Is electric charging infrastructure feasible?

    Recent article by greencarreports.com praises a new charging station design being developed by Porsche.


    This design offers 18, 350 kw (Tesla grade) charging points and 4 22 kw points (electric 'city car' grade). That's room for 22 cars. They can charge a car from 5 to 80% in a best time of 23 minutes. With potty & snack breaks, let's say we could charge 50 cars per hour, but only 36 of those could be family cars.


    36 cars per hour with 36 "pumps" working. The biggest highway gas stations I've seen might have 24 pumps, most have less. Fill up time is usually less than 5 minutes, call it 10-12 with potty & shopping. A 24 pump station can service over 100 cars per hour easily.


    The green car folks note you can get enough juice to go 62 miles (100 km) in 5-7 minutes... if you wanna pull in for a fill up every 62 miles that is. Again, as a city/commuter car model, this isn't bad, but for travelers, it sucks. If you live in a rural area where charging station infrastructure is less common, it becomes unfeasible.


    The real kicker is that this station requires 7 Megawatts of energy to power it. The article breezily explains this away by saying "all from renewable sources" - do you have any idea how big a 7MW solar array or wind farm array is!? So in reality, this bad boy is fossil fuel powered (and so are the cars that charge there) just like your ICE car is... we just get to relocate the exhaust pipe.


    By the way, how much energy is 7MW? Depends on who you ask, but depending on where you live, this much energy will power between 3000 - 7000 homes. So your SINGLE fueling station sucks up enough energy for an entire small town - enough energy for the daily needs of 10,000 to 30,000 people (assuming low density housing of 3-4 people per household) I'll also remind you this best-case scenario report is from an advocate website, not a neutral 3rd party.


    THIS is why electric cars will continue to be a single digit fringe of the world transportation fleet - at least until we get fusion powered electricity.


    Read more in the article here.


    https://www.greencarreports.co…pe-and-teslas-are-invited

    The smarter you get, the funnier I am.

    Thank you Doc&Ruby

    Total electrical usage in U.S. was 3.9 trillion KWH in 2019, it has been 3.8 or 3.9 trillion every year since 2005 (BEFORE) the proliferation of electric cars. Conversely the U.S. generates 4.12 trillion KWH annually (there is more capacity than this). Quotes are below. The charging infrastructure is rapidly growing and can be handled. The Tesla V3 supercharger can add 100 miles range in 7 minutes. I spoke with a guy last week who drove his model 3 down from Boston to Fort Myers and he said he was getting nearly 200 miles range in 30 minutes. This seems to improve each year.

    Most electric owners do NOT do long trips (300+ miles per day) in their electrics currently and own a 2nd car.

    For some reason electric cars seem to be as a political issue. Environmental friendliness is more marketing than reality. The gain for the U.S. is a reduction of gasoline/oil usage. Yes, the energy is gotten from somewhere else BUT it can be natural gas, coal and renewables. We are just becoming energy independent and it's easy to forget how lousy it was when OPEC screwed us over and bad characters like Venezuela and Russia had huge oil revenues. Full electric on road is NOT a good thing but 10% is and can be handled.


    "In 2019, about 4,118 billion kilowatthours (kWh) (or about 4.12 trillion kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale electricity generation facilities in the United States.1 About 63% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels—coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases. About 20% was from nuclear energy, and about 18% was from renewable energy sources."


    https://www.statista.com/stati…y-consumption-since-1975/

    With 280 million personal vehicles in America, shifting 25% of the fleet to electric is 70 million vehicles.

    If one filling station takes 7MW, the numbers still don't add up. There are 180,000 filling stations in the US. If 1/4 are electric (same % as fleet), you need 45,000 electric stations. That's 315 GW of power available 24/7. That's power (GW) not energy (KWh), and that's new capacity above and beyond what we produce now. No energy need for heat, lighting, electrical devices is going away. You're arguing that increasing demand for electric generation capacity of 300 GW can be counted on easily, I don't see it. Don't forget: all this new energy would be fossil fuel powered. I just don't see the eco-conscious EV crowd going all-in for clean nuclear power any time soon.


    Nor do I see companies like Tesla, GM, Ford, et al absorbing the cost for this infrastructure, which would cost many trillions. The price of that must be shouldered by the electric vehicle consumer. Currently, we overwhelmingly buy home charging stations, but that becomes problematic, too. If the major energy conduit is slow charging home units, the EV isn't a traveler's vehicle, its a personal city travel & commuter vehicle. That's fine, but a singular purpose vehicle (much like the Slingshot) will continue to be a niche vehicle because most families can't afford them. They need a more general purpose vehicle.


    Fusion power would change this dramatically by lowering the cost of electricity by up to 90%. But we ain't there yet.

    The smarter you get, the funnier I am.

    " I spoke with a guy last week who drove his model 3 down from Boston to Fort Myers "


    Wanted to address this separately. I'm glad your friend had a safe & successful journey, but I can't help noticing that it was all down the east coast.


    Pretty sure of two things:

    1. This guy had to plan his trip around stops for juice. We had to do much the same in the early 60's (& earlier). AAA helped a lot in those days.

