The largest issue is that people have no incentive to spend 30 wasted minutes charging their car, they would rather charge it while doing something useful. Unless you link the charging in with something practical, people would rather charge at home, or work.
Issue with that is hitting the magic number of time. Assuming you want to make money with the chargers you don't want people to spend more time doing something else than the car takes to charge. Say you pay for a fast charge that takes 30 minutes. You can't exactly go watch a movie without the car sitting there taking up the charge station for an extra hour or more. On the other hand if you plan on it taking 30 minutes, and the power provided is low, mostly due to multiple chargers being used at once or something and you only get like 30 kwh or something and it takes 45 minutes to an hour to fully charge... well you have an issue as well. Never mind different cars charge at different rates, with bigger or smaller batteries and higher or lower starting charge levels. Simply put it would be very hard to judge how much time your customers have to spend while waiting for their cars to charge. And unless you have unlimited number of charge stations, you don't want a line of cars waiting to charge while your out shopping in walmart and your cars fully charged.
Yes the business will never be as big as gas because you only use it on road trips in a full built out system. All your daily charging happens at/near home or at work. 20-30 mins works great for a bio break and food before continuing your road trip.
@@TheCrusher72 Depends on the charger and the size of the battery being charged, some are faster than others. Also a lot of the first gen charges were linked together. Meaning if two cars charged at the same time the power was split between the two, giving you really low amounts of power even if it claimed to be a super charger.
I rented an electric car recently. Charging was a pain especially while driving long distance. I wouldn’t rent another fully EV car. Even with the fast chargers it’s a major inconvenience.
It does not make any sense for car lending companies like hertz to be renting out EVs. There is currently not enough infrastructure and good enough infrastructure to justify lending iit to the average customer. Driving an EV is a different way of driving, especially during long journeys. For example, optimal route planning in an EV means that at some points during the trip, you would only stop for 10-15min at a charger then 8min at the next then 30min at the end etc. Also, if it aint a tesla, its not even worth it.
I have rented Teslas a couple times on Turo and that wasn't bad. You basically just use the owners account to charge at super chargers or charge at your own home. I probably wouldn't do it with a mainstream car rental company though, I have heard horror stories about not having the car come with enough charge, having to charge it before returing or facing a large fee, and then not having any sort charging set up (basically you are on your own).
When I buy gas, I insert a credit card. Why is it EV charge companies FORCE me to load an app, load a credit card, and in many cases transfer money to create a “balance”. If gasoline sellers used the EV charge business model there would be a nationwide protest.
There is one place without an app, without a card. Just plug in the cable, do nothing, car charges, simpler than gas. Just buy a Tesla. All others have that charge problem
When I charge at home there is no app at all when I change at my local shopping centre no app needed also all free charging, what country am I in? Australia. DC charging is for long distance only the idea that Americans are stupid and don't understand how ev's work thinking it's the same as petrol cars is just laughable.
Actually no one is forcing you to have app. I prefer an app that has account info and offers reliable service and a discount. Swapping a credit card means paying a service fee. Would you rather pay more or less? Thanks.
Another factor not mentioned in this video is uneven demand across various times of day and seasons. In a major tourist destination, like the grand canyon, you need massive amounts of chargers to handle the peak season loads, that would see very little revenue coming in during the off season.
@@screwstatists7324 lol That's like saying if a burger joint is losing money every time they sell a hamburger, the solution is to franchise so somebody else can lose the money. 😂
I live a couple of hours south of the Grand Canyon and go there frequently. I have never had to wait for a charger and often I am the only one charging.
The same concept applies to the Northeast's ski resorts and beaches.. Provincetown on Cape Cod has 60,000 vacationers in the summer but less than 4,000 full-time residents in the winter. That means lots of EV recharging stations for less than 6 months of the year.
@@tayzonday I’ve only ever used Tesla chargers (going on 3 years now) and I haven’t seen any cameras at the majority of locations. The machines themselves definitely don’t have any, so it would have to be the lot filming if anything. I think since there’s less risk to others at a charging station compared to a gas pump, they give much more autonomy. (crazy I’m responding to you btw, big fan!)
@@Peterjk94210 While I have seen reports of theft, especially of the power cords which contain copper among other things people tend to steal. Just frequent use seems to wear them out. Remember the plugs are put in and out several times a day if it's a popular charger. I also believe it's a high powered line, in the 200 kw range or so I believe for fast chargers? That much power going down a line probably wears it down over time. I will say without vandalism though the first thing to break is almost always the touch screen in my experience.
This is quite a good video, i was speaking to someone who is in the fuel station business (Petrol Station or 'Servo' in Australian speak). Number of big issues with EV Chargers is why you don't see big fuel stations putting in EV charging spots. 1. The EV super chargers themselves are hugely expensive to install and maintain 2. The simple reality is that an EV Charger makes a pittance of revenue compared to a fuel pump, there's a limit in how many vehicles they can service in a day 3. Electricity, which is becoming ever more expensive, means that it will soon cost more to 'fill up' your EV than it would a pickup truck with Petrol 4. Space, these things can't be installed anywhere near tanks, refueling ports, anywhere that a tanker tuck will park, gas tanks and so forth for safety reasons (EV Fires), so most sites have limited options. Add up these and other points and this is why in Australia you will rarely see any EV chargers at Fuel Stations. They simply don't make enough money to warrant the cost.
And how many square metres of land do you need to facilitate a charger or chargers? By the time you allow for driveway access, it's starts to eat into space, very quickly. That mightn't be too much of a consideration for an operator in a large acreage truck stop type scenario, but for Joe Bloggs sitting on a few million dollars worth of Suburban land, it's never going to happen. I can't see too many of these popping up in Toorak or Sydney's Northern beaches in a quick hurry, that's for sure.
@@muskrat3291 In the US, they're generally on very large properties near Interstate junctions. Australian gas station's tend to have different set ups. Not all, some are like a Pilot or Flying J, but most aren't.
The situation is similar in Europe. One other problem is the competition by non-specialized companies that offer charging as a service and don't need to profit from it. They have low cost, because they can hook up the charger to their existing grid connection (using smart power management so it doesn't require upgrading the grid connection), where a charging company needs to pay every month for a grid connection that is only used for charging vehicles. It is even better if they combine it with solar. E.g. a shopping mall, or office building can offer significant speeds at relatively low cost. If you have a parking lot, you can dump excess grid capacity into the type 2 chargers when demand for fast charging is low. This allows you to optimize the use of your grid connection capacity from morning rush hour, all day until evening rush hour.
This is why almost all petrol stations in the UK are at supermarkets - No independent charging company will ever be able to compete. When the number of EV gets large enough they will install their own and kill the independent charging market just as they did for independent petrol stations.
@@SmileyEmoji42 Supermarkets have a limited grid connection capacity. They will be significant players in the market, but I think there is room for more players. There is insufficient grid capacity, so we will need to use all of it. Companies that have large connections and fluctuating use have room to build chargers.
Honestly it's always good to have a financial plan. These uncertainties will always be there. Thing is, If you're not ready for it, you shouldn't be in the market business or get you a skilled practitioner.
That's true. I work with a professional planner and fixed-income strategist in NY. The fixed income portion of your portfolio won't simply serve as a buffer to the volatility of the equity portion of your portfolio, but will provide legitimate income.
I’ve shuffled through a few experts in the past but settled with CHRIS RYAN STEWART. His strategies are recession proof, more specifically profit-oriented and most likely you’ll find his basic information on the net. He’s a very well known portfolio manager/financial analyst.
I know of his expertise. I have turned over more than half a million dollars working with Chris Ryan Stewart on a very wide array of options and finally sticking to a few that have been favorable in the past 2 years. I began working with him in October 2021
Those charging companies are confused about what business they are in. They think they are in hi-tech business, where they develop apps, platforms or other forms of “technology”. They are mistaken. They are in commodities business. Nobody care about their shitty apps or subscriptions. But maintaining those is very costly. Contrary to widespread belief, gas pumps are cheaper than chargers. Also, both need servicing.
I expect that certain gas station chains that have attached resturants will add EV chargers. That way at least someone will know they the EV charger needs maintenance (and perhaps have someone on staff that can do basic maintenance) and they can pick up restaurant and snack sales (and people can go to the bathroom). I just have not seen it yet. A problem is space and a new utility service as the existing gas station utility service cannot handle the electrical demands of a set of EV chargers (unless the station is built to have EV chargers up front).
Gas pumps are much more expensive than chargers, but the market is saturated with few new ones being built. They only have minor maintenance cost, while we still have ~95% of EV chargers to build from 0, as the fleet transitions of ICE. The video doesn't touch on it, but Tesla installation cost per stall is about 1/5 to 1/10 the cost of other inefficient operators
@@thomasreese2816 You are woefully misinformed. Power electronics are not cheap and require maintenance. Maintenance has human costs and isn’t much cheaper than for gas pumps. There’s a reason why charging stations aren’t profitable and it’s not some conspiracy.
Don't you think that if it wasn't for all of the subsidies, grants and financial incentives, this whole EV thing would simply NEVER have got off the ground?
Never. Plus, Elon hyped this boondoggle to the extreme. "Self-driving" is a complete farce as well as turning out to be quite deadly! All his cars were recalled, to limit the use of the autopilot system to help reduce accidents and deaths.
Probably true. The sad thing is: Musk is still an anti-government libertarian that doesn’t realize a big part of his succes is due to government subisidies.
There were electric cars - check out the documentary “Who killed the electric car”. About GM’s electric car. The free market handled the problem decades ago. Edit: spelling
Right the TAX PAYERS are the ones paying billions in massive constructions of apartments and commercial buildings, HOW MUCH IS Tax payers GRANT MONEY???
I feel like the main issue is they don't understand their place in the EV ecosystem. I see these things all the time at shopping/strip malls. But most people there are coming from home and have no need to charge. Their core customer is the roadtripper - a much more niche market. Ideal placement would be close to cracker barrels imho - and they should provide some way to monetize the customers standing around for 30 mins.
