Yup, agree with all of this.
We were in the tiny town of Kremmling, CO back in June. I noticed that in the corner of the town park was a small, single charging station. It literally took up a single parking space. I presume the power was drawn off of the office that was part of the town park.
I think we'll start seeing more things like that popping up. As far as the cost of installation, the smart thing would be for local businesses to pitch in on the cost. After all, when people stop to charge their cars for 2 - 3 hours, where are they going to be walking around and spending money?
The "fuel station" of the future will not look like a "filling station" of today. At a "filling station" you pull in, pump your fuel, maybe walk into the store for a snack or bathroom break, then get back in your car and leave.
An EV "charging station" will look more like a parking lot, except with a pedestal in front of each space. You'll pull in, plug in, and then either sit in your car watching a movie or surfing the internet, or walk in to a shop/restaurant and spend your time (and money) there.
Most EV owners are only on a charger 30-40 minutes at most.
The old concept of fill it up then give it three more clicks isn’t how EVs work. The battery technology makes the meat of the battery the best portion to use, charge run at etc.
from 20% to 80% is the meat of a EV battery. Thats the portion that charges the most efficiently ie fastest. Also filling all the way up err charging to 100% isn’t exactly healthy for the battery.
Experienced EV owners with daily use actually set them to only charge late at night at the low est electricity cost (rates). The car might be plugged in at 2pm but that doesn’t mean it’s charging. Also back to battery use daily users only charge for their typical daily use.
Example if your typical day is 50 miles you generally only charge for 100-120 mile range which for most EVs is 40-50% battery charged.
This also means that for most EVs figure 2miles per KW.They are pulling 25 ish or less Kw per night charging. All the EVs are getting smart meaning if a situation develops say weather event gets forecast and your car is already charged 50%. It will kick back on and charge 100% without you telling it to. Its anticipating you may need 100% range to evacuate or possibly go a few days with no grid power etc.
As for understanding power use. My 1968 2700sqft house with giant pool, several refrigerators and updated as much as makes sense to be efficient will burn through 18-23kw in 24 hours in the summer with fans, pool pump etc. Winters we don’t run pool pumps and typically use the 40,000 btu gas insert only, we’ll run 10-16kw a day. Thats no AC use on the house! We were day 6 here yesterday with 100+ temps. Yesterday was the first day this year I turned on our AC. The house finally broke 80 at about 5:30pm. We ran the AC for about 45min then our outside temps dropped to 80 so AC went off. If we run the AC like a typical user all day we easily will see 64kw used in 24hrs vs say a high day of 25kw without AC.
Forced air AC is still the absolute number one power pig in the electricity world.
So most EV owners doing the US average 30 miles daily are likely using double the Electricity they used prior to moving to a EV.
