Comment by troupo
4 days ago
None of this solves the issue of charging at scale. How would you solve a small town of, say, 20 000 people charging for 20-30 minutes at a mall? Note: peak for "weekly shopping" is usually just the weekend.
For on-street parking (and any parking general) it's still a lot of investment in infrastructure, as it's not just hanging an extension cord from your outlet.
You're talking in hypotheticals, but Norway has 80%+ market share of BEVs, and quite a few towns with 20,000+ residents. There are already many multi-megawatt charging locations built all around UK and Europe. It's an expensive infrastructure, but when there's demand, it pays for itself. When it's busy, they build more. Growth of the grid is also manageable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dfyG6FXsUU
High-speed charging locations that have very uneven usage with peaks, save costs by using dynamic power sharing (so capacity isn't wasted when a car that has finished charging occupies a dispenser), and have battery storage on site to use a cheaper smaller grid connection, and usually also make extra money from power arbitrage.
> it's not just hanging an extension cord from your outlet.
It almost is! For slow (overnight) AC charging the expensive inverter is in the car. The "charger" on the street is just an extension cord with a network-connected switch and a few temperature sensors for safety. BTW, home "chargers" (EVSE) are overpriced. Many of them are literally a Raspberry Pi and some switches.
> You're talking in hypotheticals,
I live in a Stockholm suburb. Any infrastructure investments are met with "it's too expensive" and/or "current infra will not support charging infra".
> High-speed charging locations that have very uneven usage with peaks, save costs by using dynamic power sharing (so capacity isn't wasted when a car that has finished charging occupies a dispenser), and have battery storage on site to use a cheaper smaller grid connection, and usually also make extra money from power arbitrage.
That wasn't my point, is it? High-speed charging locations will be congested exactly because of uneven usage with peaks.