I still don't get it. Tax and tariff are not the same thing.. Are you suggesting they are?
Tariffs and taxes are both paid by the same person - the end consumer of the taxed or tariffed goods..
That is true of ALL taxes, businesses don't pay squat either. They just mark the product up and it's the end consumer who has to ultimately pony up.
But doesn't having five vehicles attached slow down every vehicle to 1/5 the charging speed? Would a car even charge overnight at that speed?
Not necessarily. In my case I have 100A service out there and can allocate 80A to EV charging. Sharing that for 2 vehicles is fine even for full charges. Across 4, well you won't likely have all of them fully discharged at the same time so again it should be enough. My 5th vehicle is a problem but it's also a spare and I can L1 trickle that guy.
The Wallbox Pulsar Plus can do it.
That is a single port unit, two models, one for 40A and the other for 48A. There are a bunch of two port units out there but I've yet to see a 4 port. Or a way to load share a pair of two ports.
Put the cable around the edge where you don't drive on it or bury it. Don't actually drive over the cable itself. Though SWA cable will take a hell of a lot of abuse.
Power is on one side, 3 of the 5 vehicles are on the other and further out in an offset area. There is no choice but to cross it, and there is no cable rated for being driven over. This means trenching, conduit, and another pedestal. And we'll need to run the charging cables between the vehicles, from front to rear, so that they don't get driven over by the others.
This is going to be a pricey pain in the ass any way you look at it.
For those who aren't familiar with LFP batteries
What you left out of this is that they don't like cold temperatures. Trying to charge one while the pack is below freezing ruins it. And they are not capable of the high amperage output per cell like L-ion.. Great for home and even RV use if you keep them within a climate controlled area. Good in most boats too.
But honestly the best thing a gas station could do is have EV charging stations and I am amazed I don't see that.
That is primarily cost to install. A small (tiny) corner store station will have 2 pumps which can each service 2 vehicles. But it does so quickly, even "slow" pumps are 3x faster than electric for the same amount of energy. So you need more chargers to service the same amount of people per hour. The cost of the chargers themselves, relatively speaking, are cheap as there isn't any fuel tank to deal with.
But the electric supply is a serious problem. Running cable to them means cutting up concrete and dodging the in-ground fuel tanks buried underneath it. Then there is the issue of getting the utility company to provide service. Six 150kW chargers will need around 1500A of 480 3 phase. A megawatt is some serious power, 1000 of those is a nuke plant all by itself (how many gas stations are there?). Now you can add batteries (and should), cut that by half at least, but it's an additional upfront and ongoing maintenance issue. Where do you put all this gear? And 150kW is a wimpy L3 charger these days.
This is just for a 2 hole station. Not having the room for all of this on top of the existing pumps is the other factor, and they are not ready to give that up just yet..
You can even get power sharing devices so they won't overload the circuit.
He has five vehicles, so do I. Show me the power sharing/multi port charging hardware for that. No, really, I'd like to see it, I'll settle for four ports of L2.
You can even run some SWA cable or whatever you use locally outdoors
Ain't gonna last in our sun and across a gravel driveway. Especially multiples, that'd be nuts
so you can have some post mounted sockets near where you park if you really despise trailing cables.
That's the plan here, and there will still be two of the four (which is all I'm planning on doing) that will require extensions. I'll run put the pedestal on one side of a pair and run a 2" or so conduit to the post on the other side for the second.
If your reason for not having an electric car is that your family are all lazy ickheads and charging provides a low effort way for them to fuck with each other then the problem isn't really electric cars as such.
But again I have to know are they really that bad?
You were doing okay until this. You sound young, single, and singularly lacking in empathy.
This is a very American post. You have five cars and cannot conceive of a 20m (that's 6.5 decafeet) charging cable.
I too have five vehicles but due to time of day electric billing we can't play the swap cable game. For that and other reasons I'm effectively limited to about 7 hours charging period. Extension cables are not going to cut it here due to a combination of things, distance and gravel being the big ones.
Not that it matters much as I've not seen a 4 port shared charger and I have 100A service to the driveway. So what I'd be forced to do is put in a pair of two port, which is fine in it's way because then they'd be close to were the vehicles are parked. But they would have to be restricted to about 40A each. Which sucks because the initial plan was a 2 port 80A and there are a few times during the year that would be "needed".
No matter how I look at this it's going to be an expensive pain in the ass. Oh, I'll do it, but it's not going to be any time soon
For smaller sites they charge the batteries off peak for the morning rush. Solar complements it. Of course the way electricity grids work, the panels don't have to be at the site anyway.
You said "In fact it's free if you just put some solar panels and some batteries at the site.", now you are back tracking as in the panels will go somewhere else. Worse you just added additional hardware as a A/C->D/C charger will be needed, which is also an efficiency loss vs just charging the onsite batteries directly from solar.
They don't power the chargers directly from solar of course, they charge the batteries and use the grid
No grid with the associated hardware was mentioned but it would be required regardless for cloudy days. Normally the panels charge the onsite batteries which in turn feed the EV chargers. The problem is that 20% number I used is wildly liberal. That's for the very best brand new and clean panels, with a tracking system, and in optimal conditions. There are damn few places you could get 8hrs per day of that averaged over the course of a year.
but some sites do have enough space to cover daily use. Think large canopies like they have at petrol stations.
