[HN Gopher] Global EV Charging Points with Open Charge Map
___________________________________________________________________
Global EV Charging Points with Open Charge Map
Author : marklit
Score : 132 points
Date : 2024-09-25 10:24 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tech.marksblogg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tech.marksblogg.com)
| nicoboo wrote:
| Really precise blog post with useful case, as usual with the
| author. Love his writing, findings and technical details.
| xur17 wrote:
| My only feedback was that he should really really consider
| linking the text `Open Charge Map` to the website.
| negative_zero wrote:
| Why would I use this over PlugShare?
| krzyk wrote:
| Or instead of OSM.
| marklit wrote:
| OSM doesn't have the same metadata as this project.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Because Plugshare is closed source, locked down and a bizarre
| cesspool of uncurated garbage with zealously curated but
| misleading or straight up wrong information.
|
| For example, in Australia, the largest supercharger networks
| are Tesla and Evie. For reasons I won't even pretend to
| understand, Plugshare refuses to allow either name in their
| labels, so if a town has both, they're called "Town (1)" and
| "Town (2)" at random. Not only does this make searching a pain,
| but people just select whichever pin happens to be on top and
| then submit their charging reports for the wrong charger. Gar!
| Typical example:
|
| "Oliver's Gundagai (1)"
| https://www.plugshare.com/location/205861 (Chargefox)
|
| "Oliver's Gundagai (2)"
| https://www.plugshare.com/location/76887 (Tesla)
| bojan wrote:
| Weird, this problem doesn't exist in Europe. I found
| Plugshare to be more reliable and informative than ABRP,
| especially in the areas where charger stations aren't that
| common.
| mft_ wrote:
| IME, Plugshare is of variable value. Good in Germany; terrible
| in Mallorca, for example.
| jwr wrote:
| PlugShare doesn't list all stations, for one.
| martini333 wrote:
| Neither does this; obviously.
| kccqzy wrote:
| And it's easy to add a new station to PlugShare. I've done
| that before.
| oezi wrote:
| Why would I use PlugShare over other apps on which I can also
| charge?
| JaggedJax wrote:
| Being truly open is a huge plus for OCM. Checking a few
| locations in both I found that PlugShare had locations properly
| listed as under maintenance while OCM listed them as open, so
| at least near me the Plugshare data seems more accurate.
|
| I also really appreciate the images and comments people have
| posted in Plugshare to help find out of the way stations or
| stations that might not be reliable. If OSM took off it would
| get there, but none of the stations I checked had any comments
| or images.
|
| I'm not a big fan of the OCM station formatting. There's a
| bunch of useless information above the fold and a bunch of
| useful information below the fold.
|
| OCM doesn't appear to have any pricing information while
| PlugShare at least tells me if the station has a charge and if
| the parking itself has a charge.
|
| I hope that open services like this can get station data from
| more direct sources for more accurate information, but the data
| isn't quite there yet for me to want to use it when I'm
| actively looking for a station.
| jsight wrote:
| Plugshare is owned by evgo. It'd be nice to have a fully
| independent entity owning the data and sharing it freely.
| tas50 wrote:
| This was my immediate question. Looking at this data in my city
| it reports a bunch of chargers that are either 100% gone or
| have been broken for a year. PlugShare reports those all
| correctly. I'd have a pretty bad time trying to charge around
| here (metro population of 2.5 million) if I relied on this
| dataset.
| luuurker wrote:
| In London (UK), OCM seems to have more chargers and more
| accurate data than PlugShare. Zap Map is probably the best
| option though, but even them are missing some slow chargers.
| oefrha wrote:
| Actual site is here: https://openchargemap.org/site
|
| Site is quite janky on my M1 iPad Pro 12.9'', and honestly, using
| a 3D globe view for this feels like form over function.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| seems they just used mapbox defaults. if your device can't run
| mapbox something is wrong with your device, it's a common and
| well supported library.
| oefrha wrote:
| Example 3D globe maps on Mapbox website run very smoothly, so
| it's not that.
| nine_k wrote:
| Take a perfectly smooth animation, add a fast-looking
| synchronous function call in the animation loop, get some
| jank. A modern GPU, even integrated into a CPU as usual on
| laptops, is ridiculously fast for the task of showing a
| globe, something like 100k triangles at worst. But you need
| to feed it on time.
