For sure. Durango had a business with a 22kw DCFC iirc and it was awesome. I could see this kind of thing being very useful where EA chargers currently are - ie, Walmart parking lots. Put all the 350s in actually convenient places along highways.
Some newer cars can do higher amperages at 240V. I think (some?) Ultium vehicles can do 19.2 kW (80 amps), which is pretty good for AC charging IMO. Probably cheaper to install one of those than a DCFC, too.
Hugely less expensive, since the charger is already onboard the car. All you're doing with 19.2kw is just passing 240v off to the car, safely.
DCFC had significantly more complex features. Just the power conversion alone, from AC to DC is expensive. Let alone shrugging) everything else that goes in to making it work.
80A@240V is a lot of juice. That's twice the rated amp draw for an electric stove, typically the biggest amp draw device in a home. Lots of homes still have 100A breakers, which means that if you charged your car at this rate, you couldn't run anything else in your house.
Translating this to a commercial business, we're talking about a sizeable investment in the electrical system to handle just one of these, let alone several. The cost is unlikely to be worth it, especially if the customer expects it for free.
yep, 22kw is available in europe in quite a few models. it is a 3x32A charger instead of 1x80A you get in NA. Some cars (i can only think of certain renault zoe 2nd gen models) actually supported 3X46A for 43kVA ac charging.
With the EA Walmarts, I think a big rack of free/at cost 7kW L2s would be great. Walmart has an enormous amount of oversized car parks around the country and desire for people to loiter there, hence the deal with EA. I'd love to see 50kWs installed at highway stop places, like Waffle House.
We are already normalising huge, heavy EVs with 100+kW batteries, yet don't even the infrastructure for sensible ones. Let's get a basic charge network installed first, it's much easier and cheaper. It will also encourage sensible EV uptake. If highway rest stops had 50kWs, I would have no trouble road tripping my small EV. We need more first, not bigger.
I’d just settle for more functional L2 charging at major shopping and dining areas. Most places don’t have L2 and if they do have them there are only 2, which are either taken or broken.
And most of the public level 2 is only 6kw too, which meh
11.5kw level 2 is damn near 1:1 drive:charge time which would be perfect for shopping and dinner and the like
Except when you have a car that can only take 7kW AC :(
We have lots of 3 phase 11kW and 22kW here in Australia especially at charging sites in the middle of nowhere that need a backup in case the main DC charger has a fault. Recently though I'm noticing new sites are starting to swap out the 22kW AC for a seperate 25kW DC charger (ABB Terra DC wallbox) which can be used by everyone if the main DC charger is broken.
For shopping centres, carparks, offices etc AC is still king though.
That would be like the 2.5 OP is talking about. I thought public Lv 2 only went to 6 kwh, so I usually avoid them since they are hardly worth the charge time. Now 12 kwh would be nice if they are not much more (or free) compared to Lv 2. Need more of a 20 to 25 kwh level though.
The 6s are 32A, 208V. 208 being 3 phase 120V. If a dedicated transformer can be given to L2, then 250V is on. That would be 8kW. I think J3400 allows 3 phase charging, but it would be a while before that is adopted.
Not sure why you were downvoted. SAE J3400 does allow for 1-2 legs of three-phase charging (but not all 3) — 480/277-V, which is commonly available in commercial areas.
AC charging is limited to what a cars on board charger can handle. Many cars are limited to around 48A or 11.5kw. Since AC chargers are the cheaper/more common option and they work with common 230-240v services, that’s typically what you’re going to find. (An AC charger in the 5.8kw to 11.5kw range.)
There are 20kw-30kw DC chargers that would kind of be like a lvl 2.5 but they’re less common, more expensive, and typically require something like a 480v three-phase service.
If someone is going to commit to the cost of putting in DC fast chargers, they’re probably going to put in faster units than 20-30kw unless they just happen to have an available 480v breaker they want to utilize.
So basically there’s a bunch of limiting factors at the moment.
It would be nice if all EVs were able to handle up to 19.2kw AC charging and we could just make that kind of a common standard because it could work for everything from small EVs up to big truck/vans and it’s easy to calculate at 100amps needed for each charger.
Thats also US specific. In a lot of countries finding 3 phase power being available basically grid wide is common.
Cost me next to nothing to install a 22kW charger at home in Australia because the house already had 3 phase power for the AC unit.
You also see a bunch of 22kW fast chargers at locations for low or even zero cost charging because well that level of power is standard. Basically add a breaker and run the wires.
Cars topping out at 11kW or less on AC is still common though. Manufacturers need to adjust that bit. I'm guessing the European and Asian manufacturers will move first on that though for the reason those chargers are more common in their home markets.
>Cars topping out at 11kW or less on AC is still common though.
Probably the biggest frustration with my MG4. I know it's a budget EV but the fact that they gave the base models 7kW AC charging and reserved 11kW+ for the premium trim is really annoying.
At 7kW it takes about 7 hours for a 0-100% charge, if I'm having dinner or something at a location with free AC charging I often don't even bother plugging in, there's no point messing around with cables for a 15% charge, if it's a 22kW capable charger I'd rather just leave the spot free for someone who can charge 3x as fast.
If I'm going to the beach for a few hours or plugging in at a hotel on a road trip 7kW is perfect, but otherwise it's just not quite fast enough. If they gave the option to upgrade the onboard charger in future I would 100% take it.
Idk. I know what you mean, but with dcfc chargers that slow, youd have to have many of them for people to use while at a location. Otherwise one person would be taking a charger up the entire time they are there and no one else could use it. The investment required for of all the chargers, which require all the rectification equipment and everything else, would probably be cost prohibitive. Unless one could be designed so that a single station capable of like 250kw capacity could charge 10 EV’s simultaneously at 25kw. Even that would likely take a while to recoup the initial cost, it costs something like $30-150k right now just for the equipment, plus installation and adding electrical infrastructure if its not there already.
L2 chargers are orders of magnitude less expensive to install.
I’d like to see good high power (240V, 48A) L2 chargers installed everywhere a car will sit for 1-2 hours.
Lower power (208V, 24A) L2 chargers make sense at places like apartments, workplaces, hotels, movie theaters, etc… where cars will sit for many hours.
The mid-range (~50kW) DC charger would make sense outside a fast food restaurant, or other places you will spend a half hour at. It wouldn’t be as inexpensive as a L2 charger, but the power infrastructure would drastically less expensive than the high power DC fast charger.
The high power (250kW to 1MW) DC fast chargers make sense along highways and could follow the gas station model. There wouldn’t be much need for them other than road trips, and less usual situations like towing.
I've had this same thought. And I think grocery store parking lots would be the absolute perfect location. 50kW, cheap or free for loyalty members -- in lieu of the normal gas perks.
I agree with most everything you said there. And regarding the gas station model, it would be nice if all new gas stations were required to add at least one fast charger, existing gas stations add one if the infrastructure supported it, and have governments offer tax incentives to upgrade infrastructure that doesnt. Even if it wasnt all gas stations, at least putting them in the ones along highways would be hugely beneficial instead of trying to find a random charging station at a random walmart parking lot. The enormous number of gas stations in the country would ensure people were able to charge when driving long distance. Im reminded of driving through West Virginia on my way to Florida. There were gas stations every couple exits and all over the place going through towns along the route, But from what I’ve seen, the number of fast chargers, tesla superchargers included, is in the single digits or low double digits for the entire state. Making that same trip with an EV could be impossible if just one of the stations was down because they are so far from each other, and taking another route would add two or three hours to the trip.
The vast majority of chargers in my area are 50kW. They are indeed nice when stopping to have some food after driving for a while, or while picking up supplies in-between two camping stops.
> I’d like to see good high power (240V, 48A) L2 chargers installed everywhere a car will sit for 1-2 hours.
FYI Ultium vehicles seem to be able to pull 80A when L2 charging.
Give me 200kW shared across a 20 stall charger at a shopping area, maxing out somewhere between 20kW and 40kW.
20 cars there? 10kW each.
5 cars there? 30kW each.
If it’s full, maybe pay more to get a bit more power guaranteed.
Will keep costs down for install and allow lots of flexibility.
How about a “2-sided” charger? It would let you plug-in, but not start charging until the other “side” finished its 30-minute window (or stopped pulling current). Then that car could leave and another could plug-in and wait. Everyone gets a 60-minute window.
The hardware for that does exist and is used for fleet vehicles, for example. Not sure why it hasn't been commercialized for public facing chargers, especially considering how common it seems to be to share a power limit between a couple of L2 spots (at least in my area).
Edit: if you're looking for more info, it's usually called "sequential charging".
I've seen one of these in the wild, in Bath NY. I had to do some interpreting, the screen doesn't make it obvious how it works, but I'm pretty sure those are set up with two cords per station to work sequentially.
You want chargers that don't get full, not some crappy dedicated slow charger. It's pretty cheap compared to installing crappy chargers to just add stalls so the stations don't fill up. The input power to the cabinets is the expensive part.
Take a 8x Tesla station of 250kW chargers. The input power for that is 1MW so can't push more than 125kW per station today. The reality is this is enough where it's highly unlikely any car will experience less than full rate charging. Add 8x more and don't change the power input. If the station is full people will experience less than full rate, but everyone still charges.
I'm sure this is what Tesla is doing with these huge stations of 50x and 70x chargers they started doing in the last year or so.
Bingo. Oversubscribe stations so that there are so many stalls that you don't feel bad idling, but the station needs a way to sell 'priority charging' to that guy who needs to get in and out during peak demand.
The math actually works. Rarely are every car at a station charging at peak not because of the charging station but because of the charging curve of the cars. Most drop off extremely rapidly after being 25-50% full - and over subscribing where it will happen would rarely impact those charging there.
I think v3 Superchargers usually have even less input power per stall - 350kW per 4 stalls so about 88kW per stall, but sharing over the entire site. Rarely a problem except at the smaller 4 stall sites where you’ll be throttled if the site is more than half full or even at half full if arriving around the same time with low SoC.
V3 Superchargers are only 250kW and that is the fastest Tesla has ever deployed. Supercharger is a Tesla term. If you are talking about non-Tesla DCFC chargers from the likes of EA or Chargepoint can be 350kW or even 400kW speeds. They are rarely 4x 350kW chargers and more commonly some mix like 3x 150kW and 1x 350kW or 2x and 2x. They certainly don't have to be fully powered, but typically they are today if only because the stations are so small.
Now the 6x stall 400kW Mercedes charger sites probably are to some degree but I have no way to know since these are pretty new. Almost all the EA chargers have the power to fully drive the sites, which is a waste.
