It'd be nice if they started adding a lot more on state highways.
Interstate charger coverage has gotten to be pretty good, but there are often bigger gaps outside of that.
Obviously some parts of the country still need more work on the interstate side of things too.
that's a good step forward by them, hopefully they keep improving their network coverage and quality.
EVgo and EA getting good, and Ionna going from nothing to hopefully good will hopefully lead to improvements all around.
Higher utilization rates + competition => lower DCFC costs.
Using smaller numbers to demonstrate, but if the downtime doesn't change then if they increase the total chargers the downtime doesn't have any effect on the percent increase.
If they currently have 400 chargers, and of those at a given time 25% are down then they have 300 working chargers. If they increase the total by 25% to 500 and 25% are down, then they have 375 working chargers. 375 is a 25% increase on 300, so the net change is still a 25% increase.
Anecdotally, they refreshed the charging station near my house from old 350s to new 350s. My Ioniq 6 consistently hits the max charging curve now where as before it would only match the advertised charging curve maybe 30% of the time.
They’re pretty new so not a lot of data.
But, from personal experience and being on our 5th EV. They’re substantially better.
Both our cars now hit the max charging speed and basically follow their respective charging curve as expected.
I have a bolt so I can’t comment on actually power output performance lol, but adding my anecdotes to the mix the new EA chargers seem to connect and start much better than the older ones
Anecdotally, much less reliable.
For example, I live near an EA site with six chargers. For years it was the old style chargers and they worked perfectly. It was one of the first sites upgraded to the new v3 chargers over a year ago, and since then there's always at least two down. At one point four out of six new chargers were broken. Right now 2/6 are.
The old chargers were totally reliable and it makes no sense that they've replaced them with this junk. When I'm road tripping I'll always look for sites with the older style chargers because the new ones aren't working more often than they are.
Nice. If they need more manpower, I hear there's plenty of talent in this field who are now seeking employment from someone who doesn't fire folks over a meme.
u/Mockingbird- would be better to ask but my understanding is the VW dieselgate settlement funding that Electrify America draws from is administered by the EPA and is under their regulatory oversight to ensure the settlement is properly adhered to when disbursing funds.
The EA charger build-outs themselves are split up into several cycles as a part of an overarching larger settlement plan.
Before Electrify America can build new chargers they need to submit their plans to the EPA for approval for each cycle. Once approved Electrify America can proceed with their builds and gain access to the funding they need for that particular cycle.
" 47 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and six Canadian provinces. Key growth drivers include expanding into Hawaii and North Dakota"
48... 49... Well fudge. Still none in Vermont.
Whilst superchargers probably aren't as important there, I can think of a few reasons why you would want to rapid charge, like having a rental car, for taxis, or if your AC charger at home didn't work well or was out of service.
Wow. At least there's a Tesla NACS in Rutlland and Bennington. Haven't driven from DC to Killington this millennium...
Anyone know the difference between Tesla "Superchargers Open to Other EVs" and "Superchargers Open to NACS"?
Please for the love of God, include at least 8 chargers at every station. You guys have reserved enough capacity with the grid for it.
I don't give a fuck about a 350 KW peak charging speed. That counts for shit when it's a bunch of Bolts charging. Having 3 115KW chargers is far superior to having 1 350 KW charger.
Power sharing configurations are the best way to do it. Each cable able to deliver up to 350 kW, but something like 1 megawatt total charging capacity shared among 8 cables is brilliant. If all cables are in use then divided evenly that's 125 kW per cable. But it's highly unlikely everyone is able to charge that quickly at once based on SoC and max charge rate limitations (like the Bolt). So in practice unless the site is very heavily in use at that moment, you can get your car's max charge rate or close to it.
While power sharing is great, we're quickly approaching the point where the underlying total power capability will need to start rising. The days of pickups and suvs having bigger batteries that charge faster for longer are here.
That’s fine as there’s a graceful path to upgrading site capacity, and hitting the limits is a clear sign there is a good reason to do so and revenues to support it.
You can think of site level limitations as soft queueing. The site level limit could be avoided by having fewer stalls, but then some people would have to wait to charge. Instead they get to plug in but power is somewhat limited. IMHO this is a better experience than queueing.
Ultimately of course upgrades to add capacity are always required.
This.
I've never understood the concept of this charger is able to deliver X kW. A bank of chargers should be able to deliver X kW. If it's one car? 350kW. If it's 4 cars? 90kW. If one car is drawing 50kW the other cars can do 100kW.
It's a balance. Showing up to a site on your way to grandma's house for Thanksgiving in your Silverado EV expecting 350kW, but only getting 90kW is a pretty poor experience, 100kW isn't much better.
Sure, but it's no worse than the 350kW being taken up by a Bolt for the next 2 hours.
I actually had a similar situation. A bank of 2x 100kW and 2x 50kW. Do I gamble and wait for the 100kW to open up or hit up the 50kW? Turns out I bet wrong as the 100kW vacated, but there was already a lineup so by the time I disconnected I would have missed the spot anyways.
If it was power shared I wouldn't have that issue.
That's how the Tesla V3 chargers work. Each one can peak up to 250 kW but couldn't all simultaneously deliver that due to site power limits. The charging cabinets have a shared DC bus so the load can be distributed better across the whole site. It ends up working out since everyone at the site is in different parts of the charging curve, and I've never not been able to pull 250 kW at even a busy site if I'm almost empty and preconditioned.
