Charging infrastructure is not growing

[KJD]

Scotland plans to have an EV charging station every 50 miles on all major roads. We should do as well in the mountain west.

http://insideevs.com/scotland-goes-japanese-government-funds-charging-points-every-50-miles/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[philipscoggins]

Only problem with every 50 miles is when you get there with 10% charge and L3 is offline.

I have found out that TN still has Ecotality money. Our city is getting a couple of L2 BLink units for free. THe city just has to run the conduit with power to the locations they want & Ecotality will install & maintain. The city has on staff utilitiy workers, so there's not much actual expense to them.

Philip

 

[brettcgb]

Ouch. Funny thing, if there was any market penetration of EV's, any infrastructure short of "ubiquitous" will be unreliable. You need range excess. Period.

Ditto on the reliability. And range. In this city (Phoenix), there are >400 L2 chargers and about 11 L3 chargers. Even this is not "ubiquitous", but you might expect that what's present is at least reliable.

This last Easter, I was driving across town, and planned to stop at a car dealer with a DCFC near my destination. I guess I should have expected that the dealer would be closed that afternoon, and all their chargers were behind locked gates. OK - there are other nearby L2 chargers. Except the hosts power-off their chargers when closed. Hmmm - There's a DCFC at an apartment complex about 10 miles away that I can reach... probably. That was along the route I usually take, and today, in the wrong direction. At the apartment, one side of the L3 was ICE'd (with many open spaces within 50 ft), and the other marked as handicap - no choice but to stay with the car in the handicap space while its charging (always a good idea anyway with DCFC.)

I was able to get a DCFC at the apartment and continue on, but there was about 45 minutes where I seriously thought I might get stranded while looking for a 120V outlet.

Lessons:

1) Chargers behind gates can not be considered reliable.

2) Chargers where the host is known to power-off chargers can not be considered reliable.

3) The public still needs to be educated regarding ICE'ing EVSE spaces. Enforcement in this regard is lacking.

4) Charger databases are, at best, always out of date.
Blink indicated all these chargers were operating and accessible. Blinks database absolutely can not be trusted, and can not be updated by users.
Plugshare also indicated all these chargers were available, but could be forgiven - they don't have access to the charger network for live data. Despite this, I've found Plugshare to be more accurate with better data.

 

[rpmdk]

Rather than a charging infrastructure I would like to see the money go to battery RnD. I love driving my EV and have no intention of going back to gas, but I would much prefer range to charging infrastructure.

 

[cgaydos]

Fourteen charge stations sounds like a lot to me: my county, and the six adjacent counties, have zero charge stations. Not much point in building them until there are a lot of EVs. But few people will be willing to accept the limited range of EVs unless there are charge stations as a "security blanket". It's the usual "chicken and egg" problem.

My local power co-op is pretty progressive and is seriously considering charge stations, so some may appear here someday. But my LEAF works just fine with home charging.

That's pretty true in all of Colorado outside the metro areas - and I'm pretty sure that's going to be true for most of the nation outside the big metros. Even in the smaller metro areas there are fewer per capita (El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs, population 650k) has only 6, and that includes 2 Nissan dealers and 2 Walgreens.

I'll give Walgreens credit ... two of the stores they chose for their L2 stations are right off I-25 between Denver and the Springs - one in Castle Rock, one in Monument. Both stops are convenient to restaurants and some shopping. That's the kind of placement you need to encourage longer trips.

Agree with the chicken-and-egg analogy. A similar analogy applied before the building of the transcontinental railroads. There wasn't enough population/business to justify such a major capital investment, but without railroads the growth in population/business was slow. That's why the government heavily subsidized the RRs. By the same token a national network of QC stations would result in much greater adoption of EVs. I'd love to, for example, see QCs in Canon City, Salida, Gunnison and Montrose so I could use my LEAF to visit dpcolorado on the Western Slope. And once those were in place you'd see a lot more people in EVs.

 

[N952JL]

Outside of the Nissan dealers, we finaly got one public L2 charger. I have talked to many businesses but nothing seems to be happening. But two hrs of L2 charging (movie or dinner) with a 3.3 kwh charger the 2012 leaf has is almost nothing. At max maybe 6kW which is between 18 and 24 miles. Not enough to return home.

Now if I had the 6 +kW charger in the 2013 that would double it to about 12kW in two hrs. That between 36 to 48 miles which is enought to get me home from where ever.

 

[Herm]

I dont hold out much hope for a charging infrastructure when everyone has sockets in their garage.. but at least the status of the EVSE or Chademo charger should always be available instantly over the internet.. just a cam and some text is all you need. The cam can also be used to monitor against vandalism or theft.