Worst nightmare - ALL of town's public EVSEs non-functional

Of course there are only 4.

And there are dealership EVSEs at a pinch:

http://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/Watt-area-s-car-recharging-points/story-25754278-detail/story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Look for this to happen more as places who put them in for "green cred" get tired of paying their network provider. Until running public charging is profitable, it's going to be somewhat less than reliable.

I expect that in the longer run level 2 chargers will make sense for just a few places: Home, work, and hotels.

If range really increases to ~150 miles as the new benchmark a 7 kW public charger will add range at such a pathetic rate that there will be no reason to bother while you are on the go. In-town you might as well charge at home. Level 2 on a large battery only makes sense if you can leave the car at a station for hours, which means home, work, and possibly highway serving hotels.

That leaves a need for fast charging out in public, preferably something without a god awful acronym. 50 kW is likely too slow, it needs to be ratio of more like 2-3 hours of highway driving to 30 minutes charging, so roughly 100+ kW. It looks to me that this is a real stumbling block for all the manufacturers except Tesla, which recognized the problem up-front.

Even the folks blathering about "future proofing" by installing wiring for anything over about a 6-10 kW EVSE sound foolish to me. There are only a handful of people who would ever see any benefit. With just a 6.6 kW station you would need a ~200 mile total commute with no work charging before you could not keep up with 10 hours of charging overnight. In fact as battery capacity increases, the need for a high output EVSE's will actually go down, since there will be a lot less need for quickly topping up after work before evening grocery runs, or in-between trips on the weekend compared to today's 60-80 mile Leaf reality.

I expect that in the longer run level 2 chargers will make sense for just a few places: Home, work, and hotels.

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Shopping centers and grocery stores will also work well, once they stop placing the charging stations right near the main entrances where they get ICEd.

After years of discussion, the state of Pennsylvania decided to put EVSEs at public expense in all the PA turnpike rest areas.

They appear to all be 6 kW L2s, and thus effectively useless hundreds of miles from major cites.

For comparison, the state of New Jersey, the highest population density state in the US, has spent years searching for a private company willing to put public for profit DCQCs at their turnpike rest areas (since Tesla's connector is proprietary it was deemed inappropriate to locate on public land). No takers.

They have now 'given up', and will allow Tesla access, so long as they provide elec hookup capacity adequate for other DCQC's, should so one come forward in the future.

In the meantime, the two most populous cities on the East Coast, NYC and Philadelphia, are only 100 miles apart and have precisely 2 reliably working DCQC units near the highway between them. Both are only 20-24 kW Chademo units, and both are several miles from the NJ turnpike.

Sad.

woodgeek said:

For comparison, the state of New Jersey, the highest population density state in the US, has spent years searching for a private company willing to put public for profit DCQCs at their turnpike rest areas (since Tesla's connector is proprietary it was deemed inappropriate to locate on public land). No takers.

They have now 'given up', and will allow Tesla access, so long as they provide elec hookup capacity adequate for other DCQC's, should so one come forward in the future..

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I'm not surprised. The only rational reason for the lack of DCQCs is that they are unprofitable. Tesla uses a model which is the inverse of the old razors and blades model. Tesla makes the razor (the car) expensive, with the promise of cheap blades (the charging). That's why it makes sense for them to put chargers which lose money out in the wild. They either are already making or plan to make high profit margins on vehicles. The Chademo backers are traditional car companies, who are generally set up for thin margins on the upfront vehicle, with ongoing revenue from service. The economics of EVs is completely at odds to traditional cars. I think the long term future of DC charging is going to be paying Tesla for access, since they are the only manufacturer with the economic incentive to build them. And I would not count on the pay services at that point, since competing with free is hard, and competing with free AND good is essentially impossible.

LeftieBiker said:

I expect that in the longer run level 2 chargers will make sense for just a few places: Home, work, and hotels.

Click to expand...

Shopping centers and grocery stores will also work well, once they stop placing the charging stations right near the main entrances where they get ICEd.

Click to expand...

Those are both local destinations where you are almost always within a reasonable distance of your home charger, so only a small minority of folks with EV's will wanto to pay to charge for the hour or two they are there. If your are always running on empty with an 80 mile range they are handy, but not so much if 150+ miles range becomes the standard. I expect more and more of these chargers to become neglected and fall into disuse if longer range comes to fruition is my point.