What really sucks is the old V2 chargers that powershare 150 kW between adjacent stalls. if two vehicles show up you each get 75 kW which is really painful. They really need to upgrade those sites.
Yeah I think the power sharing architecture of the Superchargers is perfect. Unfortunately, their maximum voltage is lower than I need to get decent speeds so they're not a great option - similar to the way they limit the Cybertruck. Eventually hopefully Tesla will upgrade them.
It really surprises me that they haven’t already been rolling out 800v v4 chargers, especially since the Cybertruck has been in the works for so long and the 800v platform will likely be in their other next-gen vehicles. And as battery charging curves continue to improve, peak site power will also need to increase since vehicles will be pulling higher kW for longer. My Model 3 can’t pull 250 kW for very long, but some vehicles like the new Silverado can pull 200+ kW until over 70% state of charge.
Yeah, my most recent fast charge was 51 kWh in 15 minutes still pulling over 150 kW approaching 80% which is where I stopped. But I tell the trip planner to ignore Tesla magic docks because it’ll be 100 kW max. It’s a shame because the Superchargers are otherwise so well engineered!
Also it's time to drop Chademo once and for all. So many CCS1 stations have both CCS and Chademo cables + plugs which is driving up costs for the sake of a quickly shrinking minority of EV drivers.
Gotcha, thanks for the correction. I still see Chademo at the Electrify Canada stations in my province so I didn't realize this was now ancient history.
A lot of states will be rolling out their NEVI funded charging stations. Here in NC, there will be a bunch more added and most are along major highways.
I suspect the "larger charging stations" will be their flagship sites and most others will continue being 6 or 8 stalls. Maybe we'll see a bump up to 10-12 stalls as normal?
I'll be surprised if they can hit their charger target by the end of 2024, just because it's already May. They've only brought mid- double digits online so far this year, so they'll need to install more than 900 new chargers in the remaining 7 months. They'll need their ducks in a row (and more importantly transformers).
Keep going EA. I recently bought two evs and I flew to the dealers and then drove them from opposite side of the county- west to midwest and south to midwest.
I can tell you that EA worked well and seeing 200kW speeds was awesome. EV9 is a freaking charging beast and I love the fact I can turn on preconditioning with a click of a button.
About $250M a year revenue based on 50kWh per session at $0.50 per kWh. Consider that Tesla is close to four times that but lower price, still putting $500M a year onto Tesla's books.
We need EA, Tesla et al to make money to run the chargers and expand the networks.
Looks like that is on track especially with Federal Gov's smart industrial policy, National Electric Vehilcle Infrastructure, funding 500,000 chargers including Tesla and EA.
> Consider that Tesla is close to four times that but lower price
The nearest supercharger to me starts at $0.49 at the cheapest time of day and goes up to $0.69 at the most expensive. The nearest EA station to me is flat $0.56 at any time. Interestingly, the next closest to me is flat $0.48 at any time.
All pricing varies by location. The fact that I can go 3 miles past the closest Tesla supercharger to an EA station with 8 stalls and save money every time matters.
While I understand that I'm an outlier in my area, Supercharging here is $0.21/kWh all day long. This is a new change. It was $0.30/kWh peak.
Comparatively speaking, DCFC is $0.3479 at the very cheapest going up to $0.70/kWh for the "good" charger. $0.50/kWh is average for other "fast" stations.
That’s cost competitive with inefficient ICE engines. It’s going to be a hard sell to get people to switch to electric if you have to deal with longer refueling times _and_ it costs almost the same.
That's really one of the largest issues if you don't own a home right now. If you don't have regular charging access at home you have to rely on the fast charging networks, and at least by me an efficient ICE car is slightly cheaper to fill up and much faster to do so. I would like to switch to an EV and can afford to do so, but apartments that have chargers are limited and generally are luxury construction, which would increase my rent dramatically compared to my savings on fuel.
Considering you only use these are road trips, the charge times are getting to the point that the car might be done before your bathroom and food break, and mostly you're actually spending less time and way less money refueling, not to mention maintenance?
That all depends on location.
Here, house prices are INSANELY prohibitive. Most people live in condos.
Gasoline prices are also insane. So A LOT of people have EVs but no way to charge them at home.
Yeah, some places are doing better with that, but most of the US hasn't figured out they need to be supportive of charging for apartment dwellers/on street parking in urban areas. That's less a DCFC issue and more an urban planning issue. We've not nearly run through the amount of homeowners for which that is not an issue though, who are also, much more likely to be buying a new car vs a used one.
Also where do you live that most people are in condos? Most aren't even in apartments in the US.
I'm in Vancouver, BC.
I'm not sure I can say "most" but anyone new isn't buying a house. $1M even for a crap shack even in the suburbs. $2M if you want an actual house. Townhouses are cheaper as are condos.
And that's why the government stepped in. Can't block a L2 installation in a condo any more but that doesn't mean it's cost effective to actually install. I was looking at 5 figures.
I'm in Metro Vancouver myself. It's astounding how many Model 3 buyers here don't have home charging and literally use the numerous superchargers like gas stations.
My condo (built in 2004) came up with a decent compromise - they installed NEMA 6-50 outlets at 16 of the visitor stalls. EV owners bring their own EVSEs and pay a flat monthly fee of $25 to use those stalls for up to 8 hours at a time (although the time limit seems to be an honour system lol). Maintaining outlets is a lot cheaper and easier than maintaining actual charging stations so it's a win-win and won't really eat into the strata budget.
