9/17/13: ECOtality files for bankrupcy and gets Nissan loan

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ObjetDart said:
But, in the end, all it says to me is that there is no viable business model in QC, since my point was consumers don't know any of this, all they are going to do is compare it to the cost they pay for charging at home.
That's a marketing problem. Restaurants are a great example - you easy pay 5x more to eat out, yet people do it every day because it's convenient. Same with a QC - you'll may 5x more per kWh to charge at a QC station - but it's convenient.

ObjetDart said:
QCs are a hard enough sell as it is, when you have to carefully plan your trip just so you can stop every hour and recharge for 20-30 minutes, vs drive anywhere you want and stop once every five hours for 10 minutes in an ICE.
The LEAF is simply not well suited for long trips. If you frequently need more than 1 QC a day, you didn't pick the right tool for the job. EVs will get there (look at a Tesla), but for longer trips more battery capacity is needed.

For city/suburban driving or destinations 1 QC away - the LEAF is great.

ObjetDart said:
Or perhaps Nissan needs to follow the Tesla model and just include free access to the QC network with the car.
Nissan has dipped it's toe into that model with dealership charging, but I still don't think that free is the right price unless you are going to do it like Tesla and build out enough plugs per location so that there is minimal waiting if any when you need a charge.

For example, Nissan has thousands more EVs on the road than Tesla. But look at the QC network of each in California - the biggest market for each. Despite Tesla getting a late start, there are 11 Supercharger locations in California with a total of 63 plugs. When they are done they are going to have somewhere around 25 locations in California and probably around 120 plugs. All available 24/7 and they have been proven to be reliable.

There's about 70 CHAdeMO stations in California right now. But half of these are Blink stations, and they are well known to frequently be on the Blink. Most of the others are at Nissan dealerships, which are only available during business hours and require you to get an employee to activate the charger and some dealerships only allow LEAFs purchased there to charge.

I'd happily pay $1 / kWh to QC if I was knew that a station would be available when I needed it. As it is now, I frequently have "charging station anxiety" when venturing out beyond single-charge range. "Will the station be functional?" "Will the station be available (not in use, not ICEd)?" "Are there convenient alternative locations to charge in case?"
 
drees said:
I'd happily pay $1 / kWh to QC if I was knew that a station would be available when I needed it. As it is now, I frequently have "charging station anxiety" when venturing out beyond single-charge range. "Will the station be functional?" "Will the station be available (not in use, not ICEd)?" "Are there convenient alternative locations to charge in case?"

I'd pay twice that knowing that I didn't have carpool in someone else's car, borrow someone else's car, have my car towed home, wait for hours on L1 or L2, etc.

As you said multiple DCQCs in a leaf are a luxury for people who are dedicated to driving en EV in both time and money. For the 95% of the rest of the miles having reliable and distributed DCQC for the rare days thst you made too many extra trips or on the occasion thst you go 1 DCQC away from home. These use cases are what LEAF DCQC need to meet. If you aren't willing to pay a large factor over what it would cost at home then buy a PEV or a second car and leave the infrastructure available to those who will. It's win win for everyone

As other say then just drive the Prius and be happy with your decision. The rest of us will use the LEAF for what it is good at and pay a lot for emergency DCQC use.
 
We usually use the QC in three situations.

First in the "longer" trips to the beach of the mountain. They require 3 QC total, one mid way and maybe one at destination. (destination can be L2 if we stay long enough). I have no problem with paying the $5 per session or $1 per hour for L2. But these trips are 5-6 time a year.

The second situations is when we are in town, low on charge and might want the peace of mind of getting home at more than LBW. This happens almost every weekend and even during the week. If the QC would have lower rate other than per $5 session I will gladly spend $1-2 for 20-40% boost. But right now we chose to slow down and go home, that is why I believe Blink looses revenue with the existing pricing structure. And since around here the peak charges kick in at 30kW, they could give the option to limit me at 30kW.

And there is the emergency in town (cannot make it home) situation, of course I will pay more. Although we now have the AAA mobile QC in Portland area. But this never happened since Blink started charging for QC and probably less than 10 times in the two years before that.
 
camasleaf said:
The second situations is when we are in town, low on charge and might want the peace of mind of getting home at more than LBW. This happens almost every weekend and even during the week. If the QC would have lower rate other than per $5 session I will gladly spend $1-2 for 20-40% boost. But right now we chose to slow down and go home, that is why I believe Blink looses revenue with the existing pricing structure.
Yep - there's a lot of times when a that 5-10 min QC is what you want just to give you that extra buffer and flat rate pricing is really tough to justify. If you think the $5 Blink rate is bad, look at the $10 eVgo flat rate! The comparison makes the Blink rate look like a deal, even the 5-10 min top up.

camasleaf said:
And since around here the peak charges kick in at 30kW, they could give the option to limit me at 30kW.
Once you get one 50 kW charge a month, it doesn't matter what rate subsequent charges are done at.

