Time at Superchargers spots v time at gas pumps

This isn't about total time taken, but time parked. I'm thinking about contention.

Let's think positive and assume BEV will be succeessful. Everyone who wants a BEV will have home charging. That leaves charging on long trips. But let's also be a little conservative and that business leaves OTR charging to Superchargers.

Imagine a simplified general scenario for a future long-range BEV:
- Range is 200 in ideal conditions, 120 in bad conditions.
- Home charging is up to 1/6 of range per hour (including visits to relatives and friends with chargers, which will beomce more common; maybe there'll be guest chargers like people now have guest rooms).
- Supercharging is fairly ubiquitous, enough that I can charge along on my normal routes.
- Supercharging is 0% to 80% in 30 minutes, 80% to 100% in 30 minutes.
- No destination chargers at businesses.

How much time would you spend parked at Superchargers each year?
How does that compare to time parked at gas pumps in a conventional car that you'd drive?

How much on-the-road (OTR) charging would our car(s) need each year? Maybe 2 1/2 hours, unless the car makes us want to drive more.
- 10 to 20 minutes on 3 trips to the Bar Harbor area, depending on the location of Superchargers.
- Supercharging back up to 80% on 2 trips to NH.
- Maybe a 20 minute charge on a trip down to Portland.

Now I think about how long we'd spend occupying fuel pumps. I've never timed it, but If a 3 minute stop (including all additional time messing around with payment) at a gas pump got me 500 miles (in my Prius), then for 15,000 miles per year, I'd have 30 stops, parking for 1 1/2 hours per year in total. That's really not a huge difference.

So maybe BEV contention will turn out to be an issue of handling extreme peaks. Maybe that's where Superswappers will have their niche, and the installation of pop-up Superswappers will be a sign that Thanksgiving is coming.

In reality I think that high BEV ownership would lead to high amounts of chargers at hotels and special large-cachement destinations. I also think that luxury car drivers and people who do more long trips would opt for larger batteries. Both of those could reduce contention at OTR chargers.

MarkR said:

I'm sure the time total that we've spent charging the MS is far far less than we've previously spent at gas stations. It takes less than 15 seconds to plug in the MS at home and usually takes 5-7 minutes for fuel at a gas station. The amount of time we've spent at a supercharger is rarely wasted. Recently, we checked into our hotel and put our bags in the room while we were recharged, while previously we had lunch during a quick charge. No wasted time at all . . . no smelly flammable fluids either. And at every Supercharger, you're apt to meet friendly people with common interests!

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To repeat: I'm not asking about total additional time taken. I believe that plug-ins compare well in that respect. This is particualrly about the time occupying a gas pump versus the time occupying a Supercharger, which is what matters for contention.

FlasherZ said:

I was thinking about a slight tangent on the future of this while driving the 1,100 miles back home in my ICE yesterday/today. The last time I did a supercharge, the first 10 minutes yielded about 100 miles. Let's suppose for a second that 135 kW per car is achievable. Let's also suppose for a second that we now have 50-mile density of superchargers along the major routes.

We might see a completely different supercharging behavior when this takes place. With 4 kids, I'd probably keep my range down so that I maximize charging rate. Stopping every 2 hours for a 15-minute charge is preferred to stopping every 3 hours for a 30-minute charge. Get them closer to the highway so that you minimize off-highway driving to the chargers, etc...

Just some rambling, like my thoughts...

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Well, the v6 firmware is meant to add smart navigation that will tell you how best to drive to minimize overall journey time, and I suspect that reducing time at Superchargers will be part of that. However, every also stop adds the overheads between highway and Supercharger, so going deep wouldn't necessarily always help minimize the journey time.