California Has 48% More EV Chargers Than Gas Nozzles (electrek.co) 269
California has 11.3% of America's population — but bought 30% of America's new zero-emission vehicles. That's according to figures from the California Air Resources Board, which also reports 1 in 4 Californians have chosen a zero-emission car over a gas-powered one... for the last two years in a row.
But what about chargers? It turns out that California now has 48% more public and "shared" private EV chargers than the number of gasoline nozzles. (California has 178,000 public and "shared" private EV chargers, versus about 120,000 gas nozzles.) And beyond that public network, there's more than 700,000 Level 2 chargers installed in single-family California homes, according to the California Energy Commission.
Of the 178,000 public/"shared" private chargers, "Over 162,000 are Level 2 chargers," according to an announcement from the governor's office, while nearly 17,000 are fast chargers. (A chart shows a 41% jump in 2024 — though the EV news site Electrek notes that of the 73,537 chargers added in 2024, nearly 38,000 are newly installed, while the other 35,554 were already plugged in before 2024 but just recently identified.) California approved a $1.4 billion investment plan in December to expand zero-emission transportation infrastructure. The plan funds projects like the Fast Charge California Project, which has earmarked $55 million of funding to install DC fast chargers at businesses and publicly accessible locations.
But what about chargers? It turns out that California now has 48% more public and "shared" private EV chargers than the number of gasoline nozzles. (California has 178,000 public and "shared" private EV chargers, versus about 120,000 gas nozzles.) And beyond that public network, there's more than 700,000 Level 2 chargers installed in single-family California homes, according to the California Energy Commission.
Of the 178,000 public/"shared" private chargers, "Over 162,000 are Level 2 chargers," according to an announcement from the governor's office, while nearly 17,000 are fast chargers. (A chart shows a 41% jump in 2024 — though the EV news site Electrek notes that of the 73,537 chargers added in 2024, nearly 38,000 are newly installed, while the other 35,554 were already plugged in before 2024 but just recently identified.) California approved a $1.4 billion investment plan in December to expand zero-emission transportation infrastructure. The plan funds projects like the Fast Charge California Project, which has earmarked $55 million of funding to install DC fast chargers at businesses and publicly accessible locations.
Chicken vs. Egg (Score:2, Insightful)
This is really what will enable the mass adoption of EVs. Yes, the back-end and power generation needs to keep up, but that is a comparatively straightforward problem compared to getting a large enough network of chargers to cover the last mile problem.
Now if they can get the number of offline or damaged charging points addressed, we'll be cooking.
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This is really what will enable the mass adoption of EVs. Yes, the back-end and power generation needs to keep up, but that is a comparatively straightforward problem compared to getting a large enough network of chargers to cover the last mile problem.
Now if they can get the number of offline or damaged charging points addressed, we'll be cooking.
True, how quickly the EV exterminates ICE is mostly a question of how quickly infrastructure expands. In Europe and China this is just a matter of planning and funding, same probably in California, parts of the US East Coast and other 'blue' regions of the US, although from what I understand the planning part can be lengthy in California. In large portions of Red America they'll likely cling onto ICE and oil but that just gives us a nice retro theme park to visit where we can see live demonstrations of stin
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And these days....if you're driving the most popular and widespread EV on the market in the US....you stand a chance of some looney burning your car or threating you with violence while you're driving it.
Yeah Elon sure burned his base. You used to see smug look on all the Tesla drivers. Now they try to avoid eye contact lol
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Sort of. Availability certainly needs to be there, but charging speed is the major hold up. I know improvements have been made but you're still looking at 30 minutes or so to get a useable charge on an EV. A gas vehicle can go from empty to full in about 3 minutes.
That's not only a matter of convenience for the consumer, but also each pump has a faster turnover time before its ready to serve another customer (eg in 30 minutes an electrical charger can serve 1 customer whereas a gas pump can serve about 1
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It depends. Assuming most people who drive an EV have access to some kind of asynchronous L2 charging - either at home, at work, shared charger in their apartment complex, or while parked and shopping, then the only people who need fast chargers are those who are on a long trip and need to recharge on the go. As long as the percentage of those people on the highway is only 10%, you can get away with replacing gas pumps 1:1 with DC fast chargers despite the 10x worse throughput, because there will be far f
Re:Chicken vs. Egg (Score:4)
On the charging side my normal time would be about 20 seconds each day I use my car, because I normally charge at home. For the less common road trip charges I am typically stopping for between 10 and 30 minutes depending on food and bathroom needs.