| mft_ wrote:
| Maybe also browser dependent? Constantly janky on
| Firefox/Windows/8840HS laptop; janky on Chrome while loading
| new locations but then mostly very smooth.
| mikael-gramont wrote:
| FYI I'm on a 2015 MBP and Firefox is doing ok here, so I
| suspect this is a perf problem with Safari.
| arethuza wrote:
| The service seems to believe there are multiple charging sites
| in the middle of the North Sea - which seems slightly
| unlikely...
| mtmail wrote:
| 57.782509, 2.295993 should have been 12.295993. For those
| "Data Provider = NOBIL", but good to see there is an edit and
| comment feature.
| arethuza wrote:
| I'm actually slight disappointed that there isn't some
| bizarre explanation for why North Sea rigs have charging
| points - preparing for electric helicopters maybe? ;-)
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Driving my electric car to my oil drilling job in the
| middle of the ocean, as I do every day
| luuurker wrote:
| The guy running the project doesn't seem to have the time
| needed to improve the site:
|
| https://github.com/openchargemap/ocm-app/issues/37
| Aachen wrote:
| I'm surprised the various charging maps aren't simply using
| OpenStreetMap. It has a large basis of charging points and anyone
| is free to use the data or contribute, so integrating is pretty
| easy. Instead, we now need to use various third-party
| alternatives and the market is quite fragmented. I noticed a
| family member with an EV needs to check two or three different
| systems and they'll all show different results of what chargers
| are near
|
| Of course, live (charging) status will need to be fetched from
| the operator, but that can be a URL field just like we have
| website and menu URL tags for restaurants
| carstenhag wrote:
| OpenStreetMap gives you static data. But when charging, you
| almost always need dynamic data (current station availability,
| availability forecast, charging prices...) even in the most
| basic use cases.
|
| And to get dynamic data you can't just fetch it from one
| operator. My employer's charging network (Digital Charging
| Solutions) has about 1450 technical charge point operators
| (those are the brands you see on the stations). Even just
| looking at the commercial charge point operators (those are
| less) you'd have to connect to hundreds.
|
| Ok, there are also roaming platforms that interconnect
| everything. But they exist to connect, so they are never going
| to give you this valuable data for free. And you'd _still_ have
| to implement about a dozen API connections to get reliable
| status data for only Europe...
|
| Edit: AMA about charging stuff :) I don't handle the data
| connections etc but I know a bit
| donalhunt wrote:
| Do you foresee consolidation occuring for access to the data?
| Having to install 10s of apps / consult multiple sources for
| charging prices (not all chargers present a price) is
| painful.
| carstenhag wrote:
| I do see consolidation happening, but it doesn't have to do
| with data. Right now there are many EMP (eMobility
| Provider) in Europe, trying to get a piece of the cake.
|
| Scale of economics will make the big ones have an edge over
| the small ones, eventually only a few big ones will likely
| survive. Two examples:
|
| - If an EMP connects directly to a CPO (Charge Point
| Operator) they can avoid roaming platform fees, but it
| requires individual integration. This is only worth for
| very large CPO like Ionity.
|
| - An EMP has to sanitize and improve the raw chargepoint
| data they get from providers. Thousands of times CPOs have
| set their chargepoints to LatLng 0,0; have messed up lng
| and lat; have put their stations to Somalia's beach.
| nine_k wrote:
| > _only Europe_
|
| I'd say "wow, even Euripe". I would expect the European
| market, even just within the EU, much more fragmented the in
| the US. I may be wrong though.
| carstenhag wrote:
| This was only data stuff. Once you actually want to sell
| electricity in all european countries and properly invoice
| it for all private & business customer needs, you also get
| a large headache :)
| Aachen wrote:
| I don't understand. You're saying there's too many operators
| to reasonably connect to. How do they currently do these live
| maps then?
|
| It seems to me that, _somewhere_ , there is a URL (or
| whatever specification) which some central server then
| fetches and aggregates to show on their map (probably briefly
| caches, too). This specification of where to fetch the data
| from each charging point from could, per my understanding, be
| an OpenStreetMap tag just like other metadata that we can
| already add. A client can either connect to the (e.g.) 50
| nearest points along the upcoming route directly, or a third
| party can do it and funnel the data back to the client, but
| the ground truth of which charge points there are and how to
| get their current status could be in OpenStreetMap rather
| than fragmented across various siloed map operators
|
| Edit: actually, even if that's not the case, it's still
| better to show "there is a charge point here with 2x 150 kW
| but I don't know the current status" than not having it at
| all. That's static information which OpenStreetMap already
| has. Even if the live info spec is too elaborate or divergent
| for an OSM metadata field, it would still make sense to show
| all the points OSM is aware of in one's application because
| it draws more people to one's app/website
| jmdots wrote:
| Someone needs to build convenience stores attached to charging
| stations. The money is in the store / lounge.
