As a person who writes a daily industry news roundup, I’m always at risk of oversimplifying complex issues. It is a hazard of the job, and I think EV charging may be one of the most underestimated challenges, both here in The Morning Dump and in the world at large. Part of this might stem from the fact that Tesla has built a robust, successful, and smart charging network in the United States. Elsewhere, it’s less straightforward.
Given Europe’s requirement for electric vehicles and its heavy investment in chargers, you might assume that the increase in electrification has made charging networks more profitable and necessary. Nope. It’s way more complicated than that. As reported yesterday, Polestar is probably not long for the United States, though the explanation for what happened is just creating more questions. That is complicated, too. Why did the UAW’s court-appointed monitor put out a scathing report on the current UAW president right before the election? Also complicated.
How to end the week on an up note? Hmm… I don’t have an up note. Sometimes them’s the brakes. Unless you’re making an autonomous vehicle, and then you maybe don’t need brakes at all.
Germany’s Charging Network Is A Bit Of A Mess
Tesla really did it right when it comes to charging. It did it so right that, in North America, everyone switched to their standard. I’ve taken a new Kia to a Tesla Supercharger and it worked just fine. One of the benefits of Tesla’s approach was that having a standardized interface and a lot of similar cabinets, the company managed to maintain a very high up-time compared to the experience many used to have with Electrify America. Lately, I’ve had fewer issues with fast-charging, and many cars and networks are plug-and-charge now, which is to say that it doesn’t take a lot of work to make a transaction happen. (Just to make things easier, I’m going to exclude home charging from this conversation, as it is a pretty solved problem at this point).
The growing reliability of charging cabinets solves one big problem people had with chargers, while leaving a whole host of other complications. This isn’t to say it all won’t work out. I’m sort of thinking about it like the railroads: by the middle of the 19th century pretty much everyone knew that it was going to be a thing, but the actual process of it all being built-out and deployed was a huge mess and many companies and investors failed (analyst/investor Jeremy Grantham made a similar point about AI on a recent “Odd Lots” episode, which is probably why it’s in my head).
Is this a real estate problem? If you can afford to build 10 fast chargers, do you put 10 in one super popular location on a busy highway, or do you put two chargers in five locations that are slightly less popular? For profitability, the super popular location might be more important, but if you want to increase the popularity of EVs you might want to spread them out. Again, Tesla benefits directly from more EV sales, whereas it’s slightly less direct for companies that are just charging companies.
Building out charging cabinets isn’t cheap, especially when governments are starting to require more local content in the cabinets, as opposed to just buying them from China (and in Germany, bureaucracy plays a role). Charging speed expectations are also increasing. Where 150 kW used to be a big number, it’s now 400 kW at minimum. If you’ve built out a cabinet two years ago it may be obsolete before it’s become profitable. In the USA, you’re now juggling the transition from CCS to NACS.
What about electricity costs? In the US, the early lead that Tesla got with Superchargers created a slim majority, and that’s probably been helpful for the market as a stabilizing force in what pricing should look like. In Europe, there are even more charging companies and they’re locked in a pricing war that few can really win, giving an advantage to big companies like Ionity (partially owned by a bunch of automakers).
As Manager Magazin points out in this big report, being profitable is hard if you can’t spend a ton of money:
Tesla is considered the benchmark in the industry, but an internal analysis by the Tank & Rast group sees only Ionity as performing well along the highways. The report states that a “hypercharger,” meaning a charging station with at least 150 kilowatts of power, is only economically viable if at least 240 kilowatt-hours of electricity are drawn from it per day. According to the analysis, Ionity achieves an average of 300 kilowatt-hours. Providers like Fastned (200), EnBW (140), and Aral Pulse (110) fall significantly short. A report by the electric vehicle data specialist Elvah also supports this ranking: According to their findings, the five fastest-charging locations with the best utilization in Germany were all recently operated by Ionity.
While competitors often have to direct their customers off the highway, Ionity chargers are typically located at rest stops directly on the expressways. “Large locations, short detours, high speed,” is how CEO van Tilburg describes Ionity’s formula for success, pointing out, among other things, that unlike many others, they focused on fast chargers with a minimum output of 350 kilowatts from the very beginning. As a result, although they only provide 4 percent of all German fast-charging points, they sell 8 percent of the total energy.