So for daily use the ratio is hugely in favor of the EV and on road trips the ratio is probably more like 2:1 or 3:1 if you use a decent charger.
Re: Chicken vs. Egg (Score:2)
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And just when I thought there was nowhere else for you guys to move the goal posts...
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Seriously? I'd call it "aligning the goal posts with reality". Nothing they said was wrong. I wonder what the stats are on numbers of cars serviced in a day for gas pumps and chargers and how they compare.
I would love to see EVs take over the world, but ICEs are entrenched for good reasons. Personally, I'd like to see standardized batteries of common sizes and shapes that can be swapped out for charged ones quickly.
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I would love to see EVs take over the world, but ICEs are entrenched .
In the early days of gas engines, you had to go to a hardware store and purchase a tin of petrol. When we get back to that state, then the ICE will be on its way out.
Re: Chicken vs. Egg (Score:2)
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And just when I thought there was nowhere else for you guys to move the goal posts...
Not moving the goal posts at all. The article is making an inaccurate comparison.
The purpose of a charger or gas pump is to refill a car with energy.
A single gas pump can fully recharge about 12 cars/hour.
A single level-2 charger can fully recharge one car in 8-10 hours.
Even where there are high-speed electric chargers the charging speed often drops when multiple cars are being charged concurrently. This is not the case with a gas station. Pointing out that these devices have different capabilities is no
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The goalposts are not absolute. Not everyone is doing long haul trips regularly.
If you're going a long way at once, fully recharging doesn't make sense. The time you'd spend on that last 20 percent charging at a lower speed you could spend driving on the remaining 80%.
For longer distances, we need DC fast charging (Level 3). We need better battery chemistry for this to really work well long term but getting to 80% in 20 minutes is perfectly fine.
For everyday commuting, you might never even need a public
Re:Chicken vs. Egg (Score:4, Insightful)
The purpose of a charger or gas pump is to refill a car with energy.
A single gas pump can fully recharge about 12 cars/hour.
A single level-2 charger can fully recharge one car in 8-10 hours.
Even where there are high-speed electric chargers the charging speed often drops when multiple cars are being charged concurrently. This is not the case with a gas station. Pointing out that these devices have different capabilities is not "moving the goalposts".
An L2 charger is not the same beast as a gas pump though. You can install an L2 charger in most single family homes, in apartment parking lots/garages, in shopping center parking lots, and office park parking lots.
With the exception of the shopping center, those are all places where it is impractical to install a gas pump for cost, logistical, and environmental impact reasons. Because of this it's totally practical and desirable to have a 2:1 or even 3:1 ratio of L2 chargers to EVs on the road. Just like we have way more outlets in our homes than are ever simultaneously in use, we should have an overabundance of L2 charging so that one never has to worry about where to plug in.
You need to compare gas pumps to DC fast charging for more of an apples to apples comparison. And if a sufficient number of L2s are installed, the lower throughput of DC chargers compared to gas shouldn't matter since most people will get their day-to-day needs met by L2 chargers and only need to the DC chargers for longer trips. Meaning that the gas station type of use case drops to a small minority of total car energy delivery.
Re:Chicken vs. Egg (Score:4, Insightful)
Even where there are high-speed electric chargers the charging speed often drops when multiple cars are being charged concurrently. This is not the case with a gas station.
Yes it is. You can easily notice the difference in speed with which the gas is being pumped into your vehicle when someone else is pumping at the same station. This is because most gas stations have a single submerged turbine pump per underground tank which supplies fuel to all of the dispensers above ground. The more people pumping gas, the slower it is for everyone.
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Why do you think this is relevant to wide-scale adoption of EVs? How many people are taking 10,000 mile trips on the regular? No, for most people, the range of your average EV is ample for a day's use.
