Chainwright wrote:wildmanbaker wrote:
Max, not doubting your info, just if it is slanted one way or the other. Of course, this never happens....Reisender, yea, like you said, you must know where they are at. Our son said the a couple of friends have Tesla's and they are pretty big cars, especially for most German, general use roads.
I'm really not trying to "slant" anything. That's why I pretty much gave you almost 10 different web sites. But there are more. Naturally you are welcome to do your own research. And Reisender has Physical Testimony of what is going on over there. Is there any reason anyone should doubt him?
And just like we have Apps for just about everything here, I'm quite sure Europeans have Apps that show them where most if not all the charging stations are.
I had some great pictures of charge locations in France and Holland as well but never uploaded them and they seem to be gone forever. (The picture I put up of the German site wasn’t mine). Oh well.
Re Apps. Yah. Each company has their own so chargepoint has their own, EVGO, Flo etc. When you charge at one of their stations you use their app to pay or you can use a swipe card. I have like four in my wallet. Tesla is easiest as you just plug into a Supercharger and your car transmits the serial number to the mothership and bills your account.
But there is one App that everyone uses. Plugshare. It is crowd sourced so not as accurate and no real time data like how many chargers are in use etc. But great for finding either commercial charging points or private home based chargers. Many of us with home stations put them on plugshare. If someone is in a pinch and they need to charge they are welcome to charge at our house albeit at max 40 amps though as houses don’t have DC fast chargers.
One other thing. Non EV drivers sometimes get it in their head that there will have to be as many commercial chargers as there is gas stations now. Not so. Not even close. The vast majority of all charging is done st home at night while you sleep. If you have a fast charger in your town you will probably never use it. Many who own EV’s have never charged anywhere but home. Others like myself may use a fast charger half a dozen times per year...maybe. If you do Lots of road trips then you’ll use them and then your best to buy a Tesla as they are king when it comes to fast charging networks.
Workplace daytime charging is getting more popular especially in sunny locations as it is quite often solar powered. Charge rates are slower at these setups as charge sharing is usually allocated at half a day per vehicle. 3.3 kw rates or less. Good enough for a days milesge. Most commuters use less than 8 Kw in a day.
All this will evolve over time. It will take a couple decades.
On edit.
I like this picture. An installation like this on a sunny day can provide all the daily mileage for every commuter parked under it...and your car is in the shade. 🙂 This is not a charging facility and there are no EV plugs but it gives you an idea of the potential of EV's. Obviously this is a solution for sunny areas but still. Kinda cool. An idea doesn't have to work everywhere for it to be a good idea.
We are frequent travelers of Europe and have driven a lot of it. European countries generally have better public infrastructure than anything on this side of the pond and EV charging facilities are no exception. But you have to know where to look and if you are not an EVer you might not even notice it. And remember. just like here, the vast majority of charging is done at home while you sleep although sponsored workplace charging is definitely getting more common everywhere.
Different countries seem to have different approaches to it. Portugal is putting DC fast charging at all their rest stops. Generally speaking their rest stops are way ahead of ours and all have a commercial component to them. Great facilities. Here is a pic or two we took last year.
Air and water stations.
Plug share is handy everywhere in the world. Here are a couple of snaps of just the DC fast charge stations of central europe. Still lots of gaps to fill in. Little by little. i'll be happy when the trans Canada is covered. My guess is at least a couple years yet. BC, Ontario and Quebec are filling in nicely but the prairies...not so much. At some point it will start to affect tourism and then it will fill in quicker. That is a few years away. IMHO
Tesla is still one of the better networks in europe. This is a German travel centre.
Different countries seem to have different approaches to it. Portugal is putting DC fast charging at all their rest stops. Generally speaking their rest stops are way ahead of ours and all have a commercial component to them. Great facilities. Here is a pic or two we took last year.
Air and water stations.
Plug share is handy everywhere in the world. Here are a couple of snaps of just the DC fast charge stations of central europe. Still lots of gaps to fill in. Little by little. i'll be happy when the trans Canada is covered. My guess is at least a couple years yet. BC, Ontario and Quebec are filling in nicely but the prairies...not so much. At some point it will start to affect tourism and then it will fill in quicker. That is a few years away. IMHO
Tesla is still one of the better networks in europe. This is a German travel centre.
wildmanbaker wrote:
Night driving. Even though they are LEDs they still use up quite a bit of electrical at night.
Ahh I see where your coming from. We don't find other systems use as much as people think. Here is a screenshot or our first generation leaf. It should give you an idea of what the various systems use. Lights are on and steering wheel heater on. You can see the climate control drawing considerably more power than the other systems. Keep in mind that the car is warm at this point. EV's heat up like right now. Within 5 minutes the current draw drops back to something like you see here although the first 5 minutes its usually north of 3 KW just for the HVAC. I don't think the heated seats were on for this as I usually don't have then selected on pre-warm. Temperature is as per the other pic. Minus eleven I think. Hope this gives some insight into real world numbers.
