You need to get to a gas station, where charging stations can be anywhere. If you have one at work and one at your house you will spend vastly less of your time filling up.
> Everybody will be charging at home/work. Other places you'll likely charge are conveniently located places between long distance destinations. Rest areas for example.
It seems like there's a lot of work to be done to scale this up for when electric vehicles get more popular. Many apartment complexes I see have no facilities for this, for example. But electric vehicles are also quite rare in this area.
I have to believe locations will often be different.
If I had an EV and couldn't charge at home, I'd be charging at the chargers next to one of my local supermarkets. I'm not going to go to one of the gas station locations around where I live and twiddle my thumbs for 20 minutes even if they had charging.
At a charging station? A lot of people do a lot of their charging not at home already - at least in cities. Presumably this could / will be true in rural areas, too.
It greatly depends. That said, I would say a large amount of the high power DC charging points (i.e., the ones you need to use when road tripping, and have to stop at for ~20-30 mins at a time) tend to be placed in inconvenient places. For example, at the VERY back of a parking lot, 200+ ft away from the nearest storefront.
Generally, it seems that they pick the furthest away locations because they aren't desirable spots, EV chargers usually need some large infrastructure that takes up additional space, and EV owners don't really have a choice...
Additionally, depending on where you have to stop, you may have a charger located in some mall or group of stores that closes at a relatively early hour (~9PM). Usually these are far enough from a convenience store (you know, the ones attached to a gas station) that it makes more sense to just wait at the charger then make a separate stop at a gas station if you need snacks/bathroom/etc.
Some stores do a good job of integrating the chargers nearby to their business, but your mileage may vary wildly. There's a bakery that has a supercharger I stop at frequently on a road trip that I take; when the bakery is open, it's fantastic little stop with food, snacks, restroom, etc. When it's closed... tough luck.
I suppose the concern in rural/suburban areas is what happens when you need to be on the road? If you really need to charge, do you have to go out of your way to find a charging station? Gas stations are everywhere.
Most people in cities will be charging at home though, the big supercharging stations will be along the highways where people are driving for hours. And with how simple car chargers are, they can just be a part of supermarket parking lots, etc.
Many people will probably only seldomly need to charge at stations, as they'd probably charge their batteries at home each night. Many office parking places will probably have charging stations as well.
If we expect electric cars to replace all gas powered cars, we have to have places for all the apartment dwellers to charge, as well as for all the people who are driving on long trips.
Even with the limited number of Teslas on the road right now, I ended up having to wait for over an hour for a spot to charge while driving from Northern California to Southern California on a holiday weekend. The station had 40 superchargers and still had over and hour wait to get to them. If every single driver on I-5 had to stop to charge, you will need a LOT of charging stations.
That is an open question. I think I can comfortable predict that along major routes (hiways) there will be charging stations. There may not be a charging station in every small town like there is a gas station. Though I predict that hotels will all have slow charging stations (probably tied to your room key).
The inferesting places are not always private properties that are trying to attract people. On my road trips, I often end up stopping and stretching my legs at scenic overlooks, hiking trails, lakes etc, none of which are likely to sprout charging stations any time soon.
Gas stations make small margin on gas, but high margin on convenience stores;
Electric Cars upset this, because 80% of trips can be slow charged at home; But the one difference is those 20% of trips requiring charging will have longer stops (potentially optimizing for higher, restaurant margins).
*Yes, there are situations where home charging in cities is less likely possible.
I'm not sure the "gas station on every corner" model is going to transition to the EV world. First of all many people will do the bulk of their charging at home, so paying for a charge will be mostly limited to long distance road trips, etc. It's not something you necessarily need to do at all during your regular commute or running errands around town.
Second, even with a fast DC charger it still takes 20-60 minutes to get a useful amount of charge. That's a lot longer than you need to run into a convenient store to buy a coffee or whatever. It makes more sense to put these chargers where people will naturally be parked longer: office buildings, restaurants, highway service plazas, etc.
Where I lived, virtually every big parking lot had charging stations. As big parking lots are generally wasted space anyways, why not work with them to be the place to charge? Just as I don't gas up at home, I can live with not charging at home, especially as charge times come down in the future.
Most normal trips will end at either your house or your place of work. Presumably both those places will eventually have charging stations.
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