Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

I would be real happy if employers would focus more on adding reserved parking with chargers instead of reserve parking for mid level management. It would send a much better message.

It might take something akin to handicap parking to convince people to think different. I would use the carrot method, get better parking with your plug in (hybrid or otherwise) instead of taxing the other to death.

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#6

Post by greglindahl » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 7:01 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #5

I would be real happy if employers would focus more on adding reserved parking with chargers instead of reserve parking for mid level management. It would send a much better message. It might take something akin to handicap parking to convince people to think different. I would use the carrot method, get better parking with your plug in (hybrid or otherwise) instead of taxing the other to death.

Huh. In Silicon Valley it is already more common to have EV chargers with dedicated parking than it is to have dedicated management spaces.

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#7

Post by sbierwagen » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 7:13 PM UTC

acveilleux wrote: post #4

They count charging stations in homes, not just public ones.

Plus, you really should be comparing the number of pumps, not gas stations. Additionally, the power throughput of a gas pump is way, way higher than a car charger. (Probably measured in the dozens of MWe per hour, compared to 50 KW/h of a DC fast charger) A single car ties up a gas pump for five minutes, an electric car ties up a charger for half an hour.

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#8

Post by lotsofmangos » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 7:18 PM UTC

acveilleux wrote: post #4

They count charging stations in homes, not just public ones.

Would be hard to fit a petrol station in everybody's home though.

edit - was also thinking that providing extra plug-in points on the side of your property to sell rooftop solar or grid at a premium, as part of a global charger sharing network, is probably going to happen eventually and has a good business plan in there somewhere.

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#9

Post by closetnerd » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 7:19 PM UTC

Wondering if anyone knows if current state of manufacturing, maintaining, and disposing batteries actually is actually more ecological than using gasoline?

I'm sure the potential of batteries to be more ecological and efficient is there, but the general assumption seems to be that they are already there and I'm not too sold on that idea yet.

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#10

Post by skywhopper » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 7:34 PM UTC

IMO, including home chargers is fine (if it were common practice for people to have gas pumps in their garages those would be fair to count as well), but to be a fair comparison, I think you need to count the actual number of gas pumps in total, and factor in the difference in "charging" time between the two technologies. So if there are an average of 6 pumps at each station, and if it takes two minutes to gas up an empty tank versus 30 minutes to fully recharge an electric car, then you really need 75 times as many charging points to claim you have something resembling equality.