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Today I noticed the line at the Costco Gasoline Station was at least eight deep. What will this look like when it takes a fast charger at least an hour to char

Today I noticed the line at the Costco Gasoline Station was at least eight deep. What will this look like when it takes a fast charger at least an hour to charge an EV?

kilroy123 5y ago
A lot of those people will charge up at home, while they sleep.
mdorazio 5y ago
Most people with EVs charge them at home (latest report I've seen puts it at about 80%), so hopefully it will look a lot better.
einichi 5y ago
Everybody will be charging at home/work. Other places you'll likely charge are conveniently located places between long distance destinations. Rest areas for example. Costco might implement chargers at parking spaces as a convenience thing, but if they do it for free they'd have to do it for all parking spaces to prevent people fighting over spaces. I have no idea how such a large-scale charging system could be retrofitted into an existing car park. Seems more likely that if supermarkets etc did want to implement charging in their carparks, they'd install a few and charge a nominal amount.
- rascul 5y ago
  > Everybody will be charging at home/work. Other places you'll likely charge are conveniently located places between long distance destinations. Rest areas for example. It seems like there's a lot of work to be done to scale this up for when electric vehicles get more popular. Many apartment complexes I see have no facilities for this, for example. But electric vehicles are also quite rare in this area.
  - vel0city 5y ago
    Most people in the US live in single family homes. A ton of those homes have plenty of power capacity to add an EV to charge at home overnight. Sure, things might be complicated for apartment dwellers at the moment, but a massive percentage of the commuter miles driven in the US could be easily handled with EVs without massive infrastructure change.
clouddrover 5y ago
> What will this look like when it takes a fast charger at least an hour to charge an EV? It looks like this: https://www.thedrive.com/news/31274/more-teslas-on-the-road-meant-hours-long-supercharger-lines-over-thanksgiving https://www.thedrive.com/news/31274/more-teslas-on-the-road-... https://thedriven.io/2021/06/30/tesla-owners-line-up-at-superchargers-amid-record-canada-temperatures/ https://thedriven.io/2021/06/30/tesla-owners-line-up-at-supe... It just means there need to be more chargers. North American charging infrastructure is fractured between the open CCS standard and the propriety Telsa plug. It would be much better if North America standardized on CCS so all EVs can charge at all chargers. At this point it just means Tesla needs to switch to CCS. Europe has more sensibly standardized on CCS Type 2 Combo. All brands of EV can charge at all chargers on all charging networks. And even Tesla is slowly opening their chargers to other brands.
vel0city 5y ago
I spent more time refueling my ICE than I do my EV. I've spent 0 minutes waiting to charge meanwhile I spent a few hours last year going out of my way to gas stations and pumping gas. Over the course of several years, it won't even come close to the amount of time wasted pumping gas versus all the time saved charging at home. If more people had EVs and charged at home/work/the mall/the grocery store, there wouldn't be a line waiting just to pump gas. They wouldn't be waiting to pump gas, their cars would have already been fully charged at home or their cars would be charging in the parking lot and they'd be in the store shopping instead of sitting in their car burning fuel running their A/C or heat idling in line.
lightbritefight 5y ago
If EVs were the mainstream instead of ICE, Costco would slap a charger on each of the spaces in its giant parking lots instead. Charging would either be free with membership to incentivize you hanging out inside the store, or cost near market rate for electricity. There would be zero lines to charge, at all.

Today I noticed the line at the Costco Gasoline Station was at least eight deep. What will this look like when it takes a fast charger at least an hour to charge an EV?

kilroy123 5y ago

A lot of those people will charge up at home, while they sleep.

mdorazio 5y ago

Most people with EVs charge them at home (latest report I've seen puts it at about 80%), so hopefully it will look a lot better.

einichi 5y ago

Everybody will be charging at home/work. Other places you'll likely charge are conveniently located places between long distance destinations. Rest areas for example. Costco might implement chargers at parking spaces as a convenience thing, but if they do it for free they'd have to do it for all parking spaces to prevent people fighting over spaces. I have no idea how such a large-scale charging system could be retrofitted into an existing car park. Seems more likely that if supermarkets etc did want to implement charging in their carparks, they'd install a few and charge a nominal amount.

rascul 5y ago
> Everybody will be charging at home/work. Other places you'll likely charge are conveniently located places between long distance destinations. Rest areas for example. It seems like there's a lot of work to be done to scale this up for when electric vehicles get more popular. Many apartment complexes I see have no facilities for this, for example. But electric vehicles are also quite rare in this area.
- vel0city 5y ago
  Most people in the US live in single family homes. A ton of those homes have plenty of power capacity to add an EV to charge at home overnight. Sure, things might be complicated for apartment dwellers at the moment, but a massive percentage of the commuter miles driven in the US could be easily handled with EVs without massive infrastructure change.

clouddrover 5y ago

> What will this look like when it takes a fast charger at least an hour to charge an EV? It looks like this: https://www.thedrive.com/news/31274/more-teslas-on-the-road-meant-hours-long-supercharger-lines-over-thanksgiving https://www.thedrive.com/news/31274/more-teslas-on-the-road-... https://thedriven.io/2021/06/30/tesla-owners-line-up-at-superchargers-amid-record-canada-temperatures/ https://thedriven.io/2021/06/30/tesla-owners-line-up-at-supe... It just means there need to be more chargers. North American charging infrastructure is fractured between the open CCS standard and the propriety Telsa plug. It would be much better if North America standardized on CCS so all EVs can charge at all chargers. At this point it just means Tesla needs to switch to CCS. Europe has more sensibly standardized on CCS Type 2 Combo. All brands of EV can charge at all chargers on all charging networks. And even Tesla is slowly opening their chargers to other brands.

vel0city 5y ago

I spent more time refueling my ICE than I do my EV. I've spent 0 minutes waiting to charge meanwhile I spent a few hours last year going out of my way to gas stations and pumping gas. Over the course of several years, it won't even come close to the amount of time wasted pumping gas versus all the time saved charging at home. If more people had EVs and charged at home/work/the mall/the grocery store, there wouldn't be a line waiting just to pump gas. They wouldn't be waiting to pump gas, their cars would have already been fully charged at home or their cars would be charging in the parking lot and they'd be in the store shopping instead of sitting in their car burning fuel running their A/C or heat idling in line.

lightbritefight 5y ago

If EVs were the mainstream instead of ICE, Costco would slap a charger on each of the spaces in its giant parking lots instead. Charging would either be free with membership to incentivize you hanging out inside the store, or cost near market rate for electricity. There would be zero lines to charge, at all.