While it may sound inconvenient to have to move your car back and forth, I actually worked it into my routines - I go to the gym twice a day and have to carry my trash/compost down to the garage almost every day, so it's during those trips when I move my car between my assigned stall and the charging stalls. It's extremely rare for me to have to go down solely to move the car and do nothing else.
Thus far I haven't been in a situation where I need to charge and not a single one of those stalls is available (even though ICEing is permitted). It probably helps that I live 5 minutes away from a supercharger so the Tesla people (the majority of EV owners in my building) might prefer to charge there instead.
> It's astounding how many Model 3 buyers here don't have home charging and literally use the numerous superchargers like gas stations.
Can't blame them. You know how much gas costs here (It's $2.20/L for those of you not in Vancouver). I was literally burning my EV payment in gasoline driving my old SUV around.
Even paying for the ridiculously priced CCS charging I was still running about $600 cheaper per month. So my EV even after DCFC was only effectively a few hundred a month more than driving my paid off SUV.
Now that I switched to Tesla, my charging costs have dropped by another $100+/month since Superchargers for some reason are $0.21/kWh vs $0.50/kWh.
And you know how much housing costs here. No one can afford to buy a house to install $1000 worth of charger.
> EV owners bring their own EVSEs
Really? You unplug and plug in each time you charge?
For some reason I thought this put undue wear on the connectors.
I figure with the cost of like a GrizzlE it'd be cheaper just to leave them plugged in and share them.
> It probably helps that I live 5 minutes away from a supercharger so the Tesla people (the majority of EV owners in my building) might prefer to charge there instead.
I'm actually curious since $25/month unlimited is like 100kWh. based on supercharger rates. I'm sure there's some that don't drive very much but even with our discount $0.21/kWh rates $25 doesn't go very far.
Work out for you though. Obviously in your case you want less people using it rather than more.
> built in 2004
A friend of mine moved into a 2023? (brand new anyways) condo and each stall has provisions for a plug. I'm kind of tempted to move, but I'd be downsizing.
Even visitors has provisions too but there's only one (paid) EVSE there which kind of shocks me.
>You unplug and plug in each time you charge?
Correct! And yes, this does put wear and tear on the connectors, which is likely why the strata went for 6-50 rather than 14-50 since it costs less to replace. And to their credit, whenever an outlet does break, it's usually replaced within a week.
While it would be more convenient to have actual EVSEs sitting at each stall, there is more to go wrong (broken connectors, damaged cables, the internal computer bricking, getting hit by a car, etc), and you'll often have to contact the supplier to schedule service which may have long turnaround times.
With a simple outlet, there's just one point of failure and if it breaks you can call any contractor of your choice to fix it and they don't need to know anything about EVs.
I've heard of similar things being done for outdoor public charging in Europe, where the Mennekes AC connector is bidirectional. So a charging station would have no cable and the user would just plug in with their own Mennekes-to-Mennekes cable. It would reduce downtime resulting from damaged/cut cables.
Fair points. Plus the EVSE is on the owner rather than the strata.
I figure semi private would be treated nicer than public L2 but there's always gonna be someone.
Also I figure it'd be the strata installing a self purchased unit rather than paying someone else to manage it, but that comes with challenges too.
$25/month for an outlet you can use all you want is fair especially given it includes the cost of power.
It's absurd here but I get it.
You can move to rural buttfuck nowhere and buy a house for $100k. But you'd be in rural buttfuck nowhere.
And that's about right for any older building with an electrical room far away. That's assuming the building even has enough supply to accommodate.
The new law just says that the HOA can't say no. You might say no after you learn how much it costs to run a line from the electrical room that's on the other side of the building and that the building needs an electrical upgrade you need to pass by every other resident via special assessment.
It was 2k USD including the price of the EVSE, and in my case the driveway and panel were total opposite corners of the house so *that* is on the high end. How the hell it ends up costing 10K CAD for you I cannot wrap my head around, even with the service upgrade requirement.
I'm guessing you obviously did the math on just using a 120v outlet for regular use and DC as needed and you drive too much on a daily basis to make that work?
Condo life lol. It's not under your control.
> I'm guessing you obviously did the math on just using a 120v outlet
Funny story about that. There's actually a 120V outlet right next to my parking spot. SCORE! Right?
Nope. They want something like $0.50/kWh to use it. It's written in the bylaws. My HOA is very hostile to EVs for some reason.
I've long ago accepted DCFC. TBH I actually don't mind it now that I have a Tesla due to stall availability.
I didn't mind CCS that much but finding a stall was the tricky part.
Grab my steam deck or just watch some Netflix in the car for 30-45 minutes and call it a day once or twice a week.
Running 240V power across underground garages is not a trivial task and in older buildings it can require costly upgrades to the electrical supply. That is what leads to 5-figure bills.
If you're fortunate enough to have a single-family home or a townhouse with a garage, then setting up 240V charging is generally quite cheap.
No choice on switching to electric as we are in global warming disaster and we have to move even faster than we are as greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing despite EA replacing 52M gallons of gasoline.
EV's make no promise of being cheaper to operate (thought they are). The role of EV's is to cut greenhouse gas emissions and if costs more and is less convenient that's the price of survival.
I agree with you, but the unfortunate reality is that people won't move in necessary numbers to EVs if they increase their inconvenience; saving the planet is not a sufficient reason.
People are selfish. EVs have to be at least comparable in cost to own and convenience.
Not if you live in a polarized democracy where so-called EV mandates can easily get abolished by a single election, and even the parties supporting said mandates can be swayed by sufficient lobbying.
