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Flex for sure
Some of these ev signings are horrible I’m sick
Some perspective… There are less than 10,000 DC fast charging stations in the US and Canada and roughly 30,000 charge ports total. Assuming newly purchased EVs charge at 400 mph on average (optimistic, my Ioniq 5 is ~600 mph) that’s a bit over 10 million miles per hour of DC fast charging capacity for all of North America. This in turn means that if these chargers were used 24 hours a day 365 days a year they could support around 3% of the miles Americans drive annually.
For comparison there are 150,000 gas stations in the US, each with multiple pumps. The gas station network can fuel at 15 billion miles per hour- 1500 times faster than the charger network can currently. Even assuming cars charge 5x faster over the next decade we’d still need 300 times more charge stations than we have currently to equal the gas station network in terms of miles per hour capacity. Even if 90% of charging is handled at home or work you’d “only” functionally need 30x the current charger network. And then there’s the Thanksgiving surge when everyone wants to drive…
Conclusion: the switch to EVs is going to have a long tail. The first ~50% of cars can switch relatively quickly: those that have access to chargers at home or work. Unfortunately with today’s tech there is no practical way to build out the fast charge network to support the next 50% if they can’t find somewhere else to charge. Something else will be required, either much faster charging rates again (well beyond the 2000 mph average assumed above) or a proliferation of medium rate chargers at shopping centers or parking meters. Either way gas will be with us for a very long time to come, especially in rural areas.
Getting the economic incentives aligned to get all those slower chargers built, ideally in places like work where cars are parked during the day, seems key to avoid charging capacity being the bottleneck.
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The great flaw in that breakdown is the assumption that most evs get charged at dc fast chargers.
DC fast chargers (or public chargers in general) shouldnt be looked at as the analog for gas stations for practical rv usage. It is a very different use case (or at least should be) for daily driving for most.
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Did you read it all?
Youre still using it as a gas station analog though. One needs to look at it completely different.
Or perhaps a better way to look at that is to say that the gas pump capacity is greatly oversized for the ev charging usecase. Saying the refuel rate is 1500 times more doesnt make it 1500 times more useful if the method of use is fundamentally different.
Maybe we should approach it more like this:
There are approximately 140M houses in the united states, and at home level 2 charging can average out to 25 miles per hour.
That puts you at the potential of 3.5B miles per hour without touching dc fast charging.
Obviously, thats a bs number, but the point is, it needs to be looked at totally differently than a gas station analog.
You’re still missing the point. For the percentage that either own homes or have access to overnight/ at work chargers what you’re suggesting is completely correct. That’s the first 50% I mention. But even if that charge capacity was infinite it would be completely useless to the ~50% who don’t have access to it. That’s the problem facing the charge network.
A bit under half of the population rents. Nearly half of all cars are either parked on public streets overnight or are in private parking with no access to an electric outlet. Today servicing the mileage needs of that population alone would require 17x the current fast charge capacity if it was used 24/7. Obviously it can’t be used all the time hence it would need multiples more.
The flaw in your logic is assuming everyone can charge like those with chargers at home or at work, when the fact is a huge percentage can’t. Fixing that issue will take time, and until it’s fixed the analysis above applies and charging will be a bottleneck.
California alone has 10,000 DC fast chargers.
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Subtract all the EA chargers that don’t work.
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We’re installing dozens more level 2 all over campus every 2-3 years. Can’t discount corporate and other institutions implementations going forward. Won’t solve the problem but one has to realize it’s a growing number and there’s still capacity for scaling
Does this count Tesla SCs too… because someone told me everyone is going NACS. 
The wife’s work have just 5x’d their charger count in their garage
At my last company we installed eight level two chargers for a building of ~60 people. We rotated spots 2-3x per day and were able to charge about 20 EVs with them. At my current company the parking lot setup and building make a similar install much more expensive and less attractive so we haven’t pulled the trigger.
Let’s get real: as of early 2021 (latest numbers I could find) there were fewer than 10k EV chargers at work in US, 95% of them level 2. Those charge at around 20 mph, so they added an additional ~200k miles per hour of charging capacity. That’s not even a drop in the bucket. Not to be a naysayer- I do think workplace charging is the best next option. But do the math: Americans drive 3.2 trillion miles per year. If we’re going fully electric and half of those drivers couldn’t charge overnight we’d need 40 million level 2 chargers 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to charge for those miles. So we’re off to a great start with workplace charging, we’re .025% of the way there already.
