Public Charging? No Big Deal – Until It Is
By Edward A. Sanchez – Jan. 12, 2022
I’ve written many posts about charging infrastructure, whether home, public, or impromptu. Having Level 2 home charging improves the ownership experience exponentially. Although the analogy is a bit hackneyed, it is fitting – think of your EV like your cell phone. Plug it in before you go to bed, and you’ll (usually) have a full charge the next morning.
But sometimes, life takes an unexpected turn, as mine did recently. Some wet floorboards in my house were a telltale sign of a water leak, and after inspection, the damage was as bad as I feared. The repair estimate was over $10,000. We were given temporary accommodations at an apartment-style residential hotel. And unfortunately for me, a Tesla Model 3 owner, EV charging was not available.
I cruised the perimeter of the parking lot, hoping to find at least one Level 1 plug, but couldn’t find any power outlets a reasonable distance from a parking space. I then went to PlugShare to see what my options were in the area. Unfortunately, the closest L2 chargers were located at businesses where access was limited to employees. Within a slightly larger radius, there was an Electrify America L2 charger at a Walmart about 2 miles away. Unfortunately, the closest Supercharger was about 7 miles away.
While this may sound like a relative abundance of charging options compared to many parts of the country, the fact that charging wasn’t available on-site at the hotel was a poignant reminder of the challenges faced by EV owners that don’t have easy access to private charging.
Even in EV-favorable California, there are still islands of charging deserts, and hotel and hospitality support for EV charging is still hit-and-miss. Some chains, such as Marriott, have done a better job than others at deploying EV charging on a relatively widespread basis. But many hotels and resorts do not have dedicated EV chargers.
I just returned from CES 2022 (listen to this episode of The Watt Car podcast for more on that), where I stayed at a luxury resort that had many amenities and services, but only one 120V outlet in the parking garage. Although I struck out the first night, with another car occupying that prized spot, I was able to get it the second night, and for the rest of my stay. Since I took a Lyft to the Las Vegas Convention Center and other destinations we needed, the fact that I was only getting about 5 miles/hour of charging was not an issue, as my car was parked for more than 24 consecutive hours.
Back to my home-away-from-home temporary hotel accommodations, while I still had more than 100 miles of indicated range, I was starting to get low-level range anxiety, as two-digit indicated range is usually the point at which I seek out charging. Fortunately for me, one of my favorite Ramen restaurants in the area was in close proximity of a ChargePoint Level 2 charger. I drove to the charging location, which was on the back side of a Walgreen’s, and the restaurant was a short walk across the street. Since the car was indicating I had more than three hours left to a full charge, I decided to get a ticket to see Ghostbusters: Afterlife to fill the time. The ticket cost me an additional $14.70 on top of the approximately $30 for Ramen, a side of gyoza, and a carafe of hot sake. The three-hour session at the ChargePoint charging station was $10.
Level 2 chargers take time to fill your car, so I decided to grab dinner see a movie.
I can hear the EV cynics and skeptics already, “Whoa! Such a deal, tree-hugger! $54 to charge up your hippie-mobile!” Yes, it’s true. For the amount I spent on dinner, a movie, and charging, that would probably be close to the amount I’d pay for about 12 gallons of fuel here in California. But rather than that entire sum going toward liquid hydrocarbons, only about a fifth went to fuel, while the rest went to meals and entertainment.
I hope within the next decade, nearly every hotel and motel across the country will be equipped with at least one L2 charger, if not three to five. Certainly California, which usually prides itself as being on the vanguard of advanced technologies, has a ways to go before EV charging is ubiquitous and common. Not that I want to name-and-shame, but the place I’m staying is part of the IHG Hotels Group. I hope the company will offer its franchisees an incentive to install L2 chargers at each of its locations. If not, many charging network companies, including ChargePoint, will often install L2 chargers at no up-front cost, in exchange for a cut of the charging revenues. Seems like a fair deal to me.
So for those of you who live in apartments, condo complexes, and only have access to on-street parking, I have a new level of respect and sympathy for you. I never knew what a luxury home EV charging was until it was taken away from me. I know in the greater scheme of things, my plight falls in the category of “first world problems,” but it’s obvious that charging convenience will be a big factor in the longer-term success or failure of EVs.
(Images by Edward A. Sanchez)
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