers is a double-hit in that regard. Not only does a charger take up space that could've had a gas pump, that loss is multiplied by the fact the same land area can service far fewer vehicles than the same area used on gasoline pumps due to the much greater length of time each car occupies the space.
You don't install chargers in thru-ways (like a gas-pump) and you don't install gas-pumps on the fringes where you'd normally have parking (like an EV charger). I don't think the land-use argument really holds, here, since it would likely be installed where there's simply parking.
And by increasing the density of chargers, you are spreading out the usage, so _per station_ the increase in cars idling in their lots I don't think would be a significant problem.
People who come to gas stations to fuel up their cars behave very differently from people who come to a place to charge, no?