I think this is simply tapping into existing infrastructure. It's not all bad. When I stop to charge, usually I'll find the nearest washroom and use it (why not?). I might grab a snack or something, too. A gas station satisfies both these requirements and is already grid-connected (electricity, plumbing, waste).
What I'd like to see more of is comforts -- I want a comfy place to sit and relax for a bit or a park trail to walk around. I hate when I pull into a charger and it's just a parking lot. Not stimulating at all. Nothing to do but sit there. If I'm not using the gas station amenities it's not much better than an empty parking lot.
I feel like gas stations have this "grind" / roadtrip mentality whereas I kind of want a relaxing, decompression space to charge my car. So maybe you're right...
It feels like it would make more sense to encourage installation of charging infrastructure at places where you might want to be for half an hour anyway; parks with parking lots, restaurants, grocery stores, etc; rather than encouraging it at gas stations, except for in the rural highway case where gas stations might be all that's easy to find when you're driving between urban areas.
How long does it actually take you to charge? I'm picturing the gas stations around here and even with a supercharger I'm not sure I'd want to just sit at a gas station for 15 minutes, even if there was room on these small-footprint locations to park several cars for an indefinite amount of time.
I don't have any better ideas, mind you; maybe small local parks should have to have charging infra if they have parking spots. Great place for the family to just get out of the car and stretch their legs for a while.
Makes some sense at highway gas stations, but hardly any in cities.
I'm not even arguing that I hardly ever do or want to have longer stops at gas stations. Restrooms only when it's urgent (so maybe once per 5h drive), food only when needed (overpriced and not good). So I'm the 90% "stop, fill tank, go pay, drive off" person, so if I had an EV this would be.. mostly as unpractical as everywhere else.
I'm sure the infrastructure will evolve over time but it currently seems like a good stop-gap. Makes dual use of current infrastructure in a transitionary period. EV adoption is still quite low. But I won't be surprised if when it increases we see the infrastructure change a lot. Like movie theaters offering deals for EV parking or far more charging stations at malls and big stores like wallmart and costco. But what to do on interstate seems like the interesting one. Do we see more casinos pop up? What entertainment or time expending industries will pop up to fill the time for people stopped in the middle of nowhere.
In Norway there’s a few charges at every mall and parking garages, a lot of grocery stores also have charges in the parking lot. Many of the gas station chains have started to adapt by installing charging stations and remaking the store inside to more of a fast food shop/coffee shop with a few tables and places to sit etc.
If you need to charge on the road then most rest-stops and fast food restaurants along the main roads have charging stations installed.
Is this a real scenario? Most EVs can rapid charge with the right infrastructure in 30-45 minutes. It’s stop and get coffee/stretch legs timeframes, I’m not sure it’s that much of an event.
There is a significant overap - fuel up, find the restroom, grab some snacks.
EV chargers have the benefits of being cheap, take little space, and permitting is raesonably simple. Expecting them to be way more widespread than fuel stations ever can be.
Depends on the charging density. I drove across Canada and, when I knew the next charger was under 200km away I'd "fill up" for maybe 5 minutes and get on with my journey.
Unlike an ICE, you want to keep your car between like 10% and 70% while road-tripping for charging efficiency.
There are times I'd stop for 30+ minutes but typically I'd go find a place to eat or take a walk at those stops.
Average gas station stop looks to be ~8 minutes. Tesla superchargers can do up to 200 miles in 15 minutes. So 100 miles of range in the same timeframe. And the charging technology is still in the middle of constant improvement.
You are quite right. A typical German gas station has nothing to offer somebody who is going to stay there for 30 minutes. Their little shop is usually overpriced and beyond that there is usually a place to pump your tires and to wash your car and little else.
Chargers in the parking lots of supermarkets would make much more sense. And indeed that is already where the chargers are to be found. This is a case of the market outsmarting the stupid bureaucrats.
A big factor for women buying EVs is that they DON'T have to go to gas stations anymore.
EV chargers belong in safe, bright areas as you sit in your car or somewhere else for 20-30 minutes. A gas station parking lot is not clean and safe, in Germany or elsewhere.
I can't believe McDonald's hasn't realized the huge potential here. They have the real estate, they have the safety and could get a ton of customers eating out of pure boredom.
> I can't believe McDonald's hasn't realized the huge potential here. They have the real estate, they have the safety and could get a ton of customers eating out of pure boredom.