| ilikecakeandpie wrote:
| They're starting to, I've seen quite a few
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| And tell us exactly where these are, their hours of operation,
| what they sell, and the best way to get there from here. A
| dedicated EV mapping team should have been something cooking at
| Google a decade ago. For some reason, they just aren't
| interested (or are now too stupid to realize) this massive,
| ripe business opportunity.
| jmdots wrote:
| Well, for one, charging duration isn't the same as filling a
| gas tank, so the store needs to be more coffee shop / lounge
| than convenience store, although those items must be
| available, too. It really should have an upscale vibe because
| electric cars are purchased more by higher income families.
| Spaces for telecommuting should be involved. Think of it as a
| truck stop but for luxury electric cars. No showers, but
| cubicles are there. Can I get ycombinator approved for this
| idea? :) /half sarcasm
| bojan wrote:
| In Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia they put major chargers next
| to large malls, so you have all the convenience of a mall while
| the car is changing.
| jmdots wrote:
| Yes, that makes sense, of course, but the point is that there
| is a business opportunity in the vast wide open world of the
| US for electric charging to not just be a sidecar to
| established businesses but rather a destination unto itself.
| Consider how much money McDonalds has made from people
| needing a restroom over the years.
| bojan wrote:
| You are completely right of of course. I often think about
| that when I can't avoid charging in the middle of nowhere.
| mikestew wrote:
| In Washington state, I'm starting to see EVGo chargers at AM/PM
| convenience stores. And I'm hearing that there are chargers at
| Pilot truck stops, and Buckee's stores in other states.
| jmdots wrote:
| Yes. I heard this about Shell recently. The key to this is
| that the big oil money is coming for this opportunity and it
| will soon be ceded to them entirely, unless someone goes
| after it. It's a multifaceted problem of electrical
| engineering plus real estate plus supply chain plus
| marketing. Needs a real team with funding.
| phkahler wrote:
| I've always said they need them at all the McDonalds along the
| interstates. You need them at a place where a person can sit
| down and eat for 20-30 minutes. A 5 minute purchase at a store
| isn't going to charge the car much.
| jmdots wrote:
| Agreed. The lounge word in my post is doing a lot of heavy
| lifting. See below.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _money is in the store / lounge_
|
| Is this demonstrated?
|
| Visiting the gas station is an across-the-income-strata chore
| with recurring economics. Wealthy EV owners, on the other hand,
| charge at home--"the economic burden of installing home
| chargers" being unfeasiable "for many living in multi-family
| housing or renting" [1]. It's unclear whether electric trucks
| will charge en route, and if so, whether they'll have many
| people on board for long hauls. So you're stuck, as a base
| case, with road trippers. An intermittent, lower-volume and
| presumably pro-cyclical market.
|
| Put simply, the economics of gas stations don't map cleanly to
| EV charging.
|
| [1]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640...
| parineum wrote:
| > Wealthy EV owners
|
| This is largely a function of needed to charge in a garage.
| vel0city wrote:
| I did a road trip through a part of Canada recently. These are
| only on 401 I think, but they were pretty nice. Small
| convenience store, a food court with 2-3 fast food choices, gas
| pumps, and DC fast chargers. Usually have their own exit/on
| ramps on the highway as well, made it super easy to get in and
| out. Well-spaced for charging on a road trip too.
|
| https://www.onroute.ca/
| 7952 wrote:
| Or fast WIFI and delivery bikes/bots. People just want to play
| with their cell phone and drink coffee.
|
| My guess is that eventually there will be fewer but larger
| charging site. Built beside major routes and close to a big
| grid connection. Have a few hundred MW's of charging all in one
| place. Much easier to maintain and more investable for large
| companies.
| eatporktoo wrote:
| Most of the ones in Pennsylvania are at Wawa or Sheetz. I wish
| they all were.
