Chargers in all the WRONG places and WRONG prices!

[Prius2Volt]

As a new Volt owner the first thing I did is check where are all the chargers in the Central Florida (Orlando) area. I was surprised to discover these are (for the most part) in all the WRONG PLACES. One is at a Domino's Pizza store (do you plan to be for more than 5 minutes when you pick up your pizza) and others at pharmacies (who spends more than 10-15 minutes at Walgreens)?

What I was surprised is the really obvious places are all missed. I found only three practical locations and all three have pricing issues: Florida Mall, Pointe Orlando, and Orlando City Hall. The mall is obvious, but at $3/hour for a charge, that's more like $12/gallon of gas for a Volt, I don't see anyone using it other than desperate Leaf/Ford EV owners. The same applies to Pointe Orlando, except there, adding insult-to-injury, they charge $3/hour to charge plus FULL garage parking fees. Finally City Hall, near restaurants and clubs. Fee isn't very generous (especially considering this location is like 50 feet from a power company building), but it beats night time parking rates downtown.

I did find a Buffalo Wings with a charger about 40 miles out of town, they got it right - encourage you to drain your battery to get there and then hang for 2-3 hours while charging to get back, love it. That's ONE done right.

What I am really surprised by how many people simply don't get it. Other than work or home, where would an EV owner spend hours a time? Simple, try places like:

1. Movies
2. Shopping
3. Eating Out
4. Theme Park / Entertainment

The classic "dinner & movie" is typically a 3-4 hour affair that is perfect for 240v charging, as is 2-3 hour mall shopping spree or a 1-2 hour major groceries shopping. An 8 hour theme park visit would even handle 110v charging nicely.

Looking around Central, with our 100+ charging stations, this is what is MISSING:

1. Every Disney Theme Park (Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios)
2. Every Disney Water Park (Typhoon Lagoon, Blizzard Beach)
3. Every Disney Shopping Area (Downtown Disney - both sides and Pleasure Island)
4. Every Universal Theme Park / Shopping Area / Movie Theaters (Island of Adventure, Universal Studios, CityWalk)
5. Fashion Square Mall & its Movie Theaters
6. Altamonte Mall and related Shopping Area
7. East Orlando/Alafaya Shopping Area
8. Mall of Millenia (inc. IKEA, Millenia Plaza - BJs, Home Depot, Best Buy, etc.)
9. Lake Eola Downtown
10. Orlando International Airport (two off-sites have chargers though)
11. Every Major Restaurant (Dr. Phillips restaurant row comes to mind)
12. etc. etc. you can add Gyms, Bars, Supermarkets, etc. to this list. I think you get the idea.

My advise to business owners who wish to generate business, ESPECIALLY if you run a business that keeps people at it for over an hour (restaurant, mall, movie theater, bar):

1. Don't fall for those third-party companies wanting to charge thousands for chargers and making it such a costly investment that you will not recover anything for 10 years or more.
2. Buy a weatherproof consumer charger ($500-1000) or two
3. Pay an electrician to install it ($500-1000)
4. Mark the spots as EV only (remember motorcycle parking? same idea)
5. Don't charge, just as you don't charge parking (even if you pay rent for that space).
6. If you charge parking, that should cover it, DEFINITELY don't charge.

That's it! For a $1k per spot initial investment and a couple dollars a day in electricity (that's if multiple cars charge that day) you have some of the best advertising and new guest encouragement possible. Trust me, just like a motorcycle rider will ride 60 miles to some cheap restaurant in the middle of nowhere "because they have dedicated motorcycle spots man!" you will find that EV owners will frequent those places that make them feel welcome and give them a charge. That has to beat most current local advertising rates/return.

Well, this is just my personal observation. I could be wrong... there could be an entire segment of EV drivers who "live at Walgreens" and who thinks $12/charger are perfectly reasonable. But I haven't met them yet.

Rick

P.S. Worth noting that EPCOT had an EV1 on display for years and has always had displays highlighting future EV vehicles. You'd think they would have chargers, no?

[WopOnTour]

Totally agree. Not a lot of forethought it seems. But businesses are putting EV carge stations in for one reason (besides a bit of "green-washing") - to draw and potentially keep business. But it's typcially way over-priced even at $1 per hour and unless you spend 2-3 hours at Walgreens doesnt even make a lot of sense when you'll be home soon enough. I guess for a pure EV that's low on charge and needs it to get home the more options the better.
But the good news is the Volt doesnt need to rely on charging infrastructure whatsoever, so...
WOT

[spreston]

Yea, this has been discussed in a lot of threads here recently.

I am beginning to think the tax incentives for these charger businesses are so good that they are setting up these charging companies knowing that no one will every use them and they don't care.

It would be interesting to see their business plans. I smell something fishy similar to what happened with wind turbines in the 80's:

"Historically, wind energy has benefited from an investment tax credit, especially in California which saw a host of installations of wind turbines in the 1980's. Unfortunately, these turbines never need to actually generate power in order to receive the credit."

Just have a look at the live charger maps across the US during the business day in the middle of the week for these companies like ChargePoint. Maybe 1 or 2 out of hundreds of chargers are being used at any one time at the peak moments.

[jteed]

Spot on! I live in Orlando too and have written many of these organizations about the pricing. I think the entire DOE program is being poorly managed. As you pointed out the funding is going to put lots of stations in the wrong places and the prices are so high that EV drivers will avoid using them if possible. I think most of install approvals come from management companies who have little awareness to the EV space and therefore no idea how to price. I'm hoping our collective efforts to educate will help. There's also a 3rd-party company which owns most of the higher priced stations and they are really taking advantage of uninformed business owners who want to do something green, but don't know much about the EV space. They installed the units at Florida Mall. Orlando Utilities units are priced much more reasonably at $.14/kwh - you'll find them on the Rosen properties on I-drive and in downtown Orlando. Winter Garden, Mount Dora and Tavares all have free stations in their downtown areas and in several municipal parks.