Interesting issue I hadn't considered before. A gas station company has a lot of worker bees making minimum wage and small number of professionals and executives. An EV charging company likely has close to zero minimum wage employees and loads of professional and high-wage tradespeople, plus the executives.
What makes you think a "gas station company" doesn't have a large number of professionals and executives? I worked for three major "gas station" companies during my career and they all have thousands of executives, we had over two thousand in one location alone with other executive offices in other parts of the country and out of the country. Also, they have huge IT departments including large data centers that are extremely costly to maintain. More than likely the corner gas station is owned by a major player.
I like the idea of gas stations adding fast chargers, like Shell or Circle K do. Currently they have 2 charging stalls vs 8 or so fueling stalls, but eventually they could expand further. This gives the same conveniences, including available bathrooms, snacks, warm food etc., increases revenue via sale of merchandise, and reduces per-charging stall costs to the gas station, e.g. potentially using already available space instead of renting space, if someone needs assistance, they can ask the person who already works at the gas station instead of the company having to hire a ton of customer service representatives to be available via the phone, and maybe workers who repair fuel pumps could potentially be trained to replace charger parts (as long as there are no electrical specific issues requiring specialization).
Diesel/petrol: Taxed to hell by the governments and still manage to be profitable. Electric: Not YET taxed by the government (if they took off that would definitely change), currently getting government subsidies, and they STILL can't make it profitable 😂
I'm only about halfway through the video so far, but I feel like the obvious solution here is for gas stations to just add in their own charging stations, replacing or adding to their gas pump stalls. I have no idea why these charging companies thought that people would rather charge up in the back of a parking lot, instead of at a convenience store where they can get food, snacks, drinks, etc and use the bathroom.
another youtuber has the same point of view as you. to me though, i would think you would want them in places like restaurants and grocerystores and even some big box stores. when do you want to plug in for 20 minutes? probably when you are already going to the place and going to be there for more than 20 min. if gas stations had tables and seating then i could see them hosting chargers, but the main thrust is having charging stations with little to no amenities. a gas station can sell you treats, but they are designed for you to be in and out in 5 minutes. meanwhile mcdonalds is bascily everywhere, they have long hours, and they give free wifi. so you can have a meal or snack, watch youtube, and charge. also they tend to have well lit parkinglots.
9:16 the narrator points out that 1 EV charging station could charge a max of 2 cars per hr. while 1 fuel pump could service a dozen ICE per hr. That means fewer customers to buy food, snacks, drinks. Basically, there's no financial benefit for the gas station to remove fuel pumps and replace them with charging stations. This is why you should always watch the entire video before posting a comment.
@@jameskelly3502 Agreed, but why would!’t these charging stations be put in malls, big box stores, or actually put their own Panera or Starbucks franchise to actually generate profit. The difference is gas pumps require the effort to pump while charging you have to keep yourself occupied for 30 minutes, might as well put chargers in some sit-down place customers would go to anyways.
I find them to be expensive for charging purposes... almost cheaper to put in gas unless you charge at home. I am suprised that they don't have a cell phone link in their stations to monitor them.
They must have an internet connection. Each charging station is controlled from what is basically a kiosk app, similar to an ATM. Its just that kiosk programmers are really your grade "D" programmers. The smart guys (grade A guys) are working Google. Each station, if properly designed, should be running self diagnostics, at a minimum, of once per hour. And if done correctly, it can be done is a multitasking manner, without impeding performance. But its not done properly. I bet you that these stations run on a Python program, since that's a prime candidate for a "low tech" kiosk app. But it shouldn't be. Python is an interpretive language, instead of compiled. That's a quick way of making a superfast modern 64-bit processor run as slow as 1MHz 6502 8-bit processor from 1974. Of course, their current counterpart, back at the main office, should also be collecting status from each station, at a regular time interval, and flag any that have a problem. Again who knows what "manager" who thinks he's God's gift to computer programming wrote the code. Incompetence runs deep !
I find them to be way cheaper than gas. You have to base it on cost/mile and will depend on your EV's efficiency. When I use public chargers while road tripping my cost has averaged about 8 cents/mile, most of it on the EA network.
Tesla has live monitoring for their chargers, they know which location get used the most and build more charging stations where needed. They also know when they are not working. These small charging companies don't have the money to keep them up and running like Tesla does.
Here down under the government collects 44 cents a litre tax (Excise) on petrol and deisel. Plus 10% tax (GST) on the total fuel bill. This money goes into general revenue and ensures we can fund our roads. A key reason BEVs are cheap to run is that they avoid these high taxes. They effectively leach off the rest of society by failing to contribute these significant amounts to general revenue including to keep of roads. It is ironic that their heavier weight means that they rip up the roads far quicker.
A loop hole- I think they would close it sooner or later once it becomes significant enough. It was closed in Texas in 2023 by increasing the annual vehicle registration tax for EVs.
I had a great great uncle who owned quite a few gas stations when he was younger. As he pointed out a family hauling their big trucks to their big boat filling up at the gas station, still made him less money the same family buying snacks and drinks. These companies seem to not understand what business they are in, it’s like bars offering a free lunch. The real product is the extra shit people buy the charging is just what brings them there.
They are govt funded projects, meaning the cost of building them is padded quite heavily because the Govt is paying for it... So if you try to build or maintain them without that funding it's pretty high. Every one cares so much about building more chargers as well they don't maintain the ones they have. Tons of cities have chargers all over the place broken or out of service, because no one wants to fix them. Instead they rather build new ones in other locations...
Evs will NEVER be 100%. No country in the world has anywhere the near the generation capacity EVs would require. Apart from the fact only the rich can afford, or even want them.
Australia has 24/7 unmanned service stations in remote country towns. No one is ever on site. This is quite unusual however and you won't see one in larger towns and cities.
I’m from Europe and here the unbranded ones usually under a supermarket brand have 24/7h self service and self payment station but on the side they have normal pumps that during the day have one employee at a time, I think it’s because people are dumb and disrespectful if they don’t see a “autorithy figure” that’s keeps social behavior in check unfortunately
A single gas pump could service 12-15 (i.e., full tanks) cars effortlessly in 30 min, i.e., giving these cars a range of 400-500miles or more. A single charging station could service only one car in 30 minutes with questionable range (depending on the electricity demand). You see, how infrastructure problems arise for EVs.
Really great analysis per usual. The EV charging companies should consider going the old gas station model. Concentrate more chargers in one location and have at least one customer support person located there. They'd however need to increase their price per KwH which will have to be passed on to the customer. The revenues would definitely increase as they can also add non-charging revenue. People would definitely eat or engage in some other activity if they're waiting 30 minutes to charge their cars.
People will not transition to electric if they have to spend half an hour drinking overpriced coffee while waiting for their car to recharge with overpriced electricity. People will only transition to electric on a voluntary basis if they can charge at home for cheaper rates most of the time. It simply does not make sense for the customer. Which is exactly why governments started to initiate outright bans on combustion cars all over the place. Electric will never be a compelling option for anyone not living in a single family home, and there are plenty of those people here in Europe.
I think it will be the likes of Walmart who will be the market leaders. Put a charger in every parking space, and people can charge up while they are shopping. It would work for them even if they only break-even from the charging operation, and they have staff around the place anyway, so they can add looking after the chargers to their duties.
@@katrinabryce That, unfortunately, is impossible. Charger on every parking spot will require astronomical changes in electrical grid, before we even discuss costs of such operation.
Never thought about the relatively slow rate of recharging compared to gas vehicles, severely limiting profit per hour per station... I don't see any way around this 😕
The city of Seattle, Wa. owns it's own utility and supplies electricity services to Seattle and neighboring areas. A year ago, the city utility installed two unmanned charging stations a half mile from where I live. These are likely aimed at serving the neighborhood, plus they are on an arterial and so could expect to attract users traveling through the area, although it's still mostly serving neighboring areas. In that year, I have never seen a car charging. They are used, mostly by cars using them for parking but not charging! That's despite being posted "no parking except when charging." Just a casual observation of use.
SPACs perform poorly because the SPAC is a way to skirt traditional due diligence process to access public equity markets via IPO. Ie SPACs attract poorly managed & poor performing assets
@@Todaviho Same in Finland, there is probably now more unmanned station than manned. Specially now when shop opening times became unlimited and gas stations are not only place to buy food at night... And even then, I think there is probably some that are next to large gas station, but are still unmanned...
Gas stations don't make money on the gas, oil companies do. They make money from their convince store sales. Electric chargers don't make money, only the power companies make money.
Its a common business practice. Start out with low prices, even losing money. After you get enough people hooked, you introduce ludicrous pricing. Customers are invested and have no choice.
One the interesting things I noticed was how to pay. Many charge stations require an app, all have their own it seems. Most also have a flat charge no matter what of a $1 or so. So even if it fails to connect to your car and you have to retry, your still getting charged that $1 for every attempt to get the broken thing to work. Despite all the tech involved I also haven't seen any that let you set charge limits. A gas station might let you put in say $10 of gas, or limit it to 5 gallons or what ever. Far as I can tell you can't say stop at 80% charge. You have to watch it and hurry up and cancel when it gets close. Other wise it just fully charges every time.
@@JustaGuy_GamingThe payment situation is really bad indeed, luckily in France there is a RFID card that's pretty much accepted at like 99% of charging station ("Chargemap"). But with all the ways they charge you, it being either by the kWh, or by the minute, with a flat fee when you plug it in, a time-based fee after 45 minutes... or your vehicle being fully charged... that can become a headache for new users that want to switch to EVs and can't charge at home. As for limiting the charge of your EV, many have the option built in, and you "don't need to rush" as the charge beyond 80% is much slower as it is will all batteries to protect them.
@@brianmurphy8811 Very true, though it could be said that the range you get for a can of gas was far superior to an EV battery charge. On top of which it would be like buying a gas can with holes in it, as even if you don't use the battery it will slowly go flat over time. One the big issues is for things like if you go on vacation and the like an the car just sits there for a few weeks. Several cars have issues with the 12v battery that controls most the car systems like the doors going dead over that time.
