How Many Charging Stations Would We Need to Totally Replace Gas Stations? (www.wired.com)

submitted 7 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/climate@slrpnk.net

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[-] BobaFuttbucker@reddthat.com 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

IMO the simplest answer is L2 charging everywhere, DCFC on highways, both with reliable uptime and repair windows.

If one could charge at home, work, the grocery store, the bank, the mall, the theater or everywhere else they might run an errand from time to time, the chargers don’t need to be that fast or expensive, EV batteries don’t need to be as big, and L2 chargers are a fraction of the installation and upkeep cost of DCFC with minimal wear on battery life. This also means EVs could be lighter and cheaper with smaller batteries.

DCFC makes sense every 50 miles or so on freeways to more than cover anyone looking to road trip.

Ubiquity and SLA’s are the two biggest areas functionally holding back our infrastructure.

It annoys me to no end when you see a mall advertising EV charging and it’s like 2 plugs that work maybe half the year for their parking lot with like 1k spaces.

The problem isn’t range or speeds. It’s availability and reliability. That’s it. Not all chargers need to be DCFC, we just need more of them with reliable uptime

Source: EV driving apartment-dweller who’s never been able to enjoy charging at home and lives this daily.

[-] riodoro1@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago

Now lets build those things and expand the grid without emitting a shit ton of co2 and a bunch of toxic shit. Maybe it’s time to rethink that whole „car” idea.

[-] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 4 points 7 months ago

If you just burned fossil fuel to generate electricity instead of using gas or diesel, you would still have a net reduction in emissions simply due to the net efficiency difference between large power generators and ICEs. Also, much of that pollution wouldn't be where as many people are living, which would have health benefits. All this ignores cleaner power generation options.

Sure non-car options are superior where they're feasible and should definitely be looked at. But for a lot of places and people, that isn't an option now, and won't be for another 10 years. So maybe we should think about ways to get there without literally setting the world on fire.

[-] Halosheep@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago

I work 23 miles from where I live. How would you suggest I get there without a car?

[-] riodoro1@lemmy.world -1 points 7 months ago

Dont. Work somewhere closer like we did before cars existed.

[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

No. Fuck no. Hard no. I refuse to live packed in like rats.

[-] Halosheep@lemm.ee 4 points 7 months ago

Lol I don't know what weird reality you live in but it ain't this one. The homes close enough to my job are literally 5x the price of the one I live now.

[-] riodoro1@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Another artifact produced by the stupid system we live in that you use as an argument for proliferation of the system.

Fixing climate change would require us rethinking how we live in general, the housing and transportation is just a tiny aspect of that.

I know it’s basically unimaginable right now, but the industrial revolution happened less than 300 years ago and the society then was also unimaginable to us today. We need to backtrack a lot of choices we made since then because it turns out the world does not really have infinite resources. And yes, we can also do nothing at all or fund carbon capture projects or other bullshit until the earth will no longer sustain us. We’ll end up in a different civilization either way, but one will be a bit more drastic.

[-] BobaFuttbucker@reddthat.com 2 points 7 months ago

I mean yeah ideally we would instead improve our infrastructure to not be so car reliant. But that’s sadly much less likely to happen and much more disruptive and costly.

At least with the infrastructure we have now and the way our cities are laid out, we should make what cars we do have as efficient and clean as possible.

Fuck cars, but we’re not gonna get totally rid of them any time soon. Might as well mitigate in the meantime as best we can.

[-] tsonfeir@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago

Okay dad, just tell us the punchline.

[-] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Currently there are nearly 190k charging ports (public + private) and nearly 70k charging stations

If we replace all gas cars with electric, we would need about 850k more charging stations.

Currently, there are 240 more charging stations planned.

They also say many existing charging stations are poorly maintained and/or don't work.

They alsoalso say 20% of Americans report that they don't have access to consistent off street chargers for night time charging, and I am fairly confident that number is a huge underestimate.

A huge number of people live in apartments that have none, or at best a small percentage of parking stalls that are or can be set up to support EVs.

I feel that that number must only be sampling current actual EV owners (ie, basically the double or above median area income, environmentally conscious, well to do urbanite/suburbanite crowd) and not people generally, and 20% of current EV owners do not have the ability to charge overnight.

Go on zillow and look up how many apartments in any US city you can afford on the median wage of an area that support EV in their parking lot/garage.

Ok, now in for those you've found, every apartment complex like that I have ever heard of of seen offers maybe 5, 10 percent of their parking stalls as EV capable.

[-] mean_bean279@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago

I’m not here to disagree with what you’re saying, but I do like to point out; I think the low number of planned charging stations currently planned for the next year and built over the last year is mostly due to the war between CCS and NACS. Now that NACS has won out I think we’re going to see a boost in planned stations again as they prepare to switch. We’ve just been in a holding pattern while trying to figure that whole thing out. I thought for sure CCS would win because Tesla wouldn’t want to give up their charger… oh well, we all win!

[-] BobaFuttbucker@reddthat.com 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

With more J-1772 chargers around we wouldn’t need as many CCS/NACS chargers except on highways for long-distance travel. Does NACS include Tesla Destination chargers? Genuinely not sure.

It’s not the range or speeds that’s the problem, it’s charger availability and reliability.

[-] Freeman 4 points 7 months ago

If everyone could plug in at home it wouldn't need that many.

To be on the road and then plug in is inconvenient no matter how many stations there are, plugging in over night or during lunch, thats the way

[-] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 7 months ago

tbh charging at fast stations doesn't actually take much longer than petrol realistically. It would be annoying if it was the only chance to charge but like my car gets ~300 km in like 20 minutes or so? It's not a very efficient one being small SUV sized (large dogs :( ).

If even if you commute a fair bit every day that's still a once a week or so thing that's idk ~10 minutes longer than a fill up and pay?

The apps are the pita. Need to regulate them out of existence in favour of standard payment terminals.

[-] kyle@lemm.ee 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I'm kinda surprised the article doesn't mention IONNA. I mean there's not a lot of meat there, but 7 major auto makers are planning a pretty significant increase to these stations (30k, and they're already starting in 2024). They're supposed to be pretty nice, with access to food, restrooms, etc. similar to a normal gas station.

I'm smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt in the US, where EVs are evil, but I rented an Ioniq 5 to test it out. Charging stations were by far the most anxiety-inducing part of the experience.

[-] MaSHiNiK@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

It remains to come up with an environmentally friendly analog for lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, but this is probably for the distant future

[-] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 7 months ago

There's sodium batteries that are picking up right now

They look pretty damn promising from a safety and environmently friendly standpoint

[-] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 months ago

It will be a while for sodium batteries to solve this problem. They have low energy density, both by weight and volume. I expect it to change enough to be a better choice relatively soon. In the meantime, lithium recycling is picking up, which will reduce the burden of the increased demand for lithium.

[-] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 7 months ago

They're pretty comparable currently to LiFePO4 batteries currently in terms of energy density. And they're seeing use in electric vehicles in China. I'd say they're popping off for sure.

And just last month the first sodium battery manufacturing plant opened in the US.

[-] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 months ago

Natron Energy, the American sodium battery manufacturer, is only talking about making EV fast chargers, not actual EV batteries. I'm guessing the big reason is energy density. I'm not sure what the range of the Chinese EVs are, but I suspect it won't be enough to attract North American consumers at this time, although I expect that will change. Also, in other locations where the population density is higher, lower range probably isn't as big of a factor.

this post was submitted on 28 May 2024

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