| xur17 wrote:
| 100% agreed. Took a road trip, and at any charger I stopped at
| I either purchased a meal, or purchased snacks from a coffee
| shop. Given how spread out they are, competition is fairly
| thin.
| ac29 wrote:
| I wonder if this is economically feasible. A fast charger is
| going to take at least 20-30 mins to charge a car, where
| filling up with gas is more like 5 minutes. This means a gas
| station can get significantly more customers per hour than an
| equivalently sized EV charging station.
| beAbU wrote:
| Here in Ireland, I noticed that most of the "main" network public
| chargers are on Google Maps now, and for some of them they even
| show the list of connector options, number of points, and whether
| they are currently in use or not. They don't have costs, but I
| can't imagine it being that long before that information is also
| included. ESB, which is the largest (and cheapest) network is the
| most information complete.
|
| Combine this with Google Maps' existing rate + review features,
| ability to upload pictures and all that, I can see how this will
| very quickly make other 3rd party services like plugshare or
| similar superfluous.
|
| On a recent 800km road trip I just used Google Maps to find
| charging points along my route that was already planned on there.
| I tried using other services like ABRP or EVNavigation and found
| all of them pretty lacking.
|
| Ireland is probably not representative of the rest of the world.
| It's very small, so with my Kona EV and it's 450km range, I can
| basically go anywhere with minimal stops for charging. Most of
| the bigger towns have at least one 50kw charger, and they are
| rolling out 100/200kw chargers at these locations now as well.
| There just is no need to have a detailed route planned out with
| battery SOC estimates and consumption and all that, and with
| charge points on Google Maps I feel we are very close to ICE
| convenience. I just drive, and when I'm a little low on charge I
| search on GMaps for a charger location, drive there, plug in,
| empty my bladder, get a snack, and then continue on my trip
| again.
|
| The vast majority of my charging takes place at home though, so
| the above only applies when I am travelling further than 200km
| from home. Home charging provides access to more than 60% of the
| country I feel.
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| This pretty much reflects what we get in the US as well.
| Obviously with the size of the US we have a ways to go before
| we get to ICE level of coverage but it has gotten much better
| the last 2-3 years. The only thing Google maps lacks over say
| the Tesla app is being able to see how many chargers are
| available at a station. I've changed my trip a little bit a few
| times when it's clear one station is a lot busier than another
| one that might be 20 miles down the road.
| dheera wrote:
| I once arrived at a Tesla supercharger that was full and
| there were Teslas lining up, but there were 4 CCS high speed
| DC chargers right next to them and not a single one was
| taken. Thankfully I had the adapter and just used one of
| them.
|
| Those connectors are a fucking bear to plug in though, and
| you usually have to try 3 times to get the charger-vehicle-
| payment dance to work.
| iphoneisbetter wrote:
| Interesting. What charging network were you using out of
| curiosity? I've never had any issue with Charge Points
| beyond the initial account and payment setup. I've used my
| NACS-CCS adapter dozens of times now mostly at hotels when
| I charge overnight.
| kccqzy wrote:
| > Those connectors are a fucking bear to plug in
|
| The connectors themselves aren't usually the cause for the
| perceived difficulty of plugging in. It's instead the
| weight and flexibility of the cable. Try this: plug in a
| CCS connector at Electrify America, and then plug in a CCS
| connector at ChargePoint. The latter feels much heavier
| than the former. Yet both are CCS connectors. Even though
| the former is rated for 350kW and the latter usually only
| 125kW.
|
| The CCS connector itself doesn't dictate what kind of
| cables manufacturers use and what kind of cooling. Tesla
| designs cables with _less_ cooling and they replace them
| more often; other brands want long-lasting cables with
| fewer field visits so they add _more_ cooling. And some
| brands use liquid cooled cables, others simply opt for
| thicker copper without liquid cooling. All of these have
| nothing to do with the connector.
| jsight wrote:
| That's true, although connector quality does vary as
| well. And in his case, he was using an adapter, which
| adds some unique potential problems. Some connectors have
| electronic latches. I've had those engage before the
| connector and the adapter were fully seated, making it
| nearly impossible to push them the rest of the way
| together. Usually fiddling with the latch button is the
| easiest way at that point.
|
| Also, some connectors have nasty white plastic, while
| others have really nice and usable handles.
