Colorado Electric Vehicle Fast-Charging Corridors

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I was in Denver earlier this week. Wow, so many Leafs compared.to Chicago. Where Iight see 7-8 Teslas or more for every Leaf at home, it was only 2 or 3 to 1 in Denver. Lots of gen2s. Same story in Golden CO. I think that combination of state and Fed rebate made the Leaf a super cheap set of wheels.
 
The local utility (Xcel Energy) also had big rebates on Leaf's for a while. Really big, like $10k for a while.

Here in Boulder I probably see more Tesla's than Leaf's now but for years it was the other way around. It's a small, compact town and a Leaf makes a lot of sense for many folks here.
 
After almost a year of no activity, construction finally resumed on the Chargepoint DCFC station at the Ouray Hot Springs Pool complex. Two of the stalls are complete and the other two appear to have been left for future expansion.


^ Only one of the two appears active, for now.


^ The pads for future expansion.


^ The cost is 45¢/min plus a $1.99 "Session fee." Very expensive given that they likely max out at 62 kW (125 kW shared) and taper down from there. By contrast, Montrose, Purgatory and Durango are a reasonable 30¢/kWh.
 
goldbrick said:
The local utility (Xcel Energy) also had big rebates on Leaf's for a while. Really big, like $10k for a while.

Here in Boulder I probably see more Tesla's than Leaf's now but for years it was the other way around. It's a small, compact town and a Leaf makes a lot of sense for many folks here.

Yea I got Xcel, State AND Federal rebates as well as some Nissan "cash" rebate on my LEAF. Xcel (utility) did not have rebates for all model EVs for some reason.
 
dgpcolorado said:
After almost a year of no activity, construction finally resumed on the Chargepoint DCFC station at the Ouray Hot Springs Pool complex. Two of the stalls are complete and the other two appear to have been left for future expansion.

Expensive but glad to see it there. That Ouray L2 charger was broken for years. I would have enjoyed using it last year when I was there. With the cost though I can charge at other towns not too far away as you imply which is what I did last year.
 
salyavin said:
dgpcolorado said:
After almost a year of no activity, construction finally resumed on the Chargepoint DCFC station at the Ouray Hot Springs Pool complex. Two of the stalls are complete and the other two appear to have been left for future expansion.

Expensive but glad to see it there. That Ouray L2 charger was broken for years. I would have enjoyed using it last year when I was there. With the cost though I can charge at other towns not too far away as you imply which is what I did last year.
Yes, Ridgway (10 miles north) has two 8 kW Aerovironment and two 6 kW Chargepoint L2 stalls, all free.

Montrose, (35 miles north) has four 7 kW stalls (two near city hall and two at the hospital), four 4 kW stalls at the rec center, all free, plus two Chargepoint DCFC stalls at 30¢/kWh. As well as eight Tesla Superchargers, of course.

Public charging resources in this remote area, 300 miles, and a lot of mountains, away from Denver, are really quite good. Much of it funded by a longtime state initiative to encourage EV charging stations and EV adoption in general — the state EV tax credit, refundable, was $6000 for some years.
 
salyavin said:
Expensive but glad to see it there.
About 10 kWh to get to Montrose or Purgatory from Ouray. They can change their Welcome sign for EV travelers to "$7 to get the hell out of Ouray."

My wife wants to go to Ouray for the springs. I find the EV DC facility pricing a bit offensive so I'll try to convince her to go elsewhere.
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
I will happily pay the 30-50 cents a kWh on road trips if it means there is more infrastructure to choose from.

Will you also happily pay 75¢ to $1 per kWh ?
 
Hmm. Good question. At a $1 a kWh, ignoring charging loss for a second, on a reasonable summer drive of 4 miles/kWh, that's $7.50/gallon for a 30 mph car equivalent.

I think at .50/kWh I am filling it up, but at a buck a kWh I am filling only for about 10% more than what I need to get to the next stop.
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
that's $7.50/gallon for a 30 mph car equivalent.

I think at .50/kWh I am filling it up, but at a buck a kWh I am filling only for about 10% more than what I need to get to the next stop.

Me too.

