Parking Etiquette Question

[NullException]

I strongly believe that Tesla needs to work harder to try to put these at restaurants or malls instead, and encourage the hotels to get a bank of destination chargers instead.

Are they locating new superchargers at hotels (that's if they're building out the network in Canada at present)?
In the UK, they're mostly doing what you're suggesting.

I think Nastned is getting it absolutely right in terms of locations and facilities, in the Netherlands: Fastned

 

[green1]

Are they locating new superchargers at hotels (that's if they're building out the network in Canada at present)?
In the UK, they're mostly doing what you're suggesting.

The last one that opened in western Canada was at a hotel, and one of the 2 under construction right now is also at a hotel.

I think Nastned is getting it absolutely right in terms of locations and facilities, in the Netherlands: Fastned

I like what Fastned is doing, I've seen stuff about them before. Where we are, there's really no competition to the superchargers. There are a few chademos, but they're not enough to road trip on.

Sun Country Highway has done great things in Canada with L2 chargers, but L2 is really a bit of a kludge if you want to get anywhere.

 

[donv]

I agree that you shouldn't ICE those spots. That said, there is a 110 volt charging spot that I park at occasionally. While I always plug the car in, the reality is that 110 charging isn't going to do much for me, for the couple of hours that I'm parked there.

 

[artsci]

So I'm the happy owner of a MS P90D, and in my office building parking lot there are two other Model S's parked every day. In our large parking lot we have 6 spaces with ChargePoint chargers, with each space painted green with white words reading "Electric vehicle charging station". These spaces are also the closest spaces to the building entrance.

So everyday I park in a normal parking space, while the other 2 MS's park in the ChargePoint spaces, but never charge. And to my way of thinking, that's cheesy. To me, it's like using grandma's car to go to the grocery and parking in the handicapped spots, even though you don't need to. But maybe I'm old and crotchety. And no, no other cars ever seem to be charging outside my building, so there is always room to do so.

So I'm wondering what's the general consensus on that? Because we own Tesla's can we simply park in charging spots without charging? Seems wrong. Am I in the minority?

IMHO it is cheesy to park in charging space when there's no need to charge. I think it's dead wrong as it prevents charging by those who need it, For example, I never park in the charging spaces at my airport unless I need to charge, which is never as I always drive to the airport with enough charge to get there and back with a a margin for side trips.

 

[green1]

Airports should have tons and tons of L1 charging (which is fairly common in areas where block heaters use is prevalent for cold weather) Allows you to counteract vampire draw, and maybe top up while gone for several days, but knowing that you can't move your car when done, so you need more outlets to accommodate all the EVs

Hotels should have a bunch of L2 chargers, Allows you to fully charge overnight, ideally enough for all your guests, but some vehicle shuffling is possible.

L3 charging should be located along highways and near restaurants, fewer stalls needed at each location as they should only be occupied for short durations, but many locations ideally for choice of where to stop.

Long term, I don't see much value to chargers at offices, grocery stores, community centres, etc. These are not places frequented by travellers, and local people shouldn't really need them as they'll have charging at home (and yes, that includes apartments, and street parking, but this is long term) That said, I'm appreciative of ANYWHERE that puts in a charger at this stage of the game, as other charging isn't always fleshed out yet

 

[Pollux]

Sun Country Highway has done great things in Canada with L2 chargers, but L2 is really a bit of a kludge if you want to get anywhere.

I'm counting on those babies whenever the family and I make our next trip to the Maritimes, maybe PEI. Maybe I haven't done enough homework? I was under the impression a lot of the Sun Country chargers were operating at 90 or even 100A, and I've got dual chargers. Definitely gonna require more time than using Superchargers, but a heckuva lot better than pulling up to some 30A L2.

So... I was thinking Supercharger highway up through Vermont or Maine, then cutting over to the Sun Country Highway.

Thanks for any comments on the wisdom/stupidity of this plan.

Alan

 

[Pollux]

Airports should have tons and tons of L1 charging (which is fairly common in areas where block heaters use is prevalent for cold weather) Allows you to counteract vampire draw, and maybe top up while gone for several days, but knowing that you can't move your car when done, so you need more outlets to accommodate all the EVs

Hotels should have a bunch of L2 chargers, Allows you to fully charge overnight, ideally enough for all your guests, but some vehicle shuffling is possible.

