I would add one thing my family has complained about wrt road trip charging is it’s not just the time you wait to charge, it’s the time and games/anger dealing with all the people in line waiting to charge.
And this is with marginal EV adoption. Imagine if it was full scale the headaches that would come. I mean think of the current amount of gas stations around, that would be insufficient to cover EV demand due to the fact EVs need to linger for so much longer. So good bye to whatever in your town needs to be destroyed in order to park more cars and charge them. So much for walkable cities.
It gets exponentially better with bigger adoption, because chargers being in use pay for installation of more chargers (and batteries got cheaper, so charging stations have their own storage and are less limited by the size of their grid connection).
Service stations on my route in the UK went from having 2-3 medium-speed chargers total in 2019 to having 2 rows of 20 high-speed chargers, and another parking doubling that is under construction. The same happened all over Western Europe - grew from a few singular chargers at supermarkets and hotels to many large charging hubs along highways.
Reliability and ease of payment also got better, partly because regulations started requiring it, but also because the stations don't sit idle any more, and it started to matter for revenue.
Also in EU there's enough charger coverage now that there's competition. I don't have to sit in line to the only charger in town, I can drive few miles to the next station.
The big difference between public EV chargers and gas stations: you can put an EV charger anywhere you have electricity, and with far lower space requirements. My city is slowly converting a few street parking spots in busy areas to EV charging, and it takes very little room - I have no complaints as someone who mostly uses sidewalks and bike lanes. Where did you think people were parking their cars in cities before?
Parking garages are also getting EV chargers. My office garage just added a couple dozen, and I don't think it would be hard for them to convert more once the demand shows up.
And I've seen them starting to go in at the little rest stops on the Autobahn that up to now only had unattended toilets; they're being added to the big, nice rest stops with gas stations, too, of course.
This is very regional, and I suspect is more of a problem for SoCal that most anywhere else. I've been driving EVs since 2019 and I have experienced a line exactly one time.
I would agree, though, that if you do run into a situation where you have to wait, the current system does not deal with it well. They need a better way to fairly manage a queue if it forms.
I had to use public chargers for a while when my house was being worked on and it was pretty miserable. They were frequently broken, and lines were common.
The real problem with public charger lines is that there is no social protocol for them yet. At a gas station, it is fine to pull up behind a car currently fueling to indicate that you would like to fuel at the pump next. Charging stations, however, are not built with pull-through spots. There's no place to form a queue at all, so people park nearby, circle, and sometimes snipe a spot when it isn't their turn (because who can tell whose turn it is?).
asdff|5 months ago
pornel|5 months ago
Service stations on my route in the UK went from having 2-3 medium-speed chargers total in 2019 to having 2 rows of 20 high-speed chargers, and another parking doubling that is under construction. The same happened all over Western Europe - grew from a few singular chargers at supermarkets and hotels to many large charging hubs along highways.
Reliability and ease of payment also got better, partly because regulations started requiring it, but also because the stations don't sit idle any more, and it started to matter for revenue.
Also in EU there's enough charger coverage now that there's competition. I don't have to sit in line to the only charger in town, I can drive few miles to the next station.
MandieD|5 months ago
Parking garages are also getting EV chargers. My office garage just added a couple dozen, and I don't think it would be hard for them to convert more once the demand shows up.
And I've seen them starting to go in at the little rest stops on the Autobahn that up to now only had unattended toilets; they're being added to the big, nice rest stops with gas stations, too, of course.
rootusrootus|5 months ago
I would agree, though, that if you do run into a situation where you have to wait, the current system does not deal with it well. They need a better way to fairly manage a queue if it forms.
loeg|5 months ago
jmcphers|5 months ago
The real problem with public charger lines is that there is no social protocol for them yet. At a gas station, it is fine to pull up behind a car currently fueling to indicate that you would like to fuel at the pump next. Charging stations, however, are not built with pull-through spots. There's no place to form a queue at all, so people park nearby, circle, and sometimes snipe a spot when it isn't their turn (because who can tell whose turn it is?).