| beAbU wrote:
| > being able to see how many chargers are available at a
| station
|
| Google Maps has this information for the ESB network in
| Ireland. It even shows which connections are currently being
| used, and which are out of order. Next step is to show
| information on the current in-use plugs, like when the
| session started. On the ESB app this information is available
| and it helps to estimate when a point might become available,
| if there is congestion.
| dheera wrote:
| As an EV owner, another issue I find is that there are a
| discomfortingly large number of chargers that are "for
| customers only" or that require you to pay for parking just to
| charge.
|
| This is a massive UX issue. With gas cars you can use any gas
| station you want and you don't have to pay additional fees
| other than the gas.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Interesting. Where do you run into this? I've never
| encountered it in the U.S (east coast). If you're in Europe,
| maybe this is a concerning glimpse of where we're heading in
| the U.S. Although I think a charger with those restrictions
| would be ineligible for U.S. National Electric Vehicle
| Infrastructure ("NEVI") funds, so maybe we can hope that
| there is a strong enough disincentive for now?
| vonmoltke wrote:
| Here in northern New Jersey there are many chargers that
| are inside municipal parking garages. Since you have to pay
| to enter (technically, to leave) you have to pay for
| parking time to use those chargers. That's obviously not an
| issue if you would be parking there anyway, but if you
| lived in the area and just wanted or needed to use the
| charger you'd have to pay an additional $1 - $2 per hour on
| top of the charges from the charger.
|
| I'm not sure what the state of the chargers being installed
| at local businesses is. My local grocery store has four
| chargers now, but I don't recall seeing any signage about
| them being for customers only. They share the parking lot
| with the church across the street, though, so that may
| complicate things.
| michaelmior wrote:
| > This is a massive UX issue
|
| I don't see what would really motivate businesses to change
| their mind on this. Since the barrier to entry for an EV
| charging station is many orders of magnitude lower than a gas
| station, it's pretty easy for a business to just add one in
| to an existing parking spot as an extra revenue stream or
| another way to draw customers. But they might reasonably
| value having available parking for customers over the revenue
| they get from EV charging.
|
| I things will probably move more in this direction as EVs
| become more popular and the average customer is more likely
| to drive one.
| r00fus wrote:
| Where is this? Here in California, it's pay-for-use for the
| chargers without any restrictions as far as I've seen.
| cesarb wrote:
| It makes sense if you invert your point of view. These are
| not chargers where you have to pay for parking; these are
| parking places which have a charger as an extra.
|
| IMO, the long-term tendency will be for every parking place
| to have an electric vehicle charger (or at least a standard
| power socket which can be used for a slow charge), the same
| way every parking place has electric lighting.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| China is missing from this map, even though it has the most
| charging infrastructure of any country. Here's the best map I
| could find in a few minutes for China (warning - very resource-
| intensive website):
| https://chargermap.nio.com/pe/h5/static/chargermap#/.
|
| Surprisingly, the above map is just charging infrastructure from
| one company. There is a lot of infrastructure from Tesla and
| other companies as well.
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| I'm visiting Chiang Mai Thailand and China is flooding the
| roads with cheap EVs, BYD, Hozon. There is charging
| infrastructure everywhere. I don't know how the United States
| is going to compete.
| mikestew wrote:
| So far it would seem that the U. S. is tackling that
| competition with tariffs. OTOH, I'm not sure what it would
| take to get a (for example) BYD to pass crash testing, and if
| it would still be price-competitive.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| BYD cars already get top crash ratings in European tests.
| For example:
| https://youtu.be/7ThTci70350?si=8-gTWRr1_jTdZam0.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _BYD cars already get top crash ratings in European
| tests_
|
| I see it coming up in the top 10 for 2023, but not 2024
| [1]. Just not released yet?
|
| [1] https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/electric-
| vehicle...
| dpkirchner wrote:
| It's so frustrating that rather than treat the climate
| crisis as an actual crisis, we've instead decided to
| heavily tax EV buyers in order to support domestic
| manufacturers that have been dragging their feet for
| decades.
| luuurker wrote:
| Is there any official source that lists all chargers in China?
| OCM automatically imports data from different countries (UK,
| Portugal, France, etc). Operators can also submit their data:
| https://openchargemap.org/site/about/datasharing
| bilsbie wrote:
| GOOD Point by my wife. Why wouldn't every business want to put in
| some chargers to attract affluent customers with 30+ minutes to
| kill.
| zelos wrote:
| Is the demand there? Affluent customers probably have chargers
| at home, so unless it's a 200+ mile round trip to visit the
| business, probably don't have much need to charge.
