It makes much more sense to put the chargers in places where you park your car: At home, at parking lots and at work.
Gas stations. No.
These are fast chargers to top-off for extended trips.
Those places make a lot more sense than what the US is doing, which is putting its long distance fast chargers in weird ass parking lots that lack access to a restroom, convenient store, food, or even a bucket with a window squeegee.
DC fast chargers. Not level 2 240v chargers.
Next, what a shit article.
You need infrastructure for fast charging so that people can travel long distances.
It takes several hours to charge my car at home. I do that twice a week or so.
That's too long when I go on a trip long enough where you'd need to get gas . If I go to the supercharger, it's 25 minutes every four hours or so. That's just the opposite of a problem for me.
The only remaining problem for me is that there's not more fast DC chargers.
I'd really like to take my EV camping, but the places where I like to go camping are far from any fast charging and don't have RV plugs. A regular 120v/15A wall plug overnight would resolve the issue, but I just can't guarantee that one's available.
That's the only "range anxiety" I have. On a daily basis, I just never have to worry about running out of juice. It's just full all the time.
It's like a phone. I charge it every night (I don't even do that for the EV). The only problem is if I'm traveling, and cars and planes have charging for me.
Once there's more infrastructure, it's just no problem.
Fast chargers at sizeable gas stations make sense. Sheetz has already been putting them in at some larger locations.
My favorite are the chargers at buc-ees. Get to buy some beef jerky and a bbq sandwich while charging.
In much of the rural US gas stations are a "one stop" - gas, groceries and often a restaurant. It would be a no brainier to add charging to those.
Places you can spend time at. Restaurants, coffee shops, even fast food, the mall, etc.
Work. The answer is always work. Eke out a little more profit while people recharge.
If you're taking a road trip, charging at work won't help you.
Oh c'mon everyone hangs out at the local gas station!
To your point, mandate public places not a relic of a dying industry.
I'm not even supposed to be here today!
Ok, I know that wasn't a gas station, but it felt like it fit.
IMO the current model we use for gas stations wouldn't work for EVs. Charging times for EVs can take a long time compared to petroleum vehicles taking only a couple minutes (depending on tank size). The lines would be a terrible experience, and you'd probably end up having to reserve a spot.
I can't imagine why you'd think that.
Yes. It takes a bit longer, but most people would charge at home.
You only use the fast DC chargers when you go on long trips.
There would just eventually be enough spots anyway. Supply and demand.
With my EV, you don't "go to the gas station" unless you're on a road trip. In your day to day travel, you just always have enough juice.
It's actually a lot nicer than a gas car in this respect.
Honestly, it makes sense for any business off of a highway that sells things to provide fast chargers. They still take several minutes at a minimum to charge, so you have a captive and probably bored customer. Seems like a gas station, restaurant, whatever would quickly make back the money spent on charging infrastructure in increased sales from people who’d rather shop or eat than sit in their car for a half hour.
Exactly. This is the same reason as why convenience stores make the profit to support the gas stations.
Here in Australia, I think it would actually work quite well, particularly in rural areas... then again all our service stations are pretty much convenience stores where you can buy fuel. Many of them you can buy a coffee and baked goods as well, some even have full restaurants.
Gas stations will need to evolve to account for the wait of EV charging. They will need to become fast casual restaurants with options for long-term stayers and this is not possible with some landlocked locations, as opposed to newer developments in the states.
Every gas station has non gas pump parking. Slap a couple of them in there.
If anything its a boon for them, as gas is sold at cost generally. Nearly all the profit comes from items in the convenience store.
I think you have it backwards.
Gas stations don't need to evolve to become restaurants... restaurants needs to simply add chargers.
It isn't even a huge leap for customers to expect it either. Some 15 years ago there was a big push for restaurants and stores and markets to install wifi for their customers. This is not all that different, quite honestly. If a restaurant has 15 parking spots in it's lot, it shouldn't be a huge ask to install a handful of chargers which can be shared by most of the parking spots. Most parking lots already have some kind of power out there for signage or lightpoles. You can tap off that, or go solar.
