Question from Australia. What is the commonly available public charger equipped with? That is, not your domestic charger, but in car parks or shopping centres. J1772, Type 2, or what?
thanks.
Heres some approx 'statistics'(!) based on 3 yrs and 30k miles of using an EV pretty much every day:- In 1000+ trips of all lengths, I've only ever 'needed' to use a 7 or 15kw charger on about half a dozen times, ie less than 1% of the time. Its something of a novelty to try out them out, but generally with up to 200+ miles of daily range 99% of my journeys are covered by 32amp / 7kw overnight charging at home. I simply dont bother with all these daft 13amp sockets TFL have been putting London - pointless.
I tend to carry around a variety of cables and adpaters allowing me to use 13amp / 32amp blue commando / J1772 / Type-2 adapter, and the Tesla 15kw chargers have their own cables.
Below is a lengthy deliberately OTT post I prepared for another forum about the EV charging infrastructure and charging away from home if you need it. Its to give some comfort to all the range-anxiety armchair experts out there in ICE land, but as stated above 99% of my charging needs are catered for by topping up overnight, and I imagine this is the same for 'most' EV drivers.
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I wonder how many ICE car drivers realise that there may now be more charge points than petrol stations in the UK ??
(... and that's not including 1 billion+ 13 amp sockets at homes and offices !)
- Ecotricity now have almost every motorway service station covered offering multiple FREE fast charging points providing 50kw DC, 43kw, 22kw, 7kw. They'll also supply electricity to your home with a discount if you own a pure EV.
- All IKEA's have Ecotricity chargers mainly 7kw / 43kw / 50kw chademo.
- Then there's something like 5,000+ 7kw+ charge points out there, many linked to hotels/restaurants/shopping centres. See the ZCW, Opencharge and other maps below.
- Within a year or so Tesla will have rolled out there UK superchargers on main motorways for Model S, and perhaps any future EV manufacturers that licence their tech.
- Tesla also have a little known grid of 15kw / 70amp chargers that's been in place for 4 yrs. It covers the entire UK if you assume a radius of 175 miles from each one.
- Nissan Dealers also provide 50kw Chademo high power charge points for the Leaf fleet, although mostly not all accessible at night. These will soon be usable by the Tesla Model S.
- There are literally thousands of 32amp / 7kw blue-commando outlets all over every industrial estate I've been to. However, whilst these are very handy on business / site meetings, they are not promoted anywhere as public charge points!
- And as a last resort most EVs can be plugged into those 1 Billion+ mains sockets all over the UK
( I've been trying to guesstimate theoretically how many 13amp sockets there are in the UK and generally arrive at about 1.4 Billion .. !!!)
Other factoids :-
There is only about 8,000 petrol stations in the whole of the UK ... see the last map below.
There are approx 34 million vehicles in the UK, 28 million of them ICE cars.
There are only about 5,000 EVs in the UK at present. That will leap by nearly a 1,000 when Tesla Model S's start arriving mid year, with other EV sales this year taking the total to maybe 7,500 by Q1 2015.
Apparently 96% of car drivers do less than 46 miles a day.
Most ICE car owners don't seem to get that most EV's top up at night, have full range every morning, and that you don't fill them up with petrol every couple of weeks. Public charge points don't get used anywhere near as much as domestic overnight charging. But its nice to know they are there, especially if planning for long trips.
Most EV drivers use them for town/city/commuting and don't care that they can't do 578 mile trips at 180mph like some of the ICE brigade bang on about.
EVs are not for everyone and if you really do want to randomly drive to John O'Groats before breakfast then no worries - go buy a 2nd hand VW Passat TDi for £5k. Its still a free world. Mostly.
Charge map websites and APP's
There is not yet one combined charge map due to many suppliers jostling for superiority, and many of the location flags on the maps shown below do overlap. However, the vast majority of EV drivers will be relying on nightly top ups rather than depend on the growing charging network. Here's a few examples :-
Open Charge Map - The global public registry of electric vehicle charging locations
Our Electric Highway - For The Road - Ecotricity
Home - Zero Carbon World
Charge point map | Source London
Live Map
Charge Point Map | Plugged in Midlands
PlugShare - EV Charging Station Map - Find the nearest location to charge your electric car!
Zap-Map - charging points map - UK electric car charge points
Relative EV distances Vs top 100 >7kw sites in the SW. I prepared these maps a couple of years ago when taking a Tesla Roadster on a driving holiday all around the south and south west of England having driven down there from the Midlands. We did about 1500+ miles in 2 weeks. Funnily enough the hotel we mainly stayed in had an unannounced 7kw type 2 charge outlet and we also made use of the 15kw charger at Taunton on the M5 when having lunch on the way back home. Just for the hell of it we also plugged in at The Eden Project since they have an eco-car-charging area close to the main entrance which saves a lengthy walk from one of the large car parks.
And just in case anyone is still reading, here's a
petrol station map for the south west !!
