tbleakne wrote:I am not sure whether any of these dual-hose units have been deployed. They have their hands full installing more single-hose units, up to 6 at one location, to keep up with demand.
Most of the supercharger locations are already deployed are dual-host units just as you described. A couple are single host units and a few more are only ~30 kW capable units (Gilroy SuperChargers for example appears to have a dual-hose unit and two ~30 kW superchargers - 4 plugs total).
GregH wrote:RegGuheert wrote:GregH wrote:...it's not unreasonable to think that DCQC stations couldn't offer multiple plugs at a single site (possibly even from a single piece of hardware). You wouldn't need multiple underground tanks, they all share the same source!
The problem is exactly that they share the same source. That source can only provide a certain amount of electricity. On top of that, each plug requires its own quick charger, which are neither cheap nor reliable at this point. I think Tesla is smart to provide the high-speed chargers in the car.
True, but this would be the case if it were two Chademos or a Chademo and a Frankenplug.. Just last week I tried "sharing" a dual port Blink station with another Leaf and when the 2nd car plugged in it had to wait until my "80%" (ie 72%) charge had completed.. no sharing of electrons, strictly single file. There's no reason the DCQC charger guts couldn't feed two different connection protocols albeit one at a time.
Well, it's probably not quite that simple - depending on the architecture of the system. The Tesla got the design right and their SuperCharger can handle this because it has a stack of 12 10 kW AC/DC converters and is able to allocate them to two different plugs. I'm bet that the Blink design uses a single 50 kW AC/DC converter, so splitting the DC output to two different cars would mean that you would need an additional DC/DC converter for each car/plug.
It's too bad that they went through the trouble of engineering it that way - but given that it'd be more complex and the already very low reliability of the units (how often are even new units Blinked from the get go???).
Personally, I would prefer 2 25kW stations over a single 50 kW station. I'd even bet that the cost of 2 Nissan or Fuji's 25 kW CHAdeMO stations are less than the cost of one single Blink CHAdeMO. Having 2 separate stations means that you're much more likely to have one that is operational given the general reliability of QC stations.