One of the criteria is "it's within a mile of certain designated freeways". Obviously it's good to have chargers along those freeways, but as long as there's a certain level of coverage it's not a bad thing if there are ALSO lots of chargers along different freeways, highways, at neighborhood gas stations, etc.
Another criteria is "at least 4 CCS chargers". Since CCS is on its way out, that also seems kinda unnecessary. I have an NACS adapter for my car, so as long as there's open chargers I don't really care what the form factor is (as long as they're fast and not chademo). However 4+ chargers in general is a good criteria. I avoid rest stops that only have 1-2 chargers because it's a crapshoot if they'll be available
Data, but it needs someone to take a deep dive to understand it. Is this mostly a trivial detail missing that in practice nobody cares about or does this means most chargers are useles?
This number is pretty much meaningless. The standards being measured are:
1) four CCS ports
2) 150 kW each
3) within 1 mile of a designated corridor
1 is worth something, but not much as the industry has been migrating to NACS. When I bought my used CCS car, it came with a fast-charge NACS->CCS converter, so dealing with a NACS charger is not that big of a deal.
Requiring 4 ports in general is a more useful standardad. The data does keep a seperate count of dc fast ports, so you could check for 4 ports if you want to, but the pass/fail does not consider non-ccs ports.
2 is reasonable.
3 is just a sign that you are completly mis-applying the standard. Probably because you are a computer.
After thinking for a moment, one is completely unreasonable. I have not seen a gas station with only four homes in decades, and that was in a small town well off the beaten path. I can refill the gas car in a few minutes. By contrast, a fast charger is generally updated to take more than 10 minutes and probably closer to half an hour. We need a much better count of how many charging ports there really are.
If these chargers are well off the beaten path then yeah, four might be okay because most people are going to be charging at home. However, on a highway people are going to be stopping to refuel their electric car just as often they're stopping to refuel their gas car. We need to ask the question of how many ports are available and that needs to be part of the data in some way.
Three, of course, is still far worse. On my last road trip to visit my mom, I kept an eye out for fast chargers since I do have an electric car that I could have taken, but I would have had a charger on the way. I saw exactly one station on the whole trip. Then I pulled up an app and, short enough, there were chargers all along the route. But, good luck finding them. They weren't obvious so to find one I'd have to pull up my phone or mess with the touchscreen on my car - either one instead of safely driving which is what I'm supposed to be doing at the moment. None of them were any places I'd care to stop for half an hour to recharge, even though I did have to stop for dinner along the route and so that would have been an ideal place but no chargers were any place I'd be eating.
The current situation is better than nothing. You can make road trips an electric car. However, it's still not anywhere near as convenient as a gas car. And that is my larger point. Electric cars need to be more convenient for road trips.
As to every gas station having a fast charger; the answer is probably never. I doubt that the EV economy would ever be able to support that number of fast charging stations.
Consider that with ICE cars, approximatly every mile driven is powered by gas from a gas station. With EVs, a significant amount of miles driven is powered by residential electricity. Many more miles driven can be powered by slow destination chargers (e.g. at workplaces). This means that the addressable market of fast charges are: A) long road trips, and B) people without convenient access to slow chargers.
In addition to that, most fast chargers are just plopped onto random shopping center parking lots. The needed infastructure is just space, and a large enough grid connection.
> In addition to that, most fast chargers are just plopped onto random shopping center parking lots. The needed infastructure is just space, and a large enough grid connection.
Fair on Colorado. The Colorado county and corridor files were our first state build-out, and they share the page with the national files. We're moving them to their own page so /data is national only, and dropping the files that don't have rows yet.
Seems like kind of a nothingburger?
One of the criteria is "it's within a mile of certain designated freeways". Obviously it's good to have chargers along those freeways, but as long as there's a certain level of coverage it's not a bad thing if there are ALSO lots of chargers along different freeways, highways, at neighborhood gas stations, etc.
Another criteria is "at least 4 CCS chargers". Since CCS is on its way out, that also seems kinda unnecessary. I have an NACS adapter for my car, so as long as there's open chargers I don't really care what the form factor is (as long as they're fast and not chademo). However 4+ chargers in general is a good criteria. I avoid rest stops that only have 1-2 chargers because it's a crapshoot if they'll be available
Data, but it needs someone to take a deep dive to understand it. Is this mostly a trivial detail missing that in practice nobody cares about or does this means most chargers are useles?
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This number is pretty much meaningless. The standards being measured are:
1) four CCS ports 2) 150 kW each 3) within 1 mile of a designated corridor
1 is worth something, but not much as the industry has been migrating to NACS. When I bought my used CCS car, it came with a fast-charge NACS->CCS converter, so dealing with a NACS charger is not that big of a deal. Requiring 4 ports in general is a more useful standardad. The data does keep a seperate count of dc fast ports, so you could check for 4 ports if you want to, but the pass/fail does not consider non-ccs ports.
2 is reasonable.
3 is just a sign that you are completly mis-applying the standard. Probably because you are a computer.
Thanks for digging a little bit into it.
After thinking for a moment, one is completely unreasonable. I have not seen a gas station with only four homes in decades, and that was in a small town well off the beaten path. I can refill the gas car in a few minutes. By contrast, a fast charger is generally updated to take more than 10 minutes and probably closer to half an hour. We need a much better count of how many charging ports there really are.
If these chargers are well off the beaten path then yeah, four might be okay because most people are going to be charging at home. However, on a highway people are going to be stopping to refuel their electric car just as often they're stopping to refuel their gas car. We need to ask the question of how many ports are available and that needs to be part of the data in some way.
Three, of course, is still far worse. On my last road trip to visit my mom, I kept an eye out for fast chargers since I do have an electric car that I could have taken, but I would have had a charger on the way. I saw exactly one station on the whole trip. Then I pulled up an app and, short enough, there were chargers all along the route. But, good luck finding them. They weren't obvious so to find one I'd have to pull up my phone or mess with the touchscreen on my car - either one instead of safely driving which is what I'm supposed to be doing at the moment. None of them were any places I'd care to stop for half an hour to recharge, even though I did have to stop for dinner along the route and so that would have been an ideal place but no chargers were any place I'd be eating.
The current situation is better than nothing. You can make road trips an electric car. However, it's still not anywhere near as convenient as a gas car. And that is my larger point. Electric cars need to be more convenient for road trips.
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When is every gas station going to have a fast charger? When am I going to see EV charging symbols on exit signs?
I already see EV charging symbols on exist signs.
As to every gas station having a fast charger; the answer is probably never. I doubt that the EV economy would ever be able to support that number of fast charging stations.
Consider that with ICE cars, approximatly every mile driven is powered by gas from a gas station. With EVs, a significant amount of miles driven is powered by residential electricity. Many more miles driven can be powered by slow destination chargers (e.g. at workplaces). This means that the addressable market of fast charges are: A) long road trips, and B) people without convenient access to slow chargers.
In addition to that, most fast chargers are just plopped onto random shopping center parking lots. The needed infastructure is just space, and a large enough grid connection.
> In addition to that, most fast chargers are just plopped onto random shopping center parking lots. The needed infastructure is just space, and a large enough grid connection.
As seen here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/3013766039
Hopefully sooner than later! These gas stations need to be upgraded and the real range will be extended for EVs.
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4CCS chargers is a requirement? I guess all the supercharger sites don’t count
AI slopsite. Generic design and very confusing wording. Why does it specify only Colorado?
Fair on Colorado. The Colorado county and corridor files were our first state build-out, and they share the page with the national files. We're moving them to their own page so /data is national only, and dropping the files that don't have rows yet.