eVgo Expansion?

[DaveEV]

You are certainly correct on all points. But I can also see the logic behind a business decision which says "It's not worth spending another $50,000 to $100,000 to add a second QC when the first one is used less than 5X daily." (...or whatever the number is.) It really is a chicken and egg problem for charging vendors. They cannot subsidize their quick chargers by selling cars like Tesla does.

But the thing is is that the bulk of the cost to install a QC are one-offs related to trenching and labor. To add a 2nd QC the cost is just hardware, or about $15k for the Nissan QC. So even if you just install two QC stations, now your cost goes up 15-30%, but you get two stations and can push 4-5 times the number of charges per day while maintaining the same service quality.

Capacity of Charging Stations Using an Erlang-B Model

The numbers in that thread assumes only a 2% blocking rate which is a very good service rate. Bump that up to 10% (the amount of times you'll get there and have to wait) and the throughput looks like this:

1 station: 0.1 charges / hour
2 stations: 0.55 charges / hour
3 stations: 1.25 charges / hour
4 stations: 2.0 charges / hour

Look at how many charges / hour you can support by going to a 2nd station while maintaining a 10% chance of finding all stations busy.

Let's say you want to support 5 charges daily before you expand. You probably only have about 12 hours a day where people are going to use the station. Basically once you get to 5 charges/day you are overloaded and people are going to be waiting frequently which provides bad service. And now you have to double your infrastructure cost.

Just look at the EV Project infrastructure reports. http://www.theevproject.com/documents.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

On the last report, across all regions DC QC stations already have a vehicle connected 5% of the time. Then you factor in that most of the use occurs from 8am-8pm. Then you look at the median usage rate and you find that it's already at 10% with peaks approaching 20%.

If you know you have a 10-20% chance of having to wait up to 30 minutes to charge - how likely satisfied are you going to be with that experience? Not to mention that you know that there will be some stations pushing much higher utilization rates than that, there are quite a few stations that are operating well over an ideal capacity. Just look at the SF Bay Area section - there the median usage rate is 10-20% from 6:30-7:30 with the peak over 40%. Crazy!

FWIW, the average charging time is 20 minutes and delivers 8 kWh.

 

[Pipcecil]

How many people actually stay parked at the station for 30 minutes? I've never used one longer than 10 minutes.

Actually me, and quite often. And no, its not because I am a jerk, I need to. I will push the car to low amounts many times before I reach the QC (not always, but about half the time). USUALLY it would only take 20-30 minutes at most. BUT with my battery degraded a normal QC to 80% (90% on the screen) takes ~45 minutes now. And when I need every single 10th of a kWh to get somewhere (like home) I can't stop early.

The only time exceed this is when I am being rather lazy, got to a charger with greater than 50% and just let it go through (I would have pulled out earlier if someone was waiting) or when (on a couple of occasions) I need a complete 100% charge (or 98/99% when it stops) to reach my destination and home without having to QC again (two QCs per trip has become the norm for me). I do calculate it out though so I don't overstay my usage, but I have been quite surprised at the increase in charging time due to increased battery resistances as my capacity has plummeted. I spend more time QCing with less electricity than i did when my battery was new - I could go from LBW to 80% in 20 minutes on a new battery (which is, what 17 kWh??), it now takes me 45 minutes to get ~10-11 kWh on my degraded battery...so sad.

 

[Valdemar]

They are not charging for the monthly fee until they have a critical mass of QCs installed - something like 15 or so.

Same here, I subscribed more than a month ago and they haven't billed me a penny yet. Who knows the billing may be delayed, but hopefully it is free as promised until they have 15 functioning sites in LA.

 

[alanlarson]

I was told by an evgo installer that each site is future-proofed for a second QC unit, i.e. SCC.

The first QC at the Great Mall in Milpitas is a repainted Nissan unit. In fact,you can see the Nissan labeling under the outer layer of paint. There doesn't appear to have been room set aside for another QC.

