Stunt822 said:
IMHO L2 is absolutely needed at larger shopping/entartainment facilities. This enables people to use drive Leaf to somewhat remote places.
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So, L2 are required at malls, features, aquaparks, museums, etc.
I agree that L2 could be extremely useful to widen the circle from which such facilities can draw customers.
The problem I see is that for this to hold true for any non-trivial increase in EV usage, the number of chargers will have to be massively increased over what seems to be in store. The fact is that right now we early adopters are a nit on a gnat's knee - we are in the noise. One or Two or even Ten L2's at a Best Buy or a Costco or a stadium or a beach or in Balboa Park is a nice feel-good gesture but isn't going to be any better than Zero if and when there are actually any significant number of Leafs/Foci/iMiEVs etc. on the road. Already we're able to fairly easily saturate the non-ICE'd spots in Balboa Park, and there's a turf war at LAX and so on....and there are hardly any of us!
I'd love to think I could drive to Disneyland in our Leaf someday (83 miles each way), but they're going to need a massive array of EVSE's and/or human plug attendants or some sort of bulletproof reservation system for that to even be even remotely conceivable. I just don't see it happening for a while. L2 is going to be a nice perk if you get lucky and one is open when you get there (wherever there may be), but you won't be able to plan trips around it until the time when the ratio of EVSE equipped parking spaces to regular spaces is much higher - so much higher that there's turnover of the spaces at at rate similar to the turnover of regular parking spaces. It should happen eventually, but it's going to take a few years of $8/gallon gas to get things started.
The same problem, I believe, applies to L3. Right now, if there were the promised handful of L3's in San Diego county (50?), we few hundred or so early adopters would be absolutely loving it. Worst case you might have the fun of encountering one or two other Leafers and everyone would be chatting and laughing and sharing and slurping down the juice they needed and getting on their way. But when there are [pick some big number] Leafs on the road, those mere 50 L3s are going to be reminiscent of the gas lines of '73 and '79, only as if each of those lines was for one pump that was really slow. And so, people are going to mainly just charge at home. Nobody's going to wait around for an L3 - in a 12 hour period an L3 would be useful to about 25 drivers who are on empty, assuming all 25 arrive perfectly staggered over that timeframe, which is a ridiculous assumption. 25 vehicles!! That is a ridiculously small number. (yes, not everyone will need the full 25 minutes...but still, I'm sure you see my point).
I think we need/want/should push for L2 and L3 charging, I just think that realistically it's going to take a lot more of it than is planned for it to be of any significant value.
Maybe someone has a moment to do the math - figure out how many "miles per minute of fueling" are available from the existing gasoline infrastructure, and how many would be available from, say, the proposed EV project distribution of L2/L3. How does that compare to the hoped for ratio of EVs to ICEs at whatever point in time?