Unattended charging stations are much too dangerous especially in the evening hours. Would you let your daughter go charge at an empty home Depot parking lot for 30 to 50 minutes on a dark night with nobody else in the parking lot? Of course not
Think about the turn around time. Pumping gas is fast, they can pump many cars per hour. Verse EV, takes longer to charge per car and less money they can make per hour.
Gas stations are also unprofitable if we're just talking fuel. The trick is that they have added a store to sell all sorts of quick and convenient items, that's where the profit is. And that's where EV charging needs to go. I've long advocated that fast food chains along major highways should install chargers to draw people to those locations.
This video would have been more interesting if you compared the EV charging companies to Tesla's Supercharging business model. Additionally, it would have been more interesting to include travel centers like Buc-ee's and Texas Best who offer Tesla Superchargers to their customers. We have two EVs in our household: A 2023 Tesla Model Y LR and a 2023 Ford Mustang Mach-E Extended Range. The experience traveling long distance in these two EVs is night and day. We traveled from Dallas to Jackson, WY this summer in the Tesla and the charging was effortless. Traveling long distance in the Mustang was not pleasant - it often meant arriving at a Walmart with 4 charging stalls, not all of them working, and a long line of EVs waiting their turn to charge. Lastly, most EVs are charged at home and/or the workplace, unlike ICE vehicles that refuel at crowded gas stations. This convenience and time savings typically offset the time spent fast-charging on road trips. And, it greatly reduces the demand for metropolitan charging for local driving. The relatively small volume of non-Tesla EVs results in a small demand for non-Tesla EV charging companies. With Tesla opening up their Supercharger network to most other EVs beginning in 2024, I wonder if non-Tesla EV charging companies will lose even more money? Note: Most gas stations don't make their profits from selling gasoline but, instead, make their profits from selling products in their stores. EV charging companies don't have this benefit.
... and on top of charging co's losing money, most car manufacturers are either not making much or losing money manufacturing them. Now, you can read about the inability to sell them in quantity. We'll see how this pans out. Not looking good.
It might be effective to set up charging stations at restaurants or entertainment venues. Some place where people can have fun or rest while their car is charging.
The big box store is 2-10 minuets from home. I don't ever see folks charging at the Walmart chargers. Maybe if you are traveling and really need to buy some crap at Walmart.
Here some supermarkets do this. I think this is more advertisement than anything else. Like saying, If you drive EV buy here. I don't think they create too much revenue as they installed pretty slow chargers and you can serve very few customers. Because they only leave after shopping and not as soon as they are fully charged. I also know people that drive to a supermarket, park there cars there for charging and go to work nearby....so worst case you have a non shopping customer blocking you charging station for around 9 hours 😂
@@blablup1214 in my state there is a law limiting you to two hours. Someone tried that 9 hours for work once and in their second day found themselves with a sizable fine. Those chargers communicate back to a server and can phone in a tow truck to haul you away.
I I used to have to 'recharge' my horse every night on cross country trips. The model changed when gasoline power came in, and I was able to do longer trips, at higher speeds, with multiple refills. The cost to the taxpayer was enormous, in creating an asphalt covered road network. It also marginalized every other transportation mode. The transition to EVs is another different model, but requiring a whole lot less extreme adaptation than the previous shift. We can still use the same taxpayer subsidised road network. We also have the convenience of doing 80-90% of 'refilling' at home, for a whole lot cheaper than gas. The fact that EVs are still a small market, and drive-by recharging on highways is a small part of the usage pattern means that such chargers aren't going to be cost effective until there are a whole lot more EVs on the road. I tend to look for destination charging, where I can use my time for something else while the car is charging. Like shopping, or eating or sleeping. The fact that there is so much more flexibility in how you charge compared to how you have to gas up means that the 'gas and go' model you've been used to for 100 years is no longer viable. I'm adapting, not whingeing.
Your video didn't mention Tesla's Supercharger network. It's definitely worth including in the discussion about EV charging companies, as it stands out in several key areas: Uptime: Tesla boasts an impressive uptime record for its Supercharger network, with reports suggesting over 95% of stations operational at any given time. This reliability is a major advantage for Tesla owners, as it reduces the risk of encountering a non-functional station during a trip. Profits: While specific financial details are limited, Tesla has hinted that its Supercharger network is profitable. This could be due to many factors. Number of chargers: As of December 2023, Tesla boasts over 1,974 Supercharger stations and 21,852 individual charging ports in the US alone. This extensive network provides widespread coverage and reduces range anxiety for Tesla drivers.
There needs to be an Indy 500 for EVs. Racing technology spured the ICE development more than anything else. Yes, the first races would be extremly boring and slow. But hot swaping batteries should be like changing tires.
To ad to all the other problems, think about the cost to supply the roughly 1 megawatt of power these charge stations require. Depending on location that ranges from really expensive to you can't afford it
Tesla has been doing it for years. 1 MW is enough for like 16 charge stalls. They do have some that big these days, but they used to be like 8 stalls with a max total of 600kW.
@@phillipsusi1791 I just had a friend bid one and it was a 1,OOO KVA transformer for 6 level 3 chargers and one other type of charger that had lower electrical requirements, but I forget what the small one was for. Yeah Tesla can do it, because they don't really have to make a profit. But Apu at the Quickie Mart isn't going to make any money after having to install a 1,000KVA padmount transformer
@@phillipsusi1791 They've got superchargers now that can do 350kwh. That's three chargers drawing 1MW. My entire neighbourhood, with 70 homes, would rarely draw that much power, and we have four large pad-mounted transformers to handle the supply. I know of one isolated gas station near where I live that paid $700,000 to install two superchargers. Gotta to do a lot of charges to make a return on $700,000!
@@jesseyoung9654 350 kW is the max theoretical output. Some of the new Teslas supposedly can take that much, for a few minutes, when the battery is at the right level, and that's it. My 2016 maxes out at around 165 kW. It doesn't take long for it to drop below 100 kW, and that's even on a 350 kW charger with nobody else around. Their output can also drop if all of the stalls are in use. I sometimes plug in to a busy station expecting to get 160 kW and, because the whole station is loaded down, only get 100 kW or less. Often it is down to only 20-30 kW by the time I have enough to leave. Just because they say it can do 350 kW doesn't mean they need to have the capacity to run all of the stations at 350kW at the same time. That was my point.
@@phillipsusi1791 The paradox here is that when the stalls are at their busiest is precisely when you need that max capacity, and it's also when you make the most money. I live in a tourist town that is right near the range limit for EVs departing out of Brisbane and Sydney. The Superchargers here have massive lines around holiday time, which is when they need to charge as fast as possible and get people on their way. It's also when they charge a premium. Catch 22 for the charger operators - do they spend the money on max capacity, or do they forgo the extra revenue?
0:13Infrastructure should be the government's job, not the private sector's. Because if it is ordered in large quantities and standardized Prices will go down. 0:21 I suggest you use trains and planes.Driving 8 hours by car is a waste. 1:49 Most people will charge Battery from 20-80% capacity. 2:05 Unless the government standardizes like in Europe and China
One of the great things we are always told about the "energy transition" is that it means more jobs. But the advantage of these boondoggles is they don't require a person on site... So which is it? So many similar conflicts in the dumb ev transition schemes.
There is no transition. Things just add up. We have never burn that much coal as today, while people think coal is just from the i dustrial revolution time
THIS is why going electric is going to be a heavy financial lift. The IC vehicle grew up alongside a parallel gigantic industry (oil extraction and refining) ready, willing and EAGER to fuel IC vehicles. The big sleepy electric companies have little or no interest in that market. Indeed, they know that reduced electricity consumption will save them money in reduced power plant costs.
I’ve had my EV for 2 years now and have never experienced range or “will it start” anxiety. It’s the best high ticket item purchase of my life. At the end of the day, an EV charging station is a glorified wall outlet. If one company (that everyone loves to hate) can operate a huge network with a positive gross margin, so can another. No. These companies don’t have to drastically increase their prices to become profitable. They simply have to be better. Tesla’s network is 4.8/5 rated and I’ve never had an experience with a charger that didn’t work (Tesla’s operational stats are 99.1% working 24/7) EV charging stations were never meant to be “as profitable” as gas stations. It’s a different experience.
May I also add another problem of EV charger, adding a station will be put strain on power grid. Let's say a charger take 150 kW to charge a battery to full in 20 mins. At full capacity a station with only 8 charger will take more than Megawatt of electricity. How can power grid manage fluctuation on demand?
I leased a Ford Mustang Mach E, and put on about 10,000 miles a year. I don’t think I even averaged once per month at a public charging station, thanks to a charger in my garage. I’m now looking forward to leasing another EV. However, if I didn’t have home charging, I wouldn’t even consider an EV unless it was a Tesla. The public charging stations usually had half the stalls out of service. Once I was nearly stranded on the far side of the state, when only one of six stalls at an Electrify America station worked, and another time it took me about 20 minutes to disconnect my car from the ChargePoint charger in the middle of the winter when the charging plug froze into the side of my car!
It seems that all non-Tesla chargers are prone to break down far more frequently than Superchargers. Thats why i would only buy a Tesla if i needed a BEV.
Why wouldn't they put Starbucks or Panera's at every location, maybe even at big-box stores where people sit for more than 20-30 minutes. Malls and grcoery stores should be where these chargers are being put so they recieve a portion of the profits.
Like u mentioned yourself, charging EV takes longer to charge per car. Less cars charged, less customers entering the stores and buying stuffs. Whereas pumping gas is fast, they can pump many cars per hour. More car pumped, more customers going in the stores and buying stuffs. Big malls, movie theaters,etc seem promising. Though its gonna take time for those places to fully implement charging stations.
