These people have you to thank that I'm reporting their charger is broken. (Vandalism? Not so sure this was accidental.) http://www.chargepoint.com/ From the dust settled on it I'd say it's been down a little while, must not be a busy charger.
zener said:
How can u pay the charge in your home area?
Mr. Physics is referring to using a wall outlet to charge a low power consumption bike. Before you consider how people charge away from home, consider the ease so many CAN charge at home. (But not all.) I've never been there, I'm given to believe you're not standardized across the continent. I guess you have 100v to 220v at 16a. In the U.S. we have a conventional "Hair Dryer" outlet at 125v/20a. Entry level EV. And I've always heard our electricity is more reliable than yours, but my neighborhood will have 10-20 short power failures over the course of the year.
Nearly 70 million single family houses can get 240v/40a power (4x the little wall outlet) whether it's installed or not. If not I'd be surprised if a phonecall couldn't get it in maybe a week. (Maybe in some rural areas it's a problem.) You'd need an outlet that serves the garage, obviously. Townhomes, attached to one another but each unit with it's own garage I'd expect the same thing. Just so you understand that Mr. Physics is saying that perhaps 75% of America can charge at least a small EV at home, though without the 240v you'd be driving your Tesla maybe twice a week.
Apartment dwellers might not have a garage or any outdoor charging. I knew the guy who wanted one of my Vespa style scooters I used to fix but he couldn't carry it up to his apartment to charge. This was a scooter that would be safe to get over 30mph on and comfortable enough to spend a half hour at a time on going over 10 miles.
Ah, now onto the fun part of what you asked. Mr. Physics and I are at near opposite ends of the State of California. Which used to have maybe 97% of the public chargers in America. And 10-15 years ago they were FREE. Not that you could use them all, they have varying plugs, etc. And literally a number of them rotted away where they sat.
Still, there are chargers at a lot of City Halls, some are still free. I know a guy that lives in (The People's Republic of) Santa Monica, a place of free chargers in the park, unless that's recently changed. And him unable to afford one with the range to get him to work. (At the moment, anyway.)
I went to look at the Chargepoint near me at Walgreens real quick before the Indy 500 started. Whenever I think to check another Walgreens as I go by they have one. This one said it'll take credit cards, debit cars, etc. The website has a link to get a Chargepoint card, so maybe those stickers are out of date. Haven't used one, I can't explain it. But they claim over 17,000 chargers, over 5,000,000 charges, they even guess at over 100,000,000 miles driven on their charges.
Oh, they even have a link to request they put in a station near you. I've even talked to apartment dwellers who say they rarely get to charge their Volt but like it just fine anyway. Don't know if they need to get a Chargepoint installed near home and work or what.
I just want to remind YKick that just those living in Mr. Physics Utopia Zone (Also known as the Peoples Republic of Northern California) alone could bring a huge expansion in useage, raising the national average dramatically. In my weather I could make some 5,000+ annual miles on a 40+ mile roundtrip vehicle, if it wasn't going to cost more than I could get for my car and truck both and still not meet half my needs. Tantalyzing. (Isn't that more appealling with a 'Y'?) All our low numbers, it's all the PRNC's fault for setting such a bad example.
To the topic: lifepo4 is cheap compaired to gasoline over its full lifetime. But its expensive compaired to the raw material cost. I guess its provit we all want 8
16, 24, 32. . . .