They'd end up with half the neighborhood using up all the parking space (which is really expensive in urban areas) to charge their EVs for hours, buying nothing at all at worst or a cheeseburger at best.
Gas and Service Stations have their own category as they are a significant target for crime. Unlocked vehicles, stores open at night, cash on site, etc.
CCTV prevents no crime, it exists for insurance purposes.
But hey, TALK TO WOMEN, you will learn a lot. Safety/Risk is a totally different perception and issue across gender lines. Just like why humanity agreed on separating bathrooms in the first place.
Anecdotally speaking (in a very safe part of California), my wife got robbed at a gas station. Since she was driving a large vehicle with tinted windows, the thief simply pulled up to the passenger side while she was gassing up, opened the car door (door guaranteed unlocked for gassing up), waved to my 4yo daughter in the back row, and grabbed my wife's purse, then hopped back in her car and sped away. The CCTV at the gas station was useless.
That highly depends on the franchise/gas station in question.
Gas stations are typically more dangerous because there's far more foot traffic in close proximity, and it's more socially acceptable and expected at night at a gas station than at a McDonald's (which tend to close lobbies at night).
I feel like this makes more sense for a big box store, you know, a place where you would naturally park your car for a time anyway, not a place you tend to try to get in and out of relatively quickly - or often never leaving your car at all.
That said, there are big picture infrastructure considerations (Eg, load on the grid at differing times of day). If the convention moves to charging at destinations (eg work, stores), that could see the power needs once met by gasoline now being offloaded onto the grid during day hours, and that's likely not ideal vs charging overnight.
I am not so sure about that, especially in the US.
While some gas stations may be in badly lit areas, a lot of gas stations are in pretty well-lit and well trafficked areas.
In addition, with pay at the pump and the speed of filling a car, you can basically tap your credit card, fill up your car, and be out of there in 2-3 minutes. Even a minute’s with of pumped gas will probably give you a 100 mile range.
And if you have kids, in the car, maybe sleeping, they can remain in the car while you pump gas.
An EV charge will take at least 15 minutes minimum maybe more. You likely have to go find somewhere nearby where you can sit and wait for your car to charge.
> I can't believe McDonald's hasn't realized the huge potential here. They have the real estate, they have the safety and could get a ton of customers eating out of pure boredom.
I’ve seen multiple MacDonald’s already in the Netherlands and Germany with one or two charging spots. My guess is that they are measuring return on investment and will go for it once the return looks good. Same for Shell. They also have a few chargers at various locations.
I just finished renting an EV in Italy, and infrastructure was better than expected.
However, oil companies that should be protecting their moat and putting plugs at every freaking station, especially the rest stops and stations that have coffee bars or places where people socialize.
The franchisee system makes it that they dont really own most of the properties out there, and gas stations mostly make money on the attached shop, and the gas is a marketing draw to get traffic in the store. The shops might expand into cafe services if charging stays a long process in 5 to 10 years
Italy has had that expensive electricity issue for a while. Their grid is reliant on local labor and local supply chain by design, for better or worse.
The electricity prices still beats nearly $10/gallon petrol, and one friendly Airbnb let us charge on their property’s solar+battery installation, making their power half the market price.
What advantages does this measure have over fuel taxes?
As far as I know, (higher) fuel taxes are more effective, much more fair, create better incentives and have more scientific evidence backing them up than this, but I may be missing something.
Advantage is through the coupled mechanism. There's a chicken and egg problem for consumers of EVs. People are less likely to buy EVs because there aren't many charging ports so they take on extra risk and cost while betting that the future will allow them to regain similar conditions to their ICE vehicle. Filling stations are also at a similar risk investment situation as they don't want to build charging stations when there aren't enough EVs on the road to justify their costs.
So consumers and filling stations are stuck in a Nash Equilibrium because neither wants to take on the market bet. Both will actually suffer losses for moving first and realistically will not receive rewards for investing early (i.e. there is little to no opportunity cost). So Germany is shifting the risk away from the consumer.
But this is just a guess and I'm sure there are naive aspects about it. But it is also naive to just assume that everything can be solved with taxes and incentives. Though I hope this policy has some aspect that creates opportunity costs for not installing charging stations (i.e. gov will subsidize stations installing them at a decreasing rate)
Germany already has 0.65€/liter ($2.60/gal) fuel taxes, and on top of that there's the regular 19% VAT.
