[LINK] All German petrol stations must offer electric car charging

[David Lochrin]

On 2020-06-12 01:52, Paul Brooks wrote:

> Most EVs have a range of several hundred kilometres in a charge - the ones I've looked at, I can drive from Sydney to Newcastle and back again without charging in the middle.

Yes, I was surprised to find the current Nissan Leaf has an "indicative" range of 270 Km.

However the specs at https://www.nissan.com.au/vehicles/browse-range/leaf/specs-and-prices.html#grade-LEAFZE1A-0 tell us the car has an acceleration of "7.9 Km/h" so I hope the range figure is more believable, at least it has the right units!

> If you do need to charge, they [garages] are the last place you would want to go to, because you need 15 mins to a couple of hours to push in a decent charge to make stopping worthwhile, and theres nothing else to do at those places.

The Leaf apparently has a charging time from "alert" to 100% of 7.5 hours from a 32 amp home outlet.  However the charging time from 20% to 80% is only 1 hour using a 50 amp rapid-charge outlet, which would probably require a dedicated feed from the street so isn't practicable for home use.  Even a 32 amp outlet would be pushing most home wiring.

I think this indicates vehicle use with home-charging would have to be quite disciplined, and home charging would not be precticable in some situations.

> To me, suburban fuel stations are dodos, and we will quickly find alternative uses for all those corner real-estate blocks when they go broke from disuse. Putting charger-points at those locations is nuts.

In the long term, yes.

David Lochrin