They're different facilities though, and in different places.
Gas stations are situated near population centers, because you tend to run out of gas wherever you're driving, and you drive where you live.
In practice, consumer EVs almost universally charge at home[1] and "never" just "run out" of charge. You're car is always charged, there's little value to topping up at the shopping areas or whatever. Instead, you need DC fast charging where you travel: on the long distance arteries where your car can't otherwise reach.
To be clear: you need gas there too. But rural highway gas stations represent a small fraction of all gas service. Most gas stations won't be able to shift to EV charging and keep their business model.
[1] Though there are growing pains with apartment facilities being slow to install AC charging. Right now an EV works much better in a home with a garage, though that seems likely to sort itself out. Cheap electrical work is cheap, it's just a question of how to get people to pay for it. Some regulation is likely to be needed.
whats the solution for millions of renters that dont have access to ev stations at home though? even if the charging station is a mile away would you expect someone to walk 1 mile every charge cycle?
There are workarounds mentioned by sibling comments but the fact is that EVs are, and will continue to be, very inconvenient for those who don't own a home.
I think "very inconvenient" is stretching it. The pessimal case is that you are 100% reliant on fast charging and have to spend 20 minutes once a week at your local shopping mall or wherever your convenient fast charger is. That may not correlate well with the shopping you want to do, but it's hardly a disaster. In practice it's only a little worse than gassing up, and it smells better.
> ”whats the solution for millions of renters that dont have access to ev stations at home though?”
The solution is to get chargers installed wherever you park the car. May require legislation if your landlord is uncooperative.
In the mean time, charging at a public charging station isn’t so bad provided it’s convenient and reliable. If you can combine charging with shopping or dining etc it’s not much different to topping up at a gas station. Probably cheaper too!
Here in Alaska, people commonly plug in their normal cars in the winter so they will start after a cold night (these are heating units that are spliced into the engine's hoses to circulate and warm the engine coolant). Just about every private parking spot has an electrical outlet for each parking space, even at quite downscale apartment buildings. It's usually controlled by a switch inside the unit. You can flip it on when you wake up so the car is warmed up enough to start by the time you leave for work.
I remember many years ago that having one of these outlets was a bullet point for apartment listings, but nowadays it's just expected.
So the market worked in that case.
EV charging stations are going to be more expensive than a basic 20 amp outlet (a quick web search indicates $700 to $2,000, not including installation), but not all that expensive, compared to the other capital expenses involved in being a landlord.
Even $700 seems expensive for a basic wall charger. I see them as low as £225 (USD $310) here in the UK[1], so expect them to get cheaper as the market develops. Of course, the real cost is in the installation and wiring.
For permanent installation in parking lots, they need to be weatherized, rugged enough to make at least a token resistance against people running them over, and so on.
The ones I was seeing were built into bollard-like posts.
Yes. Note that the one I linked to is weatherised (IP65), and claims "Corrosion resistant & fire retardant,
Impact resistant design" ... so it should be rugged enough to survive in typical apartment parking lots.
Obviously bollards will cost more, but something like this would be suitable if you have parking spaces up against an existing wall.
There's a block heater for the engine, just to get the oil to a sane temperature. Pretty much every single parking spot in apartment buildings has an 8A/230V socket for it.
If you remove the default 2 hour timer from it, you can use the exact same socket to charge 100-200km of range to an electric car over night.
Especially for a long range teslas. 300-400 mile range plus 250kW charging is pretty close to the gas vehicle experience. It’s doable to do exclusively supercharging, although you’re missing out on some of the biggest benefits of EVs.
I highly doubt it will be legislated. Heat waves regularly kill hundreds of people, yet few states require rentals to be air conditioned, even in the south.
What Tesla does: Co-locate fast DC chargers at grocery stores (Meijer, Kroger, some Targets, etc). You charge when you go grocery shopping, and the shopping trip typically takes longer than the charge (in my experience).
This is a stop gap until legislation requires EV charging be provided at apartments and workplaces (similar to handicap parking mandates).
My question is whether or not Tesla chargers can work with other EV cars. If not, then isn't it that all of Tesla's efforts are just helping their own brand instead of helping the EV push as a whole?
In the US the Tesla plug is their own invention. In Europe they've moved on to CCS.
In theory it should be possible to open up Superchargers to other brands, but it's more of a marketing/business issue than any technical problem.
I really don't see Volkswagen/Audi/BMW making a deal with Tesla to integrate their systems with the Tesla backend. Would you want your customers to use a competitors tools? =)
Superchargers only currently work with Tesla’s due to technical constraints (although Tesla is changing that now that there are significant numbers of non-Tesla EVs with a big enough battery and 100kW charging ability).
However Tesla destination chargers which are lower speed and three have been available for both Tesla cars and non-Tesla EVs.
If you have a place to park your car (not roadside parking), it's perfectly possible to install an AC charger in there.
A 3.7kW one will be more than enough for people working 9-5. The car will be sitting there doing nothing for 10+ hours anyway, why not charge at the same time.
Nothing will change without legislation though.
In Finland we changed the law so that if an apartment building has "major renovations", they MUST install EV charging capability for all parking spots. (No need to install a charger, it just needs to be possible).
I think the solution is to charge when shopping. Fast charging once per week for 30-45mins while you are in a supermarket is convenient and is probably adding enough range for the whole week.
Charging stations at more and more public parking is coming. If you drive to work you'll almost certainly be able to charge there. Every time you go to the mall or food store, you'll be able to charge for an hour. Basically in few years half the 'public' parking spaces you leave your car at will have charging opportunities meaning the only time you'll need to seek out charging is during longer road trips (just like people who can charge at home)
One thing I noticed in Norway too was on street parking meters that also had electric charging cables. Tap your card, pay for parking and the minor electricity cost just gets added to the parking charge.
Gas stations are situated near population centers, because you tend to run out of gas wherever you're driving, and you drive where you live.
In practice, consumer EVs almost universally charge at home[1] and "never" just "run out" of charge. You're car is always charged, there's little value to topping up at the shopping areas or whatever. Instead, you need DC fast charging where you travel: on the long distance arteries where your car can't otherwise reach.
To be clear: you need gas there too. But rural highway gas stations represent a small fraction of all gas service. Most gas stations won't be able to shift to EV charging and keep their business model.
[1] Though there are growing pains with apartment facilities being slow to install AC charging. Right now an EV works much better in a home with a garage, though that seems likely to sort itself out. Cheap electrical work is cheap, it's just a question of how to get people to pay for it. Some regulation is likely to be needed.