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Power Government Transportation United States

Biden To Require EV Charging Stations Every 50 Miles On Federal Highways (usatoday.com) 334

Posted by BeauHD from the rules-of-the-road dept.
The Biden administration on Thursday pledged to have 500,000 public charging stations for electric vehicles in place by 2030. "The proposed standards, which will be published next week in the Federal Register, dictate that a charging station be located every 50 miles along the interstate and no more than a mile off the highway," reports USA Today. "Stations would be required to maintain a minimum number and type of chargers capable of serving multiple customers." From the report: Stations would be prohibited from requiring drivers to have a membership or be part of a club to use their chargers. Real-time information on pricing and location would have to be available to help motorists using a GPS app better plan their trip. The Federal Highway Administration's proposed standards will apply to federally funded charging stations in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The goal is to ensure a seamless system of charging stations that can be used by motorists no matter what car they drive, where they live or how they pay. [...] The administration is providing more than $5 billion to states over the next five years to build a network of charging stations along the nation's interstates.
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Biden To Require EV Charging Stations Every 50 Miles On Federal Highways More

Biden To Require EV Charging Stations Every 50 Miles On Federal Highways

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  • Is there power available along interstates? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by flatulus ( 260854 ) on Thursday June 09, 2022 @06:15PM (#62607920)
    I have no idea yes or not, but wondering if adequate power exists along interstate right of way. Those stations within a mile are probably in populated areas so won't have as much of an issue. But what about the many hundreds of miles of interstate between metropolitan areas? I could see the $5 billion being consumed just trenching and running power, if it's not already present.

    • Solar Roadways!!!

      *ducks*

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shanen ( 462549 )

        Why are you ducking? The few places where there are large gaps between gas stations tend to be in deserts that tend to be brightly lit. However, I'm pert' shure there's electricity available on the Interstates, so maybe you were conned into feeding a troll, because the answer is obviously "Yes." If you thought it was Funny, I sure wouldn't give you the mod point (if I ever had one to give).

        Having said that, I think it's better to use tax-related incentives and disincentives than mandate-style policies.

        Howev

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

          what seems to make sense is a two-pronged approach.

          A third prong for a ground wire would probably be more sensible... I'm sorry, I'll see myself out.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dru Nemeton ( 4964417 )
      Well if you add in the push for solar he just announced it starts to make sense that solar + charging = no need to run cables for long distances.

      • Well if you add in the push for solar he just announced it starts to make sense that solar + charging = no need to run cables for long distances.

        So every 50 miles you have acres of solar panels and a shit-ton of batteries?

      • Just don't plan to drive at night.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by laird ( 2705 )

      In areas without as much power available, there are a few options that I've seen. First, the usual answer for areas with power nearby, the power company charges for running more power to the area and they build it out. Second, in areas without available power, they can set up batteries with the superchargers, and either trickle-charge them from available power, or use solar power, or both. Batteries work nicely, because the power supply, either solar or grid, only has to cover the average utilization, so th

      • Re:Is there power available along interstates? (Score:5, Informative)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Thursday June 09, 2022 @07:06PM (#62608110) Homepage Journal

        I'd also point out that highways always have some power, because there are road lights and often rest stops. And where there are rest stops with restaurants, bathrooms, etc., the HVAC uses vastly more power than EV charging, so that's logistically easy to add. Well, as easy as anything involving permits and approvals is...

        I think you are greatly underestimating the power involved here. AC charging along a highway is borderline useless. You need HVDC charging. And a typical HVDC charger draws 60-100 kW per stall on average while in operation (and that's if you use batteries to augment the supply and spread the load over the entire day). The air conditioner for a rest stop likely draws on the order of 3 kW per building.

        And you don't need just one charging stall. Even for the small number of Tesla cars on the road, they have 50-stall chargers every couple of hundred miles, with smaller stations more frequently. For the whole country to go electric, count on needing 50 to 100 stalls every 50 miles. That's potentially on the order of 10 megawatts of power consumption every 50 miles. That's about the average power consumption of a town of 5,000 people (though somewhat less than that if you assume low charger utilization at night).

