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Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

reuters.com

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Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#141

Post by eru »

gpsx wrote: post #84
askvictor wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are totally correct, yet OP's point is still reasonable - this was written from the perspective of a petrol-car driver; moreover, it's a missed opportunity to think differently. Petrol stations require big tanks underground to store the petrol; we don't have pipelines through the city carrying petrol. On the other hand, we do have a massive network of wires carrying electricity. EV charging can so easily be distr…

What would be a good use of gas stations for electric cars is battery swapping. It is too early to make this mandatory but I think it might be time to start working on this idea. (It has been looked into before.)

Why would you make any of this mandatory?

If people are willing to pay for this service, someone will be eager to make a buck and supply.

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#143

Post by fulafel »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #52

Seems like policy written by petrol car drivers and not well thought out. In the future electric vehicle world 95% of charging will be done at home, or in some facility near your rental building. Most EV drivers have no need to visit charging stations unless they're going on an extended road trip, and then we need a particular _kind_ of DC fast charging station. I mean... I have an EV and I could count on two hands t…

You can also think of this as sunsetting petrol car infrastructure that can't be repurpoused for EVs. Making petrol stations more scarce good way to reduce their usage.

Society's most important goal is to reduce petrol consumption after all, to survive climate change, and only secondarily to make life nicer for EV owners.

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#144

Post by probably_wrong »

eru wrote: post #141
gpsx wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be a good use of gas stations for electric cars is battery swapping. It is too early to make this mandatory but I think it might be time to start working on this idea. (It has been looked into before.)

Why would you make any of this mandatory? If people are willing to pay for this service, someone will be eager to make a buck and supply.

While I would usually agree with your line of thinking, I'm not sure it applies here as well.

There is more money to be made in not providing the service and slowing down EV adoption, environment be damned. That makes it the perfect situation for the government to jump in and re-align those incentives.

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#145

Post by watt »

adrianN wrote: post #129
cgb223 wrote: post #2

While I’m all for a future full of electric cars, I wonder what kind of financial burden this will put on petrol stations or even if charging stations fit the same paradigm as gas pumps since they take much longer to charge

Most petrol stations are on their way out imho. Charging at petrol stations is just a stop-gap measure until curbside charging is widely available. Cars spend 23 hours a day parked. Making a 2kW charger available at most parking spots would eliminate the need for fast charging except for long distance travel.

It's a way for them to stay somehow relevant. I think the ones in cities will be gone once EV adoption takes off - people will charge while out shopping, when parked, etc.

The chargers in rest stops/stations road side will be where business is.

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#146

Post by yellowapple »

deelowe wrote: post #111
Barrin92 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how a typical German residential street looks ( https://reidiculoustravels.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/dsc_0... ) It's not really trivial to pack that full of chargers if you don't want to interfer with pedestrians or cyclists.

I get it, but do you think queuing up at a petrol station is a viable solution to this or is it more likely to be political maneuvering to appease the station owners who are worried their business models will be obsolete soon?

> or is it more likely to be political maneuvering to appease the station owners who are worried their business models will be obsolete soon?

What would be the point of that? If station owners believe that charging stations will keep their businesses alive, then they'll put them in themselves, without needing a law telling them to do so.

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#147

Post by virgilp »

eloff wrote: post #135
qayxc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most EV drivers have no need to visit charging stations [...] You do realise that we're talking about Germany here, don't you? You cannot apply US standards to a foreign country with 7x the population density and only a ~50% home ownership rate... The fact of the matter is, that half of German households cannot charge their vehicles at home, because they live in a rented apartment. In cities in particular (you know,…

If you don't have a parking space, you probably don't have an EV and whether gas stations have chargers or not is irrelevant. If you do, it doesn't matter if you're renting or not, you have a similar ability to charge at home. What you probably can't do is install a dedicated fast charger unless you somehow plan to take it with you when you move, or work a deal with the landlord to share the cost. I think the one thi…

Not in Germany, but I do have a dedicated parking space, I could totally afford an electric car, an yet it would not be practical to get one. Here are my reasons:

- I need one car, not many (I'm lucky to get _one_ space, ain't gonna get several!).

- I can't charge it there, there's no infrastructure. Sure, I can ask city to add infrastructure but... good luck with that, it's going to take a while, there are a lot of problems to solve (besides actually installing power near my space, we need a meter to charge me, and it needs to be a "smart meter" that doesn't allow everybody to use power paid by me; it needs to be at least moderately vandalism-proof. And I need to find a way to leave my car plugged in for extended periods of time, unsupervised, without fearing that someone will steal stuff from it - e.g. the charging cable?)

- If all the above are solved - I still need to use that car for extended trips (vacations, visiting parents in a different city). Those would still mean that I need to charge "on the road". Due to the first point, it'd still be a challenge to go 100% electric even if I had the "charging at home" part covered.

Really, I think if we don't solve the "charging in gas stations" part, electric vehicle use is going to be inherently limited.

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#148

Post by huonpine »

eigenvector wrote: post #138
huonpine wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it? My local city has electric parking meters, is it hard to add a cable to that?

Yes, because an electric parking meter uses only a few watts of electricity and may not even be connected to the grid (the most common ones I've seen just have a tiny solar panel). A electric vehicle charger may use 200 kW and require its own dedicated transformer. A fast charger is a fairly substantial cabinet. Now you're jackhammering the sidewalk to bring an underground electrical service to that spot.

Can you apply your thinking to petrol stations. We build floating city's to extract oil thousands of meters down. Is running some cables harder then that?

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#149

Post by de_watcher »

eloff wrote: post #135
qayxc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most EV drivers have no need to visit charging stations [...] You do realise that we're talking about Germany here, don't you? You cannot apply US standards to a foreign country with 7x the population density and only a ~50% home ownership rate... The fact of the matter is, that half of German households cannot charge their vehicles at home, because they live in a rented apartment. In cities in particular (you know,…

If you don't have a parking space, you probably don't have an EV and whether gas stations have chargers or not is irrelevant. If you do, it doesn't matter if you're renting or not, you have a similar ability to charge at home. What you probably can't do is install a dedicated fast charger unless you somehow plan to take it with you when you move, or work a deal with the landlord to share the cost. I think the one thi…

> If you don't have a parking space, you probably don't have an EV

Not true.

And if every gas station has a fast charger then you don't need a parking space with a charger.

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#150

Post by tannhaeuser »

cookiengineer wrote: post #134
qayxc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most EV drivers have no need to visit charging stations [...] You do realise that we're talking about Germany here, don't you? You cannot apply US standards to a foreign country with 7x the population density and only a ~50% home ownership rate... The fact of the matter is, that half of German households cannot charge their vehicles at home, because they live in a rented apartment. In cities in particular (you know,…

Another problem is that even if you are lucky to be able to rent a garage for a few hundred bucks per month, you are not able to get your car charged inside. A lot of building regulations will prevent that, including Erschliessungsgebühren, Elektroverträglichkeitsmessungen, the required VDE Sicherheitsprüfungen and the fact that each garage lot would require a legal address in order for paying Energiesteuer there, as…

Interesting. Do you have details to share, because I'd vaguely planned to equip my garage with electrical charging capability? I can assure you though that nobody is paying several hundred bucks per month for a garage or parking lot except maybe in the very city center of the four big cities in Germany, like next to the iconic main attraction of that city. It seems the public sector wants to grab the money for EV charging, with public parking lots being dedicated to it, while there's no plan for private proprietors to install their own charging.
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