Here’s Why Charging an Electric Car Can Suck - And It’s Not The Reason You Think!

Filling a car with gas is very simple and the vast majority of Americans have been doing it for years. Pay with credit card or cash, press a button or two, insert a standardized nozzle into the filler and voila, now, in theory, load. An

electric

vehicle is even simpler: plug in the car and wait a bit. If you live somew

here

with regular access to a 240-volt power source, it's possible to recharge in a matter of hours, but the reality is that most people don't have high-voltage power. your garage and also

charging

at a standard 120-volt outlet can take several days, while installing these 240-volt outlets becomes increasingly affordable.

Home

charging

is generally not feasible for those who live in apartment complexes or don't have a garage, so if you fall into this boat, how do you keep your car well-charged in the year 2019? Charging stations seem to appear more frequently than update notifications on an iPhone, so with a swipe of your credit card and a standardized charging plug, on-the-go charging should be possible. simple well you don't quite see this is called a charging point and

here

in our town of Boulder Colorado is by far the most popular company that supplies these charging stations for public use and let me quickly show you how it works, so there is an app. on your phone you open it up and there are literally hundreds in the Denver metro area and if you zoom in there has to be 20 30 40 right here in Boulder Colorado so the way it works is you click on one of the charging stations you can open.

It's on Google Maps and it takes you here, but it's even better than that because if I zoom in I can click on the station and see if it's available, so this one has two stations and it says they're both available, and they are. and it says it will charge at five kilowatts or about 15 miles per hour, so to start charging it's just a matter of swiping your credit card correctly. Unfortunately no, there are dozens of companies that produce these chargers, but each has its own account. payment method and its own app, it's like Sinclair Shell and Maverick make you check in at their station before you can refill your tank, so that's how the charging point works.

I have my credit card information plugged into my phone and it's actually used in my case Apple Pay to power the charger now you can also use a little swipe card if I had one but since I have the app that's what I'm going to do use, so I just hold my phone near the charging point and there it goes. Authorizing my credit card which is stored in the app and verify click and now my charger should be available like this but we immediately ran into another problem because remember I said all these new manufacturers use a standard plug, the j1772 plug.

It looks like this but unfortunately I lied to you because Tesla uses their own proprietary plug which really

suck

s but luckily there is a solution because with the model x this little adapter was included so if I plug my adapter into the tesla now I should be able to use this charging point plug 1772. I connect it. It is flashing green. Now take a look at this. If we look here on the screen, it will tell us how fast we are loading and how much it is costing us. there you can see 0.02 kilowatts, a smiley face that informs us that we are charging and that our current cost is, so we have not charged anything at this moment, but there goes 0.003 kilowatt hours, we accelerate up to 1.19 5.13 kilowatts, so now we are. charging at a pretty decent rate and you can see it's just plugging in today we're charging at 24 amps and here on the Tesla that means about 17 miles per hour so every hour we gain about 16 to 17 miles of range so where are you going?

To find these charging points, to be honest, governments and city parks can install them in popular areas. In this case, we are dealing with a residential complex, a large apartment complex, so this apartment complex had one. installed here, but you can also find them in shopping malls, you can find them in city centers, they are everywhere, even when we review them next in industrial areas, you can see it here on my phone. It's the charging rate of just under six kilowatts, we've added almost half a kilowatt hour and it's estimated we've added about a mile to the Tesla.

Now let's say we've been here for a couple of hours and we're done loading. we do it right, we just go up here and click stop and in theory it sends a signal to our little station and tells it that we're done loading. Their contact station says it's working and there you have it, it just stopped charging. The session was stopped. with success, so now what I do is I just come here and disconnect the vehicle and you'll notice that here he actually gives me little instructions with this cowboy guy, there he goes and you can see he charged me eight cents, we gained half a kilowatt hour of charging on six minutes, so just plugging it in like this and that's it, I'll get a receipt sent to my phone telling me how much it's going to cost, but how much does it cost.

It largely depends because the apartment complex or shopping center or whoever installed the charger will usually set the rate. The interesting thing about these charging points is that they all cost different amounts so if I click on one we just stop it, here you can see the price is 15 cents per kilowatt hour, that means recharging the tesla up to half would cost around 7.50, while this is super affordable at a speed of 15 miles gained per hour, it would take about 10 hours for half a charge, let's take a look at the one in the industrial park we have. let's move on to the next thing which should be down here now this one is actually a little bit different this one will be a dollar per hour so sometimes it's for the amount of energy sometimes it's set per hour and you can see we have two available so It should be good to go there next, so we're here at another loading point.

This is. I kept saying it's an industrial area. This is a business park, but it is actually a very advanced business park. I'd say it's probably about three or four square miles. They have like 12 of these charging point stations, so let's see how this one charges up to 6.6 kilowatts. I

think

it always starts off a little slow and then builds up pretty quickly. 1.6 4.26 5.38 Well, we're done. five let's see if we can overcome six 5.75 5.85 I

think

we are getting close to the maximum. A couple of things to keep in mind is that because these charging points are usually commissioned by the mall, park, city, or developer where they are located. are installed, they can actually set their own rules, so for example the first charging point we went to said limited to residents and guests only.

Of course, I was neither of those and they still let me charge, they can even set their own schedules. so you are at the mercy of whoever installed it generally, charging points are actually very intuitive and surprisingly reliable, but what about other charging companies? Now one of my favorite apps is an app called plug share and none of these companies today. They are actually paying us to say this. This is my honest opinion, but I want to give you a little useful information if you are thinking about purchasing an

electric

vehicle or already own one. Therefore, Plug Share is a social media-like app for plugs and charging stations.