Relevance (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do you think this is relevant to wide-scale adoption of EVs? How many people are taking 10,000 mile trips on the regular?
It's relevant because while an EV is fine for everyday, about town use most of us do, on ocassion, like to drive to the mountains to go hiking, drive to a neighbouring city to do something or go on a family holiday and we need our vehicle to be able to accommodate that use.
It may not be something we do everyday but it is someting we do several times a year and that's the main reason we did not look at EVs the last time we bought a car. Yes I know it is possible to careful plan a trip around charging sta
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If I drive 25 miles every day for 200 days out of the year and take 10 road trips each at 500 miles round trip (with only my home charger at the beginning and end of the round trip) then I will have to find a public charger for ~250 mi
Re:Chicken vs. Egg (Score:5, Insightful)
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What you have to really ask is: for a 10,000 mile trip, how many charger-minutes do you need if your car is EV, versus how many nozzle-minutes do you need if your comparable car is ICE?
Ignoring the "10,000 mile trip" silliness, that's not a relevant question. On long trips, the limiting factor is biological, not fuel. If you charge while you eat, etc., what you find is that you very rarely end up waiting for the car, at all. If anything, I think I spend less time "fueling" my EV than I do my ICEV, because while pumping gas only takes a few minutes, it's a few minutes you can't do anything else. Well, I guess some people start the pump then walk into the store for snacks or bathroom whi
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Anecdotal reports indicate that typical recharging any 'long-range' EV after a trip segment of 200 miles or so, about 4 hours, will usually take between 3 and 4 meal-hours.
Nope, the assertion that recharging your EV is nowhere as efficient, or swift, as refueling your petrol vehicle, is is true. Planning to stop for a meal when you recharge your EV is to plan on a break, a meal, an extended loiter wherever you are, and another break since time has elapsed since you initially stopped.
My last trip from Arizon
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No one charges to 100% on a road trip unless they really have to due to badly spaced chargers. That 80-100% charge will take you longer than going from 10-80%. Also, Tesla is actually a little behind the times with their charging speeds. My car, for example, has an 800V battery and can accept up to 350kW due to the reduced current requirement for a charge time of under 20m for 20-80% in good conditions. So you are way better off stopping for 20m to charge every 200mi, than stopping for an hour every 300
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Been roadtripping in a Tesla since getting my Model 3 in 2018 [x.com]. Back then the Superchargers maxed out at 120 kW and during roadtrips to Wisconsin (from Houston) some of the stops would require the slow* 100% charge to reach the next Supercharger. On occasion I'd be prompted to drive slower to extended range, such as between Little Rock Arkansas and Miner Missouri (example of that prompt [x.com] from a 2019 trip).
Now the newer (2019+) V3 Superchargers [tesla.com] max out a 250 kW, plus those older 120 chargers were software up
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Everything you said is true for an individual, but misses the point the parent was making regarding the total number of charging stations needed.
If an EV needs to charge 20 minutes every 200 miles, and an ICE vehicle needs to pump gas for 5 minutes every 200 miles, then you will need 4 times the number of public level 3 chargers as gas pumps to serve the same number of cars. In fact if roadtripping EVs are mostly charging at normal meal breaks, then you will need even more chargers, since use will be more c
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The question is why so many of these fast chargers are in fueling stations. In the short and medium term, restaurants near an Interstate will easily make their investment back by having a couple level 2 chargers in the further area of the parking lot. A convenience store isn't a great place to spend 30 minutes or a couple hours and there's really no point to it. The blue Interstate signs need an EV icon for level 2 and 3 charging to show in the corner of the logos on the sign. Even better, add a solar p
Re: Chicken vs. Egg (Score:2)
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The absolute number of chargers vs gas nozzles doesn't matter, you're gonna need *way* more chargers to break even.
What you have to really ask is: for a 10,000 mile trip, how many charger-minutes do you need if your car is EV, versus how many nozzle-minutes do you need if your comparable car is ICE?