Germany, like most markets, is seeing more and more chargers, preparing for a future with more electric cars. Unfortunately for most charging companies, there just aren’t enough electric cars yet and utilization rates remain below profitability. That means that companies are cutting charging fees to the point that they lose money while also trying to expand.
And, as the report mentions, there are other threats out there:
Lidl is currently making headlines. The discount supermarket is enticing users of its Lidl Plus app to its own DC fast-charging stations. At 27 cents per kilowatt-hour, it’s incredibly cheap – at least until the end of June.
Lidl is the main competitor for Aldi if you’re not familiar with budget European supermarkets. This is another company that’s now competing in the larger marketplace for public charging, but one that doesn’t have the same incentive structure. Lidl wants you to come in and spend money, not charge and get the hell out of there.
We’re in a slightly better situation in the United States, and right now the need for chargers is high enough that companies are seeing increased demand every time they install a new charger (on average, there are definitely underused spots). But even charging companies here are seeing competition from companies like Walmart, which is rapidly increasing the number of chargers at its stores.
My general assumption is that more chargers will be needed to combat range anxiety, even as cars get more efficient and charging gets faster, although that creates another wrinkle: If you can charge faster you need fewer chargers per vehicle, right?
Like a gentle Nancy Meyers comedy, it’s complicated.
Did Polestar Die So That Volvo Could Live?
It was reported yesterday that Polestar was not going to be permitted to sell new cars in the United States next year due to the Department of Commerce, which used the Biden era Connected Vehicle to determine that Polestar’s Chinese ownership structure meant it went afoul of this rule.
What about Volvo? As I wrote at the time, Volvo got a reprieve from the same law, although it had to agree to comply with various regulations. Volvo and Polestar have essentially the same ownership and sell similar cars. What’s going on here? That’s what dealer Matthew Haiken, of Polestar Short Hills in New Jersey is also curious about.
Haiken wants to know the implications for sister brand Volvo, which received authorization in May but still must comply across its lineup.
“If it can happen to Polestar, why can’t it happen to Volvo?” he said. “I want answers from Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson, who started [Polestar]. It’s not fair.”
This is a reasonable question. Polestar currently makes cars in South Carolina alongside Volvo, and CEO Hakan Samuelsson made it clear to me at lunch in March that the South Carolina plant needed to be more utilized.:
“I agree with you,” Samuelsson said, adding that “You either use your factory or you don’t have a factory.”
“We need to fill the factory, that’s the first option and best option. We will bring in the XC60 at the beginning of next year.”
Polestar makes a fraction of the cars that Volvo does. Given the difficulties Polestar has had in the market and other changes, it feels entirely possible that Geely could have made a deal at the top to fully utilize the South Carolina facility (thus pleasing the President and Republican politicians), resulting in a game of musical chairs where Polestar was left without a seat.
Court-Appointed Monitor Alleges UAW President Fain Retaliated Against The VP Now Running Against Him
The saga of UAW President Shawn Fain and Vice President Rich Boyer had a big moment earlier today when the court-appointed union Monitor, Neil M. Barofsky, essentially backed up Boyer’s claims that he was the victim of retaliation from the President over his unwillingness to, among other things, help out Fain’s future sister-in-law.
You can read the whole report here if you’re interested, but the Detroit Free Press has a good summary:
In a report filed on Thursday, June 25, the monitor says Fain, based on faulty pretenses, unfairly stripped Rich Boyer of oversight of the union’s Stellantis Department. The monitor concluded that none of the stated reasons offered by Fain justified the removal of Boyer’s responsibilities and that, instead, Fain’s actions fit into a recurring pattern of retaliation against perceived union foes.
All told, the monitor said, none of Fain’s accusations are verifiable or amount to dereliction of duty by Boyer and may in fact be the result of Fain’s and his team’s shortcomings as contract negotiators.
