Seems like policy written by petrol car drivers and not well thought out. In the future electric vehicle world 95% of charging will be done at home, or in some facility near your rental building. Most EV drivers have no need to visit charging stations unless they're going on an extended road trip, and then we need a particular _kind_ of DC fast charging station.
I mean... I have an EV and I could count on two hands the number of times I've even used a public charging station. I charge at home, commute to work, charge up some there sometimes, and then return home and plug in. I have a "gas butler" [1] at home. Stopping at a gas station is a thing of the past for me, unless I need to pick up windshield wiper fluid.
Most EV drivers have no need to visit charging stations [...]
You do realise that we're talking about Germany here, don't you? You cannot apply US standards to a foreign country with 7x the population density and only a ~50% home ownership rate...
The fact of the matter is, that half of German households cannot charge their vehicles at home, because they live in a rented apartment.
In cities in particular (you know, the places where EVs make the most sense), many people don't have a garage - often not even a dedicated parking spot.
This is an actual problem that prevents many people from owning an EV in Germany.
Another problem is that even if you are lucky to be able to rent a garage for a few hundred bucks per month, you are not able to get your car charged inside. A lot of building regulations will prevent that, including Erschliessungsgebühren, Elektroverträglichkeitsmessungen, the required VDE Sicherheitsprüfungen and the fact that each garage lot would require a legal address in order for paying Energiesteuer there, as the control of that is done by external organizations like the ISTA or similar entities.
And yes, overall for private people it’s totally impossible to think of everything in this regard, even if you are lucky enough to have an owned home.
Interesting. Do you have details to share, because I'd vaguely planned to equip my garage with electrical charging capability? I can assure you though that nobody is paying several hundred bucks per month for a garage or parking lot except maybe in the very city center of the four big cities in Germany, like next to the iconic main attraction of that city. It seems the public sector wants to grab the money for EV charging, with public parking lots being dedicated to it, while there's no plan for private proprietors to install their own charging.
> Do you have details to share, because I'd vaguely planned to equip my garage with electrical charging capability?
Where do you live? The regulations vary a lot from state to state and even city to city, as the local Bauamt or Baubehoerde usually has the last say when it comes to approval/denial of installations like this.
In the BW area there's something available like the Netze-BW initiative that does most of the mentioned regulations/paperwork for you [1].
I'm not sure whether or not RWE or EON (the energy suppliers for more Northern states of Germany) have a similar initiative, but it seems that you can get the "Wallboxes" from them as well [2]. In the larger cities like Karlsruhe, I've seen a lot of the charger stations of Innogy [3] that seem to offer installation services for parking lots and private garages as well as for businesses.
> I can assure you though that nobody is paying several hundred bucks per month for a garage or parking lot
Prices kinda exploded around the Baden-Wuerttemberg area over the last years in the "Regionalmetropolen" aka where most industries or businesses are located. Can only speak for those, though I'd imagine that a lot of the mid-larger cities have even more problems with higher densities of people/m^2.
I'm guessing that while a proper type 2 charger might be impossible to install, but if you have a regular electrical socket you can just use a 3-pin "granny" charger. Sure it's slow but overnight it should be enough, and you don't have to ask anyone for permission for these.
Thanks very much for the info! I'm in HH, but have been to Freiburg frequently some years ago, which is certainly a lovely (and expensive) place, but even there I'd be surprised to hear prices in the range you mentioned. Maybe it has changed recently.
You are totally correct, yet OP's point is still reasonable - this was written from the perspective of a petrol-car driver; moreover, it's a missed opportunity to think differently. Petrol stations require big tanks underground to store the petrol; we don't have pipelines through the city carrying petrol. On the other hand, we do have a massive network of wires carrying electricity. EV charging can so easily be distributed, that there is simply no need for 'petrol stations.' Put charging spots directly on the street and other parking places, with an app/API to show availability. Monitor demand, and add more in hotspots.
That would require significant more infrastructure in public spaces. Requiring petrol stations is a good first step to break the barrier that combines private/public work.
(I'm assuming petrol stations are private enterprises in Germany on this point)
Yes, because an electric parking meter uses only a few watts of electricity and may not even be connected to the grid (the most common ones I've seen just have a tiny solar panel). A electric vehicle charger may use 200 kW and require its own dedicated transformer. A fast charger is a fairly substantial cabinet. Now you're jackhammering the sidewalk to bring an underground electrical service to that spot.
Can you apply your thinking to petrol stations. We build floating city's to extract oil thousands of meters down. Is running some cables harder then that?
An off shore oil well will basically extract black gold, paying for themselves in no time(at least when the oil barrel price was high). Electrical charging station on the sidewalk not so much.
