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Not as important … to whom? Currently there’s a lot of areas in the country with long distances between fast charging stations. Sure that might change in year

Not as important … to whom? Currently there’s a lot of areas in the country with long distances between fast charging stations. Sure that might change in years but for now “range anxiety” (as mentioned in the article) is real.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
I would disagree with the statement "there's a lot of areas", but I absolutely would advocate pouring more money into DC fast chargers at locations that make sense (grocery stores or similar locations with facilities and are open large swaths of each day). Don't put them at gas stations, that model is dead. If your EV range is 250-400 miles, and DC fast charging continues to expand rapidly (which it is based on both Tesla and other networks deployment rates), you're paying for and dragging a whole bunch of cells needlessly around (not to mention paying financing/capital costs on that unnecessary equipment). Today, you're never more than 100 miles from a DC fast charger [1] [2] [3] with the caveat being northeastern Montana, the Kansas/Oklahoma border, central Nevada (which could be solved withe a station in Ely), and southeastern New Mexico. Heck, I can hop into my Model S or Model Y today and drive from Central Florida to Acapulco, Mexico, Prince George, BC, or Quebec/Newfoundland, CA. Range is solved, charging infra is the challenge (which is also why the UK phased out EV subsidies to move towards charging infra financial support [4]). [1] https://plugshare.com/ https://plugshare.com/ [2] https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map | https://ibb.co/n8x05j7 https://ibb.co/n8x05j7 (100 mile range circles on North America, red is active, blue is planned, cones are under construction) [3] https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html#/find/nearest?fuel=ELEC https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html#/fi... (Uncheck Level 2 from charger selection to scope only to DC Fast charging) [4] https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/16/uk-ending-electric-car-subsidies-to-concentrate-on-ev-charging-infrastructure/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/16/uk-ending-electric-car-...
- timapplesauce 4y ago
  The simple fact of the matter is that if you take an EV for a long road trip across America today, your choice of route will be very dependent on where charging stations exist. With an ICE vehicle, it's barely a consideration. For the few areas where you know you'll be too far from a gas station the solution is simple: A cheap gas can or two filled with fuel. What's the reasonable and cost effective equivalent for an EV? The other issue is that even a fast charger takes considerably longer than a gas pump to refill your car. This, coupled with the relatively low availability of them overall, means that you are more likely to have to wait in line for your turn and you spend even more time not on the road traveling to your destination. With all this being said, I think an EV is very compelling as a secondary vehicle for 90%+ of use cases so long as you also have an ICE vehicle and a sufficient way to charge your EV at home.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    People may continue to pay for $4-5/gallon gas if they so choose. It is a free country, after all. Gas prices will not go back down so long as refinery capacity is constrained [1] [2] [3] (which it will be in perpetuity, as investment will not flow to it with fossil fuel phase outs in progress, and refinery lifecycles are measured in decades). Let the free hand of the market do its thing. People will figure it out [4], pricing signals and all that jazz [5]. You can lead a horse to water but drowning it does no good. Let it drink when it is sufficiently thirsty. Maybe gas prices prices have to go even higher, who knows! I am morbidly curious to see. [1] https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/062122-us-refining-capacity-falls-to-lowest-mark-in-8-years-amid-record-prices-eia https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight... [2] https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_operable_crude_oil_distillation_capacity https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_operable_crude_oil_distill... [3] https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/23/u-s-oil-refiners-margins-smash-records-but-few-plan-to-build-more-plants/ https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/23/u-s-oil-refiners-marg... [4] https://electrek.co/2022/03/25/tesla-models-sold-out-2023-price-increase/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/25/tesla-models-sold-out-2023-pr... [5] https://electrek.co/2022/03/22/electric-cars-3-to-6-times-cheaper-to-drive-us-high-gas-prices/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/22/electric-cars-3-to-6-times-ch...
    - timapplesauce 4y ago
      That’s a very “let them eat cake” attitude that doesn’t serve anyone well. EVs are simply not an option for the majority of people in the world until their cost decreases and their range increases. Fossil fuels need to be phased out but forcing gas prices up this fast is a very cruel way to do it.
    - lttlrck 4y ago
      Spoken by someone with enough money to have owned multiple Tesla's IIRC.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - 4y ago
- geoduck14 4y ago
  >Today, you're never more than 100 miles from a DC fast charger This is actually a long distance. Let's consider where my in-laws live: Abilene, TX. They are 80 miles from a fast charger right now. If I drive an EV to visit them, I have to run a 100 ft cable out their house to slow charge my EV (which, I think is SUPER slow). Or, I can drive 80 miles (each way) to recharge and give myself... 120 miles of range "in town"
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    If you have a Tesla, there is a Supercharger in the permitting phase a bit east of there (Clyde, TX). If you have a legacy automaker EV, advocate for a non Tesla DC fast charger in town or consider installing a Level 2 charger at your in laws. If we want more infrastructure, we must default to action. I can come to help if you need help installing a L2 charger, or talk to Abilene about their fast DC charging situation. The HEB is the location I’d spec out for an install, with the Mall of Abilene or Market Street grocer a secondary site. There’s also a Walmart that could host an Electrify America CCS Charger. Be patient as we climb the hockey stick adoption rate. Only recently did Buc-ees agree to Superchargers at every national location, for example. (my model S gains 48 miles of range per 12 hours on a 16A 120V circuit, which works for situations like you describe, but faster charging everywhere is welcome)
    - clouddrover 4y ago
      > If you have a Tesla, there is a Supercharger in the permitting phase a bit east of there If you have a Tesla. There is no value in single brand chargers. It is profoundly dumb infrastructure. > If you have a legacy automaker EV, advocate for a non Tesla DC fast charger Always advocate for chargers that charge all brands, especially if you have a Tesla. Anything less is just stupid.
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        Tesla is the dominate EV automaker in the US. If they’ll pay for the charger, it absolutely makes sense to let them. They’ve got the deep pockets from selling high margin vehicles at scale. I know, I know, you despise them. Such is life. I don’t swim upstream. https://electrek.co/2022/03/17/tesla-still-dominates-us-electric-car-market/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/17/tesla-still-dominates-us-elec... https://electrek.co/2022/03/10/tesla-tsla-order-rate-surging-us-gas-prices-turning-people-to-electric-cars/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/10/tesla-tsla-order-rate-surging... > Tesla is the biggest EV brand in the US by a long shot. About 80% of all electric cars in the country are Tesla vehicles, and unsurprisingly the company is starting to feel an increase in orders from gas price pressure. > A source familiar with Tesla’s order rate said that the automaker saw it increase 100% this week compared to last in parts of the country particularly affected by gas prices.
- todd8 4y ago
  > Today, you're never more than 100 miles from a DC fast charger ... As long as your road trip travels from fast charger to fast charger 100 mile separations aren't a problem. But in my state (TX) there are lots of places where the 100 miles to a fast charger are not in the direction I want to travel. I don't want to backtrack even 30 miles south to the a charger in the wrong direction just to recharge so that I can drive the 30 miles north to be back where I started on the trip.
googlryas 4y ago
I've had my tesla for a year and used fast charging literally once, when I went on a 900 mile road trip. Before that, just charging at my house has been good enough. If your average daily use of a car is less than the equivalent of driving from Philadelphia to New York and then back again, you will have no problem with keeping your EV charged with a 50A charger in your home.