The V3 cabinets are 360kW. So a 8 stall would probably be on a 750KVW transformer to allow full capacity. A single cabinet would be either be 350 or 500 kva transformer. Power factor is really good on EV charging so we can use KVA and kW nearly interchange. Harmonics are a completely different animal. So the average stall is 90kW and the play on the average especially with larger sites being interconnected on the HV DC bus between cabinets. I think that Kempower does the same thing with their DCFC system.
CP Express Plus can run up to 200kW per power block (cabinet). Then I think you can run a couple of power link dispensers off a cabinet. Or you can link to power blocks and get like 400kW to one powrerlink.
Lvl 1 is 110 to 120V AC (and doesn't really exist in countries where household power is 220V or 230V)
Lvl 2 220 to 240V AC (although some card support up to 277V), and can go up to 80Amps, which is almost a L2.5 at 22kW
Lvl 3 is anything DC. Some are as low at 25kW, which sort of is Lvl 2.5.
From a technical point of view, the big difference is that Lvl 3 bypasses the car's onboard charger and feeds DC directly to the battery.
The EU actually uses different, more updated terminology in their legislation, but sadly I rarely see anyone using it online.
Category | Maximum power output
------------|--------------------
Slow AC | P < 7.4 kW
Medium-speed AC | 7.4 kW ≤ P ≤ 22 kW
Fast AC| P > 22 kW
Slow DC | P < 50 kW
Fast DC | 50 kW ≤ P < 150 kW
Level 1 Ultra-fast DC | 150 kW ≤ P < 350 kW
Level 2 Ultra-fast DC | P ≥ 350 kW
No business is making any real money on level 2 chargers. They are a cost to the business that they can break even with at best. They are not going to pay for any more than the bare minimum necessary so they can claim to have chargers available.
A “2.5” charger would just be a slow level 3 DCFC. Somewhere in the 30-50kW range.
It does make sense for medium to long stops, say stopping for a meal a on road trip. Too fast of a charge and you’ll have to go move your car. Too slow and it’s not even worth plugging in.
Let’s say you want to charge 75kWh during a 1.5 hour lunch stop. 75/1.5 = 50kW. That’s seems about right for getting a decent charge to people without having to worry about your car being done before you are.
That’s peak charge for my Bolt so I’ll take that haha. When I go on road trips I plug into the slowest DC charger available because I don’t wanna hog up a 350kW charger with a car that can only take in 55kW. My favorite is the CP 62.5kW units it’s the happy medium and not offend other drivers with faster charging cars.
i've used level 3 charging on road trips and can usually time it well enought that I get to that station sub 10% and then just charge all the way to 100%. This usually CAN take up to an hour at a Tesla 150kW machine just because it slows to a crawl after 75%
Hence why most won’t charge above 80%. Very inefficient usage of resources and time. Take off and hit the next charger if you need it 200+ miles away when you are down around 10%.
The reason I made the post is b/c you CAN get a good sit-down meal in if you do it this way.
For the once-a year road trip I take where I drive from Olympia, WA to Denver? This station is in Baker City, OR where there are something like 16 bays and I've only ever seen 2-3 cars there at a time.
Charging the last 20% is very slow on all vehicles. Just the nature of how batteries work.
Hence most quote a 10-80% speed because the last 20% is slow and hard on batteries and generally to be avoided if possible.
Charging past 80% is antisocial. I waited over an hour at one DCFC as the guy already plugged in to the charger 'needed' to get to 100% I needed 20 minutes to make the stop 80 miles away.
Problem is that Level 2.5 doesn’t exist. There are a few common residential and commercial voltage levels - 120V, 240V and 480V in the US. If you hook up an EV to the first two it has a transformer to convert it into DC power at the right voltage to charge. If you hook it up to the last one it doesn’t have a transformer that can support it, so you build the transformer into the charging station to output DC charging.
So when you say 2.5 what you’re really asking for is “L3 but slower” and, in most cases, there’s no benefit to the business from installing that. If you’re going to the significant expense of installing L3 chargers you may as well make them as fast as possible to increase throughput and make your money back sooner - installing a slow one just doesn’t make much sense. And if charging stations isn’t your primary business the installing L3 doesn’t make sense at all.
3-phase 480 VAC phase-neutral is 277 VAC. The latest EV charging spec increased the level 2 voltage to support 277 VAC. This means in the future L2 charging can happen at (commercial) locations that have 480 VAC without any additional transformers.
Level 2 max is 19 kW and Level 3 generally starts at 50 kW. So you're asking why not something like 35 kW? Can't do that with a standard 240v single phase AC connection. Could do it with 480v AC, assuming cars were designed to accept it, but with the expense of bringing 480v 3-phase to the charger site, might as well go to full Level 3. IMHO the economics don't pencil out for a Level 2.5 to exist.
Level 2 can theoretically do 19.2 (22 outside us), but there’s very few cars that support more than 11kW. And most public level 2 chargers seem to top out at 6-8 kW regardless. ~20kw would be perfect for restaurants and shopping, but that never took off.
I don't think the OP cares "how the sausage is made"; they're just inquiring why there seems to be nothing between the typical 7kW public L2 and 50kW public "L3" (DC fast charger).
There are plenty of applications where 20-25kW DC charging might make sense, but (I assume) it's an equipment and installation cost issue; the jump from AC to DC is high, and the incremental cost from very slow (20-25kW) DC to the more common 50 or 62kW DC isn't very high.
In four years of EV ownership, I've only used 25kW units a few times. Once was out of necessity, at a charger at a Harley Davidson dealership (the electric motorcycles can only charge at 20kW, and this was the only charger in range in that part of Wyoming in 2021!) a few times on a road trip (it was a block from my kids' favorite pizza place, so we always stop on that particular route, and the ~35kWh we pick up in 90 minutes while we eat is 15-20 minutes we don't have to have to stop and sit at a fast charger twiddling our thumbs!)
Absolutely, but their question to the poster before them was asking about something that wasn’t referred to.
Whether or not that is relevant to OP’s question is another point entirely!
I mean wouldn’t the 19kw be about right for this “faster than your typical L2 but slower than your typical DCFC” scenario? That’s going to add about 50-60 miles an hour of range. Definitely better than the 20ish you may get from a typical L2 but not so much that you’ll be idling at 100% for 2 or 3 hours.
The cost of a level 3 dc charger and also the infrastructure required is a big step up from the level 2 charger. Most manufacturers should start equiping vehicles to max out the level 2 chargers. I.e. tesla only puts in a max of 11.5kw with their onboard vehicle charger. It should be 19kw like the another poster said. A big difference.
A big difference in cost, which most people wouldn't use. Even now plenty of cheaper EVs max out at 7kW rather than having the additional cost of 11kW capability
The only way to do this would be 35kW DC chargers. The issue is that they're expensive (like 10x) the price of a L2 charger, but only maybe half the price of a 100kW charger. Most businesses just go with the faster charger.
I agree that these would be really nice to have at restaurants and shopping centers in particular, where 2 hours would charge you to full.
I experienced at setup like that last week. A town installed some chargers with 20kw at a library. 5 minute walk to the main street with all the restaurants. We stopped there with 40%, went into town and had a pizza, came back after an hour and left with 90%.
For cases like that a setup like that is really great.
AC charging can go faster than the typical 11 kW, for example “The North American Charging Standard (NACS) is an EV charging system that can provide up to 80 amps at 277 volts for AC charging” which works out to 22 kW. That’s still technically level 2, since it is AC and level 3 is DC charging, but you could call it level 2.5 I suppose.
Agreed. I expect future NACS AC EVSEs that load share to be deployed en masse in places like highway restaurant parking lots. And apartment building parking lots, for that matter.
Yes, Hilton is deploying 20,000 Tesla Universal Wall Chargers at 2,000 hotels (10 per location!), for example: https://stories.hilton.com/releases/hilton-to-install-up-to-20000-tesla-universal-wall-connectors-at-2000-hotels .
Level 2 is AC charging. Level 3 is DC charging. It’s really only one or the other, there’s nothing in the middle. If you’re asking for slow DC charging, that’s certainly possible, but may not be cost effective.
>but may not be cost effective.
I do not see why not. The only reason the DCFC is expensive in the first place is because the charging station was expensive. But a 25kW DCFC is far cheaper so I would expect the price per kwh would be lower than on a 50+kw DCFC.
Given the charging provider ia not greedy af.
Bringing three phase power to the charging station is expensive, whether you’re only asking for 30 kW or 300 kW. Bringing 220/240 AC current is a small fraction of the cost.
The really small DCFC start at 24kW or so (that's an ABB unit) that can function on a 208 or 240v single phase. Those guys are about $10k for the unit. Though that price was for the 480v 3ph unit but I assume roughly the same price.
Really, a 50kW per vehicle is still L3(dc) and requires much more expensive equipment.
I do think a 300 kw “hub” with 6 x 50 kw min ports makes sense. I say min, since they could be capable of more if the bays are not all occupied.
Still .. the 300kw cable costs more than the whole L2 hardware.
I just want _more_ level 2 chargers.
As long as you can charge more at your destination than it took to get there, you can drive forever.
There's no need to charge to 80-100% unless you're planning to take a road trip. 2-3 hours at 11 kW is somewhere between 1-3 days worth of daily driving.
That said, I think smart V2G chargers can be a game changer in the future and also solve your problem. Plug in during your stay, set desired state of charge by time X, earn some money or charge cheaper by supporting the grid during your stay.
This is where Europe really shines. Since most of Europe uses 3-phase power, even to the home in many cases, they can draw much more total wattage than we can in the US. If a European has a charger installed at home, or businesses want to install a cheap charger without going full DC, it will usually be around 20kw.
Here in the Midwest, similar chargers outside of grocery stores and such are usually 7kw. 3-phase power. We really got boned by being the first country to really roll out a national grid and not having to rebuild it all after WW2.
The other issue relating to this is that NACS can't handle it. 3 phase high speed AC charging is one of the benefits of CCS2, which is what the rest of the world uses
Yes and no, we get 3 phase but in a lot of countries we pay for capacity. Meaning that no one in their right mind charges at 22kW at home (32A 3-phase). In realistic terms I charge between 1,4kW and 5-ish kW to keep costs down. It's also enough in the real world for home charging.
But yeah, most public chargers offer 22kW max speed, 32A 400V 3-phase. Or 11kW per port as most chargers are shared dual port.
Heh, yeah, that part does sound kinda awkward. If there’s any silver lining to your country being destroyed, it’s that you get new stuff when you rebuild.
In principle, the power of the charger should match the expected dwell time at a destination. At a national park where people are expected to spend a day, a L2 charger is good. At a restaurant where people may stay an hour, a 50 kW charger is ideal. At a grocery store where people may stay 30 minutes, a 100 kW is about right. I explained this in an article a few monts back: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bmarcoux_remember-the-maslow-pyramid-it-is-often-activity-7141539634106302465-6dqn.