And here is the dream world talk. 105k sqft for six 350kW chargers, that's right at two football fields of space. Were are the canopies that size? And that would only allow for roughly 8hrs utilization. Again, under optimal conditions. And 6 chargers is roughly the equivalent to two gas pumps in vehicles served per hour. That's tiny corner store stuff.
I think onsite batteries are going to be a requirement for any large charger install to both keep the grid stabilized and to allow smaller interconnects. And I think you'd be nuts not to throw some solar up if you have the room for it. But you aren't going to get a significant amount of your power that way.
Where do you live that $3 per gallon and 15 cent electricity exists? I haven't seen that in years.
That's pretty much the entire southwest from what I've seen
Electricity is much cheaper than gas though. In fact it's free if you just put some solar panels and some batteries at the site. With the kind of usage EV charging will bring, the payback on initial investment will be fast, and then it's all pure profit.
That's dream world talk. The best commercial solar panels hit 20W per square foot so at full output it would take 7500 square foot of panels to supply a single 150kW charger. It would take 105,000 square feet to do a half dozen 350kW chargers. And that's optimal conditions, which isn't going to be 24/7 or even close to it.
Yep, if a branch circuit is being converted you've pointed out one of the caveats. Most people usually don't have a great deal of things plugged into their garage outlets, though. So, you run an extension cord to the beer fridge and call it a day, basically.
And just where do you plug that extension cord in at? Won't last long if you run it through the door inside. Garages are also were people keep their power tools, rechargeable batteries, like for the lawn mower, weed eater, and leaf blower. Many people still use corded versions of those, were are they going to plug them in at? Guess they can't sweep their car out either, or run a pressure washer.
I'm guessing you don't actually live in a house with a garage...and a yard...
As to being extremely unlucky and having your outdoor outlets on the same circuit as the garage, there's actually a few relatively inexpensive porch lights with built-in GFCI outlets available on Amazon. Yeah, you'd end up with blank plates over your previous outdoor outlets, but that'd solve the issue of ending up with no outdoor outlets.
If the outdoor outlet is near the garage it's pretty much standard practice. In fact there is a specific line in the NEC book that allows just exactly that because it's so common. As to using the light, oh lots of issues there. You have to turn the light switch on first, and most of those are el cheapo rated for lighting only, not motors, like the things I mentioned above. Then how much is on that particular circuit and what else will get knocked out when it's eventually tripped?
I never said this was a solution that works for every use case.
There are very few cases this should even be considered. You can't do it if you rent. Many (most?) locales will require a permit and licensed electrician to perform it. And if you have to pay for that anyway in most situations you might as well run a new circuit. Especially in a house as you likely have multiple vehicles. Which is why I ran 100A to mine.
In fact, we even have a 240v outlet standard that is a direct drop-in for the same wiring used for standard 15A 120V outlets: the NEMA 6-15. That's right, you can just find some existing outlet circuit that isn't being used for anything else, swap the outlet and replace the breaker with a double-pole model and now you've got 3kw of EV charging capability, without having to run a new wire!
Good luck with that as there will be multiple outlets on the same circuit. So to make that work you have to find all of the outlets on that circuit, remove the receptacles and put a blank cover plate on them, then install the 6-15 on the one you want. And now your garage no longer has any 120V outlets which usually includes the outdoor one.
Plus, if you're lucky enough that the circuit was originally a 20A (12AWG Romex), you can up the outlet to a NEMA 6-20 and get 3.84kw of output.
12awg has been required as a minimum for all circuits for as long as I can remember. The exception is mobile homes.
Most US homes are actually more "EV ready" than people tend to assume.
As someone who just recently ran 100A service to his driveway for dual EV chargers I cackle at your ignorance.
40 mph sustained is unreasonable over 24 hours. My plan is 60 mph sustained over ~10 hours, this is entirely doable even alone.
No it is not. I had to take one of my daughters to south Florida a few years ago, rush trip as she was moving for a new job. We drove her car down there loaded to the gills and I flew back. It was just under 1500 miles, google maps shows it to be just under 22hrs drive time, and we did it in a little under 24hrs averaging a bit over 60mph.
I timed one of my typical stops on a trip back from Las Vegas. I stood there like a boob and watched the gasoline dispense into the tank. Then I went into the store, did bathroom, selected a snack and a drink, came back out, and... 20 minutes.
Typical road trip for our family is me stopping at the pump to do the fill while the wife, daughter, and grand daughters go inside. When I'm done I pull up to the store front and head in myself. Amusingly I still beat them back out to the truck. Total time is usually less than 10 minutes but we don't dawdle.
Because however deeply scared you may be of these "others", the never were a threat in that regard. Yes, I get that you are too deeply stuck in delusion to be able to understand that.
Well shouldn't we at least try to protect those poor "others" from the dirty Americans? Did you want them to suffer and die? Or are you saying that they were immune?
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills. -- Ambrose Bierce