I only see widespread utility with either fast charging along highways, or level 2 in those few places where you will be stopped already for long periods.

Moof said:

LeftieBiker said:

I expect that in the longer run level 2 chargers will make sense for just a few places: Home, work, and hotels.

Click to expand...

Shopping centers and grocery stores will also work well, once they stop placing the charging stations right near the main entrances where they get ICEd.

Click to expand...

Those are both local destinations where you are almost always within a reasonable distance of your home charger, so only a small minority of folks with EV's will wanto to pay to charge for the hour or two they are there. If your are always running on empty with an 80 mile range they are handy, but not so much if 150+ miles range becomes the standard. I expect more and more of these chargers to become neglected and fall into disuse if longer range comes to fruition is my point.

I only see widespread utility with either fast charging along highways, or level 2 in those few places where you will be stopped already for long periods.

Click to expand...

I agree with this. The idea of L2 chargers at grocery stores etc just doesn't make sense to me for several reasons.
1) The cost has to be absorbed by someone - I don't see the 'draw' of charging to be a reasonable marketing expense; i.e. the number of additional visits/spending by customers is not likely to increase enough to average out the cost/visit to make up for it. You don't make money in a business offering an incentive with a higher cost than the profit on each visit. It is really all about marginal costs here - how much more business (net) do you get for spending $x.
2) Other than early adopters, who really WANTS to have to plug in throughout the day? Sure, if it is "free" some of us may like to use it, but really for most folks I imagine plugging in once a day (at night) is about all the 'inconvenience' they will tolerate. So why would the majority of folks want to do it? Make it free and perhaps - but if you try and recover even the power cost I don't think most will consider it worth the bother, especially if power is cheaper at home.

The more I think of this the more I tend toward the following:
* L1 is appropriate for long term parking like airports etc - going to be there a couple days anyway, why not put more plugs in and leave them the whole time.
* L2 has a place where cars are parked overnight, i.e. home/apartment or some isolated work places
* DCQC (aiming for 150 miles in 30 minutes or faster) is appropriate along major travel corridors (i.e. rest areas etc). Also at airport and similiar "short term" parking - i.e. where people park to pick up/drop off passengers.

I see 150+ mile EVs being the norm in a few years and with that sort of range, I suspect well over 95% of drivers will be able to go all day between charges the vast majority of their driving days.

Yes, there are exceptions - the person with the 200 mile r/t commute, or the traveling business owner (i.e. someone who spends all day in their 'office car') but designing for a 100% solution throws the cost of the system way out - i.e. that last 2% could cost as much as the first 98%.

My basis for these conclusions is personal experience (I'm the eager to charge wherever I go, my wife is the more 'normal' - she loves the car, but won't even think about charging until home) and discussions with others around my office. Clearly I have a very biased sample here, but there are stats out there on how many miles people really drive and I suspect I'm not too far off on the percent of folks who, without conscious effort, drive less than 150 miles/day.

I would be more than happy to pay for charging wherever it is installed, as I have never expected it to be free. Part of the problem in my area is there is a very small handful of EV's, and that would make it unprofitable for whoever pays for the installs. Out of the 2 public EVSE in my area the one (Wholefoods) is free, and the other is a Chargepoint L2 at $2/hr with a minimum of 1 hour charge. I use it when needed, and don't feel ripped off. If my choice is paying $2-$5 for an hour of charging or getting stranded on the road I think that is an easy choice regardless of how much cheaper it is for me to charge at home.

In your situation that sucks they are all down, but at least you have 4 EVSE in your area. Probably the only reason I am glad we don't have a lot of EVSE is that I have not ever planned a commute based on having one available.

We have a regional grocery store chain (Price Chopper) that for years has offered gasoline discounts as a reward for shopping with them. It works well for them. They recently started adding L-2 charging stations to their stores, and while the volume of EV-related business involved isn't large, it has earned them a lot of positive public image points among people who drive BEVs and PHEVs, or who just want to "save the environment". There are kinks to be worked out, like non-working stations and putting them in too-appealing spaces in some locations, but I think those who look strictly at immediate bottom line results are being short-sighted.