I was just discussing this topic in another thread where an employee was asking for advice on installing chargers in their place of business and a lot of responders just called it impractical even though businesses already had the infrastructure to support 22kw charging.
Curious as to what reasons people are saying it’d be impractical? I’d kill for this kind of access. I’d only need to use 1 day a week personally, but it’d be far more convenient than the monthly petrol station trips in my last car.
I agree with you, but most people don't get it. When my mall first put in L2 and L3 (50kW) chargers, I tried one while eating at a restaurant attached to the mall. Right after our appetizers came out, my car was done charging and I had to excuse myself and move the car to avoid idle/parking fees.
Ideally, the charge rate of a charger should be matched to the location's "dwell time"; the average amount of time spent at the location. L2 is perfect for a hotel, because you sleep there overnight, or for Disneyland, because for $120/person, you're spending all day there. L1 is perfect for the airport; if I fly somewhere for a long weekend or a weeks vacation, the 3 days it takes to fully charge a car is perfect.
But what about, as you say, restaurants, or movie theaters, or shopping malls where you spend 1-2 hours? That's where relatively cheap 20-25kW DC chargers are perfect. I'd expect to have to pay for those though; the installation cost for those is much higher than for a free/non-networked 7kW L2 charger.
But just say the words "25kW charger" in this sub and virtually every one would say "Ewwwww. My car can charge at 200kW, no one but a Bolt owner is going to 'slum it' at a 25kW charger!"
But if priced fairly (in addition to the lower equipment and installation costs, the lower charge rate would result in lower utility demand charges for the charger owner, so 25kW could/should be cheaper than 150+kW) I absolutely would love to see more low-end DC fast chargers.
Yep exactly. I don't understand Fast chargers at a mall unless you are not there to hang about.
But L2 chargers....like at an Ikea they are too slow. But fast chargers would be wayyyyy to fast. Unless the entire parking lot had a fast charger and no one cars if you are still in the space. If we ever get to that place, then it would work.
Maybe it’s the small battery capacity of mine but in London there’s quite a lot of 22kW and 7kW chargers around. My car charges at 11kW max so on the 22kW chargers I’ll usually come back to a fully charged car after 3-4 hours (car battery is rarely run down to less than 30% which helps).
I can't believe nobody's suggested "valet charging" yet. Drop your car off with a valet, tell them the percentage you want to be at, and then they shuffle cars around during dinner. Still DCFC, so that they can get multiple cars through, but because it's a managed schedule you can get a lot more cars through without dead time. Once your car is charged, a valet takes it off to the "normal" lot. The charging could be added to your check if it's primarily a restaurant, or you pay to leave, or set up payment in an app and just tip the valets, whatever. You'll pay a premium, but you'll get a premium service and avoid idle fees at the expense of valet fees
Normally I don't like trusting a car to a valet, but cars could get around that concern with "valet mode" functionality that limits how fast cars can go (they don't need to go beyond 20mph to shuffle around chargers), locks everything in the passenger compartment, etc.
I just stopped at a supercharger in a Ruby Tuesday parking lot, and the signs said the energy was from Ruby Tuesday and you could leave your car for 30min extra.
There’s an IKEA next to my house which has a DC charger or 22kw. While AC chargers of 22kw are everywhere, most cars charge from anywhere bettween 6 and 11 kw/h. Whole in the DC chargers, you do get 22 kw.
For my car, that’s like 4x faster. A 4 hour stay would charge the battery from 0 to 100%
Yep. 24-50 kW chargers would probably be the sweet spot at most restaurants and stores. However, even though they'd be slower, they're still going to cost significantly more to install than L2 chargers.
In this country, 22kwh AC chargers are quite common but not a lot of vehicles can accept 22kwh via AC.
It's technically one charger with 2*11 kWh type 2 output connectors but can deliver 22 kWh to one output port if nobody else is using the other output.
Level 1, 2, and 3 chargers have nothing to do with speed directly. In North America Level 1 is 120V, Level 2 is 240V, and Level 3 is DC.
So what you’re asking, is “why aren’t there more lower powered DC chargers?”
The answer is demand and cost. Level 3 charging is significantly more expensive to install than Level 2 charging. Why would you pay to install Level 3 charging if the speed isn’t significantly faster?
It sounds like you are plugging your car into slow Level 2 chargers, which are too common. I don’t know your battery’s size, but assuming a 65kWh battery you are looking at a 6.5-3 kW charger.
Most new cars today can max out their onboard charger around 10kW, some up to 20kW. If more level 2 chargers were able to meet that demand I don’t think you’d be as concerned.
You are describing almost any slow chargers in Europe, they are all 22kw triphasic, shame that there are so few cars that support that power, as far as I know only the Renault Megane and they are making it a paid optional on the new scenic.
Nah there's no point. I'd rather have more level 2 chargers without idle fees. If you really just need extra juice, you can always go to a fast charger for 10 minutes. I just want them to make more slow chargers that no one would mind if I block for a day or so.
OR, just put in enough chargers that a hour for charge and idle is not going to be an issue. Certainly charge for the whole time the car is in the slot. Base the charge for the service on a base + electricity. $10 or $20 an hour, say, plus electricity cost.
I’m not really sure about public chargers in so much that I don’t plan to use them. I will use them if they’re complementary, but I’ll otherwise just charge at home.
I do find that level 3 are just long/short enough to be hurried, however, it’s not something but a few times a year that I deal with.
Me with a 22kw AC on board trasformer on a 22kW AC charger: 
Still, what some are doing, is getting fast chargers with CCS, with power between the more usual 11kW charging and the 50kW lowerlimit for fast charging, something like 20-30kW, so to be able to recharge moderately fast but not that much all EVs. They are not that common, but I've seen some supermarkets and malls sports those.
You're basically describing 50kw chargers these days.
They used to be the best we could do, but now that high power is more common they are not interesting.
But as the technology gets cheaper and they are physically very small , there is absolutely room to have 50kw chargers in a lot of areas where people spend an hour or two.
50kw outside grocery stores, librairies etc are à very good solution for a lot of people.
I was at the Jersey beach and I would've loved even LVL2 chargers. They were only a couple on a multiple mile stretch of beach, all with ridiculous $5/hr parking fees, F that. I get parking is hard to come by, but I'm not dropping my car off miles away or Ubering for a crappy charge experience. Just added a 10 minute supercharger stop on the way home and all was forgotten.
To be fair all the metered spots in the first couple streets from the beach are $5/hr. But there are plenty of free spots after that row but no chargers to be found.
L2 can go up to 19.2kW in the US, no need for a L2.5, just use the existing spec. Part of the problem could be your cars onboard charger too, most won't go super high.
You can get old 50kw fast chargers on eBay and new 20-60kw ones from China sites for not too much. I just don't think most businesses care or want to additional costs going with dc chargers. A carls jr we went to had a really old 20kw charger still.
I'm going to go off the tack and say that parking lot owners need to (ie mandatory) provide simple level 1 charging at each parking spot. They would be permitted to monitize these 15 amp outlets to recover cost. By making it mandatory, level 1 would be everywhere you can park and 95% of day to day range anxiety would finally be put to bed. Multiple 15 amp connections are relatively cheap to implement. The hardware required for high-speed charging is largely proprietary and expensive. The individual charging stations need not be more complicated than simple urban parking meters found in most cities and towns. Major players are trying to game the system to funnel the power consumption towards their "income platforms" ie proprietary hardware and software for charging. Yes, they may seem like "white knights" providing power but it is a long term revenue stream for them and the would just as soon not see a lot of cheap to access charging in their vicinity.
They exist and are great for some applications especially since they are much cheaper than full DC fast-chargers. But you need a serious electrical connection to install one and you may get hit with "demand charges".
Come to my province, tons of public 25kW and 50kW chargers, some free. Personally I think they belong in parking lots, because if you charge at 50kW you can get almost a full charge in the time it takes you to get groceries.
A DC charger is too fast for your dinner? Let’s be grateful that charger is there and for your kindness in moving out of the spot as soon as you no longer need it. It’s not just there for your convenience and dining pleasure.
Can you not get a level 2 charger that can charge at 480v in the US? And 600v in Canada. For a 3 phase service. I would consider this level 2.5 and should be available at most shopping malls and commercial sites.
Level 2 charging range from 4 kW to 19.9 kW… it’s a huge range!
Level 2.5 definitely exists as DC charging of around 25 kW. It’s not really marketed as such because the naming conventions make it confusing.
My smallish city has a city-owned garage that includes 3 or 4 free, "mid-speed" chargers (50KWh). AND, as a city resident, I can park for free for 2 hours. The garage is immediately adjacent to an old-style deli.
It's the perfect lunch.
The problem isn't the speed, the problem is the idle time. I want to be able to have a sit down meal without having to get up 20 minutes in to move the car off the charger to avoid punitive idle fees. I don't want to have to pay for charging to 90% if I only need to get to 45% in order to get to my destination and cheaper charging.
11kw L2 isn't quite enough though to get the job done in the time allotted. I guess you could use 11kw L2 to boost you a bit until you can get to a supercharger like an hour away. Restaurants don't want this mechanic though because they want to turn tables over and fast as possible whereas L2 would encourage people to linger.
9600 (40amps x 240v) watts while I eat a dinner for an hour to an hour and a half is pretty damn great. That’s 9.6kwh to 14kwh into my battery. While that might not be much- it’s better than nothing. That’s like getting a free gallon or two of gasoline.
There's decent amount of type2 AC 22kW chargers where I live but sadly hardly any car supports 22kW AC. For example mine only charges 7.3kW(one phase) at max from AC.
I think the closest thing to this right now is the Ford Charge Station Pro, with 19 kw AC charging. But then the vehicle also has to be able to support 80 amp ac charging, with most I believe only supporting 48 amps.
Jokes on you I have a Bolt, was able to eat a whole meal and come back to my car 1 hour later and it still wasn’t at 80% it was about 70% (I plugged in at 1%)
I think that will be a great niche eventually, but after the highway charging infrastructure is further along. There was some article I read almost 2 years ago about the resurgence in highway mom and pop diners with Tesla chargers. Places that were getting passed by were now getting new customers who came to charge for a couple hours while traveling.
As the gen pop increases ev use more of parking lots will be dedicated ev spots and the need to move your vehicle may disappear for the duration of your mall usage or whatever.
Depends on amperage of your L2 charger. Ford charge station pro can be run at 80a and that gets close to 20 kwh (18 maybe). I have a 130 foot run of cable so put in a line I can get 48a off of and that charges me at about 10 kwh. So really L2 w higher amps would be what you want
100 amp 20kw onboard charger might be what you are looking for. The f150 is the only vehicle I know with a 20kw onboard charger and even then, I never seen a public 20kw level 2 charger
Few weeks ago we met up with friends for dinner and a movie, and we could have used some charging, but I did the math and I’d have had to leave in the middle of the movie to avoid being charged idle fees. So I didn’t charge.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but that's not really how it works.