In reading the report, the Monitor credibly alleges that many of the excuses Fain used as reasons for removing Boyer–who was in charge of the union’s relationship with Stellantis–were either bogus or caused by Fain’s own team. So why did Fain remove Boyer (who has since been reinstated)? While there’s no smoking gun in this report, the Monitor clearly intimates that it was Boyer’s reluctance to intervene in matters specifically tied to Fain that were the cause:
President Fain inappropriately used the powers of his office to pursue a personal matter on behalf of a family member, an abuse of his authority. Fain took a matter in which he had a personal interest—the treatment of his fiancée’s sister’s injury—and pursued it through the powers of the UAW presidency, pressing it on Stellantis’s senior management and on senior Union officials who ultimately reported to him. In doing so, he expended Union resources—his own time and that of a Vice President, an Assistant Director, and his Top Administrative Assistant—to seek relief from requirements that apparently applied to other Stellantis UAW members injured on the job.
Fain, for his part, put out a statement implying that the report is political (via the Freep report):
“Now, more than two years after becoming aware of Vice President Boyer’s allegations, and on the eve of our election, Mr. Barofsky has chosen to publicly release a politically charged and false report about me,” Fain wrote. “The most reasonable conclusion is that he is playing political games and abusing his power.”
This should be an exciting election.
Autonomous Vehicles Might Not Need Brake Pedals
It continues to amuse me that Zoox–the company that Jason once called Vaporware Horseshit–named their vehicles VH-XX in reference to Jason’s missive. Next time we’re in Vegas we gotta get Jason a ride.
The current administration is trying to simplify the rollout of robotaxis and, according to Reuters, may remove the requirement for a brake pedal in vehicles that don’t have other controls:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed on Thursday to end a government requirement for manual brake pedals in self-driving vehicles, a move that would make it easier to deploy such vehicles on U.S. roads.
The proposal would not apply to vehicles with human driver controls and NHTSA said it would not drop braking performance requirements, including strict stopping distance standards for self-driving vehicles.
It is one of a number of changes proposed by the agency to facilitate the roll-out of self-driving vehicles. NHTSA is in the process of developing safety performance tests for self-driving vehicles as part of a separate standard.
So long as the cars have a giant, deployable anchor, I don’t see what the issue is.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Many of us are hitting the road so we can meetup at Watkins Glen and then Lime Rock. So, sure, Ray Charles with “Hit The Road Jack”
The Big Question
What are your weekend plans?
Top photo: Ionity
I’m going to finish installing my new interior parts in my TR6 and get it back on the road. I’ve done both seats now and just cleaned the new carpet, so it’s coming together, courtesy of The Roadster Factory’s excellent materials.
TBQ: watching World Cup matches, friends over for brunch on Saturday, possibly trying to make the faded black plastic trim on the Wrangler look less faded. Researching SAAB parts and Mini parts as well.
Matt, just know that as long as you slip in a quote from Manager Magazin (even a negative one), you don’t have to end with an up note. We can take it.
EV fast chargers need more pull through chargers. EV’s are great tow vehicles except for short range. Last time out I purposely skipped a Supercharger for an EVolveNY charger with a longer charge cable to save five minutes unhooking and rehooking the trailer. I had to block two chargers to use one. Yes, that’s a jerk move. There were still lots of open chargers and nobody else showed up so no harm done. It’s still annoying to need to be put in that position.
Weekend plans are finishing up landscaping and fixing a low voltage issue on my Seadoo. Then hopefully testing the Seadoo.
Weekend plans: Relax and get burgers
EV charging is a mess because everyone is looking at it through the lens of gasoline. The idea of stopping to top off the battery at a fast charger is just pushing fuel station mentality to the EV system. I am forced to do this because I have no charger at home/apartment, and no charger while at work.
In reality, there should be more places to charge while parked, like for work or at home where the car just sits there not doing anything for several hours. This means supplying power outlets at those places. EV can charge off simple 240v AC or even 120v AC outlets at a slow rate, but it adds up. 8 hours at work is 8 hours of trickle charge. This means infrastructure at the business level and residential setups.
Fast chargers are great for longer trips but shouldn’t be considered the best way of keeping EVs running.
