5 ms·

It pisses me off, and I think it is harmful when 6.6kW Chargepoints cost 34c/kWh (operators say, "gee nobody is using this station, why build more") On the bri

by ip26 5y ago

It pisses me off, and I think it is harmful when 6.6kW Chargepoints cost 34c/kWh (operators say, "gee nobody is using this station, why build more") On the bright side, it should be improved with competition, and 99% of charging is at home anyway. There is a reasonable argument to be made that remote 350kW charge banks have high infrastructure & peak price costs, but urban L2 chargers have no such good argument to hide behind.

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
IMO, EV chargers that provide less than 50 kW never should have existed and did a lot of damage to EV adoption. For fuck's sake, my charger at home is 11 kW. (240V, 48 amp.) There's no reason any public charger should be less than that.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  It's not good for batteries to fast charge them all the time. You should only use fast chargers when you need to, like on long road trips. It absolutely makes sense for public chargers at, e.g., office buildings to only be Level 2.
  - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
    Oh yeah, chargers at the office could be level 2. But at the grocery store? I think those should all be level 3. Though really, I think that if you can't charge at home, then a BEV just isn't the car for you. Even if you can charge at work, what happens when you start looking for a new job, or you begin working from home?
- tgtweak 5y ago
  A simple AC->DC rectifier/transformer and some voltage regulation banks + integrated circuits and 10ft of cables should not be a $200,000 a piece. I can almost guarantee you Tesla's BOM (at least for their 72KW supercharger) is not over $20k as delivered & installed cost for an entire station was on average under $200,000 in 2016, and stations have on average 10 chargers per station. From Tesla's disclosures on capital expenditure as it relates to supercharger stations in 2016, before scale-out savings or optimizations to date (They are now over 3,000 stations) : While $40.6 million might seem like a lot, it's a tiny portion of Tesla's total capital expenditures. Tesla spent about $1.3 billion on capital expenditures in 2016. Since Tesla's total Supercharger locations expanded from 584 to 790 during this period, the company likely spent around $197,000 per new Supercharger location during the year.

by ip26 5y ago

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago

IMO, EV chargers that provide less than 50 kW never should have existed and did a lot of damage to EV adoption. For fuck's sake, my charger at home is 11 kW. (240V, 48 amp.) There's no reason any public charger should be less than that.

josephcsible 5y ago
It's not good for batteries to fast charge them all the time. You should only use fast chargers when you need to, like on long road trips. It absolutely makes sense for public chargers at, e.g., office buildings to only be Level 2.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  Oh yeah, chargers at the office could be level 2. But at the grocery store? I think those should all be level 3. Though really, I think that if you can't charge at home, then a BEV just isn't the car for you. Even if you can charge at work, what happens when you start looking for a new job, or you begin working from home?
tgtweak 5y ago
A simple AC->DC rectifier/transformer and some voltage regulation banks + integrated circuits and 10ft of cables should not be a $200,000 a piece. I can almost guarantee you Tesla's BOM (at least for their 72KW supercharger) is not over $20k as delivered & installed cost for an entire station was on average under $200,000 in 2016, and stations have on average 10 chargers per station. From Tesla's disclosures on capital expenditure as it relates to supercharger stations in 2016, before scale-out savings or optimizations to date (They are now over 3,000 stations) : While $40.6 million might seem like a lot, it's a tiny portion of Tesla's total capital expenditures. Tesla spent about $1.3 billion on capital expenditures in 2016. Since Tesla's total Supercharger locations expanded from 584 to 790 during this period, the company likely spent around $197,000 per new Supercharger location during the year.