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It mentions chargers, but from my quick perusal, it doesn't mention how many stalls per charger station. EV charge stations have a slower throughput than petro

It mentions chargers, but from my quick perusal, it doesn't mention how many stalls per charger station. EV charge stations have a slower throughput than petrol stations, and that means you require more stalls to cover the same number of cars. One of Tesla's "killer" feature is not just the number of charge stations, but also the number of stalls per station; there are usually 8 per station, though exceptions are abound. But it increase the likely hood that you will have access to a stall when you reach the station.

SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
> EV charge stations have a slower throughput than petrol stations, and that means you require more stalls to cover the same number of cars. The thing that they say about EVs is "imagine if your car started with a full tank of gas every morning. How often would you use a filling station then?" You can't simply compare "time to fill at the filling station, times number of stalls, is this number the same or else it's an issue". That math doesn't work. As the majority of trips are short, and the majority of charging is at home overnight, and even when on the road there are other charging options (for e.g. I usually see cars charging near my local shops on one of these https://www.sourcelondon.net/home https://www.sourcelondon.net/home) then the numbers are not directly comparable.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  This is about motorways and there I haven't seen a decrease in the amount of filling station stops just because it starts charged. If anything, electric has had an increase in fills required so far due to range limitations and the desire to avoid filling completely (for both charge time and battery wear).
  - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
    Won't many motorway trips still be within EV range without a charge en route? i.e. under e.g. 200 miles. I once had a long car commute for a while, with time spent on the M25 (a ring road around London, a major motorway / traffic jam) and that was still around 110 miles daily round trip. I could have done it daily on an overnight charge. So maybe EVs doing a quick partial change out of "desire to avoid filling completely" which swings the numbers the other way. IDK how big these relative effects are, but this is another way in which the maths is different, the numbers are not directly comparable.
    - SoftTalker 3y ago
      In Europe, maybe. In the USA, a 400-600 mile drive is not unusual and within the radius of what I would consider driving vs. flying given the hassle of flying here.
      - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
        > In Europe, maybe. Article headline: "By 2028 there must be fast chargers every 60 km on the EU’s key motorways" So yeah, the topic is Europe (EU and UK) Of course 400-600 mile drives exist, just that they don't form a large proportion of car trips.
        tredre3 3y ago
        > So yeah, the topic is Europe (EU and UK) Article is about the EU only, not the UK. Even their map deliberately leaves the UK blank.
        SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
        The topic (as opposed to the article only) includes my personal anecdote above, which you might notice is in London, UK. I use words deliberately. Parent comment phrase "in Europe" typically includes UK as well, not just EU members. I'm already more than comfortably aware that the EU does not include the UK. But, UK habits are at present more like those on the continent of Europe than to USA. That's why I felt the anecdote relevant. What was your point again?
      - fsckboy 3y ago
        a 400-600 mile drive is not unusual? it's not unheard of, it's not out of the question, it's not a crazy distance for cities to be "away from" each other, but unless your job is "driver", it is not a "usual" thing to do except a few times a year. You're talking about a full day driving.
        SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
- hobofan 3y ago
  > and the majority of charging is at home overnight Are there actually stats that show this? What I hear anecdotally from friends (in Berlin and other bigger German cities) is that in the city it is often very hard to find charging spots. The problem is that in urban areas charging at home is almost never an option, as people live in apartments and not houses. There the parking is either done curbside (with curbside charging stations near your apartment being rare), or on the rented parking spot on the apartment building property (which landlords aren't exactly rushing to modernize).
  - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
    > Are there actually stats that show this? In general yes, I see 80% of charging at home, but you can google this as well as I can. Specifically for Berlin / inner city I don't know. A point of denser city living is to lessen the need for private car ownership. I'm also in an apartment in London. We don't have a charger, but then we don't have a car either, we don't need one here.
  - tredre3 3y ago
    His 80% figure is repeated a lot around the web but the source seems to be: https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy-efficiency/spotlight-energy-efficiency/2021/04/18/electric-vehicle-chargers-the-basics/23564 https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy-efficiency/spotli... Which is interesting because only 55% of dwellings in Canada are single-family homes or semi detached condos (where you'd be able to have a home charger). Just goes to show that as EV adoption goes up, the percentage of people able to charge at home will go down.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
