At the risk of sounding like a click-baity thread, I didn't know what to title it, but I wanted to keep it broad. Apologies if this thread has been discussed elsewhere as I'm fairly new to the forums but have been trying to keep up around here.
Some ICE dealers already have limited charging abilities for their customers' cars, but for the most part, no, or it's not that high speed.
With respect to the recent Bolt looking to be a good Model 3 competitor/alternative up until the point the SuperCharger enters the conversation, I have a feeling that the ICE manufacturers do have an Ace up their sleeve using their dealership model to enable high-speed cross-country charging.
What's to stop GM from, for example, releasing an EV, let's call it Bolt 2.0 or ELR 2.0. It has maybe an 75kWh battery. It's 400VDC. It supports 150kW charging. As an option, or with the purchase price of the car, you're offered nationwide UltraCharging at every GM dealership, because every GM dealership was just told by Detroit to install UltraChargers at their dealerships within 24-36 months to support their new "Tesla Killer".
I'd hazard a guess that 90%+ of all GM dealerships could get that permitted and constructed within a year. And now you have UltraChargers or whatever installed in almost every 1000+ person community across the continent. Range anxiety would not even be talked about. Local charging wouldn't even be an issue. Cross country travel in an EV would not be something people worried about, unless they had a city-EV, or Tesla owners still many man miles away from SCs.
Am I out to lunch, or is this already a common strategy that has been discussed? I can't believe that I would be the first person to have thought of this. Would GM/Ford/whoever be able to control their dealers like this? I'd suspect that they would need to be compensated for electricity costs, but if that's factored into the vehicle price, it should be fairly easy to figure out.
Some ICE dealers already have limited charging abilities for their customers' cars, but for the most part, no, or it's not that high speed.
With respect to the recent Bolt looking to be a good Model 3 competitor/alternative up until the point the SuperCharger enters the conversation, I have a feeling that the ICE manufacturers do have an Ace up their sleeve using their dealership model to enable high-speed cross-country charging.
What's to stop GM from, for example, releasing an EV, let's call it Bolt 2.0 or ELR 2.0. It has maybe an 75kWh battery. It's 400VDC. It supports 150kW charging. As an option, or with the purchase price of the car, you're offered nationwide UltraCharging at every GM dealership, because every GM dealership was just told by Detroit to install UltraChargers at their dealerships within 24-36 months to support their new "Tesla Killer".
I'd hazard a guess that 90%+ of all GM dealerships could get that permitted and constructed within a year. And now you have UltraChargers or whatever installed in almost every 1000+ person community across the continent. Range anxiety would not even be talked about. Local charging wouldn't even be an issue. Cross country travel in an EV would not be something people worried about, unless they had a city-EV, or Tesla owners still many man miles away from SCs.
Am I out to lunch, or is this already a common strategy that has been discussed? I can't believe that I would be the first person to have thought of this. Would GM/Ford/whoever be able to control their dealers like this? I'd suspect that they would need to be compensated for electricity costs, but if that's factored into the vehicle price, it should be fairly easy to figure out.