| parineum wrote:
| It's chicken and egg at this point.
|
| Having an EV requires charging at home. People that can't
| charge at home don't buy an EV. People that would charge in a
| parking lot don't have an EV.
|
| Public charging has really stagnated in the last 5 years.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Even just for travelers though. If you're within 30 minutes
| of a highway exit and there area isn't well covered by
| other chargers it seems like it would be a good investment.
|
| If it were me I'd even try to sell them washer fluid and
| other road supplies.
| sn wrote:
| Me and my partner exclusively charge at work.
| ac29 wrote:
| I think being able to charge at home is almost a
| requirement but definitely not necessary in some places. I
| charge at home maybe twice a month, and there are dozens of
| chargers within a few minute walk of where I live. Many
| retail areas have chargers too, so its easy to get a few
| kwh of charge on a short trip to get groceries or
| something.
|
| I think there are also a significant number of EV owners
| who almost exclusively use public DC fast charging. If
| there are enough fast chargers around, you can treat an EV
| similarly to an ICE car - drive it til its mostly empty
| then fill it up.
| eatporktoo wrote:
| https://insideevs.com/news/734705/ev-chargers-cash-cow-
| nearb...
|
| Relevant article from today referencing a recent MIT study.
|
| As someone who owns multiple EVs, it's about the fact that
| you are much more likely to go to a business within probably
| 1000ft of the charger. The chargers are also frequently very
| busy. I 100% go to a ton a businesses that I wouldn't
| otherwise simply because they are located near the charger.
| Convenience is king
| bilsbie wrote:
| Those tourism promoting visitor centers would also be great
| candidates. We spent 30 minutes learning about some random
| region of Georgia because they put chargers outside.
|
| I'd never stopped in one of those places in my life.
| jsight wrote:
| It makes perfect sense for quality interstate stops. There's a
| reason that Sheetz, Wawa, and Buc-ees have so many of them.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I found a free charger that was super slow. But nothing else was
| really in range. Luckily it was by a beach. But I literally had
| to hang out on this beach for five hours. Weird experience.
| Forced leisure?
| thelastgallon wrote:
| In the long run, we won't need any maps to find chargers. If you
| park, you can charge, not DC fast charging, but 240V charging.
| Cars are parked 22 - 23 hours/day, no need to build expensive DC
| Fast charging.
|
| I wish there was a federal rule requiring all parking to have
| 240V. Every building spends millions of dollars on adding
| handicapped parking and making the building accessible -- these
| features are rarely ever used, but EV parking spots will be used
| every day and forever.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Are trips longer than 300 miles outlawed in your vision of the
| future? Barely anyone needs DC charging for their day-to-day
| usage, it's largely for supporting longer trips.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I'm still kind of bummed that I can't do a trip to eastern Oregon
| without renting a car. Even John Day is still iffy, I hope we can
| get more charging off the beaten track soon.
| cyberax wrote:
| You can. I've done these trips multiple times. There is a
| charger in Burns that makes it possible.
| bilsbie wrote:
| This is going to sound weird but I just did my first Tesla road
| trip and the charging stops were sort of low key highlights of
| the trip!
|
| Picnic at one while we change. Nice stroll in a park coming back.
| Went to a restaurant I'd never go to another time.
| wmanley wrote:
| I also completed my first big road trip with the Tesla during
| the summer holidays. This was around France.
|
| With a long trip my preference was to slow charge overnight so
| as to start the day at >90%, and sometimes we'd also have a
| single supercharge during the day. The supercharger experience
| is great - you plug in and it works. When you're done you
| unplug and continue your journey.
|
| The slow charge experience was less good. In France there are a
| lot of charging points in car parks, but to actually start
| charging it involves a load of faf.
|
| 1. Slow chargers typically involve using an app or website, so
| you need to find that, figure out how to tell it which charger
| you're at, enter your payment details. Hopefully you've got
| internet access in the underground car park that you've
| selected.
|
| 2. Each provider has a different app or website - they're
| typically difficult to use and buggy, but each in its own
| unique way.
|
| 3. Slow chargers don't don't come with their own cables, so you
| need to get your one out of the boot, and put it away again.
|
| 4. Stopping charging typically involves navigating the
| website/app again, hopefully you haven't closed the tab,
| otherwise it's going to be a pain getting back there.
