San Diego adding 117 new 50-cents-per-kWh public chargers

I think it makes a difference whether the business intends to make money with the chargers, or whether they are using them to draw in customers. Like providing free parking spaces (not applicable to cities like San Francisco, with their obscene parking charges ).

 

Not true. The best charging rate I'm aware of is 300mi/hour (though you probably can't actually charge at that rate for a full hour) using a Tesla Supercharger. It will be free for Tesla S owners and is powered by solar panels.

 

50 cents a kwh:
As a consumer I would say

Awesome rate as an emergency use
OK rate for occasional use
Lousy rate for daily use.

As an aside, the more I try to imagine a for-profit, unsubsidized infrastructure the less obvious it becomes. Faster charge times, and charge by the hour (or amount, whichever is greater) are needed to vacate spotes for the next car to improve utilization. These chargers will also have to broadcast their availability to drivers.

 

How do you pay for these? With credit card? ( don't have PIP)

 

That is interesting, but what I read is that it is compatible only with Model S. Industry should get together and make sure all the EVs follow same specs reduce the friction to consumer. What I fear is that these guys patent some of these things to differentiate, but in turn complicating this for the users. I feel that these charging stations should charge consumers, should get some subsidy in short term. But ultimately has to be profitable like the gas stations today.

 

Now there is a good idea!

 

I like the idea of purchasing a vehicle and that it comes with a lifetime of free fuel, why should tesla give free fuel to people who buy a different brand of vehicle?

 

Tesla only has to to pay the capital cost of the chargers. Most of the supercharger stations use solar, which, last time I checked, is still free.

 

charge point already does that - and you can reserve them online as well

SGH-I717R ? 2

 

Well ... there is land cost, maintenance cost, replacement costs, property taxes, permit taxes, etc ... not even sunshine is free.

 

Let them charge for others, I specifically mentioned that these stations should charge. But making these things/tech exclusive, they are going to impact the adaption of EV.

Also, dont expect Tesla to set these up in all the neighborhoods to make the promise of lifetime fuel free. They are bound by the economy of scale. They are having trouble producing the cars in number, so I dont expect them to produce the charging stations as required!

 

+1. ... not to mention the 10's of thousands of dollars of costs for the Panels/Inverters.

SGH-I717R ? 2

 

^^ opportunity costs, interest, vandalism ...
funny how people are carefree with someone else's money LOL

 

A charging infrastructure suffers from an interesting conflict of interest that differs from our usual expectation that prices go down with scale and adoption.

Consumers want convenience in the form of low prices, immediate availability, nearby access, and quick service. Adoption and scale work against the consumer as much as for them. And without adoption, utilization is low, keeping prices high.

I read sites of EV enthusiasm, but people rarely bother to consider just how difficult a nut this problem actually presents.

 

I am not sure if law makers understand the complexity or they are just helpless as the whole country is against government doing more things (or atleast no one wants to pay for it).

We are hearing that natural gas is in abundance, in theory it should help the NG cars and EVs (as most of the power plants use natural gas). But, the infrastructure for either of those things is very bad. I dont want to go through lot of pain by buying those products and getting struck somewhere with empty tank. Market wont build the infrastructure because there is no volume. For EV charging units to be commercial, it needs faster charging, so that more cars can be serviced. These things cannot be accomplished just by throwing away car pool stickers and tax breaks. Yes, those things help, but not enough.

 

^^ complicated, ain't it ?

My uninformed, low brow assessment of this entire question is that a better approach would be to focus charger installations at the workplaces of adopters, and only have an emergency, high cost network of chargers at relatively few key spots.

 

Tesla's supercharger network is designed for long distance travel. Definitely not city based travel.
Also keep in mind, the rate of charge would fry any other EV on the road. Why use a supercharger if you can't use it's full potential?

 

So a Prius is the answer???

 

Oops double post

 

Although these 240v outdoor EVSE's can deliver 7 kilowatts (and much higher potential from other models of EVSE's)- many plugins' on board chargers can only accept 3 kilowatts. That's why for many plugins, a fixed rate per kilowatt is more palatable.

SGH-I717R ? 2