A traditional gas station services many cars and trucks quickly, and the cars that run low on the open road are often able to keep driving far enough to find a random gas station with minimal total downtime.
Conversely, electric charging is slow and is not space efficient, since cars have to park during that time. When counting chargers, you also have to discount all the chargers that are privately owned and attached to a house, because they are effectively inaccessible to a random car whose battery is running low on the open road. Private chargers only help the owner's car, and only if the owner is able to drive home whenever required.
This is true. Gas nozzles are overprovisioned (in most cases except in wilderness areas), while even with more electric public chargers, the chargers are underprovisioned. The only reason the EV charging system sort of works is the at-home chargers combined with the relatively small number of EVs. If all cars were EVs, the charging system would fail, both in cities and on highways.
The problem is charging time. Until charging times equal gas fueling times, the queuing models show that lines will be long.
Re:Chicken vs. Egg (Score:4, Insightful)
for a 10,000 mile trip, how many charger-minutes do you need if your car is EV, versus how many nozzle-minutes do you need if your comparable car is ICE?
Already missed the point. The majority of people filling their gas cars are doing so because in many small trips has resulted in their vehicle being empty and needing to be filled. That is a problem that is largely non-existent for EVs, especially in America which has an incredibly high suburban living rate with off-street parking.
As a comparison I used to refill my car one a week.
Now I use a public charger only when I take those "10,000 mile trips", which was twice last year. I still drive the same distance. Most EV owners won't use public charging infrastructure with any kind of frequency.
I'm not sharing the charging minutes with as many people as those counting nozzle minutes because EVs don't typically go and get charged at a station.
And when I am sharing, it's usually on a road trip where the charging minute isn't a limiting factor, but rather how hot the coffee is I am drinking, the queue for food, and the bathroom at the highway rest stop. I stop because *I* need a refill, the car getting recharged is rarely the driver for picking my stop.
Re: Chicken vs. Egg (Score:2)
Driving from Alaska to Brazil [Re:Chicken vs. Egg] (Score:2, Informative)
The absolute number of chargers vs gas nozzles doesn't matter, you're gonna need *way* more chargers to break even.
No you don't. Most people with EVs charge them overnight; they don't use public chargers at all on a day to day basis. All people with gasoline cars, on the other hand, fuel them at public fueling stations ("gas stations").
What you have to really ask is: for a 10,000 mile trip,
The number of people who take 10,000 mile trips is so tiny that it is completely negligible. The average in the US is 40 miles per day.
...
When counting chargers, you also have to discount all the chargers that are privately owned and attached to a house,
publicly accessible chargers.
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EV charging is far more space efficient. You can fit 60 EV chargers on the footprint of a typical 6 nozzle gas station. Not to mention it is a far simpler construction project since it doesn't involve putting large toxic fuel tanks in the ground that will poison that real estate for many years after it is taken out of commission.
Re: Chicken vs. Egg (Score:2)
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EV charging is far more space efficient. You can fit 60 EV chargers on the footprint of a typical 6 nozzle gas station.
That's quite a claim. Are you stacking the 60 EV's vertically? Is there no access road so cars can come and go?
I'm guessing the real number is closer to 16.
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EV charging is far more space efficient. You can fit 60 EV chargers on the footprint of a typical 6 nozzle gas station.
10 to 1 seems like an exaggeration. I'm curious about how those 60 space would be laid out. Gasoline and diesel stations are usually designed more for convenience than for space efficiency: for example, so that drivers can pull in and then drive out without having to back out, as they would need to do in most parking lots. This takes more space but make the process more convenient and faster. A proper comparison would need to consider those factors.
Drivers may be more willing to accept a parking model for
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On the other hand you also get to subtract out all the cars that get to charge at home or while parked at a shared L2 charger. While gasoline pumps need to be used by everyone who drives an ICE to refuel, fast chargers are only needed by those on road trips who are driving outside their normal range.
This means you don't need to replace each gas pump with 4-5 DC fast chargers as would be suggested by just taking the ration of EV charge time to ICE refuel time would suggest. You just need to add enough to s
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The absolute number of chargers vs gas nozzles doesn't matter, you're gonna need way more chargers to break even.
