Cybertrucks Will Have Larger Parking Spots at Tesla Superchargers

[Crissa]

True but how much to do you think it costs to put in a petrol station? Gas pumps tanks, supporting buildings and hardware. Not to mention all the environmental hoops.

It can be a profitable endeavor if the volume of EVs warrant it.

But they're already in place, and every car that uses gas has to visit a station.

EVs only visit fast chargers when they travel. The vast majority of the time they charge at home or the office, because the vast majority of time vehicles sit at home. And the vast majority of miles are commutes, not long trips.

-Crissa

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[ajdelange]

I feel this [lack of chargers] is one of the bigger issues facing wide spread EV adoption today.

If you think lack of charging is an obstacle I recommend the following excercise: Log onto ABRP, lay in a long route and after it has computed it for you click on each of the Superchargers and/or DC fat chargers (recpommend you try this for a Tesla and a Rivian. You will be shown how many stalls are at the station and how many are occupied. If their is a dearth of chargers you will find the majority if not the vast majority occupied at any reasonable time of day. If their is a surfeit you will find most of them empty most of the time. What do you see?

Let's recognize that there are times when some chargers are overwhelmed but by and large they are usually underwhelmed.

The real problem in getting the US market to wider acceptance of BEVs is that there simply aren't enough BEVs for them to buy. The only real game in town right now is Tesla and they sell all they can make. They are working hard to
1)Increaase production capacity
2)Get the price down to where more people can afford them.

Most analysts agree that price parity will signal the end of gas. We are getting pretty close!

 

[MEDICALJMP]

But they're already in place, and every car that uses gas has to visit a station.

EVs only visit fast chargers when they travel. The vast majority of the time they charge at home or the office, because the vast majority of time vehicles sit at home. And the vast majority of miles are commutes, not long trips.

-Crissa

I don’t know about California, but around here I see new gas stations being built all the time.

don’t discount the need for long trip charging needs. While the majority of the time we all hang around our home turf, it takes only 1 road trip to see most of the vehicles on the highways are cars and not semis. There is a need for them out in the sticks off the major highways.

 

[ajdelange]

I don’t know about California, but around here I see new gas stations being built all the time.

Guess it depends on how you define Gas Station. I still think of a Gas Station as a small building with two pumps, an air compressor a rack of oil cans and a soda machine. Inside there is a counter with a cash register and behind it an assortment of fan belts hang from the ceiling. There may be a garage bay or two attached with lifts and a tire mounting/balancing machine (has it's own air compressor).

Where I live and travel those are disappearing to be replaced by a small market fronted by usually many more than two pumps and, in the case of the new WaWa in Vienna, VA, 8 V3 Superchargers but no pumps at all. The soda machine is gone and has been replaced by a wall or 2 of reach in coolers loaded with energy drinks, mangosteen juice, iced teas and beer. There are shelves and shelves of things your doctor would tell you not to eat. The repair bays are gone.

So I am curious as to what sort of "gas stations" are being built around where you live and travel.

it takes only 1 road trip to see most of the vehicles on the highways are cars and not semis.

Try one of the coasts. It is true that there are more cars than semis but the semis are pretty thick.

 

[Crissa]

Gas stations are still being built. Heck, Supercharger stations are being built!

But the profit motive of chargers vs their cost is not there for fast DC charging. A gas station has a probable market of ever gasoline powered device around it - plus travelers. The charging station essentially only has travelers.

-Crissa

 

[Newton]

Since there's already thousands of gas stations, with the little stores, why arnt people just building say 2-4 high speed ev chargers at the gas stations? This would make ev adoption much easier. One of the main reasons I'm thinking tesla over other ev's is the fast charging networ. Gas station can make a bit of money from the land leasing or whatever deal the charger and gas station come up with(or they can just do it themselves) plus the ev people will probably use the store. Seems like a win win to me.

 

[Crissa]

...why arnt people just building say 2-4 high speed ev chargers ...

