Lothsahn said:
roger1818 said:
I would generalize that and say any destination that people will stay at for more than an hour anyway, would do well with AC charging stations (L1/L2).
Destination charging stations are expensive. If there's not significant demand and willingness to pay for their installation, they won't justify the price. The charging stations are often in excess of $5000 per plug, plus a maintenance agreement with Chargepoint, etc. to handle support, calls, billing, etc.
As demand for destination chargers grows and there are more options for quality destination chargers (It was telling that you said "Chargepoint, etc," as if you couldn't think of any others), the price will likely come down. Even if it doesn't, the cost of the charger when amortized over its lifespan, is small. For reference, according to
this article, Chargepoint has a leasing program where, "business owners can pay as little as $3 to $6 per day to lease a charging station." In many cases, adding one customer per day as a result of having the charging station will pay for the station.
I don't see why it makes any sense to build out this infrastructure in most cases. In general, people will just charge at where they live (home, apartment, etc) and use L3 for long distance travel. I do see certain use cases, such as hotels, where L2 charging is likely to be common, but I'm not sure the cost will be justified for the other use cases, especially long-term parking lots such as at an airport, where the utilization of the charger will be extremely low (car charges initially, then sits for a week wasting the charger).
You are assuming that people can charge where they live. It easy for people of means to pay to have a charging station installed at their home, but for those who can't afford it, what are their options? Landlords aren't going to want to shell out over $5000 per parking spot (or pay to lease a charging station) without passing that cost onto their tenants. That could be a big issue for people who are struggling to make ends meet.
There is also an issue for those who don't have a parking spot at home, but instead have to park on the street. They would need the city to install curbside charging stations for them.
These issues aren't insurmountable, but it will take consented effort to resolve them and it will likely take several decades to do so. Maybe one day when that happens, you are correct and we won't need so many destination chargers, but we are a long, long way from that.
Self-driving will also impact this. A few spots will likely have automated charging ports that the cars will utilize, then go sit in a standard parking spot with no charging capability. I expect these charging spots will be level 3 chargers to reduce the number of charger installations required.
That could be a long term solution, but you would need to find a way to automate the connection of the DC Fast charger to the vehicle. Forget about using inductive charging for this as the magnetic field needed to transfer hundreds of kilowatts of power would be massive and would fry all of the electronics inside the car. Even if you resolved that issue, the cost of the electricity wasted due to the inefficiencies of inductive charging would pay the salary of a valet.
Autonomous rapid charging may happen one day, but I wouldn't count on it happening anytime soon.
I do rely on pre-research on Plugshare.