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Whole Foods stops using 350Green charging
- Thread starter sp4rk
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I totally agree with the several people who question L2 chargers at <1hr destinations. Even a LEAF can't take that much advantage of it and you have have to REALLY live out in the sticks for an L2 to make a difference under that scenario. I guess I'm pretty jaded about all those businesses that put in LA L2s (low amp L2) chargers. A classic case of jumping on the band wagon without actually thinking it through. Or as an ex-Navy friend used to say "beat to fit, paint to match".
Sticks - this is as American as you can get. It even sounds American - all twangy and nasally. I always though it came about because it rhymes with hicks (as in Hicks from the Sticks). I can't even imagine that word said with a British accent.
Sticks - this is as American as you can get. It even sounds American - all twangy and nasally. I always though it came about because it rhymes with hicks (as in Hicks from the Sticks). I can't even imagine that word said with a British accent.
I totally agree with the several people who question L2 chargers at <1hr destinations. Even a LEAF can't take that much advantage of it and you have have to REALLY live out in the sticks for an L2 to make a difference under that scenario. I guess I'm pretty jaded about all those businesses that put in LA L2s (low amp L2) chargers. A classic case of jumping on the band wagon without actually thinking it through. Or as an ex-Navy friend used to say "beat to fit, paint to match".
Sticks - this is as American as you can get. It even sounds American - all twangy and nasally. I always though it came about because it rhymes with hicks (as in Hicks from the Sticks). I can't even imagine that word said with a British accent.
"'In the sticks' is just a reference to an area where there are lots of twigs, that is, the countryside. It was first an American expression but is now used throughout the English-speaking world. The earliest citation of it that I have found is from the US newspaper the Florence Times Daily, November 1897:"
Source:
In the sticks
I think it makes sense. The distance people travel for their daily errands is always within the local area. The local mall, restaurants, shopping, etc is all withing short distances. If you get 10-15 miles out of a 20-30 min charge, that's all you need to cover your trip.
You guys don't know what it's like to drive a Leaf or FFE etc. The problem is you often have lots of places to go in a day, not just the local grocery store. Go to work, 40 miles round trip. You remember that on your way home you need to stop at the local Whole Foods to pick up some arugula, 12 mi out of your way. Then stop to visit a friend and suddenly 5 mi gained at Whole Foods is everything. I agree it should be 60 - 80A, but 30 is better than nothing.
Yes and worse than that it's still going on. Most people who make decisions about installing public charging stations are clueless about real needs and what will be needed in the near future. Chargepoint really irked me when they recently came out with their new and improved dual charging station that they're talking business owners into. Instead of raising amperage from an already useless 30A, they lowered it! The poor business owners are tearing up the concrete for something that's already obsolete!
The new dual charging stations don't have to share a circuit. They can each be wired to their own breaker so they don't share. They have the flexibility to share if the site has a limited amount of power available. Also, they have the benefit of a single conduit for two charge points and the retractor mechanism so that you don't have cables laying on the ground because people are too lazy to re-coil it.
They already had dual charging stations that use separate circuits. This is like a downgrade from those, but it's being marketed to all their potential customers, not just the ones that have limited power available. They could have designed it to be 60A unless it was being shared, at which point it would drop to 30. My wife's employer installed 15A charging stations that are always in use and now the facilities managers are admitting they blew it and should have installed 30A chargers for employees and higher for patients who often have to travel a long way for a short appointment.
Right. There are a number of Leaf owners in NTEAA and the two comments I hear most often are: I'm not going to that function because it's more than half my range away and there's no convenient charging, and Can I charge there? With any low range EV, local driving requires as much planning as a road trip in a Tesla.
Has anyone thought of operating a pay charge? If the Tesla super chargers or EV chargers had a slot u could swipe your card and pay even $1.00 or $.50 for a 1/2 hr charge ( for non Tesla cars) more places would put them up. Parking garages,restaurants ,motels. I see the future of parking meters will soon be charging stations. Been to towns were their parking meters charge 25 cents for 10 min parking. Not the end of the world if you had to pay if you were in dire need of a charge.
This is why short range EVs aren't really catching on. The majority of the public would never accept that. I think about plugging in my MS every time I pull into a parking lot that has an EVSE and the word "hassle" flashes before my eyes. I can't imagine having to do that everywhere I go just to be able to get home. Deeply inconvenient. On top of that the EVSE infrastructure isn't nearly as reliable as the gasoline infrastructure. I would not own such a car. Sorry LEAF owners...
Edit: By the way, those low amp EVSEs at places like WF, Walgreens and so on, are almost always empty. This speaks much louder than someone crafting a verbal argument that EV people need them.
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John, you really need to do some basic reading about EVs and charging before posting all these questions. This is what ChargePoint and Blink networks are, a way to charge for charging. But with the cost of the units no one makes money off them. Most we're installed with government grants. When destinations do install them it's to attract business, and the cost of electricity is small compared to the equipment cost.
They are the exception, then. Blink and ChargePoint network stats show a really low load factor, an average of less than one car per day per charger. My experience confirms this. I live in Seattle, where there is a very high percentage of EVs, and seldom do I see a car charging at an L2 charger.
You can't expect charging stations to get heavy usage until a significant fraction of cars on the streets are EVs. (10-20%)
In the meantime, public L2 stations can be extremely useful to the early adopters with EVs. DC fast chargers are even more useful. EV drivers and advocates need to figure out how to get more installed, with no short term payback from selling charging services. Fortunately, this is being accomplished, even if slowly and in patches.
GSP
In the meantime, public L2 stations can be extremely useful to the early adopters with EVs. DC fast chargers are even more useful. EV drivers and advocates need to figure out how to get more installed, with no short term payback from selling charging services. Fortunately, this is being accomplished, even if slowly and in patches.
GSP
Many charging site hosts install ChargePoint units because of the data and access control that they provide. Two examples - Workplaces install them because they can white-list employee cards to provide the free or nominal fee charging that they decided upon while refusing service or charging more to others. Second example, retail. ChargePoint recently used Target as a success story - the point was that nobody shops there for more than 2 hours, so providing 2 hours of free charging and then charging an hourly fee after that encouraged patrons to visit but not over-stay. The data that ChargePoint provides does have value and it must have enough value that hosts find it worth the price - both up-front and recurring.
Not wanting to quibble but this doesn't begin to explain the current usage rate. I see a lot of Leafs on the roads in my area but a rounds-to-zero number charging. The simple fact is most of the EVSEs were sited in really dumb areas. The longer the average duration of parking in a given lot, the more appropriate an EVSE is (and the higher the utilization). This is why they are fairly successful for employee parking lots and not so much at places like Walgreens where the average park-time is short. It's a sad reflection on the government drive to install chargers with no real understanding of usage patterns. I wish that money had been put into encouraging businesses to set them up for employee parking instead of tossing it away on the Blink network.
What does that note say that's stuck on the charge cord? I've never seen a Volta station but I've heard they will install one for free if it's in a high traffic location where they can get ad revenue from that big screen. Great idea.
Exactly...moderator, please consider changing the title; Whole Foods abandoned one EV charging network, not EV charging. Whole Foods chargers have saved my butt a few times when traveling.
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