Frankly, Vandalism is a cause for a good fraction of the outages in urban areas.
And putting a charger in Hollywood of all places (which isn’t the “safest” neighborhood by modern American suburb standards) is… challenging.
Imagine spending $400k on a fancy new 5-station charging setup only to have the cables cut for $23 worth of copper the next evening.
I’m curious what the viability is to set up a new fast charging station.
The one thing I know from a friend who did some research was that selecting the “box” was by far the easiest and cheapest part.
Getting near-Gigawatt electrical service was NOT easy and heavily restricted the location that it could cost-effectively be installed.
Also, getting permits from the city may be the reason Tesla doesn’t have it yet as they city may be stingy in this particular densely populated area.
Also challenging is leasing the parking spots, as this kind of use reduces the number of zoned parking spots available for buildings and most in very urban areas are built right at zoning minimums, so they don’t actually have parking spots that they can legally give up. (which is why you see a bunch in parking ramps in urban areas).
I’d expect half a million $$ in investment or so. Payoff is like 20 years.
My friend bailed after getting a bunch of quotes for service. It wasn’t even close to profitable unless you HAPPEN to have a free parking location with high-voltage power already adjacent (which is decidedly rare in major cities) and major government subsidies.
Yeah, they’re basically prototypes.
The first generation of battery from most EV companies had a silly high failure rate.
Tesla, GM, Nissan, Audi, etc all had really high failure rates in the first generation of cars. In the 30% range for GM and Nissan, in the 5% range for Tesla.
The motors had high failure rates (again in their first generation). Similar rates.
They’ve also added high-complexity parts like heat pumps in their first automotive iterations.
I expect all of this will become more reliable once they’re more established.
It’s plausible they already are. From what I’ve heard the failure rate on Tesla parts (battery, motor, etc) dropped significantly after the first revision in 2016 and again after 2021. 2013 battery was a 5% failure rate, while the 2017 battery was a 0.2% failure rate (roughly) from the 2022 data I saw.
I expect that progress continues and third our fourth generation EVs will be decidedly more reliable than ICE cars.
This is why Tesla formerly implemented idle charges and is currently implementing congestion charges for users charging beyond 90%, and congestion warnings that automatically reset cars to 80% (but can then be reset by users) at high-utilization chargers.
It’s also why outages like “2/4 plugs are broken at this location” (which is shockingly common at some brands of chargers) isn’t acceptable.
Finally, a system that detects when a charger is full and automatically directs users to another nearby charger is very helpful, especially given the scenario that sometimes there are multiple nearby chargers, but one gets more popular than others due to location.
Tesla manages all of these.
I’m not sure why Tesla is the only one who can do this right, however, it’s a bit baffling.
Ever had a Mercedes EV? Because I’ve heard the service experience with those is somewhat awful.
Parts are 6+ months in some cases and techs are unhelpful, etc.
Stuff like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/mercedes_benz/comments/10k8g9w/broken_eqs580_and_unbelievably_bad_service/
None are great.
EV parts are scarce and replacement parts are horrendously expensive.
Tesla gets shit for stuff like expensive battery replacements, but A Model Y battery costs under ONE HALF of a replacement Mach-E battery (for example). (MSRP on a Mach E battery replacement is $41k).
The EQB is a short-range car with slow charging compared to something like a Tesla or the new Kia.
Chargers for the Mercedes are half as available as they are for a Tesla Model S and the range is barely half and it charges at half the speed. Overall, you’d have had a much more pleasant experience in a Tesla.
Then you chose to charge to 100% (which means almost 1 hour charging stops, yikes).
The “cannonball run” across the US is won by a Model S, which drives down to 5% and then charges up to about 60%. Above that, it slows down a lot.
That makes for 15-20 minute charging stops.
At least you didn’t end up in a Mazda or a Chevy Bolt, they’re far worse for road trips than the Mercedes, but the Mercedes is a decidedly bad road trip EV.
No, I use superchargers.
Because Subaru’s EV is trash.
I know the Tesla and probably the Polestar will maintain the 12v automatically. Leave the car plugged in anyway.
Some of the legacy carmakers like Nissan and Chevy (on the bolt, etc) don’t have this and you might want to trickle the 12v. THey only charge the 12v when the key is turned to ACC, which is pretty lame.
I don’t know about the i4.
For non-Tesla cars, you get your own account. Companies like ChargePoint or ElectrifyAmerica.
Those will let you pay just like your Starbucks card or whatever (put your CC into the app).
Tesla is the one with weird direct-billing that will often get passed through.
The experience with CCS is rarely that you’re stranded.
My experience has generally been… pull into an EA charger with 4 handles. 2 are outright broken, one is finnicky and/or slow and the last one works fine.
That’s… not ideal, but it’s not show-stopping. It can result in some lines and angry visitors when people show up, especially since EA is kind of bad at reporting dead cables in their app.
EVs typically can’t easily be “completely powered off”.
They all seem to wake up and spin up pumps now and then.
The only BMW i4 that’s under $60k has sub-270 mile range and the 0-60 of a base model Chevy Bolt.
The fastest i4 (almost $70k) is slower than the base-model Model 3 or base-model EV6, both of which sell in the $38-$41k range.
There’s definitely tradeoffs and that’s A LOT to pay for “interior”.
They absolutely do. I think it’s quiet, but BMW or Mercedes does exactly the same thing.
They’ll give a driver of a M760 a loaner and offer to phone a taxy for the beat up old X1 that’s in for the same service. Comparing the $170k car to the $28k car.
Tesla has a similar (well not as dramatic) spread in car prices.