toomuchtodo 4y ago

I would disagree with the statement "there's a lot of areas", but I absolutely would advocate pouring more money into DC fast chargers at locations that make sense (grocery stores or similar locations with facilities and are open large swaths of each day). Don't put them at gas stations, that model is dead. If your EV range is 250-400 miles, and DC fast charging continues to expand rapidly (which it is based on both Tesla and other networks deployment rates), you're paying for and dragging a whole bunch of cells needlessly around (not to mention paying financing/capital costs on that unnecessary equipment). Today, you're never more than 100 miles from a DC fast charger [1] [2] [3] with the caveat being northeastern Montana, the Kansas/Oklahoma border, central Nevada (which could be solved withe a station in Ely), and southeastern New Mexico. Heck, I can hop into my Model S or Model Y today and drive from Central Florida to Acapulco, Mexico, Prince George, BC, or Quebec/Newfoundland, CA. Range is solved, charging infra is the challenge (which is also why the UK phased out EV subsidies to move towards charging infra financial support [4]). [1] https://plugshare.com/ https://plugshare.com/ [2] https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map | https://ibb.co/n8x05j7 https://ibb.co/n8x05j7 (100 mile range circles on North America, red is active, blue is planned, cones are under construction) [3] https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html#/find/nearest?fuel=ELEC https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html#/fi... (Uncheck Level 2 from charger selection to scope only to DC Fast charging) [4] https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/16/uk-ending-electric-car-subsidies-to-concentrate-on-ev-charging-infrastructure/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/16/uk-ending-electric-car-...

