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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

#151

Post by de_watcher »

jussij wrote: post #85
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned, already petrol stations in many countries do not actually profit from the sale of petrol since margins are so low. Rather, their profits stem largely from the attached convenience store.

The majority of petrol station traffic would be from the 'every day commuter', travelling to and from work. And the majority of these 'every day commuters' would currently own conventional cars. Those who drive electric cars would be charging their cars at home and as such hardly every need to stop in these stores. By replacing conventional cars with EVs will only see that tight profit margin getting tighter.

Most of the people can't charge at home, it's not the US.

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

#152

Post by oh_sigh »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #39
oh_sigh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize every ICE vehicle that drives into the gas station has little explosions going on inside of it, right?

You know internal combustion engines have spark arrestors by regulation. Your point still kind of stands: ICE engines aren't without fire risks.

And yet, engine fires still happen, and yet gas stations reason for existence is literally so gas powered cars can come up to it.

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

#153

Post by ido »

huonpine wrote: post #131
HaloZero wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require significant more infrastructure in public spaces. Requiring petrol stations is a good first step to break the barrier that combines private/public work. (I'm assuming petrol stations are private enterprises in Germany on this point)

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

We already have similar on-street charging stations like that in Berlin, just not enough. I suspect the reason it's not all street-parking is the strain on the electric infrastructure which would probably require a lot of rewiring.

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

#154

Post by ido »

elihu wrote: post #95
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,…

> The fact of the matter is, that half of German households cannot charge their vehicles at home, because they live in a rented apartment. Do apartments in Germany not have charging stations? And if not, is there a fundamental reason why they can't be remedied somehow in the near-ish future?

Where would you put them? Most German cities are old and there's only on-street parking (that you have to be lucky enough to get).

This is what my neighborhood looks like: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4550916,13.3779422,183m/data...

All of these are 5-6 story apartment buildings with no parking lots. I would be surprised if even 1 unit in a 100 has dedicated parking.

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

#155

Post by fyfy18 »

def8cefe wrote: post #86
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #43

This begs a larger question of how petroleum mega corps are going to weather the transition to electric vehicles. Looking at BP, margins are really poor. They have $22 Billion in cash vs. $11 Billion operating expenses and $24 Billion in debt. There is time: in March, 2% of new vehicles sold in Europe were BEV. On the other hand, the total spend on electricity per mile driven is 1/3 that of petrol. That means a compl…

Looking at just gas stations, they could spin it into a benefit since the customer will be required to stay at the station for a significant amount of time (~30 mins?) to charge instead of a few minutes. You lure them in with the electricity then push all your high-margin crap on them like drinks and snacks. It would massively increase foot traffic to quick-service restaurants, cafes and other activities on or near t…

In my country this is how the petrol stations stay relevant. Prices for fuel are pretty consistent between them (unlike say Italy, where there can be a 20c/litre difference if you drive 100m to the next station) so they've had to branch out to provide additional services.

All petrol stations that have a store have a selection of hot drinks and food, and various other things you would expect form a corner shop. The prices are lower than coffee shops, and in some cases better quality too (especially for food). I saw one brand recently started selling their food on delivery services as less people were travelling during quarantine.

Most of the automated stations (i.e. you can only pay at a machine, not they fill up the car for you :D) share the premises with a fast-food restaurant.

Most EV chargers price their electricity at quite a bit higher than you would pay at home, so in the short term I guess they can jump on this bandwagon. But as range increases and cities start installing more on-street chargers that model will fail too.

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

#156

Post by jussij »

de_watcher wrote: post #151
jussij wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of petrol station traffic would be from the 'every day commuter', travelling to and from work. And the majority of these 'every day commuters' would currently own conventional cars. Those who drive electric cars would be charging their cars at home and as such hardly every need to stop in these stores. By replacing conventional cars with EVs will only see that tight profit margin getting tighter.

Most of the people can't charge at home, it's not the US.

Why would anyone buy an electric car if they couldn't charge that car overnight in their own garage?

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

#157

Post by dorgo »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #140
joejerryronnie wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe just swap cars. They can maintain a small inventory of fully charged EVs, just swap your depleted EV out and be on your way. Then your previous EV gets charged up for the next guy.

and then ... "oh crap, left my (phone|charger|book|scarf|lipstick|pocket knife) in the other vehicle" ...

is the sensor density in cars not high enough yet to detect and notify?

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

#158

Post by cookiengineer »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #150
cookiengineer wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cha…

> Do you have details to share, because I'd vaguely planned to equip my garage with electrical charging capability?

Where do you live? The regulations vary a lot from state to state and even city to city, as the local Bauamt or Baubehoerde usually has the last say when it comes to approval/denial of installations like this.

In the BW area there's something available like the Netze-BW initiative that does most of the mentioned regulations/paperwork for you [1].

I'm not sure whether or not RWE or EON (the energy suppliers for more Northern states of Germany) have a similar initiative, but it seems that you can get the "Wallboxes" from them as well [2]. In the larger cities like Karlsruhe, I've seen a lot of the charger stations of Innogy [3] that seem to offer installation services for parking lots and private garages as well as for businesses.

> I can assure you though that nobody is paying several hundred bucks per month for a garage or parking lot

Prices kinda exploded around the Baden-Wuerttemberg area over the last years in the "Regionalmetropolen" aka where most industries or businesses are located. Can only speak for those, though I'd imagine that a lot of the mid-larger cities have even more problems with higher densities of people/m^2.

[1] https://www.netze-bw.de/netzanschluss/elektromobilitaet-zuha...

[2] https://www.eon.de/de/eonerleben/elektroauto-zuhause-laden-w...

[3] https://www.innogy-emobility.com/elektromobilitaet/produkte

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

#159

Post by tonyedgecombe »

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…

It would make more sense to put them in supermarkets. Nobody wants to spend an hour sat in a petrol station drinking mediocre coffee. At least in a supermarket you are spending time doing something you would be doing anyway.

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

#160

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

huonpine wrote: post #148
eigenvector wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

An off shore oil well will basically extract black gold, paying for themselves in no time(at least when the oil barrel price was high). Electrical charging station on the sidewalk not so much.
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