Walmart plans EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years
evchargingstations.com
evchargingstations.com
I did have to shorten the subtitle to fit. The full subtitle is "Walmart plans expansive EV Charging network which will blanket the US within a few years".
Going from the Tesla Supercharger network I can't share this sentiment at all. Virtually every time I charge at an EA station (which is admittedly only a few times a year) there is either random power degradation with no notice or one or many totally dysfunctional stalls. This latest time a few days ago the only open stall was busted because the terminal said to unplug from the last session over an hour ago.
The flakiness is compounded by the lack of chargers per station. Superchargers often have 10 or even 20 chargers, EA chargers often have 2 to 4 chargers so a charger going out is much worse.
Driving a Mach E around Texas.
Add to that, you can make people use your app and show them targeted adverts. You can get them to buy any bulk goods for pickup when they are charging the car.
And some charging networks apply idle fees if you don’t move your car quickly when charging completes.
Of course, a car can only charge as fast as the charger, so maybe it makes sense (and certainly saves money) to install slightly slower ones at locations where customers are likely to want to spend longer times.
Walmart is also unlikely to have these charges, since they obviously do not want people to rush through their stores. (Obviously charges after a couple of hours might be there.)
True, but in practical terms this is not worth worrying about for most of us. Saw a recent article where a Korean driver had done over 600,000km (~ 375,000 miles) in his Ioniq 5 on the original battery. He'd only ever used DC fast chargers, typically charging to 100%!
His battery did fail around the 600,000km mark, but most vehicles never get anywhere close to that sort of mileage. And apparently it still retained 87% of original capacity up until that point.
And despite being far out of warrantly, Hyundai replaced his battery as a goodwill (good publicity!) gesture.
(Many cars allow you to set a reduced charging speed on AC, but not for DC fast charging, AFAIK)
Sigh. Plug and pay charging is so much better. It’s not like this is a Tesla only feature. Ford has thousands of chargers beyond SuperChargers that just work for plug and pay.
With Walmart the EV charging is just going to be another thing managed from the Walmart app. I'd guess that a significant majority of people who will be wanting to charge there already use Walmart for other things and have the app.
They were great when they were expanding and had great stores to lure you away from the competition, but now they operate under maintained not well staffed stores with confusing self checkout and obtrusive surveillance everywhere. It’s just a total race to the bottom at their stores.
Hopefully it will encourage better players like Target to follow suit.
Anyways, reality is that people buy EVs to charge them at home most of the time. At least thats what I think the reality is.
An organization as large as Walmart has the wherewithal to put together an effective charging network if they decide it is a priority. One of the nice things about being first-party is that they will likely have a preventive maintenance program and emergency maintenance program for the chargers, and some of that can be done by the company electrician.
I have a Tesla, and due to various factors (apartment living, other family members with Teslas), I almost exclusively use public chargers. I have some opinions of what amenities I want at a charger (bathroom, cold diet coke), but in general the chargers at gas stations, grocery stores, and Walmarts are the best for me. Restaurants and malls are actually not great amenities because that's often not the mood you are in when you arrive at the charger.
8-(
I've _never_ been required to "join the club", or "run the app" to purchase gasoline.
Why does charging an EV require use of an app?
This is an accessibility issue and as such should be illegal...
I do agree that chargers requiring an app are a royal pain. We're an all-EV household and I don't bother with local chargers that don't have readers or support plug-and-charge. There's a lot of Shell chargers in our area that require an app to work and almost no-one uses them because of how clunky it is.
For all of those people, using the chargers won't require downloading some new clunky app that they only have because of EV charging.
It will be that an app they already have and use regularly and already have their payment information adds EV charging to the list of Walmart goods and services that they already use it for.
[1] https://www.appsrhino.com/blogs/walmart-grocery-delivery-app...
Teslas do not need any app for charging. I mean sure, they do have an app, but no need to even have the app on the phone or with you to charge. No need for a phone or a credit card or a code or a password or a chip or a retina scan or interacting with a screen or tapping a keypad or anything. Just plug the plug into the car at the supercharger and it charges. Or, do it at home, cheaper.
> This is an accessibility issue and as such should be illegal...
Assuming it was app-exclusive, you would have a hard time convincing anyone that someone might be capable of driving an EV on the road while also having enough of a disability to make it impossible for them to use a phone app.
There are already members-only gas stations such as the ones attached to Costco. This would be following the same pattern but with an app instead of a card, which is actually far more easy to acquire than a paid Costco membership.
EV charging stations that take cash are not going to be common.
Card or app allow unattended use. Cash does not.