      No-one is disputing the growing demand for charging infrastructure, or the unsolved problems in street-side or apartment parking-lot charging. That's not motorways though. It's not the same thing.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
  People who live in apartments instead of single-family detached housing often have to park on the street. "at home overnight" is not near a charger. Even if they have dedicated parking they often can't install a charger into their landlord's property. For a lot of people, it's true that they won't need charging stations. But for urban areas those stations will be more necessary than in suburban or many rural areas.
- nottorp 3y ago
  > imagine if your car started with a full tank of gas every morning ... designed by people living in suburban sprawls, for people living in suburban sprawls.
mrtksn 3y ago
Aren't those for profit infrastructure? IMHO they will put as many as needed for the region. These legislations are not intended to design the infrastructure but to enforce minimal availability at places where there's no enough commercial reasons to build one. The idea is that regions not lucrative enough shouldn't be left behind because when left behind in infrastructure people start migrating to other places and make the problems even more severe. So, the companies and and probably the countries will have to foot the bill for bringing the infrastructure to such places and the expenses for number of stalls is probably a rounding error in contrast to the expense of building the first one. We will end up having 1 stall where it's rarely needed and as many stalls needed at places where the demand is hight.
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  Imagine the situation of the company installing chargers. They're fitting a curve between expense of (installation and maintenance) vs (profit from charges sold). It's reasonable that a company would want to minimize their expense by installing fewer chargers, while maximizing profit by ensuring that all their equipment is utilized as much of the time as possible. The charger company doesn't want to have chargers that are only utilized during peak moments but still need to be serviced and paid for. This comes at the expense of consumers who will suffer longer queues.
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    Well, EU is a free market with safeguards. The libertarians hate EU because they believe that it's a socialist organisation, the hard left hates EU because they believe that EU is a neoliberal one. None of these would be happy, EU won't let companies optimize for absolute profit in the expense of society and EU won't act as a central planner which will turn the companies into a non-profits which build to comfort the electorate. I guess the situation on peak hours will improve as the battery tech improves. The tech problems won't be solved through regulations, EU would intervene only if the issues are caused by suboptimal market conditions like monopoly trying to milk the customers or the for-profit institutions fail to provide the services and cause issues(like not installing charger at low demand locations).
kurthr 3y ago
That, and the 400kW peak charging rate (most SuperChargers and batteries are only 250kW capable). With 3-4mi/kWh (7-10km/kWh) it's possible to get 100mi (150km) of charge in <5min. Even 100kW charging feels slow now (anything below 600mi/hr or 1200km/hr). That's not quite as fast as partially filling your gas tank, but it's within a factor of a few. Of course then next 100km can take 2-3x longer as the rate slows down from peak. (p.s. there are a lot of stations in the US with 20+ SuperChargers and people tend to fill up to 80-90% when traveling. They must be pulling MW!)
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  It's honestly hard to pull into a highway charging station and spend less than 10 minutes there, after 2.5 to 3 hours of driving. I've noticed that Tesla's Navigation seems to be optimizing for 10-15 minute stops, and I'm never finished in the rest stop by the time the car says it's ready to continue.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Yes, charging can be quicker than filling with gasoline. 15 minutes charging can be done in parallel with the rest stop. OTOH 5 minutes filling with gasoline is done in serial with a bathroom break and buying a coffee.
    - nordsieck 3y ago
      > Yes, charging can be quicker than filling with gasoline. 15 minutes charging can be done in parallel with the rest stop. OTOH 5 minutes filling with gasoline is done in serial with a bathroom break and buying a coffee. I see people fill their tanks unattended all the time. Probably not a good idea, but it happens.
      - bryanlarsen 3y ago
        Filling unattended is illegal in many states.
clouddrover 3y ago
Tesla is just one of many charging networks in Europe. All brands of charger charge all brands of EV in Europe. Big charging locations are already being built. For example, this one is 13 Alpitronic 300 kW chargers, 26 charge ports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMyz62dXPmc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMyz62dXPmc This one has 10 Aliptronic 300 kW chargers, 20 charge ports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpbtgfqrYdA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpbtgfqrYdA And often different charging networks deploy chargers near each other, so if one is full or expensive or performing poorly you can switch to another one. Here's Fastned and Tesla living together and an EnBW station with 52 charge ports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrDUuusBcTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrDUuusBcTg Here's Gridserve and Tesla living together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoN4WCpuxHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoN4WCpuxHY

SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago

> EV charge stations have a slower throughput than petrol stations, and that means you require more stalls to cover the same number of cars. The thing that they say about EVs is "imagine if your car started with a full tank of gas every morning. How often would you use a filling station then?" You can't simply compare "time to fill at the filling station, times number of stalls, is this number the same or else it's an issue". That math doesn't work. As the majority of trips are short, and the majority of charging is at home overnight, and even when on the road there are other charging options (for e.g. I usually see cars charging near my local shops on one of these https://www.sourcelondon.net/home https://www.sourcelondon.net/home) then the numbers are not directly comparable.

zamadatix 3y ago
This is about motorways and there I haven't seen a decrease in the amount of filling station stops just because it starts charged. If anything, electric has had an increase in fills required so far due to range limitations and the desire to avoid filling completely (for both charge time and battery wear).
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  Won't many motorway trips still be within EV range without a charge en route? i.e. under e.g. 200 miles. I once had a long car commute for a while, with time spent on the M25 (a ring road around London, a major motorway / traffic jam) and that was still around 110 miles daily round trip. I could have done it daily on an overnight charge. So maybe EVs doing a quick partial change out of "desire to avoid filling completely" which swings the numbers the other way. IDK how big these relative effects are, but this is another way in which the maths is different, the numbers are not directly comparable.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    In Europe, maybe. In the USA, a 400-600 mile drive is not unusual and within the radius of what I would consider driving vs. flying given the hassle of flying here.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
      > In Europe, maybe. Article headline: "By 2028 there must be fast chargers every 60 km on the EU’s key motorways" So yeah, the topic is Europe (EU and UK) Of course 400-600 mile drives exist, just that they don't form a large proportion of car trips.
      - tredre3 3y ago
        > So yeah, the topic is Europe (EU and UK) Article is about the EU only, not the UK. Even their map deliberately leaves the UK blank.
        SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
        The topic (as opposed to the article only) includes my personal anecdote above, which you might notice is in London, UK. I use words deliberately. Parent comment phrase "in Europe" typically includes UK as well, not just EU members. I'm already more than comfortably aware that the EU does not include the UK. But, UK habits are at present more like those on the continent of Europe than to USA. That's why I felt the anecdote relevant. What was your point again?
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      a 400-600 mile drive is not unusual? it's not unheard of, it's not out of the question, it's not a crazy distance for cities to be "away from" each other, but unless your job is "driver", it is not a "usual" thing to do except a few times a year. You're talking about a full day driving.
      - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
hobofan 3y ago
> and the majority of charging is at home overnight Are there actually stats that show this? What I hear anecdotally from friends (in Berlin and other bigger German cities) is that in the city it is often very hard to find charging spots. The problem is that in urban areas charging at home is almost never an option, as people live in apartments and not houses. There the parking is either done curbside (with curbside charging stations near your apartment being rare), or on the rented parking spot on the apartment building property (which landlords aren't exactly rushing to modernize).
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  > Are there actually stats that show this? In general yes, I see 80% of charging at home, but you can google this as well as I can. Specifically for Berlin / inner city I don't know. A point of denser city living is to lessen the need for private car ownership. I'm also in an apartment in London. We don't have a charger, but then we don't have a car either, we don't need one here.
- tredre3 3y ago
  His 80% figure is repeated a lot around the web but the source seems to be: https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy-efficiency/spotlight-energy-efficiency/2021/04/18/electric-vehicle-chargers-the-basics/23564 https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy-efficiency/spotli... Which is interesting because only 55% of dwellings in Canada are single-family homes or semi detached condos (where you'd be able to have a home charger). Just goes to show that as EV adoption goes up, the percentage of people able to charge at home will go down.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
    No-one is disputing the growing demand for charging infrastructure, or the unsolved problems in street-side or apartment parking-lot charging. That's not motorways though. It's not the same thing.
SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
People who live in apartments instead of single-family detached housing often have to park on the street. "at home overnight" is not near a charger. Even if they have dedicated parking they often can't install a charger into their landlord's property. For a lot of people, it's true that they won't need charging stations. But for urban areas those stations will be more necessary than in suburban or many rural areas.
nottorp 3y ago
> imagine if your car started with a full tank of gas every morning ... designed by people living in suburban sprawls, for people living in suburban sprawls.

