But if you don't, I can imagine there being more stress about charging times, fast chargers, etc.
For road trips, thanks to Tesla's extensive Supercharger network, they are really great for that.
But with more standards (CCS and NACS) becoming pervasive, hopefully this becomes an issue of the past (payments, etc).
My big question is, I don't understand why the oil companies haven't gotten on board. Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?
It's a good question. I don't know for certain, but my hypothesis would be because of what you and the OP said:
> Destination charging is a thing. Drive somewhere, plug in, do what you came to do, and drive back with enough charge to get home.
> if you have a garage or driveway then your electric car ownership will be a dream where you truly stop thinking about range
No one goes to a gas station to hang out, you know? Instead you plug in at work, or the mall, or the restaurant, or just don't bother until you get home. It doesn't make sense to spend your 20+ minute charge time at a gas station.
To your point, put chargers at existing locations humans dwell at, the only other use case is highway travel chargers. There are ~110k gas stations left in the US, and I'll argue many of those will not be needed going forward as mobility electrifies [1] [2] [3].
[1] https://www.axios.com/2022/07/15/gas-stations-prices-closing
[2] https://enpowered.com/the-death-of-gas-stations-will-be-far-...
[3] https://www.urbanismnext.org/resources/americas-gas-stations...
I'm sure it wouldn't get used much (unless the UI was very front and center, and maybe recommended a time based on your previous stops at that charger), and Tesla would be somewhat disincentivized to build it anyway as their goal is to get as many unique cars through the charger as possible, but it would still be neat...
We're somewhat spoiled that aggressive volumes of fast DC charging is immaterial on battery pack health in well engineered battery packs, as well as the rate of improvement in battery technology. Don't worry too much about it, enjoy a better UX and simply charge when convenient. Batteries are only going to keep getting better.
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/07/14/another-tesla-with-over... ("Another Tesla With Over 400,000 Miles On One Battery")
What would be really nice is a better way of sharing a charger after you're done charging. My experience is that a Tesla supercharger is often too fast. On a road trip charging stops usually coincide with meals, but a charge takes less time than a nice meal does. The charge is done and idle fees start accumulating when you're halfway through the meal. It's rude to others waiting for the charger to leave it there plugged in. It'd be awesome if there was a way to have two plugs per charger, and a big green light to indicate that the first car is done charging so that anybody pulling into the second stall would get a full speed charge.
e.g. a 250kW charger becomes 125 when two cars are parked next to each other.
It only takes a minute to move your car, I don't really find it that big of a deal.
I'm not sure I understand, was he complaining when they were in a parking lot, but off a road?
Personally, I see gas stations as convenient to the road, but you are also there for a short time.
If you are charging for a non-trivial amount of time, getting out and doing something else is very nice. Charging while grocery shopping is something I do frequently.
PlugShare shows 18 total charging stations within a 10 minute drive of my home (only one DCFS). There are none near my grocery store, gym, doctor's office, etc. And I WFH.
If I wasn't able to install a charger at my home, I would be going out of my way for DCFS a couple of times a week and making up ways to kill time.
I hope it'll be different someday, but today is not that day. Or, as the quote goes, "the future has arrived, it's just not evenly distributed yet".
That will come. This is already happening in the EU. The US is just lagging the rest of the world a bit here with EV adoption and charging infrastructure.
But if you think about it: what happens when you remove 40% of the demand for petrol and diesel from the market? Because that's what happens when those driving the most and the furthest switch to electric: they stop buying lots of petrol and diesel. And early adopters tend to be the ones driving the most. So, demand takes a big hit fairy early in the transition.
What happens is very simple: petrol and diesel stations start losing a lot of business. Until they realize that they have the perfect locations for charging and that people will want to buy from their shops and restaurants while they are charging. So, of course they are going to adapt in a hurry and invest in charging infrastructure as this starts happening.