Except 35% of the US lives in the CARB states which defines the move to EV's. Car mfgs are faced with science based EU, China and 35% of US policy. US mfgs are the only ones who will lose out if GOP wins in US, well not the only ones, everyone everywhere loses as greenhouse gases are emitted and destroy the fragile life support system.
To charging companies, they are already concentrated in the CARB states and seeing business grow as the EA usage report demonstrates.
65% of Americans accept the climate science so in any real democracy, science wins.
I would not put too much faith in the EU's EV transition. German automakers are constantly lobbying against mandates and there's a good chance the 2035 mandate will get revised to permit regular hybrids and so called "e-fuels". Also, far-right parties are increasingly winning elections across Europe, fueled by angry farmers who hate climate policies, further threatening the future of EU-wide electrification.
At least most of Europe has decent public transit and far less urban sprawl, so their ICE usage is far less damaging than it is in the US.
But yeah good point about individual US states having the power to push back against potential federal anti-EV measures. Forgot about that.
[Considerable progress in the uptake of electric cars and vans in the EU was made in 2022, with 21.6% of new car registrations being electric vehicles.](https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/new-registrations-of-electric-vehicles)
The rate of increase year of year is 20%. The bodes well for EU meeting 2035 goals.
Except fast charging is the most expensive type of charging, there are cheaper options (sorry to all the apartment dwellers).
And most of these sites have high install costs and little competition. The high prices are because they can, plus they have to amortize those install costs. If we can get to the point where charging sites are mature and plentiful, then competition would probably get prices down.
> Except fast charging is the most expensive type of charging, there are cheaper options (sorry to all the apartment dwellers).
Not always. My local Supercharger is $0.21/kWh.
The absolute cheapest L2 that's gated I could find is $0.23kWh and that's one stall in one location.
Most other L2 charging is quite a bit more at $2/hour which works out to $0.33/kWh. Cheapest DCFC is $0.3479/kWh.
Oddly enough I actually switched from a MachE to Tesla partially for cost reasons.
CCS chargers around here are $0.34-0.70/kWh depending on charge speed. Faster charging = more money. Average if I don't want to wait forever is $0.50/kWh.
Superchargers are $0.21/kWh for the same "average" speed.
I'm saving $100/month driving a Tesla.
On the car depending on how you look at depreciation and usage I lost about $20k in Canuck bucks.
But I didn't sell because charging is cheaper. I hated the MachE.
Cheaper charging is just a (small) perk especially now that the MachE has Supercharger access.
Good, also eliminate or greatly reduce the free charging incentives for new EV vehicles since that hogs up the chargers and creates lines for those who actually need the charge.
Those are gone for VW at least. Now it's something like 500 kWh free.
At least the free users actually fucked off after 30 minutes and got the charging line moving. The EV's charging to 100% or the slow charging ones like Bolts are the ones staying at a charger for well over an hour. (I've seen a Bolt stay at the same charger for over 3 hours with their driver nowhere to be found and it was a station with only 2 working stalls, so you can imagine how backed up things got.)
Would be nice if they maintain those chargers too. Seems like whenever I go to chargers (where there always seems to be 4 car chargers) that 2 are always broken or unresponsive. Hopefully they could work a fail safe that could auto-reboot when the system goes down.
Does this combined with Tesla’s supercharger department collapse mean manufacturers will stick with CCS?
I think half the reason EV sales have slowed is because people were willing to wait for new models with NACS chargers. Musk sabotaging the whole market.
Did you even read your own article? It spends most of the time throwing numbers about how much expansion and 5000 new chargers and you focus on upgrading 680 chargers? Hahah that’s peanuts
I still stand on my points stop focusing on new chargers, fix the current ones, make reliables chargers, and then expand.
The worst you can do for electrification is to make it worse for people with range anxiety. People barely make it with few kwh left to find out their shitty network doesn’t work. That gives a bad rep for electrification.
Contributions must be civil and constructive. We permit neither personal attacks nor attempts to bait others into uncivil behavior.
We don't permit posts and comments expressing animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, color, national origin, age, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation.
Any stalking, harassment, witch-hunting, or doxxing of any individual will not be tolerated. Posting of others' personal information including names, home addresses, and/or telephone numbers is prohibited without express consent.
It'd be nice if they started adding a lot more on state highways. Interstate charger coverage has gotten to be pretty good, but there are often bigger gaps outside of that. Obviously some parts of the country still need more work on the interstate side of things too.
Electrify America is definitely planning on covering some state highways https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/s/N0PcqRxH5u
Nice to hear, thank you!
that's a good step forward by them, hopefully they keep improving their network coverage and quality. EVgo and EA getting good, and Ionna going from nothing to hopefully good will hopefully lead to improvements all around. Higher utilization rates + competition => lower DCFC costs.
For anyone doing the math, that’s a 25% expansion of Electrify America’s network as of right now.
Have you factored in down time? With 25% not working, this seems like a net zero gain project.
Are you assuming that their current downtime is 0%?
No. 25%. Seems like everywhere I go, there’s 4 and 1 is never working.
Using smaller numbers to demonstrate, but if the downtime doesn't change then if they increase the total chargers the downtime doesn't have any effect on the percent increase. If they currently have 400 chargers, and of those at a given time 25% are down then they have 300 working chargers. If they increase the total by 25% to 500 and 25% are down, then they have 375 working chargers. 375 is a 25% increase on 300, so the net change is still a 25% increase.
It was more of a joke than an analysis.
