Public Charging Stations

Battery swapping is a very, very bad idea. I know it sounds great to a lot of people on the surface, but there are some real problems with the idea.

First problem is operating cost. Right now a battery for an electric vehicle can cost anywhere between $10,000 to $50,000 depending on the vehicle. Now you'd need to have several of these batteries in stock and all charged up. Plus you'd need to spend several hundred thousand dollars on the equipment to actually do the swapping. Now factor in how many customers such a station would have on a given day. How much would you have to charge for a battery swap in order for a station like that to remain profitable. With current levels of electric vehicles I'd imagine you'd need to charge about $10,000 per swap. If 5% of the cars on the road were electric you might be able to charge $200 per swap. That costs a lot more than filling up a tank with gasoline. Who in their right mind would pay it?

But wait! It gets even better. Since there is no standardization on battery type, that means the station would need to store several types of different batteries as well as the equipment to change them out. Now you just quadrippled the up-front investment.

And you certainly wouldn't want all cars to standardize on one battery type, especially this early in the game. That would kill all future innovation of batteries and also mean all EVs would have the same capacity.

Then what happens when you buy your brand new shiny electric vehicle with its $18,000 battery inside and you take it to a swap station and wind up with a 6 year old battery that holds 50% capacity? Who absorbs the cost for that? If it is the swap station, then you better keep racking up the operating cost for that place. It is getting to the point that swapping a battery in a car is going to cost as much as buying a whole brand new EV.

Battery swapping sounds great for the end-user. Long distance commutes, free brand-new batteries anytime you want. But how in the world would anyone be able to run such a business?

 

Currently most of the charging stations in SoCal are free but that's changing soon. The Chargepoint network will start charging $2 an hour around June/July of next year. Walgreens are starting to install chargers and the cost will be around $3 an hour. the most expensive I have heard of so far is a blink network charger installed at Pala Casino just outside Temecula which charges $4 an hour.

Based on 50mpg and $4 a gallon gas it would be more cost effective to use gas than to charge if charging cost more than about 76 cents and hour so the introduction of such charging costs will mean charging at home only for most PIP owners unless they really want to use a little gas as possible

 

The decal is only at locations that state it is required. My understanding is that most locations aren't signed requiring the sticker.

 

You might want to ask Shai Agassi...

radio

 

That is actually no longer true, the legislation was changed earlier this year so that PHEV can now park in the spot as long as it is charging. If it isn't charging then it can be towed as long as the parking space is correctly signed.

Plug-in America have some fliers that you can put on the guy's windsheild politely asking them not to park unless charging. It may be just selfishness but it may also just be lack of though and a gentle reminder may be enough.

BTW - The white stickers were never used to control access to the EV charging spots. Under the old legislation there was a separate sticker that you had to obtain from the CA DMV that allowed you to park in the charging spots. This law also required specific signage on the parking spot and only a handful of spaces were ever marked with the correct signs.

 

I recently read the Penna. Turnpike will be installing chargers at their rest areas. I think this is great! The article also said that they will be installing two types of chargers. One will take 4 hours to charge and the other will take 20 minutes to charge. I wonder who would want to spend 4 hours at a Penna. Turnpike rest area? This is our government's way of thinking.

 

Everyone seems to believe that you have to charge fully each time you connect to a charger. A charger using the Full 32amp capability will give about 20 miles of range in an hour. So if you have 100 miles of to go and a a full battery with 100 miles of range when you set out, then a stop of say an hour while you have a picknick lunch will give you a nice 20 mile cusion so you are not worried about running out short of your destination.

There are a lot of things that effect charging. For example if you are parked at the airport for a week while on vacation then a nice 110V connection will have you fully charged when you get back. If you are driving a couple of hundred miles then you might want to have a DC fast charge. to get you up to 80% charge while you take a bathroom break.

