Feds award $521 million in EV charger funds, but rollout remains slow
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Is it normal for you to see gas stations with four pumps and not another one for 50 miles or more?
Is it normal for you to wait for 15-20 minutes per car before getting through the pump line to start your car fueling?
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Yeah you can move hydrogen generation off site, but then you add in transport cost to something that is already fairly expensive comparatively. You still need the local storage equipment which is not cheap to store a substantial amount, and as you said compressor losses.
Hydrogen is appealing because it is similar to the fossil fuel setup. Massive refineries and then transport said product to smaller locations for distribution. The issue is that hydrogen is significantly less energy dense and is significantly harder to store.
Most of hydrogens problems are solvable, they just add additional cost to something that is already expensive.
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I suspect that - in addition to handwave-y statements about and the exhaust is water vapor - the superficial similarity to liquid hydrocarbon operations is the appeal. Except the not-so-secret dream of converting diesel engines to hydrogen isn't going to pan out primarily for reasons of fuel density - even with terrifying cryogenic hydrogen. And facts-on-the-ground refueling speeds at pilot H2 stations are often similar to DC fast charging electric vehicles.
It's all possible within the realm of existing technology, just not presently economically feasible nor do any of the developable proposals within the R&D pipeline look to change this reality.
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Fully agree, but my prediction is that long haul trucking will be a combo of:
- Better batteries (improved Wh/kg and Wh/$)
- High powered fast chargers
- Autonomous on freeways
I think the trucking transition will ultimately be driven by companies chasing lower operating costs, and batteries will win there.
Catenaries are way more infrastructure-heavy than a network of fast charger stations. They make more sense for rail than roads (because rail doesn't cover last mile, it's a sparse network).
Hot swapping a $50K battery pack requires a lot of trust from customers, and heavy equpiment. That business model won't get off the ground for anything bigger than scooters.
Autonomous (domain limited to just freeways) will be way cheaper for long haul. Trucks pulls into a charging stall and a person plugs it in. Somewhere near a city's edge, a driver will meet the truck to drive the cargo last mile to the customer and manage the delivery.
Freeway autonomous is vastly easier to get 100% right than urban, and the partial autonomy will face less resistance.
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I'm planning a trip in late fall. Do the rental people still charge a large premium for EVs that they are now getting rid of because they cost too much (possibly because they're not being rented as much as expected, except by Uber drivers)? The place I'm going is kind of rural, and doesn't have a LOT of chargers, but there's a small cluster of superchargers around one interchange not far away and a small EA site that's usually about 1/2 broken according to Plugshare, there are a few public and car dealer Level 2s scattered around, and the place I'm staying has RV plugs (do the rental cars have a bag of adapters in the trunk/frunk?). It's about 125 miles from the various airports I might use, so doable if I start with a full charge, though for one of them there's a decent mountain range to cross.
If I were doing this from home, a Bolt would work fine. Unfortunately, it's 600 miles away. Flying for 1 1/2 hours and driving for 1-2 hours is better than driving for 2 days. Oh well.
If I were doing this from home, a Bolt would work fine. Unfortunately, it's 600 miles away. Flying for 1 1/2 hours and driving for 1-2 hours is better than driving for 2 days. Oh well.
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Caltrans has (slowish, but free) DC chargers at a lot of the rest stops in the south-central inland areas. Unfortunately, most of them are broken (no ongoing budget for maintenance), or inaccessible because the rest areas are closed long-term for construction.
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Used to be. Lots of "Next gas 50 miles" or so signs in rural California, sometimes not even that far away from urban areas. Less common now, of course.
Truck stop with lots of gas pumps but low prices next to a heavily used freeway? Yes, 15-20 min wait is not unusual. Problem with EV chargers is that your worst-case wait can be a lot longer than that, though with the Bolt I never had to wait long, if at all, at any charger (though getting a charge once connected could take a while).
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I've seen more chargers out of service in my 1.5 years of EV ownership and 30k miles on it than the number of gas pumps I've seen out of service in 20 years of driving cars over hundreds of thousands of miles.
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I take it you don't own a Tesla? That's not to say Tesla superchargers are anywhere near perfect, but their uptime is much better than non-Tesla DC chargers. I've a dozen out-of-service stalls in 7.5 years) as listed in the app's real-time operational status and with my eyes. And I'm pretty sure I've seen more than that at a gas station over 20+ years (I've seen entire rows closed down).
It's just generally such a non-issue for gas pump that most people don't even notice it (which actually supports the point that EV charging uptime matters more than gas pump uptime).