        And the bigger question is who will build it and pay for it. Having it as part of a highway standard is well and good, but somebody has to own and maintain 50,000-ish HVDC charging stalls totaling around $10 billion dollars AND own the land under it AND build big enough parking lots to accommodate it. All in all, that's not a small amount of money even before you factor in any extra 480V feeders required. If private industry owns it, they won't build enough infrastructure to handle the traffic long-term and they'll take significant profits on the power and probably charge the federal government a lot of money to do it. If the government does it, they'll probably find a way to screw it up. I'm not sure which is worse. :-)

        • Re:Is there power available along interstates? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by eth1 ( 94901 ) on Thursday June 09, 2022 @09:36PM (#62608466)

          Thing is, if you need to run that much power along the Interstates, using it to charge cars sitting still is dumb.

          Build a roll on/roll off auto-train down the middle, with stops outside major towns every 50-100 miles instead. Park on the train, plug in the car, and take a nap. As a bonus, it turns ICE cars electric for long trips, and you don't have to have range anxiety, because you'll have a full(er) battery when you get where you're going.

        • The goal here, last I heard, is four 150kW chargers at each station. A 3MW wind turbine with a 20% capacity factor would provide enough net energy for continuous use of all four chargers. One Tesla megapack per charger (four per station) should be plenty to buffer the power. And these are rather overly cautious specs for a charger in the middle of nowhere anyway.

          • Re: Is there power available along interstates? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by modecx ( 130548 ) on Friday June 10, 2022 @12:05AM (#62608676)

            Two minutes of google-fu indicates a utility scale windmill costs $1.3 million to $2.2 million per megawatt, meaning your installation is about $4 million to 6.6 million each, before you get around to installing chargers. Furthermore your Tesla megapack is $1.25 million each. Running tab for each charger is $5.15-7.9M before any maintenance at all--and you need to realize that maintenance on windmills can be considerable.

            Interstate highways are 48k miles and some change, round up to 50k for easy maths and allow for some growth. So, you'll need 1000 of these setups; total bill $5.15-8 billion, which sounds surprisingly feasible on the face of it, given that we give some $4+ billion a year to Israel, and recently another $40B to Ukraine, and untold billions to every other corner of the globe. It would be nice for the USA to spend some money on USA infrastructure for a change.

            Naturally, it would be completely silly to not interconnect them with some grid level power, simply for the reason that it might not be windy in a particular area, or the windmill went down (which they do), or because the highway goes right through a populated area and the people might not take kindly to a giant noisy windmill as a neighbor--not to mention it would be more practical to gang those windmills together away from populated areas for ease of maintenance and such, and perhaps throw some solar installations in the works too, for when it's not windy, or too windy. That would add a considerable amount.

            Of course, since it's a federal project, you probably need to multiply that by 10x, to account for pork, etc...

    • Maybe read the second sentence.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      Yes, sufficient power does exist in almost all cases. Gas stations require power, and it's rare to go more than 50 miles without one. We probably won't get charging stations in those stretches, which, like when driving a legacy car, will require some attention to avoid running out.

    • Right now, there are plenty of interstates where there are no exits at all for more than 50 miles. But that is the reason we have a public process before these things go into effect. At least when there isn't an emergency that requires rule by decree, like a pandemic.

    • There's already power, but that won't stop them from spending the $5 bil anyway.

  • *Tadum* *Crash* *Thud*

    Thank you, thank you, I love you too.

  • I remember stopping at a rest area on a major toll road recently and it had a large "FAST EV CHARGING" sign at the entrance.

    When you got to the charger, located right next to the entrance to the bathrooms, it had a laminated sign on it that read "Charger Out of Order" that had clearly been there for quite some time. The charger also appeared to be quite badly broken.

    And this was on a toll highway that supported a quite nice rest area with multiple fast food places, a convenience store, and a large gas stati

    • Yeah it's going to be an issue, as I can see some people with vested interest in petrol making sure that 'accidents' happen to those charging stations on a regular basis.

      You make some very valid points, but didn't mention that what this is going to be good for is long-haul truckers. They'll need to have charging available coast-to-coast.

      Hmm...might be a good time to look into opening an EV charger repair service.

      • Charging EV semis (Score:5, Insightful)

        by steveha ( 103154 ) on Thursday June 09, 2022 @07:11PM (#62608130) Homepage

        what this is going to be good for is long-haul truckers. They'll need to have charging available coast-to-coast.

        Maybe. The thing is, electric semis will save so much money on not buying diesel that there's a strong incentive to use them; therefore there is a strong incentive to solve the problems, and companies operating semis are probably pretty good at solving logistical problems. So I think the companies that buy the semis aren't going to wait for the Federal government to solve their problems... they are going to install the chargers they need, where they need them.