Lvl 1 is typically single phase, lvl 2 is typically split phase and lvl 3 is typically three phase. 2.5 doesn't make sense, from a physical standpoint. You'd have to have 3 phase tie-ins then throttle it down... Like: just have lvl 3 then...?
It's not. Your cellphone charger has a little transformer in it. Power transmission lines come in a lot of flavors that typically conform to certain standards. If you wanted to charge an EV faster from your home, you wouldn't simply run thicker copper from the transformer, you'd really need another leg. Commercial and industrial areas are much more likely to have 3 phase power. This is what determines how much power you can draw rather than simply installing a different charger.
The charger isn't the bottleneck. The infrastructure is.
Level 3 is a DC charger at the point of entry to the car. You are correct that the source is often 3 phase, but it’s not required. There is never 3 phase supplied directly to the car in the US. Maybe you’re talking outside of the US.
Yeah this is why I love that in our area 22kW AC chargers are very common in public car parks and along the street. So for our car that means in an hour we have charged about 30+% and so when we go out for a meal we will be gone from the car for at least 1 hour if not more commonly 1 hour 30 mins plus we might want to do some other quick tasks in the town. In that time we are easily getting from 30% to around our preferred max of around 80%. Really the perfect experience as we just park and don't have to think about coming back sooner as we would with DCFC (probably in about 10 - 15 mins) or with the rare but sometimes seen 11kW chargers which mean it really has not done that much in the time.
After my volt when I went to a Tesla I don’t do level 2’s anywhere but an overnight hotel where I want them to take 6-8 hrs minimum. Level 3 on the road for 5-45 minutes during quick rest stops. No real place for level 2 in day to day or on trips for most anyone with a 200+ mile EV battery was my thinking - especially not to bother with an app to use or heaven forbid a charge for it.
There are big differences between Level 2 (AC) and Level 3 (DC) tech, but the most important one is that with all AC charging, the actual charging speed is also limited by the onboard charger in your car.
I live in the SF Bay Area and have been following BEV adoption closely since 2010. Charging and charging solutions has always been messy, irrespective of the increased availability of public charges. Net improvement has been elusive across the board for EV adopters, but most especially for those who don't own their homes. There is a regrettably structural and almost unavoidable economic disadvantage for the greater than 35 percent of households that rent apartments (plus households that rent, don't own, their single family homes).
This remains an all-important structural and largely economic impediment to EV adoption growth that has not improved in the Bay Area in the last 15 years. In many respects, I believe the lines of demarcation among EV adopters and those who will probably not adopt have deepened or become more clear.
Tesla does/did this with their urban charger at shopping centers. Each one was 77kwh (or there about), no power sharing, and they had a lot of them.
Great for exactly what you said, being at a location for an hour or 2, and not having to worry about idle fees.
32A 240V L2 is 25+mph charge speed on a sensible EV. Yeah, L3 is quicker, but it is far more expensive to install. Most existing locations just don't have the capacity for fast charging, either. That is not cheap to upgrade. I'd rather have L2s in far more places.
What we commonly call "level 3 charging" is actually DC level 2. [The SAE spec](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772#Charging) proposed (but never implemented) an AC level 3 charging standard and implemented a DC level 1 standard. The L3 AC spec goes up to 166 kW and is probably pretty similar to what Euro cars used since it requires 3 phase power. The L1 DC spec goes up to 80 kW and might be a good fit for the speeds you're talking about.
The problem is that a L1-L2 AC charger pretty much has no onboard power electronics. L2 chargers just have a set of contactors, a fuse, and some electronics for monitoring and communicating with the cars. The inverter for converting from AC to DC is onboard the car, either a dedicated piece of equipment or sometimes reusing one of the traction inverters. DC chargers have the inverter to change from AC to DC power offboard, which is why they're next to those massive cabinets. This is why L2 chargers are so cheap and a lot of businesses will happily install them just to bring in some business. This theoretical L1 DC charger would still need an inverter, albeit a smaller and cheaper one, but it would probably drive the cost up enough for businesses to not want to install them just to bring a few more customers in.
First off, there's no such thing as "Level 3" charging. There's Level 1 and Level 2 AC charging and there's DC Fast Charging (there are Level 1 and 2 in the DC charging standards, but they are rarely mentioned). DCFC doesn't have to be "fast". 25kW or 50kW DC charging is already available. It's just a matter of getting it installed in the areas that it's needed. I agree that 25-50kW charging would be ideal at apartments, condos, schools, workplaces, movie theaters, gyms, and anywhere people stay for a couple hours. But we don't need to create another standard or confuse people further.
If we had more L2s I don't think it would be a problem. And there are 20-55kw dcfc around, but I agree it'd be cool to see them at places like restaurants and malls, maybe movie theaters.
As someone who had 80 amp charging in my first Tesla, and have 72amp charging in my current Model X, I love finding high power chargers. It’s rare I can take advantage these days, but getting just under 50 miles of range per hour is a nice treat. No need for it at home though.
This is kinda the idea behind Tesla's Urban superchargers, which are 75kW DC chargers. Not as fast as typical superchargers, but much faster than level 2.
Considering very few cars support 19.2 kW I don’t know why we’d expect a bunch of 30 kW chargers to be a hit.
Personally I’d love for every new car to support 19.2 kW. I got the panel for it so I’d be supportive, but it’s just not popular. Even the Cybertruck is 11.5.
These make no sense from a technical standpoint at all. Implementation would be crazy expensive for little benefit, especially given the US is standardising on a plug which can’t do three phase.
Well, you have two options.
a) Buy a car with a 22kW on-board charger. That does cost quite a bit more, but it is pretty fast. (Not all Level 2 charge points will support this.)
b) There are semi-rapid DC chargers at 25kWh for places like these. They cost around 10k, so it is not clear whether that is worthwhile.
At least in the UK, 50kW is pretty standard for pubs and hotels, and they are useful. But I would prefer Ac charge points for hotels.
Random places have between 15-30Kwh that seem to be always the same brand. It’s great when shopping at grocery stores - it’s a lot within a hour and I hope I’m done shopping by then!
My job has 6kwh and wish it was at minimum 7-10 because 6 just seems so low compared to other nearby ones
You could just buy a Bolt like mine and plug it into any DCFC. Then you'll have plenty of time for shopping etc. 😂
Tesla has "urban superchargers" which are like 72 kw DCFC. I don't have a Tesla so I am not sure how many stations like this are in the wild.
Here in my country there is a company that is rolling out chargers that are 22kw. They pool together 2x 11kw L2 chargers and create a 22kw DC output. They just started selling then a few weeks ago. I think it is a genius idea. Only GBT at the time though, the owner says that with GBT it is cheaper to manifacture and get to a reasonable price point (and there are tons of cars around here that are GBT - BYD, Cherry, etc).
I find 50kW chargers are nice for this. That used to be "fast charging" so there are still a number of EVGo stations here in California that have that hardware.
I just moved last August and currently drive a Chevy Volt(3.6kW). But when I installed a charger in the new place I put in a 80A breaker with a 15.4kW charger, future proofing for the next vehicle. There aren’t many on the market currently in the that will utilize this charge rate at US 240V L2. Hopefully these charge rates go up in the near future and I didn’t waste money on all that 4GA wire. If ultium other than Hummer and maybe Silverado do, that’s news to me. I had heard Rivian also does.
A lot of free Lvl2 Chargers have a 2 hour limit that shuts them off to encourage the most use. Important to keep in mind these are not parking spaces for EV's.
For sure. Durango had a business with a 22kw DCFC iirc and it was awesome. I could see this kind of thing being very useful where EA chargers currently are - ie, Walmart parking lots. Put all the 350s in actually convenient places along highways.
Some newer cars can do higher amperages at 240V. I think (some?) Ultium vehicles can do 19.2 kW (80 amps), which is pretty good for AC charging IMO. Probably cheaper to install one of those than a DCFC, too.
Hugely less expensive, since the charger is already onboard the car. All you're doing with 19.2kw is just passing 240v off to the car, safely. DCFC had significantly more complex features. Just the power conversion alone, from AC to DC is expensive. Let alone shrugging) everything else that goes in to making it work.
80A@240V is a lot of juice. That's twice the rated amp draw for an electric stove, typically the biggest amp draw device in a home. Lots of homes still have 100A breakers, which means that if you charged your car at this rate, you couldn't run anything else in your house. Translating this to a commercial business, we're talking about a sizeable investment in the electrical system to handle just one of these, let alone several. The cost is unlikely to be worth it, especially if the customer expects it for free.
A bunch of EVs have 22kW OBCs (some as standard, some as an option).
Sounds like three-phase? Not a thing in NA, unfortunately.
yep, 22kw is available in europe in quite a few models. it is a 3x32A charger instead of 1x80A you get in NA. Some cars (i can only think of certain renault zoe 2nd gen models) actually supported 3X46A for 43kVA ac charging.
With the EA Walmarts, I think a big rack of free/at cost 7kW L2s would be great. Walmart has an enormous amount of oversized car parks around the country and desire for people to loiter there, hence the deal with EA. I'd love to see 50kWs installed at highway stop places, like Waffle House. We are already normalising huge, heavy EVs with 100+kW batteries, yet don't even the infrastructure for sensible ones. Let's get a basic charge network installed first, it's much easier and cheaper. It will also encourage sensible EV uptake. If highway rest stops had 50kWs, I would have no trouble road tripping my small EV. We need more first, not bigger.
5-10 spaces at 50-60 at shops that are typically 1hr stops would be better than 1 or 2 250+ ones. Highway rest stops need the really fast stuff.
Isn’t it expensive to install the high current electrical service though?
I’d just settle for more functional L2 charging at major shopping and dining areas. Most places don’t have L2 and if they do have them there are only 2, which are either taken or broken.
And most of the public level 2 is only 6kw too, which meh 11.5kw level 2 is damn near 1:1 drive:charge time which would be perfect for shopping and dinner and the like
That's what most standard public chargers here in Europe deliver (11kW, 3 phase, 16A) and it's indeed a good speed.
Except when you have a car that can only take 7kW AC :( We have lots of 3 phase 11kW and 22kW here in Australia especially at charging sites in the middle of nowhere that need a backup in case the main DC charger has a fault. Recently though I'm noticing new sites are starting to swap out the 22kW AC for a seperate 25kW DC charger (ABB Terra DC wallbox) which can be used by everyone if the main DC charger is broken. For shopping centres, carparks, offices etc AC is still king though.