If you are driving a PIP then you probably will be happy with a half hour top-up while you take a bathroom break or you can take longer if you want a bite to eat and get closer to full.

The ultimate of course isn't fast charging or battery swap but the use of inductive loops in the road that will allow you to drive as far as you want and arrive at your destination with a full battery. This technology is being tested in a couple of places including Korea but isn't ready for prime time now. Not sure how it would scale to a quarter million cars on the 405 freeway on a Friday evening.

 

I must say that is the biggest misconception to fight. Everyone believes you are tied to the charger. In the PiP or Volt you do not have to charge AT ALL. Granted that would defeat the purpose of your purchase, but you never have to. Like today I went to work, came home and we had errands to run. I plugged/unplugged the Volt at least 4 or 5 different times today for a total of 66.9mi @ 16.6kwh.. You do not need to do a full charge everytime. Once you depress the trigger release on the cord it automatically ceases all charging operations where it was. 20 miles per hour of charging would be great! The Volt only gets 10 miles per hour w 240V/15A. Going from 110 to 240 was a very nice leap. Bet charging at twice the amperage would be great as well.

My personal routine is anytime I am home. Like when I came home from work just long enough to change and get the wife I plug it in. Any additional miles/power is a good thing. I think it was maybe plugged up for 15 or 20 minutes before we set off again. Now granted if say I came home, and was just going to run inside and grab something that would be a waste of plugging up. If you are going to be home for more than 15 minutes however then I think it is a good idea since you will at least get an extra mile or 2. As insignificant as it may seem when you first start doing it every little bit counts. Like today all my little bits of charging here and there I still had 4 miles left when I pulled in the driveway after almost 67 miles using no gas at all.

 

Well put.

i think that's the big benefit of the hybrid synergy drive in general; squeeze every little bit of yardage using ev, glide or coast, to maximize mpg.

i can definitely see pluggin in if home for 15 minutes just to squeeze a little more out of the ev.

 

Believing you have to fully recharge every time you plug in does confuse the purchase decision. People tend to get hung up on doing things only one way.

Keeping misconceptions from flurrishing is something Toyota is really good at. With GM, it's unfortunate the quantity of electricity actually consumed had been excluded from their promotion & reports. Lack of detail is very much an enemy of change.

kWh values now being provided like that help to overcome the perception. That's good to finally see. (Thanks for your data.)

Fortunately for us, PIP only takes 1.5 hours to fully recharge with typical (240-volt) public charging-station anyway. So even if the pack is totally depleted, a visit to the mall, movie theater, restaraunt, or coffeeshop will cover it entirely anyway.
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I live in NYC and I have only seen one... "semi-public"... charger in a paid parking lot, so you have to be a customer to use it. I asked the attendant how much it costs to use it and he said, "oh that thing doesn't work...the credit card machine is busted".

 

Awesome article in today's Bay Area News Group paper -

" 'Clean IT' firm charges toward an electric future "

Q & A interview with Pat Romano, CEO of Coulomb Technologies, makers of Chargepoint, electric car charging stations. 4,500 charging spots up and running in 14 countries including 200 charger in SF Bay Area

Green Energy - San Jose Mercury News

:cheer2:

 

There are nearly 50 charging stations in Manhattan available to the public. Yes, most of them inside parking garages because there are working with a Point Of Sale type of equipment.
Hey, some body has to get paid for the equipment investment and electricity used by others.
Many of Manhattan's charge stations are managed by " ChargePoint" by Coulomb Technologies and operate by means of a charge pass type of swipe card. Any electrical charges are applied to your personal acct.
Take a look at Charge Point, it's a very convenient service for POS and free charge stations
I use their services regularly with my PHEV.

 

Amen. Realize there is no reason to expect a robust charging network to b4 in place whenEVs address just now becoming available in the area.


When I got my Leaf 11 months ago there were a half dozen 240 volt charging options within 25 miles of me. Today there is 43.

But st the same time there its now a reason to have them