L3 charging should be located along highways and near restaurants, fewer stalls needed at each location as they should only be occupied for short durations, but many locations ideally for choice of where to stop.

Long term, I don't see much value to chargers at offices, grocery stores, community centres, etc. These are not places frequented by travellers, and local people shouldn't really need them as they'll have charging at home (and yes, that includes apartments, and street parking, but this is long term) That said, I'm appreciative of ANYWHERE that puts in a charger at this stage of the game, as other charging isn't always fleshed out yet

I think you have a well-thought-out hierarchy, including the need for a (possibly quite long) transition phase. But I think you're also making a fundamental assumption that charging continues to be a lengthy affair. I agree that that's what current battery chemistry and physics dictates. But various hints out of various research labs suggest that maybe this assumption could one day be invalidated. Should charging time drop into the 5-10 minute range for most typical consumer use cases, then I think the result may be a continuation of the current gas station model. Apartment and condo dwellers, maybe most city dwellers, would NOT build out a charger at their home.

Personally, I'm conflicted: I'd very much like my charging to be WAY faster but I also like the thought of gas stations declining precipitously in number. That's a lot of real estate that can be reclaimed for other, possibly more attractive uses.

Alan

 

[green1]

I'm counting on those babies whenever the family and I make our next trip to the Maritimes, maybe PEI. Maybe I haven't done enough homework? I was under the impression a lot of the Sun Country chargers were operating at 90 or even 100A, and I've got dual chargers. Definitely gonna require more time than using Superchargers, but a heckuva lot better than pulling up to some 30A L2.

So... I was thinking Supercharger highway up through Vermont or Maine, then cutting over to the Sun Country Highway.

Thanks for any comments on the wisdom/stupidity of this plan.

Alan

Sun Country Highway chargers are often high current, but not always. That said, even on a 100A charger you only get 80A, and it's at 208v, not the 240v you have at home, so the total time to refuel is still in the 4 hour range, not the 30 minute range.

 

[green1]

I think you have a well-thought-out hierarchy, including the need for a (possibly quite long) transition phase. But I think you're also making a fundamental assumption that charging continues to be a lengthy affair. I agree that that's what current battery chemistry and physics dictates. But various hints out of various research labs suggest that maybe this assumption could one day be invalidated. Should charging time drop into the 5-10 minute range for most typical consumer use cases, then I think the result may be a continuation of the current gas station model. Apartment and condo dwellers, maybe most city dwellers, would NOT build out a charger at their home.

Personally, I'm conflicted: I'd very much like my charging to be WAY faster but I also like the thought of gas stations declining precipitously in number. That's a lot of real estate that can be reclaimed for other, possibly more attractive uses.

Alan

I believe you are right, however the ability to accept charge fast is not the only obstacle here, you also need to be able to provide it at those speeds, which requires some pretty significant infrastructure, especially in a "gas station" type model where you are trying to do it for many vehicles at the same time.
Additionally, as most people will charge at home most of the time, gas stations will be fewer in number, which necessarily makes them less convenient, which drives more people to charge at home. I don't think that my overall hierarchy is actually that far off. I think the L3 chargers will be much faster (will we call them L4 or something?) but the convenience of charging at home and hotels will outweigh the benefits of fast charging at an L3 location, and those places won't be able to provide those high currents.

 

[Pollux]

Sun Country Highway chargers are often high current, but not always. That said, even on a 100A charger you only get 80A, and it's at 208v, not the 240v you have at home, so the total time to refuel is still in the 4 hour range, not the 30 minute range.

Ummm... 80A @ 208V.... That works out to maybe 48-49 miles of range per hour? 5 hours to fill up a 235 mile range P85+ (@ 90% SOC). OK, I think I'm following your point.

But I'm figuring on ~2 hour partial charges. I admit that the current state of the charging station buildout -- really, the lack of Tesla SCs yet in that area -- means I'm gonna be doing a ton more advance planning, along with Plan B and Plan C stuff.

Alan

 

[Pollux]

I believe you are right, however the ability to accept charge fast is not the only obstacle here, you also need to be able to provide it at those speeds, which requires some pretty significant infrastructure, especially in a "gas station" type model where you are trying to do it for many vehicles at the same time.

Point to you.