        Elon Musk commented that a driver of a diesel semi cannot go on break while the semi is being refueled. Diesel is nasty and can be dangerous so someone needs to supervise. But electric charging is safe to leave unattended, and drivers need to go on breaks at regular intervals. Therefore, Elon Musk reasoned, it's important to get the regulations changed so that electric semi drivers are allowed to plug in their semi and then take a break. If "refueling" can be overlapped with mandatory breaks, it will help electric semis be competitive with diesel semis, even though electric semis will take half an hour to an hour to charge.

        The above two points make me wonder if companies that buy Tesla semis will install chargers at the warehouses that load and unload the semis. Back the semi up to the warehouse loading dock, plug in the semi, and while it charges start loading cargo onto it. Arrive at the destination, back the semi up, plug it in and start unloading cargo.

        Just as people with electric cars actually spend less time "refueling" than people with combustion cars (because while the car takes a lot longer to charge than gas pumping takes, they can walk away from the car and leave it) maybe electric semis will also wind up effectively taking less time for "fueling".

        The energy content of liquid hydrocarbon fuel is awesome so an EV will never with a flat-out race with a combustion vehicle, but in practice an EV should not take an excessive amount of time.

        • This is all very true and Musk's ideas here are sound and this policy will help move that transition.

          Also the fact that everything does not have to get solved at once, by the time electric semis are really commonplace a good amount of convential cars will have already been replaced, this reducing dependence on oil allowing refineries to make more diesel instead until the trucks are displaced. Replacement will happen in waves.

          • this reducing dependence on oil allowing refineries to make more diesel instead until the trucks are displaced.

            Diesel and gasoline are fractional distillates from the same barrels of oil. You can't just say we'll use these barrels to make diesel instead of gasoline.

            • True to a degree but there is some variability in terms of what refiners can produce;

              US Refiners Shift into Maximum Diesel Mode [spglobal.com]

              To be clear I have no idea where that line is which brings and interesting issue, if we have 40 percent EVs displacing gas but we now have a glut of gas what's to be done with it? End up converting it to some diesel compatible fuel? Is that even possible? Interesting times.

              • True to a degree but there is some variability in terms of what refiners can produce;

                US Refiners Shift into Maximum Diesel Mode [spglobal.com]

                To be clear I have no idea where that line is which brings and interesting issue, if we have 40 percent EVs displacing gas but we now have a glut of gas what's to be done with it? End up converting it to some diesel compatible fuel? Is that even possible? Interesting times.

                I believe maximum gasoline mode is typically used in summer and maximum fuel oil mode is typically used in winter. So yes, there is some flexibility in the process which is dictated by economics of upgrading and post-processing of the various fractions. Here is a really good overview;

                https://ektinteractive.com/ref... [ektinteractive.com]

                Back before it found use as a motor fuel, gasoline was considered an unwanted byproduct in the production of kerosene and was usually just burned off. Nowadays producers have found mark

    • Re:But will they maintain them? (Score:5, Informative)

      by laird ( 2705 ) <lairdp@@@gmail...com> on Thursday June 09, 2022 @06:48PM (#62608048) Journal

      Road trips in EVs are quite pleasant, actually. We've been doing them since 2018. It only takes 15-20 minutes to charge, then you can go another 200+ miles, and a short break every 3-4 hours is a pretty natural pace - we've driven the entire length of the east coast several times over the years, and it was if anything a bit more pleasant in an EV than it was in a gas car, since when the car is recharging you can go to the restroom and get a bite to eat, so you're never actually waiting.

      I do agree that there also need to be slow/cheap overnight chargers. What several countries do is require parking, houses and apartments to include EV charging, or at least the ability to add charging, as a part of building codes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      Teslas are great for long trips. Other EVs, not so much. (At least in North America, over in Europe, there is tons of charging for any EV.) I'm planning a huge cross-country road trip, and there are very few places where charging is of any concern. We'll have a few minor detours, and we'll be a bit tight going to Craters of the Moon, but the only real issue is not having chargers going north-south in Nevada. Those aren't the largest highways, but they're really useful for certain trips. I expect we wo

      • I mean we have a gumball rally time for a Tesla now. For those unfamiliar it’s the fastest time you can drive from NY to LA without being arrested.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Chargers aren't, for the most part, the issue with EVs. You don't need chargers every 50 miles to make EVs practical. Going on long trips with an EV will simply never be practical.