They put a concrete pad between two facing stalls in a parking structure. The pad is not centered, but extends into one parking stall more than the other, so that stall is hashed off and marked "No Parking" Of course, that is the one in front of the QC and first L2 charger, so you have to park behind the chargers and wrangle the cord through the gap between the two to get to the car. The cords do not reach adjacent parking spots. There is a narrow extension of the pad in front of the next space, towards a wall mount L2 that is fairly usable for that spot. I don't see any way they could add another QC there.

- and this location just went in service in the last month or so. You would think they would know how to do it by now.

 

[Valdemar]

^^^ I suppose they had restrictions to deal with at certain sites, the ones I've been to do have room for a second charger.

 

[DaveEV]

^^^ I suppose they had restrictions to deal with at certain sites, the ones I've been to do have room for a second charger.

I can't imagine why they didn't leave any visible stubs for the 2nd QC. Now they're going to need significant concrete work to get the 2nd QC in.

Personally, I really hope that they install dual plug QCs that can do both CCS/CHAdeMO for the 2nd station since there are so many more CHAdeMO cars out there than CCS cars, but I highly doubt they will.

 

[NYLEAF]

The eVgo website now lists charging plans available for Nashville, TN, one of the markets listed in my OP. Interestingly, there do not appear to be any eVgo stations in Nashville (yet, anyway). The job listings for eVgo Site Developer are still open for Orlando, Miami and Chicago.

I'm looking forward to eVgo opening up stations in NY.

 

[Rebel44]

The problem is that I think their approach is very poor. A single plug per location sucks from three perspectives:

1. Reliability - outage takes down the station and potentially leaves you stranded (at least they tend to couple L2)
2. Availability - if station is in use, you'll have to wait a while before it frees up. Better hope that person doesn't leave their car there while at the movies or that the plug reaches more than one parking spot!
3. Infrastructure cost - The most expensive way to install stations is to install a single station per location.

You are certainly correct on all points. But I can also see the logic behind a business decision which says "It's not worth spending another $50,000 to $100,000 to add a second QC when the first one is used less than 5X daily." (...or whatever the number is.) It really is a chicken and egg problem for charging vendors. They cannot subsidize their quick chargers by selling cars like Tesla does.

Chicken and egg problem is exactly why I think tesla solution is vastly superior.

When I was considering which new car to buy last year Leaf was ruled out because of following:

Poor battery chemistry + lack of BMS lead to increased risk of battery degradation.
Lack of BMS means much worse range in winter (my commute is 32 miles to work and 12 hours later 32 miles back - with no chargers at work)
Nonexistant/useless charging network

At the end i bought new Fiat panda for $6200 in cash and started saving to next gen EV.

 

[Valdemar]

There are reports on PlugShare some sites are getting dual Chademo/CSS ABB units in addition to the Nissan ones, allowing for 2 simultaneous Chademo sessions. Which is great news (for Leaf owners)!

 

[DaveEV]

There are reports on PlugShare some sites are getting dual Chademo/CSS ABB units in addition to the Nissan ones, allowing for 2 simultaneous Chademo sessions. Which is great news (for Leaf owners)!

Yes, I noticed this, too. Will the ABB units charge a car on both the Combo and CHAdeMO plug simultaneously? I guess one might not bother to attempt use the ABB station unless the Nissan station is down... Given the general unreliability of the Nissan QCs, I am very happy that eVgo is adding a dual-plug QC to existing locations. I really hope they don't end up yanking the Nissan QCs.

 

[Randy]

The ABB units with two cords will deliver one charging session at a time...The electronics within are not rated or designed to deliver two charges at once or even to share charging power between the two systems.

And as far as the discussion above about concrete work and installing the second unit, NRG eVgo has been building most of their sites in a pre-plumbed fashion to include the 2nd DC FC. They did it with a small skim coat of concrete over the junction box that can easily be chipped out to reveal the connection point... So where you see a gap on their pad, that is probably where the 2nd DC FC unit is going to go.

In San Diego, work has started to install the second units...

 

[Valdemar]

Unless they remove the single-nozzler it is another win for Chademo!

 

[NYLEAF]

Unless they remove the single-nozzler it is another win for Chademo!