But you only live once. Go for 20 mph
 
Today's news:
"Starbucks and Volvo Cars are installing 60 DC electric vehicle chargers at up to 15 Starbucks locations spanning the drive from Seattle to Denver.

The companies on Tuesday announced which cities will receive charging stations. In Washington, they’ll be installed in Seattle, Issaquah and Yakima. Oregon locations are Hermiston and La Grande. The full list can be found here.

The plan is to install the chargers roughly every 100 miles along the route stretching 1,350 miles. The project should be completed by the end of the year.

The stations will be powered by ChargePoint. According to Volvo, it will take about 40 minutes for one its EVs with a battery at 20% to reach a 90% charge."
The eastern most location will be Broomfield, CO.
 
Bouldergramp said:
..................... ChargePoint. According to Volvo, it will take about 40 minutes for one its EVs with a battery at 20% to reach a 90% charge."
When there is inevitably 2 people ahead of you in line for those chargers, that's 3 x 40 minutes = 2 hours stuck there. If they work at all and aren't vandalized.
We're spoiled by 7 minute gasoline fill-ups and need to adjust to the new reality of long, long trips with extra "time-off" to loiter at charging stops.
 
voltamps said:
Bouldergramp said:
..................... ChargePoint. According to Volvo, it will take about 40 minutes for one its EVs with a battery at 20% to reach a 90% charge."
When there is inevitably 2 people ahead of you in line for those chargers, that's 3 x 40 minutes = 2 hours stuck there. If they work at all and aren't vandalized.
We're spoiled by 7 minute gasoline fill-ups and need to adjust to the new reality of long, long trips with extra "time-off" to loiter at charging stops.
This "new reality" is temporary, until most charging stations are built out with multiple bays. A station with multiple bays can be much busier without increasing wait times.
 
Goal: We need enough chargers in the correct locations with high enough power and fast enough charging vehicles to make long waits rare.

Less than 1% of cars on the road are electric. More cars should mean more locations and more bays, reducing wait times. Cars are getting faster, I usually need 20 minutes or less with 150kW charging.
 
The curious arithmetic about DC charging is that it takes about 5x longer than ICE, and about 1/5 of total miles are DC charging. So it works out that a buildout of DC charging equal to the number of present day ICE stations is about what will be needed. This of course presumes that the number fast charging cables is about the same as the average number of filling stations at an ICE location.
 
WetEV said:
Goal: We need enough chargers in the correct locations with high enough power and fast enough charging vehicles to make long waits rare.

Less than 1% of cars on the road are electric. More cars should mean more locations and more bays, reducing wait times. Cars are getting faster, I usually need 20 minutes or less with 150kW charging.
We also need the stalls at DCFC stations to be well-maintained and easy to start/use. Something that isn't the case currently for CCS/Chademo, so far as I can tell.

The Ouray station I mentioned above has been down for at least two weeks — just off, don't know why. That is the sort of unreliability that is going to give average drivers — the sort who don't hang out in EV forums — fits!
 
dgpcolorado said:
WetEV said:
Goal: We need enough chargers in the correct locations with high enough power and fast enough charging vehicles to make long waits rare.

Less than 1% of cars on the road are electric. More cars should mean more locations and more bays, reducing wait times. Cars are getting faster, I usually need 20 minutes or less with 150kW charging.
We also need the stalls at DCFC stations to be well-maintained and easy to start/use. Something that isn't the case currently for CCS/Chademo, so far as I can tell.

The Ouray station I mentioned above has been down for at least two weeks — just off, don't know why. That is the sort of unreliability that is going to give average drivers — the sort who don't hang out in EV forums — fits!

Charge networks vary a lot in terms of reliability. Chargepoint is far from the best.

Reliability is very much needed.
 
SageBrush said:
Who do you think are the top two ?

Hard to say.

I've had a good experience with EVgo, two charges per day while I commuted by LEAF 160+ miles round trip for a few months. All 50 kW units, all single charger per location. Most of the 176 QC sessions on the LEAF was doing this.

I also had a good experience with Electrify America, 33 charges and 4000 miles Seattle to Grand Canyon to Colorado and back.

Some other networks I've used once or twice.

All of this is not enough to have an opinion on the top two on.
 
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