Let’s not get bogged down in hypotheticals. California has over 178,000 chargers—nearly 50% more than gas nozzles—and that number is growing fast. The infrastructure is already expanding to meet demand, not the other way around.
What you have to really ask is: for a 10,000 mile trip, how many charger-minutes do you need if your car is EV, versus how many nozzle-minutes do you need if your comparable car is ICE?
10,000 miles? That has to be a typo, or are you just exaggerating to make your numbers work? I don’t think a Cannonball Run X 3 is part of anybody’s daily commute. The average driver isn’t taking cross-country trips every other day. Fast chargers a
Re:Chicken vs. Egg (Score:4, Funny)
Dude? Seriously? This is your benchmark?
A 10,000 mile trip would take you from New York to Sydney, Australia.
You're correct there aren't a lot of EV chargers between New York and Sydney. However, kindly observe that there also aren't a lot of gas stations in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Plus a bonus (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know the actual percentage, but many EV owners also have their own private charging station at home (not shared) so they may not frequently use public charging stations at all. I don't think I've used a public charger more than maybe 10-12 times in the last 5 years. Some of those folks may even use "renewable energy" to supply those electrons (I don't).
Best,
Re:Plus a bonus (Score:4, Interesting)
Quick lookup suggests that about 44% [census.gov] (based on an owner-occupied rate of 55.8%) of California residents rent their living space and likely have limited or no access to charge at home.
=Smidge=
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And of the remainer, a significant portion have no off-street parking, or it's in use as storage (like garages in cities.)
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Everything devolves into politics and the grievances of the proletariat.
Everything is related to politics, and our economic system which was designed to transfer wealth upwards. The nation was designed by landed white men who wanted to preserve their privilege; mission accomplished.
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Does the summary not state
And beyond that public network, there's more than 700,000 Level 2 chargers installed in single-family California homes, according to the California Energy Commission
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There are plenty of small rental units in urban areas that have no driveway and come with no parking. It's impossible for these home owners to provide L2 charging on premises. Requiring a certain percentage of provided parking spaces to be equipped with chargers makes sense though.
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I had no problem accessing a charger when I rented. Do American rentals come with BYO solar panels / generator?
But in any case given how EVs in California still make up less than 5% it's clear that access to home charging isn't the limiting factor.
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There needs to be far more shared L2 chargers installed, including at utility poles for use by people with street parking only. I think a lot of times this discussion conflates DC fast charging, which should be a rare need only required for longer trips, with L2 charging, which can be slotted asynchronously into your daily routine as long as they are convenient and ubiquitous. L2 chargers are also much cheaper to install compared to DC chargers, requiring only a standard 480V 2-phase circuit.
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> Common Sense suggests that disciplined EV owners could find sufficient access to charge an EV in any home that has the capability of powering a clothes dryer.
Common sense suggests that this is small consolation for someone who lives in a 5th floor apartment, by way of example.
> They do not take steps to recharge their vehicles every time when not driving
Which is pretty difficult if you don't own the property you store the vehicle on, and the owner of said property has no desire or incentive to insta
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Common Sense suggests that disciplined EV owners could find sufficient access to charge an EV in any home that has the capability of powering a clothes dryer.
Ok. My second floor apartment actually does have a dryer inside the unit, unlike the other poster who uses a laundry room. How do you propose I charge a car in a ground level spot that is not adjacent to the building I live in?
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"Nobody has to piss every three hours"
Off-topic, just to note that you obviously don't know that there are people who are pregnant or who take diuretics to treat high blood pressure or who have prostatic hyperplasia.
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That was literally in the summary. Didn't even have to RTFA.
"there's more than 700,000 Level 2 chargers installed in single-family California homes"
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That doesn't capture them all. You don't need an L2 charger at all. You can plug it into a 120V or 240v outlet and use the charging cable that used to come with all Teslas (now I think it's a few hundred bucks). A standard 4-prong 240V outlet (normally used for electric stoves and electric clothes dryers) and charge at a rate of about 30 miles of range per hour. That's actually what I use. Even if the battery is completely flat, you can plug in when you get home from work and it's fully charged in the
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Sure, but the important point is, that's one charger per vehicle. How many vehicles share a gas pump nozzle?
