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The issue is peak travel not day to day. Network providers will set metrics for spare capacity very carefully. If they have redundant chargers their costs will be higher than the competitors. They’ll have to price higher or lose margin. So they’ll all have a number to work to which will never meet peak demand. Which is why many business models employ some kind of demand management pricing model to reduce the peaks and troughs.
I pretty much only Supercharge on long journeys. My average Supercharge session over 55 sessions is 23kWh per session (about 30% of the battery or 100 miles). 23kw depending on State of Charge, v2, temperature, etc etc etc, lets say 10 minutes to charge. In reality you can’t actually do much at Motorway Services in 10 minutes – a quick pitstop if there’s no dilly dallying. So you charge 6 cars per hour per stall.
In 2019 the busiest day of the year for the roads was Friday 16th August ( https://nationalhighways.co.uk/media/wdopybqy/managing-delay-on-the-strategic-road-network.pdf).
If you had decided to travel to Cornwall on the M5 Southbound there was about 4000 cars per hour passing Gordano services Highways England - WebTRIS - Map View. Not everyone needs to charge on the M5, but let’s say its's 2030, there are the same number of cars on the road as today, they're all BEV and 1/3 will need to charge at some point on the M5 on their journey. So 1300 cars or so per hour @ 6 cars per hour = 222 stalls. Gordano alone has about 500 parking so physical space is not an issue. 53MW for the National Grid, easy peasy (even if you replicate that across the whole country). So far so good.
But… they won’t install 222 stalls because for half of the year half will be empty. If you had 200 stalls across that M5 section instead of the 222 needed there would be queues at chargers starting by 9:00am and queues of 1h by midday.
If you installed 150 stalls across the network, 10% were broken and the average car faffed for 15 minutes instead of 10 minutes, by 9:00am 2800 cars would be waiting to charge across the M5 network and motorway services might start backing up onto the M5. By midday you’re looking at waiting ‘hours’ to get a charger because of the backlog.
The number of chargers will need to be a finely balanced thing but the numbers actually aren't ridiculous to make it work, The road network capacity is the capacity bottleneck, not the number of chargers we can install. State of the nation today: There are currently 9 100kW+ 3rd party chargers on the M5 between Bristol and Exeter plus 40 Tesla Superchargers. About right for the number of BEV cars on the road (assuming some queueing at peak times).
If you really want to gulp, imagine a serious power cut in 2030 with 1000's of cars waiting to charge, hours of delays and roads gridlocked. Superchargers suddenly need to become critical national infrastructure. As mentioned let’s just hope range keeps increasing and so fewer people need to charge.
Edit: Numbers above don't consider Northbound traffic = add on a few more chargers .
I pretty much only Supercharge on long journeys. My average Supercharge session over 55 sessions is 23kWh per session (about 30% of the battery or 100 miles). 23kw depending on State of Charge, v2, temperature, etc etc etc, lets say 10 minutes to charge. In reality you can’t actually do much at Motorway Services in 10 minutes – a quick pitstop if there’s no dilly dallying. So you charge 6 cars per hour per stall.
In 2019 the busiest day of the year for the roads was Friday 16th August ( https://nationalhighways.co.uk/media/wdopybqy/managing-delay-on-the-strategic-road-network.pdf).
If you had decided to travel to Cornwall on the M5 Southbound there was about 4000 cars per hour passing Gordano services Highways England - WebTRIS - Map View. Not everyone needs to charge on the M5, but let’s say its's 2030, there are the same number of cars on the road as today, they're all BEV and 1/3 will need to charge at some point on the M5 on their journey. So 1300 cars or so per hour @ 6 cars per hour = 222 stalls. Gordano alone has about 500 parking so physical space is not an issue. 53MW for the National Grid, easy peasy (even if you replicate that across the whole country). So far so good.
But… they won’t install 222 stalls because for half of the year half will be empty. If you had 200 stalls across that M5 section instead of the 222 needed there would be queues at chargers starting by 9:00am and queues of 1h by midday.
If you installed 150 stalls across the network, 10% were broken and the average car faffed for 15 minutes instead of 10 minutes, by 9:00am 2800 cars would be waiting to charge across the M5 network and motorway services might start backing up onto the M5. By midday you’re looking at waiting ‘hours’ to get a charger because of the backlog.