1. Depends on how well it is cared for- especially battery charging behavior. Warranty in Tesla is 8 years or 120K miles. 2. Around $17K, currently. 3. Depends on your application, geographic location, and ability to care for the battery. Great for some, not as good as ICE for others.
Why not install four or five at existing gas stations and set up a waiting area they can spend more money in or encourage the customers go have lunch at a restaurant next door? That way the employees who were watching the pumps and registers who were there already can assist customers on-site and more money can be extracted from the customers. This doesn’t have to be complicated. No silly apps, no remote tech support, just periodic maintenance.
How often do you see companies encouraging their customers to spend their time and money at someone else’s businesses? If it’s a united venture under a single conglomerate then that means that a gas station plus convenience store will have to buy more real estate by buying space for EV stations and a full out restaurant That can easily double the costs and for what? Accommodating a shakey market with a history of negative profits as shown in the video? Until the EV technology matures it’s much safer to use that extra space for a more reliable gas station
@@randall172Starbucks, subway, McDonald’s and rest of the fast food restaurants should be enough to cover. The issue is there is not enough engineers to cover
Many of the comments in this video represent a comparison of apples to oranges... Example: Comparing how much clients a single pump can serve by hour to EVs is stupid since the correct comparison would be by location. Gas can fill up a lot faster but they also need a much larger footprint for the gas tanks to be able to fill many cars an hour. That is why we don't see gas pump locations with dozens of stalls. Electric, on the other hand, can have locations with, 40, 50 or more stalls were cars can fill up at the same time.
You made a case study of one company. They sound like an absolute disaster. How the hell can they not know when their chargers are offline? How can their customer service and related systems be so bad? How can their maintenance costs be so high? The answer to all the above is “incompetence”, and that’s not a reflection on EV’s but on folks who obviously do not have a background in engineering or any other appropriate discipline. No one who is actually serious about creating a sustainable business goes via SPAC.
They're all pretty garbage. Nonfunctional and derated chargers are the norm across many companies. He's not cherry picking. The current state of charging infrastructure in this country is abominable.
They know when a charger is offline. Each one is constantly sending data about it's status. Not relaying this information to the customer and not dealing with it in a timely manner screams incompetent customer service. It is also possible that the companies that own the chargers underestimated how much service would be required. Nothing is maintenance free. This doesn't even include vandalism and theft. Some people see a convenient place to charge their car. Crackheads see a pile of unprotected scrap metal ready to be stripped and resold. Though they should have adapted once they saw chargers failing at a higher than expected level. Again, bad customer service model.
wait till they digitally stop you from unlimited charging and you get a quota.. Remember you asked for this.. Remember last summer when private citizens had their air conditioners disabled digitally because "reasons" and those people were unable to use their "smart" air conditioners..thats the tip of the iceberg.. enjoy your communism.
@@kerstin3267 I'm in Northern California. I pay $0.09/kWh to charge at home during off-peak and nearest public EV chargers usually go for $0.35 to 0.40 per kWh. People must be incredibly lucky if they pay less for public charging.
@@duerf5826Some workplaces offer free charging while they work so that’s one public charging benefit if they’re in a company like that. But the charging stations are limited so idk if it’s a full benefit
I think the reality of the situation is we just don't know yet what a electric car future will look like as even in the markets ahead of the curve total fleet adoption is just about into double digits.
I've owned an EV for just under a year and a half. In buying it, I got a three year deal for free charging at Electrify America, whom Genesis, the manufacturer of my EV, undoubtedly compensates. But I have yet to use any EV charging station. I pay about $0.17/kWh at my house, and the convenience of coming home, plugging it in, and being ready to go the next day makes it worth the cost to me. My typical day uses about 19 kWh, costing about $3.29 to drive my typical 62 miles. That said, I've not taken a long trip in the car for the reasons you mentioned (lack of charging station availability and reliability). I have an IC pickup truck that I use for the rare long trips.
Could not finish this, too many questions. Gross margin at Electrify America here in Colorado, where electricity is purchased at about $0.12/kwh and sold for between $0.42/kwh and $0.56/kwh, is off the charts compared to Murphy. I think the problem is capital cost, depreciation, and lack of use generally. Also, the adoption rate is still slow. The chargers at convenience stores that I have seen on long trips (just took a 3,000 mile trip last week) are often not in use, whereas I have seen wall to wall usage at the gas pumps (there are exceptions). It’s a catch 22. There still are not enough chargers geographically to encourage people to take EVS on long trips as much as they take ICE vehicles. And people are afraid of the occasional wait for a charger. I have an EV and an ICE vehicle, and it was a no brainer which one to take on that 3,000 mile trip. EV around town (and for going 0-60 in the blink of an eye), and ICE for trips. But as they build more chargers the take rate and useage will increase. It’s one thing to occasionally wait 5 minutes for a pump and fill up in 10. It’s another to risk waiting 30 minutes for a chargers and fill up in 45, even though the average charger useage rate is small. It’s a mess. There are gas stations on every corner. On a trip you are never more than 20 or 30 miles away from a fast refilling gas station right by the highway that has food and amenities. But you can easily be hundreds of miles from a charging station on a road trip out west. You have to plan carefully, hunt the station down, hope the damn thing is working (and if it is not, have enough juice to make it to your next alternate which can literally be 100 miles away), and wait a long time to charge, in a Walmart parking lot if you are lucky but often where there are no amenities whatsoever, not even a bathroom. Isn’t that special. To match the convenience of ICE vehicles and totally adapt to EV’s, you need to install 3 times as many chargers (along highways for people on trips) because it takes 3 times as long to charge as it does to fill up with gas. I don’t see us getting there for a very long time. My EV charges somewhat slowly. We took a leisurely 2 days to reach Orang County m Colorado in the ICE vehicle, but it would have been 3 days with all the stops in an EV. Again, you can’t drive from 100% to empty because that one charging location you were counting on just might be down that day. And it is rough on batteries to fast chargers to 100% anyway, and to deplete to close to zero, so there are a lot of stops. And there are generally no bathrooms, much less In ‘n Out it Burgers, at the charging stations. Can you take a trip in an EV? Sure. Is it convenient to do so? No. EV’s will remain around own, charge at home vehicles for quite some time. At least until the next big technological breakthrough. Sorry Elon.
Even if EV charging station reliability is perfected and they never break down, the length of time required to charge will never charge. You can fill up a 20 gallon tank of a Cadillac Escalade in about 90 seconds from pump start to stop. Even Tesla's fastest fast charging will take 30 minutes to completely recharge a Model X LR battery to 100%. Further increasing the charging speed will increase temperature, reduce charging efficiency, and greatly reduce the longevity of the battery. That is a disadvantage that EVs will never overcome relative to an ICE car.
Charging at a station is the exception. Charging at home is the norm- very cheap, and way cheaper that petrol. That, along with the much more frequent and expensive PM maintenance is the disadvantage ICE vehicles will never overcome.
1) You spend 20 mins screwing around buying your Doritos and Pepsi, spending 10 mins deciding what flavour you want, in the gas station anyway 2) that is from 0-100%. Like your phone and laptop, it deliberately charges slower 80+% charged to wear out the battery cells less thus it prolongs your battery life. It is 0-80% in 20 minutes. Based upon average driving patterns and mid range EV typical range, it is 2 mins charge per day of use. And that’s if you drive everyday too. 4) Everyone is gangsta until they find out charging an EV is 2-3x cheaper than gas or it’s infinite if you charge your EV at a public one for free.
Icing and maintenance are only part of the issue. Icing is still a problem that doesn’t get mentioned enough. Some stations also price for time versus metering the power actually transmitted. Public chargers pricing for time don’t make sense for some vehicles. Glad there are public chargers out there in a pinch for everyone, but really should be a home/work thing. These issues and other reasons are why I’m glad I went for a Chevy Volt instead. Lion’s share of my driving is electric, but I have access to gas whenever I need it. Hydrogen solves for some of these public charger issues, but carries its own significant problems too. And, Teslas are still king in terms of their charging network value add.
The same is true for ICE. My BIL recently blew the engine on his 2011 Impreza Sport. Granted, he's a sports reporter and put 24k miles/year on it. But still, it's now worth less than $400 scrap because an engine would cost more than a car with ~300k miles is worth.
I have a Toyota RAV 4 Hybrid. Best decision I ever made. A hybrid engine is the best of both worlds - the electric and gas engines talk to each other, using gas only when necessary and no need to worry about where the next charging station is and if it works. I get 900 - 1100 km (560 to 685 miles) per tank. Even when it's -20 (-4F) out I still get 600km (370 miles) per tank.
Which is what the big automakers tried to tell governments would be ideal, hybrids. But no instead you have California, where I am, and other states (I will guess) passing legislation requiring EV sales, how many and by when et cetera. California et al will eventually have to walk back some of this envelope pushing legislation but I fear it may be too late for many auto makers who are struggling now with EV manufacturing, namely the batteries. As a side note I have a very trustworthy 2001 RAV4 I bought new and am driving till the wheels fall off. I enjoyed reading your comment b/c gives me confidence! Anyway. Cheers.
@@rhobot75 Only problem with Hybrids is they were kind of rushed, as car companies rushed to being as seen being Green with less product testing than normally goes into a car. If anything goes wrong it's usually very expensive to fix. Not long ago I was reading a news article about a guy who had to replace his Hybrid battery, would of cost him 15k, for a car he only paid 20k for... Which seems odd if you consider how much smaller hybrid batteries are.
@@ceasarwright7567 Depends on the tank size as well. I believe most hybrids have slightly smaller tanks. While something not very efficient but with a 20 gallon tank can also get similar range.
hey, maybe do a video on a business u think is working. i like hearing about the failures, your content is good. but would be interesting to hear about some wins too.
The fatal flaw of EV's is battery life/cost. A well maintained gas motor can easily last 25 years while batteries deteriorate quickly & rarely exceed 7 yrs of useful life. This makes EV's effectively disposable as each time it's re-sold the buyer is likely have to buy a new "motor" which makes any "green" benefit moot as you'll just buy a new one instead.