Yep, even on road trips, if public L2 chargers were fairly ubiquitous, I could easily halve my use of L3 chargers, and it would be more convenient and cheaper. If L2 buildout was better, I would expect that less than 10% of charging would use L3 in general.
Not to mention there are also a number of places offering free L2 charging.
Where?
Volta used to be free L2 charging though only at 7kw in most places. Then Shell bought them, they stayed free for a while but you had to use the Shell App to start them. A bit later and you now had to pay and the pricing was the highest in the area by a good margin. A bit after that they all disappeared.
Stores, restaurants, campgrounds, employers, parking garages, hotels. They aren’t part of any big network just installed when the business got a tax credit to install a basic cheap charger.
I charged for free last monday in a parking garage downtown while were were at a concert. The basement level has 6 chargers. I
We do have some employers with free L2. We did have some at stores, restaurants, a couple of parks, and parking garages. Many of those went away a long time ago or switched to paid.
My employer started with pay chargers but got tired of trying to keep them working and the payment part was the problem. So they ripped out the paid chargers and put in simple dumb ones that are free.
However, we just built a new building which involved ripping out those chargers again and the new ones are pay. Those are set to become available on 6-July but I have no idea how much they will cost or what the charge rate will be. I suspect we will have a lot of employees parking in the charging spots but not actually charging. They are about 15 to 20% of the parking lot and closest to the building.
Yes, those old free chargers are starting to go away around here too. I don’t see many of them converting to paid – they just get removed when they get vandalised or break.
Cherry Springs State Park in central PA has 4 free 11kW chargers. American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan also has free charging.
These are the samples I actually used that are outside of employers or businesses.
Yeah I’ve seen a few in National parks that are still around but other than that they have pretty much gone away around here and the places I’ve traveled.
We have had fun in the past trying to maximize free charging, but they seem to be getting more rare. We will still sometimes book hotels based entirely on free chargers if they have them.
A few years ago there were a couple of L3 charging spots in rural SE Utah that were free- that was a good time doing 700-800 mile trips to Canyonlands and such, and spending maybe $10 on charging, but I think those days are over.
Easy access to 120v would benefit the homeless so naturally the USA will do everything in it’s power to not let that happen.
Because the “homeless” will rip out the copper wire to finance their drug problem.
My biggest beef with owning an EV is the unfortunate eventuality of having to give an Elon company money.
I’ve owned an EV since 2016 and have given zero dollars to an Elon controlled company.
That gives me hope, unfortunately I am on the west coast so Tesla Cancer is highly metastasized here.
I’m also on the west coast. Lots of Teslas, lots of Tesla Superchargers – but also lots of other chargers that in my experience work fine.
I’m not sure if my year of Bolt is even compatible with Tesla chargers but I see no reason to buy an adapter even if it is.
same, since 2023. Home charge 99.9 of the time. Skipped tesla stations on the 2 times I level-3’d
The tribalism, even here, becomes tiresome. The same people in California are “vote blue, no matter who” which is why California is losing taxpayers and is home to half of the “homeless” population of the US.
I’m allowed to vote with my wallet, and I suspect I would not get along with you at all.
Elon’s vision for humanity sucks, his callous attitude towards marginalized groups sucks, and I will use my constitutionally guaranteed freedom of association to not associate with him.
TBQ: Load up the Panamera and drive to Tucson for the week. Maybe set up an appointment to get it detailed.
On the autonomous vehicles is it really that much of a trouble to put in a brake pedal? They MUST have friction braking systems, right? how much could either a ratchet-style e-brake or a hydraulic pedal really cost at this point? If I don’t have some sort of big red kill button or a stopping mechanism, I’m just not getting on board.
That was my thought as well. If not brake pedal, do they at least have an E-Stop?
Yes friction brakes are required to complete a “regen” stop, particularly on a hill, and to hold it in place at said stop that isn’t on perfectly level ground.
The concern is not having friction brakes – it is the requirement to have a physical brake pedal.
An e-stop button connected to an electronically controlled master cylinder is a much better solution than a mandated traditional brake pedal.
Realistically a vehicle like the Zoox would likely have a plug is gaming controler to drive them around manually instead of a steering wheel, accelerator, and brake pedal.