Long term, petrol and diesel are going to be a minor side hustle for rapid charging stations where most of the revenues come from people waiting for their vehicles to charge buying snacks, refreshments, and other stuff.
My point being, there probably never was a lot of margin on fuel. Which is why I’m surprised that more convenience stores with fuel aren’t putting in chargers because now you’ve got a captive audience for 20 minutes. They’re getting there, though, as I see AM/PM stores with EVGo chargers now in the PNW. And at $0.45/kWh versus $0.11 at home, there is profit to be made on electrons, I imagine.
She said they essentially broke even on gas (something like 1-3 cents of profit per gallon), but made all their money on items inside (she/her family was Asian, so they made a killing cuz they had an asian-styled buffet in their gas station in a small town in Indiana, the only one of its kind for miles)
I was on the north side of Indianapolis, the wealthier side of town that could afford a 30% markup on a gallon of full-serve gas.
Small Indiana town? Oh, yeah, I’d imagine they’d make a killing versus hot dogs that have been sitting on that roller thing all day. :-)
There are many chargers at gas ("petrol") stations in the UK. There are even a few stations that have been completely converted, with the pumps removed and replaced with chargers only.
For example, Shell Fulham in London: https://find.shell.com/gb/fuel/10018937-shell-recharge-waitr...
Installing high-power charging does depend on having a suitable grid connection available, of course. For some gas station locations, getting enough power to the site might be impractical or uneconomic.
Gas stations will have to adapt by installing chargers, as eventually there just won’t be enough combustion vehicles around to keep them in business.
For rare longer trips, public fast charging infrastructure is quite convenient.
.8*120*15 = 1440w vs 230*13 = 2990w
You can only use 80% of a load on a breaker in the US, AFAIK UK receptacles are fused which allows using 100% of the listed device ampacity instead of 80%. I could be wrong about that last part though.
I don't have an EV charger, but I did have a 32A 230v power feed installed to my detached garage, suitable for a 7.4kW EVSE in the future. Parts and labour cost less than $650. It was a day's work for one man; he used armoured cable that doesn't need to be buried very deep, and could cross paved areas just cutting a 2" slit.
This was in a high cost-of-living area, a qualified and well reviewed electrician, and I didn't bother to shop around for multiple quotes.
A level 1 charger will add 3-4 miles of range every hour it's plugged in. Assuming you don't have some wildly long commute, that's easily enough to cover most people's daily driving in 8-10 hours of charging overnight.
Around where I live tesla's got some co-generation going on near by where they've got natural gas -> fuel cell -> supercharger setups (bloom energy runs one and I forget the other).
Absent that you need the power company to pipe in some serious power feeds and those aren't always convenient to trench into where you've already got a gas station.
Oil companies’ involvement with gas stations is only to the extent of selling their brand to the gas station operator. I don’t think I have ever heard of an oil company itself operating a gas station, I doubt they even own a single one.
They have the massive amounts of money to make those investments and sell them to gas stations the same way they do now.
Many of them have existing oil infrastructure that they want to put value on. If they are to become obsolete, their net worth and buying power will be threatened. And so they go into fear/panic. The koch brothers.
Depends on the energy company.
Some like BP, Chevron, and Idemitsu Kosan began investing fairly heavily in renewables and battery technology (eg. ownership in solar development, owning and licensing battery and charging IP, etc) for diversification reasons.
Others did not, and don't want to end up paying competitors.
Furthermore, gas stations are themselves just franchises so the franchisee might have to eat the cost of installation.
Chevron owns Chargepoint so they were able to scale charging infra to their stations, but other competitors might not want to subsidize Chevron corporate and leave it to the franchise.
Well, almost perfect. Being on 110V in residences is a downside.
Including the car’s depreciation, an EV does not always pencil out versus a gas hybrid unless you do a lot of driving.
Plus a lot of states charge a much higher annual tax for EVs compared to gas hybrids.
It's something like $5-7 to fully charge an EV from 0 where I am (Washington DC suburbs), vs about $50 to fill a tank of gas.