Hotcakes make up less than 10% of breakfast sales (Score:2)
Fully-electric vehicles (BEVs) were 8.1% of all U.S. light vehicle sales in 2024.
if charging only took 48% longer than refueling (Score:3)
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Re:if charging only took 48% longer than refueling (Score:4, Insightful)
So, why would I want to spend more $$ for a vehicle that is so much more inconvenient than my ICE?
I mean, with my ICE...I don't have to rent a vehicle for anything, it does everything and fits ever use case I want for a private vehicle.
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So, why would I want to spend more $$ for a vehicle that is so much more inconvenient than my ICE?
I never said you should want that. Just pointing out an option for people considering an EV that also take the occasional long trip.
I mean, with my ICE...I don't have to rent a vehicle for anything, it does everything and fits ever use case I want for a private vehicle.
Then by all means keep your ICE. I also have an ICE vehicle.
In my two car household, one ICE and one EV would be a great solution, but we'd need to run a very expensive power line from one side of the house to the other side, on top of investing in an expensive charger. We can't justify that expense.
EVs aren't for everyone, but they can be ideal for a lot of people.
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Doesn't matter.
I don't want to spend extra money niche vehicle that is less convenient than I currently own with ICE.
I don't have the money for a specialty vehicle in addition to my fully functional multipurpose vehicle.
If I had spare cash and wanted a specialty vehicle...I'd likely buy and restore an old CJ7 Jeep to something I could go off-roading with...for fun,
Re: if charging only took 48% longer than refuelin (Score:2)
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Renting a vehicle is expensive. When I go on vacation I visit two cities so last year I flew to city 1 and picked up a rental and drove it to city 2 and dropped it off and flew home. Last year there were SUVs for 50/day. Not anymore! Even economy vehicles this year are 200/day. It is literally cheaper for me to fly from city 1 to city 2. Fortunately we can borrow a car in each city. My point is that I would never want to have to rely on renting a vehicle for making a trip anywhere.
I didn't say it would be a good/economical option for everyone. Just pointing out an option that might work for some people who would like an EV as their primary vehicle.
Use time (Score:3, Informative)
Each nozzle is used by a single person for a few minutes, while a charging station needs to be used for a much longer time. This is an apples to oranges comparison, typical for ideology-motivated messages.
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And the VAST majority of EV cars aren't using ANY of those public chargers because most people charge at home. Yes, my car is often plugged in and charging for 4-5 hours at a time ... because it is in my driveway, plugged into my own Level 2 charger.
Re:Use time (Score:4, Informative)
"And the VAST majority of EV cars aren't using ANY of those public chargers because most people charge at home."
Ignoring your mixing of "cars" and "people" in this poorly considered claim, "the VAST majority" use public chargers. Usage by any individual is not a binary, either none or total, it's a mix. Otherwise there would never have been a need for fast chargers to begin with.
The most successful use of an EV is when there is little to no long distance usage. That way (only) slow charging is needed. Lots of owners meet this pattern, especially with second cars or with city vehicles. Primary vehicles, though, almost always have some demand for long range travel and that requires "public chargers". If you regularly travel hundreds of miles at a time, EV isn't (yet) for you.
Private chargers (Score:3)
I read TFA, and articles it references, but can't find the definition of "shared" private EV chargers nor a breakdown of how many of those 178k chargers are private. Considering "gas nozzles" are public, comparing them to some unknown number of "shared private" chargers, that potentially only a few people might be allowed to use each, is kind of misleading.
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I read TFA, and articles it references, but can't find the definition of "shared" private EV chargers nor a breakdown of how many of those 178k chargers are private. Considering "gas nozzles" are public, comparing them to some unknown number of "shared private" chargers, that potentially only a few people might be allowed to use each, is kind of misleading.
I might be misunderstanding your post...
The summary included this detail: "And beyond that public network, there's more than 700,000 Level 2 chargers installed in single-family California homes, according to the California Energy Commission."