*But* you've also got to evaluate it as a capital expenditure versus operational expenditure tradeoff and your total lifecycle expenses. The CapEx for installing some serious charging infrastructure is nontrivial but it's not at all clear to me that it's much more (or even as much as) what one would spend to build a new gas station. Underground tanks, pumps, fire suppression, whatever else goes into a gas station... isn't exactly cheap. And once that infrastructure is up and running, the cost to operate it may be significantly more than what it costs to operate an EV "gas station". Electricity is cheaper than gas, at least it should be, and there are no operational issues with taking delivery of gas, pumping gas, and so on. Depending on how this is built out, you may even have billing happening automatically based on identifying the car as it connects, something that no one can imagine doing right now with ICE vehicles. So no more credit card processing, no more vulnerability to dip attacks, no more going in and out of the main station to process a charge or prepay. Heck, if you want to do some kind of on-the-fly transaction to pay for the EV charge, you probably can do it directly from your car's console.

Teardown expenses at the station's end-of-life are also way less. Gas stations have serious issues w.r.t. the EPA. EV stations shouldn't have any of these problems. Well, pure EV stations.

I really don't know where this winds up on a total lifecycle cost calculation.

Additionally, as most people will charge at home most of the time, gas stations will be fewer in number, which necessarily makes them less convenient, which drives more people to charge at home. I don't think that my overall hierarchy is actually that far off. I think the L3 chargers will be much faster (will we call them L4 or something?) but the convenience of charging at home and hotels will outweigh the benefits of fast charging at an L3 location, and those places won't be able to provide those high currents.

I question the assumption that most people will continue to charge at home. Projecting based on current physics, sure. But if we postulate a 500 mile range battery, that magically can be charged pretty danged quickly, e.g., 5 minutes for a partial charge, 10 minutes for a full "I was on 'empty'" charge, then I think we are looking at charging infrastructure that will NOT be duplicated at home, and a battery size that will take a long time to fill up even with a 240V/40A circuit. So I can imagine a set of properties that winds up mapping back onto the existing notion of a network of gas stations.

Alan

 

[green1]

One of the biggest selling points of an EV is waking up each morning to a full battery. Don't look for people to rush to trade that in for the gas station experience if they don't absolutely have to.
I can charge in 10 hours on 32 amps for my current pack, even if it doubles in size I'll still be able to charge to full overnight on well less than 100A which is quite achievable on home connections.

 

[Pollux]

One of the biggest selling points of an EV is waking up each morning to a full battery. Don't look for people to rush to trade that in for the gas station experience if they don't absolutely have to.
I can charge in 10 hours on 32 amps for my current pack, even if it doubles in size I'll still be able to charge to full overnight on well less than 100A which is quite achievable on home connections.

Yes, as you say.

But the current audience for the car is not the future audience. Demographics are going to change dramatically as Tesla expands, especially as they add first Model 3 and then pickup truck. In the expanded pool, there are going to be a LOT of people who won't be able to obtain home charging (condos, apartments, city houses with parking restrictions, etc.). Another set of people won't be able to afford to pay much for their home charging infrastructure, which rapidly increases in cost as amperage increases. For some people, even getting to 80A will be costly because it will require upgrading their entire house service (say, from 100A to 200A or 200 to 400). Many folks will only be able to afford a 240V/40A circuit.

Moreover, I think the charge-at-home benefit really isn't appreciated until you've lived it. So for most of that future audience, they will not value and thus will not much care if they have to go to a "gas station" instead of charging at home. I have come to treasure the full-battery-in-the-morning thing, and also to appreciate faster turnaround on charging, so I've got a 100A-capable circuit now running from my house to my detached garage, but set on an 80A breaker with the car set to 64A charging, because my house service is only 200A and previous load testing suggests that I'm using most of that. So if I want to do a full 80A at the car, I'm going to have to upgrade my house service from 200A to 400A. None of this (circuit to the garage, upgrading house service) is cheap. It's very hard to justify the economics of what I've done (total cost of car plus charging), compared to, say, buying 5 average-priced ICE vehicles operating on regular unleaded gasoline and driving a different one on each work day. So it's hard for me to imagine that a person of ordinary means will spend $35K-$40K on an M3 and then follow that up with possibly thousands more on home charging infrastructure to achieve a 64A/72A/80A circuit.

And then let's talk about who will be buying the 3-year old pre-owned M3 @ $20K-$25K, or the 5-year old car that costs $15K-$18K.

Alan

 

[auger]

Could be worse. South Florida would be my first guess . . .