I recently spoke to a cabbie in Madrid that was driving a Tesla, and he said the economics were a no-brainer. He charges at home overnight and once mid-day and his monthly electricity bill was 130 euros. Before that, he was spending over 1,000 euros a month on gas.
That more than makes up for the additional initial cost of having an EV.
If you drive 5k to 10k miles per year though, a hybrid Camry or Prius or equivalent is still going to be cheaper per mile over 20 years compared to an EV due to the huge depreciation in the EV due to battery replacement cost.
Even a RAV4 Prime is probably cheaper.
Those of us lucky enough to have PG&E in California have a different calculation though. As of my latest bill they charge 88c/kWh and I heard they just approved yet another rate increase. We'll probably be paying $1/kWh pretty soon.
It's a bit cheaper after midnight, but still more expensive than nearly everywhere.
The center tap of that transformer is connected to ground and neutral. Normal residential outlets are connected between that neutral and one of the two hot outputs, giving 120 V.
Connecting across the two hots instead of across one hot and neutral gives 240 V. Many houses have one or two 240 V outlets. Typically there is one where the builders expected you to put your washer and dryer, to support an electric dryer. Often there is also one in the garage.
It's easy for an electrician to add more 240 V circuits4 and, assuming you don't need a new electrical panel, fairly reasonably priced. Googling is claiming typically $250-800.
I'd guess that in the US one factor might be that a large fraction of gas stations are also convenience stores and most of them make more money from the convenience store side of the business than from the gas side of the business.
The convenience store has two kinds of customers. One is people who are there to get gas but also pick up something in the convenience store. The other is people who come specifically for the convenience store.
Space outside not used for cars that are at the gas pumps is usually used for parking for the people who are there for the convenience store.
If they add EV chargers that are separate from the pumps they will probably have to reduce the parking space for convenience store customers. So they are replacing spots currently used by people who are there for a usually short visit to the convenience store with spots for people who are there to charge EVs.
Even if 100% of EV charging customers also use the convenience store it still reduces convenience store volume because they occupy a spot longer than the people who are there just to use the convenience store. Plus there will be people who are there just to charge and will not use the convenience store.
If they add the EV chargers where the gas pumps are, then the EV charging customers are replacing gas buying customers and so again their is a reduction in turnover because EV charging is slower. Because EV charging is slower I'd guess there is a larger chance that an EV charging customer will decide to also use the convenience store than there is that an gas customer will, so that might compensate some for the lower turnover but I'd guess that it would still be a net reduction in convenience store business.
Where I am in the UK, the unit rate at home is ~10p, while it's 40-50p at a public charger. I can get the home rate even cheaper (5p/kWh) with good timing.
One more things on the busy todo list - not a biggie for a retiree for sure.
My parents in the Netherlands bought an EV two years ago. They live in an apartment without their own charger in the building. Mostly my father just uses one of several public slow chargers in the neighborhood; once a week or so. He checks on his phone when one is available, drives there and plugs in. They also use chargers at hotels when they are traveling and are typically booking things with chargers available. Destination charging is a thing. Drive somewhere, plug in, do what you came to do, and drive back with enough charge to get home.
They went on a longer trip to France half a year ago. That's the first time he used a rapid charger. The most stressful thing with that is figuring out the payment systems. It's getting better but there are still way too many options for that. Recently Tesla super chargers became an option as well for them (lots of those) and those seem to work best. They drive a Renault.
Anyway, this is very typical behavior with EVs. You charge when it's convenient instead of when you have to. Mostly you are not going to run out on a normal day. It's only on longer journeys that you need to do a bit of planning (make sure the car is charged up before you leave, pick where & when to rapid charge). The worst case is having to take a 45 minute break or so when it's not convenient. That can happen but mostly you can plan to combine that with lunch or something else. And my father is 75, so he needs to have breaks more frequently than the car.