      Well that simply isnt true at all.

      Even with current battery tech a model 3 with the long range option can go around 350 miles which is plenty long enough to get you to your next meal stop where you can charge your car while you eat.

      And as for your "never" part, you are aware that there are extremely large amounts of money being put into new and more powerful batteries don't you?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Chargers aren't, for the most part, the issue with EVs. You don't need chargers every 50 miles to make EVs practical. Going on long trips with an EV will simply never be practical. EVs are great for local driving, where you can just recharge to cover all your daily driving overnight.

      As someone who has done more than one trip across the country in an EV, I disagree. It does add time for charging, but unless you're driving by yourself, you're probably going to want to stop somewhere to eat and use restrooms anyway, so it doesn't add nearly as much time as you might think.

      If the Biden administration really wants to make EVs more practical, they should be finding ways to get chargers in places where people actually live and work and shop. The problem is that, right now, unless you own a house with a garage, you can't charge.

      I have a carport. I can charge. I can also charge at work, at various hotels, at various grocery stores, Target stores, etc. A lot of apartment complexes have charging, too. The only thing preventing it from being m

      • I'm not saying it is super practical, but another solution would be instead of charging the batteries in the car, having a system such that the battery is swapped out with a fork-lift type system from under the vehicle. It would need to work much like empty propane tanks are exchanged for full ones at many locations. But as the batteries are a huge cost, I don't see how practical this would be. I couldn't imaging swapping a brand new battery and getting a random-aged one, say near the end of its life.

        But

    • That used to be true just a few years ago, but nowadays folks take their electrics on long trips regularly, as half an hour of fast charging get majority of range, then full charge at hotel overnight, continue on. Sure it's a different style of driving stopping to stretch your legs and eat every few hours as a predetermined location, well, not really, as in old cars we'd stop to gas up and eat as well.

    • Going on long trips with an EV will simply never be practical.

      EVs are perfectly fine with slightly more range and as long as your destination has a charger. The human body needs breaks at least every 250 miles or so. An EV with a true 300 mi range where you need to stop and pee or eat anyway is perfectly adequate with current technology.

      The current pain points are:
      1) Lack of charging at the destination. So you drive 250 miles and then need to come back some amount of distance.
      2) Not having charging at home so departing with a near dead battery.
      3) The rarity of actu

    • I see the problem is that it has to be BEV-only or bust. I think there is room for longer-range hybrid (40-60 mile) which would be excellent for the rental market. Then when you want to go out of town on a road trip, you rent one of those which has an essentially unlimited range range and only needs fuel stations every 300 miles or so..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eth1 ( 94901 )

      If the Biden administration really wants to make EVs more practical, they should be finding ways to get chargers in places where people actually live and work and shop. The problem is that, right now, unless you own a house with a garage, you can't charge. Chargers every 50 miles isn't going to help that.

      If they want to make EVs more practical, the Biden administration needs to force apartments to provide a sensible way to charge the residents' cars. (not the current state of 2 stalls for a 500-unit complex, and not using a monopoly to gouge people)

      It's insane that brand new apartments with parking garages are being built without even a regular 120 or 240V outlet at each space.

  • West Texas? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by UMichEE ( 9815976 )

    I've been in some pretty remote parts of Texas on I-10 and I would guess there's barely a gas station every 50 miles. There's definitely no gas station between Marathon and Big Bend NP on US-385 and that's way more than 50 miles. US-385 between I-40 and Hartley also breaks the 50 mile gas station rule and it's a reasonably trafficked road (if you are driving between Dallas and Denver you'll pass through here).

    I think this idea is really great in principle to guarantee that one can travel across the count

    • One difference with the charging stations is you don't need to have someone available to run it, and you don't need to truck in tankers of gas to be stored. At most they should require a restroom and garbage disposal which would be the areas needing the most service.

      • Sounds like an excellent target for teenage vandals. How long before they're rife with graffiti and toppled chargers?

