Please help shape the future of charging infrastructure

[akouri]

A 6kW L2 (like so many public chargers around here) is practically useless unless I'm parking there for several hours or overnight.

I think this is the problem I also identify strongly with.

Going to investigate solutions to this a little bit more. If anybody knows someone who would want to be a candidate for a prototype of this type of solution/charger, please DM me and we can talk.

 

[houstonian]

- Lots of people have free supercharging. For them, price obviously isn't a consideration.

Interesting; I wonder how the percent of TMC posters with some form of FUSC translates back to the fleet at large.

- Make sure to include plenty of space for trailer hitches, pull thru spaces

Yes please.

Do you think this would work in the US? Or would people trash it?

Would depend on the location.

Speaking in general, non-political terms, """diversity""" is a hot topic right now in the states.

Recent experiences over the last few years could suggest installing any facility in a major metro flirting with 'woke-ness' policies - to say nothing of a full on embrace - ends poorly. Consider major retailers leaving downtown San Francisco, the CNN meme'd 'fiery but mostly peaceful protest' trope, or Fink publicly distancing BlackRock from ESG and you'll see the problem come into focus.

The takeaway here is in general rural/burbs are probably a better bet for infrastructure investment tailored to an upscale, pleasant experience than urban locations...and I dare say no more on the topic.

A 6kW L2 (like so many public chargers around here) is practically useless unless I'm parking there for several hours or overnight.

Would add one exception to this where L1 makes sense: airports, particularly long-term parking.

Assuming one leaves their vehicle for 2+ days at an airport (or train stop, cruise port, etc.) the quantity of the chargers would outweigh the speed of the chargers as time would not be a constraint.

 

[bradtem]

The simple summary of where charging goes:
Charging belongs where we park, not where we drive.

At home, hotels, restaurants, tourist stopping destinations. Shopping maybe but frankly I don't need to shop *that* much on a road trip. All charging in my home city is at my house. 100% of it. For those who can't get charging at home the answer is to do everything to fix that, not to try to help them charge away from home.

 

[Earl]

I am working on a project to add more level 3 NACS charging stations in Texas as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.

Eventually we will expand to the rest of the country, but we're trying to understand more about the charging behavior of most Tesla drivers: What people like, don't like, want changed, etc.

You can help us build more chargers by sharing your opinions on this survey. The survey should take about 4-5 minutes. I will share summarized data once they survey closes.

Mods: If this isn't allowed for some reason, please let me know. There is no personal information collected as part of the survey, and it's not for marketing.

This survey, while undoubtedly well intentioned, is worthless compared with Tesla who know exactly where 100% of charging occurs. The best information this could yield would be to tell you what those who click on links on fan websites say they do. It misses the non-fans (normal people) and those (like me), who don't click on links to goofy websites we know nothing about.
In addition to Tesla's 100% data, several electric companies have solicited their EV drivers and put ODB2 monitors on their cars to make fairly good studies that will definitely exceed the fidelity of this one.

 

[akouri]

For those who can't get charging at home the answer is to do everything to fix that, not to try to help them charge away from home.

I tend to agree with this. Nevertheless, there is always going to be a contingency of apartment landlords who will never make the investment to install charging infrastructure in their parking lots. This is a barrier to the long-tail adoption of electric cars.


Also still, if you ever intend on driving you car more than 100 miles from your home, having a good fast-charging network is essential.

 

[miimura]

This survey, while undoubtedly well intentioned, is worthless compared with Tesla who know exactly where 100% of charging occurs. The best information this could yield would be to tell you what those who click on links on fan websites say they do. It misses the non-fans (normal people) and those (like me), who don't click on links to goofy websites we know nothing about.
In addition to Tesla's 100% data, several electric companies have solicited their EV drivers and put ODB2 monitors on their cars to make fairly good studies that will definitely exceed the fidelity of this one.

Using the data for where EVs currently charge completely misses the places where people would RATHER charge. For example, when I take my kid to a multi-day sports tournament, I charge at Superchargers in the city where the tournament is. I would rather charge at the hotel where we're staying, but only one in several dozen hotels in the area have EV charging.

 

[Earl]

Using the data for where EVs currently charge completely misses the places where people would RATHER charge. For example, when I take my kid to a multi-day sports tournament, I charge at Superchargers in the city where the tournament is. I would rather charge at the hotel where we're staying, but only one in several dozen hotels in the area have EV charging.

Good point. However, I suspect that data showing that one is always in use, compared with the many staying in the area who use the Superchargers, is fairly good data though. If a second were to install a destination charger, I'm sure the data from its usage would be even more valuable.
Given the relative expense of a Supercharger versus a few destination chargers, I suspect Tesla could afford to give away a few destination chargers in those area.
The peak to average usage in the area would also weigh in on the value of putting in more destination chargers. Your tournament is likely a surge on local capacity but might not justify something if there is little use the rest of the time.

 

[houstonian]

I would rather charge at the hotel where we're staying, but only one in several dozen hotels in the area have EV charging.

This is my preference too but find L2 at hotels - or at least at Hyatt's and Marriott's - are hit or miss due to congestion.

Circa 2017/18/19 the EV herd compared to hotel L2 spots remained tame but after 2020 it seemed to become harder and harder to get charging at a hotel due to another using the spot overnight.