As much as I can’t stand Elon, the Tesla charging network really is the best. And, because everyone who drives a non-Tesla (at least in my area) hates Elon as well, I can anticipate that every other charger is going to be in use, and the Superchargers aren’t clogged. I just did another cross-Washington road trip, and literally every EV stops and charges in Ellensburg because it’s at the base of the Snoqualmie mountain range – you’ve either just used up your battery, or are about to. Both directions, every single non-Supercharger was either in use or was out-of-order (I’d say about 15 chargers total). But there are 3 Supercharger sites in town with maybe 40 chargers, and I was easily able to find two stalls to take up (Tesla cables are too short for a Bolt EUV unless you line up perfectly in front of the cable outlet, which means you’re half-way into the neighbor stall). I would love more 150kw chargers spread out so that if you want to skip the busy ones and make it to something 20mi down the road you could.
There are lots of pros going for Tesla, but I’m not sure they are the best. They are slow. Access is limited. Lots of them have cables too short. Yes, their uptime is great. Yes there are loads of them all over the place. But options like Ionna are quickly expanding…
I seem to recall Alec from Technology Connections saying he specifically avoids Superchargers because they’re actually slower than other modern charging stations on 800V cars and they’re more of a PITA because of the short charge cables and such.
Yup. The short cables are a pain and they top out at half the speed of other companies’ 350kW chargers on my 800V car. I only use Superchargers if there are no other options.
Quickly expanding for mighty small values of quickly: Tesla 37,000 Ionna 1020.
Ionna hopes to reach 30k by 2030. Their experience is great, their availability is tiny.
a coworker of mine loved his new EV, until winter hit and he couldn’t get from Yakima to Seattle on a single charge with the heat on.
TBQ: Road America Trans Am series this weekend 🙂
TBQ: dunno, depends. Might go to a model train show, but that particular one has been increasingly disappointing. FH6 will probably factor into it, and I did just get the new Star Fox…
Try to revive the 50-year old MGB that’s been sleeping in my garage for two years. Then I’ll see if I can figure out why the immobilizer on my 30 year old MGF doesn’t want to – uh – mobilize.
Is it ’76?
It is – early model year build in Chartreuse.
The problem with them sitting is the master cylinder seems to always fail. I switched to silicone brake fluid, and that helps.
TBQ: Saturday would have been my Ohio Rt 555 road rally but the threat of rain has postponed that. So now both days are helping the GF move/unpack/assemble assorted furniture.
Home charging is only half solved. Sure we can get electricity into the car from the home, but it should be just as easy to get electricity into the home from the car and right now that process is a discombobulated mess.
Here here! Japan solved this more than a decade ago.
I haven’t used an EV charger, but I want to ask: Is there any issue where a charger couldn’t be set up like an automated gas pump? ie use credit card, plug in, charge, unplug and return the charger cable, cost of used electrons gets posted to the credit card. Is it a credit card timeout thing or a security thing or etc? Are they concerned someone might sneak in and swap the charger to their own EV on someone else’s dime?
Maybe there’s a security aspect, but it seems like 80% just the same bullshit that we deal with across the board in 2026. “look! if you have our app it’s easy to find chargers! and we’ll send you updates! and you earn points! and blah blah blah blah blah…..”
Motherfucker I don’t want another app I just want a cheeseburger!
Wait, what were we talking about?
Some are set up like this. Half the time I use electrify america, the app fails from lack of cell service or other, and I then just use a credit card, which is probably easier to just do in the first place.
Some do work with a credit card reader like that. The “best” option is generally plug-and-charge, which means you don’t deal with anything. You just plug into the charger and it speaks to your car to handle billing.
The worst is apps.
No, there is no reason that chargers can’t work just like a gasoline pump. In fact the Biden era infrastructure bill required new chargers to have a screen to display the price and take credit card payment in order to get federal subsidies.
They also required those chargers to be open to all brands of vehicle and use an industry standard plug. This is why Tesla opened up their charge network and turned their plug over to the SAE standards committee.
When you push the button to unlock the plug from the car it stops the charging session. So if you unplug you’ll have to reauthorize to restart charging.