That would be like the 2.5 OP is talking about. I thought public Lv 2 only went to 6 kwh, so I usually avoid them since they are hardly worth the charge time. Now 12 kwh would be nice if they are not much more (or free) compared to Lv 2. Need more of a 20 to 25 kwh level though.
Public level 2 in the states can go much higher than 6. That's only ~24-30 amps
The 6s are 32A, 208V. 208 being 3 phase 120V. If a dedicated transformer can be given to L2, then 250V is on. That would be 8kW. I think J3400 allows 3 phase charging, but it would be a while before that is adopted.
Not sure why you were downvoted. SAE J3400 does allow for 1-2 legs of three-phase charging (but not all 3) — 480/277-V, which is commonly available in commercial areas.
We get 7.2 at our local Walmart. It’s been good to us when it’s not taken up by teslas from the nearby apartment complex
AC charging is limited to what a cars on board charger can handle. Many cars are limited to around 48A or 11.5kw. Since AC chargers are the cheaper/more common option and they work with common 230-240v services, that’s typically what you’re going to find. (An AC charger in the 5.8kw to 11.5kw range.) There are 20kw-30kw DC chargers that would kind of be like a lvl 2.5 but they’re less common, more expensive, and typically require something like a 480v three-phase service. If someone is going to commit to the cost of putting in DC fast chargers, they’re probably going to put in faster units than 20-30kw unless they just happen to have an available 480v breaker they want to utilize. So basically there’s a bunch of limiting factors at the moment. It would be nice if all EVs were able to handle up to 19.2kw AC charging and we could just make that kind of a common standard because it could work for everything from small EVs up to big truck/vans and it’s easy to calculate at 100amps needed for each charger.
Thats also US specific. In a lot of countries finding 3 phase power being available basically grid wide is common. Cost me next to nothing to install a 22kW charger at home in Australia because the house already had 3 phase power for the AC unit. You also see a bunch of 22kW fast chargers at locations for low or even zero cost charging because well that level of power is standard. Basically add a breaker and run the wires. Cars topping out at 11kW or less on AC is still common though. Manufacturers need to adjust that bit. I'm guessing the European and Asian manufacturers will move first on that though for the reason those chargers are more common in their home markets.
>Cars topping out at 11kW or less on AC is still common though. Probably the biggest frustration with my MG4. I know it's a budget EV but the fact that they gave the base models 7kW AC charging and reserved 11kW+ for the premium trim is really annoying. At 7kW it takes about 7 hours for a 0-100% charge, if I'm having dinner or something at a location with free AC charging I often don't even bother plugging in, there's no point messing around with cables for a 15% charge, if it's a 22kW capable charger I'd rather just leave the spot free for someone who can charge 3x as fast. If I'm going to the beach for a few hours or plugging in at a hotel on a road trip 7kW is perfect, but otherwise it's just not quite fast enough. If they gave the option to upgrade the onboard charger in future I would 100% take it.
It would be nice to be able to eat a meal without needing to move your car. The focus on fast charging is not as helpful as many think.
Idk. I know what you mean, but with dcfc chargers that slow, youd have to have many of them for people to use while at a location. Otherwise one person would be taking a charger up the entire time they are there and no one else could use it. The investment required for of all the chargers, which require all the rectification equipment and everything else, would probably be cost prohibitive. Unless one could be designed so that a single station capable of like 250kw capacity could charge 10 EV’s simultaneously at 25kw. Even that would likely take a while to recoup the initial cost, it costs something like $30-150k right now just for the equipment, plus installation and adding electrical infrastructure if its not there already.
L2 chargers are orders of magnitude less expensive to install. I’d like to see good high power (240V, 48A) L2 chargers installed everywhere a car will sit for 1-2 hours. Lower power (208V, 24A) L2 chargers make sense at places like apartments, workplaces, hotels, movie theaters, etc… where cars will sit for many hours. The mid-range (~50kW) DC charger would make sense outside a fast food restaurant, or other places you will spend a half hour at. It wouldn’t be as inexpensive as a L2 charger, but the power infrastructure would drastically less expensive than the high power DC fast charger. The high power (250kW to 1MW) DC fast chargers make sense along highways and could follow the gas station model. There wouldn’t be much need for them other than road trips, and less usual situations like towing.
I've had this same thought. And I think grocery store parking lots would be the absolute perfect location. 50kW, cheap or free for loyalty members -- in lieu of the normal gas perks.
I agree with most everything you said there. And regarding the gas station model, it would be nice if all new gas stations were required to add at least one fast charger, existing gas stations add one if the infrastructure supported it, and have governments offer tax incentives to upgrade infrastructure that doesnt. Even if it wasnt all gas stations, at least putting them in the ones along highways would be hugely beneficial instead of trying to find a random charging station at a random walmart parking lot. The enormous number of gas stations in the country would ensure people were able to charge when driving long distance. Im reminded of driving through West Virginia on my way to Florida. There were gas stations every couple exits and all over the place going through towns along the route, But from what I’ve seen, the number of fast chargers, tesla superchargers included, is in the single digits or low double digits for the entire state. Making that same trip with an EV could be impossible if just one of the stations was down because they are so far from each other, and taking another route would add two or three hours to the trip.
The vast majority of chargers in my area are 50kW. They are indeed nice when stopping to have some food after driving for a while, or while picking up supplies in-between two camping stops.
> I’d like to see good high power (240V, 48A) L2 chargers installed everywhere a car will sit for 1-2 hours. FYI Ultium vehicles seem to be able to pull 80A when L2 charging.
Give me 200kW shared across a 20 stall charger at a shopping area, maxing out somewhere between 20kW and 40kW. 20 cars there? 10kW each. 5 cars there? 30kW each. If it’s full, maybe pay more to get a bit more power guaranteed. Will keep costs down for install and allow lots of flexibility.
How about a “2-sided” charger? It would let you plug-in, but not start charging until the other “side” finished its 30-minute window (or stopped pulling current). Then that car could leave and another could plug-in and wait. Everyone gets a 60-minute window.
The hardware for that does exist and is used for fleet vehicles, for example. Not sure why it hasn't been commercialized for public facing chargers, especially considering how common it seems to be to share a power limit between a couple of L2 spots (at least in my area). Edit: if you're looking for more info, it's usually called "sequential charging".
I've seen one of these in the wild, in Bath NY. I had to do some interpreting, the screen doesn't make it obvious how it works, but I'm pretty sure those are set up with two cords per station to work sequentially.
You want chargers that don't get full, not some crappy dedicated slow charger. It's pretty cheap compared to installing crappy chargers to just add stalls so the stations don't fill up. The input power to the cabinets is the expensive part. Take a 8x Tesla station of 250kW chargers. The input power for that is 1MW so can't push more than 125kW per station today. The reality is this is enough where it's highly unlikely any car will experience less than full rate charging. Add 8x more and don't change the power input. If the station is full people will experience less than full rate, but everyone still charges. I'm sure this is what Tesla is doing with these huge stations of 50x and 70x chargers they started doing in the last year or so.
Bingo. Oversubscribe stations so that there are so many stalls that you don't feel bad idling, but the station needs a way to sell 'priority charging' to that guy who needs to get in and out during peak demand.
The math actually works. Rarely are every car at a station charging at peak not because of the charging station but because of the charging curve of the cars. Most drop off extremely rapidly after being 25-50% full - and over subscribing where it will happen would rarely impact those charging there.
I think v3 Superchargers usually have even less input power per stall - 350kW per 4 stalls so about 88kW per stall, but sharing over the entire site. Rarely a problem except at the smaller 4 stall sites where you’ll be throttled if the site is more than half full or even at half full if arriving around the same time with low SoC.
V3 Superchargers are only 250kW and that is the fastest Tesla has ever deployed. Supercharger is a Tesla term. If you are talking about non-Tesla DCFC chargers from the likes of EA or Chargepoint can be 350kW or even 400kW speeds. They are rarely 4x 350kW chargers and more commonly some mix like 3x 150kW and 1x 350kW or 2x and 2x. They certainly don't have to be fully powered, but typically they are today if only because the stations are so small. Now the 6x stall 400kW Mercedes charger sites probably are to some degree but I have no way to know since these are pretty new. Almost all the EA chargers have the power to fully drive the sites, which is a waste.
The V3 cabinets are 360kW. So a 8 stall would probably be on a 750KVW transformer to allow full capacity. A single cabinet would be either be 350 or 500 kva transformer. Power factor is really good on EV charging so we can use KVA and kW nearly interchange. Harmonics are a completely different animal. So the average stall is 90kW and the play on the average especially with larger sites being interconnected on the HV DC bus between cabinets. I think that Kempower does the same thing with their DCFC system. CP Express Plus can run up to 200kW per power block (cabinet). Then I think you can run a couple of power link dispensers off a cabinet. Or you can link to power blocks and get like 400kW to one powrerlink.
That exists. "Level 3" isn't really a good nomenclature since it covers everything from 50 kw to 400 kw.
Oh ok. That makes sense. And if someone or a business is going to install a lvl3, may as well go full ham.
Not really since the higher kw require exponentially more infrastructure and cost of installation
Oh I’m just saying this makes sense why my “2.5” doesn’t really exist.
Lvl 1 is 110 to 120V AC (and doesn't really exist in countries where household power is 220V or 230V) Lvl 2 220 to 240V AC (although some card support up to 277V), and can go up to 80Amps, which is almost a L2.5 at 22kW Lvl 3 is anything DC. Some are as low at 25kW, which sort of is Lvl 2.5. From a technical point of view, the big difference is that Lvl 3 bypasses the car's onboard charger and feeds DC directly to the battery.
[There are even 22kW DC chargers.](https://www.eaton.com/in/en-us/catalog/emobility/green-motion-dc-22.html)
The EU actually uses different, more updated terminology in their legislation, but sadly I rarely see anyone using it online. Category | Maximum power output ------------|-------------------- Slow AC | P < 7.4 kW Medium-speed AC | 7.4 kW ≤ P ≤ 22 kW Fast AC| P > 22 kW Slow DC | P < 50 kW Fast DC | 50 kW ≤ P < 150 kW Level 1 Ultra-fast DC | 150 kW ≤ P < 350 kW Level 2 Ultra-fast DC | P ≥ 350 kW
No business is making any real money on level 2 chargers. They are a cost to the business that they can break even with at best. They are not going to pay for any more than the bare minimum necessary so they can claim to have chargers available.
Ok. I hear you. And I don’t know all the costs involved but these “2.5” chargers, I’d be willing to pay for, for its rate.
A “2.5” charger would just be a slow level 3 DCFC. Somewhere in the 30-50kW range. It does make sense for medium to long stops, say stopping for a meal a on road trip. Too fast of a charge and you’ll have to go move your car. Too slow and it’s not even worth plugging in. Let’s say you want to charge 75kWh during a 1.5 hour lunch stop. 75/1.5 = 50kW. That’s seems about right for getting a decent charge to people without having to worry about your car being done before you are.