The current needed to charge an EV is far higher than what a parking meter was wired for.
Privately run charging stations on public sidewalks are few and pricey and most of the time sitting empty.
So it's clear that if you want a mass switch to EVs the government will need to subsidize the infrastructure to make EV charging affordable. However, digging up the sidewalks of a whole city with public funds to cable it for EV charging is the last thing taxpayers want to hear even in green Austria since it's seen as a something that will only benefit the top % that can afford EVs and they already have charging stations at their houses.
I imagine the wiring to the meters is designed to carry the current necessary to run an electric parking meter and wouldn't hold up to the current required to charge an EV.
We already have similar on-street charging stations like that in Berlin, just not enough. I suspect the reason it's not all street-parking is the strain on the electric infrastructure which would probably require a lot of rewiring.
What would be a good use of gas stations for electric cars is battery swapping. It is too early to make this mandatory but I think it might be time to start working on this idea. (It has been looked into before.)
Battery swapping was an idea that made sense when battery tech wasn't as good and ranges weren't as great, but its window has passed. You might be thinking of Better Place, which actually launched a battery-swap station. It made sense (some) sense at the time to spend 5 minutes on a battery swap that would otherwise take 6 hours to charge for 111 miles of range. But today, right now, you can spend 20 minutes to get 174 miles of range at a supercharger.
...which is also why it's a bit frustrating to see people saying "Oh, this is from the perspective of gas guzzlers!"...no it isn't. this is a huge win, we're not trying to replace all infrastructure overnight, but it lowers the inconvenience of a marginal EV greatly...174mi in 20 min is damn good, that's 4 of my loooong commutes
> But today, right now, you can spend 20 minutes to get 174 miles of range at a supercharger.
That's still 20 minutes longer than it should take. And probably around 15 minutes longer than it takes to fill up with gas (which will give you twice the range). Speeding that up makes sense.
(To be clear, I don't think it's reasonable to mandate swappable batteries, for instance; there's far too much innovation and potential innovation in battery technology for that. However, I think it's reasonable to experiment with that, and any other solution that will let it take less time to charge.)
While I would usually agree with your line of thinking, I'm not sure it applies here as well.
There is more money to be made in not providing the service and slowing down EV adoption, environment be damned. That makes it the perfect situation for the government to jump in and re-align those incentives.
Just charge an carbon tax. That should give people the right incentives.
(Including eg just drive your existing cars less. 50% reduction in driving existing cars is as good or better for the environment than eg 50% conversion to electric cars. But I don't expect the government to know what is better for the customer.)
This isn't just a matter of paying for a service because ICE cars will disappear in a few decades. Removing options before there are viable alternatives is bad policy. Good policy would make the migration from an old to a new technology as smooth as possible.
Maybe just swap cars. They can maintain a small inventory of fully charged EVs, just swap your depleted EV out and be on your way. Then your previous EV gets charged up for the next guy.
Half of German households does not need to own a car because of excellent public transportation systems, car-sharing and policies oriented to remove personal cars from the streets.
I think another option is charging stations at major stores and office spaces that have parking lots. That way you can charge while shopping or working. I see this become more common in the US.
> The fact of the matter is, that half of German households cannot charge their vehicles at home, because they live in a rented apartment.
Do apartments in Germany not have charging stations? And if not, is there a fundamental reason why they can't be remedied somehow in the near-ish future?
My apartment building in Berlin doesn't even have dedicated bathrooms. The shower is in the kitchen. They used to be workers dorms which were converted. They previously had communal facilities and they had to squeeze these in where ever they could when converting. There is on street parking. Really I think the next step isn't EVs but kicking cars out of the neighbourhood altogther. We don't need them. They are mostly used for ego not transport it seems.
Like most general statements about the US, this is only true in parts of it. Plenty of cities in the US, especially the older east coast one's, do not have apartment buildings with parking lots.
New buildings usually have underground parking, but I don’t think this policy has anything to do with the residents of the big cities. Car-sharing is more viable option there and it’s easy to provide chargers for car-sharing services on the streets.
If you don't have a parking space, you probably don't have an EV and whether gas stations have chargers or not is irrelevant.
If you do, it doesn't matter if you're renting or not, you have a similar ability to charge at home. What you probably can't do is install a dedicated fast charger unless you somehow plan to take it with you when you move, or work a deal with the landlord to share the cost.
I think the one thing that does change in Germany is more people live in apartments where you have less options for installing a charger than in the suburbs in your own garage in the US.