I wonder if eVgo is considering removing some of the single-CHAdeMO units from stations in CA that are having dual-standard units installed. They could then ship these units to new markets where they aren't contractually obligated to offer SAE Combo, like they are in CA. They've just started installing stations in TN and GA, and they could save themselves some money by re-purposing the stations from CA. If it meant we got eVgo stations faster in NY, I'd be happy to take used stations from CA...

 

[NYLEAF]

Job postings were added for Austin, TX and Salt Lake City, UT. The job openings in Miami, Chicago and Orlando are still open. I wonder how much longer it will take for them to start installing stations in the markets that they've already hired for.

 

[JPWhite]

Not to mention the fact that even the Nissan station seem to break down quite often leaving you stranded.

I depend upon a Nissan Brand CHAdeMO unit each workday to give me enough to get home. Never been let down yet after 4 months of QC use.

About once per week I arrive and the Red fault light is on with an error on the screen. I press STOP for 3-4 seconds which restarts the unit, works everytime. People may complain about the Nissan brand units reliability, but the most likely cause is user error, an incorrectly inserted plug in the cars QC port.

 

[Valdemar]

Not to mention the fact that even the Nissan station seem to break down quite often leaving you stranded.

I depend upon a Nissan Brand CHAdeMO unit each workday to give me enough to get home. Never been let down yet after 4 months of QC use.

About once per week I arrive and the Red fault light is on with an error on the screen. I press STOP for 3-4 seconds which restarts the unit, works everytime. People may complain about the Nissan brand units reliability, but the most likely cause is user error, an incorrectly inserted plug in the cars QC port.

Here in SoCal they start to crap out as soon as the temps rise above 90. Other than that they seem to be more or less stable.

 

[JPWhite]

Not to mention the fact that even the Nissan station seem to break down quite often leaving you stranded.

I depend upon a Nissan Brand CHAdeMO unit each workday to give me enough to get home. Never been let down yet after 4 months of QC use.

About once per week I arrive and the Red fault light is on with an error on the screen. I press STOP for 3-4 seconds which restarts the unit, works everytime. People may complain about the Nissan brand units reliability, but the most likely cause is user error, an incorrectly inserted plug in the cars QC port.

Here in SoCal they start to crap out as soon as the temps rise above 90. Other than that they seem to be more or less stable.

Overtemp is a maintenance issue for the host. There is a heatsink that gets clogged up with debris that needs cleaning once per month. We had the same here in Nashville. But once the maintenance was done, the units worked fine at 100+

JP

 

[DaveEV]

About once per week I arrive and the Red fault light is on with an error on the screen. I press STOP for 3-4 seconds which restarts the unit, works everytime. People may complain about the Nissan brand units reliability, but the most likely cause is user error, an incorrectly inserted plug in the cars QC port.

Browsing local PlugShare locations, hardware failures are still pretty common. Heck, even Tony has a hard time keeping them online - he has two at a location and both were down recently for about two weeks. http://api.plugshare.com/view/location/51941" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Luckily, there are nearby QCs 2.8 mi, 3.2 mi or 4.2 mi away depending on what direction you're going, so at least you have options if what I consider the best location along a high traffic route is down.

The lack of QC reliability makes me wish we had 80A capable on-board charging like you can get on a Tesla - you can buy very reliable 80A J1772 stations for a fraction of the cost of a QC station. Even 40A L2 would be great to have as backup for when you can't find a QC station.

 

[lkkms2]

[/quote]
I depend upon a Nissan Brand CHAdeMO unit each workday to give me enough to get home. Never been let down yet after 4 months of QC use.

About once per week I arrive and the Red fault light is on with an error on the screen. I press STOP for 3-4 seconds which restarts the unit, works everytime. People may complain about the Nissan brand units reliability, but the most likely cause is user error, an incorrectly inserted plug in the cars QC port.[/quote]


Good to know how to reset. Thanks.

 

[lkkms2]

Overtemp is a maintenance issue for the host. There is a heatsink that gets clogged up with debris that needs cleaning once per month. We had the same here in Nashville. But once the maintenance was done, the units worked fine at 100+
JP

Hmm, how does a heat sink get clogged up? Would like to see how this looks. Any thing we can do to prevent this from happening?