Hopefully, NEVI uptime requirement lead to more reliable chargers that combined with the realtime availability requirement (which is true for Superchargers, but not all other charging networks) should mitigate these types of problems.
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Reasonable.
To the extent that the catenary model has a chance, it would involve major freight corridors, trucks with moderate battery packs, and intermittent deployment to facilitate charging at a rate less than DC fast charging.
But it's still a lot of infrastructure to run.
The capital cost would be significant, along with the cost to users. Would have a better chance of working if the industry standardizes on a single formfactor and goes out of their way to properly maintain packs with a meaningful performance guarantee, but that's a bit of an ask.
I expect this to catch on regardless of drivetrain. The industry is powerfully driven to eliminate costs and wages are one of the prime targets there. Offerings like BlueCruise are close to being able to handle this task today; others I'm unaware of may simply be awaiting market and regulatory acceptance. I expect that there will be the occasional highway rescue by drivers who otherwise perform drayage runs.
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Depends heavily on the way you charge.
If I charge at home using cheap electricity from an off demand meter my Ioniq 5 is about a third the cost of my Prius per mile, assuming I don't count the costs to have the 240V line and meter installed. With those the payback will be well over a year.
If I use the level 2 charger at my Mom's retirement community it's a wash with my Prius
If I use a DCFC around here it runs $0.50-0.56/KW, which is more than twice what my Prius costs per mile
Admittedly an extreme example comparing DCFC to one of the most efficient gas cars, but in general you won't save substantial money with an EV unless you can home charge or find a super cheap lvl 2 like the one at my work.
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I was responding to a previous poster saying that the lower cost per mile of EVs will drive adoption quickly. You are correct that cost per mile calculation is heavily dependent on your local electric rates and local gas prices and is not always a victory for EVs.
But what I bolded was more my main point. Even if in a persons area the cost per mile is lower to charge at home you can't discount the cost to install an EVSE in a low income area. I plan on installing my own but even then I am looking at almost $500 and that is not needing a panel upgrade, and me doing all the wiring and install. That would just be an additional expense for someone when they are buying a car.
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I don't own a Tesla, but I see enough superchargers out around the greater seattle area when I pass by them
It's not just superchargers, everything from level 2 posts (Tesla destination charging included) to DCFC all seem like they got terrible uptime...
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So you are looking at the Supercharger stations as you pass and seeing out of order stalls?I don't own a Tesla, but I see enough superchargers out around the greater seattle area when I pass by them
I agree that non-Tesla DC charger and most L2 chargers tend to have worse uptime. Tesla destination chargers don't report real-time availability data and more importantly not are maintained by Tesla, but rather the "destination" (e.g. the hotel) that they are located at. I've personally never had an issue with Tesla destination chargers, but I've only use about a dozen of them over the past 7.5 years.
As I mentioned above, it was unclear to me if you are claiming Tesla superchargers in your area also have poor uptime that is worse than the overall 99.97% uptime for the whole Supercharger network.
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Yeah.... that's literal bullshit from Tesla.
Just ignore our broken chargers and judge the location as a whole.
It's nowhere near 99.97% in reality.
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Hot swapping for long-haul freight trucks is the one use case where it kinda makes sense. Standardizing battery pack size and location is easier (vs light duty cars and trucks), shipping routes are more predictable (vs general public), and being able to charge batteries more slowly helps keep infrastructure and consumption costs in check (utilities do not like big spikes in usage, especially during peak demand periods).
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I see. Separately, how are you judging Tesla Supercharger uptime if you are just driving by then?
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Technically, yes. Packaging for large trucks is both more generous and more standardized than personal automobiles. Demand is more predictable as well - operators could even know days in advance when a given truck is scheduled to make a stop and plan accordingly.
But like hydrogen it runs into cost issues. For every hotswap-capable truck there will need to be some (fraction) of a pack on hot standby out there waiting for them. As the battery is the most expensive component of a BEV that cost will be passed on to the user in the form of significant fees.
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No, you're correct, although anyone looking into a level 2 at home should check with their electric company. Mine offered a $300 rebate if I put in a load shifting meter- didn't cover the electrical work, but it did pay for the charger itself
Or you can be smarter than me and check your local Plugshare. My work has a couple of L2s that are $0.10/kW-hr. Even with the cheap electricity I get off the load shift, it's going to take me something like 15000kW-hr worth of charging to amortize the home install over just charging at work...