Parent comment said "no dedicated parking space" which is a different thing. When I lived in Toronto, I had a resident permit issued by the city to park on the street on same block as my building, but I was at the mercy of whatever space was available. Some days I'd get a spot right in front of my building, some days I had to walk around the corner. This is a pretty common parking scenario in dense, older areas - there is no dedicated parking lot and the space you are parking on is part of the public realm.
Not in Germany, but I do have a dedicated parking space, I could totally afford an electric car, an yet it would not be practical to get one. Here are my reasons:
- I need one car, not many (I'm lucky to get _one_ space, ain't gonna get several!).
- I can't charge it there, there's no infrastructure. Sure, I can ask city to add infrastructure but... good luck with that, it's going to take a while, there are a lot of problems to solve (besides actually installing power near my space, we need a meter to charge me, and it needs to be a "smart meter" that doesn't allow everybody to use power paid by me; it needs to be at least moderately vandalism-proof. And I need to find a way to leave my car plugged in for extended periods of time, unsupervised, without fearing that someone will steal stuff from it - e.g. the charging cable?)
- If all the above are solved - I still need to use that car for extended trips (vacations, visiting parents in a different city). Those would still mean that I need to charge "on the road". Due to the first point, it'd still be a challenge to go 100% electric even if I had the "charging at home" part covered.
Really, I think if we don't solve the "charging in gas stations" part, electric vehicle use is going to be inherently limited.
One thing I've wondered about is key less entry could solve a bunch of issues with cars. Like pay the local charging station to deal with charging. As in middle of the night a attendant gets in your car, drives it a couple of minutes to a charging station and plugs it in. Brings it back an hour or two later.
Like I said earlier, my father's family is German; there is a mix of residential situations and I wouldn't say the majority of them live in the scenario you are showing here with a densely packed street; and for the people who live like that, car ownership isn't strictly necessary.
Ideally we want people to not have to drive at all. Which is actually possible in most German cities. Last time I was visiting Mainz I was able to take trains and buses everywhere, including out into the countryside for a hike. This is a far better situation than anywhere in North America.
My Oma & Opa lived in suburban Mainz (Weisenhau) in an apartment building (with a parkade of some kind, don't recall the details as this was about 25 years ago) for decades before moving back downtown to a senior's residence. My aunt and uncle live in Mainz Laubenheim, in a single family home with a car parking pad in front for their vehicle. My other aunt lives in a building, she doesn't own or need to own a car really.
Chargers are only small poles, not that big.
And you do not need to pack the street full of chargers.
Just pust a few chargers that each charge two cars and reserve the the spots for electrical cars.
When electrical cars get numerous add an hourly fee to motivate owners to move their cars when full charged.
This is how it looks at my place in Copenhagen: two charging stations each serving two cars.
But I also think charging at petrol stations make sense.
When considering buying an electric car, at least if the family only have one car, it is a big issue if it can be used on long trips, even if you only do them a few times a year.
And if you are driving to Italy doing 90+ miles/h on the German highways then you will need to charge you vehicle several times. And you will not have time to get off the highway every time. But a 20 minute toilet and coffee break is acceptable.
I get it, but do you think queuing up at a petrol station is a viable solution to this or is it more likely to be political maneuvering to appease the station owners who are worried their business models will be obsolete soon?
> or is it more likely to be political maneuvering to appease the station owners who are worried their business models will be obsolete soon?
What would be the point of that? If station owners believe that charging stations will keep their businesses alive, then they'll put them in themselves, without needing a law telling them to do so.
I haven't looked much into it and I don't know that many people who own an electric car, to be honest.
What I could think of is that gas stations themselves might become somewhat more multi-use, that's already the case in some places in Germany. So people might to grab something to eat while charging up or do some shopping and so on. Scale them up a bit so that people have something useful to do while their car charges. People in Germany still like traditional stores and physical shopping a lot, I don't think it's just pandering to the owners.
The bulk of the charger would have to be embedded in the street or sidewalk with only the cable protruding. That might make for a pretty expensive installation, but it could be done.
"You do realise that we're talking about Germany here, don't you? You cannot apply US standards"
a) I'm not in the US. b) My extended family is all German. I'm quite familiar with the differences in Germany. Gas stations are still not the right distribution model.
As an American, I'm jealous of this policy. If all gas stations in the US were required to provide EV charging, there would be a significant uptick in EV adoption. Even if they don't end up getting used, the value is in the peace-of-mind for people currently on the edge of making the switch to EVs. It's a great way to encourage EV adoption, second only to straight cash incentives.
Another thing to consider is the assumption that home charging is always feasible. I would love an EV, but it simply doesn't make sense where I rent.