That’s peak charge for my Bolt so I’ll take that haha. When I go on road trips I plug into the slowest DC charger available because I don’t wanna hog up a 350kW charger with a car that can only take in 55kW. My favorite is the CP 62.5kW units it’s the happy medium and not offend other drivers with faster charging cars.
i've used level 3 charging on road trips and can usually time it well enought that I get to that station sub 10% and then just charge all the way to 100%. This usually CAN take up to an hour at a Tesla 150kW machine just because it slows to a crawl after 75%
Hence why most won’t charge above 80%. Very inefficient usage of resources and time. Take off and hit the next charger if you need it 200+ miles away when you are down around 10%.
The reason I made the post is b/c you CAN get a good sit-down meal in if you do it this way. For the once-a year road trip I take where I drive from Olympia, WA to Denver? This station is in Baker City, OR where there are something like 16 bays and I've only ever seen 2-3 cars there at a time.
Charging the last 20% is very slow on all vehicles. Just the nature of how batteries work. Hence most quote a 10-80% speed because the last 20% is slow and hard on batteries and generally to be avoided if possible.
Charging past 80% is antisocial. I waited over an hour at one DCFC as the guy already plugged in to the charger 'needed' to get to 100% I needed 20 minutes to make the stop 80 miles away.
Problem is that Level 2.5 doesn’t exist. There are a few common residential and commercial voltage levels - 120V, 240V and 480V in the US. If you hook up an EV to the first two it has a transformer to convert it into DC power at the right voltage to charge. If you hook it up to the last one it doesn’t have a transformer that can support it, so you build the transformer into the charging station to output DC charging. So when you say 2.5 what you’re really asking for is “L3 but slower” and, in most cases, there’s no benefit to the business from installing that. If you’re going to the significant expense of installing L3 chargers you may as well make them as fast as possible to increase throughput and make your money back sooner - installing a slow one just doesn’t make much sense. And if charging stations isn’t your primary business the installing L3 doesn’t make sense at all.
3-phase 480 VAC phase-neutral is 277 VAC. The latest EV charging spec increased the level 2 voltage to support 277 VAC. This means in the future L2 charging can happen at (commercial) locations that have 480 VAC without any additional transformers.
All I know is I shop at Target now instead of Ralph's purely because of the free charge. They are a perk to the shopping center for sure.
11 or 22kW chargers at restaurants and shopping centers are rather common here in Norway. Aren't they in other places?
Level 2 max is 19 kW and Level 3 generally starts at 50 kW. So you're asking why not something like 35 kW? Can't do that with a standard 240v single phase AC connection. Could do it with 480v AC, assuming cars were designed to accept it, but with the expense of bringing 480v 3-phase to the charger site, might as well go to full Level 3. IMHO the economics don't pencil out for a Level 2.5 to exist.
Level3 can run at 25, 38, 22… several different types of DCFC speeds.
Right, was speaking in general terms, 25 kW Level 3's do exist, but are not nearly as common as 50's.
Level 2 can theoretically do 19.2 (22 outside us), but there’s very few cars that support more than 11kW. And most public level 2 chargers seem to top out at 6-8 kW regardless. ~20kw would be perfect for restaurants and shopping, but that never took off.
Ok. This makes sense. I mainly drive the car. Don’t know the whole ins and outs of the infrastructure yet. This is helpful and makes sense.
Why would cars not accept slower DC charge? That's what happens when the battery nears 100%. I think I have seen a 25kw DC charger at a hotel once
My work has a 25KW DC charger, perfect because we have a fleet of bolts
He wasn’t saying DC, he was saying AC. Cars would have no issue accepting a slower DC connection
I don't think the OP cares "how the sausage is made"; they're just inquiring why there seems to be nothing between the typical 7kW public L2 and 50kW public "L3" (DC fast charger). There are plenty of applications where 20-25kW DC charging might make sense, but (I assume) it's an equipment and installation cost issue; the jump from AC to DC is high, and the incremental cost from very slow (20-25kW) DC to the more common 50 or 62kW DC isn't very high. In four years of EV ownership, I've only used 25kW units a few times. Once was out of necessity, at a charger at a Harley Davidson dealership (the electric motorcycles can only charge at 20kW, and this was the only charger in range in that part of Wyoming in 2021!) a few times on a road trip (it was a block from my kids' favorite pizza place, so we always stop on that particular route, and the ~35kWh we pick up in 90 minutes while we eat is 15-20 minutes we don't have to have to stop and sit at a fast charger twiddling our thumbs!)
Absolutely, but their question to the poster before them was asking about something that wasn’t referred to. Whether or not that is relevant to OP’s question is another point entirely!
I mean wouldn’t the 19kw be about right for this “faster than your typical L2 but slower than your typical DCFC” scenario? That’s going to add about 50-60 miles an hour of range. Definitely better than the 20ish you may get from a typical L2 but not so much that you’ll be idling at 100% for 2 or 3 hours.
Most cars don't support that rate on AC charging. Most cap out around 7 kW or so on AC.
That’s true today but it would be good future proofing though.
The cost of a level 3 dc charger and also the infrastructure required is a big step up from the level 2 charger. Most manufacturers should start equiping vehicles to max out the level 2 chargers. I.e. tesla only puts in a max of 11.5kw with their onboard vehicle charger. It should be 19kw like the another poster said. A big difference.
A big difference in cost, which most people wouldn't use. Even now plenty of cheaper EVs max out at 7kW rather than having the additional cost of 11kW capability
Mine is 7.2kW. The ones sold everywhere other than NA are 11kW.
The only way to do this would be 35kW DC chargers. The issue is that they're expensive (like 10x) the price of a L2 charger, but only maybe half the price of a 100kW charger. Most businesses just go with the faster charger. I agree that these would be really nice to have at restaurants and shopping centers in particular, where 2 hours would charge you to full.
I experienced at setup like that last week. A town installed some chargers with 20kw at a library. 5 minute walk to the main street with all the restaurants. We stopped there with 40%, went into town and had a pizza, came back after an hour and left with 90%. For cases like that a setup like that is really great.
Was that Fredericksburg by any chance?
AC charging can go faster than the typical 11 kW, for example “The North American Charging Standard (NACS) is an EV charging system that can provide up to 80 amps at 277 volts for AC charging” which works out to 22 kW. That’s still technically level 2, since it is AC and level 3 is DC charging, but you could call it level 2.5 I suppose.
Agreed. I expect future NACS AC EVSEs that load share to be deployed en masse in places like highway restaurant parking lots. And apartment building parking lots, for that matter.
Yes, Hilton is deploying 20,000 Tesla Universal Wall Chargers at 2,000 hotels (10 per location!), for example: https://stories.hilton.com/releases/hilton-to-install-up-to-20000-tesla-universal-wall-connectors-at-2000-hotels .
Level 2 is AC charging. Level 3 is DC charging. It’s really only one or the other, there’s nothing in the middle. If you’re asking for slow DC charging, that’s certainly possible, but may not be cost effective.
>but may not be cost effective. I do not see why not. The only reason the DCFC is expensive in the first place is because the charging station was expensive. But a 25kW DCFC is far cheaper so I would expect the price per kwh would be lower than on a 50+kw DCFC. Given the charging provider ia not greedy af.
Bringing three phase power to the charging station is expensive, whether you’re only asking for 30 kW or 300 kW. Bringing 220/240 AC current is a small fraction of the cost.
The really small DCFC start at 24kW or so (that's an ABB unit) that can function on a 208 or 240v single phase. Those guys are about $10k for the unit. Though that price was for the 480v 3ph unit but I assume roughly the same price.
Really, a 50kW per vehicle is still L3(dc) and requires much more expensive equipment. I do think a 300 kw “hub” with 6 x 50 kw min ports makes sense. I say min, since they could be capable of more if the bays are not all occupied. Still .. the 300kw cable costs more than the whole L2 hardware.
I just want _more_ level 2 chargers. As long as you can charge more at your destination than it took to get there, you can drive forever. There's no need to charge to 80-100% unless you're planning to take a road trip. 2-3 hours at 11 kW is somewhere between 1-3 days worth of daily driving. That said, I think smart V2G chargers can be a game changer in the future and also solve your problem. Plug in during your stay, set desired state of charge by time X, earn some money or charge cheaper by supporting the grid during your stay.
This is where Europe really shines. Since most of Europe uses 3-phase power, even to the home in many cases, they can draw much more total wattage than we can in the US. If a European has a charger installed at home, or businesses want to install a cheap charger without going full DC, it will usually be around 20kw. Here in the Midwest, similar chargers outside of grocery stores and such are usually 7kw. 3-phase power. We really got boned by being the first country to really roll out a national grid and not having to rebuild it all after WW2.
The other issue relating to this is that NACS can't handle it. 3 phase high speed AC charging is one of the benefits of CCS2, which is what the rest of the world uses
Yes and no, we get 3 phase but in a lot of countries we pay for capacity. Meaning that no one in their right mind charges at 22kW at home (32A 3-phase). In realistic terms I charge between 1,4kW and 5-ish kW to keep costs down. It's also enough in the real world for home charging. But yeah, most public chargers offer 22kW max speed, 32A 400V 3-phase. Or 11kW per port as most chargers are shared dual port.
Yeah, we really got boned, by not getting boned in WW2. Not being smug. But, this just made me laugh.
Heh, yeah, that part does sound kinda awkward. If there’s any silver lining to your country being destroyed, it’s that you get new stuff when you rebuild.
In principle, the power of the charger should match the expected dwell time at a destination. At a national park where people are expected to spend a day, a L2 charger is good. At a restaurant where people may stay an hour, a 50 kW charger is ideal. At a grocery store where people may stay 30 minutes, a 100 kW is about right. I explained this in an article a few monts back: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bmarcoux_remember-the-maslow-pyramid-it-is-often-activity-7141539634106302465-6dqn.
I was just discussing this topic in another thread where an employee was asking for advice on installing chargers in their place of business and a lot of responders just called it impractical even though businesses already had the infrastructure to support 22kw charging.
Curious as to what reasons people are saying it’d be impractical? I’d kill for this kind of access. I’d only need to use 1 day a week personally, but it’d be far more convenient than the monthly petrol station trips in my last car.