Well a, they are, and b, it's alot of money to set up a charging station. And c, most gas stations are not where high power lines are located. Which only makes b worse. I suppose d, it's very little profit over charging.

https://www.greencarreports.com/new...ger-a-model-for-filling-in-fast-charging-gaps

-Crissa

 

[MEDICALJMP]

Guess it depends on how you define Gas Station. I still think of a Gas Station as a small building with two pumps, an air compressor a rack of oil cans and a soda machine. Inside there is a counter with a cash register and behind it an assortment of fan belts hang from the ceiling. There may be a garage bay or two attached with lifts and a tire mounting/balancing machine (has it's own air compressor.

The “gas station” you describe is actually the old, nearly dead, “service station.” They existed before the era of the convenience stores of the Circle K, QuikTrip, Kum N Go, variety you later describe. Service stations are a dying breed.

I live off I-80, the nations second longest interstate highway, which is a major east-west artery. I do see many, many, many semi-trucks. And still they are outnumbered by automobiles. My statement stands.

Crissa, EVs may “only visit a supercharger when they travel” however, EVs don’t always charge when they are home. We have a destination charger recently installed at my hospital. I see it being used by patients and staff. When I go to other places around the city I see people using destination chargers. Everybody isn’t “just charging at home“. If everybody was just charging at home unless they were traveling they wouldn’t be using these conveniently located chargers around various cities. I have also gone to one of the superchargers around here to talk talk with Tesla owners about their experiences and almost always they have local license plates. I’ve asked them why they are charging at the SC versus at home even though it cost them. And their responses are one variation of the other over quickness, they be paying less at home but it’s faster and more convenient because of where the charger is to work, shopping, etc. and they didn’t want to go through the hassle and cost of putting in a home charger. And they like going out to the charger and talking to other Tesla owners. Don’t forget about all those apartment dwellers who have zero charging options at their homes.

As a group, we humans tend to extrapolate our situation to others and think everyone’s experience is like our own. It isn’t always the same. A.J.Travels a route from Quebec to Virginia. He knows all the charger points, has a chart, and feels wherever he goes he has ready access to the super charger. In his case, he is correct. Others need to or like to travel the road less traveled. They don’t have a super charger where they need to go. We have ranches in western NEBRASKA bigger than eastern states. These folks may need to travel a county or two over to do shopping.

I belong to a Tesla forum here and am continually reading about range/charging issues when people who live in the metro need to visit family at home. Where you live Superchargers seem like they there are a dime a dozen and range issues are oh-so-yesterday. In flyover country the reality is quite different.

As Newton said above, gas stations could be incorporating supercharger stations in the same spot. Germany recently enacted legislation to do just that in all of their new “gas stations” being built. I see this coming here in the for seeable future. The change from ICE to EVs is not going to be a one decade process. There is too much money tied up in the fossil fuel infrastructure and what people are currently driving for that to happen. Not only that, but the electrical infrastructure isn’t yet ready for a mass change to electric vehicles at this point. We are going to need to have more electrical generation capacity to take 136 million gas vehicles off the street.

More new cars are going to be sold as electric vehicles and fewer ice vehicles are going to be sold. But it’s not a quick transition. As the economics change our gas station companies will need to adapt and change their models.

 

[ajdelange]

Since there's already thousands of gas stations, with the little stores, why arnt people just building say 2-4 high speed ev chargers at the gas stations?

I think they are doing exactly that. Quick Check, Royal Farms, WaWa, Sheetz are some I know and the post that follows yours lists several on the west coast. "People" can't just install a Tesla SC though. Tesla has to do that. In fact "people" can't generally install a fast DC charger as 300 kW service is doubtless several times what the whole store (little store) uses. And these things are expensive, of course. One installs one in the hopes that its cost will be more than offset by additional sales resulting from attraction of more customers. I don't think retail sales of electricity by itself is likely to be profitable. Besides which in many places the utilities have laws in place to prevent that. What a small operator can do is install a level 2 charger and give away the electricity. In fact Tesla will give a small business a "Destination Charger" free and give an allowance of up to $10K (?) for installation. Don't know if that program is still active, though.

Gas station can make a bit of money from the land leasing or whatever deal the charger and gas station come up with(or they can just do it themselves) plus the ev people will probably use the store. Seems like a win win to me.

Several of them have come to that same conclusion.

One of the most interesting things I've seen recently relevant to this is a Level 3 charger with a huge battery pack that connects to modest size service. While it is not charging a vehicle it is charging its battery. It can charge the vehicle much faster than it can charge its battery so that it can do Level 3 charging but as long as the duty cycle is low that's not a problem. Ideal for a remote location but I'm not sure how the economics would work out. The operator would probably have to charge quite a bit per kWh to pay for the thing because it can't be cheap.