When you open it, it looks like some kind of Google map, but there are thousands of plugs, chargers, superchargers, Tesla superchargers, and fast chargers. It's just a ton of charging opportunities and actually brought me to this one now this is another company this one is made by a company called chargepro through uh sema connect and this one is going to work a little bit different the nice thing about plug share is which in this case actually works with station and I don't have to go to a separate app so I open my Plug Share app like this like I said there are only hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stations but this is one of the suggestions , is actually where we are now. apartments in gun barrel center and there is a photo of the outlet that you can see that people have posted about their experiences. arnesha had a good experience. draw had a good experience so I know it should be fine.

I can see it is a j1772 and the cost is one dollar. one hour for the first four hours and two dollars an hour for the next four hours. Yes, I'm stuck, so one of the problems with these charging stations intended for all new vehicles and not just Tesla is that they are typically located in the front of the vehicle because many new cars charge in the front, but Tesla is in the back so I'll have to back up and try again. Ok let's try charging with the Charge Pro, so same procedure, same j1772 plug, then the Tesla adapter and then the plug now it's a challenge, there are literally dozens of charging companies and they all have their own separate apps, they all They have their own separate interfaces, so a charging point app will not work on this device, but connect the app. use to find the station, so let's see if it works.

I have everything plugged in. Let me open my shared socket. Here is the station. It's a little off in terms of location, but I'll try it anyway. Pay with the plug. sharing my credit card information is all connected, so this is going to be oh man, this is where it gets a little unintuitive. I think this is building 14 in this complex and it will be 14 north, so let me try to activate it. activating the station make sure your car is plugged in yes so this is the problem. We have an outlet sharing company trying to talk to another company by giving them my credit card information to initiate charging and it's all done over the internet.

Sometimes it doesn't work as well as just going to the individual charging stations app and doing it that way, so unfortunately I couldn't get the shared plug to connect to the station and start charging. It says the credit card pre-authorization time is running out. will move, so let's try one a little further down this parking lot and see if we have better luck. Well, the second round with Charge Pro I think that's what it's called. Yes, Charge Pro so far no luck, but this is it. our second try this one looks a little more promising so pay with the shared plug ok we're plugged in it says authorized ah come on so second time's the charm we got a flashing green light there now no we have a very nice LCD screen.

It's shown like we did at the last charging point, but you can see the kilowatt hours go up and then we're charging at about 5.6 kilowatts, so the classic level two, level two is usually between five and six kilowatts. , so the Plug Share app uses the Charge Pro here it connected and we managed to start charging the Tesla. So far, we've shown off Level 2 chargers, and while they're popping up more and more in the US, they're still too slow for most who need to charge over 15 miles of range. in one hour DC fast charging solution now it's time for level three this is called DC fast charging and levels one and two are AC chargers so alternating current is the current that comes out of your standard wall outlet.

Now these are DC or direct current. chargers at level two we max out at five or six kilowatts look at this level three 50 kilowatts pretty crazy but there are some issues with level three charging and I'll show you what it is so this is a company called evgo evgo does fast charging and especially here in our city they are the only fast charging player that is not a tesla supercharger so for this to happen i have to open the evgo app. Now I will show you the different types of plugs there are. Actually, unfortunately there are three different types of DC charging plugs and they don't necessarily play off each other, which is why the first type is called chatimo.

Now this is a chatimo plug and it is completely different from the Tesla plug. It is completely different from j1772 socket. This is a DC Fast Charger Plug that you would find on something like a Nissan Leaf or maybe even something older like a Mitsubishi. I mean, these seem to be slowly losing popularity for a Tesla. You have to get a special adapter to use this Chatumo plug. and it's a big, beefy thing that plugs into the back of the car. Unfortunately I don't have one of those but it is possible to charge a tesla using this plug however the next one is not possible to use this is called a ccs plug and this is also a fast charging plug however tesla will not sell you one ccs to tesla adapter which is a shame but the funny thing is that in Europe tesla uses this same plug so unfortunately it also varies by country but just plug this into the car and get up to50 kilowatts of real-world charging speed.

A charger like this will get you back about a hundred miles of charge in about 30 minutes. It's similar to a supercharger, but if I'm being honest, a little slower and talking about superchargers, this solution is by far the easiest and for most of us, the quickest way to recharge the third plug I mentioned It is the Tesla specific plug that only works with Tesla cars. A supercharger not required. apps or credit card just plug in the tesla and charge it at speeds of 2 3 even 400 miles of range gained every hour tesla then remotely bill your tesla accounts very simple but you will be out of luck unless you have a model x or the model 3 that will allow you to charge there, you have a quick look at the different types of fast chargers now let me know in the comments section below if you think you can live like that, I mean I think it all depends on the city and the place. like rock charging plugs, charging stations are very prevalent, these DC fast chargers are changing the game so I am very excited and happy to say yes you absolutely can, but more rural areas where electric vehicles, charging points or any other company are less frequent, it can be a bit difficult, you may be stuck charging at home.

This is the final challenge manufacturers face in converting internal combustion customers to electric vehicles, according to Toyota, the world's largest automaker. world and a recent customer survey they did found that 34 of those surveyed were not sure that battery electric vehicles do not have an internal combustion engine, so in other words, 34 of the people surveyed were not completely unsure whether or not electric vehicles had a gasoline or diesel engine. and although many of those watching are probably car enthusiasts who are fully aware that BEVs or battery electric vehicles do not have a gasoline engine and may even be willing to tolerate juggling four or five apps and potentially a charging adapter to keep their cars charged, many people like My mom and my family in general just won't have the understanding or the bandwidth to go through this process.

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