Charging Station Congestion

[Logal727]

Did a road trip to Indy last week and found some fellow MachE drivers charging at a Walmart EA station. Three MachE's at the same time - that's a first for me.

Looks like a shopping cart getting charged too

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[HuntingPudel]

Looks like a shopping cart getting charged too

Well, they have a BBC powered shopping cart at Sonoma Raceway, why not an electric one? ??

 

[Mathington]

Side note...
We were one of the 5 cars at the AirBNB that Kyle mentioned in the video. There were two Teslas (the X and the 3 in the video), and 3 CCS cars (Ioniq 5, Taycan, and us). The CCS cars had no problems with busy CCS chargers. Granted, I don't think it will stay that way as more CCS cars are sold (and given free charging).

I agree, once more CCS EVs are on the road this year, things area going to get really busy real quick.
EA usually has about 4-6 chargers per site, vs Tesla who seems to have a lot more. I predict that people with CCS cars will be lining up a lot more than Tesla before the end of the year.

Hopefully EA, EvGo and the other providers can ramp up charger installs to accommodate the explosion in EV adoption.

 

[Mathington]

Did a road trip to Indy last week and found some fellow MachE drivers charging at a Walmart EA station. Three MachE's at the same time - that's a first for me.

What a beautiful line up!

 

[voxel]

it’s pretty dumb Bucees hasn’t added any yet, I could spend a good hour or so in that store.

Me too.

Bucees is building Tesla Superchargers at the Florida locafions but if you follow the build progress it is slow due to permits and installing power. It takes half a year or more it seems to get a site up. I suspect adding EA or EVGo chargers after would not be a major problem.

 

[Logal727]

Me too.

Bucees is building Tesla Superchargers at the Florida locafions but if you follow the build progress it is slow due to permits and installing power. It takes half a year or more it seems to get a site up. I suspect adding EA or EVGo chargers after would not be a major problem.

Ugh, just Tesla? Wtf

 

[jznd400]

These two EV6s were at most, 6 weeks old. If I’m seeing full station usage at stations from cars that are only a month or so old, then I’m thinking it won’t be long before we see some real congestion problems.

I see a lot of brand new EVs with temp plates at the public charging stations in our area, maybe a ratio of 2:1 to cars with metal plates. I wonder if these new owners are DC fast charging because they haven't been able to get L2s installed at home yet? That's what happened with me - DC fast charged a bunch of times because of the long lead times for an electrician to come and quote...then order parts (supply chain issues for suitable breakers nationwide?)...then book an install date...

Since I got my L2 installed, though, I haven't been back to a DC fast charger (yet).

 

[voxel]

Ugh, just Tesla? Wtf

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/1...for-superchargers-span-26-stores-in-7-states/

Yeah, I don't know who funds these chargers - Tesla or Buc-ee's. If Tesla is funding them then I can see a gas station happily obliging.

With EA, there is a funding round every 30 months so there must be a year of agreements and planning beforehand. The EA Tampa location (at Transworld Automotive) still isn't open and that has been "Coming Soon" since last summer.

If DC charging was actually profitable... you'd see a mad gold rush of companies building DC chargers everywhere. Instead, it's either utilities building them (Duke or FPL) or a single EVGo at Wawa's.

 

[Logal727]

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/1...for-superchargers-span-26-stores-in-7-states/

Yeah, I don't know who funds these chargers - Tesla or Buc-ee's. If Tesla is funding them then I can see a gas station happily obliging.

With EA, there is a funding round every 30 months so there must be a year of agreements and planning beforehand. The EA Tampa location (at Transworld Automotive) still isn't open and that has been "Coming Soon" since last summer.

If DC charging was actually profitable... you'd see a mad gold rush of companies building DC chargers everywhere. Instead, it's either utilities building them (Duke or FPL) or a single EVGo at Wawa's.

Yeah maybe we’ll get access to super chargers eventually and it will be worthwhile to non Tesla folks

 

[RickMachE]

The mad rush should happen soon once the $7.5B purse strings are loosened.

I have seen numerous Buc-ee's opened with nary a single charger, but almost 250 gas pumps. Clearly not a priority for them.