You numbers are just plain wrong as the battery is my Tesla is guaranteed for 10 years or 120,000 miles to retain at least 70% of its original full charge. Even a higher mileage vehicle with say 50% of original battery capacity would still have utility for many people.
Your fatal flaw is spouting hot garbage. All EV makers have battery warranties exceeding the 7 year mark. Most last way longer. Also 25 years for a gas gar? I's possible but the average life is maybe 15 years
Good video! I switched from a hybrid and truck to a Ford Mach-e about 18 months ago. I now have 27,000 miles on the Mach-e. I made the switch because I had rented a 2021 Kia Niro EV while having engine work done on the hybrid. At the time, charging stations were reliable and plentiful here in Los Angeles. Now, I haven't needed to use a public charger for about five months. But, I see many more chargers down than up. They need to partner with fast food or convenience stores to allow people to purchase goods or take a breather while charging.
The Mach-E is the only EV I like. I have a newish Mach One, a 1973 Mach One and maybe soon a Mach E. Do you charge at home? I have a couple 240 volt outlets in my garage already.
@@TheBandit7613 I mostly charge at home. I've only publicly charged twice in the past six months, and those were on a road trip from LA to Vegas. I don't have a 240v outlet, only 120v. It isn't an issue. I drive about 3,000 miles a month.
If you can't charge at home, hopefully in a driveway or garage Ev's are really hard to justify imo. The prices of most fast chargers are nuts, and the time out of your day to charge your car once or twice at them is pretty bad, especially if you don't get the advertised speeds on the chargers. Starting every day to work with a 20 minute charge is not a good idea.
You obiously have never owned and EV. More like 20 minutes once a week at a fast charger if you have a normal commute. Or zero hours every day if you can charge at home or work.
@@CheapSushi Right. EV charging needs to be widely available for everyone who owns a car, just like gas stations are today. But what did you expect, everyone to get a charger everwhere all at once? As the guys building Rome once said about such criticism, we're working on it!
@@Tom-dt4ic There is also the issue of turn around, Ev stations are much slower than gas obviously. Meaning if you actually replaced every car on the road with a EV's you'd need far more chargers. A gas station with 8 pumps would likely need at least 32 charge stations, and the power from the grid to actually power that much.
@@JustaGuy_Gaming Actually, you would only need to increase capacity on highways for the percentage of cars using that highway that have ventured far from home. For everyone else, you'll just be able to charge at home or work. So in towns you'll actually need way less places to charge than there are currently gas stations. Like way less! Gas stations will go out of business in droves. The challenge will be installing level 2 chargers everywhere, like for nearly every parking place in an apartment. And at hotels. And at work place parking lots. And yes, the grid will be able to handle this just fine as the grid will grow with EV adoption, just like it as always grown in the past 70 years to meet demand.
@@Tom-dt4ic Not sure about needing less chargers. I mean your talking about every apartment complex, work place etc having chargers. Given even a modest apartment complex might have 300ish apartments, thats a lot of chargers even if you just give them one per apartment. Though at least home based ones wouldn't have to be fast chargers. As for the grid being able to handle it, I have my doubts. Many cities already have power issues and rolling black outs, especially in the summer or winter months when people use air conditioners or heaters. The other issue is this chase for "green energy". In the last decade or so we have shut down countless coal power, nuclear, natural gas etc power plants and the Solar/wind etc plants built in their place don't exactly cover those needs. Simply in a put in a time we need expansion of power generation, we are removing them. It's especially bad in places like Europe as proven by the hole situation over there where basically every one bought power from other countries while claiming their own "Green Energy sources" were so great.
If it's not profitable that doesn't mean the government should take taxpayers money and burn it away in this. Instead it means that the cost charged for electricity is too cheap so EVs need to pay their fair share
I’ve been commenting about this for awhile now, why would someone without a charger at home want to buy a electric car and pay exorbitant prices for electricity when they could just keep their gas car and fill up in minutes at a gas station that is on every corner?
The charging stations should have convenience stores, restaurants & other stuff attached which would hopefully subsidize the charging & help not bore the driver waiting 20-30 minutes for the thing to charge OR just have existing gas stations have an EV charging section to go along with the usual gas pumps
Walmart is supposedly going to add EV charging to all of their stores. This will be great if is comes to life. I hope this will get Home Depot, Lowes, Best Buy, mega grocery stores to consider doing this also. I do agree we should be able to use a credit for places like a home Depot and Walmart to if we can use their card.
Τhe root of the problem is that several of these companies started from government funded research projects, where snake-oil salesmen wrote proposals to develop charging systems just aiming to get the grant. When they develop the product and present the results they either beautify the operation or even hide the shortcomings. All these products presented as the new planet saving solution in the proposals are evaluated in lab conditions for a short time just to end successfully yet another gov/EU-funded R&D project. When deployed in the real world, their real shortcomings show up. Typically research grant IT products require continuous maintenance because something breaks all the time. Sometimes the product doesn't work even when demoed before the evaluation committee haha. These maintenance costs from training and paying the maintenance personnel that needs to be in standby pile up and you show what happens in the video. But even though the product and the spin-off company fail, the snake oil salesmen researchers get rich with the tax payers' money.
Even without straight forward malice, when your motivation is not to make money - your company, unsurprisingly, will not make. Those charging systems are over complicated, which causes poor reliability and high maintenance costs.
I considered installing e c for my parking spaces but this analysis is correct the capital and overheads costs are not covered and the more machines the more you lose
it's a bad sign for the future of EV's that .40 cents/kwh is a losing proposition for the charging companies. not knowing about charger outages is perplexing. you would think that networking the chargers in each location and have them report outages and usage data over the cell network, wifi or through a cable would be a no-brainer. if it was a problem that the charger couldn't detect, like a broken connector, they should know it's out by the usage data. EV's will never grow like everyone is expecting if the charging infrastructure is hard to find, more expensive than gas, time consuming and way less conveinent.
Not at all. Remember in reality, gas stations make FAR more profit when you buy an overpriced drink or snacks than they ever do off the fuel. This won’t really change with gas stations having EV charging or RNG / biogas pumps. EV chargers will be located where the gas stations are located already due to market forces. Not to mention larger high traffic places will have them as essentially a ‘loss leader’, in that they don’t expect to make much profit off the charging, but it will bring EV drivers to that place and thus shop there more and/or think of the place of business more positively. Not to mention lots of rural private campgrounds are installing them because if they don’t, the consumers with EVs will leave for the competition. Pure market forces.
Excellent point about the profit margins on EV chargers being so slim due to the time it takes to 'fill up' in comparison to a diesel pump... and the fact that Exploding Vehicle owners do you have a technical option of home charging? Whereas it's not within most people's ability to manufactured diesel at home 😂 It's a solid point that hadn't considered: thank you very much for highlighting it.
Feel like them depreciating their chargers is a write-off method. I can only imagine the actual plug itself ever requiring maintenance, power delivery electronics are tried and tested for over a century.
You can depreciate an asset OR you can expense it all at once. NOT both. There are some cases you must depreciate an asset rather then expense the whole amount in one year. If you want some reading material check out topic 704 and section 179.
@@cheddarcheese Yes, but your charging station will contain different assets which depreciate over different times. The civil engineering work to prepare the land for installation only needs to be done once and will last for hundreds or even thousands of years. The payment terminal and plug/socket interface will last the least amount of time, and the power electronics stuff will last maybe 50 years. Also, accounting depreciation and tax depreciation are not the same thing. Tax subsidies often take the form of allowing for a much higher deduction than what you put in the accounts, or by allowing you to put a higher cost in the tax return than what you actually paid.
The idea solution for EV charging is the rest stop model. A restaurant, shops, bathrooms, and more. Some place people can spend 30 or so minutes either getting a meal, shopping, or something else while their car charges. Nobody wants to just sit in an empty parking lot for 30 minutes with nothing to do. If i were an EV charging company I would partner with some restaurant chains, book distributes, or coffee companies. Maybe create a place with 10-20 charging stations, but where you can also read/buy books, food, or just hang out till your car is charged.
Producing the electricity isn't even the hard part, having the infrastructure to get said electricity to the amount of charging stations we would need is much harder (aka more expensive).
Except one country is already doing it. Granted they have hydroelectric everywhere, but.. claim debunked. As for the rest of us, there's plenty of load available overnight - and EVs can charge at home for about the wattage of a space heater, and get enough range for 90% of people's driving needs the next day. Seems pretty possible to me.
When I had my ev about 7 years ago 50 percent of chargers didn’t work or were slow. My cousin whom recently bought an ev confirms that that’s still the case. Best use in my opinion is to use it locally and charge it at home.
Yea but I drive back and forth from Florida to Pennsylvania and I use a gas car which I can get off most exits for gas and get right back on the highway!
@@flybirds2024 I've driven from Florida to Maine several times with my Tesla and didn't even have to pay to charge it on the trip since I bought in 2016 and was grandfathered in to free supercharging. Even if buy today and have to pay, it's only slightly more expensive than driving a gas car, so if you only do a cross country trip once a year, it still works out in the end. Sure, I can't do a cannonball run only stopping for gas for 5 minutes every 4 hours, but I can't do that anyway between needing to stretch my legs, walk the dogs, get food, and get the kids to pee.
I've watched an installation of EVgo chargers at the bank across the street from my office over the last year and wondered why they were doing this, and who would ever use it. I've had a Tesla since 2016 and have used their supercharger network on cross country road trips almost every summer since. Other than those summer road trips, I charge at home. I can't understand why anyone would pay triple the cost to charge on this EVgo charger at the bank ( and 1/2 or 1/3rd the speed of a tesla supercharger that is along the highway ) instead of charging at home. If you are driving cross country, then parking at this bank for an hour to recharge is not the way to do it. If you are just driving around town, then charge overnight at home for 1/3rd the cost.
Some people live in apartments or condos or don't have drives at their homes. In addition, if it's an older home it would probably require an upgrade to the power supply.