On the charging front, I wish charging companies would be a little more strategic with their locations. I appreciate that both EA and Tesla have DCFC stations right next to each other at the local grocery store, but it would be nice if one of them had also considered placing chargers anywhere along the 70+ miles between my town and the nearest larger city like the owners of the dozen or so gas stations on that route did. There are a few L2 public chargers from Blink and EVgo along the way, but literally 100% of them are within 10 miles of that same grocery store.
As for weekend plans, I’m hoping to be wrenching on the Jeep to hopefully figure out where a new and severe power steering fluid leak is at.
If I didn’t need to use a different app for every company (or even apps at all) I’d be more likely to use public chargers. Just let me stick a credit card in the machine and get my electrons, dammit. If my choices are A) spend 5-10 minutes installing more junk on my phone for no material benefit, or B) Spend a pointless “out of network” fee, I’ll take C), none of the above.
This is correct. And in a world of bad charging ecosystems, nothing is as bad a Shell Recharge. You have to use the app to start charging, but every charger around me has next to no cell coverage, so no charging. And, you can’t just point at a QR code to tell the app what charger you are at, you have to punch in a code. And that usually just returns a “Site not found” message. Just make it plug and play. There is a reason why Tesla sells a lot of cars.
I’m not a fan of QR codes to start a charge. In fact our state charging network just set out a warning not to use them as they are finding scammers are putting fake QR codes on their chargers. Essentially the QR code version of credit card skimmers.
Oh and in my experience Shell usually manages to make sure the code is hidden really well, or at least easily confused with other numbers stuck on the charger… and my example was trying to get free L2 charging at a mall!
This. So many different apps and accounts to manage, with absolutely no recourse if you have no cell coverage. At least many of the newer ones take credit cards, though then you are stuck paying elevated rates for not being a member.
TBQ: I’m headed to the climbing gym to see if I can climb steep stuff in my mountaineering boots. I tore a ligament in my foot while scrambling last weekend. My wife and I head to Greece for was was supposed to be a climbing holiday next week. It might be much more of an eat cheese and drink wine at the taverna vacation…
Honestly your consolation vacation sounds better than most of my actual vacation plans!
TBQ: Yardwork, maybe getting the shitbox Civic back on the road, the battery is toast after winter hibernation and the solar charger wasn’t able to revive it.
Also need to wash the Si, and give it an oil change.
All that requires me first clearing up some debris from the storms last week, might even borrow one of the girlfriends chainsaws.
Do you have a girlfriend with multiple chainsaws or multiple girlfriends that each have a chainsaw?
One girlfriend, multiple chainsaws. Forgot the possessive apostrophe.
Punctuation saves lives. And possibly relationships.
Lucky man…nothin sexier than a woman into “manly” stuff like chainsaws, lawn equipment, tools, enthusiast cars, etc!
What are your weekend plans?
What is this “weekend” thing you speak of? Are you implying that people only work certain days of the week??? If you are referring to two the days that come after Friday, I’m working both of them.
Yeah I’ve got to work tomorrow too.
FYI: My ‘like’ is an acknowledgement. I’m not happy for you.
Some more details regarding the economics behind this would be interesting. To my untrained eye, a charger has very little ongoing expense besides amortizing the initial cost of the installation.
On the other hand, 240 kWh isn’t very much. Just 3-4 large EV batteries a day.
Capacity charges to be connected, I think.
Commercial electricity is billed with both capacity and commodity charges. Commodity charge is the kWh delivered so it is easy to understand. The capacity charge is per kW for all kW of maximum demand, so even at the $2.57 per kW that my local utility bills for EV chargers (regular commercial customers pay $15 per kW) a 400 kW charger is $1028 per month. This $1028 has to be spread out to multiple customers, because at only one large EV battery charged per day that is $34 per person in just capacity charges. The charging company still has to pay $0.09 per kWh at offpeak times in addition to the capacity charge.
Demand charges are often on a 30 day or a 1-year ratchet. The user pays a peak demand surcharge based on the highest kW (not kWh) pulled off the grid over a 5/15/30 minute window for the previous month/year. Think of kW and the same as GPM (gallons per minute). The more people simultaneously fast charging at a station, the greater the flow ‘GPM’ of electrons have to go through the utility feed. That’s the kW. The peak kW surcharge is added to the total consumption, kWh (thing GALLONs of electrons) for the billing period.