 

[Mathington]

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/1...for-superchargers-span-26-stores-in-7-states/

Yeah, I don't know who funds these chargers - Tesla or Buc-ee's. If Tesla is funding them then I can see a gas station happily obliging.

With EA, there is a funding round every 30 months so there must be a year of agreements and planning beforehand. The EA Tampa location (at Transworld Automotive) still isn't open and that has been "Coming Soon" since last summer.

If DC charging was actually profitable... you'd see a mad gold rush of companies building DC chargers everywhere. Instead, it's either utilities building them (Duke or FPL) or a single EVGo at Wawa's.

I'm not sure what it's like in the USA, but in Canada, Tesla, Electrify Canada, EvGo, Petro Canada can all apply for goverment funds to install EV charging infrastructure. We are talking up to tens of millions of dollars each being given to Tesla and other companies.

You can check the website to see a list of all the grants given out for charging, what company gets the money, how much and where the charger will be. Canada EV Charger Funding Data

 

[voxel]

The mad rush should happen soon once the $7.5B purse strings are loosened.

I have seen numerous Buc-ee's opened with nary a single charger, but almost 250 gas pumps. Clearly not a priority for them.

They seem to take 6-10 months to install... the permits were applied for before Nov 12, 2021 (6 months ago). I was at this Bucee's a month or so ago and never saw ANY construction.

This is what concerns me... even with $7.5B of funding... these chargers don't pop up overnight. In the meantime L2s can be cheaply installed and should be plentiful at malls.

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/supercharger-daytona-beach-fl-buc-ees.247030/

 

[tfitzgex]

Big waits and long queues. This is already happening at Tesla Superchargers. Are people seeing this at EA and EVgo?

I was at an EA station on Friday with a Bolt EV charging up when I got there and then two EV6s pulled up.

In Portland every.other.car. is electric Portland General Electric has subscription for their DCFC, 25 dollars a month for all you can charge (off peak hours) The nearest one to me, when they are working are almost always full. The one downtown is always busy. I'm usually surrounded by Nissan Leafs. I'm starting to see more teslas show up, because the DCFC have chadmo, and quite a few tesla owners have the adapter... which apparently they stopped making. I'm usually surrounded by Nissan Leafs.

 

[cvk71]

As a Tesla owner, I agree that Elon Musk's real brilliance was installing the Supercharger network. He has promised to soon allow other EVs to use that network, which no doubt will make him even more money!

And it could be good for us, too, since it would vastly expand the places we could fast-charge our MMEs. However, that could also make congestion at Superchargers worse. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Thankfully, state and Federal programs to fund new charging infrastructure are spooling up fast. That will help solve our short-term problem by installing more fast chargers.

But a long-term problem is looming, as the Washington Post pointed out in an article today: The grid isn't yet ready to handle the increase in demand for EV charging as we move rapidly from ICE cars to EVs. We're going to need to invest a lot more in modernization of the grid to handle the anticipated demand.

That reminds me to put in a plug for rooftop solar. My modest solar array feeds two Tesla Powerwall batteries, which run my house exclusively during peak and mid-peak hours. As a result, I draw from the grid only during off-peak hours, including charging my EVs. And during the summer, I send more electricity to the grid than I draw. More and more states have incentives for installing rooftop solar, such as tax credits and no-downpayment financing. I got more than 10 percent back in rebates when I installed the Tesla Powerwalls. I hope more EV owners will consider installing rooftop solar; it's really a no-brainer!

I installed a 12.24 kw system with 3 powerwalls on my house and it's working out great. Easily handles day to day charging without any juice from PG&E. In fact I just pumped 45 kw back to the grid in one day and I haven't needed anything from the grid for over a month. Only problem is Tesla customer service. It was so bad for my solar that I backed out of buying one of their cars and bought my Mache E

 

[PaulA]

I have never seen more than 2 other vehicles charging at any EA location I have visited. Often, we are the only ones.

I have been to EA locations in Michigan, Ohio, NY, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida.

Our experience has been similar to yours. We’ve used EA in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida. We saw, at most, one other car charging at the same time.

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