A joint venture of 7 car companies

… will add ~30,000 more high-speed EV charging stations over the next few years:

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What is charging station use rate? 1 charger is used 24hrs/day? Or 1 hr day? If there were 10,000 chargers could grid support them all be used at same time?

I’m sure that this possibility never occurred to the engineers and executives at all seven car companies. :smirk:

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I hope they locate some near me. I’d like more competition. Actually, I’d like a Tesla Supercharger station closer than 10 miles away. A Tesla Supercharger just off I-70 near me would be ideal, and it’s close to the eastern start of I-70. There is a big commercial district just a mile off the highway. Tesla doesn’t tell you their email on the website and I just found one online elsewhere. I’ll see if they receive the message.

Are there any Panera Bread locations near you? It seems that many of them have EV charging stations. Some are of the J1772 type, and others are Tesla Superchargers. There is a Panera ~7 miles from my home that has ten 150kW Tesla Superchargers.

Not that close. The seem to be associated with Wawa and Royal Farms convenience stores for the most part. They aren’t real close either. There are several shopping centers and gas stations though.

I wonder if Wawa and Royal Farms will be putting in picnic tables and restroom facilities to accommodate all the people waiting for their cars to charge and the people waiting for their turn to charge their cars. Do you think the will put in a “take-a-number” dispenser so the folks know who is next in line?

Why not charge at home? Iknow it takes longer but you can do it in your sleep.

That’s what I do, but if I was traveling, I would almost surely have to use a commercial charging station. Luckily, the Costco Visa card now provides a 4% rebate on commercial charging station billing, just as it does with gas purchases, so in the event that I do have to use a commercial charger, I am prepared to do it with a discount.

Clearly this long overdue. Never been to a Royal Farms. There are Wawa stations here and they do good business in food sales but they have limited parking and no eating areas.

I see these chargers as a better fit with the larger footprint RaceTrac stations. Or Buc-Ees, would be an excellent fit. Huge parking, good food (yes, really!) and shopping.

If I am not mistaken, the Tesla chargers are free for Tesla cars. Companies sometimes make their standard chargers free too.

About the only time I see cars charging is when the charging is free. Otherwise everyone just charges at home. Most people don’t go 100 miles in a day in town, and EVs have 100 to 300 mile range.

The only actual need for charging is along highways where charging is required to complete the trip.

Royal Farms current stores are located in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia and North Carolina. I’m not surprised you haven’t seen them.

I don’t charge at home because it would take many years to pay off the 220VAC installation. Even a 110VAC portable charger would take a couple-a-three years to pay off.

I have been in PA, WV and NC but did not see one.

Is it a gas, convienience and food more? Many pumps and hot food? With sit-down food?

Gas, convenience and fried chicken. The chicken is their claim to fame. Food and Wine magazine declared their fried chicken the best fast food chicken a few years ago and raved about it. I like it too. Direct competitor to Wawa and 7-11. They do breakfast and coffee like the other guys too.

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Doesn’t your utility or your state subsidize the installation of a home charger? In some states, and with some utilities, monetary assistance is available.

In the end the government is not going to miss out on all the gas money from ice vehicles as they will just raise taxes elsewhere to supplement the lost revenue… They ALWAYS find away to get there money… lol
You can bet others will follow in one way or another… Yes Tn has a tax credit for a new ev of up to $7500, but last year during the heat our electric service did rolling black outs in the day for around 30 minutes at a time, now when the heat index is over 100 degrees, we have already had many, even June 30th at 6pm 2023 we had 99 degree temp with a 118 degree heat index… Not having AC for even a short period of time is just going to make the HVAC unit work even harder to try and cool the house back down while it is already having a hard time keeping it cool in the 1st place… So once they add all the charging stations to the power grid (assuming they will be used lol) that is already over loaded for the most part from all the people moving here everyday, it will say the least make it very interesting…
Now all you people that live in much cooler environments that don’t need a lot of AC don’t understand the humid heat of the South and the need for AC…

As I wrote earlier, if various quick-stops like Wawa and Royal Farms put in Quick Chargers, they will be giving up parking spaces for the ICE customers and as more and more EVs hit the roads and highways, the lines to recharge will stack up like a busy gas station with lines waiting to fill up, but I can fill my gas tank in a few minutes, but charging up an EV takes upwards of 20-minutes and more to get back on the road. So where does the next in line park, if EVs start to stack up, how will they ever decide who is next in line after an hour or so of waiting your turn… Will the business be handing out a Number Ticket that will show who is next?

tenor (2)

What part of the country doesn’t have 220VAC already at the house?

Plenty of older homes, ones that are 75+ years old… If they have never been upgraded then it’s probably 120V/50A (maybe 100A…) In the late 1990, when I was stationed at Goodfellow AFB, in San Angelo Texas, our unit as well as others sponsored a homes in the “Christmas in April” event. Many of the units on base as as well as many businesses in town would go into older homes and fix them up. Replace windows, install insulation, upgrade plumbing, etc… I was involved in 4 of these projects over the years and all four were barely wired for electricity. Most rooms had only one outlet in them and some only had a ceiling fixture with an adapter that screwed into the light socket and provided an outlet/light bulb socket. Some of these homes still had the open copper wire with ceramic posts running through the attic (the insulation had long since dried out and fallen off…)

I was very aware of this as my fist home, a log cabin, did not have electricity until 1955 and indoor plumbing until 1957…

Even in the county I live in now, with Langley Air Force Base and the NASA Langley Research Center nearby, the county was still ensuring that all homes in the county had indoor plumbing not more than 10-years ago…

So yeah, if you live in a location that all home construction is newer than 50-years old, then they probably have 220VAC with 200 or 300 amp service.

I believe the service from the street to my home is 440VAC. What I’m missing is a line from the circuit box to the garage. It’s about a 50-foot line that must be run behind existing drywall. The big expense is installing a dedicated 220V-40A breaker, the cross-house wire and the outlet in the wall. The last time I got an estimate the cheapest one was about $1500 just for that, plus $500 for the wall charger.

Not anymore.