My wife is working with her building to get a unit installed at Lake Eola and I'm working to get stations installed in all of the Hunters Creek parks.

Spread the word to as many people as you can and make certain to call your local and state reps.

[Steverino]

My charger is in exactly the right place: my garage. :-)

If I had one wish, it would be that chargers were installed at the workplace. That's were cars are parked 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week. This should be top of the list for charge locations. Sure, movie theaters, malls, etc are long term parking as well, but they don't come close to the 5 days a week 50 weeks a year frequency of use that charge stations at work represent. Because they are 8 hour opportunities, they could even be slow 110v charge stations.

So my picks would be
#1 home garage
#2 parking at work
#3 public, long term parking at theaters, shopping malls, hotels, train stations, airports, etc.
#4 (but way, way down the weighted priority list), short parking such as restaurants, pharmacy, and the like

[EVFest]

My charger is in exactly the right place: my garage. :-)

If I had one wish, it would be that chargers were installed at the workplace. That's were cars are parked 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week. This should be top of the list for charge locations. Sure, movie theaters, malls, etc are long term parking as well, but they don't come close to the 5 days a week 50 weeks a year frequency of use that charge stations at work represent. Because they are 8 hour opportunities, they could even be slow 110v charge stations.

So my picks would be
#1 home garage
#2 parking at work
#3 public, long term parking at theaters, shopping malls, hotels, train stations, airports, etc.
#4 (but way, way down the weighted priority list), short parking such as restaurants, pharmacy, and the like

No Charger (EVSE) Should even Be installed without contacting 10 - 20 EV or PHEV Owners within 30 Miles minimum , and 100 miles, Tops, and getting their input on best installation points for them! Unless - like was said - Tax credits for the Stupid Rich!

Fast Chargers should be installed at Freeway Service Centers at the rate of 1-2 per 5-6 Level 2 Chargers. In Malls - they could be like 1-2 per 10 - 15 Level 2 Chargers, and for each level 2 charger point there should be 2 - 4 of the 110-120V NEMA 15 Duplex Plugs (Like the ones in Bathrooms - GFCI, I believe they are), so we have a 'Pyramid' of choices. If all the comments in these many threads were compiled - a Report could be put together - any one want a job?

[scottf200]

...But it's typcially way over-priced even at $1 per hour and unless you spend 2-3 hours at Walgreens doesnt even make a lot of sense when you'll be home soon enough....
WOT

I've heard the http://350green.com/ (Chicago charge installer) folks at a EV club presentation mention if *they* are evaluating a place like a Walgreens it would need to be near other businesses that you would/could be walking to. Shopping or eateries.

[dwl]

Something that works sometimes is contacting the folks responsible for maintaining the charging stations. There aren't many worthwhile public charging stations in Minnesota. But one with a decent location is at a strip mall and had charged $3 for each 2 hour session. I sent them a nice e-mail explaining that this was really too expensive to make economic sense for most EV drivers. And really had to be somewhere lower than $1 an hour. To my surprise, the e-mail got routed over to the manager for that strip mall who is responsible for operation of that charging station. He took the time to review average usage and found that most folks charge there for only an hour. So he reduced the fee to $2 per session. I thanked him for listening to my concerns and taking action, pointed out that the general preception in the EV community is that public charging stations are over priced, and encouraged him to contact me if he had any questions or wanted to discuss anything.

It's not a big win and, being per session, is still a little on the wrong side of sensible. But it's something. And since this guy just based his pricing on what other local public charging stations set for fees, every one that can get knocked down a little bit helps lower the preception that these prices are OK.

[Toasty]

Something that works sometimes is contacting the folks responsible for maintaining the charging stations. There aren't many worthwhile public charging stations in Minnesota. But one with a decent location is at a strip mall and had charged $3 for each 2 hour session. I sent them a nice e-mail explaining that this was really too expensive to make economic sense for most EV drivers. And really had to be somewhere lower than $1 an hour. To my surprise, the e-mail got routed over to the manager for that strip mall who is responsible for operation of that charging station. He took the time to review average usage and found that most folks charge there for only an hour. So he reduced the fee to $2 per session. I thanked him for listening to my concerns and taking action, pointed out that the general preception in the EV community is that public charging stations are over priced, and encouraged him to contact me if he had any questions or wanted to discuss anything.

It's not a big win and, being per session, is still a little on the wrong side of sensible. But it's something. And since this guy just based his pricing on what other local public charging stations set for fees, every one that can get knocked down a little bit helps lower the preception that these prices are OK.

can you post the letter you sent him?

[djskii02]

I agree the most with Severino about work being the best place to charge. Right on the money. It takes so long to charge that putting a charging station in at McDonalds is useless. At least for a Volt. Thats why the Volt makes sense. Who wants to worry abour charging stations. The best and cheapest thing a hotel can do is put regular 120 volt outlets in accessible to parking spots and let me charge it for a flat fee per 24 hours. Same goes with businesses. Put outlets in and let us bring our own chargers. Volt owners are well aware of our battery usage and can prepare ahead of time.

The only other option I saw a youtube video on is a company that produces and envisions inductive charging stations. They use a magnetic induced current (like a coil) that charges automatically when a battery becomes within range. Although that sounds great, the cost of infastructrue would be too much for now.