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Life took me to the local mall with the family. There are 4 EV (electrify?) charging stations and 4 cars charging: a Bolt, a Polestar and 2 Hyundai. All connected, 2 empty and 2 with drivers waiting inside.
Across the aisle another Hyundai Ionic 6 and a BMW IX showed up waiting their turn.
I talked to the driver of Polestar, told him that I’m curious about Polestar and that I’ll be shopping this weekend to replace my crashed Volt. He said he likes his Polestar 2, his Mom gave him the car 6 months ago. He gets 210 miles. His Dad has a Tesla but he likes the Polestar better. Braked automatically when a deer jumped in front of the car.
Anyway back to charging… sucks to see people waiting in line for better infrastructure. It was 7:40 PM and his car should be fully charged by 8:20. I guess those other drivers need to wait their turn.
OK as I was typing thus one car left and the IX pulled up and started their charge. The Ionic 6 is still waiting.
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It looks like the entire station turns green when the car is done. One left and another pulled in, but the other one, the Bolt the drivers is missing, probably inside the mall and that car occupies a spot that could be used by another vehicle. But Al least all 4 are working.
There is another charging area within sight, I’m about to check it out.
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OK the Bolt left and a Mustang pulled in.
I think I had it backwards. The stations light up green when charging?
It seems to take them a few minutes to get the charge flowing, it’s like watching inexperienced people using an ATM for the first time.
The other charging station was 2 spots EV Go, one Honda wine Cadillac Lyric charging there.
The people with Mustang plugged in, fiddled with the touchscreen for a few minutes and walked towards the Mall but the station is still dark. Unclear if that means anything.
A Tesla model 3 with temporary license plates pulled in and quickly drove away.
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I walked and check out the stations. All 3 are charging and for some reason some of them are green on all sides, some are green only on one side. It is not related to charging…
The 3 article stations show the charge percentage, two cars were at 84%, one jumped to 85% while I walked around. The 3rd car was at 52%.
The 4th slot is empty. One car just left, now 2 are empty.
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Hence the reason peeps get teslas and many new EVs have tesla plugs.
Infrastructure. Since everyone has range anxiety...
It's approximately 350-400 miles from SF or Sacramento to downtown LA / Orange County. If you drive on a Fri, Sat or Sunday on that route either way and count the number of Teslas coming the other way... literally thousands. Like every 3rd car.
this is on I-5 in CA, halfway between SF and LA... 52 superchargers next to an In-N-Out. Dozens of other SCs along the way... I would guess over a thousand chargers. There are 100 in Tejon, which is at the bottom of the San Joaquin valley.
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There’s always going to be a shortage of public chargers, particularly during prime time. If you don’t have charging ability at home or at work then you probably don’t want an EV.
Within a few miles of my (suburban) home, there are a couple dozen non-Tesla public chargers. Most are free, by the way. Also about a dozen Tesla Superchargers (which my car can’t use). I’m currently charging at the public library.
Do you have an app to show available chargers?
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special, I like how easily you are entertained while at the mall. My wife drags me along and I about die every time she mentions she just wants to stop for a few minutes at the show store along the way. Worse is that she wants my opinion on the shoes. I’ve tried every reply I could think of to get her to just buy what she wants to no avail so that I could sit in the food court observing all the young females.
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Here's a dumb question from a driver who considered an EV 4 years ago but ended up with an IC.
Short of using an app or other onboard program, how does one know when seeing a charging station whether it's free or not? Or whether your particular vehicle can use it regardless of cost? Gas is gas and gas pumps are all the same, but is there some color-coding or other clear way of knowing what kind of charger one can use? Thanks.
