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[MostlyBonkers]

Can you imagine 30-40 bikes being parked up outside all wanting a quick charge? The same will apply for cars and motorway service stations, shopping centres and so on.

Sticking to bikes though, a quick charger may easily draw 10kW in order to top up in around an hour. 50 bikes would be a .5 MW draw. The cafe would need its own substation!

I can see a big business in fitting out all these premises with all the required equipment. On the plus side, the cafés would become filling stations and be able to make money from their car/bike parks. Unless battery tech makes a giant leap forward and people only ever charge when they get home...

With all the engineering and technical talent reading this forum, have any of you ever thought about getting a slice of the action? This time next year (or decade), you could be millionaires!

I hope at least some of you got the Only Fools and Horses reference. :-)

[cloroxbb]

That's assuming there will be 50 outlets for each bike to charge...

Honestly, what I am hoping will happen, is that once Tesla start manufacturing battery cells, that Zero can get cheaper priced batteries with higher capacity per cell, and would be able to use Superchargers (somehow). If not the supercharger stations, at least the cheaper battery cells!

[protomech]

It's hard to make predictions about the future given only what we know in the present and past.

Some general notes:
* EV adoption has been and likely will continue to be fairly gradual. I'd love to see a parking lot full of 30-40 electric vehicles, but reality is that we're not going to arrive there suddenly (barring events like EV rallies). Generally speaking, there will be plenty of time to ramp up supply.
* Outside of the workplace, public L2 charging hasn't seen a ton of usage even where the charging stations are installed. Most of the time, people prefer to charge at home where it's cheaper or at quick chargers if available. L2 charging is primarily useful for emergencies or in rarer instances where you are parking for an extended period and need to travel farther than your single-charge range - uncommon even with today's 70-80 mile EVs. Even in the case of the Mission R, 1 hour charging at 10 kW will "only" charge 70-100 miles .. you probably won't tour cross-country at these speeds, but you certainly might dip in for a meal while out doing a weekend loop.
* As EV adoption does ramp up - say in 10 years when the on-road vehicle mix might reach 10% EV - we will certainly have to upgrade the "last-mile" infrastructure in places. It's also possible that local generation and battery storage options will become commonplace as prices drop, reducing the need in some cases to increase the grid-tied infrastructure.

[NoiseBoy]

I disagree MB. Current motorcycles only have a range of around 150 miles and cafes don't have petrol pumps. By the time range of EV's has doubled people will just charge at night at home which doesn't require any extra infrastructure. I will ask my contact for numbers but iirc if 30% of cars in the UK were electric and charged at night it would flatten out the demand curve and make generation more efficient.

[MostlyBonkers]

It is difficult to predict. Charging at home won't necessarily be the most convenient for all. Ideally you need a garage or off street parking. Getting a quick charge while out shopping or dining might be popular, especially if it's free. Battery swapping might be the best solution for long trips to get you back on the road in under five minutes, like a petrol station does.

[Richard230]

The problem that I see with charging at a commercial establishment, is that the vehicle has to be parked very close to an electrical supply and because most establishments are setback from the parking area and surrounded by a sidewalk, the electrical outlet must be installed underground and on a pole in a designated parking area.  This is a very expensive installation and one that most businesses will not want to undertake, especially when they probably do not own the building or parking lot, but lease the space from an absentee landlord.  That is true, as an example, at Alice's Restaurant.  They let me use one of their 120V outlets off to the side of their building, behind a gate to their rear yard, but the restaurant owners have told me that the cost of installation of a Level 2 facility is just not an improvement that they want to financially tackle any time in the foreseeable future. They just don't see a Level 2 outlet attracting enough new business to justify the cost, especially as most of their customers with EVs live relatively close to the restaurant and have no problem driving or riding there and back home without needed to recharge.

For me, I just adjust my EV usage to accommodate day rides within a 40-mile radius and recharge at night from my garage's wall outlet.  For longer rides, I take the easy way out an just ride one of my IC motorcycles.

[protomech]

Battery swapping is dead, absent top-down direction from a sponsoring entity.

Exhibit 1: A Better Place. They tried to convince automakers to use a common battery format, and succeeded only in convincing Renault to adopt this format for the Fluence ZE. Now ABP is out of business, and anyone that was considering battery swaps is burned.

Exhibit 2: Tesla's battery swap stations. Tesla dictates top-down the charging interface and battery swap interface for their vehicles, and bundles the Supercharger cost into the 85 kWh S (also used as an upsell). Even so, there's been very little information on the battery swap stations and only vague promises that one or two stations will be coming soon.

Exhibit 3: Zero X-series bikes. Hollywood Electrics and others have used battery swaps for endurance racing. In theory a fleet operator could purchase additional battery charging stations and provide some number of additional batteries for workers to swap out. In practice, it is simpler and probably less expensive to purchase a 3 or 4 module fixed vehicle, if the fixed vehicle has enough range for daily usage. Consider Zero FX ZF5.7 = $12k + $5k for two more modules + $1500 for 2x quick-chargers 2 kW total = $18.5k, versus Zero S ZF11.4 = $15k.

[nigezero]

Great debate. Lots of thinking here down under on this topic too. Renault are bundling a fast charging station into the cost of some cars them simply install one within a logical range from the owners home; I like the idea. As more owners buy, more chargers pop up in random areas but by targeting sales they can target charger build out too. I'm also hearing folks talking about PV GC powered charge stations with LiPo storage (10-20kwh) to reduce peak demand and thus install cost. This generates cheaper energy but only works out with low traffic; as demand goes up, grid connection at high current is required.