We have two EVs, a garage, we charge from solar, we live in CA with tons of DC fast chargers around. All of which make EVs seem easy and obvious. But getting to high penetrations of EVs (over 50%) is going to take fundamental changes to infrastructure on a scale most can’t fathom. And as I pointed out above the biggest issue is that the financial incentives are not aligned to make these changes. Installing a workplace charger is expensive, running thousands (if you’re lucky) to many tens of thousands of dollars. Once installed they can save employees lots of money on gas/ commute costs, but is that sufficient incentive for the employer? And getting practical: our current building parking lot is shared. We’d need to change our long term building lease, rip up our lot and get a service upgrade from PG&E to add enough chargers for less than half our employees. Getting the economic incentives aligned to add the required number of chargers is a huge issue.
Does anyone really think gas won’t be with us for a very long time?
Depends how much money they print to throw at it. Apparently we can afford to support 2 wars, so I don’t see anyone stopping the ev agenda advancing using federal dollars. At the rate of inflation only half the country will be able to afford cars in the future anyway, maybe less, so have to factor that in as well.
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From memory at the last meeting we had on this, level 3 chargers were around 100k each, required a transformer upgrade with a two year waiting list, and needed a 80 percent utilization rate at 50 cents a kw plus the cost of electricity to break even. Utilization was hovering around 20-30 for existing stations
I recognize you were taking about level 2 charging - we were going for volume, and it really reset my ambitions. We went from one EV to 12 and still have two level 1 chargers a year later. At least it get people to work early (posturing for the plugs!)
Our local EA station went from no one there to a waiting list all day - overnight. The famous hospital next door took OUT their level 2 stations they had for a decade because people were ignoring the two hour time limit, and even towing the vehicle couldn’t solve the problem.
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it’s ok though, soon the israelis will hit gaza with their “jewish space lasers” and we won’t have to support 2 wars.
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Fundamentally EVs are on track to be much cheaper than gasoline from an overall cost per mile point of view, so there will be a net dividend when we get there. Unfortunately there’s a mountain to climb between here and there, so if we’re going to grow the capability organically it will take a time. It will get figured out though: wholesale electric prices when it’s sunny out are the equivalent of ~$.20 per gallon gas depending on node, so there will be no shortage of incentive.
You don’t think when we transition from oil to electric that rates will increase dramatically? If everyone installs solar can we support the materials to provide that? Competing energy is always the answer so there’s competition in the market. Rare earth is mined in very unstable areas, do we want to rely on that? We already give China so much control over our markets, 60% of materials come from there, chips from Taiwan etc etc.
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At my ‘friends’ last company they installed 10 Lvl 2 chargers for a building of over 100 people.
Since it was located on Level 1 all the lawyers in the building parked there with their ICE cars and paid fines happily because 1) No one parked there but EVs 2) They got themselves sweet exclusive parking on level 1. 3) Lawyers time = money and less time parking = more money.
So no one got to charge their cars.
They moved the chargers to level 5 after that…lol
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I have a horse in the race so I’m biased, but no I don’t. Rates are going up due to unnatural incentive structures, mandates, etc, and the world will need to adapt to volatile rather than fixed pricing. That won’t be easy. But fundamentally renewable electricity is cheaper:
The average new built wind or solar plant make power substantially cheaper than existing, paid off gas and coal plants cost to run. And because these are engineering and production problems (I’m an engineer), and as such prices will come down over time. Yes there will be supply crunches as for example battery production grows but there are no fundamental supply bottlenecks that won’t be overcome.
The big caveat is that coal or gas give you power when you want it, while solar or wind gives you power when it has it. Thus Solar and wind might be cheaper but it’s also less valuable. But if you can figure out how to use it when available (charging your car at work when the sun is shining, for example) it’s fundamentally going to be much, much cheaper. Solar has come down 10x in the last ten years and it’s nowhere close to done. When the world adapts to that… like I said: sub $.20 per gallon gas equivalent. Industrial customers, often behind the meter, are already starting to see the economic benefits this type of pricing can bring.