        • âoeSorry, world. We were going to do something about the vast amount of CO2 emitted by our transport infrastructure, but someone vandalized a charger, so we gave up.â

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          So are restrooms, traffic signs, etc. The solution is simple: Do maintenance. If the problem gets too bad, do some cameras. These vandals got there in a car. Cars have license plates. Also, teen usually carry cell phones. Maybe add a nice sign "Vandalizing this charging station carries a $1000 fee just for the repair technician to get here. You have been warned."

          Seriously. This is a solved problem. You just need to _care_ to use one of the established solutions.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Indeed. The usual naysayers only see potential problems, they do not see the advantages. Building a charging station you need to get power there (bury a cable next time you do road maintenance...). OTOH, if you have cell-reception, there will already be power nearby. Other than that they can be easily combined with a regular rest stop.

    • I think it's reasonable to assume that an electric car with a 50-100 mile range isn't going to travel coast-to-coast.

      What about a vehicle with a 150 mile range? What if one of the charging stations is out of order? Every 50 miles is a perfectly reasonable plan if your goal is to stop use of fossil fuels for transportation, but you want to keep the cars viable. Because here's the deal Jack, Biden still has to court corporations because he's still an establishment candidate. And that means not kicking big oil in the dick completely. And both the roads and the tires are made out of petroleum products.

      From an efficiency and p

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        You are not wrong about the need for a working rail system in the US. But establishing these takes a lot of time and most countries found out that usually these need to be done by the state as private rail does not work very well overall and is more of a niche solution.

        With the irrational love of cars in the US, this just faces too much resistance IMO. The examples that this is superior and works well are all over the planet after all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      I-10 has Tesla Superchargers about a hundred miles apart. 50 miles is a nice aspiration, but it won't work on every highway. I believe this is a grant program, so odds are there will be no applications for some of those.

    • Whew...51.2 miles between the Hitching Post in Hartley & Pilot in Vega TX. And 67.9 miles to Panther Junction, outside of Big Bend NP. Now if only those rural roads were Interstates to begin with. If only we had a way to look up what a word means?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Rural areas are an issue. So are tribal land. Thankfully we did not give up on cell phones just because we could not immediately provide everyone with equal service

      Presumable over the next 8 years private businesses will open or add to their property. I imagine in Texas BucEEs would love the subsidies as half hour charging mean a captive customer to buy their $10 chips. Which are a bargain. Made in store.

      I would suggest the congress needs to pas a law making destruction of charging stations a felony wi

    • I haven't driven West Texas, but I've done Nevada on US 50. At one point, there was a broad valley with absolutely nothing in that I could see except for a wind farm. I'm given to understand that much of Texas is also prime for wind power. This could work out.

  • Think for a moment: Even fast charging takes well over half an hour. What will people do while waiting for their car to charge? They'll sit down at your restaurant and eat. I mean, if I have to wait for my car to charge, I can as well eat here instead of somewhere else, right?

    But I'm sure gas stations will lament and demand compensation for having to upsell their crap.

    • Re:As if that needs a mandate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday June 09, 2022 @06:57PM (#62608078) Homepage Journal

      Think for a moment: Even fast charging takes well over half an hour.

      It does if your battery is totally empty and you charge it to 100%, but that's not a good plan. Deep discharges reduce battery lifespan. And 100% charges take a long time. What you want is to keep it above 50 miles of reserve capacity, and then charge it to 90% or so, and that's likely going to take well less than half an hour. Keeping capacity in it means that if the charger is out of order, you can get to the next one (or the last one) and not charging it fully is both faster, and better for the battery as well (although not super-relevant when you're going to discharge it immediately anyway, to be fair.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      I think it's really more of an aspiration and a grant program than a mandate. The mandate is only specifications for what qualifies for the grant money.

      Oh, and your half hour number is wrong. You don't want to fast charge over 80%, as that's where it really slows down, and you don't show up at zero. You can charge Model Y from 20% to 80% in 20 minutes at a 150 kW Supercharger, and faster at a 250 kW charger. I would expect that with new chargers and cars that are designed to take good advantage of them

  • I think that this is exactly what federal funding should be doing, building out the infrastructure for high-speed charging for road trips, because for road trips you need expensive, high speed chargers, and there have to be a critical mass of them nationally for EVs to be viable for road trips. For overnight charging, those are cheap, slow chargers that should simply be a part of all parking structures, road parking, etc. Keep in mind that for charging overnight for average daily driving, even a standard 12

  • plug standard? Tesla station must let any change (and let non dealer repaired Teslas change?)

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