@@frederickclause2694 Any home can support a dryer outlet, no upgrade needed. Sure, apartments and condos will need to put some chargers in their parking lots and figure out how to bill for it. That isn't a hard problem.
You fail to mention the largest EV charging company! It is profitable, has over 16,800 chargers, and their chargers had .05% downtime in 2023! Can anyone tell me the company im talking about?
@@youtubetim3577 At least Telsa had the sense to put their chargers along highways to serve people driving cross country. A bunch of chargers around town ( that are 1/2 or 1/3rd as fast ) are useless whether they are owned by chargepoint or EVgo.
The company is barely profitable. Their charging network isn't profitable. And the coverage is really poor, if EVs were ever going to be viable for mainstream (lol) the charging network would have to be far bigger than what it is now, and no company will want to pick up that loss.
@@alkaholic4848 Tesla has the best profit margins out of any car company right now. Net profit per car is $9,574 compared to $2,150 per car at GM. In short, you’re a 🤡.
@@clam_baked The figures per car are misleading, they can be easily manipulated. Tesla profits 2023: $10.7billion GM profits 2023: $21.8billion Incidentally, this is also why Tesla stock is a bubble / ponzi scheme. Compare the above to the share prices... Tesla: $209 GM: £35 Completely disproportionate, as with the same comparison against pretty much any other shares. Tesla is ridiculously overvalued, they'll never meet the hype.
"...by merging with SPACs...all disasters." Yep, seems on point.
If you see SPAC, think short
Usually followed-up with "lost 90% of its value in a year...".
Short play all clear!
@@Jordan-Ramses Merge with SPAC = couldn't come up with an enticing prospect for going public.
Remember, SPAC just means that their business couldn't survive the mandatory disclosures required to go public the normal way....
The largest issue is that people have no incentive to spend 30 wasted minutes charging their car, they would rather charge it while doing something useful. Unless you link the charging in with something practical, people would rather charge at home, or work.
Issue with that is hitting the magic number of time. Assuming you want to make money with the chargers you don't want people to spend more time doing something else than the car takes to charge. Say you pay for a fast charge that takes 30 minutes. You can't exactly go watch a movie without the car sitting there taking up the charge station for an extra hour or more.
On the other hand if you plan on it taking 30 minutes, and the power provided is low, mostly due to multiple chargers being used at once or something and you only get like 30 kwh or something and it takes 45 minutes to an hour to fully charge... well you have an issue as well. Never mind different cars charge at different rates, with bigger or smaller batteries and higher or lower starting charge levels. Simply put it would be very hard to judge how much time your customers have to spend while waiting for their cars to charge.
And unless you have unlimited number of charge stations, you don't want a line of cars waiting to charge while your out shopping in walmart and your cars fully charged.
maybe a battery swap station and onboard solar panel can charge your car while in parking can help
Yes the business will never be as big as gas because you only use it on road trips in a full built out system. All your daily charging happens at/near home or at work. 20-30 mins works great for a bio break and food before continuing your road trip.
10-12 mins, actually - not sure where this guy got that from…
@@TheCrusher72 Depends on the charger and the size of the battery being charged, some are faster than others. Also a lot of the first gen charges were linked together. Meaning if two cars charged at the same time the power was split between the two, giving you really low amounts of power even if it claimed to be a super charger.
Where I live, they charge 9 times more for electricity, than it cost at your home. Still losing money.
right thats why i call bs
I rented an electric car recently. Charging was a pain especially while driving long distance. I wouldn’t rent another fully EV car. Even with the fast chargers it’s a major inconvenience.
It does not make any sense for car lending companies like hertz to be renting out EVs. There is currently not enough infrastructure and good enough infrastructure to justify lending iit to the average customer. Driving an EV is a different way of driving, especially during long journeys. For example, optimal route planning in an EV means that at some points during the trip, you would only stop for 10-15min at a charger then 8min at the next then 30min at the end etc.
Also, if it aint a tesla, its not even worth it.
Just use train
I have rented Teslas a couple times on Turo and that wasn't bad. You basically just use the owners account to charge at super chargers or charge at your own home. I probably wouldn't do it with a mainstream car rental company though, I have heard horror stories about not having the car come with enough charge, having to charge it before returing or facing a large fee, and then not having any sort charging set up (basically you are on your own).
When I buy gas, I insert a credit card. Why is it EV charge companies FORCE me to load an app, load a credit card, and in many cases transfer money to create a “balance”. If gasoline sellers used the EV charge business model there would be a nationwide protest.
There is one place without an app, without a card. Just plug in the cable, do nothing, car charges, simpler than gas. Just buy a Tesla. All others have that charge problem
Or just keep your ICE truck. That option is much cheaper.
When I charge at home there is no app at all when I change at my local shopping centre no app needed also all free charging, what country am I in? Australia. DC charging is for long distance only the idea that Americans are stupid and don't understand how ev's work thinking it's the same as petrol cars is just laughable.
Actually no one is forcing you to have app. I prefer an app that has account info and offers reliable service and a discount. Swapping a credit card means paying a service fee. Would you rather pay more or less? Thanks.
@@t.d.5804 wow what a solution then you need an app just to unlock you car
Another factor not mentioned in this video is uneven demand across various times of day and seasons. In a major tourist destination, like the grand canyon, you need massive amounts of chargers to handle the peak season loads, that would see very little revenue coming in during the off season.
The answer may be to simply sell the units to third parties and charge for maintainance. The math is a sales problem
@@screwstatists7324 lol That's like saying if a burger joint is losing money every time they sell a hamburger, the solution is to franchise so somebody else can lose the money. 😂
I live a couple of hours south of the Grand Canyon and go there frequently. I have never had to wait for a charger and often I am the only one charging.
The same concept applies to the Northeast's ski resorts and beaches.. Provincetown on Cape Cod has 60,000 vacationers in the summer but less than 4,000 full-time residents in the winter. That means lots of EV recharging stations for less than 6 months of the year.
Commercial energy rates are far lower than residential. The electricity cost is hardly a factor.
I don’t understand how a charging station only lasts three-to-seven years. What wears out?
In my experience almost always abuse from users
@@Peterjk94210 Don't charging stations film every user for reasons of security and self-defense? Gas stations do . . .
@@tayzonday I’ve only ever used Tesla chargers (going on 3 years now) and I haven’t seen any cameras at the majority of locations. The machines themselves definitely don’t have any, so it would have to be the lot filming if anything. I think since there’s less risk to others at a charging station compared to a gas pump, they give much more autonomy. (crazy I’m responding to you btw, big fan!)
The corruption. New guys want their cut.
@@Peterjk94210 While I have seen reports of theft, especially of the power cords which contain copper among other things people tend to steal. Just frequent use seems to wear them out. Remember the plugs are put in and out several times a day if it's a popular charger. I also believe it's a high powered line, in the 200 kw range or so I believe for fast chargers? That much power going down a line probably wears it down over time.
I will say without vandalism though the first thing to break is almost always the touch screen in my experience.
This is quite a good video, i was speaking to someone who is in the fuel station business (Petrol Station or 'Servo' in Australian speak). Number of big issues with EV Chargers is why you don't see big fuel stations putting in EV charging spots.
1. The EV super chargers themselves are hugely expensive to install and maintain
2. The simple reality is that an EV Charger makes a pittance of revenue compared to a fuel pump, there's a limit in how many vehicles they can service in a day
3. Electricity, which is becoming ever more expensive, means that it will soon cost more to 'fill up' your EV than it would a pickup truck with Petrol
4. Space, these things can't be installed anywhere near tanks, refueling ports, anywhere that a tanker tuck will park, gas tanks and so forth for safety reasons (EV Fires), so most sites have limited options.
Add up these and other points and this is why in Australia you will rarely see any EV chargers at Fuel Stations. They simply don't make enough money to warrant the cost.
And how many square metres of land do you need to facilitate a charger or chargers? By the time you allow for driveway access, it's starts to eat into space, very quickly.
That mightn't be too much of a consideration for an operator in a large acreage truck stop type scenario, but for Joe Bloggs sitting on a few million dollars worth of Suburban land, it's never going to happen. I can't see too many of these popping up in Toorak or Sydney's Northern beaches in a quick hurry, that's for sure.
Circle K, 7-11, Pilot Flying J, Shell are just a few of the major players putting in charging stations.
@@muskrat3291 In the US, they're generally on very large properties near Interstate junctions. Australian gas station's tend to have different set ups. Not all, some are like a Pilot or Flying J, but most aren't.
The situation is similar in Europe.
One other problem is the competition by non-specialized companies that offer charging as a service and don't need to profit from it. They have low cost, because they can hook up the charger to their existing grid connection (using smart power management so it doesn't require upgrading the grid connection), where a charging company needs to pay every month for a grid connection that is only used for charging vehicles. It is even better if they combine it with solar. E.g. a shopping mall, or office building can offer significant speeds at relatively low cost. If you have a parking lot, you can dump excess grid capacity into the type 2 chargers when demand for fast charging is low. This allows you to optimize the use of your grid connection capacity from morning rush hour, all day until evening rush hour.
That's called competition, so the private competitors need to compete. Simple as that
Just use kempower dc fast chargers. You won't need a big grid connection
This is why almost all petrol stations in the UK are at supermarkets - No independent charging company will ever be able to compete. When the number of EV gets large enough they will install their own and kill the independent charging market just as they did for independent petrol stations.
@@SmileyEmoji42 Supermarkets have a limited grid connection capacity. They will be significant players in the market, but I think there is room for more players. There is insufficient grid capacity, so we will need to use all of it. Companies that have large connections and fluctuating use have room to build chargers.
One key factor could be the substantial upfront investment required to build charging infrastructure.
Additionally, the competitive landscape and the race to establish market dominance might be leading to aggressive spending.
Honestly it's always good to have a financial plan. These uncertainties will always be there. Thing is, If you're not ready for it, you shouldn't be in the market business or get you a skilled practitioner.