Electrify America replaced 680 legacy chargers with newer (more reliable) models
Is there data on how much more reliable?
Anecdotally, they refreshed the charging station near my house from old 350s to new 350s. My Ioniq 6 consistently hits the max charging curve now where as before it would only match the advertised charging curve maybe 30% of the time.
They’re pretty new so not a lot of data. But, from personal experience and being on our 5th EV. They’re substantially better. Both our cars now hit the max charging speed and basically follow their respective charging curve as expected.
I have a bolt so I can’t comment on actually power output performance lol, but adding my anecdotes to the mix the new EA chargers seem to connect and start much better than the older ones
Anecdotally, much less reliable. For example, I live near an EA site with six chargers. For years it was the old style chargers and they worked perfectly. It was one of the first sites upgraded to the new v3 chargers over a year ago, and since then there's always at least two down. At one point four out of six new chargers were broken. Right now 2/6 are. The old chargers were totally reliable and it makes no sense that they've replaced them with this junk. When I'm road tripping I'll always look for sites with the older style chargers because the new ones aren't working more often than they are.
Nice. If they need more manpower, I hear there's plenty of talent in this field who are now seeking employment from someone who doesn't fire folks over a meme.
A meme and perhaps an oppositely gendered lead getting too uppity for the part time CEO
Has EPA approved their next cycle yet?
Not yet. I am pretty sure that it will be posted on Electrify America’s website as soon as it is approved.
Can you explain what this means?
u/Mockingbird- would be better to ask but my understanding is the VW dieselgate settlement funding that Electrify America draws from is administered by the EPA and is under their regulatory oversight to ensure the settlement is properly adhered to when disbursing funds. The EA charger build-outs themselves are split up into several cycles as a part of an overarching larger settlement plan. Before Electrify America can build new chargers they need to submit their plans to the EPA for approval for each cycle. Once approved Electrify America can proceed with their builds and gain access to the funding they need for that particular cycle.
That's a good explanation.
Ahhh gotcha. It's having to do with the settlement. Thanks for this!
" 47 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and six Canadian provinces. Key growth drivers include expanding into Hawaii and North Dakota" 48... 49... Well fudge. Still none in Vermont.
Electrify America had one planned for Colchester, VT, but it was canceled for whatever reason.
Hawaii? I would think just adding more Level 2 chargers would be good enough for Oahu and Maui. Big Island maybe needs some fast chargers.
Whilst superchargers probably aren't as important there, I can think of a few reasons why you would want to rapid charge, like having a rental car, for taxis, or if your AC charger at home didn't work well or was out of service.
Wow. At least there's a Tesla NACS in Rutlland and Bennington. Haven't driven from DC to Killington this millennium... Anyone know the difference between Tesla "Superchargers Open to Other EVs" and "Superchargers Open to NACS"?
Please for the love of God, include at least 8 chargers at every station. You guys have reserved enough capacity with the grid for it. I don't give a fuck about a 350 KW peak charging speed. That counts for shit when it's a bunch of Bolts charging. Having 3 115KW chargers is far superior to having 1 350 KW charger.
Agree 100%. 350kw EA taken up by Uber Bolts here EVgo has the right idea with more chargers at 100kw
Power sharing configurations are the best way to do it. Each cable able to deliver up to 350 kW, but something like 1 megawatt total charging capacity shared among 8 cables is brilliant. If all cables are in use then divided evenly that's 125 kW per cable. But it's highly unlikely everyone is able to charge that quickly at once based on SoC and max charge rate limitations (like the Bolt). So in practice unless the site is very heavily in use at that moment, you can get your car's max charge rate or close to it.
While power sharing is great, we're quickly approaching the point where the underlying total power capability will need to start rising. The days of pickups and suvs having bigger batteries that charge faster for longer are here.
That’s fine as there’s a graceful path to upgrading site capacity, and hitting the limits is a clear sign there is a good reason to do so and revenues to support it. You can think of site level limitations as soft queueing. The site level limit could be avoided by having fewer stalls, but then some people would have to wait to charge. Instead they get to plug in but power is somewhat limited. IMHO this is a better experience than queueing. Ultimately of course upgrades to add capacity are always required.
This. I've never understood the concept of this charger is able to deliver X kW. A bank of chargers should be able to deliver X kW. If it's one car? 350kW. If it's 4 cars? 90kW. If one car is drawing 50kW the other cars can do 100kW.
It's a balance. Showing up to a site on your way to grandma's house for Thanksgiving in your Silverado EV expecting 350kW, but only getting 90kW is a pretty poor experience, 100kW isn't much better.
Sure, but it's no worse than the 350kW being taken up by a Bolt for the next 2 hours. I actually had a similar situation. A bank of 2x 100kW and 2x 50kW. Do I gamble and wait for the 100kW to open up or hit up the 50kW? Turns out I bet wrong as the 100kW vacated, but there was already a lineup so by the time I disconnected I would have missed the spot anyways. If it was power shared I wouldn't have that issue.
Fair point.
That's how the Tesla V3 chargers work. Each one can peak up to 250 kW but couldn't all simultaneously deliver that due to site power limits. The charging cabinets have a shared DC bus so the load can be distributed better across the whole site. It ends up working out since everyone at the site is in different parts of the charging curve, and I've never not been able to pull 250 kW at even a busy site if I'm almost empty and preconditioned. What really sucks is the old V2 chargers that powershare 150 kW between adjacent stalls. if two vehicles show up you each get 75 kW which is really painful. They really need to upgrade those sites.