|
| 5. There's no indication on how much it's going to cost until
| after you've gone through all the trouble. Even then it can be
| unclear - for example do I need to pay for parking while I'm
| charging or not?
|
| 6. It often costs as much or more than the supercharger -
| although all the prices I saw were cheaper than the UK.
|
| 7. There are typically idle fees, so you might find yourself
| having to disconnect your car and move it in the middle of the
| night (assuming you put it on charge in the evening)[^1], or
| you might find yourself having to rush back to the car in the
| middle of your sightseeing.
|
| I want to slow charge when I'm parked, because I'm away from
| the car anyway. My dream slow-charging experience is:
|
| 1. Broad availability in any given car park, let me just plug
| in if I happen to be stopped
|
| 2. Streamlined payment process, preferably automatic and
| through the touchscreen of the car, rather than involving a
| phone or website. Don't make me enter payment card details - I
| want something like the apple pay experience, but "Tesla pay".
|
| 3. No idling fees so I can change my mind and have a dessert if
| I fancy without worrying about getting back
|
| I don't care about speed if I'm not waiting. 7kW is more than
| enough.
|
| [^1]: My trick here is to adjust the charging current in the
| Tesla app, such that it will take _longer_ to charge. This way
| I 'm never idling, even though I'm taking up a space for the
| same time anyway.
| rjsw wrote:
| I would like to see slow charging points in the parking lots
| for French low-cost chain hotels. Pay for it at the same time
| as the room.
|
| The chain hotels are used during the week by tradespeople, we
| will want them to be using electric vans soon.
| ac29 wrote:
| Some of these things are the same in the US, others not.
|
| > 1. Slow chargers typically involve using an app or website,
| so you need to find that, figure out how to tell it which
| charger you're at, enter your payment details. Hopefully
| you've got internet access in the underground car park that
| you've selected.
|
| Yes, this can be somewhere from mildly to extremely annoying.
| I have also seen chargers that accept tap to pay credit cards
| though, no account needed.
|
| > 2. Each provider has a different app or website - they're
| typically difficult to use and buggy, but each in its own
| unique way.
|
| Similar in the US, though I wouldnt describe any of the apps
| as difficult to use or buggy. Usually the most annoying part
| is creating an account.
|
| > 3. Slow chargers don't don't come with their own cables, so
| you need to get your one out of the boot, and put it away
| again.
|
| Never seen this in the US. I dont even know what the cable
| would be.
|
| > 4. Stopping charging typically involves navigating the
| website/app again, hopefully you haven't closed the tab,
| otherwise it's going to be a pain getting back there.
|
| Stopping charging is usually doable from the app, but usually
| I dont want to stop charging until I am ready to physically
| disconnect which also stops charging.
|
| > 5. There's no indication on how much it's going to cost
| until after you've gone through all the trouble. Even then it
| can be unclear - for example do I need to pay for parking
| while I'm charging or not?
|
| I dont think I've run into a charger that doesnt display
| pricing info yet.
|
| > 6. It often costs as much or more than the supercharger -
| although all the prices I saw were cheaper than the UK.
|
| Wow, that is awful. In general slow (AC) charging in the US
| is half the price or less of fast (DC) charging. In fact,
| usually public AC chargers are even cheaper than charging at
| home (for me, very expensive kwh at home).
|
| > 7. There are typically idle fees, so you might find
| yourself having to disconnect your car and move it in the
| middle of the night (assuming you put it on charge in the
| evening)[^1], or you might find yourself having to rush back
| to the car in the middle of your sightseeing.
|
| This is annoying but necessary. If chargers let you idle for
| free, it would be impossible to find an empty space many
| places. I think the idle fees (usually $1-3/hour in the US)
| are a reasonable compromise.