The number of chargers will need to be a finely balanced thing but the numbers actually aren't ridiculous to make it work, The road network capacity is the capacity bottleneck, not the number of chargers we can install. State of the nation today: There are currently 9 100kW+ 3rd party chargers on the M5 between Bristol and Exeter plus 40 Tesla Superchargers. About right for the number of BEV cars on the road (assuming some queueing at peak times).
If you really want to gulp, imagine a serious power cut in 2030 with 1000's of cars waiting to charge, hours of delays and roads gridlocked. Superchargers suddenly need to become critical national infrastructure. As mentioned let’s just hope range keeps increasing and so fewer people need to charge.
Edit: Numbers above don't consider Northbound traffic = add on a few more chargers .
jimbo_hippo
Member
California has a freakish amount of Teslas and they aren’t CCS ready as such so I don’t think Santa Monica will ever be comparable with the likes of Birmingham or Doncaster or wherever over here.
I haven’t visited California since embracing EVs so I’m happy to be corrected by anyone who has but friends who have visited lately have said that in L.A. there are bonkers amounts of the brand.
I haven’t visited California since embracing EVs so I’m happy to be corrected by anyone who has but friends who have visited lately have said that in L.A. there are bonkers amounts of the brand.
Drew57
Active ember
Yes, we visit family in CA regularly - on any part of a city road or a highway you can usually see multiple Teslas.
I was going to use that Santa Monica Supercharger last year before we were forced to return for the first Lockdown. The car showed it as full so we diverted to the Culver City 16 stall Airport location but still queued there too.
In less than 2 weeks we finally return & I'm sure things will be much worse.... March 2020 the only Model Ys were in showrooms pre-launch!
Shell are putting rapid chargers (both 50kW and 150kW) in all of their forecourts so that should help: EV Recharge
I don’t think this is likely to be honest, nor is it helpful.
When’s the last time we’ve had a national powercut? They’re usually scoped to a small area so cars can go elsewhere. Also 1000s queuing? This isn’t the petrol crisis where forecourts are the only places to fill up, cars will be getting their juice from all over, plus I’m sure in 2030 there will still be plenty of ICE cars around.
I don’t think this is likely to be honest, nor is it helpful.
When’s the last time we’ve had a national powercut? They’re usually scoped to a small area so cars can go elsewhere. Also 1000s queuing? This isn’t the petrol crisis where forecourts are the only places to fill up, cars will be getting their juice from all over, plus I’m sure in 2030 there will still be plenty of ICE cars around.
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There are 6 motorway services along the M5 south of Bristol, so from your numbers 37 chargers per services would be sufficient. I think assuming that 1/3 of all traffic would want to charge at Gordano is a little unrealistic.
Shell and BP have to do this, but from experience it is doubtful they will in Salisbury any time soon. The city of 45,000 has no working fast chargers, just a scattering of 32A chargers....just like the one I have at home.
The nearest fast (more than 50kw) chargers are on the A303, Amesbury at the Tesla Supercharger: there is nothing to the South and west until Exeter.
The nearest fast (more than 50kw) chargers are on the A303, Amesbury at the Tesla Supercharger: there is nothing to the South and west until Exeter.
Fat Wolfie
Member
Think it would be free, technically my free charging expired on 17/11 so I assumed the last day of free charging would be 16th. Didn’t try on 17th as I was home then so used my 5p overnight tariff instead
Shell said all of their stations will have 50kw and 150kw chargers by 2025 so I guess it’s just a case of waiting, they’ve already started rolling this out.