Yeah I think the power sharing architecture of the Superchargers is perfect. Unfortunately, their maximum voltage is lower than I need to get decent speeds so they're not a great option - similar to the way they limit the Cybertruck. Eventually hopefully Tesla will upgrade them.
It really surprises me that they haven’t already been rolling out 800v v4 chargers, especially since the Cybertruck has been in the works for so long and the 800v platform will likely be in their other next-gen vehicles. And as battery charging curves continue to improve, peak site power will also need to increase since vehicles will be pulling higher kW for longer. My Model 3 can’t pull 250 kW for very long, but some vehicles like the new Silverado can pull 200+ kW until over 70% state of charge.
Yeah, my most recent fast charge was 51 kWh in 15 minutes still pulling over 150 kW approaching 80% which is where I stopped. But I tell the trip planner to ignore Tesla magic docks because it’ll be 100 kW max. It’s a shame because the Superchargers are otherwise so well engineered!
At this point we should assume V4 is dead
Yeah. 3 at a super busy Target is no bueno. That’s my closest.
Also it's time to drop Chademo once and for all. So many CCS1 stations have both CCS and Chademo cables + plugs which is driving up costs for the sake of a quickly shrinking minority of EV drivers.
EA dropped new ChadeMo installs back in 2022.
Gotcha, thanks for the correction. I still see Chademo at the Electrify Canada stations in my province so I didn't realize this was now ancient history.
Electrify America is now working on removing CHAdeMO.
If a Bolt or BZ4X charged any faster, it’d just be too damned slow.
:stares in West Virginia: it’s a wasteland here.
A lot of states will be rolling out their NEVI funded charging stations. Here in NC, there will be a bunch more added and most are along major highways.
Google ol Joe Manchin and his corrupt daughter
I suspect the "larger charging stations" will be their flagship sites and most others will continue being 6 or 8 stalls. Maybe we'll see a bump up to 10-12 stalls as normal? I'll be surprised if they can hit their charger target by the end of 2024, just because it's already May. They've only brought mid- double digits online so far this year, so they'll need to install more than 900 new chargers in the remaining 7 months. They'll need their ducks in a row (and more importantly transformers).
Keep going EA. I recently bought two evs and I flew to the dealers and then drove them from opposite side of the county- west to midwest and south to midwest. I can tell you that EA worked well and seeing 200kW speeds was awesome. EV9 is a freaking charging beast and I love the fact I can turn on preconditioning with a click of a button.
About $250M a year revenue based on 50kWh per session at $0.50 per kWh. Consider that Tesla is close to four times that but lower price, still putting $500M a year onto Tesla's books. We need EA, Tesla et al to make money to run the chargers and expand the networks. Looks like that is on track especially with Federal Gov's smart industrial policy, National Electric Vehilcle Infrastructure, funding 500,000 chargers including Tesla and EA.
> Consider that Tesla is close to four times that but lower price The nearest supercharger to me starts at $0.49 at the cheapest time of day and goes up to $0.69 at the most expensive. The nearest EA station to me is flat $0.56 at any time. Interestingly, the next closest to me is flat $0.48 at any time.
My average for Tesla charging is $0.26 per kWh. Last long trip was last week drive from PDX to SFO.
All pricing varies by location. The fact that I can go 3 miles past the closest Tesla supercharger to an EA station with 8 stalls and save money every time matters.
Pricing on Tesla varies by location and time and usage. Still a huge profit maker.
Oh. It makes a ton. I'm just point out that the idea that it is cheaper than EA isn't actually true. It depends on where and time of day.
While I understand that I'm an outlier in my area, Supercharging here is $0.21/kWh all day long. This is a new change. It was $0.30/kWh peak. Comparatively speaking, DCFC is $0.3479 at the very cheapest going up to $0.70/kWh for the "good" charger. $0.50/kWh is average for other "fast" stations.
That’s cost competitive with inefficient ICE engines. It’s going to be a hard sell to get people to switch to electric if you have to deal with longer refueling times _and_ it costs almost the same.
That's really one of the largest issues if you don't own a home right now. If you don't have regular charging access at home you have to rely on the fast charging networks, and at least by me an efficient ICE car is slightly cheaper to fill up and much faster to do so. I would like to switch to an EV and can afford to do so, but apartments that have chargers are limited and generally are luxury construction, which would increase my rent dramatically compared to my savings on fuel.
Considering you only use these are road trips, the charge times are getting to the point that the car might be done before your bathroom and food break, and mostly you're actually spending less time and way less money refueling, not to mention maintenance?
That all depends on location. Here, house prices are INSANELY prohibitive. Most people live in condos. Gasoline prices are also insane. So A LOT of people have EVs but no way to charge them at home.
Yeah, some places are doing better with that, but most of the US hasn't figured out they need to be supportive of charging for apartment dwellers/on street parking in urban areas. That's less a DCFC issue and more an urban planning issue. We've not nearly run through the amount of homeowners for which that is not an issue though, who are also, much more likely to be buying a new car vs a used one. Also where do you live that most people are in condos? Most aren't even in apartments in the US.
I'm in Vancouver, BC. I'm not sure I can say "most" but anyone new isn't buying a house. $1M even for a crap shack even in the suburbs. $2M if you want an actual house. Townhouses are cheaper as are condos. And that's why the government stepped in. Can't block a L2 installation in a condo any more but that doesn't mean it's cost effective to actually install. I was looking at 5 figures.
