I was having a think the other day . I was on a trip over to the Dartford area and on the way stopped off at several motorway services . Membury on the M4 had 2 charging points which were in use . The cars were still there after my pit stop . I can't remember seeing any places at the other services on the way . On the way back we stopped off at Newbury on the M3 . Here there were 12 Tesla charging points which will be put into use in the future .
I'm wondering as more petrol filling stations start to put charging points in will they gradually replace fuel pumps ?
My next thought was surely this will become uneconomical for the filling stations ? Filling up an ICE fuel tank with fuel takes less than 5 minutes . So on a busy day the filling station can serve a lot of customers . Now EV's take longer to charge , so the number of customers during a day will be a lot lower and so turnover will be lower . The filling stations won't be able to charge too much as people can charge at home . The idea that people will be able to spend their time shopping or doing leisure activities whilst charging seems to be pie in the sky! If queues are forming with people waiting to charge their vehicles whilst other people are swanning around staying longer than necessary this will lead to frustration and anger .
To me it just seems that the whole thing hasn't been thoroughly thought through !
Charging at home, reduces chance you will need to charge whilst shopping. Shopping is usually a local trip.
Rapid chargers can add hundreds of miles in less than one hour. If you went shopping or to a leisure area, you're unlikely need to charge, see above.
If on a longer journey, rapid chargers are required. If you overstay after your car is topped up, bay blocking fees are added. These excess stay fees are extremely expensive.
Tesla for example will limit the charge to 80% at busy sites. Charging above 80% is where the rate of charge is much lower. I get a notification saying my car is nearing this level, please return to remove your vehicle.
No one is going to leave their car racking up huge fees blocking others from charging. At non Tesla charging stations, you can't charge unless you have a validated payment via contactless or in Tesla's case a valid card on their system.
As more EVs are bought, more charging points will be installed, eventually I expect every parking bay will have a charge point. Most will be 7kw for those drivers who are adding 20-30 miles whilst shopping etc. Work places again will have chargers installed for their driving workforce.
My wife installed two chargers for her staff, which back then had hybrids and for her to charge her Tesla when in the office. They would happily swap vehicles once a car had been topped up. Please don't suggest it's wasting work time, smokers get several breaks a day to have a cancer stick, so time it takes to move a vehicle is far less. Her system had NFC dongles for those authorised to charge from work.
There is a shift already taking place to EV transport. Once you have an EV, the adaption to the way you use it, charging etc, is a doddle.
I've had full EVs a relatively short period, 4 years maybe. At one point we had three EVs in the family with only one 7kW dedicated chargers and an 13amp socket. It was no issue keep these vehicles charged for their uses. We have well over 100k miles of use now, drive 120miles a day mostly with our Nissan Leaf.
Every morning it's ready to go charged up for its daily drives.