    2. He would have a more difficult time traveling to NW Arkansas, I bet. Not that it couldn't be done, but the challenge would be great and the route more restricted.


    This isn't a knock on the technology, its just a reality check on the state of the infrastructure. Its bound to improve & be better for my children & grandchildren than it is for me.


    The future steals in on silent feet only the prepared have ears to hear.

    The smarter you get, the funnier I am.

    I can see families with two (or more) vehicles:


    1) an ICE SUV for long trips such as camping or skiing;

    2) an EV for short to medium commutes.


    PV panels -> a storage unit such as Tesla's Wonder Wall -> EV. Charge by sun evenings & weekends, off the battery when daylight is limited.

    Quote from Doc&Ruby

    Pretty sure of two things:

    1. This guy had to plan his trip around stops for juice. We had to do much the same in the early 60's (& earlier). AAA helped a lot in those days.


    Of note, Tesla has chargers along most of the major interstates and there have been documented NY - LA type journey's in them.


    Also, Tesla's navigation directs you to charging stations, and also lets the car know how much to charge at each station, to make it to the next scheduled stop. They rarely charge to 100% if they can keep from it, targeting 80% IIRC, so that the batteries will last longer. Of course, you can override this and tell it to charge to 100%.


    Just food for thought.

    We have 2 Model S Teslas at ZZP currently with a Model 3 and 2 Cyber trucks on order. Our VP takes her P70 to Chicago regularly and the owner has taken his P100D to FL multiple times and even brought it to tail of the dragon on our annual company retreat down there. Wokka is correct that the nav in the Tesla will take you from charger to charger and will typically keep the battery at 80% and not let it go below 20% for longevity. It starts cutting our non essential systems as the power gets close to 20% or below. On the owners 2017 Model S he was getting about 200mi/charge. He just got a new one and it charges faster than the old one and also gets 300mi/charge. I’ve driven them quite a bit and I get why ppl love them. The auto-pilot feature is a game changer. I had taken one about an hour south of the shop and on the way back set the autopilot and never once touched a pedal or the steering wheel for anything other than driver feedback to make sure you’re not sleeping the entire way. They’re amazing cars. I’m aiming to get a cyber truck in a couple years for myself. Allegedly a fully optioned out one will have a range of 350mi/charge. But battery tech will be even better by then so it could potentially increase. But back to the main point they can definitely be a road trip car. While it was doable, five years ago that would not have been my opinion but specifically from a Tesla standpoint, their charging infrastructure and battery tech has come a long way and doing long distance road trips in them is completely doable.



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    Quote from Kyle D

    ........... and the owner has taken his P100D to FL multiple times ........

    .

    As someone who drives straight through from FL to ME at least once a year I would love to see this route and know how much time it adds to the trip ..... 15012 miles door to door.


    My Snowbird neighbors with Teslas almost all fly in and have their cars transported, leave them home, or use the auto train. Even those that only live a couple states away.


    .... nerd-squared


    .

    :REDSS: The ghost of SLingshot past ......

    When we drove down to Tail, all of the charging stations were along the main highway route and all were right by gas stations and/or restaurants. We typically were stopped for about 30-40min for each charge. That was with the 2017 P100D. The new one charges significantly faster and has quite a bit more range so it is not as drastic as the 2017 but it does add more time to the trip than your average stop for fuel there is no denying that. But if you toss in the convenience factor of autopilot, It makes the drive a lot more tolerable and less straining.

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    Fixed it for ya!

    Remember folks - this isn't a rehearsal, this is The Show!8)

    Quote from dalancroft

    Thanks SlingLow! Different strokes for different folks. I might need a pickup once or twice a year to haul stuff -- $19.95/day @ Home Depot.

    Very affordable. My pickup is actually my main driver. I just got back from Home Depot with interior alder trim boards and 10 ft cedar exterior trim boards. I'm afraid if I don't go there 4-5 times a week they might close it down!

    Remember folks - this isn't a rehearsal, this is The Show!8)

    Quote from SlingLow

    Very affordable. My pickup is actually my main driver. I just got back from Home Depot with interior alder trim boards and 10 ft cedar exterior trim boards. I'm afraid if I don't go there 4-5 times a week they might close it down!

    Never owned a pick-up truck except to haul dirt bikes for about 4 year then I bought a trailer and did not really need the truck any more.

    I do not know.


    I believe Tesla was offering free charging at 'supercharger' stations at one time, don't know if this is still true.


    I suspect that hotels & malls offer free charging as an incentive for doing business there, but I'm equally sure they do this because almost no one takes them up on it. If a sizable portion of their trade accepts free charging, it will very quickly cease to be free.

    The smarter you get, the funnier I am.

    Quote from Doc&Ruby

    I do not know.


    I believe Tesla was offering free charging at 'supercharger' stations at one time, don't know if this is still true.


    I suspect that hotels & malls offer free charging as an incentive for doing business there, but I'm equally sure they do this because almost no one takes them up on it. If a sizable portion of their trade accepts free charging, it will very quickly cease to be free.

    Visiting Branson, MO the Comfort Inn has 3 or 4 charging parking spots --- the week we were there last fall never saw any pugged in.