Assuming a monthly ratchet, the demand surcharge per kWh added to the bill for July is based on the peak kW consumed during any 5/15/30 minute sliding window back in June, and so on, and so on…
Now commercial utility contracts are crazy complicated and vary for every utility, and sometimes every user (everything is negotiable), and what they have one year may change the next. Often the demand surcharge is more than half the total bill (consumption, fees, taxes are the rest).
Residential rates are often just consumption based on kWh, though some offer discounts at night.
Those prices that I quoted are for a city owned municipal power company, and they are based on the highest capacity used per month.
This is why fast chargers are going to have to have their own battery. The cheapest delivered electricity comes off peak, but it has to be optimized so that the maximum capacity for the month is used as often as possible.
Yep. Mitigating the peak demand by temporarily storing excess capacity is a great way to keep costs under control if you offer hyper-speed charging.
magine a charge station near a stadium or concert venue. One large act could, within a couple of hours, cause an exceeding high peak (EVERY fast chargers in use at the same time, all maxxed out at peak kW), and that rare, once in a blue-moon recorded peak surcharge gets tacked onto every kWh sold the following month.
Those one time anomalies cost a fortune that gets passed on to everyone’s bill, even if the peak only occured for an hour or two.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing charging stations with multiple bays that have software to automatically reduce the flow across the ‘pumps’ to keep those wild kW peaks under control…
As an example, say there’s a brand new hyper charging station with 4 bays…
If one is in use, peak kW available (assuming the EV can use it) – maybe 300kW max… If another user comes in and can also peak at 300, maybe now the 2 active stalls downshift to a max of 150kW… another person shows up.. now 3 users capped at 100 kW… etc.
Sort of negates spending extra money on an EV that supports hyper charge rates if your hyper charger decides it’s not hyper today.
I think this is something for which AI can be made to work, but people charging during a rare event are going to be surprised by the high surge pricing.
I agree, unfortunatley the linked report is in German and I’m not tech savy enough to find a translated version.
240 kwh / day would be $24,000 a day per charge if they make a $0.10 profit per kwh. That’s 8 million a year for one charger, I find it mind boggling that’s barely profitable.
You are off by a couple orders of magnitude lol.
It’s $24 per day ($8760/yr) at $0.10 profit per kWh.
Doh, a math mistake is bad, not doing a common sense double check is much worse I’ll blame a long week
The problem for DC chargers is what we call demand charges in the USA. They are based on the highest rate of power deliver for the month. For high draw installations like a DC charger than can be upwards of $20 per kW.
Say you have a single 350 kW charging station at your business. The first charge of the month results in a $7,000 demand charge. (350 kW x $20). However, that charge only cost that customer $30 (60 kWh x 50 cents per kWh) For the rest of the month you are digging out of that hole.
More info on the economics of charging here:
https://trendxinsights.com/blogs/ev-charging-station-cost-usa/
UAW corruption, Fain being a jerk, yea, all that lines up. But as you have mentioned before, two things can be true at the same time. It saddens me to have to question this, but the court appointed monitor, do they have any connection to the trump administration? I would be very unsurprised if that monitor was being told by the admin to pour gas on the UAW election fire to destabilize the UAW as republicans hate unions in general, and I know Fain has being a very aggressive thorn in their side. This admin is intent on revenge whenever possible.
But maybe this is just all coincidental and honestly, normal UAW shenanigans? (Full disclosure, I am all for unions, they need to exist, but the UAW does have a history of chaos).
I could be wrong, or it could have changed, but I thought the monitor was appointed under the Biden administration. I also remember hearing that the monitor was upset about the lack of cooperation from Fain a couple years ago (I think. Time tends to blend things together).
TBQ: relaxing at home watching F1, MotoGP. Then packing things for a work trip to Norway on Monday.
Allegations of corruption in the UAW? I’m shocked.
*sarcasm detector explodes*
What are your weekend plans? Cone dodging in the Camaro on Sunday