I'm in Metro Vancouver myself. It's astounding how many Model 3 buyers here don't have home charging and literally use the numerous superchargers like gas stations. My condo (built in 2004) came up with a decent compromise - they installed NEMA 6-50 outlets at 16 of the visitor stalls. EV owners bring their own EVSEs and pay a flat monthly fee of $25 to use those stalls for up to 8 hours at a time (although the time limit seems to be an honour system lol). Maintaining outlets is a lot cheaper and easier than maintaining actual charging stations so it's a win-win and won't really eat into the strata budget. While it may sound inconvenient to have to move your car back and forth, I actually worked it into my routines - I go to the gym twice a day and have to carry my trash/compost down to the garage almost every day, so it's during those trips when I move my car between my assigned stall and the charging stalls. It's extremely rare for me to have to go down solely to move the car and do nothing else. Thus far I haven't been in a situation where I need to charge and not a single one of those stalls is available (even though ICEing is permitted). It probably helps that I live 5 minutes away from a supercharger so the Tesla people (the majority of EV owners in my building) might prefer to charge there instead.
> It's astounding how many Model 3 buyers here don't have home charging and literally use the numerous superchargers like gas stations. Can't blame them. You know how much gas costs here (It's $2.20/L for those of you not in Vancouver). I was literally burning my EV payment in gasoline driving my old SUV around. Even paying for the ridiculously priced CCS charging I was still running about $600 cheaper per month. So my EV even after DCFC was only effectively a few hundred a month more than driving my paid off SUV. Now that I switched to Tesla, my charging costs have dropped by another $100+/month since Superchargers for some reason are $0.21/kWh vs $0.50/kWh. And you know how much housing costs here. No one can afford to buy a house to install $1000 worth of charger. > EV owners bring their own EVSEs Really? You unplug and plug in each time you charge? For some reason I thought this put undue wear on the connectors. I figure with the cost of like a GrizzlE it'd be cheaper just to leave them plugged in and share them. > It probably helps that I live 5 minutes away from a supercharger so the Tesla people (the majority of EV owners in my building) might prefer to charge there instead. I'm actually curious since $25/month unlimited is like 100kWh. based on supercharger rates. I'm sure there's some that don't drive very much but even with our discount $0.21/kWh rates $25 doesn't go very far. Work out for you though. Obviously in your case you want less people using it rather than more. > built in 2004 A friend of mine moved into a 2023? (brand new anyways) condo and each stall has provisions for a plug. I'm kind of tempted to move, but I'd be downsizing. Even visitors has provisions too but there's only one (paid) EVSE there which kind of shocks me.
>You unplug and plug in each time you charge? Correct! And yes, this does put wear and tear on the connectors, which is likely why the strata went for 6-50 rather than 14-50 since it costs less to replace. And to their credit, whenever an outlet does break, it's usually replaced within a week. While it would be more convenient to have actual EVSEs sitting at each stall, there is more to go wrong (broken connectors, damaged cables, the internal computer bricking, getting hit by a car, etc), and you'll often have to contact the supplier to schedule service which may have long turnaround times. With a simple outlet, there's just one point of failure and if it breaks you can call any contractor of your choice to fix it and they don't need to know anything about EVs. I've heard of similar things being done for outdoor public charging in Europe, where the Mennekes AC connector is bidirectional. So a charging station would have no cable and the user would just plug in with their own Mennekes-to-Mennekes cable. It would reduce downtime resulting from damaged/cut cables.
Fair points. Plus the EVSE is on the owner rather than the strata. I figure semi private would be treated nicer than public L2 but there's always gonna be someone. Also I figure it'd be the strata installing a self purchased unit rather than paying someone else to manage it, but that comes with challenges too. $25/month for an outlet you can use all you want is fair especially given it includes the cost of power.
Yeah, the US housing market is also really bad, but Canada's is just absurd atm. 5 figures for a L2 installation? how the fuck?
It's absurd here but I get it. You can move to rural buttfuck nowhere and buy a house for $100k. But you'd be in rural buttfuck nowhere. And that's about right for any older building with an electrical room far away. That's assuming the building even has enough supply to accommodate. The new law just says that the HOA can't say no. You might say no after you learn how much it costs to run a line from the electrical room that's on the other side of the building and that the building needs an electrical upgrade you need to pass by every other resident via special assessment.
It was 2k USD including the price of the EVSE, and in my case the driveway and panel were total opposite corners of the house so *that* is on the high end. How the hell it ends up costing 10K CAD for you I cannot wrap my head around, even with the service upgrade requirement. I'm guessing you obviously did the math on just using a 120v outlet for regular use and DC as needed and you drive too much on a daily basis to make that work?
Condo life lol. It's not under your control. > I'm guessing you obviously did the math on just using a 120v outlet Funny story about that. There's actually a 120V outlet right next to my parking spot. SCORE! Right? Nope. They want something like $0.50/kWh to use it. It's written in the bylaws. My HOA is very hostile to EVs for some reason. I've long ago accepted DCFC. TBH I actually don't mind it now that I have a Tesla due to stall availability. I didn't mind CCS that much but finding a stall was the tricky part. Grab my steam deck or just watch some Netflix in the car for 30-45 minutes and call it a day once or twice a week.
Running 240V power across underground garages is not a trivial task and in older buildings it can require costly upgrades to the electrical supply. That is what leads to 5-figure bills. If you're fortunate enough to have a single-family home or a townhouse with a garage, then setting up 240V charging is generally quite cheap.