I can’t speak for BP I don’t know if they made any announcement.
cryo
Member
Something to bear in mind when doing fuel/service/garage comparisons petrol/diesel is only available from licensed retailers ( flammable products storage regs) whereas electricity is available at every house with a drive and a charger. I can foresee individuals living near future problem charging areas offering their drive/charging via Facebook or other means if serious problems ever arise so in effect there is no reason for critical infrastructure problems to lead to serious disruption. You buy electricity at X and sell it to somebody at 4X (still way cheaper than national providers) + a small amount of time on your drive instead of wasting the same amount of time in a que to get them to the next open working online charger or to a fairly close destination. The big oil companies will have lost their grip/monopoly on energy sales due to potential unofficial home emergency electricity providers. I suspect this will also apply to individuals that have no home charging infrastructure locally if their local charging points get overloaded or are out of commission. Electricity is very easy to measure and the price charged is easily calculated with as above stated charging potentially available at probably 50%+ of UK homes to get people on their way. The same cannot be said for fuel when problems arise. It would be interesting to find the percentage of home chargers not being use at any given time in the UK which I would suspect would be a fair proportion.
HenryT
Active Member
We are going to need more charging infrastructure yes, but the smallness of our country is definitely a benefit. If you can home charge you can get to a large part of the country without needing to charge at all. We will need more infrastructure, granted, but the majority of the time people with Teslas, that have such a long range, shouldn't actually be using them.
The push should be on destination chargers and then educating people to only fill up as much as they need to reach their destination.
roblab
Active Member
And, oh, just think! We're going to open all our Tesla Superchargers to OTHER manufacturers! So not only will there be lines of TESLAs, but that line will also have other makes in it (Rivian, Ford, Chevy, etc.) so the wait will be longer...UNLESS people start figuring out how to charge at home. It only takes a $10 outlet! Of course, hiring someone to do the work will cost you, but here in Napa County I am allowed to install my own outlet without a permit. I rarely use supercharging, but when I do, I see a bunch of locals sitting there, reading a paper, playing games on their cell phones, wasting time because they can't "afford" to put in a 220 v outlet at home, or arrange with their apartment supervisor to put in an outlet they can use. When I see lines, I see people who can't figure out solutions, or who think it's cheaper to waste time than fix their problem.
And apart from the legion of Teslas, like a very quiet army, it appears in Cali there's a drive in drive out system and they don't need roofs coz it never rains....
Never understood why all chargers (not just superchargers) are just in standard parking slots making queueing and manoeuvring impossible and are open to the rain
It's cheaper that way.
And you aren't as exposed for as long with charging as you are pumping fuel, so it's less of a problem.
That line in California is people who can't charge at home. It's not really indicative of the EV future. If everybody had EVs it'd drive the market to provide more home and destination charging. That's not a technical problem.
There _are_ lines for travel, during peak travel periods. Tesla's been a bit reactive, but does address them.
And the more EVs you have, the easier it becomes to address those peaks.
And then there are the "OTHER" chargers....I use the phrase loosely.
Salisbury District Hospital has installed a row of BP Pulse 7kw chargers in an obscure place next to the Eye Clinic. The good news is that they work. But they are not really much use: waiting for my wife to complete her annual eye MOT in just over an hour I added £0.82p worth of electrons, tis just about supported the electrons consumed driving there and watching YouTube in the car.
It rather reminds me of my early days when I'd put £0.50p of petrol in my Motorcycle to get me home...
Salisbury District Hospital has installed a row of BP Pulse 7kw chargers in an obscure place next to the Eye Clinic. The good news is that they work. But they are not really much use: waiting for my wife to complete her annual eye MOT in just over an hour I added £0.82p worth of electrons, tis just about supported the electrons consumed driving there and watching YouTube in the car.
It rather reminds me of my early days when I'd put £0.50p of petrol in my Motorcycle to get me home...
It rather reminds me of my early days when I'd put £0.50p of petrol in my Motorcycle to get me home...
I bet that after 4 fills you got a set of fine "crystal" sherry glasses, free
I remember those days...I bet that after 4 fills you got a set of fine "crystal" sherry glasses, free
Tiger Tails too from Esso....
The points of my previous post (in case you don’t want to read all of it):
- there will always be queuing at peak times;
- the number of ultra-rapids will be essential to making BEVs work;
- the number of ultra rapid chargers isn’t going to be a problem in the long term as road capacity will be exceeded first;
- power cuts can and do happen. Localised and in larger areas and they can last for hours (not so long ago Transport chaos across England and Wales after major power cuts | Energy industry | The Guardian). The risk increases as our operating margin gets smaller. If it happens in future disruption to road transport infrastructure would be significant.
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