One issue the German state is trying to solve is that even charging stations that aren't economically profitable can be valuable to the overall system. Something along the lines of "you barely ever need that charger, but having it available solves range problems that would otherwise prevent you from getting an EV".
> What advantages does this measure have over fuel taxes?
It's about the order of operations.
Ubiquitous fast charging infrastructure makes it much easier for people to make the switch to EVs, especially for people who don't have the ability to charge at their homes.
Lacking that, increasing gasoline taxes will just anger people who don't have access to a practical electric fueling option.
Ensuring infrastructure is available everywhere is one of the most important roles of governments. Imagine buying a car if there were only roads in some cities instead of everywhere, doesn't make much sense. This ensures you will have charging stations everywhere, and that greatly increases the value of electric cars.
Fuel taxes don't address the same issue. Availability of chargers is a blocker for EV adoption. The measure directly helps with that problem, while fuel taxes is a more indirect push. In other words, even if you are heavily pushed by fuel taxes, if you have a blocking barrier with charging infrastructure, buying an EV won't be feasible to begin with.
> The legislation indicates that the German government is getting serious about EV charging, having identified that the industry needed a push. If the move proves successful, expect other jurisdictions to follow the example in short order.
This is just the place where they are not needed, except perhaps on the Autobahn.
When you stop to fill your car with melted dinosaurs, the time is so short you can just wait for it to complete. If it's crowded you can even wait for one or two people to finish so you can start filling -- the overall time is not terrible. OTOH, it takes longer to charge your car with electrons, so you want to overlap it with an errand or excursion you'd make anyway.
The Tankstelle on the Autobahn often have a cafe, sometimes a playground, so you could make an actual stop on a trip. But usually when you are running errands you don't want to be stuck in some random location for an extended period.
Question for EV charging -- how does the economics work at a charging station? If I was an EV owner is it cheaper to charge at home -- and do I pay a premium at a station for fast charging? Are stations subsidized by say a Home Depot who just wants people to come to their business?
1. It's cheaper to charge at home, and we do have a Level 2 charger in the garage. But with a new Hyundai EV, you get unlimited free charging (albeit, 30 minutes at a time) through Electrify America. There's one down the road from us at the local Target. So when one of us goes to Target, we get the "free" fill-up. In fact, just this morning I was driving by from some other errand, and figured, hey, I've got fifteen minutes so I'll throw the car on the EA charger and save a few bucks. But it only takes like five or six dollars to charge the thing at home, so did I save anything even if I didn't go out of my way?
Otherwise, L3 is for road trips, especially if it's coming out of my pocket. And partly because one of the reasons we bought our second electric car is because you don't have to go out of your way to a special place just to keep the thing running.
2. I've not seen free charging at places like HD. What I have seen are Level 2 chargers at Safeway grocery stores that are subsidized by the advertising on the giant-ass (a meter tall?) screen. Advertise all you want on that screen, I'm in the store not seeing it. Other places you'll swipe a credit card or summat.
It is cheaper to charge at home for sure, especially if we are talking about L3 vs. L1 or L2 charging. L3 charging (the one that gets done < 30 minutes) is more expensive to set up and power. It is meant for people on roadtrips, but a lot of people who live in apartments or use Tesla for ride shares also use them.
But if you have access to home charging and don't drive a lot, you'll rarely ever use a charging station. But when you need access, e.g. on a memorial day road trip, the L3 chargers you find will be swamped while the L2 chargers are too slow.
How frequent do you actually think chargers will be used? I understand that there are a lot of market dynamics but I would imagine that if we swapped to EV -- home charging/office charging would be the big ones with few people going to gas stations/convenience stores.
EV is partially sold as not having to go to convenience stores/gas stations to recharge.
It is usually dramatically cheaper to charge at home at night.
For example, in Alameda California I pay:
* 15.17 cents per kWH during off-peak times (nights and weekends)
* 50 cents per kWH during peak times (5pm-9pm)
The Supercharger down the road charges:
* 51 cents per kWH from 12pm-11pm (the time you're most likely to use it)
* 41 cents per kWH from 11pm-4am
* 32 cents per kWH from 4am-12pm
No one is going to leave their car at a Supercharger overnight though. So more realistically you're paying over 3x the cost if you use public Superchargers.
My Model Y has a 75kWH battery so its about ~$11 to charge it from zero to full at home vs about ~$38 at a Supercharger during the day.