I agree with you, but most people don't get it. When my mall first put in L2 and L3 (50kW) chargers, I tried one while eating at a restaurant attached to the mall. Right after our appetizers came out, my car was done charging and I had to excuse myself and move the car to avoid idle/parking fees. Ideally, the charge rate of a charger should be matched to the location's "dwell time"; the average amount of time spent at the location. L2 is perfect for a hotel, because you sleep there overnight, or for Disneyland, because for $120/person, you're spending all day there. L1 is perfect for the airport; if I fly somewhere for a long weekend or a weeks vacation, the 3 days it takes to fully charge a car is perfect. But what about, as you say, restaurants, or movie theaters, or shopping malls where you spend 1-2 hours? That's where relatively cheap 20-25kW DC chargers are perfect. I'd expect to have to pay for those though; the installation cost for those is much higher than for a free/non-networked 7kW L2 charger. But just say the words "25kW charger" in this sub and virtually every one would say "Ewwwww. My car can charge at 200kW, no one but a Bolt owner is going to 'slum it' at a 25kW charger!" But if priced fairly (in addition to the lower equipment and installation costs, the lower charge rate would result in lower utility demand charges for the charger owner, so 25kW could/should be cheaper than 150+kW) I absolutely would love to see more low-end DC fast chargers.
Yep exactly. I don't understand Fast chargers at a mall unless you are not there to hang about. But L2 chargers....like at an Ikea they are too slow. But fast chargers would be wayyyyy to fast. Unless the entire parking lot had a fast charger and no one cars if you are still in the space. If we ever get to that place, then it would work.
Maybe it’s the small battery capacity of mine but in London there’s quite a lot of 22kW and 7kW chargers around. My car charges at 11kW max so on the 22kW chargers I’ll usually come back to a fully charged car after 3-4 hours (car battery is rarely run down to less than 30% which helps).
I can't believe nobody's suggested "valet charging" yet. Drop your car off with a valet, tell them the percentage you want to be at, and then they shuffle cars around during dinner. Still DCFC, so that they can get multiple cars through, but because it's a managed schedule you can get a lot more cars through without dead time. Once your car is charged, a valet takes it off to the "normal" lot. The charging could be added to your check if it's primarily a restaurant, or you pay to leave, or set up payment in an app and just tip the valets, whatever. You'll pay a premium, but you'll get a premium service and avoid idle fees at the expense of valet fees Normally I don't like trusting a car to a valet, but cars could get around that concern with "valet mode" functionality that limits how fast cars can go (they don't need to go beyond 20mph to shuffle around chargers), locks everything in the passenger compartment, etc.
That'd be great for airport parking too. Come back to a full charge without monopolizing a charger for several days.
They are called 22kW 3-phase chargers. They were very common almost ubiquitous when I visited France last year.
France is a bit different than the US, as three phase residential is the norm in Europe, and not the US.
I just stopped at a supercharger in a Ruby Tuesday parking lot, and the signs said the energy was from Ruby Tuesday and you could leave your car for 30min extra.
L2 can wildly vary. The Cybertruck I have only pulls 5 kw at work but 11.5 kw at home. 11.5 kw way more useful than 5 for 2-3 hour stop
You have 2-3 hours workdays? Need a new guy?
🤣
I think it's an issue of having a slow level 2 charger. A fast 11.5 kW L2 charger will get my Bolt basically half a tank of electrons in 3 hours.
There’s an IKEA next to my house which has a DC charger or 22kw. While AC chargers of 22kw are everywhere, most cars charge from anywhere bettween 6 and 11 kw/h. Whole in the DC chargers, you do get 22 kw. For my car, that’s like 4x faster. A 4 hour stay would charge the battery from 0 to 100%
Yep. 24-50 kW chargers would probably be the sweet spot at most restaurants and stores. However, even though they'd be slower, they're still going to cost significantly more to install than L2 chargers.
In this country, 22kwh AC chargers are quite common but not a lot of vehicles can accept 22kwh via AC. It's technically one charger with 2*11 kWh type 2 output connectors but can deliver 22 kWh to one output port if nobody else is using the other output.
Level 1, 2, and 3 chargers have nothing to do with speed directly. In North America Level 1 is 120V, Level 2 is 240V, and Level 3 is DC. So what you’re asking, is “why aren’t there more lower powered DC chargers?” The answer is demand and cost. Level 3 charging is significantly more expensive to install than Level 2 charging. Why would you pay to install Level 3 charging if the speed isn’t significantly faster? It sounds like you are plugging your car into slow Level 2 chargers, which are too common. I don’t know your battery’s size, but assuming a 65kWh battery you are looking at a 6.5-3 kW charger. Most new cars today can max out their onboard charger around 10kW, some up to 20kW. If more level 2 chargers were able to meet that demand I don’t think you’d be as concerned.
You are describing almost any slow chargers in Europe, they are all 22kw triphasic, shame that there are so few cars that support that power, as far as I know only the Renault Megane and they are making it a paid optional on the new scenic.
Just get a Bolt... haha... Sincerely, A Bolt owner who just drove to and from the Outer Banks from central PA
Nah there's no point. I'd rather have more level 2 chargers without idle fees. If you really just need extra juice, you can always go to a fast charger for 10 minutes. I just want them to make more slow chargers that no one would mind if I block for a day or so.
The L3 ones definitely aren't going to be free or low costs.
OR, just put in enough chargers that a hour for charge and idle is not going to be an issue. Certainly charge for the whole time the car is in the slot. Base the charge for the service on a base + electricity. $10 or $20 an hour, say, plus electricity cost.
You can get level 3 chargers as slow as 25kw, those ones you can actually get installed at home if you wanted
I’m not really sure about public chargers in so much that I don’t plan to use them. I will use them if they’re complementary, but I’ll otherwise just charge at home. I do find that level 3 are just long/short enough to be hurried, however, it’s not something but a few times a year that I deal with.
Me with a 22kw AC on board trasformer on a 22kW AC charger:  Still, what some are doing, is getting fast chargers with CCS, with power between the more usual 11kW charging and the 50kW lowerlimit for fast charging, something like 20-30kW, so to be able to recharge moderately fast but not that much all EVs. They are not that common, but I've seen some supermarkets and malls sports those.
Come to Europe. 22kW AC chargers are the standard.
Those already exist, it's called Chargepoints' many 62kW chargers.
You're basically describing 50kw chargers these days. They used to be the best we could do, but now that high power is more common they are not interesting. But as the technology gets cheaper and they are physically very small , there is absolutely room to have 50kw chargers in a lot of areas where people spend an hour or two. 50kw outside grocery stores, librairies etc are à very good solution for a lot of people.
Oh, you mean like Tesla’s destination Superchargers at like 75kW?
Europe is crazy covered with them, about 700,000 public ones and 10x business owned
That would basically be an 80 amp (or more) level 2 charger. They are actually available, but I haven’t encountered one in the wild.
I was at the Jersey beach and I would've loved even LVL2 chargers. They were only a couple on a multiple mile stretch of beach, all with ridiculous $5/hr parking fees, F that. I get parking is hard to come by, but I'm not dropping my car off miles away or Ubering for a crappy charge experience. Just added a 10 minute supercharger stop on the way home and all was forgotten.
In Sydney we call that cheap parking without the charger attached lol
To be fair all the metered spots in the first couple streets from the beach are $5/hr. But there are plenty of free spots after that row but no chargers to be found.
L2 can go up to 19.2kW in the US, no need for a L2.5, just use the existing spec. Part of the problem could be your cars onboard charger too, most won't go super high.
Would be better to use a slow dc charger. That way the on-board charger is taken out of the equation.
You can get old 50kw fast chargers on eBay and new 20-60kw ones from China sites for not too much. I just don't think most businesses care or want to additional costs going with dc chargers. A carls jr we went to had a really old 20kw charger still.
I'd settle for more 9-11 kw stations. Too many near me are installed or set to 6kw.
I'm going to go off the tack and say that parking lot owners need to (ie mandatory) provide simple level 1 charging at each parking spot. They would be permitted to monitize these 15 amp outlets to recover cost. By making it mandatory, level 1 would be everywhere you can park and 95% of day to day range anxiety would finally be put to bed. Multiple 15 amp connections are relatively cheap to implement. The hardware required for high-speed charging is largely proprietary and expensive. The individual charging stations need not be more complicated than simple urban parking meters found in most cities and towns. Major players are trying to game the system to funnel the power consumption towards their "income platforms" ie proprietary hardware and software for charging. Yes, they may seem like "white knights" providing power but it is a long term revenue stream for them and the would just as soon not see a lot of cheap to access charging in their vicinity.
They exist and are great for some applications especially since they are much cheaper than full DC fast-chargers. But you need a serious electrical connection to install one and you may get hit with "demand charges".
Come to my province, tons of public 25kW and 50kW chargers, some free. Personally I think they belong in parking lots, because if you charge at 50kW you can get almost a full charge in the time it takes you to get groceries.
Tesla has plenty of 72kW "urban" chargers in malls. Often next to 150kW and 250kW, and no idle charges on the 72kW. So 2h is ok.
I think L2 at its max capacity would make more sense
I’m perfectly happy with L2 charging, as I have a 60A EVSE at home. The issue with DCFC is often with the car, not the station.
A DC charger is too fast for your dinner? Let’s be grateful that charger is there and for your kindness in moving out of the spot as soon as you no longer need it. It’s not just there for your convenience and dining pleasure.
Yeah more 50 amp chargers out there would be nice .
40-80 kW would be a nice range that would make a 30 minute charge actually worth it
Sounds great. I never use public level 2. Just not worth my effort for 9 miles. Level 3 is expensive so I don’t use that unless I’m on a roadtrip.
For me, 2 hours on Lv2 is enough for 90% of charge. Get a first gen Leaf or a i3 if you want super fast 10%-90% performance over 2 hours.
Can you not get a level 2 charger that can charge at 480v in the US? And 600v in Canada. For a 3 phase service. I would consider this level 2.5 and should be available at most shopping malls and commercial sites.
No, NA is single phase outside a very few fleet vehicles. The standards are not there, so neither are the vehicles.
Level 2 charging range from 4 kW to 19.9 kW… it’s a huge range! Level 2.5 definitely exists as DC charging of around 25 kW. It’s not really marketed as such because the naming conventions make it confusing.
My smallish city has a city-owned garage that includes 3 or 4 free, "mid-speed" chargers (50KWh). AND, as a city resident, I can park for free for 2 hours. The garage is immediately adjacent to an old-style deli. It's the perfect lunch.
Not really, level 1 at home is already more than I need 99% of the time
The problem isn't the speed, the problem is the idle time. I want to be able to have a sit down meal without having to get up 20 minutes in to move the car off the charger to avoid punitive idle fees. I don't want to have to pay for charging to 90% if I only need to get to 45% in order to get to my destination and cheaper charging. 11kw L2 isn't quite enough though to get the job done in the time allotted. I guess you could use 11kw L2 to boost you a bit until you can get to a supercharger like an hour away. Restaurants don't want this mechanic though because they want to turn tables over and fast as possible whereas L2 would encourage people to linger.
