251–260 of 292 posts
Side topic but I’ve thought it would be cool for EV owners to offer their chargers up just for people in emergencies. Battery about to die. You could even charge a big mark up. I’d be willing to help a poor traveler once a week or so. Someone should make a website like that where ev owners can list themselves for emergency charging.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a40897680/ev-public-ch...
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I think the answer is that there needs to be, like gas stations, substantial retail/dining side-quest stuff set up to get revenue. If you don't have working chargers, people won't buy your hamburgers and pop. Or whatever. Likely though this market is going to need some regulation/standardization. In the end though, the demand is sporadic. Supercharger use is only for a minority of use cases (road trips) for a small s…
I've liked that 7-Eleven started putting DCFC's at some of their nicer locations in the US. The last time I did a fast-charging session was for a few-minute stop after a weekend spent away from home. The 7-Eleven was a pretty new location, easily right off the highway, and had a decent taco restaurant along with the usual snacks and pizza and roller grill items. Having a quick taco, grab some drinks, and a quick pee…
As much as I dislike Musk personally, I will probably buy the NACS adapter and just use Tesla stations.
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I've got a Rivian and have only used their chargers on a road trip to Whistler from the Bay Area. One was in Shasta behind a little hotel—you'd not see it if you weren't looking for it. The other was at a Homewood Suites lot somewhere in Southern Oregon. Unsurprisingly, these were back-to-back stops. So, I think they were specifically put there to help bridge a gap between Northern CA and Southern OR.
If you were going to use it, your car's navigation would probably route you there, and you wouldn't need to look for it. FWIW.
Of note, right by the Shasta station was a large Supercharger bank, so the planning for this was probably done before the Rivian deal to use Tesla chargers and the free adapter program Rivian implemented. They may have kept that one anyway, considering the Shasta Area is probably underserved and fits Rivian's target market for their stations ("adventure" areas)
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I've come to notice that there is no incentive for 3rd party ev-chargers to be dependable. Telsa and rivian have a vested interest in keeping the chargers working. Their sales depend on the chargers working. Even a little bad press is a multiplier against sales. They also have significant engineering effort throughout the charging ecosystem, from the batteries, on-board infrastructure, standards, mapping, strategic c…
I mean they’re buying electricity for 10 cents and selling it for 60. They sell quite a few kw per hr that way at the fast chargers, and there are frequently lines so it’s not as if supply greatly outstrips demand. Profit is the incentive.
The only charging network I know that is publicly traded is Chargepoint, and they have never turned a profit. In fact, their losses have increased as revenue has gone up. But, they are not a perfect example since their chargers are independently operated with prices set by the operator (with prices anywhere from free to significantly in excess of retail electricity prices).
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Such ANGER. The Internet says 50% of US buyers are identified democrats, YMMV for internet stats. That number doesn't seem stupid -- EVs are progressive, environmentalist, anti-establishment. Tesla's stock is a huge bubble. It's worth the next 10 car companies combined! Yes there's a ton of AI speculation in there, but fundamentally the company's stock is about geometric growth in sales. The most important customer t…
Is it Tesla sales that is down or a general down trend in the car market? Tesla's Model Y is still the best selling car model in the world in 2024
Do you have a source for that? Tesla is not even in the top 10 largest auto manufacturers, but the larger ones have way more models so I suppose it is possible Model Y is the best selling car (though it certainly isnt in the US).
TIL Rivian has a charging network
Rivian's R&D center is in Palo Alto, but their charger map doesn't show a public charger anywhere near there. They have zero chargers of their own in Silicon Valley. There's a standards group at SAE working on making US charger payment compatibility work.[1] BP Pulse, General Motors, Ford, ChargePoint, Electrify America, Tesla, Toyota, and Rivian are on board. It's good to see more higher-powered chargers. When and i…
Silicon Valley has one of the highest density of EV chargers in the world, why would Rivian need to build more?
Their goal appears to be covering areas poorly served to expand the places EV owners can go. This seems much more valuable than adding another plug to an already well served urban area.
Side note: why don’t gas stations offer charging? They’re already at good locations and they could drive business to their shops and delis. Especially if they happen to be in a an area with no other chargers around. Don’t even be fancy. Just buy a consumer grade charger with a 220 volt outlet and have the cashier charge $20/hour or something.
L2 AC chargers like you are mentioning would be a terrible fit for a gas station because they are too slow. In my car, which has a small battery, charging for a full hour is only like a 15% charge. No one wants to hang out at a gas station for several hours, and even if they did they arent going to go into the store to buy stuff more than once most likely.
How did we get from a situation where you could just pay with cash/card for fuel to having monopolized single-brand car fueling stations?
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You’re right! Pay phones used to actually make money and get maintained by the phone company! A lot of money. And a lot of regulation. Outside of the hood, they started reducing the maintenance expenses in the mid 90s when receiving calls was pretty much banned. Chargers are worse than ATMs, they are yet another real estate tax scheme. The actual function of charging is often not a serious consideration.
Receiving calls? Perhaps Im too young, what was the use case for that?
Also, urban apartment buildings weren’t always wired and while traveling you didn’t always have phones in motels. My grandfather had a bar whose clientele was mostly from a shipyard. When they’d furlough the workers for a retooling or something, he’d close the place and work as musician in a resort town for a few weeks - he’d send a postcard with a pay phone for folks to call at a certain time window.