In California and New Jersey, there are more than 50 EVs for each public charging station available. As electric vehicles continue to gain market share, will there be enough charging stations?
Drivers of electric cars in rural areas experience “anxiety about the range”
Charging stations are emerging rapidly as electric cars enter the US market. But plugs that are blocks from each other in cities can be tens of miles into the countryside. (20 April)
AP
Before traveling with her electric car, Nicki Gordon-Bloomfield did her homework.
She is studying a pair of applications to determine the best places to recharge her Chevrolet Bolt’s batteries along the way.
She likes stations that are clustered close to others to make sure there are options in case one flashes. She prefers to charge near interesting restaurants. She will call ahead along the route to order food to take home, then have a picnic while the car absorbs electrons for the next leg of the trip.
Gordon-Bloomfield said the availability of charging for public use has improved significantly over the past decade as the network is being built. But with so much recent interest in electric cars, the question now is whether there will be enough to go around when hundreds of thousands of new EV converts get behind the wheel for their first trips.
It could be a close call.
Installation costs are high and usage is generally low. Business owners who are taking the plunge and installing chargers need to hope that EV drivers will eventually come.
However, EV supporters say far-sighted businesses see the potential and do not want to be abandoned. Efforts are also gaining a huge boost of $ 7.5 billion that the Biden administration has invested in its infrastructure bill for up to 500,000 new chargers, including many in rural areas, and the lack of space could be more than inconvenient.
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A turning point for EV
The boom to install a charger is a guarantee for the future of EV.
After the last few years, sales of electric cars are finally growing. They doubled last year compared to the previous year, and traders say they can’t get enough of them to meet demand. Their market share, which was 4% of new car sales, is expected to continue to grow.
And despite ominous economic signs, there is no indication that demand will soften. Almost every major automaker – and some new startups – are promoting new long-range electric models with some years-long waiting lists.
General Motors promises that its range will consist only of zero-emission vehicles by 2035.
One expert says a huge installation wave is underway.
“Right now it’s the wild, the wild west,” said Lauren MacDonald of EVAdoption, which analyzes trends in electric vehicles and charging.
So many new installations are coming in, MacDonald said, worrying that EV drivers could get lost in the mix.
“Everyone is trying to put chargers in the ground, but no one is focused on the customer experience,” such as whether they are supported and offline, he said.
Long wait
Tesla, which was early and set the standard for interstate charging with its Supercharger network, experienced growing pain.
Some Tesla owners have reported a long wait at the carmaker’s high-speed refueling points. This is an ominous sign, given that Tesla is leading the electric car revolution. Seven out of 10 electric vehicles on the road are Teslas, Experian Automotive found.
Meanwhile, congestion problems have not been such a big factor in other charging networks.
For the most part, there are enough chargers, as evidenced by low levels of use, MacDonald said. Many use only 5% of the time per day – which means only one or two charging sessions. Some places, of course, are more popular than others.
Billions more for chargers
As sales of electric vehicles are expected to double every few years, 40 million electric vehicles could be on the way by the end of 2030, McDonald predicts. If not enough public chargers are available, this can make electric car buyers worse.
To encourage the transition to EV, the Ministry of Transport must set up a network in order to have at least one charging station that can hold up to four EVs every 50 miles on major highways. They will be required to be no more than a mile from the road.
At the same time, many private charging companies continue to install more stations in anticipation of the wave to come.
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One, for example, is Electrify America, created and funded by Volkswagen following a scandal in which it was caught in a scheme to cover up emissions from its diesel cars. Electrify America, which says it is investing $ 2 billion to install 10,000 chargers in the United States and Canada over 10 years.
Another is ChargePoint, which says it has more than 174,000 chargers.
In their quest to grow, charging companies are forming alliances with automakers and looking for roadside businesses that see refueling as a way to pull new business from wealthy EV customers who will have more time to kill while vehicles recharge. .
For example, ChargePoint recently signed a deal in which Volvo chargers will be placed in up to 15 Starbucks locations on a 1,350-mile route from Seattle to Denver.
ChargePoint is “really reworking what the trip looks like and what it means to stop on the road to refuel,” said Colleen Jansen, chief marketing officer. “We see all kinds of companies that are interested in charging decisions.”
These can be office complexes, hospitals, shopping malls or transport companies or transit operators who want to electrify their fleets.
What will happen to gas stations?
Then there are gas stations, which seem to lose the most when switching to electric transport. Hoping not to be abandoned, they are looking for strategies to stay current at a time when almost every other roadside business is becoming a rival to charging EV.
The process involved asking some difficult questions, said Jeff Lennard, vice president of NACS, a trading group that represents gas stations and store operators. Between them:
- Should charging stations be installed in the most desirable parking spaces on the plot or in the smallest ones?
- Is it sensible to install awnings and offer food that can be delivered directly to the cars while customers stay inside while charging?
- Will drivers fully charge their cars’ exhausted batteries, or will they treat them more like their cell phones, grabbing a little charge for a day when they can?
One of the boldest moves was made in 2020 by Wawa, a Pennsylvania-based gas station and a chain of convenience stores. It opened its first location without fuel pumps in Vienna, Virginia, in 2020. It offers only electric recharging.
Wawa has also added Tesla Superchargers or other recharging devices to more than 50 of its conventional charging points.
Emerging technology could doom the charger to a boom
Despite all efforts to meet the demand for public chargers for new electric cars, much of the planning could fall victim to evolving charging technology.
With so many new EV models coming on the market, manufacturers are vying to offer a longer range that would allow them to miss charging stations. Some are focusing on reducing charging time, which means drivers will spend less time eating or shopping at the roadside business.
Mercedes-Benz, for example, has just advertised its Vision EQXX prototype for more than 620 miles. Kia Motors boasts that the “ultra-fast charge” of its EV6 can go from 10% to 80% charge in 18 minutes. If a revolutionary new battery technology emerges later this decade, as predicted, charging time will be further reduced.
Advance planning can pay off
For now, electric car drivers who want to avoid charging while driving in the country can learn something or two from Gordon-Bloomfield, who lives near Portland, Oregon and is the founder of a business that promotes electric cars and green technology. called Transport Evolved.
A little advance planning can take away the worries of running out of battery when traveling long distances in an electric car. There are several applications that can help you point the way. Gordon-Bloomfield said he likes Chargeway and A Better Routeplanner.
She says she will usually recharge her Chevrolet Bolt EV two or four times a day on long journeys, usually about half an hour at a time, long enough to reach 70% or 80%. Charging speeds tend to drop after that, she said. “The newer the car,” she said, “the faster it will charge.”
She said she had drained her battery only once due to a broken charging station. And she accused herself of not checking the application more closely, in which case she would find that the station was offline.
There are so many charging stations appearing in some corridors, especially on the East Coast and West Coast, that Gordon-Bloomfield said he no longer needed to look closely at his routes there.
This is proof of how far the charging network has come – “very different from 10 years ago,” she added.
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