It doesn't. Almost all DC fast charging I've done has been plug and charge or with a normal credit card terminal.
Meanwhile when I buy gas at QT or Sam's Club I pay through an app.
(I should note that I have occasionally encountered charging stations that had integrated credit card readers, but they have all been out of service.)
* Donwload the Walmart app
* Scan the QR code
So a valid response to "Why does charging an EV require use of an app" is, it doesn't, other places don't require it.
Even aside from that, many charging networks _do_ require "membership", "running the app", and often even require a pre-established balance on the account for the most convenient charging process.
It seems Walmart is also planning to follow this strategy, which is the point of the original objection.
As mentioned, the vast majority of my public DCFC experiences haven't used an app at all.
Planning long journeys means having an app for every stop.
It really shouldn't.
Last time I looked into it InterCharge (OICP) was still just 1 of 4 competing protocols along with OCPI, OCHP and eMIP.
Has OICP displaced the others now or are they still fighting it out?
The salient point is the consumer perspective: I can have one generic app to handle charging payments for basically any public charge point and I interact the same way with all of them, I put the plug in my car and scan a QR code.
The debate in that unified market is more about price discrimination, because prices at a given charge point may vary depending on who operates it versus who your e-mobility provider is. Which is quite annoying in itself and should be fixed. But paying 59 ct/kWh vs. 69 ct/kWh is quite different from having a dedicated "car charging apps" folder on your phone.
Imagine something like a two-seater City car, while I'm dreaming I imagine this type of vehicle completely taking over for most City commuting. Since these would be smaller and slower than normal cars, they would be phenomenally safer.
All of these cars are highway capable. The cars OP describes are extremely niche in Europe.
There have been many, many car projects like that from large and small companies. All of them failed to get any kind of mainstream audience.
People want general purpose cars and they will not buy anything else.
>Since these would be smaller and slower than normal cars, they would be phenomenally safer.
City driving at 50kmh is already dangerous in regular cars. Either you limit traffic to something like 25 kmh or you have to accept that crashes are now more dangerous.
Obviously it isn't great there, but it is not a car you can only drive in the city.
We have two major grocery chains (a duopoly pretty much), and they started competing for the growing EV customer base by installing chargers at every store of theirs.
Now just one of them has over 300 charging stations with about 2000 plugs, 5 years ago they had next to nothing.
Turns out it's good for business when families stop to charge for 30 minutes, they drop a bunch of money for other services while they're at it.
And I'll rather stop at a store to grab cheap snacks and ready to eat meals vs. paying through the nose for gas station prices. (We actually have some cups, plates, and cutlery in the car just for this)
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/electric-transformer-shorta...
This will not change much. Charging infrastructure is only a small part of making EVs appealing, although it is obviously a necessary prerequisite.
The IDs right now are also selling quite well, with VW Brand leading the manufacturer charts.
Generally, most EVs you can buy in the EU are just 10-20k more expensive than their ICE counterparts, and incentive programs don’t make up for that difference.
I assume you are talking about the family van 2 series? And not the sporty 2 door 2 series. (Why didn't you buy a Touran?)
You are also comparing used car prices to new car prices which is pretty insane.
>EV prices are just way too high.
Sure.
> You are also comparing used car prices to new car prices which is pretty insane.
I don’t care if the car is used or new tbh, I need 7 seats. I get that that’s not a super common situation, and that the comparison is unfair. The 2er was 40k when new. The thing is, there‘s basically no usable used 7 seater EVs in the non-crazy price range.
A used lower end model from one manufacturer vs a new high end model from a different one doesn’t seem like a fair comparison.
Besides 7 seaters are only must for families with 4 kids, AKA less than 10% of households.
I have both - decent sized EV and an old 7 seater. I'd never want to take it for a road trip as EV is just far more comfortable and easier to drive (autopilot 90%+). Its sole purpose is to deal with family visits and when I need to tow something like twice a year.
I just hope something like the blue rhino propane tank for batteries to offer a Battery drop in.
DCFC is a good bit more expensive than a L2 charge.
Charging at home it costs me about $0.135/kWh.
I'm very aware you pay a premium for DCFC. Presumably Texas' regulatory structure would help with all of that.
> Charging at home it costs me about $0.135/kWh.
So you're paying more than I pay to charge at home with my municipally owned and operated power company in California.
Most of California pays a rate 2x what I'm paying, which is a pretty typical rate.
Yup, and they can charge a premium for fast charging, because it is really convenient when you need it.
> Most of California pays a rate 2x what I'm paying, which is a pretty typical rate.
Yeah, all the private companies in California charge a fortune for power. It's ironic that the municipal services are so much more cost effective.