timapplesauce 4y ago
The simple fact of the matter is that if you take an EV for a long road trip across America today, your choice of route will be very dependent on where charging stations exist. With an ICE vehicle, it's barely a consideration. For the few areas where you know you'll be too far from a gas station the solution is simple: A cheap gas can or two filled with fuel. What's the reasonable and cost effective equivalent for an EV? The other issue is that even a fast charger takes considerably longer than a gas pump to refill your car. This, coupled with the relatively low availability of them overall, means that you are more likely to have to wait in line for your turn and you spend even more time not on the road traveling to your destination. With all this being said, I think an EV is very compelling as a secondary vehicle for 90%+ of use cases so long as you also have an ICE vehicle and a sufficient way to charge your EV at home.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  People may continue to pay for $4-5/gallon gas if they so choose. It is a free country, after all. Gas prices will not go back down so long as refinery capacity is constrained [1] [2] [3] (which it will be in perpetuity, as investment will not flow to it with fossil fuel phase outs in progress, and refinery lifecycles are measured in decades). Let the free hand of the market do its thing. People will figure it out [4], pricing signals and all that jazz [5]. You can lead a horse to water but drowning it does no good. Let it drink when it is sufficiently thirsty. Maybe gas prices prices have to go even higher, who knows! I am morbidly curious to see. [1] https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/062122-us-refining-capacity-falls-to-lowest-mark-in-8-years-amid-record-prices-eia https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight... [2] https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_operable_crude_oil_distillation_capacity https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_operable_crude_oil_distill... [3] https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/23/u-s-oil-refiners-margins-smash-records-but-few-plan-to-build-more-plants/ https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/23/u-s-oil-refiners-marg... [4] https://electrek.co/2022/03/25/tesla-models-sold-out-2023-price-increase/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/25/tesla-models-sold-out-2023-pr... [5] https://electrek.co/2022/03/22/electric-cars-3-to-6-times-cheaper-to-drive-us-high-gas-prices/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/22/electric-cars-3-to-6-times-ch...
  - timapplesauce 4y ago
    That’s a very “let them eat cake” attitude that doesn’t serve anyone well. EVs are simply not an option for the majority of people in the world until their cost decreases and their range increases. Fossil fuels need to be phased out but forcing gas prices up this fast is a very cruel way to do it.
  - lttlrck 4y ago
    Spoken by someone with enough money to have owned multiple Tesla's IIRC.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - 4y ago
geoduck14 4y ago
>Today, you're never more than 100 miles from a DC fast charger This is actually a long distance. Let's consider where my in-laws live: Abilene, TX. They are 80 miles from a fast charger right now. If I drive an EV to visit them, I have to run a 100 ft cable out their house to slow charge my EV (which, I think is SUPER slow). Or, I can drive 80 miles (each way) to recharge and give myself... 120 miles of range "in town"
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  If you have a Tesla, there is a Supercharger in the permitting phase a bit east of there (Clyde, TX). If you have a legacy automaker EV, advocate for a non Tesla DC fast charger in town or consider installing a Level 2 charger at your in laws. If we want more infrastructure, we must default to action. I can come to help if you need help installing a L2 charger, or talk to Abilene about their fast DC charging situation. The HEB is the location I’d spec out for an install, with the Mall of Abilene or Market Street grocer a secondary site. There’s also a Walmart that could host an Electrify America CCS Charger. Be patient as we climb the hockey stick adoption rate. Only recently did Buc-ees agree to Superchargers at every national location, for example. (my model S gains 48 miles of range per 12 hours on a 16A 120V circuit, which works for situations like you describe, but faster charging everywhere is welcome)
  - clouddrover 4y ago
    > If you have a Tesla, there is a Supercharger in the permitting phase a bit east of there If you have a Tesla. There is no value in single brand chargers. It is profoundly dumb infrastructure. > If you have a legacy automaker EV, advocate for a non Tesla DC fast charger Always advocate for chargers that charge all brands, especially if you have a Tesla. Anything less is just stupid.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Tesla is the dominate EV automaker in the US. If they’ll pay for the charger, it absolutely makes sense to let them. They’ve got the deep pockets from selling high margin vehicles at scale. I know, I know, you despise them. Such is life. I don’t swim upstream. https://electrek.co/2022/03/17/tesla-still-dominates-us-electric-car-market/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/17/tesla-still-dominates-us-elec... https://electrek.co/2022/03/10/tesla-tsla-order-rate-surging-us-gas-prices-turning-people-to-electric-cars/ https://electrek.co/2022/03/10/tesla-tsla-order-rate-surging... > Tesla is the biggest EV brand in the US by a long shot. About 80% of all electric cars in the country are Tesla vehicles, and unsurprisingly the company is starting to feel an increase in orders from gas price pressure. > A source familiar with Tesla’s order rate said that the automaker saw it increase 100% this week compared to last in parts of the country particularly affected by gas prices.
todd8 4y ago
> Today, you're never more than 100 miles from a DC fast charger ... As long as your road trip travels from fast charger to fast charger 100 mile separations aren't a problem. But in my state (TX) there are lots of places where the 100 miles to a fast charger are not in the direction I want to travel. I don't want to backtrack even 30 miles south to the a charger in the wrong direction just to recharge so that I can drive the 30 miles north to be back where I started on the trip.

googlryas 4y ago

I've had my tesla for a year and used fast charging literally once, when I went on a 900 mile road trip. Before that, just charging at my house has been good enough. If your average daily use of a car is less than the equivalent of driving from Philadelphia to New York and then back again, you will have no problem with keeping your EV charged with a 50A charger in your home.