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Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

Most 7-11s near where I live have very limited parking. And it's not a place where you spend much time shopping - you're usually in and out in 5 minutes or less. Having cars charging there for an hour or more will eat up that limited parking space. It's good to have more charging stations, but it would seem like it would make more sense to have them in front of stores where people tend to shop for a long time - just thinking out loud: maybe this could be a way to revive shopping malls? Offer cut rate charging stations, people walk around in the mall waiting for their car to charge and maybe end up buying stuff.

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I assume 7-11 management is aware of things like parking constraints, and that could be why this is only being rolled out to 250 stores in North America (out of 10,000). I'm sure that there are more than enough 7-11s that do have good parking, are in the right areas where charging stations would turn a profit, etc. If even 1 out of 5 7-11s met those conditions, they can later increase that to 5,000 EV stations in 2500 stores. Remember, there's over 100K gas stations and if we count pumps, you're in the ballpark of a million, so there is lots of room for companies to enter the charging market before it gets too crowded. Might as well set up a beachhead now.

I love more charging stations, but I agree with this skepticism, 7-11 tend to be very quick stops ? If 7-11 builds chargers at my nearest location, I'll occupy them happily and walk home while charging. And perhaps I'll enter 7-11 on the drop-off or pick-up trip ?

I have a plug-in hybrid (Volt) and live in an apartment complex without chargers, and I use the abundant shopping mall chargers at Valley Fair mall in San Jose, CA as you describe. I live close enough to walk home 1 mile from the mall, so I'll drop car off, then go into mall to pickup a meal at the nice food court or browse around. Probably as 7-11 hopes: I'll readily spend $10-$15 on food, while charging $5.

My unique fit here is that Valley Fair is an urban mall: it's close to my apartment in healthy walking distance, and it has dense multi-level parking structures, so I'm not walking out and back through a vast mall parking lot.

Movie theaters in malls map well to charging stations because of the 2 hour duration you are inside, for when people go inside movie theaters again ($AMC?) Offices and workplace charging work well for me too (when not WFH)

These are DC fast chargers. You won't be walking home while it's charging.

Most shopping malls (at least that I've seen) already have EV charging.

IMO it's kind of useless though. If I'm traveling I need a DC fast charger and if it is a DC fast charger, probably won't have much time to go in the mall before it's done (and have to move my car to open up the spot). If I'm near home I almost never need to charge outside.

7-11 is actually better since I won't be too far away from my car. Run in, grab a snack, chill for 5-10 minutes and be on my way. Only problem is they never have bathrooms.

it seems restaurants, movie theaters, grocery stores, are the types of experiences where an EV charger is appropriate. This is like offering an EV charger in a drive thru like McDonalds.

Did a road trip in Europe in December 2020 and it turned out that McDonalds very reliably had EV charging. What you're saying is not as crazy as it sounds!

20-30minutes of fast charging at McDonalds is perfectly reasonable for those who go inside. The important bit is having 100+kw chargers.

Exactly! I'd love for every interstate or highway fast food restaurant to have fast chargers. Even 70KW is often fast enough to get to the next stop in a lot of cars.

There are quite a few combination 7-11 gas stations that I’ve seen on road trips. I’d guess those are the targets.

These are DC fast charging stations, you can get a decent charge in ~10/min on newer EVs.

They could enforce a time limit. Cars are also starting to charge to a usable percentage much faster. Tesla was talking about charging at 1000mph or ~ 83 miles range in 5 minutes of charging.

Also, at a 7-11 near a freeway exit, I would assume it's a different story than an urban 7-11.

it's DC fast charging. lets say you're in the store for 10 minutes. lets say its chargepoint's new 24kw charging. That means in 10 minutes, a user would get about 4kwh of energy. i'd estimate that's 10-20 miles depending one how one drives (15-20 if slow stop and go city driving, probably between 10-15 if speedy highway driving). But, if this is an around town driving and there are many places where 10-20 minutes here and there you can pick up miles like that, it all adds up.

with that said, malls are also a great place to have charging.

Probably target interstate highway locations.

The big question is, within the next 5yrs how much charge will you be able to get in 10 minutes.

Very few cars are stopping for an hour. The typical stop time is between 20 and 30 minutes.

And with more cars supporting 350kW charging speed in the near future (Kia EV6, anyone?) that time is only going to decrease.

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