raylo32
100 kW
You just expertly made my case that they are great commuter/city cars, but not so much for long distance travel. And, no, electricity lines and infrastructure does NOT run everywhere. This is a huge country. And even where it exists not near enough capacity to service our 263 million vehicle fleet. And even today when there are very few users if you get just one car in front of you at the supercharging station might as well go have lunch. You aren't going anywhere.
billvon said:Right. Now count the number of outlets available in a typical mall - each capable of level 1 charging.raylo32 said:I don't see how the charging infrastructure can ever be as ubiquitous as gasoline stations, especially here in the USA. Think of a busy Interstate highway with literally thousands and thousands of gas pumps and you still have to wait to access one sometimes.
The big advantage of EV charging over gas usage is that power lines already run everywhere, so adding charging stations is easy (at least at first.) And no big excavation projects for tanks, or environmental hassles from spills, and much less risk of fire. No real estate needed; no land to buy or rent, no curbs to cut, no new asphalt to pour. Just existing parking spaces. And once you start to hit the limits of the grid infrastructure, the upgrades needed are well-understood and common.
I am one of the EV coordinators for my company, and we solved most of the charging problems by putting a simple outlet at each EV parking spot. Outlets are $0.61 each. Even with the conduit, wiring, breaker additions etc the total cost was about $100 per parking spot. People get to work, plug in, and don't think about it until they leave - and they get ~40 miles of range during that time. So for the most part there won't be lines; there will be people looking for parking spots, which people are used to now. (There will still be lines for fast chargers for people taking long trips, but these are the exception rather than the rule.)So even if you were to replicate those thousands of pumps into charging outlets (utilities will have to seriously upgrade generating and distro lines for that), each fill takes at least 20x the time it takes to pump gas. How does that work? Lines will be into the next county.
But thinking about how to put chargers along malls, highways, businesses etc in the same numbers as gas pumps sort of misses the point. Gas cars can't be refueled at your house. EV's can be. Most people are going to do most of their charging at home, using a grid system already set up to deliver ~20kW to each home. And they are going to tend to do this when power is cheap (at night) - which is the time that the grid is seeing the lowest load currently. So it will be a long time before any grid upgrades are needed for that.
Tesla has put a fast charging station every ~100 miles across most major highways in the US. (https://www.tesla.com/findus) That covers long trips. But again, most people won't use that sort of charging for their everyday driving.Not to mention the vast empty stretches of our country... good luck electrifying that. These pure electrics cars are great and I do see a role for them as local commuters that can charge at home and/or workplace every day. But beyond that, not so much.