mrtksn 3y ago

Aren't those for profit infrastructure? IMHO they will put as many as needed for the region. These legislations are not intended to design the infrastructure but to enforce minimal availability at places where there's no enough commercial reasons to build one. The idea is that regions not lucrative enough shouldn't be left behind because when left behind in infrastructure people start migrating to other places and make the problems even more severe. So, the companies and and probably the countries will have to foot the bill for bringing the infrastructure to such places and the expenses for number of stalls is probably a rounding error in contrast to the expense of building the first one. We will end up having 1 stall where it's rarely needed and as many stalls needed at places where the demand is hight.

droopyEyelids 3y ago
Imagine the situation of the company installing chargers. They're fitting a curve between expense of (installation and maintenance) vs (profit from charges sold). It's reasonable that a company would want to minimize their expense by installing fewer chargers, while maximizing profit by ensuring that all their equipment is utilized as much of the time as possible. The charger company doesn't want to have chargers that are only utilized during peak moments but still need to be serviced and paid for. This comes at the expense of consumers who will suffer longer queues.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  Well, EU is a free market with safeguards. The libertarians hate EU because they believe that it's a socialist organisation, the hard left hates EU because they believe that EU is a neoliberal one. None of these would be happy, EU won't let companies optimize for absolute profit in the expense of society and EU won't act as a central planner which will turn the companies into a non-profits which build to comfort the electorate. I guess the situation on peak hours will improve as the battery tech improves. The tech problems won't be solved through regulations, EU would intervene only if the issues are caused by suboptimal market conditions like monopoly trying to milk the customers or the for-profit institutions fail to provide the services and cause issues(like not installing charger at low demand locations).

kurthr 3y ago

That, and the 400kW peak charging rate (most SuperChargers and batteries are only 250kW capable). With 3-4mi/kWh (7-10km/kWh) it's possible to get 100mi (150km) of charge in <5min. Even 100kW charging feels slow now (anything below 600mi/hr or 1200km/hr). That's not quite as fast as partially filling your gas tank, but it's within a factor of a few. Of course then next 100km can take 2-3x longer as the rate slows down from peak. (p.s. there are a lot of stations in the US with 20+ SuperChargers and people tend to fill up to 80-90% when traveling. They must be pulling MW!)

matthewdgreen 3y ago
It's honestly hard to pull into a highway charging station and spend less than 10 minutes there, after 2.5 to 3 hours of driving. I've noticed that Tesla's Navigation seems to be optimizing for 10-15 minute stops, and I'm never finished in the rest stop by the time the car says it's ready to continue.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Yes, charging can be quicker than filling with gasoline. 15 minutes charging can be done in parallel with the rest stop. OTOH 5 minutes filling with gasoline is done in serial with a bathroom break and buying a coffee.
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    > Yes, charging can be quicker than filling with gasoline. 15 minutes charging can be done in parallel with the rest stop. OTOH 5 minutes filling with gasoline is done in serial with a bathroom break and buying a coffee. I see people fill their tanks unattended all the time. Probably not a good idea, but it happens.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      Filling unattended is illegal in many states.

clouddrover 3y ago

Tesla is just one of many charging networks in Europe. All brands of charger charge all brands of EV in Europe. Big charging locations are already being built. For example, this one is 13 Alpitronic 300 kW chargers, 26 charge ports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMyz62dXPmc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMyz62dXPmc This one has 10 Aliptronic 300 kW chargers, 20 charge ports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpbtgfqrYdA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpbtgfqrYdA And often different charging networks deploy chargers near each other, so if one is full or expensive or performing poorly you can switch to another one. Here's Fastned and Tesla living together and an EnBW station with 52 charge ports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrDUuusBcTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrDUuusBcTg Here's Gridserve and Tesla living together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoN4WCpuxHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoN4WCpuxHY