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Comment by VectorLock | Hacker News Reader

Using dealerships to build a charging network is a nice idea. The knock on benefit of getting car owners to your dealership more frequently and hopefully selling more cars.

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That's a terrible idea from a user perspective. All of ionity and tesla's superchargers are in urban or shopping areas that allow you to quickly buy some food, go shopping or go to a bathroom in a respectable location.

I personally would have zero interest in going to my car dealership as their locations are typically far away from anything urban or of interst.

Same here, I avoid them when I can. It won’t be too long before the gas stations are fast chargers, though- I give it 20 years.

Simply replacing gas stations with chargers is a step back in electric's flexiblity. They don't need large underground storage tanks and special zoning. I think gas stations will simply vanish, and chargers will stay next to useful places like businesses, grocery stores restraurants, malls, etc.

This is true in Urban markets, but in more rural areas the gas station is the grocery store and the restaurant. It will probably help those businesses by giving bored drivers a reason to come into the business and spend.

Now the trunk is auto drive (which is less problematic for long running one that is train service in nature), the business model has to be rethink.

In the ideal world we'd turn the existing gas stations into solar powered super charger stations (which do sort of look like current gas stations [1]). Existing gas stations are often found near useful places like grocery/restaurant/business areas.

But as you say, there are less needs for equipment and regulation, so we could potentially have existing gas station locations converted AND new sites even closer and even more liberally sprinkled about providing even more convenience.

[1] https://electrek.co/2017/04/24/tesla-new-supercharger-statio...

That’s sort of pointless though unless the gas station is in the middle of nowhere. There is no point in wasting valuable real estate with solar panels covering a parking place in front of a building nobody has a reason to visit.

The grid functions with renewable energy so I would rather use the super charger at the grocery store than the one at a previous gas station.

Middle of nowhere is a good place for a charger. mmost people will charge at home 95 % of the time. It is only the 5% trips where you don't get back home that you need a charger. Middle of nowhere is where that is likely to be. Look at truck stops, they are all stores and restaurants, everything someone going a long distance needs. They are never inside a city because land is too expensive and anyone in the city for the night has a parking space.

Maybe in the US. House ownership isn't that common in every country. It's rather difficult to charge your car at home in an apartment building.

I wonder whether the charging cables will start getting stolen like rims have been.

I think it's largely a matter of just getting charging stations in more places. People who own cars must park them somewhere, and all those somewheres can have utilities installed if someone's willing to pay for it, it's just a matter of figuring out how to make it happen (whether via mandates or incentives or just market forces).

They don't have to be superchargers, either, just good enough for overnight charging.

The transition will probably take a while, but I expect that eventually people will stop calling them "electric cars" and just call them "cars" and charging stations will become part of the ubiquitous infrastructure of cities, like sidewalks and fire hydrants.

I don't know if people stealing charging cables is a common problem now. People complain where I live about catalytic converter thefts. There are probably ways to solve the issue of people stealing expensive charging equipment and re-selling them, but if people steal cables simply to recover ten dollars or thereabouts of copper, I don't know how to fix that (aside from "move to a nicer neighborhood"). Maybe use less valuable metals like aluminum, if that can be made to work in this application?

I expect apartments will start installing chargers for residents. They just need a way to ensure that they don't lose money giving free power away. The early ones will do it for a direct profit. The later ones will do it because potentialnnew residents will start saying "nice place, but no placeto charge my car", after a while they will get the message and add them to compete. (where needed)

Event though youcan charge in minutes, that doesn't mean you should.

There are a bunch of out-of-the-way gas stations in the US South that would benefit greatly from adding electric "pumps". They are generally located on vacation friendly roadways and are frequented mostly by travellers on their way to the beach.

Adding several electric recharge slots would be a great way to bring people and keep them there for 10-20 minutes. Restroom and snacks (or even meals) for 4-5 people plus you get to clean the bugs off of your windscreen. I personally make this trip every year (sometimes twice a year) and would love to see more electric refueling stops.

Still think battery that can plug and play is a good idea, with all sort of monitoring tools you would not trade your good rental one with a bad one. A d if you have two to three you can simply like drinks just replace it when drive along. (Heave enough not easy to do in your neighbourhood store.). Charging is only for like cinema etc. Gas station is a goner except as cafe etc.