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, I think people underestimate the pleasure of not rushing
| yourself on a roadtrip even when the destination is the
| important part. It's a bit healthier too as I force myself to
| do a bit of walking and stretching
| bretthoerner wrote:
| We had the same experience going ~800mi in a day (each way; so
| we did this twice). We also had 3 kids in the car, so 5 people
| total... or to put it another way, approximately 500% more
| people in our EV than the big SUVs driving next to us.
|
| A guy at one stop in TX was in a huge Excursion and was walking
| his dog near the charger, laughed and said "you're going to be
| here a while." We were in and out before he was. The FUD is
| extremely strong still. Our drive (CO to North TX) has to be
| one of the least populated (and anti-EV) drives in America and
| there was still no range or charge speed anxiety.
| martini333 wrote:
| The site lags on $1.000+ hardware. </thread>
| elchief wrote:
| nice job
|
| needs an easy Type I/Type II ... filter. easier than a kw slider
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Worth mentioning that the US's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is
| helping to fund chargers:
|
| > _This funding opportunity is made possible by the Bipartisan
| Infrastructure Law's signature EV charging investments: the $2.5
| billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) Discretionary
| Grant Program and funds from the National Electric Vehicle
| Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program that are set aside for
| strategic grants to states and local governments to deploy EV
| chargers._
|
| https://driveelectric.gov/news/new-cfi-funding-released
|
| And as a part of this, federal standards were established for
| qualifying chargers. There's a bunch here to insure physical and
| electrical compatibility. But one of the excellent requirements
| is real-time API availability information, on how many chargers
| there are, what their charge rates are (per charger), and what
| chargers are presently open.
|
| https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/28/2023-03...
|
| This should be a great help to EV owners/renters in the US!
| browningstreet wrote:
| I've been driving a Tesla around California these last couple of
| weeks, and using PlugShare to find "free" chargers (there are
| plenty of municipal chargers that don't charge, or don't charge
| for the first 2 hours, etc).
|
| That works pretty well, though it's not entirely up to date yet.
| Shell ReCharge spots aren't listed consistently.
|
| But what surprised me the most is that the Tesla map doesn't do a
| good job of alerting you to clustered Superchargers. For
| instance, in Quartsize, I've usually stopped at the only
| Supercharger I know about -- the one behind Carl's Jr. But across
| the highway there are new Superchargers, and behind Terrible's,
| there's a new one too. It's almost a year old at this point, and
| Terrible's has restrooms, and in 110F heat, the walk from the
| original Supercharger over to the Terrible's location is
| definitely something you'd want to avoid.
|
| Tesla could do a better job of letting you know that when it's
| routed you to a Supercharger, there are actually alternatives/
| options in the immediate vicinity. It pretty stubbornly just
| points you to whichever one it chose.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Does anyone know if these charging stations have normal sockets
| so one can charge their electric bike on them?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| In my experience in the PNW US the answer is no. They only have
| DC charging attachments.
| kccqzy wrote:
| No. How do you enable payment for such normal sockets? Even if
| you figure out a way to do that, the amount of payment for
| electric bikes is so tiny that just to cover credit card
| processing fees would require electric bike users to pay for
| exorbitantly expensive electricity.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| So bike batteries are typically not more than 750 Wh. If you
| are trying to go on some long cross-country trip for fun,
| then maybe you pack three of them (2kWh of electricity). That
| gives you ~100 km of pedal assist.
|
| That's still a dollar/day including CC fees. Seems
| reasonable.
| luuurker wrote:
| For Android users wanting to use Open Charge Map, I recommend
| using the EVMap app instead of the official one. It doesn't let
| you see or post comments, but you can see pictures if available.
| Much smoother and also tries to show the charger status:
|
| - https://ev-map.app/
|
| - https://github.com/ev-map/EVMap
|
| I only use OCM when I want to add a picture or read/add a
| comment.
| thangalin wrote:
| Can it filter by charging level?
| luuurker wrote:
| You can filter by speed, connector type, operator, number of
| connectors, and ignore chargers that are marked as having
| issues.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| My neighbour's charge point is officially a public charger. It is
| located on his driveway, behind a closed fence. The reason it is
| 'public' is because there were government kickbacks for
| installing public charge points with no requirements to have ypur
| 'public' chargepoint be usable by the public.
|
| This is not a one time exception. You can drive through city
| streets with your GPS showing multiple nearby public access
| chargers. With none in sight (they are iside people's garages or
| on their property behind closed fences).
| wnc3141 wrote:
| Is that not fraud?
| ac29 wrote:
| That is textbook fraud. Courts consider intent, you cant just
| rules lawyer them with an argument that "it didnt technically
| say my public charger had to be accessible to the public".
| bgnn wrote:
| In the Netherlands we have the touring club (ANWB) app which
| shows all the chargers, their current status, all the parking
| places and petrol stations including the actual prices. Oh it
| also shows real time traffic and provides roadside help. All in
| one functional fast app for free. Amazing really what nonprofits
| can do.
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