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A shared private charger would be one provided by an employer apartment building, hotel or similar. Those are useful to those who have access to them, and reduce the load on public chargers, but that means the general public gets less benefit from them than from public chargers. In that sense it's helpful to know how many of the 178k chargers are private vs public.
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I read TFA, and articles it references, but can't find the definition of "shared" private EV chargers nor a breakdown of how many of those 178k chargers are private. Considering "gas nozzles" are public, comparing them to some unknown number of "shared private" chargers, that potentially only a few people might be allowed to use each, is kind of misleading.
I might be misunderstanding your post... The summary included this detail: "And beyond that public network, there's more than 700,000 Level 2 chargers installed in single-family California homes, according to the California Energy Commission."
In my neck of the woods these 'shared private' EV chargers are usually bought by groups of citizens, like every house in a cul-de-sac, or an entire stairway in an apartment building or something like that and then shared between the contributing residents which works well because most people here don't see what powers your car as an integral part of their political identity. The municipality/government will incentivize this by enabling such operators to charge at residential tariffs rather than the much hig
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They are stating that the "public network" count includes private chargers, but they are shared by more than 1 person in some way. IE a business may have a charging station that can be used by some specific employees (and this is probably the greatest contributor to that "public" count). There might be an apartment building with 2 or 3 units, that has a charger that can only be used by the tenants at that apartment. Or potentially a homeowner has a charger that they share with their immediate neighbor. Tho
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I read TFA, and articles it references, but can't find the definition of "shared" private EV chargers nor a breakdown of how many of those 178k chargers are private. Considering "gas nozzles" are public, comparing them to some unknown number of "shared private" chargers, that potentially only a few people might be allowed to use each, is kind of misleading.
Level 2 “charger” for EV don’t really exist, it’s all onboard the vehicle. It’s an EVSE, all it does is communicate with the car to be sure the vehicle charging system does not overload the local wiring. It’s basically a tiny communication module that’s incredibly simple and a contactor. Part of the reason they can command such high prices is people don’t know it’s just a switch and a $0.20 computer
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It is still a bit of an apples-to-oranges though because the usage cases are clearly vastly different, as are the times you need to be connected to the nozzle/charger for in order to top up. If you have an ICE you are highly unlikely to have a nozzle at home, but for all we know all 700,000 of those home chargers stated in TFS are all tha
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"I read TFA, and articles it references, but can't find the definition of "shared" private EV chargers nor a breakdown of how many of those 178k chargers are private."
Because the distinction is not important. The article contrasts "public or shared private EV chargers" with "at-home chargers" so the first category is chargers used by more than end user while the second is the rest. "Private" in this context simply means not accessible to the general public while "shared" means more than one user. If you s
Lies, damn statistics, and lies (Score:3)
There are not nearly enough high speed chargers where they are needed for distance travel. The ones that are there don't work half the time, but the system will lie to you about that. You'll find yourself in a long line waiting for the one charger that works, or hunting for something else.
Still need more (Score:3)
Hanging out at the gas station. (Score:3)
Not once have I ever heard an ICE car driver suggest that they don't mind hanging out at the gas station for a half hour to an hour, or that they might go to a restaurant while their tank is filling...
Yes, it's good to have charging stations, but it would be far simpler, and easier, just to make carbon-neutral gasoline. Instead of just retooling existing chemical plants, electric car enthusiasts want us to rebuild the entire country's infrastructure so they can emit a few percentage points less carbon than their ICE driving counterparts. One wonders - if they've got the money to spend on an EV - why they just don't ride a bike. If you're willing to tear up infrastructure to "go green", wouldn't it make more sense just to build cities that don't require a car to live?
But but but (Score:3)
But EV charging takes a lot longer than 48% more than using a gas nozzle. Nevertheless, as long as someone else is paying for putting in those chargers... What I see, in the places I frequent in norcal, is lots and lots of chargers, lots and lots of Teslas, but very few cars at any of the charging farms around.
Re: I can hear the mental gymnastics now (Score:4, Informative)
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Doesn't like 80% of Norway live "near the coast" and all of Norway lives on a higher latitude than all of the USA?