What I don't understand is why a replaceable battery is seen as an all or nothing proposition. Design the car so that you could add 1 or 2 extra batteries when you need them.

So 90%, 95%, 99% of the time you're using your built-in 150-mile range. But you're not dragging around the weight of the extra 200, 250, 300 miles that you don't need. Your car weighs a lot less so you get better eMPG.

Tesla did a demo of having a battery swap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY That's really cool but if you could roll into Jiffy Lube (now offering Jiffy Volts) and get your extra batteries ...

I like that idea. It's a little tricky to pull off, though. Adding cells in series increases the voltage (which the car might not be designed to handle) or adding them in parallel means they have to be well-matched to what the car already has.

I don't know if anyone has tried this, but a solution I like for adding dissimilar batteries is to break the battery up into blocks that are linked in series, with each block being, let's say, 50 volts. Maybe the stock battery has five of these in series for 250 volts.

If you add more blocks, it exceeds the voltage specifications. So what happens is that each block has a contactor (i.e. a big relay) that can bypass that block; it just looks like a 0-volt battery when enabled.

Supposing you add two extra blocks for a long trip. Then you have a scheduler that disables two blocks at a time on a rotating schedule, so it always has 250 volts. If the added blocks have more amp-hours than the OEM blocks, that's fine: they'll just be enabled for a longer duration. Rotating batteries in and out can be done in a way that keeps their voltages roughly equal with each other as they're depleted.

Maybe this is too complicated and too much of a hassle to be worth it in general (as opposed to just building a car with a big battery to begin with). I'm also not sure if typical relatively-inexpensive contactors can tolerate being switched on and off every few minutes while under load.

On the plus side, you could probably just have a few kinds of generic "extra" batteries that work in a wide range of vehicle as long as they can handle the required current. They wouldn't have to be an exact match for what's already in the car.

More than a handful of the high speed super chargers need some pretty serious electrical infrastructure so there's still a pretty important niche for something like a gas station for people taking longer trips where the charging time means you need somewhere to kill time while you charge.

Here in Michigan, we have lots of "dealership rows" where I can imagine these being installed. They're technically shopping areas, but they're very car-centric, with 5- or 7-lane 45mph roads with tons of curb cuts and huge parking lots all around. You'll have the dealerships grouped by big franchises, each building doing it's best at giving the impression of separate businesses for imports, one for each of the big 3, a used lot, and a carwash and probably a gas station. The other side of the pedestrian-impassable road may have a mall, a big box store, fast food, or small retailers, and there's probably more a half mile down the road, but there's no sidewalk or safe way to walk there from the dealership.

Some malls making an effort to be more relevant than they were in the 80s have charging spots in their parking lots, that would be a lot more attractive.

Yes, these are common. However, it's important to ask yourself why they're common. They're usually chosen because of cheap real estate and car buying being a destination event. i.e. we buy cars infrequently enough that we value ability to choose among more options more highly than the time it takes us to arrive at a destination. This is the opposite of how we consume fuel. How often do you drive out of your way for a lower gas price? I almost never do.

Costco charges enough less for gas that I'll often make a special trip to fill up there. But I also try to combine that with some shopping, which I suppose is why they do it.

If it's a "yes, and" situation, it's still a net positive.

GM does have a few in retail locations. The issue is unlike Tesla Superchargers they aren't maintained. If they even work, it outputs very little charge and often drivers of non-EV cars will park in those spots. It's so terrible that I fail to see the point of even having them.

Agreed. The only time I ever had to wait for a Supercharger was at the one at the Tesla store in Nashville. It had 6 chargers, but 3 were being used by the people who worked at the store, so only 3 were available for other use.

Harley Davidson dealerships attract traveling Harley owners.

The charging stations at dealerships are meant first for the dealerships, visitors are secondary.

When you're selling EV's, you don't want your outlets to say "sorry, can't do a test drive, our cars aren't charged" (before uberlyft, how many times did you hop into a cab only to have the guy say "sorry, the credit card machine is broken"). And when people do buy the car, they don't want you driving off the lot with can-I-even-get-home range anxiety as your first experience with electric.