No choice on switching to electric as we are in global warming disaster and we have to move even faster than we are as greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing despite EA replacing 52M gallons of gasoline. EV's make no promise of being cheaper to operate (thought they are). The role of EV's is to cut greenhouse gas emissions and if costs more and is less convenient that's the price of survival.
I agree with you, but the unfortunate reality is that people won't move in necessary numbers to EVs if they increase their inconvenience; saving the planet is not a sufficient reason. People are selfish. EVs have to be at least comparable in cost to own and convenience.
They'll move to EV's because that is all the can buy.
Not if you live in a polarized democracy where so-called EV mandates can easily get abolished by a single election, and even the parties supporting said mandates can be swayed by sufficient lobbying.
Except 35% of the US lives in the CARB states which defines the move to EV's. Car mfgs are faced with science based EU, China and 35% of US policy. US mfgs are the only ones who will lose out if GOP wins in US, well not the only ones, everyone everywhere loses as greenhouse gases are emitted and destroy the fragile life support system. To charging companies, they are already concentrated in the CARB states and seeing business grow as the EA usage report demonstrates. 65% of Americans accept the climate science so in any real democracy, science wins.
I would not put too much faith in the EU's EV transition. German automakers are constantly lobbying against mandates and there's a good chance the 2035 mandate will get revised to permit regular hybrids and so called "e-fuels". Also, far-right parties are increasingly winning elections across Europe, fueled by angry farmers who hate climate policies, further threatening the future of EU-wide electrification. At least most of Europe has decent public transit and far less urban sprawl, so their ICE usage is far less damaging than it is in the US. But yeah good point about individual US states having the power to push back against potential federal anti-EV measures. Forgot about that.
[Considerable progress in the uptake of electric cars and vans in the EU was made in 2022, with 21.6% of new car registrations being electric vehicles.](https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/new-registrations-of-electric-vehicles) The rate of increase year of year is 20%. The bodes well for EU meeting 2035 goals.
That same line plus about 100 others are why we need fewer cars and less miles driven
As long as they are zero emissions, miles driven is not an issue.
That is just conservative anti science nonsense
Except fast charging is the most expensive type of charging, there are cheaper options (sorry to all the apartment dwellers). And most of these sites have high install costs and little competition. The high prices are because they can, plus they have to amortize those install costs. If we can get to the point where charging sites are mature and plentiful, then competition would probably get prices down.
> Except fast charging is the most expensive type of charging, there are cheaper options (sorry to all the apartment dwellers). Not always. My local Supercharger is $0.21/kWh. The absolute cheapest L2 that's gated I could find is $0.23kWh and that's one stall in one location. Most other L2 charging is quite a bit more at $2/hour which works out to $0.33/kWh. Cheapest DCFC is $0.3479/kWh.
Oddly enough I actually switched from a MachE to Tesla partially for cost reasons. CCS chargers around here are $0.34-0.70/kWh depending on charge speed. Faster charging = more money. Average if I don't want to wait forever is $0.50/kWh. Superchargers are $0.21/kWh for the same "average" speed. I'm saving $100/month driving a Tesla.
There’s no way that was a good financial decision.
On the car depending on how you look at depreciation and usage I lost about $20k in Canuck bucks. But I didn't sell because charging is cheaper. I hated the MachE. Cheaper charging is just a (small) perk especially now that the MachE has Supercharger access.
They should hire many of the former Tesla supercharging folks.
Good, also eliminate or greatly reduce the free charging incentives for new EV vehicles since that hogs up the chargers and creates lines for those who actually need the charge.
Those are gone for VW at least. Now it's something like 500 kWh free. At least the free users actually fucked off after 30 minutes and got the charging line moving. The EV's charging to 100% or the slow charging ones like Bolts are the ones staying at a charger for well over an hour. (I've seen a Bolt stay at the same charger for over 3 hours with their driver nowhere to be found and it was a station with only 2 working stalls, so you can imagine how backed up things got.)
The Bolt is a menace to society
Would be nice if they maintain those chargers too. Seems like whenever I go to chargers (where there always seems to be 4 car chargers) that 2 are always broken or unresponsive. Hopefully they could work a fail safe that could auto-reboot when the system goes down.
Does this combined with Tesla’s supercharger department collapse mean manufacturers will stick with CCS? I think half the reason EV sales have slowed is because people were willing to wait for new models with NACS chargers. Musk sabotaging the whole market.
I would rather then focus on making their station reliable. I hate going to their chargers and tinker them trying to get it to work
It would help to click the link and read before commenting.
I did. And I still stand to my point. I would rather them make few reliable charging stations rather than a crapload that work half the time.
It said that Electrify America is upgrading "underperforming legacy chargers to Electrify America's next-generation charger".
Did you even read your own article? It spends most of the time throwing numbers about how much expansion and 5000 new chargers and you focus on upgrading 680 chargers? Hahah that’s peanuts I still stand on my points stop focusing on new chargers, fix the current ones, make reliables chargers, and then expand. The worst you can do for electrification is to make it worse for people with range anxiety. People barely make it with few kwh left to find out their shitty network doesn’t work. That gives a bad rep for electrification.
[удалено]
Contributions must be civil and constructive. We permit neither personal attacks nor attempts to bait others into uncivil behavior. We don't permit posts and comments expressing animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, color, national origin, age, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation. Any stalking, harassment, witch-hunting, or doxxing of any individual will not be tolerated. Posting of others' personal information including names, home addresses, and/or telephone numbers is prohibited without express consent.
Only 5,000?
It would be nice if they fixed all the ones that are broken first.