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"Also the citizens are basically paid with oil money..."
Right, because people who do better than you cannot possibly be better than you. Norway could not possibly have a good approach if it weren't for their corrupt polluting ways that they hide from virtuous Americans, right? Unlike American greatness, Norwegians could not possibly survive without destroying the planet while pretending they don't.
"so how green is it really?"
Greener than you, and more respectable.
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Once again, most of the EVs in Norway are used near the coast where it hardly goes below zero. Also the citizens are basically paid with oil money to put up with an EV (so how green is it really?)
It is true that Norway floats on an ocean of oil which has made them rich. However, taking a look at a charger map of Norway and seeing lots and lots of charging stations all over inland Norway tells me that you are spreading a bunch of FUD when you claim EVs in Norway are only used near the coast. Also, most modern EVs now have batteries with thermal management for optimal charging and battery life, so you are dispensing form a big pile of FUD on that count as well.
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How do you know the statistics are falsified? Where do you get the real statistics?
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The article plays fast and loose with statistics to show that EVs are on the rise. They spin 75% of the people buying ICE cars as progress.
The EV market saw charging 150% more for their solution as “progress” too. Go figure the end result of that was pricing your product right out of 75% of the market. That’s not spin. That’s just simple no-shit math.
Leave the government in charge of deploying EV chargers, and they’ll hook them up about as fast as government taxpayer broadband internet programs have connected houses. Which is to say we’ll run out of fucking oil before that happens.
Re:But most of the cars are still ICE... (Score:4, Informative)
Only if they get used for comparable durations.
In my experience, filling up an ICE car's fuel tank takes about 5 minutes. An EV fast charger needs 30+ minutes, and a level 2 charger needs multiple hours. From TFS, about 10% of public/shared-private chargers are fast chargers and the other are level 2. If we take 4 hours as a typical level 2 charging time, that means the expected occupancy time for a public/shared-private charger is about 220 minutes -- 44 times as long as for a gasoline nozzle. So if you have 50% ICE and 50% EV, you need about 40 times as many EV chargers as gasoline pumps.
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you need about 40 times as many EV chargers as gasoline pumps
100% of ICE car owners require a public gas pump. Your conclusion assumes 100% of EV charging will happen at public chargers which is not true.
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There are already privately limited-access chargers in the mix here. Some large fraction of the 40-times-as-many chargers will be privately owned or at people's homes -- but you still need that kind of ratio in order to have similar capacities.
As the fraction of at-home chargers goes up, the 40x ratio will go up by some (tiny) amount because the fraction of fast chargers will decrease. It will probably go up by more because restricted-access chargers are not useful to the general public, so utilization go
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No. It takes longer to charge an EV then it does to fill up an ICE car. The nozzles can service 5-25X more cars then the EV chargers.
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Very old cars can take an hour to get 180 miles, newer ones with very fast charging can do that in 10 minutes. There is also battery swap which takes under 4 minutes.
Someone will now claim that they need to do 12 hours non-stop at 85 MPH, but I'm not going to even contemplate enabling that kind of recklessness.
Re: So you kind of need them (Score:2)
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That's easily doable in modern, affordable EVs in Europe, such as the new MGS5.
Re: So you kind of need them (Score:2)
Re: So you kind of need them (Score:2)
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Some cars have live charger data, otherwise you can use an app with Android Auto. Generally speaker it's very rare to have to wait here, there are a lot of chargers installed.
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That's a bit ridiculous, but 8 hours with 2x15 minute breaks and a half hour break is not uncommon.
Common, reckless and deeply antisocial.
Driving that much with inadequate breaks increases collision rates. Fine I guess if you wrap your car around a tree and it's just you, but if you hit someone else you are making someone else pay for your poor decisions.
Re: So you kind of need them (Score:2)
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You should only need L3 on road trips where you are actively waiting for your vehicle to charge. For day to day use public charging, L2 is fine as long as there are enough of them that you can park at one frequently enough to keep topped off. Beyond being wasteful and expensive to use for daily charging, they also shorten your battery life if used as your main charging solution.