TheStreet.com: There Are Too Many Electric Cars

Anton Wahlman, IIRC, owns a Volt &/or an ActiveE. So, I'm guessing he writes from experience.

I see quite a bit of haggling & screaming about chargers in some popular places. EVSEs that are far away from shopping centers etc obviously get used less.

Not dissimilar to normal parking spaces, I guess.

Isn't this kind of like saying "there aren't enough gas stations for all the cars on the road! It's a calamity!"?

This is one of those problems that will quickly fix itself, especially when it turns out there's a dollar to be made on it. It's a capitalist system. Where the demand exists, supply will be filled by *someone*.

@NeilBlanchard.

I think the point is that it is too hard to find a reliable charging station for a pure EV to make a trip that needs a remote charge to make it back home.

In Illinois a very large number charger are broken and have been for a very long time. They show up as available when you check on-line. If on top of that we get a situation where the very few working chargers at popular destinations are constantly in use I can not see how you would ever venture outside your home chargers radius.

Yeah, are they not counting the heavily trafficked charging stations that we all use at home? I've never been even close to needing public charging outside of my own garage.

I like what "dutchinchicago" said. Most of the charging stations are installed at the wrong places with the wrong type of charging stations.

In order to stimulate EV adoption, charging stations "matching need/speed/time" should be installed in the right location.

L2 charging station at work place will stimulate a lot of commuting cars to switch over to EVs.

L1 charging station at airport will be perfect for long term parking.

L2 charging stations at movie theater and shopping malls are correct.

DC fast chargers along the interstate is the key for long range travel.

Installing a Level 1 charger in front of a shop ro restaurant is useless. It should be at least a DC fast charger or L2.

The best way to promote EV adoption is through work place charging. That is the first step.

"You don't want to install too many chargers, or they go underutilized and assets are wasted."

I don't think an extra outlet is really a "wasted" asset...

Thanks for sharing, surfingslovak. I'm surprised to hear that Stanford installed EVSEs at the track & field. Seems an odd place to put them; they'll be used for events, sure, but other times they'll be idle.

It's a different world here in CNY. The vast majority of people have no idea that EVs exist, so they don't even realize that pedestal they're blocking with their SUV is an EVSE.

I tend to agree that this problem will likely continue for much of the rest of the decade. In the mean time, it will stifle demand for pure EVs, and push more people into PHEVs/EREVs. Tesla knows that they need to drive their own infrastructure (superchargers) to sell their cars, and Nissan seems to be catching on (they will soon start rolling out more CHAdeMOs).

Whats the next Junk Media Headline

Electric Cars Give You Cancer!!!!

Really these bullshit articles just get worse and worse

I think there's an opportunity for someone to drastically reduce the price (and increase the convenience) of workplace charging. It's great when companies are willing to spend several thousands of dollars (in hardware costs alone) per L2 charging space, but as @surfingslovak pointed out, most people would do just fine to have a 120V outlet to plug into while the car sits in the lot all day. The problem with installing a bunch of 120V outlets is that it's a pain for cars to have to drag their EVSE out and plug it in, as compared to plugging into a J1772 cable that might be just waiting in an L2 spot.

What I'd love to see (and have been suggesting in various forums) would be a single box, multi-car EVSE unit. It would ideally have four or even eight J1772 cords, able to charge several cars at once. If only one car was plugged in, it could conceivably charge at 6KW or more, but the rate would automatically be reduced as additional cars plug in. Up to eight cars could be charged from a single 240V 40A circuit as compared to the current model where such a circuit is dedicated to a single charging space. It's easy to rapidly run out of available power or circuits when you're burning 6+KW per parking space. The key is that you would just pull in, and plug in to a cable that is just sitting there waiting for you. These devices would not need to be networked or managed in any way, and they would dole out the power, ensuring that all cars would be charged and ready to go at the end of the day -- rather than one or two being charged and six more sitting all day without charging.

I believe the existing Open EVSE project can already support exactly this sort of smart-multiplexed charging functionality. Someone just needs to build this, put it in a rugged outdoor enclosure, and sell it to businesses to install in their employee parking lots. It would only be slightly more expensive per space than installing 120V outlets, but would be much more convenient for everyone to use (and would offer higher speed charging when fewer cars are charging). I wouldn't turn down any royalties offered by whoever decided to productize this... :-)