That's true. I work with a professional planner and fixed-income strategist in NY. The fixed income portion of your portfolio won't simply serve as a buffer to the volatility of the equity portion of your portfolio, but will provide legitimate income.
I’ve shuffled through a few experts in the past but settled with CHRIS RYAN STEWART. His strategies are recession proof, more specifically profit-oriented and most likely you’ll find his basic information on the net. He’s a very well known portfolio manager/financial analyst.
I know of his expertise. I have turned over more than half a million dollars working with Chris Ryan Stewart on a very wide array of options and finally sticking to a few that have been favorable in the past 2 years. I began working with him in October 2021
Those charging companies are confused about what business they are in. They think they are in hi-tech business, where they develop apps, platforms or other forms of “technology”. They are mistaken. They are in commodities business. Nobody care about their shitty apps or subscriptions. But maintaining those is very costly.
Contrary to widespread belief, gas pumps are cheaper than chargers. Also, both need servicing.
I agree. You should be able to just swipe a credit card like at a gas pump.
I expect that certain gas station chains that have attached resturants will add EV chargers. That way at least someone will know they the EV charger needs maintenance (and perhaps have someone on staff that can do basic maintenance) and they can pick up restaurant and snack sales (and people can go to the bathroom).
I just have not seen it yet. A problem is space and a new utility service as the existing gas station utility service cannot handle the electrical demands of a set of EV chargers (unless the station is built to have EV chargers up front).
@@perryallan3524 Gas pumps are relatively easy to maintain. Ev chargers are dealing with high voltage and require specialized knowledge.
Gas pumps are much more expensive than chargers, but the market is saturated with few new ones being built. They only have minor maintenance cost, while we still have ~95% of EV chargers to build from 0, as the fleet transitions of ICE.
The video doesn't touch on it, but Tesla installation cost per stall is about 1/5 to 1/10 the cost of other inefficient operators
@@thomasreese2816 You are woefully misinformed. Power electronics are not cheap and require maintenance.
Maintenance has human costs and isn’t much cheaper than for gas pumps.
There’s a reason why charging stations aren’t profitable and it’s not some conspiracy.
Don't you think that if it wasn't for all of the subsidies, grants and financial incentives, this whole EV thing would simply NEVER have got off the ground?
Never. Plus, Elon hyped this boondoggle to the extreme. "Self-driving" is a complete farce as well as turning out to be quite deadly! All his cars were recalled, to limit the use of the autopilot system to help reduce accidents and deaths.
Probably true. The sad thing is: Musk is still an anti-government libertarian that doesn’t realize a big part of his succes is due to government subisidies.
@@thebeacon2100 year old tech means its proven and all the teething issues have been worked out, you would be stupid not to use it.
There were electric cars - check out the documentary “Who killed the electric car”. About GM’s electric car.
The free market handled the problem decades ago.
Edit: spelling
Right the TAX PAYERS are the ones paying billions in massive constructions of apartments and commercial buildings, HOW MUCH IS Tax payers GRANT MONEY???
I feel like the main issue is they don't understand their place in the EV ecosystem. I see these things all the time at shopping/strip malls. But most people there are coming from home and have no need to charge. Their core customer is the roadtripper - a much more niche market. Ideal placement would be close to cracker barrels imho - and they should provide some way to monetize the customers standing around for 30 mins.
Interesting issue I hadn't considered before. A gas station company has a lot of worker bees making minimum wage and small number of professionals and executives. An EV charging company likely has close to zero minimum wage employees and loads of professional and high-wage tradespeople, plus the executives.
What makes you think a "gas station company" doesn't have a large number of professionals and executives? I worked for three major "gas station" companies during my career and they all have thousands of executives, we had over two thousand in one location alone with other executive offices in other parts of the country and out of the country. Also, they have huge IT departments including large data centers that are extremely costly to maintain. More than likely the corner gas station is owned by a major player.
@@muskrat3291Well just in your region... I know a couple men owning gas stations and it is essentially a family business.
I know of no gas station that is offering only minimum wage for their employees. They would HAVE no employees if that was the case.
I like the idea of gas stations adding fast chargers, like Shell or Circle K do. Currently they have 2 charging stalls vs 8 or so fueling stalls, but eventually they could expand further. This gives the same conveniences, including available bathrooms, snacks, warm food etc., increases revenue via sale of merchandise, and reduces per-charging stall costs to the gas station, e.g. potentially using already available space instead of renting space, if someone needs assistance, they can ask the person who already works at the gas station instead of the company having to hire a ton of customer service representatives to be available via the phone, and maybe workers who repair fuel pumps could potentially be trained to replace charger parts (as long as there are no electrical specific issues requiring specialization).
Why would gas stations WANT to lose money?
Diesel/petrol: Taxed to hell by the governments and still manage to be profitable.
Electric: Not YET taxed by the government (if they took off that would definitely change), currently getting government subsidies, and they STILL can't make it profitable 😂
0:58 "Merging with a SPAC/ SPACs" should get an ominous organ chord at this point.
it's called a stinger, an ominous audio cue.
I'll have one in my head from now on, thanks to you 😂 💕
I'm only about halfway through the video so far, but I feel like the obvious solution here is for gas stations to just add in their own charging stations, replacing or adding to their gas pump stalls. I have no idea why these charging companies thought that people would rather charge up in the back of a parking lot, instead of at a convenience store where they can get food, snacks, drinks, etc and use the bathroom.
good point. you would think they would try to shoot for areas that people could shop or eat and sit down, like restauraunts.
another youtuber has the same point of view as you. to me though, i would think you would want them in places like restaurants and grocerystores and even some big box stores.
when do you want to plug in for 20 minutes? probably when you are already going to the place and going to be there for more than 20 min. if gas stations had tables and seating then i could see them hosting chargers, but the main thrust is having charging stations with little to no amenities. a gas station can sell you treats, but they are designed for you to be in and out in 5 minutes. meanwhile mcdonalds is bascily everywhere, they have long hours, and they give free wifi. so you can have a meal or snack, watch youtube, and charge. also they tend to have well lit parkinglots.
Exactly, put a Starbucks or Panera with every EV charging station and increase the gross margin.
9:16 the narrator points out that 1 EV charging station could charge a max of 2 cars per hr. while 1 fuel pump could service a dozen ICE per hr.
That means fewer customers to buy food, snacks, drinks.
Basically, there's no financial benefit for the gas station to remove fuel pumps and replace them with charging stations.
This is why you should always watch the entire video before posting a comment.
@@jameskelly3502 Agreed, but why would!’t these charging stations be put in malls, big box stores, or actually put their own Panera or Starbucks franchise to actually generate profit. The difference is gas pumps require the effort to pump while charging you have to keep yourself occupied for 30 minutes, might as well put chargers in some sit-down place customers would go to anyways.
It's a pleasure to watch your channel grow, as you continue to produce SOLID documentaries that educate as well as entertain. Great stuff!
Slurp slurp
@@codycastglug glug
I find them to be expensive for charging purposes... almost cheaper to put in gas unless you charge at home. I am suprised that they don't have a cell phone link in their stations to monitor them.
They must have an internet connection. Each charging station is controlled from what is basically a kiosk app, similar to an ATM. Its just that kiosk programmers are really your grade "D" programmers. The smart guys (grade A guys) are working Google. Each station, if properly designed, should be running self diagnostics, at a minimum, of once per hour. And if done correctly, it can be done is a multitasking manner, without impeding performance. But its not done properly. I bet you that these stations run on a Python program, since that's a prime candidate for a "low tech" kiosk app. But it shouldn't be. Python is an interpretive language, instead of compiled. That's a quick way of making a superfast modern 64-bit processor run as slow as 1MHz 6502 8-bit processor from 1974. Of course, their current counterpart, back at the main office, should also be collecting status from each station, at a regular time interval, and flag any that have a problem. Again who knows what "manager" who thinks he's God's gift to computer programming wrote the code. Incompetence runs deep !
I find them to be way cheaper than gas. You have to base it on cost/mile and will depend on your EV's efficiency. When I use public chargers while road tripping my cost has averaged about 8 cents/mile, most of it on the EA network.
Tesla has live monitoring for their chargers, they know which location get used the most and build more charging stations where needed. They also know when they are not working.
These small charging companies don't have the money to keep them up and running like Tesla does.
Here down under the government collects 44 cents a litre tax (Excise) on petrol and deisel. Plus 10% tax (GST) on the total fuel bill. This money goes into general revenue and ensures we can fund our roads.
A key reason BEVs are cheap to run is that they avoid these high taxes. They effectively leach off the rest of society by failing to contribute these significant amounts to general revenue including to keep of roads. It is ironic that their heavier weight means that they rip up the roads far quicker.
A loop hole- I think they would close it sooner or later once it becomes significant enough. It was closed in Texas in 2023 by increasing the annual vehicle registration tax for EVs.
"The money goes in to general revenue" -- then only like 0.01% goes to roads.
I mean you could charge a road tax like other countries do, instead of a hidden road tax in fuel.
I had a great great uncle who owned quite a few gas stations when he was younger. As he pointed out a family hauling their big trucks to their big boat filling up at the gas station, still made him less money the same family buying snacks and drinks. These companies seem to not understand what business they are in, it’s like bars offering a free lunch. The real product is the extra shit people buy the charging is just what brings them there.
They are govt funded projects, meaning the cost of building them is padded quite heavily because the Govt is paying for it... So if you try to build or maintain them without that funding it's pretty high. Every one cares so much about building more chargers as well they don't maintain the ones they have.
Tons of cities have chargers all over the place broken or out of service, because no one wants to fix them. Instead they rather build new ones in other locations...
Evs will NEVER be 100%. No country in the world has anywhere the near the generation capacity EVs would require. Apart from the fact only the rich can afford, or even want them.
Australia has 24/7 unmanned service stations in remote country towns. No one is ever on site. This is quite unusual however and you won't see one in larger towns and cities.