A month or so ago I did a comparison between charging a Chevy Bolt at home, with just a level I charger, and putting gas in a Nissan Versa, Hyundai Elantra, or Kia Forte.
The Bolt will be cheaper per mile if G/E > 9.4, where G = price of gas in $/g, and E = price of electricity in $/kWh
I looked at average gas prices and residential electrical rates in all 50 US stats plus DC, and in all of them G/E > 9.4.
This comment has a table showing G and E for all states and DC at the time [1].
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People who come to gas stations to fuel up their cars behave very differently from people who come to a place to charge, no?
What I'd like to see more of is comforts -- I want a comfy place to sit and relax for a bit or a park trail to walk around. I hate when I pull into a charger and it's just a parking lot. Not stimulating at all. Nothing to do but sit there. If I'm not using the gas station amenities it's not much better than an empty parking lot.
I feel like gas stations have this "grind" / roadtrip mentality whereas I kind of want a relaxing, decompression space to charge my car. So maybe you're right...
I don't have any better ideas, mind you; maybe small local parks should have to have charging infra if they have parking spots. Great place for the family to just get out of the car and stretch their legs for a while.
I'm not even arguing that I hardly ever do or want to have longer stops at gas stations. Restrooms only when it's urgent (so maybe once per 5h drive), food only when needed (overpriced and not good). So I'm the 90% "stop, fill tank, go pay, drive off" person, so if I had an EV this would be.. mostly as unpractical as everywhere else.
If you need to charge on the road then most rest-stops and fast food restaurants along the main roads have charging stations installed.
EV chargers have the benefits of being cheap, take little space, and permitting is raesonably simple. Expecting them to be way more widespread than fuel stations ever can be.
(Side note, I actually wish EV charging stations tried to be less like gas stations)
Unlike an ICE, you want to keep your car between like 10% and 70% while road-tripping for charging efficiency.
There are times I'd stop for 30+ minutes but typically I'd go find a place to eat or take a walk at those stops.
Average gas station stop looks to be ~8 minutes. Tesla superchargers can do up to 200 miles in 15 minutes. So 100 miles of range in the same timeframe. And the charging technology is still in the middle of constant improvement.
Chargers in the parking lots of supermarkets would make much more sense. And indeed that is already where the chargers are to be found. This is a case of the market outsmarting the stupid bureaucrats.
This effort is better spent on a carbon tax that directly funds rebates for electric vehicles and charger installations.
EV chargers belong in safe, bright areas as you sit in your car or somewhere else for 20-30 minutes. A gas station parking lot is not clean and safe, in Germany or elsewhere.
I can't believe McDonald's hasn't realized the huge potential here. They have the real estate, they have the safety and could get a ton of customers eating out of pure boredom.
They'd end up with half the neighborhood using up all the parking space (which is really expensive in urban areas) to charge their EVs for hours, buying nothing at all at worst or a cheeseburger at best.
- Those in the city centers which mostly offer no parking space at all.
- Those which are so far outside the urban area that parking is no problem anyway.
Gas and Service Stations have their own category as they are a significant target for crime. Unlocked vehicles, stores open at night, cash on site, etc.
Here is an advisory by the Florida Sherriff's on how to deal with gas stations: https://www.flsheriffs.org/uploads/docs/How_to_Prevent_Gas_S...
CCTV prevents no crime, it exists for insurance purposes.
But hey, TALK TO WOMEN, you will learn a lot. Safety/Risk is a totally different perception and issue across gender lines. Just like why humanity agreed on separating bathrooms in the first place.
Gas stations are typically more dangerous because there's far more foot traffic in close proximity, and it's more socially acceptable and expected at night at a gas station than at a McDonald's (which tend to close lobbies at night).
I feel like this makes more sense for a big box store, you know, a place where you would naturally park your car for a time anyway, not a place you tend to try to get in and out of relatively quickly - or often never leaving your car at all.
That said, there are big picture infrastructure considerations (Eg, load on the grid at differing times of day). If the convention moves to charging at destinations (eg work, stores), that could see the power needs once met by gasoline now being offloaded onto the grid during day hours, and that's likely not ideal vs charging overnight.
While some gas stations may be in badly lit areas, a lot of gas stations are in pretty well-lit and well trafficked areas.
In addition, with pay at the pump and the speed of filling a car, you can basically tap your credit card, fill up your car, and be out of there in 2-3 minutes. Even a minute’s with of pumped gas will probably give you a 100 mile range.
