Charging an electric vehicle in the future increasingly looks like an experience somewhere between a truck stop and an airport lounge.
Most public chargers sit in parking lots, often three or four machines along the side of a hotel or grocery store. Drivers are exposed to the elements and, unless they need to go shopping, are basically stuck hanging out in their cars while filling their batteries.
But charging companies and automakers increasingly see a need for stations with amenities: restaurants, good bathrooms, comfortable furniture, and canopies that shield from the rain, snow and sun. After all, even the fastest chargers need a half-hour to top off your car so you’d better enjoy the stay. The additional convenience could entice would-be EV drivers to take the plunge, adding fuel to the electric transition.
I don’t think EV chargers need amenities, I think we need to put the chargers in the places people are going anyway.
Gas station style roofs wouldn’t hurt
I expect chargers with big solar arrays bolted to the roofs to start being the norm tbh.
it’s free real estate.jpg
You need both. Destination chargers in malls and the like, and chargers along highways for people on longer trips.
It needs to look like a Starbucks or a McDonald’s. These idiot franchises on the highway should be adding EV chargers — it’s a captive audience.
At least in europe, these fast food chains almost always have electric charging. I think it’s a good fit, because charging the car and eating something takes about the same time.
Gas station chains like Sheetz, Wawa, and especially Buc-ees are well prepared for this.
This is literally an imagined problem. The current state of EV charging is that you spend maybe 20 minutes every 300 miles charging. It’s barely any longer than you already spend filling up with gas, grabbing a snack and using the bathroom.
takes me 3 minutes tops to fill up my gasoline car. barely any longer? maybe from the galactic scale.
It’s certainly longer and less convenient, but greatly offset by the fact I can almost always charge at home. Only on days where I drive more than a couple hundred miles (very rarely) do I need a charging station.
agreed. currently it really only makes sense to buy an ev if you can charge at home.
Or at work, or only need to charge once a week, or something similar.
most people dont keep their jobs over a decade anymore. dont get stuck in a shitty job situation because its your gas station too.
It takes you 3 minutes to fill up, grab a snack and use the bathroom?
Either if that is somehow true, and when you road trip you sprint around the gas station like a madman, that’s still adding around 15 minutes for every 4 hours of driving.
99% of the time, filling up a car with gas does not involve going to the bathroom or getting a snack.
The only time I do that is occasionally on road trips, and still, usually it’s just running in to use the bathroom, nowhere near 20 minutes.
OK well in this mode you’d spend 17 more minutes and save thousands of dollars in fuel costs?
I guess I missed the part where the discussion was on fuel costs.
The discussion is about the ownership experience. You clearly don’t own an ev but have lots of thoughts about how inconvenient it would be to stop an extra 15 minutes a few times a year. You’ve gotta balance that against the massive benefits an ev provides, one of which is a massively lower cost of ownership vs the n times a year you find yourself road tripping, which for most people isn’t really that often
I actually spent a lot of time weighing the benefits of buying an EV, as I used to have a 50 mile one way commute.
I opted to get a different job instead.
Again, the discussion is not about the ownership experience, it’s specifically about charging the cars. Also, my point is that you don’t road trip often and so, you aren’t typically spending 20 minutes at a gas station. I think you are just projecting an anti-EV stance onto me for some reason.
I’m specifically talking about filling on road trips, because otherwise you charge at home.
If you have the space and charging equipment.
The charging equipment I use is a normal wall outlet. I have a pretty small commute (maybe 30 miles) and I don’t need any special charging equipment to charge that much overnight.
The only time I use a public ev charger is on road trips. I never think about charging unless I’m driving more than 250 miles in a day. The only time I’m spending a full 20 minutes at a charger is if I’m driving closer to 450 miles.
It isn’t safe, but I know many people who do road trips that way. I’m pumping gas, make sure you are back in your seat when the pump turns off because I’ll leave without you. (I don’t think they ever left without someone, but if you were late they did find ways to punish you for it)
Takes me 30 seconds to charge my EV at home. I just plug it in and the next morning I have the equivalent of a full tank and don’t have to plan stops at some random gas station that’s occasionally out of the way to fill up.
This is simply not true. Even at fast chargers I do not get the advertised charging rate in my vehicle. So many factors influence it (heat, other vehicles charging, my cars software, etc…). I am lucky and can charge at home, but I. Road trips, I’m taking 25-30 minutes to charge, which is an inconvenience at this current time.
