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fast charging at grocery stores

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Most EV owners charge at home or at work. And that's super convenient, makes going to gas stations seem like a chore. But a lot of people live in apartments and work at places without chargers, and this is a real barrier to getting them out of ICE cars. So I've been thinking about this problem of how they can do routine non-road-trip charging with the least inconvenience.

And I think the answer is supermarkets. Pretty much everyone with a car drives to the grocery store once or twice a week. For an EV with a 200-300mi range, the grocery shopping interval matches perfectly with how often you need to charge. And each time you spend around a half hour or so inside the store, an ideal length of time for a DC fast charge.

Tesla, EA, and other charging networks should push for large scale deployment of supercharging/CCS at grocery stores as the solution for this problem.
 
Most EV owners charge at home or at work. And that's super convenient, makes going to gas stations seem like a chore. But a lot of people live in apartments and work at places without chargers, and this is a real barrier to getting them out of ICE cars. So I've been thinking about this problem of how they can do routine non-road-trip charging with the least inconvenience.

And I think the answer is supermarkets. Pretty much everyone with a car drives to the grocery store once or twice a week. For an EV with a 200-300mi range, the grocery shopping interval matches perfectly with how often you need to charge. And each time you spend around a half hour or so inside the store, an ideal length of time for a DC fast charge.

Tesla, EA, and other charging networks should push for large scale deployment of supercharging/CCS at grocery stores as the solution for this problem.
Pretty much what we have here in Santa Cruz. Both the Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley SC are in the supermarket car parks.

I did exactly what you described the weekend after I got my MY. I left it charging while I did my weekly groceries shopping and came back 2 mins after it had finished.
 
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And supermarket fast charging will be even more useful as EVs spread down the socioeconomic ladder. So imagine a future where FoodMaxx, Grocery Outlet, and Walmart Supercenters have parking lots lined with Superchargers and CCS plugs, full of old Teslas and other EVs.
 
There's a midwest grocery store, Hy-Vee, and they have superchargers at some of their locations. Stopped at a couple of them on a recent road trip.
One in Davenport, IA - Hy-Vee - not mentioned on their store page
They had some good food and clean restrooms, so it worked nicely.


I could definitely see more supermarkets doing this. It was a lot better than "behind the hotel we're not staying at" we found a lot of other places
 
Exclusively fast charging at grocery stores would work in my neck of the woods. All of the circled stations are fast chargers in the same shopping center as a grocery store, or literally hosted by a grocery store. These are mostly EVgo but there is an EA site and a Supercharger. Actually, the Bernardo Sunnyvale Supercharger is hosted by Safeway but not shown on the map.

Plugshare@Grocery.jpg
 
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Here in NorCal Superchargers are sometimes colocated with shopping. In malls or Targets seem to be pretty common. By me, 4 of the 5 local Superchargers are in shopping parking lots (outlet mall, 2 Targets, and Home Depot). The outlet mall also has EA and was their first 350 kW location, but I have never seen anyone using that charger.
 
Fast charging exclusively degrades batteries faster, so home and work charging is probably a better bet long term. Colder climates already have plugins for block heaters in a surprising array of places, so it's not anything new.
urban SC's are hardly at a 1C charge rate. not really 'fast' or super degrading.
some cars have great capacity that have done only supercharging.
super conditioned V3 charging all the time may not be great?
 
Here in NorCal Superchargers are sometimes colocated with shopping. In malls or Targets seem to be pretty common. By me, 4 of the 5 local Superchargers are in shopping parking lots (outlet mall, 2 Targets, and Home Depot). The outlet mall also has EA and was their first 350 kW location, but I have never seen anyone using that charger.
The limitation to charging at malls and shopping centers is people don't go there on a regular schedule. I go to the mall/Target/Home Depot as needed, maybe a couple dozen or so times a year, irregularly spaced with more frequent visits in November and December. And different visits are different lengths of time, sometimes 15 minutes and sometimes 2 hours. Doesn't match the need for charging.

Whereas the grocery store, I go predictably about every 3-4 days and always spend around 30 minutes. Just matches the charging need perfectly.
 
The limitation to charging at malls and shopping centers is people don't go there on a regular schedule. I go to the mall/Target/Home Depot as needed, maybe a couple dozen or so times a year, irregularly spaced with more frequent visits in November and December. And different visits are different lengths of time, sometimes 15 minutes and sometimes 2 hours. Doesn't match the need for charging.

Whereas the grocery store, I go predictably about every 3-4 days and always spend around 30 minutes. Just matches the charging need perfectly.
Many Targets, Walmarts, etc. are now grocery stores as well.
 
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Yep. We buy 80% or more of our grocery items at Target. They are up to 50% cheaper on canned goods, breads, and snacks than the local Safeway. We still buy fresh meats, veggies, and fruits from Safeway and smaller stores, but not much more.
That's pretty much what I noticed up here. Target cheaper than all the other local big groceries. Except Walmart here is still the cheapest. Having said that, we go to the Casino to eat more often than we go to the grocery store to get groceries so we sure love the supercharger and destination charger there.
 
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Yep. We buy 80% or more of our grocery items at Target. They are up to 50% cheaper on canned goods, breads, and snacks than the local Safeway. We still buy fresh meats, veggies, and fruits from Safeway and smaller stores, but not much more.
Target and Walmart's logistics system is really good at cheaply moving mass quantities of nonperishable boxed goods. That's why Target and Walmart grocery sections are full of cheap junk food. Safeway, Albertsons, Sprouts, and other grocery chains have invested lots of money building a supply chain for fresh produce and meats, which is a harder problem.

I would discourage people from doing grocery runs at Target and Walmart. I think Target/Walmart shoppers' grocery buying habits tend to drift to junk food over time, because that's what those stores promote. I see a lot more chub-chub at Walmart than Safeway, and this is at stores literally on opposite corners of the same intersection of Almaden and Cherry here in San Jose.
 
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urban SC's are hardly at a 1C charge rate. not really 'fast' or super degrading.
some cars have great capacity that have done only supercharging.
super conditioned V3 charging all the time may not be great?
It must be similar in cost from urban SC compared to V3. At the Houston galleria, I believe they are going with V3 instead of urban. I would think that urban would make more sense to give you a little time to shop rather than just charge and go.
 
And supermarket fast charging will be even more useful as EVs spread down the socioeconomic ladder. So imagine a future where FoodMaxx, Grocery Outlet, and Walmart Supercenters have parking lots lined with Superchargers and CCS plugs, full of old Teslas and other EVs.

I've seen a LOT of Electrify America chargers in Walmart parking lots. I think it's one of their first choices, and I think it's a good one.
 
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It must be similar in cost from urban SC compared to V3. At the Houston galleria, I believe they are going with V3 instead of urban. I would think that urban would make more sense to give you a little time to shop rather than just charge and go.

I like the idea of urban chargers as well. The lower charge rate is also less damaging for the battery pack. Maybe they could all be V3, but allow the car owner to select a charge rate? Or simply select the amount of charge time such at 15 minutes, or an hour, or whatever, and the charge rate would adjust accordingly.
 
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