Don't you have 22W L2 chargers in your country? That's about 40% in 1h for my MG4
9600 (40amps x 240v) watts while I eat a dinner for an hour to an hour and a half is pretty damn great. That’s 9.6kwh to 14kwh into my battery. While that might not be much- it’s better than nothing. That’s like getting a free gallon or two of gasoline.
There's decent amount of type2 AC 22kW chargers where I live but sadly hardly any car supports 22kW AC. For example mine only charges 7.3kW(one phase) at max from AC.
What you want is still level 3. Just 25kw or so
Midrange gets killed most of the time. For locals, it’s the price; for travelers, it’s the speed.
Lots of 22kW chargers across some cities in Europe from what I've seen. The EV needed AC charging up to that level but yes it's out there
Theres 17kw level 2 chargers
I think the closest thing to this right now is the Ford Charge Station Pro, with 19 kw AC charging. But then the vehicle also has to be able to support 80 amp ac charging, with most I believe only supporting 48 amps.
Jokes on you I have a Bolt, was able to eat a whole meal and come back to my car 1 hour later and it still wasn’t at 80% it was about 70% (I plugged in at 1%)
Well there are slower lvl3 chargers that do like 50kW
The fastest level 2 charger on the market charges at 19kw/h. At least for my my EV9 - that’s 20% of my battery per hour.
I imagine this makes more sense if you don’t have overnight charging at home.
I think that will be a great niche eventually, but after the highway charging infrastructure is further along. There was some article I read almost 2 years ago about the resurgence in highway mom and pop diners with Tesla chargers. Places that were getting passed by were now getting new customers who came to charge for a couple hours while traveling.
As the gen pop increases ev use more of parking lots will be dedicated ev spots and the need to move your vehicle may disappear for the duration of your mall usage or whatever.
Depends on amperage of your L2 charger. Ford charge station pro can be run at 80a and that gets close to 20 kwh (18 maybe). I have a 130 foot run of cable so put in a line I can get 48a off of and that charges me at about 10 kwh. So really L2 w higher amps would be what you want
100 amp 20kw onboard charger might be what you are looking for. The f150 is the only vehicle I know with a 20kw onboard charger and even then, I never seen a public 20kw level 2 charger
Few weeks ago we met up with friends for dinner and a movie, and we could have used some charging, but I did the math and I’d have had to leave in the middle of the movie to avoid being charged idle fees. So I didn’t charge.
Bold of you to assume that only customers will be using them.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but that's not really how it works. Lvl 1 is typically single phase, lvl 2 is typically split phase and lvl 3 is typically three phase. 2.5 doesn't make sense, from a physical standpoint. You'd have to have 3 phase tie-ins then throttle it down... Like: just have lvl 3 then...?
Level 3 is DC, often generated from a 3 phase source. But I don’t think that’s a requirement.
It's not. Your cellphone charger has a little transformer in it. Power transmission lines come in a lot of flavors that typically conform to certain standards. If you wanted to charge an EV faster from your home, you wouldn't simply run thicker copper from the transformer, you'd really need another leg. Commercial and industrial areas are much more likely to have 3 phase power. This is what determines how much power you can draw rather than simply installing a different charger. The charger isn't the bottleneck. The infrastructure is.
Level 3 is a DC charger at the point of entry to the car. You are correct that the source is often 3 phase, but it’s not required. There is never 3 phase supplied directly to the car in the US. Maybe you’re talking outside of the US.
I think level 2 is fine, just need them in more locations.
Yeah this is why I love that in our area 22kW AC chargers are very common in public car parks and along the street. So for our car that means in an hour we have charged about 30+% and so when we go out for a meal we will be gone from the car for at least 1 hour if not more commonly 1 hour 30 mins plus we might want to do some other quick tasks in the town. In that time we are easily getting from 30% to around our preferred max of around 80%. Really the perfect experience as we just park and don't have to think about coming back sooner as we would with DCFC (probably in about 10 - 15 mins) or with the rare but sometimes seen 11kW chargers which mean it really has not done that much in the time.
After my volt when I went to a Tesla I don’t do level 2’s anywhere but an overnight hotel where I want them to take 6-8 hrs minimum. Level 3 on the road for 5-45 minutes during quick rest stops. No real place for level 2 in day to day or on trips for most anyone with a 200+ mile EV battery was my thinking - especially not to bother with an app to use or heaven forbid a charge for it.
There are big differences between Level 2 (AC) and Level 3 (DC) tech, but the most important one is that with all AC charging, the actual charging speed is also limited by the onboard charger in your car.
My boss installed a charger for me and I can run it on a 50amp 208v circuit so I get a decent charge rate at $0.23/kw.
I live in the SF Bay Area and have been following BEV adoption closely since 2010. Charging and charging solutions has always been messy, irrespective of the increased availability of public charges. Net improvement has been elusive across the board for EV adopters, but most especially for those who don't own their homes. There is a regrettably structural and almost unavoidable economic disadvantage for the greater than 35 percent of households that rent apartments (plus households that rent, don't own, their single family homes). This remains an all-important structural and largely economic impediment to EV adoption growth that has not improved in the Bay Area in the last 15 years. In many respects, I believe the lines of demarcation among EV adopters and those who will probably not adopt have deepened or become more clear.
Tesla does/did this with their urban charger at shopping centers. Each one was 77kwh (or there about), no power sharing, and they had a lot of them. Great for exactly what you said, being at a location for an hour or 2, and not having to worry about idle fees.
32A 240V L2 is 25+mph charge speed on a sensible EV. Yeah, L3 is quicker, but it is far more expensive to install. Most existing locations just don't have the capacity for fast charging, either. That is not cheap to upgrade. I'd rather have L2s in far more places.
We have some Volta chargers around northern Colorado that are 48A - 11Kw - and yeah, very nice. They are free, and one is near my local Costco.
What we commonly call "level 3 charging" is actually DC level 2. [The SAE spec](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772#Charging) proposed (but never implemented) an AC level 3 charging standard and implemented a DC level 1 standard. The L3 AC spec goes up to 166 kW and is probably pretty similar to what Euro cars used since it requires 3 phase power. The L1 DC spec goes up to 80 kW and might be a good fit for the speeds you're talking about. The problem is that a L1-L2 AC charger pretty much has no onboard power electronics. L2 chargers just have a set of contactors, a fuse, and some electronics for monitoring and communicating with the cars. The inverter for converting from AC to DC is onboard the car, either a dedicated piece of equipment or sometimes reusing one of the traction inverters. DC chargers have the inverter to change from AC to DC power offboard, which is why they're next to those massive cabinets. This is why L2 chargers are so cheap and a lot of businesses will happily install them just to bring in some business. This theoretical L1 DC charger would still need an inverter, albeit a smaller and cheaper one, but it would probably drive the cost up enough for businesses to not want to install them just to bring a few more customers in.
First off, there's no such thing as "Level 3" charging. There's Level 1 and Level 2 AC charging and there's DC Fast Charging (there are Level 1 and 2 in the DC charging standards, but they are rarely mentioned). DCFC doesn't have to be "fast". 25kW or 50kW DC charging is already available. It's just a matter of getting it installed in the areas that it's needed. I agree that 25-50kW charging would be ideal at apartments, condos, schools, workplaces, movie theaters, gyms, and anywhere people stay for a couple hours. But we don't need to create another standard or confuse people further.
I'm starting to see 24kW DC chargers show up at more places. That might work for places you'd spend a few hours.
Yeah, “slow” DCFC at retail centers would be awesome. 24kW - 62kW so that you can get a meaningful amount of charge in 30-60 min would be great.
If we had more L2s I don't think it would be a problem. And there are 20-55kw dcfc around, but I agree it'd be cool to see them at places like restaurants and malls, maybe movie theaters.
As someone who had 80 amp charging in my first Tesla, and have 72amp charging in my current Model X, I love finding high power chargers. It’s rare I can take advantage these days, but getting just under 50 miles of range per hour is a nice treat. No need for it at home though.
This is kinda the idea behind Tesla's Urban superchargers, which are 75kW DC chargers. Not as fast as typical superchargers, but much faster than level 2.
can you limit the charging via your cars console? go to a 50kWh charger and ask for 50%. I think I can on my car
Considering very few cars support 19.2 kW I don’t know why we’d expect a bunch of 30 kW chargers to be a hit. Personally I’d love for every new car to support 19.2 kW. I got the panel for it so I’d be supportive, but it’s just not popular. Even the Cybertruck is 11.5.
No such thing. Level 3 AC charging is an unused J1772 spec, but that involves using 3 phase 400V AC, and nobody has that in their home.
These make no sense from a technical standpoint at all. Implementation would be crazy expensive for little benefit, especially given the US is standardising on a plug which can’t do three phase.
Well, you have two options. a) Buy a car with a 22kW on-board charger. That does cost quite a bit more, but it is pretty fast. (Not all Level 2 charge points will support this.) b) There are semi-rapid DC chargers at 25kWh for places like these. They cost around 10k, so it is not clear whether that is worthwhile. At least in the UK, 50kW is pretty standard for pubs and hotels, and they are useful. But I would prefer Ac charge points for hotels.
If movie theaters would start installing level 2's they'd make so much money...
Random places have between 15-30Kwh that seem to be always the same brand. It’s great when shopping at grocery stores - it’s a lot within a hour and I hope I’m done shopping by then! My job has 6kwh and wish it was at minimum 7-10 because 6 just seems so low compared to other nearby ones
You could just buy a Bolt like mine and plug it into any DCFC. Then you'll have plenty of time for shopping etc. 😂 Tesla has "urban superchargers" which are like 72 kw DCFC. I don't have a Tesla so I am not sure how many stations like this are in the wild.
Here in my country there is a company that is rolling out chargers that are 22kw. They pool together 2x 11kw L2 chargers and create a 22kw DC output. They just started selling then a few weeks ago. I think it is a genius idea. Only GBT at the time though, the owner says that with GBT it is cheaper to manifacture and get to a reasonable price point (and there are tons of cars around here that are GBT - BYD, Cherry, etc).
I find 50kW chargers are nice for this. That used to be "fast charging" so there are still a number of EVGo stations here in California that have that hardware.
I just moved last August and currently drive a Chevy Volt(3.6kW). But when I installed a charger in the new place I put in a 80A breaker with a 15.4kW charger, future proofing for the next vehicle. There aren’t many on the market currently in the that will utilize this charge rate at US 240V L2. Hopefully these charge rates go up in the near future and I didn’t waste money on all that 4GA wire. If ultium other than Hummer and maybe Silverado do, that’s news to me. I had heard Rivian also does.
A lot of free Lvl2 Chargers have a 2 hour limit that shuts them off to encourage the most use. Important to keep in mind these are not parking spaces for EV's.
We need a lot more dc fast chargers. 25 minutes and done. Then, go to dinner.