Most restaurants that germans go to don't have a parking lot nearby. Most restaurants are in the city. Although maybe some enterprising country inn/restaurant owners already offer EV charging.
You're thinking cities with single use neighbourhoods like in the US, where residency and commercial areas are usually separated. That's not the case in Germany.
My experience is that even places with fast food are not fast enough for EV charging. I pretty much always end up charging more than I actually need, or even move the car because its fully charged, before we're done eating and back at the car.
Right now EVs charge fast enough that you can't do anything meaningful with the time, but too slow for just sitting and waiting.
Some US chains are primed for this, or at least pretty close. Wawa, Buc-ee's, and similar, have ready made and made to order food, restrooms, and many have shopping as well. They aren't full sitdown restaurants, but they could optionally add seating areas if they didn't want to just let people eat in their cars.
So pretty much they just need to find space for the car chargers at their normal parking spots, and maybe add some more spots to deal with increased demand in the future. I've seen both Wawa and Buc-ee's testing chargers at some of the locations, so they're definitely moving in the direction already.
That's a terrible place to put them. They should be in large parking lots and garages where people leave their car for 30+ minutes.
You're not spending 30+ minutes charging on modern EV's (maybe some cheap crappy ones IDK)...I spent my summer holiday driving around Europe for 3 weeks, and charging stops were always <25min from leaving the highway to back on the highway. The actual charging time was often so short that we barely had time to get the kids to the bathroom and back before the car was ready to drive for another couple of hours. Having them at gas stations in Germany, where there's almost always a decent level of amenities (at least along the highway) is just fine and makes perfect sense.
it's not, what about the handicapped who need assistance? Gas station has those.
this should be done along major roads everywhere
Though I'd agree simple 230v (since it's the EU) charging in many places is something that should be a focus too, mainly at workplaces and stuff like that where people spend a lot of time
Most gas stations have some building with a (or multiple) shops which could easily be adjusted to slow moving chillin car charging peoples (no offense, I’m one as well).
They should concentrate on making EVs financially more plausible for people without an electrified garage. Half of Germany lives in flats, most without an own parking space and will pay much more for charging their EV with much less comfort. And politics seem to completly ignore that.
While I agree, it is much easier to bring in charging stations to gas stations where infrastructure is already built out. It seems like a near-term win with the long-term option for flat integration/power connectivity
The electric infrastructure is the whole grid. I'd argue apartment complex are better prepared for the increased power use than a gas station and is more convenient a location than gas station.
What are you going to do while waiting for your car to charge? At least at home you can go.. home. Shopping centres are a close second. You can do your shopping while you're charging. Parking spaces and grid are already there.
that's assuming these things actually work I keep picturing the scenario where you pull up to a gas station in the air pump doesn't work while you're trying to inflate your tire
What a bone-headed move. A gas station is not really set up to handle vehicles that might be there for 5x, 10x or maybe even 15x longer than a gasoline car takes to fill up. You'd be far better off, putting them in the parking lot of a local grocery store or movie theater or restaurant.
Some gas stations are also highway rest areas with restaurants and whatnot. The ones that aren't close to rest areas are in mixed used neighbourhoods, so possibly close to the customers' homes. If you take your car to the cinema in Germany, you're doing it wrong.
Rented a Tesla this summer for a trip with my family- where I was in Michigan, the nearest superchargers were in the lot at Meijers (a regional supermarket chain), which made sense for Meijers (there's already a big lot there, already infra, it's a place you can tie fueling up with getting groceries) but it meant I had to drive half an hour to shop instead of going to the local market.
My thought is that they should be planting superchargers (or their functional equivalent) in every store or restaurant parking lot because when the only place to get a charge is in the next county over, that's directing EV drivers there and not local
Yeah, it'll cost something to build out infra to support that much power but honestly the US grid needs the upgrades anyhow- and if anything, electricity is relatively cheap compared to buying gas
We could have a look at Norway how they are dealing with the transformation, e.g.https://insideevs.com/news/532464/fuel-stations-norway-fast-chargers/. And maybe this is also part of it as well: https://www.fuelsandlubes.com/totalenergies-to-sell-retail-network-in-germany-and-netherlands/. And Aral is already having REWE to go.
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