IMO the current model we use for gas stations wouldn’t work for EVs. Charging times for EVs can take a long time compared to petroleum vehicles taking only a couple minutes (depending on tank size). The lines would be a terrible experience, and you’d probably end up having to reserve a spot.
Germany Will Force 80% of Gas Stations to Install EV Charging, Too
Submitted 1 year ago by boem@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.thedrive.com/news/germany-will-force-80-percent-of-gas-stations-to-install-ev-charging
Comments
joyjoy@lemm.ee 1 year ago
PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I can’t imagine why you’d think that.
Yes. It takes a bit longer, but most people would charge at home.
You only use the fast DC chargers when you go on long trips.
With my EV, you don’t “go to the gas station” unless you’re on a road trip. In your day to day travel, you just always have enough juice.
It’s actually a lot nicer than a gas car in this respect.
ourob@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Honestly, it makes sense for any business off of a highway that sells things to provide fast chargers. They still take several minutes at a minimum to charge, so you have a captive and probably bored customer. Seems like a gas station, restaurant, whatever would quickly make back the money spent on charging infrastructure in increased sales from people who’d rather shop or eat than sit in their car for a half hour.
Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi 1 year ago
Here in Australia, I think it would actually work quite well, particularly in rural areas… then again all our service stations are pretty much convenience stores where you can buy fuel. Many of them you can buy a coffee and baked goods as well, some even have full restaurants.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
On the road, nobody fully charges their EV.
It isn’t efficient, since the fuller the battery, the slower it charges.
grayman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s a terrible place to put them. They should be in large parking lots and garages where people leave their car for 30+ minutes.
DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
You’re not spending 30+ minutes charging on modern EV’s (maybe some cheap crappy ones IDK)…I spent my summer holiday driving around Europe for 3 weeks, and charging stops were always <25min, often so short that we barely had time to get the kids to the bathroom and back before the car was ready to drive for another couple of hours. Having them at gas stations in Germany, where there’s almost always a decent level of amenities (at least along the highway) is just fine and makes perfect sense.
kameecoding@lemmy.world 1 year ago
it’s not, what about the handicapped who need assistance? Gas station has those.
- all the amenities that are at the gas station so you can do stuff during your 15 minute charge,
this should be done along major roads everywhere
Though I’d agree simple 230v (since it’s the EU) charging in many places is something that should be a focus too, mainly at workplaces and stuff like that where people spend a lot of time
PerCarita@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
I think the naysayers don’t live in Germany, or at least are not used to the idea of mixed use neighbourhoods.
Petter1@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Most gas stations have some building with a (or multiple) shops which could easily be adjusted to slow moving chillin car charging peoples (no offense, I’m one as well).
jabjoe@feddit.uk 1 year ago
We want them at office car parks, super market car parks, restaurant car parks, etc. Anywhere you going to leave your car for hours. It doesn’t need to be rapid.
In the future, when cars are largely V2X, while just sat there, they can be local power stage. Buying and selling power, making you money and smoothing the grid.
Cars are sat most of their lives. While sat, they should be plumbed in and their huge batteries made use of.
riceandbeans161@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
this is a reminder that EVs are here to save the car industry, not our lives.
wish they’d invest in public transport.
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 1 year ago
They’re doing both. Yeah, I’d wish they’d do more for public transport. But the 49 Euro ticket was a good start.
axo@feddit.de 1 year ago
A good start, but not proper investment in public transit. DB is still massivly underfunded and the road infrastructure, again, got more money to spend than the rail infrastructure, despite claiming the Ampel would do it the other way around… :/
kiranraine@reddthat.com 1 year ago
I could say the same for it over here in the states bc geezus. Esp as someone who absolutely hates driving bc of audhd and so many other reasons. Not to mention everything is so far away when I need it and shopping online isn’t always ideal(and I’m still wary of buying certain things online…)
Alto@kbin.social 1 year ago
More than anything else in tbis world, I just want to live in a truly walkable city. I'll probably have to eventually cross an ocean to get that.
menemen@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They should concentrate on making EV financially more plausible for people without an electrified garage. Half of Germany lives in flats, most without an own parking space and will pay much more for charging their EV with much less comfort. And politics seem to completly ignore that.
letsgocrazy@lemm.ee 1 year ago
You mean by making petrol stations have EV charging points?