The crux is many hotels only installed 1-to-2 chargers, at least initially, and due to the overnight nature of people in hotels they'll plug in, sleep, and then unplug the following morning. Nothing wrong with that but it does suck up the charger for the entire night and it's unrealistic to expect someone to wake up at 3am when their car's done charging to move it for someone else.

Moreover as there's no way I know of to query the charger status of a hotel in advance, I'm now opting to SC in advance as few things are more...enjoyable...then arriving at a hotel sub 10% late at night only to find the charger already occupied and then having to hunt down a SC to top off.

Would hope hotels, and airports, opt for a solution to allow more L2 plugs even if they charged at a slower rate. With hotels, and especially airports, quantity of charging plugs seems more important then the quickness of the charge as folks will presumably be parking overnight.

 

[miimura]

I don't even want the hotels to offer free charging. I would prefer to pay the prevailing rate, like $0.20/kWh. That will reduce the freeloaders who don't really need it or locals trying to get free juice. It is still cheaper than DCFC because it's slow, but there should be a reasonable number of plugs. I don't think providing charging for 10% of the rooms is unreasonable today in California. Simple dual head power sharing like ChargePoint units is fine (32A to one car or 16A each to two cars actively charging) but when you get a large number of chargers, pooled power sharing like PowerFlex is even better. That can allow perhaps a dozen plugs to share 200A with up to 40A each plug.

 

[houstonian]

I don't even want the hotels to offer free charging. I would prefer to pay the prevailing rate, like $0.20/kWh. That will reduce the freeloaders who don't really need it or locals trying to get free juice.

FWIW I’ve found full service hotels tend to have some pay-for-parking system and the L2’s are installed in these pay-to-park lots. Either that or you’ve got to valet to use the charger.

Anyways point here is “free” or “pay” can take on multiple dimensions here. Think the point you’re making however is there needs to be more plugs and some kind of barrier needs to exist to make sure the limited charging resources are not sucked up by non-hotel patrons?

Near service hotels are a bit more of the Wild West as they tend to offer free parking lots with no real from of access control.

(Near service would be something like a Hyatt Place, Courtyard, Hilton Garden Inn, Holiday Inn Express, etc.)

Completely agree more plugs, even if at slower charge rate, is ideal for hotel charging.

 

[bradtem]

I don't even want the hotels to offer free charging. I would prefer to pay the prevailing rate, like $0.20/kWh. That will reduce the freeloaders who don't really need it or locals trying to get free juice. It is still cheaper than DCFC because it's slow, but there should be a reasonable number of plugs. I don't think providing charging for 10% of the rooms is unreasonable today in California. Simple dual head power sharing like ChargePoint units is fine (32A to one car or 16A each to two cars actively charging) but when you get a large number of chargers, pooled power sharing like PowerFlex is even better. That can allow perhaps a dozen plugs to share 200A with up to 40A each plug.

Yes, the old era of "get a couple of charging stalls so you can list that as an amenity, and rarely will even one be used" is over. Thanks to all the hotels who started that way but now we need:

• More charging stalls (enough for say 90% of your nights to give every guest a stall who needs one)
• A reservation system (so people can reserve a room with stall, or learn one is not available)
• Stall sharing protocols, including having 2 parking spaces per stall, one for the evening car, one for the morning car, and hotel staff who go swap them at 2am. (For we Tesla drivers, we would need to leave them a valet key to let them swap if they have NACS plugs, until Tesla puts in an "allow stranger to unplug once done" mode, which it should.
• Other fancy stall sharing protocols, like charging poles with 2 cables that it can alternate

Of course, many hotels will not have put 2 parking spaces per stall (though often if they just had 2, they did that by accident.) In that case you either have the owners leave the key with the front desk for a valet to move the car, if they have such a person.

And yeah, I would be open to hotels charging a reasonable rate. (I was annoyed once that I stayed with a hotel that wanted $25 flat rate when I only needed about 60 miles. The flat rate would have been OK for an empty car but not for a mostly full. Turned out I needed those 60 miles due to a change in plan.) What might be good is just charging idle fees if they know there are more cars than stalls, to get people to move their car or swap the cable.

Most hotels use J1772 which can be swapped between cars if the cable reaches 2 parking spots.

And of course they need to be serious about enforcing ICEing of spots. Which they usually aren't. And they don't have much motive to do.

 

[akouri]

If anybody is curious where I ended up with this project, I used your feedback from this thread to shape the direction of Starlight Charging (www.starlightcharging.com)

Starlight Charging is building a new type of NACS charger that is specifically designed for multifamily apartment buildings, hotels, and airports. Unlike current L2 chargers, which often need expensive infrastructure/panel upgrades, this charger is designed to work within existing building electrical constraints.

How does this work?
Let's say a hotel only has 60A of panel capacity available. They can either install one L2 charger which will charge a car at 11.5kW, or, with Starlight's new charging system, we can take this 60A capacity, and divvy it up between 10-15 spaces. Each space gets a "port" into the 60A pipe, and just like water flowing through a pipe to multiple spigots, we use software to communicate with the car, determine the SOC for each vehicle, and a clever incentive/pricing algo to make sure all the cars are optimally charged by the time of departure.

If anybody wants to learn more, or help with the project/share feedback, or even recommend your own apartment garage for a pilot project, please feel free to contact me through the contact details on the website, or send me a dm!