So the chargers-at-dealerships requirements are there to make sure dealers can first just sell the cars. Second usage is maintenance -- yeah, EV's don't need oil changes, but they still get their mirrors broken off at the same rate as any other car. Think getting a range top-up after you drop off the car for whatever repair as part of your premium service package upsell.

It's not about building out a destination charging network, it's about making sure their EV retail outlets can effectively retail EV's.

Can’t stop laughing on this “ can-I-even-get-home range anxiety as your first experience with electric.”

> And when people do buy the car, they don't want you driving off the lot with can-I-even-get-home range anxiety

This rings true. My last car came with enough fuel to prove the fuel gauge was working, which I realised just as I was about to pull onto the (local) highway.

My local [car brand] dealer doesn't have a charger for my car. As such, I always make sure that my car is charged before I take it over there.

I mean, they could charge them off 120V, but that's like 1/4 of the speed as you can get off a dedicated charger, or less if they install fast chargers, which is what I'd expect for a $200k/dealer installation.

I'm guessing most dealerships already have 240V at least. Car lifts need a lot of power, unless you want to be waiting around for minutes to lift a car. That's more than enough to charge a test drive car overnight.

That isn't what happened with Nissan. I own a leaf and have been following the whole situation since it launched. They required every dealership to install chargers. Most have moved them to the corner of the lot in protest b/c people just charge and leave.

One of the issues with electrics is that they need almost no maintenance. Dealerships don't make money on sales. So it didn't take long for the Nissan dealers to put two and two together. Fortunately, they are contractually bound to support the chargers at this point.

So we can all assume they will be out of business in 20-30 years? Great. Doesn't sound like a real loss.

I assume you haven't dealt with Tesla's purchase and service model.

I have (twice). Good riddance to traditional dealers.

>Most have moved them to the corner of the lot in protest b/c people just charge and leave.

What were they expecting...? lol

> Most have moved them to the corner of the lot in protest

Not much of a protest. Sounds better for both the dealership and the customers.

> They required every dealership to install chargers. Most have moved them to the corner of the lot in protest b/c people just charge and leave.

So...its in the most convenient location for the charger users (since they don't fight other dealership traffic) and for other dealership operations (since they don't fight charger users) ... how is this a protest or, for that matter, anything different that what Nissan corporate would most want them to do?

The last thing I'd want to do while charging my car is talk to salespeople

Nissan dealerships are effectively franchises and don't get much money from those chargers, if at all (and even if they did, it can't compare to the amount they make from car sales).

> One of the issues with electrics is that they need almost no maintenance.

But sometimes they do. Window motors fail. Air-conditioner stops blowing cold. Whatever. Stuff happens. And in a Tesla, it's a nightmare because there are no dealers and most independent shops won't touch them.

I don't know that they're building a charging network for Cadillac owners so much as making sure their dealerships are capable of selling and servicing electric cars. You can't do many test drives if you can't charge the cars.

From a users perspective though, this is terrible. Typically you want to use the chargers when you are on a road trip. And, at least where I live, the car dealerships are not convenient to the highway.

For the "apartment chargers" (aka anyone who can't charge at home or work for whatever reason) this might make some sense as a "visibility" scheme. The chargers will probably be open as well, and allow other car owners to use them… that might help drive foot traffic?

The car dealerships in a lot of the country are actually convenient to the highway or major state routes - especially as you get into less urban areas.

In my life, the only car dealership I've been to that wasn't adjacent to at least a US highway, if not an interstate, was some fancy Porsche-Audi combo. (No purchase was made there.)

I suspect that the goal is really to ensure that cars on the lot are properly charged. When I was looking into a PHEV a few years back, everyone online was complaining the cars were never, ever charged. That had to hurt sales since PHEVs generally perform worse on gas and then have engine noise.

I don't think that works. Would people really want to go to the location of dealerships, usually on high traffic roads and commercial districts, far from suburban homes to charge their vehicles?

I'd rather they setup a charging setup at homes or residential areas.

They’re probably level 2 chargers so that when you buy the car, it’s actually at 100% battery. Hyundai does this.

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