ShittyRedditWasBetter@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Imagine thinking people are going to wait 30 minutes to charge for work. Putting charge stations at gas stations is stupid and will never work. They already get long lines during busy periods when if takes 3 minutes to fill.
menemen@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Where you still wait 30 minutes and pay much more than those charging at home.
So: no. That is not what I mean. That is a shitshow.
ViewSonik@lemmy.world 1 year ago
While I agree, it is much easier to bring in charging stations to gas stations where infrastructure is already built out. It seems like a near-term win with the long-term option for flat integration/power connectivity
Michal@programming.dev 1 year ago
The electric infrastructure is the whole grid. I’d argue apartment complex are better prepared for the increased power use than a gas station and is more convenient a location than gas station.
What are you going to do while waiting for your car to charge? At least at home you can go… home. Shopping centres are a close second. You can do your shopping while you’re charging. Parking spaces and grid are already there.
gacorley@kbin.social 1 year ago
I mean, if you live in a flat without your own parking space, I'd expect you're taking public transportation most of the time. If you don't own a car in the first place, there's no need to convert you in the first place, at least if you have no reason to need a car.
ShittyRedditWasBetter@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s a terrible assumption. Many people live in an apartment and street park.
PerCarita@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Do you live in Swabia? You sound like you live in Swabia.
vapeloki@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I get your point. But to be fair: for landlords where massive subventions in place. This program ended amd was not renewed because of lack of interest.
But at least for new buildings, a policy to force charging stations at every parking lot would be a good idea
menemen@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That is why it should be solved by our politicians. They cannot always leave the main burden to the lower middle class…
Hazdaz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What a bone-headed move. A gas station is not really set up to handle vehicles that might be there for 5x, 10x or maybe even 15x longer than a gasoline car takes to fill up. You’d be far better off, putting them in the parking lot of a local grocery store or movie theater or restaurant.
PerCarita@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Some gas stations are also highway rest areas with restaurants and whatnot. The ones that aren’t close to rest areas are in mixed used neighbourhoods, so possibly close to the customers’ homes. If you take your car to the cinema in Germany, you’re doing it wrong.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 year ago
My nearest cinema in the UK is 90 minutes walk away.
There used to be two in my town. One closed back in the mid-90s and has been several pubs and clubs since, and the other closed long enough ago that there’s still a faded poster for The Hunger Games outside. Nothing else has moved into this building, except presumably for the local spiceheads.
But I digress. Putting charging points at motorway service stations is a good idea. Such a good idea that it’s already been done in just about all of them, and as electric vehicle use climbs, will presumably increase the number of charging points accordingly until there’s one for every parking space. Putting them in a regular petrol station would be a shit idea. I assume when we finally drink the Earth dry of oil, these places will close and be another polluted husk on the apocalyptic hellscape called Britain. Cars will be charged from home by then, we’ll have no use for them. As more of them close, it’ll trigger a cascade of people who don’t want to drive 10 miles to fill their car up, so will switch to electric.
Home and car parks will be the only place to charge in the future.
gian@lemmy.grys.it 1 year ago
While it is a good idea to put them near the places you suggest, it not stupid to put them also at the gas stations. Here we already have gas station on highways with EV charging stations and they just take some parking places, usually a couple in the smaller stations and maybe up to a dozen in the biggest ones. It is a nice advantage to be able to have lunch while the car recharge.
tankplanker@lemmy.world 1 year ago
As others have mentioned it’s as well as not instead of.
However it’s boneheaded to charge to 100% the vast majority of the time as it’s often as slow to charge from 20 to 80% as it it from 80 to 100% on an ultra rapid charger as it massively slows down above 80.
I can charge twice from 10 to 80% with my car in about 40 minutes for a range of almost 500 miles vs. One 10 to 100% for a range of almost 320 miles in the same time.
