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Charging speed is a big issue when you’re renting or road tripping. When people use shared infrastructure, charging time corresponds to how many customers you c

by klabb3 2y ago

Charging speed is a big issue when you’re renting or road tripping. When people use shared infrastructure, charging time corresponds to how many customers you can serve per parking spot/charging station. With gas, hoards of cars can be serviced quickly. Thus it’s really important that the car can be meaningfully charged during an extended rest stop or lunch break. Consumers disproportionately buy for these “happy” occasions, even if it would make much more economical sense to just rent once or twice a year. Me + partner rented a small e-fiat in Mallorca and it was really fun to drive, but there was a lot of anxiety around finding charging stations and wandering around for hours while charging. Note we didn’t have overnight charging at the hotel though.

pornel 2y ago
> how many customers you can serve per parking spot/charging station. With gas, hoards of cars can be serviced quickly For gas stations the throughput matters, because cars are blocking the queue. BEV charging is more comparable to parking. This is simply solved by having more charging stations (dispensers) at parking spots. BTW: even in shittiest EVs, DC charging doesn't take hours. You probably have been misdirected to an AC charger designed to be used overnight. Unfortunately, many satnavs still treat charging stations as all equal like gas stations, and send you to the nearest one, instead of the fastest one.
- illiac786 2y ago
  I guess it makes a huge difference for the station if they have to build 10 or 100 charging spots no? Space, cost, etc. Kind of the reason why there is 10 gas pumps and not 100.
  - pornel 2y ago
    The big difference is that EVs are designed to be charged unattended (you plug in, and go do something else). Nobody needs to be monitoring the "pumps". Charging locations are often combined with other businesses, which means it's usually not taking new space, only converts the parking space that would have been used to park a car anyway. Large DC fast charging installations usually have a central hub that does the expensive things (AC-DC, batteries), and then the power is distributed to simpler dispensers that do communication with the car and cooling on the car's end. The whole setup is expensive, but the number of dispensers isn't the main limiting factor. The costly limiting factor usually is the maximum power the system can deliver at once. That directly dictates the maximum throughput (number of cars they can serve over time), regardless whether that power is delivered via few fast chargers or many slower chargers. The number of dispensers cancels out in the equation.
  - mrkstu 2y ago
    ^^^ Hasn't been to Buccees
- klabb3 2y ago
  > You probably have been misdirected to an AC charger designed to be used overnight. It’s possible, I don’t recall. But those were the only available spots, in a European country with large ambitions to transition. Half were out of service, and many were occupied, which we often found out after driving to them for 15 min. With scarce spots, charging has to be fast to clear out space. Getting to the point of convenience is a very solvable problem, but it’s still not there in many places and situations. I think fast charging will remain as an important part of that solution.
ikr678 2y ago
If you are road tripping somewhere remote, having too many fast chargers available can overload very small local power grids.

by klabb3 2y ago

pornel 2y ago

> how many customers you can serve per parking spot/charging station. With gas, hoards of cars can be serviced quickly For gas stations the throughput matters, because cars are blocking the queue. BEV charging is more comparable to parking. This is simply solved by having more charging stations (dispensers) at parking spots. BTW: even in shittiest EVs, DC charging doesn't take hours. You probably have been misdirected to an AC charger designed to be used overnight. Unfortunately, many satnavs still treat charging stations as all equal like gas stations, and send you to the nearest one, instead of the fastest one.

illiac786 2y ago
I guess it makes a huge difference for the station if they have to build 10 or 100 charging spots no? Space, cost, etc. Kind of the reason why there is 10 gas pumps and not 100.
- pornel 2y ago
  The big difference is that EVs are designed to be charged unattended (you plug in, and go do something else). Nobody needs to be monitoring the "pumps". Charging locations are often combined with other businesses, which means it's usually not taking new space, only converts the parking space that would have been used to park a car anyway. Large DC fast charging installations usually have a central hub that does the expensive things (AC-DC, batteries), and then the power is distributed to simpler dispensers that do communication with the car and cooling on the car's end. The whole setup is expensive, but the number of dispensers isn't the main limiting factor. The costly limiting factor usually is the maximum power the system can deliver at once. That directly dictates the maximum throughput (number of cars they can serve over time), regardless whether that power is delivered via few fast chargers or many slower chargers. The number of dispensers cancels out in the equation.
- mrkstu 2y ago
  ^^^ Hasn't been to Buccees
klabb3 2y ago
> You probably have been misdirected to an AC charger designed to be used overnight. It’s possible, I don’t recall. But those were the only available spots, in a European country with large ambitions to transition. Half were out of service, and many were occupied, which we often found out after driving to them for 15 min. With scarce spots, charging has to be fast to clear out space. Getting to the point of convenience is a very solvable problem, but it’s still not there in many places and situations. I think fast charging will remain as an important part of that solution.

ikr678 2y ago

If you are road tripping somewhere remote, having too many fast chargers available can overload very small local power grids.