If billing by the kWh, you want it to go as fast as possible to free up the charger for the next user.
If billing by time plugged in, you don't really care unless you know there's someone waiting in line in which point you want to get done sooner.
 
walterbays said:
PS, I just looked at a little trip this weekend with Blink QC. Based on my SOC when I arrive and going only to 80% I'd end up paying over 10X as much per kWh as I do at home. But my total cost for the trip, enabled by the QC, would be less than half as much as driving the gas car. As usual.
Yes at $5/QC, assuming you are charging at least 50% each time, the cost per mile is roughly on par with the most efficient gasoline alternatives.

At $10/QC, though, it falls apart. Forget the Prius, at that point it's "just drive the SUV."
 
ObjetDart said:
At $10/QC, though, it falls apart. Forget the Prius, at that point it's "just drive the SUV."
Again, you are comparing the incremental cost with your average cost. Yeah, the incremental cost hurts, but the average cost is still fine unless you are trying to drive cross-country on QC charges alone.

Typically you fill up at home at a cost of $0.02-0.04 / mile or $0.08-0.15 / kWh depending on where you live. A Prius at 45 mpg costs about $0.08-0.09 / mile for reference at current gas prices.

Say you now pay $1 / kWh at a QC ($10, 10 kWh) that gets you 35-40 miles of range or $0.25-28 / mile. Yeah, that incremental cost is about the same as driving a < 20 mpg car. But if you combine it with the 50 miles you drove on 0.02-0.04 / mile, ($1-2), now you've paid $12 to go 90 miles which comes out to $0.12 / mile. Yeah, still more than driving the Prius, but more like driving your typical gas burning vehicle so it's not as bad as you think.

And don't forget, all of that ignores all the other benefits of driving the EV, too.
 
drees said:
Again, you are comparing the incremental cost with your average cost. Yeah, the incremental cost hurts, but the average cost is still fine unless you are trying to drive cross-country on QC charges alone.
I understand your point, but I don't think you need to go to the "cross-country" extreme to get to the point where it doesn't make sense.

Just for example...I took the Leaf from Eugene to Portland and back a few weeks ago (for national Plug In day). This is a fairly typical trip many locals make since Portland is the closest big city. It's a 240 mile round trip that required 5 QCs to complete. Fortunately we still have some free AeroVironment QCs around so I was able to QC for free the entire way except for one $5 Blink QC. So, not bad at all, except for the extra time it took to charge. At $5/QC that trip would cost $25...less appealing, but still a pretty good bargain and you can certainly swallow it for the thrill of taking your EV on a longer trip. At $10/QC though it's $50, and suddenly it's not only easier and faster to take my 20mpg FJ Cruiser instead, it's cheaper as well.

I guess some will say that the Leaf is just not suited for a trip like this, or any trip that requires more than 1 QC to complete. That's too bad. At low cost QC, I think it would be.

And yes I know it is ignoring the other benefits of EV driving. I totally get those aspects, that's why I own one in the first place and why I attempted this trip at all despite all the careful planning it took beforehand and the extra 2 hours I spent charging en route. But when I think about EVs gaining wider acceptance, I'm not convinced the masses are necessarily going to feel the same way about those other benefits, enough to overlook the fact that the whole much-cheaper-than-gas argument could go out the window the moment you want to drive further than 100 miles from your house.
 
drees said:
pkulak said:
200 amps? That cable would be as thick as my leg!
No, really, that would be 3/0 -> 250 Kcil copper wire depending on the insulation temperature rating, between 0.4-0.5". Pretty thin.

Look at Tesla Supercharger cables. Pretty thick, but not as thick as your leg. And those are pushing about 300A!

Wow, I had no idea those things were 300 amps. Crazy!
 
johnrhansen said:
It's too bad they can't make high speed chargers that work off of regular single phase power. A 200 amp service could supply 36 KW. It still would charge 6 times faster, but be cheaper to acquire and operate.
drees said:
You mean like the Andromeda CHAdeMO stations?
http://andromedapower.com/ORCA__Mobile.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Power input:
AC (208/240/400/480V; 50/60Hz; 1, 2 or 3-phases)
DC (200-700V)
johnrhansen said:
looks like the max it can do with single phase is 25 KW..
That's 7-8 times faster than the onboard 3.3kW charger. 6 minutes for 2.5kWHr. Starbucks would be able to host such a charger, perhaps as a separate utility customer.