I only fully charge at home and only if it makes sense for the journey I’m doing. It’s not good for the long term health of the battery to repeatedly charge it to 100% all the time. Plus it’s kind of a dick move to block fast and ultra chargers with the slow charge above 80%.
Then there’s the cost, I don’t want to spend 45 to 75p a kWh to charge on a public charger when I pay 9p at home on my ev tariff. If I do need to charge I only charge what I need, which can be as little as 5 minutes for about 60 miles.
Sure, not every car comes with 350kw support (or even 250kw) yet, but more will as people realise that charging speed is at least as important as range if you plan to travel in Europe.
Hazdaz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What car has almost 500 miles of range at 80% state of charge?!
While new models get released all the time, the Lucid Air is known to have one of the longest EV ranges and it is around 510 miles from 100%.
A car would have a total range of around 625 miles at 100% if it is getting 500 miles at 80%.
p_q@lemmy.world 1 year ago
maybe they need the parking lots, for people putting gasoline via canisters in their cars.
BeautifulMind@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Rented a Tesla this summer for a trip with my family- where I was in Michigan, the nearest superchargers were in the lot at Meijers (a regional supermarket chain), which made sense (there’s already a big lot there, already infra, it’s a place you can tie fueling up with getting groceries) but it meant I had to drive half an hour to shop instead of going to the local market.
My thought is that they should be planting superchargers (or their functional equivalent) in every store or restaurant parking lot because when the only place to get a charge is in the next county over, that’s directing EV drivers there and not local
Yeah, it’ll cost something to build out infra to support that much power but honestly the US grid needs the upgrades anyhow- and if anything, electricity is relatively cheap compared to buying gas
evatronic@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Yeah, it’ll cost something to build out infra to support that much power but honestly the US grid needs the upgrades anyhow- and if anything, electricity is relatively cheap compared to buying gas
It’s a good thing that Inflation Reduction Act Biden got passed includes a crapton of money to help businesses pay for chargers and other infrastructure, eh?
BeautifulMind@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah. If that keeps money in small towns and going into small businesses vs. big-box chain stores, it’s well-spent. Especially if it means your transport fuel dollar isn’t funding fossil energy(?)
At the moment, Michigan sources about 2/3rds of its electrical power from coal or natural gas but wind and nuclear are a growing piece of that. Where I live, in WA, most of our electricity is Hydro (and it’s cheap, at ~10¢/kWh). Also, fueling up on electricity (even in MI, where electricity is ~19 ¢/kWh) was pretty cheap compared to gasoline.
I think if we don’t put those in local, small-town small-business lots everywhere it’ll be bad for small businesses, small towns, and in marginal ways, for the environment.
obinice@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Okay, but who is building the vast energy grid infrastructure required to move the gargantuan amounts of electricity that will be required once all vehicles make the switch?
I’m all for it, but I don’t hear anybody talking about the huge national grid upgrades that will be required, or who’s going to pay for it all, or how many years it’ll take to get done.
Everyone seems to talk about building more chargers, but not going any further than that.
spamspeicher@feddit.de 1 year ago
I can’t speak for other countries, but since the article is about Germany: You have never heard of Netzentwicklungsplan, Südlink, Südostlink, Lastmanagement für Ladestationen and many more of these things? The Netzausbau (expansion of the power grid) and Lastmanagement (power distribution management) is pretty much a huge topic for all Netzübertragungsbetreiber and the other smaller power grid operators in Germany. Most of the development is slow at the moment because of bureaucracy and NIMBYs but it is actively being worked on.
Beliriel@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Atleast better than the train network lmao
doctron@feddit.de 1 year ago
We could have a look at Norway how they are dealing with the transformation, e.g.https://insideevs.com/…/fuel-stations-norway-…. And maybe this is also part of it as well: fuelsandlubes.com/totalenergies-to-sell-retail-ne…. And Aral is already having REWE to go.
Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hopefully they will have it so that the EV charging stations included will be under canopies to protect them from the weather, as I know that that is a big problem with current canopy-less implementations.
ilickfrogs@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Gas pumps have had canopies for as long as I can remember. This should be expected.
Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Indeed it should, though there are many EV charging stations where it isn’t the case, especially in America. Tesla’s Charging locations are like that, they usually don’t have a canopy over the Chargers, which in my opinion doesn’t seem like a great practice because it exposes the machines to the elements and make them unpleasant for users when it’s raining or snowing.
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Why are they pushing the costs onto gas stations and not paying for it themselves?
PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That article is too shit to extract any “real” information from, but gas stations are a very logical place to install electric “gas stations”.
UxyIVrljPeRl@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Congratulations, you managed to burn even more money!
bstix@feddit.dk 1 year ago
I drive an EV. I don’t want chargers at gas stations.
It makes much more sense to out the charges in the place where you park your car: At home, at parking lots and at work.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 1 year ago
These are fast chargers to top-off for extended trips.
Those places make a lot more sense than what the US is doing, which is putting its long distance fast chargers in weird ass parking lots that lack access to a restroom, convenient store, food, or even a bucket with a window squeegee.
PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Ha! That is the opposite of the truth.
Aside from the fact that not all of them are at gas stations, they’re almost always very near to them.
IME, there’s always a place to go to the bathroom and purchase something. Plus, lots of them will offer you discounts while you’re charging.
PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world 1 year ago
DC fast chargers. Not level 2 240v chargers.
You need infrastructure for fast charging so that people can travel long distances.
It takes several hours to charge my car at home, twice a week or so.
That’s too long when I go on a trip. If I go to the supercharger, it’s 25 minutes every four hours or so. That’s just the opposite of a problem for me.
The only remaining problem for me is that there’s not more fast DC chargers.
I’d really like to take my EV camping, but the places where I like to go camping are far from any fast charging and don’t have RV plugs. A regular 120v/15A wall plug overnight would resolve the issue, but I just can’t guarantee that one’s available.
hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
Fast chargers at sizeable gas stations make sense. Sheetz has already been putting them in at some larger locations.
billygoat@catata.fish 1 year ago
My favorite are the chargers at buc-ees. Get to buy some beef jerky and a bbq sandwich while charging.
PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Sheets hasn’t Tesla has been installing them at places like Sheetz.
Anyway, it looks like the NACS is winning the standards war, so everyone will benefit from their early investment.
raptir@lemdro.id 1 year ago
In much of the rural US gas stations are a “one stop” - gas, groceries and often a restaurant. It would be a no brainier to add charging to those.
Seraph@kbin.social 1 year ago
Oh c'mon everyone hangs out at the local gas station!
To your point, mandate public places not a relic of a dying industry.
Got_Bent@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m not even supposed to be here today!
Ok, I know that wasn’t a gas station, but it felt like it fit.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Something is afoot at the Circle K
someguy3@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Places you can spend time at. Restaurants, shops, the mall, etc.
Got_Bent@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Work. The answer is always work. Eke out a little more profit while people recharge.
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 1 year ago
So you can’t own an EV if you live in an apartment? Hmmm…
jpj007@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Last I checked, most apartments have parking lots.
bstix@feddit.dk 1 year ago
Of course you can, and IMO, you should be able to charge it at home, in parking lots and at work.
GigglyBobble@kbin.social 1 year ago
The current German government isn't famous for their well-thought-out decisions.
airbck@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There is a difference between bad policy and unpopular policy. If each party caters to their target audience there are two others the policy is unpopular with. Blatantly bad policy is rare. Interestingly the current opposition had the same intention when they were in charge. But now they have to cater to their right wing audience.
finn_der_mensch@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
At home either you’re responsible on your own or your landlord is, in fact in Germany many people rent. Here there is a law already: if requested, the landlord has to install an EV charger. In many parking lots of businesses at least where I live chargers already exist. I don’t know if this is another law or if it just works in that field.
ViewSonik@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is a infrastructure problem. This is a near-term win to put these in gas stations where power infrastructure already exists or can exist. Massive power infrastructure doesn’t work quickly, it will take time but ultimately you’re correct to push for parking locations.