On Charging

 We've recently started doing more road trips with our electric vehicles, and I have some thoughts.

Not with these guys, though it was nice to meet the owner of the other Leaf.

1. Home Is Where The Heart Is

The first thing that I want to emphasize is that this is a game changer, even for roadtrips.

We installed a level 2 charger at home, and while obviously we're not using that on the road (due to space and time) it means that we can plan a roadtrip without worrying about how much charge we end on when we get back, because the charger will for sure fill the car to a usable amount (usually even full) overnight.

We experienced the opposite when we visited my father-in-law and couldn't charge at his house at all (it was difficult to even set up a trickle charge on the portable charger that comes with the car at level 1). So even if we're talking roadtrips, it matters what is available at your home base. A lot.

2. Gas Stations Are Sort Of Your Friends?

I originally called this "not your friends," but they still are a necessary part of the charging infrastructure in much of the US. But unlike for a gas car, where a fill-up is a short pit stop of a few minutes, charging an EV can be an hour or more for real roadtrip lengths of charge. Now, that depends on charging speed and that's why higher-end EVs tend to focus more on increasing that speed than on increasing battery capacity (beyond a certain point). But it matters a lot to have something to do that isn't wandering the tiny aisles of a gas station like an increasingly bored tiger in a zoo. 

This guy doesn't have a ton to do in him while the car is charging, except for refilling your cup again and again.

3. Other Countries Still Do It Better

In both Europe and Canada I noticed something I have yet to see in a US city.

Can you spot it?

How about here?

That's right, it's street-parking chargers.

Yes, we have them in parking garages sometimes in the US, but they're not visible from the street, so you can't see if you can use it in advance. Just sliding a few of these onto the street makes a huge difference for visibility and usability for the chargers, and thus for the EV users.

It really helps if those are high-speed chargers (so that the spots turn over faster). I noticed in Lincoln, NE, that most of the charging infrastructure is level 2, not level 3 fast chargers, which limits how much charge you can get unless you're spending 3+ hours somewhere. If it wouldn't fill up my Leaf, with its tiny battery, it's not going to do much for bigger cars at all. 

But speed can be somewhat compensated for by ubiquity: if every place you stop has a charger, that adds up.

Overall, the state of play for EV charging along I-80 is improving, but not amazing (there's a highly notable gap between the Des Moines and Omaha metros, with basically one CCS charger at the Casey's in Avoca between). It's certainly better than it was 5 years ago. But we can and should do better, especially if we want to transition our car-centric urban design to electric cars.

We should also be looking more at trains, as always, but that's a different post.