I find the "1, 2, or 3 phase" power input statement somewhat bogus - there is no such thing as 2 phase. That might have been creative renaming of split phase power, which is still single (1) phase.
 
It's been a long time since my school days but if I remember right there is such a thing as 2 phase power. The voltage on the ungrounded legs were 90 degrees apart. In split phase the voltages are 180 degrees apart but there are 2 ungrounded legs I can see how people can call it 2 phase but it really is not accurate. That term should be saved for the 90 degree difference.

brettcgb said:
johnrhansen said:
It's too bad they can't make high speed chargers that work off of regular single phase power. A 200 amp service could supply 36 KW. It still would charge 6 times faster, but be cheaper to acquire and operate.
drees said:
You mean like the Andromeda CHAdeMO stations?
http://andromedapower.com/ORCA__Mobile.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Power input:
AC (208/240/400/480V; 50/60Hz; 1, 2 or 3-phases)
DC (200-700V)
johnrhansen said:
looks like the max it can do with single phase is 25 KW..
That's 7-8 times faster than the onboard 3.3kW charger. 6 minutes for 2.5kWHr. Starbucks would be able to host such a charger, perhaps as a separate utility customer.

I find the "1, 2, or 3 phase" power input statement somewhat bogus - there is no such thing as 2 phase. That might have been creative renaming of split phase power, which is still single (1) phase.
 
drees said:
Randy said:
Q2 2013 Financial information about the Blink buyer: Car Charging group

http://www.hotstocked.com/article/66392/car-charging-group-inc-otcmkts-ccgi-back-above.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Their winning bid was $3.35 million for the Blink assets

• cash: $165 thousand
• current assets: $1.1 million
• current liabilities: $8.9 million
• quarterly revenue: $77 thousand
• quarterly net loss: $5.6 million
• accumulated deficit: $26.8 million
Ouch. That looks like another company that's on the verge of going bankrupt itself. How are they going to make up a $5.6M quarterly loss by buying the currently money losing Blink network? Through volume?

How are they funding the purchase with no cash on hand?
For the quarter ended Sept 30, 2013, per http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=CCGI" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, it doesn't look like things are any better on the revenue and profit/loss side: $89K in revenue but $7.937 million in net loss.

When's the money (wherever it's coming from) going to dry up?
 
They are still just bleeding money. It doesn't help that they can't wrangle in their network - the charger at my work has been out for ~ 3 months, and with one charger we play merry-go-round switching off all day long. Things will get really bad if the second one fails, all of us that charge at work can't make it back home on a single 100% charge.
 
Seems to me that a couple of things are going on...Bleeding some money from the charging business, for sure...

But the real hemorrhaging is coming from executive bonuses...How long is that viable?
 
Randy said:
... But the real hemorrhaging is coming from executive bonuses...How long is that viable?
I've thought for some time that bankruptcy protection should require all bonuses and other discretionary compensation to be taken from management. Unfortunately, it often seems to work in reverse.
 
davewill said:
Randy said:
... But the real hemorrhaging is coming from executive bonuses...How long is that viable?
I've thought for some time that bankruptcy protection should require all bonuses and other discretionary compensation to be taken from management. Unfortunately, it often seems to work in reverse.
Well, Ecotality went bankrupt. CCGI hasn't, yet.
 
Are they coming back to life under the new post-bankruptcy management?

Back in August, I signed up and have submitted a total of 6 requests to get a card so I could be a customer. Each time they claimed they sent one and their customer service couldn't comprehend that they hadn't. Today I finally got one after requesting one earlier this week!

Perhaps if they are now willing to let people who want to be customers actually be customers, they might have a better chance. It seems like most of the local stations I find are Blink. Now that I have a card, I will start to find out if they are actually available or offline. Keeping my fingers crossed.
 
DarthPuppy said:
Are they coming back to life under the new post-bankruptcy management

No signs of life yet. Other than one or a few stations in Tennessee there have been no reports of Blink repairing any public charging stations post bankruptcy, which continue to break as often as ever.
 
walterbays said:
No signs of life yet. Other than one or a few stations in Tennessee there have been no reports of Blink repairing any public charging stations post bankruptcy, which continue to break as often as ever.
Umm,,, How do the stations continue to break at a high rate, unless someone fixes them?
 
FWIW, if you want to hear a rep from CCGI speak about their network, go to the Car Charging Group red link of http://youtu.be/RW9GEm2iqr4?t=10s" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. For me, actions speak louder than words...
 
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