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There’s no reason to install Level 2 or an EVSE - it is a luxury someone with a low income fortunately doesn’t need. You can charge most people’s daily driving with a regular outdoor outlet.
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I think there is still technically an EVSE when plugging into a 120V outlet, it's just a very simple one - in the same way that an EV still technically has a transmission, even though it is a single speed with a fixed gearbox.
I've read that the labor of pulling the wire and setting up the metering and stuff is the major cost... so you might as well put in even a low power 240V (e.g. 3kW) as the material costs are only incrementally more. Also I think 240V is like 5-10% more efficient, so installing 120V might save you initially, but it would cost more in the low run (over years/decades) - especially with L1 potentially not being to replenish a daily commuter + errands.
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If I drove straight to work and back it would take 6 hours to replenish what I used. If I ran errands and stopped and visited until late at night like usual, it would not be full the next day. Not a problem, but I wouldn't want to do that too many days in a row.
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And ... if you have TOU metering (which we have as default here, regardless of EV use), you can always charge from a 120V outlet for short commutes. At 4 miles/kwh, you can easily recover the energy used in a 24-25 mile round trip commute overnight. Longer than that, yes, you need the Level 2, but when you get the car you can use 120V to get used to it, charge overnight, and still get an off-peak rate. The local utility also offers a $0.015 discount from the off-peak rate between midnight-0600 if a EV is registered to the service address, which works whatever voltage you're using.
I ran off 120V for about 6 months after buying a Bolt. Required a little planning, but it worked fine.
Edit: and charging at home was much less expensive per-mile than buying gas for the Prius (at $4.50-5.00/gallon around here).
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I could see battery swaps at operator-owned facilities, eg pepsi plants. Otherwise, seems cheaper to just have stationary batteries buffering the grid draw at a truck stop where various trucks come by and plug in for half an hour each.
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The capital costs suggest a high degree of regimentation would maximize that ROI - knowing where rigs will be at any given hour, knowing route schedules to the point that a hotswap makes sense mid-route or end of day swapping in another driver.
Those don't need to be expensive/low(er) cycle-life li-ion either - LFP or one of the many flavours of flow batteries. Could even be a service that grid-scale peaking/load-following battery banks offer.
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Yes, states must submit plans with specific requirements to get the funds. https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/12744
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If Chargepoint could fix ONE issue in 1.5 weeks it would be a serious improvement.
Collectively only having 9 days of downtime allowed per calendar year is a significant upside to the current situation
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They've fixed "down" issues in my city within 2 weeks normally... other issues like not linking online, or etc is a bit longer...
Chargepoint's issue is that they don't own most of their chargers. They sell chargers to other people and repair it based on the contract's budget and etc...
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China, approximately the same geographical area as the USA, has more than 2million chargers (most Level 2 but DC fast chargers gaining momentum). Consequently, EV sales passed 30% last year and closing in on 50% now, while EV sales in USA & most of EU are tanking. This high cost of EV is USA is certainly one factor, but widespread owner dissatisfaction in many areas points to the root cause: not enough working chargers.
A plan to have 500,000 by 2030 is not going to start the revolution needed to meet US electrification and clean energy goals. Get with the program.
A plan to have 500,000 by 2030 is not going to start the revolution needed to meet US electrification and clean energy goals. Get with the program.
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To be sure, China's one party government and party-state capitalism allows it to be much more decisive and ambitious it it's national plans - for better (China's HSR rail system has done a great job are replacing regional air travel) or for worse (China's "encouragement" of real estate development lead to lots of corruptions/embezzlement with "tofu concrete" buildings and as well as ghost cities). Still personally, I think investing in infrastructure almost never a bad idea ("the bridge to nowhere" is the exception to the rule)... even with the missteps and false starts, I think China has done a superior job compared to the US (with the two-party system in the US and more state independence, it takes us time to move, especially if there is "disagreement" among people at the lower levels of government, which is basically not allowed in China for better or worse.
It's hard to say what the needed number of L2 chargers is.. one big difference between the US and China is that 65% of households in the US live in single family homes, a majority of them (like 80%) are owned and a majority of those (over 90%) have a garage/carport. On the flipside only 9% of US households that drive to work live in apartment buildings of over 9 units. That's compared to the 25% of single family homes in China. I couldn't find a stat on the percentage of apartment dwellers in China (particular ones that owned and drove cars) do you have a link? The number of DC chargers that China has is impressive though and I hope US will catch up (as seen by this article, we are trying to).
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