 

[ajdelange]

As a group, we humans tend to extrapolate our situation to others and think everyone’s experience is like our own. It isn’t always the same. A.J.Travels a route from Quebec to Virginia. He knows all the charger points, has a chart, and feels wherever he goes hehas ready access to the super charger. In his case, he is correct. Others need to or like to travel the toad less traveled.

First, while I definitely benefit from my own experiences and am definitely influenced by them I am well aware of the effects of overweight on the a-priori's have on Bayseian (I am definitely a Bayesian) decision making. Therefore, I in no way expect everyone to have the same situation I do and often specifically mention that fact in discussions such as this one.

It is certainly true that one is going to be most comfortable on a route he travels frequently. He knows where every potentially useful charging station is just as he knew where every likely to be useful gas station was when he drove ICE.

I also like to travel the road not taken and one of the reasons I have done this is to see whether not having access to the Tesla network is a problem. I have, therefore, driven into remote parts of Quebec (which can get pretty remote) hundreds of miles from the nearest SC. I have not found a problem in doing so. Where I have gone there have always been plenty of CHAdeMO stations available. When I talk about this I nearly always mention that these are generally limited to 50 kW and so they are slow but point out that if one is exploring at a leisurely pace that is not a problem. I also usually state that I am well aware that my experience is not global.

Most of the people here do not have any experience with Tesla cars or its charging network or indeed any BEV experience at all. It is at them I aim the following bullets

•Range anxiety belongs in the past. It was overstated in the first place and in the second the availability of charging has expanded greatly in the short 2 years I have been driving BEV
•There are situations where charging can be a challenge. The installers of chargers obviously have striven to put the chargers where they are needed most. There are still areas underserved
•When you actually start to drive a BEV you will understand all this much better
•Until you do fiddle with ABRP

 

[MEDICALJMP]

Looking over these last dozen or so responses it is funny to me how far off topic we've all gone from the thread titled "Cybertruck will have larger parking spaces at Tesla Superchargers.". ??

 

[kev12345]

Costco had the wider stalls figured out decades ago. I welcome any business making parking stalls wider.

 

[MEDICALJMP]

 

[Crissa]

however, EVs don’t always charge when they are home. We have a destination charger recently installed at my hospital. I see it being used...

Destination charger? And how much does it charge to park and charge there? How many spots are devoted to these chargers, compared to EVs in the parking lot?

I didn't say that cars didn't charge. Just that in the vast majority of driving, they do not charge away from home. This is the inverse of gasoline powered cars.

And the profit per car is much, much lower for charging stations than gas stations. Not to mention each one can service far fewer cars.

-Crissa

 

[ajdelange]

I thought the the most interesting aspect of this video whose theme is the US charging deficit was that it showed station after station with few or no cars in the stalls. This is what you will find by and large if you use ABRP to check on the activity at a given location at a given time.

Keep in mind, however, that this is at the current level of penetration (about 2% in the US). When that goes to 50% we will clearly need 25 times more stalls than we have now to be where we are now.

So I think it's a matter of perception on the part of the public which according to a survey mentioned in the video is still plagued by range anxiety and still plagued by fear of being unable to charge. The petroleum industry is doubtless still pushing this misinformation to the extent that it can but that seems to be less prevalent than it was. It is, thus, up to the automakers to educate the public if they want to sell more cars.

But we are looking at Tesla in this forum. Tesla doesn't need to sell more cars. They are more worried about being able to manufacture enough cars to meet the demand than generating demand to meet their production. Evidently the market knows that Tesla has sufficient charging infrastructure and that the range of Tesla products is adequate (my X has range comparable to my Lexus SUV and in this forum we are talking about a truck that will have more range than my Lexus). So it's the other guys. Charging infrastructure is another area in which they are well behind Tesla and yes, it is going to be harder for them to sell cars until they beef up charging and range.

I think the question of how Tesla is going to get to 300 - 350 kW charging rate in order to compete with e.g., Rivian is the more interesting one. Many of you know how I think they can do it. I wait with baited breath to see if they will do it and how.