And if you have kids, in the car, maybe sleeping, they can remain in the car while you pump gas.
An EV charge will take at least 15 minutes minimum maybe more. You likely have to go find somewhere nearby where you can sit and wait for your car to charge.
I’ve seen multiple MacDonald’s already in the Netherlands and Germany with one or two charging spots. My guess is that they are measuring return on investment and will go for it once the return looks good. Same for Shell. They also have a few chargers at various locations.
However, oil companies that should be protecting their moat and putting plugs at every freaking station, especially the rest stops and stations that have coffee bars or places where people socialize.
The electricity prices still beats nearly $10/gallon petrol, and one friendly Airbnb let us charge on their property’s solar+battery installation, making their power half the market price.
As far as I know, (higher) fuel taxes are more effective, much more fair, create better incentives and have more scientific evidence backing them up than this, but I may be missing something.
Advantage is through the coupled mechanism. There's a chicken and egg problem for consumers of EVs. People are less likely to buy EVs because there aren't many charging ports so they take on extra risk and cost while betting that the future will allow them to regain similar conditions to their ICE vehicle. Filling stations are also at a similar risk investment situation as they don't want to build charging stations when there aren't enough EVs on the road to justify their costs.
So consumers and filling stations are stuck in a Nash Equilibrium because neither wants to take on the market bet. Both will actually suffer losses for moving first and realistically will not receive rewards for investing early (i.e. there is little to no opportunity cost). So Germany is shifting the risk away from the consumer.
But this is just a guess and I'm sure there are naive aspects about it. But it is also naive to just assume that everything can be solved with taxes and incentives. Though I hope this policy has some aspect that creates opportunity costs for not installing charging stations (i.e. gov will subsidize stations installing them at a decreasing rate)
One issue the German state is trying to solve is that even charging stations that aren't economically profitable can be valuable to the overall system. Something along the lines of "you barely ever need that charger, but having it available solves range problems that would otherwise prevent you from getting an EV".
It's about the order of operations.
Ubiquitous fast charging infrastructure makes it much easier for people to make the switch to EVs, especially for people who don't have the ability to charge at their homes.
Lacking that, increasing gasoline taxes will just anger people who don't have access to a practical electric fueling option.
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This is just the place where they are not needed, except perhaps on the Autobahn.
When you stop to fill your car with melted dinosaurs, the time is so short you can just wait for it to complete. If it's crowded you can even wait for one or two people to finish so you can start filling -- the overall time is not terrible. OTOH, it takes longer to charge your car with electrons, so you want to overlap it with an errand or excursion you'd make anyway.
The Tankstelle on the Autobahn often have a cafe, sometimes a playground, so you could make an actual stop on a trip. But usually when you are running errands you don't want to be stuck in some random location for an extended period.
Otherwise, L3 is for road trips, especially if it's coming out of my pocket. And partly because one of the reasons we bought our second electric car is because you don't have to go out of your way to a special place just to keep the thing running.
2. I've not seen free charging at places like HD. What I have seen are Level 2 chargers at Safeway grocery stores that are subsidized by the advertising on the giant-ass (a meter tall?) screen. Advertise all you want on that screen, I'm in the store not seeing it. Other places you'll swipe a credit card or summat.
But if you have access to home charging and don't drive a lot, you'll rarely ever use a charging station. But when you need access, e.g. on a memorial day road trip, the L3 chargers you find will be swamped while the L2 chargers are too slow.
EV is partially sold as not having to go to convenience stores/gas stations to recharge.
For example, in Alameda California I pay:
* 15.17 cents per kWH during off-peak times (nights and weekends)
* 50 cents per kWH during peak times (5pm-9pm)
The Supercharger down the road charges:
* 51 cents per kWH from 12pm-11pm (the time you're most likely to use it)
* 41 cents per kWH from 11pm-4am
* 32 cents per kWH from 4am-12pm
No one is going to leave their car at a Supercharger overnight though. So more realistically you're paying over 3x the cost if you use public Superchargers.
My Model Y has a 75kWH battery so its about ~$11 to charge it from zero to full at home vs about ~$38 at a Supercharger during the day.
The Bolt will be cheaper per mile if G/E > 9.4, where G = price of gas in $/g, and E = price of electricity in $/kWh
I looked at average gas prices and residential electrical rates in all 50 US stats plus DC, and in all of them G/E > 9.4.
This comment has a table showing G and E for all states and DC at the time [1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36978950