If this were enacted in the U.S. I would expect the parking spots with charge ports to be filled for hours at a time, using up parking spots for the convenience store. Not the end of the world, but gas station operators and non-electric customers would probably find it annoying.
Gas stations are setup to service cars in minutes; to re-charge a similar number of electric cars in the same time would require either new battery technology that can be charged at something like 30C or a huge parking lot. Having more chargers around is a good thing, but gas stations aren't ideal for more than an occasional customer. It might be good in rural areas though that wouldn't otherwise have any chargers, as a sort of emergency backup charging location if some unwary traveler finds themselves without enough charge to get to the nearest city.
All new public charging stations really need to be Level 3. The only new Level 2 chargers that should be going in are ones where people already park for hours at a time (overnight street parking, apartment buildings, etc.)
Honestly people don't want to go to a gas station and wait and watch people fill up while their car charges, they'll park somewhere where they can get out, sit in a cafe, do some shopping, go to work, or go to sleep - in short people use chargers in a different way than they use gas pumps.
I think there is a place for gas stations with chargers .... along the interstate .... but not in cities
they tend to be on busy streets or corners where people can stop fill up and leave quickly - as I mentioned above electric cars just don't charge that fast, no one in an electric car wants to sit watching people gassing up - better that they leave the car for an hour and do something important in their lives - it really is a different way of thinking about how you use a vehicle
Honestly if we look what currently works best for electric cars is:
- short/mid distance (city/metro area/village cluster/...)
- personal charger, often implying personal parking slot
In which case indeed gas stations become complete obsolete.
But if electric cars become more wide spread then there will be many cases of people without personal parking slots using them and fast chargers in super marked parking slots and similar are still rare. Especially people traveling inside of Germany. So gas stations with chargers are still somewhat useful.
I believe enforcing chargers on gas stations will allow easier adoption outside of the "personal parking slot sharing only case", especially they make electric cars more reliable for holiday/weekend/busisness trips inside of Germany.
>>In the future electric vehicle world 95% of charging will be done at home,
Where I live in the UK 100% of houses around me don't have a driveway(beauty of terraced houses). There's streets upon streets of these. The only way anyone is going to charge an electric car living in those is either at a public charging station elsewhere, or if the council installs some charge points(yeah, with what money lol).
It sounds like policy written by the convenience stores (I assume some sort of convenience store owners special interest group or association exists in Germany). Their business model is they sell gas at approximately break even and make all their $$ on the store. They stand to lose big as things move electric. If they can get out in front of it and be the place where people expect chargers (as opposed to expecting to charge at the grocery store or work) to be then the stand to gain a lot of business. No one store or chain wants to be the first mover though so you get legislation instead.
I've been to Autobahn petrol stations in Germany. They are not pleasant places. They need to work on that before they can entice people to come in and spend anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours there.
I'm not sure why this is a not reality yet. When this happens, I will certainly not be the one refuelling my car at -30C in the winter, I will be seated in my electric car waiting for the swap to complete.
Me only time I go the super charger was when my home charger got hit by lightning- car was fine charger not so much...
Otherwise I might go once in awhile to fill up my wife’s car- she feels safer with the gas car ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also I put air in my tire at the gas station... that was neat because they upgrade to work with Apple Pay... I felt old trying to figure out where to insert my quarters
You can also think of this as sunsetting petrol car infrastructure that can't be repurpoused for EVs. Making petrol stations more scarce good way to reduce their usage.
Society's most important goal is to reduce petrol consumption after all, to survive climate change, and only secondarily to make life nicer for EV owners.
It would make more sense to put them in supermarkets. Nobody wants to spend an hour sat in a petrol station drinking mediocre coffee. At least in a supermarket you are spending time doing something you would be doing anyway.
Exactly. We need L2 in every suburban wasteland parking lot, at every hub and spoke train station, etc. We need regulations enforcing charging in apartment building parking lots. New street construction should include L2 or L1 charging at streetlights.
But even more so, we need to reduce car usage regardless. Which is something Germany is ahead of Noth America on already.
Can’t speak for others but a) i have no way to charge my car at home as I have no dedicated parking spot, and b) i have no need to use a car for commuting or short distances because I live in a city, so this change might actually make electric viable in US cities.
Perhaps if you own a house in a suburbs and commute the same amount daily to a spot that also coincidentally has an electric charging spot your view is realistic
I mean... I have an EV and I could count on two hands the number of times I've even used a public charging station. I charge at home, commute to work, charge up some there sometimes, and then return home and plug in. I have a "gas butler" [1] at home. Stopping at a gas station is a thing of the past for me, unless I need to pick up windshield wiper fluid.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf7Y3OmHsck