I’m from Europe and here the unbranded ones usually under a supermarket brand have 24/7h self service and self payment station but on the side they have normal pumps that during the day have one employee at a time, I think it’s because people are dumb and disrespectful if they don’t see a “autorithy figure” that’s keeps social behavior in check unfortunately
Aussies have loved their Chargers for many years now🤣
Most pumps in the USA are 24 hour, while many of the stores attached to them close at night.
And even those unmanned fuel stations are smart enough to have overhead cover I bet!
A single gas pump could service 12-15 (i.e., full tanks) cars effortlessly in 30 min, i.e., giving these cars a range of 400-500miles or more. A single charging station could service only one car in 30 minutes with questionable range (depending on the electricity demand). You see, how infrastructure problems arise for EVs.
Really great analysis per usual. The EV charging companies should consider going the old gas station model. Concentrate more chargers in one location and have at least one customer support person located there. They'd however need to increase their price per KwH which will have to be passed on to the customer. The revenues would definitely increase as they can also add non-charging revenue. People would definitely eat or engage in some other activity if they're waiting 30 minutes to charge their cars.
People will not transition to electric if they have to spend half an hour drinking overpriced coffee while waiting for their car to recharge with overpriced electricity. People will only transition to electric on a voluntary basis if they can charge at home for cheaper rates most of the time. It simply does not make sense for the customer.
Which is exactly why governments started to initiate outright bans on combustion cars all over the place. Electric will never be a compelling option for anyone not living in a single family home, and there are plenty of those people here in Europe.
@@foobar9220it all seems to be delusional luxury beliefs held by the upper class. "Gas too high? Just buy electric hurr dee hurr"
You should try the idea before them!
I think it will be the likes of Walmart who will be the market leaders. Put a charger in every parking space, and people can charge up while they are shopping. It would work for them even if they only break-even from the charging operation, and they have staff around the place anyway, so they can add looking after the chargers to their duties.
@@katrinabryce That, unfortunately, is impossible. Charger on every parking spot will require astronomical changes in electrical grid, before we even discuss costs of such operation.
Never thought about the relatively slow rate of recharging compared to gas vehicles, severely limiting profit per hour per station... I don't see any way around this 😕
The city of Seattle, Wa. owns it's own utility and supplies electricity services to Seattle and neighboring areas. A year ago, the city utility installed two unmanned charging stations a half mile from where I live. These are likely aimed at serving the neighborhood, plus they are on an arterial and so could expect to attract users traveling through the area, although it's still mostly serving neighboring areas.
In that year, I have never seen a car charging. They are used, mostly by cars using them for parking but not charging! That's despite being posted "no parking except when charging."
Just a casual observation of use.
Everyone is charging at home for next to nothing. EV's have decent range now, so rarely use public charging.
@@Rexbilly9819
The kiss of death: merging with a spac 😂
November 2021 - oh happy days the market was full of Covid money and crazy.
SPACs perform poorly because the SPAC is a way to skirt traditional due diligence process to access public equity markets via IPO. Ie SPACs attract poorly managed & poor performing assets
Correction: Many gas stations operate without staff present while the convenience store is closed at night.
I think there are laws that requires at least one worker watching the pumps so someone doesn't blow up at 3 am
@@SuperPlayz You are correct.
@@SuperPlayz Seriously? In Sweden we have 24/7 unmanned stations
Not in Europe, no.
@@Todaviho Same in Finland, there is probably now more unmanned station than manned. Specially now when shop opening times became unlimited and gas stations are not only place to buy food at night...
And even then, I think there is probably some that are next to large gas station, but are still unmanned...
Gas stations don't make money on the gas, oil companies do. They make money from their convince store sales. Electric chargers don't make money, only the power companies make money.
Its a common business practice. Start out with low prices, even losing money. After you get enough people hooked, you introduce ludicrous pricing. Customers are invested and have no choice.
All the sheepe were sucked in and now they have ruined it for the rest just like covid.
Wow, when it comes to EV supercharger networks...this video went out of its way to NOT MENTION the behemoth supercharging network built by Tesla!
That’s because Tesla is profitable and those companies are not.
It's really shocking how bad EV charging is when compared to gas pumps.
One the interesting things I noticed was how to pay. Many charge stations require an app, all have their own it seems. Most also have a flat charge no matter what of a $1 or so. So even if it fails to connect to your car and you have to retry, your still getting charged that $1 for every attempt to get the broken thing to work.
Despite all the tech involved I also haven't seen any that let you set charge limits. A gas station might let you put in say $10 of gas, or limit it to 5 gallons or what ever. Far as I can tell you can't say stop at 80% charge. You have to watch it and hurry up and cancel when it gets close. Other wise it just fully charges every time.
@@JustaGuy_GamingThe payment situation is really bad indeed, luckily in France there is a RFID card that's pretty much accepted at like 99% of charging station ("Chargemap"). But with all the ways they charge you, it being either by the kWh, or by the minute, with a flat fee when you plug it in, a time-based fee after 45 minutes... or your vehicle being fully charged... that can become a headache for new users that want to switch to EVs and can't charge at home.
As for limiting the charge of your EV, many have the option built in, and you "don't need to rush" as the charge beyond 80% is much slower as it is will all batteries to protect them.
You think this is bad, try reading a little history. When the ICE engine was first popularized, people had to go to general stores to buy gas.
@@brianmurphy8811 Very true, though it could be said that the range you get for a can of gas was far superior to an EV battery charge. On top of which it would be like buying a gas can with holes in it, as even if you don't use the battery it will slowly go flat over time. One the big issues is for things like if you go on vacation and the like an the car just sits there for a few weeks.
Several cars have issues with the 12v battery that controls most the car systems like the doors going dead over that time.
Tesla charging works great. Card connected to car. Plug in car and it starts charging. Only non-tesla charging is a pain.
Unattended charging stations are much too dangerous especially in the evening hours. Would you let your daughter go charge at an empty home Depot parking lot for 30 to 50 minutes on a dark night with nobody else in the parking lot? Of course not
Think about the turn around time. Pumping gas is fast, they can pump many cars per hour. Verse EV, takes longer to charge per car and less money they can make per hour.
Gas stations are also unprofitable if we're just talking fuel. The trick is that they have added a store to sell all sorts of quick and convenient items, that's where the profit is. And that's where EV charging needs to go. I've long advocated that fast food chains along major highways should install chargers to draw people to those locations.
This video would have been more interesting if you compared the EV charging companies to Tesla's Supercharging business model. Additionally, it would have been more interesting to include travel centers like Buc-ee's and Texas Best who offer Tesla Superchargers to their customers.
We have two EVs in our household: A 2023 Tesla Model Y LR and a 2023 Ford Mustang Mach-E Extended Range. The experience traveling long distance in these two EVs is night and day. We traveled from Dallas to Jackson, WY this summer in the Tesla and the charging was effortless. Traveling long distance in the Mustang was not pleasant - it often meant arriving at a Walmart with 4 charging stalls, not all of them working, and a long line of EVs waiting their turn to charge.
Lastly, most EVs are charged at home and/or the workplace, unlike ICE vehicles that refuel at crowded gas stations. This convenience and time savings typically offset the time spent fast-charging on road trips. And, it greatly reduces the demand for metropolitan charging for local driving. The relatively small volume of non-Tesla EVs results in a small demand for non-Tesla EV charging companies. With Tesla opening up their Supercharger network to most other EVs beginning in 2024, I wonder if non-Tesla EV charging companies will lose even more money?
Note: Most gas stations don't make their profits from selling gasoline but, instead, make their profits from selling products in their stores. EV charging companies don't have this benefit.
Exactly right. 👍
EV's suck.
... and on top of charging co's losing money, most car manufacturers are either not making much or losing money manufacturing them. Now, you can read about the inability to sell them in quantity. We'll see how this pans out. Not looking good.
It might be effective to set up charging stations at restaurants or entertainment venues. Some place where people can have fun or rest while their car is charging.
Local bowling alley does just that, and even offers complimentary charging for customers. Took my mother there for her birthday last year.
The big box store is 2-10 minuets from home. I don't ever see folks charging at the Walmart chargers. Maybe if you are traveling and really need to buy some crap at Walmart.
Here some supermarkets do this.
I think this is more advertisement than anything else. Like saying, If you drive EV buy here.
I don't think they create too much revenue as they installed pretty slow chargers and you can serve very few customers.
Because they only leave after shopping and not as soon as they are fully charged.
I also know people that drive to a supermarket, park there cars there for charging and go to work nearby....so worst case you have a non shopping customer blocking you charging station for around 9 hours 😂
So that E.V. is going to RULE YOUR LIFE ..HA HA !!
@@blablup1214 in my state there is a law limiting you to two hours. Someone tried that 9 hours for work once and in their second day found themselves with a sizable fine.
Those chargers communicate back to a server and can phone in a tow truck to haul you away.
I I used to have to 'recharge' my horse every night on cross country trips. The model changed when gasoline power came in, and I was able to do longer trips, at higher speeds, with multiple refills. The cost to the taxpayer was enormous, in creating an asphalt covered road network. It also marginalized every other transportation mode. The transition to EVs is another different model, but requiring a whole lot less extreme adaptation than the previous shift. We can still use the same taxpayer subsidised road network. We also have the convenience of doing 80-90% of 'refilling' at home, for a whole lot cheaper than gas. The fact that EVs are still a small market, and drive-by recharging on highways is a small part of the usage pattern means that such chargers aren't going to be cost effective until there are a whole lot more EVs on the road. I tend to look for destination charging, where I can use my time for something else while the car is charging. Like shopping, or eating or sleeping.
The fact that there is so much more flexibility in how you charge compared to how you have to gas up means that the 'gas and go' model you've been used to for 100 years is no longer viable. I'm adapting, not whingeing.
Your video didn't mention Tesla's Supercharger network. It's definitely worth including in the discussion about EV charging companies, as it stands out in several key areas:
Uptime: Tesla boasts an impressive uptime record for its Supercharger network, with reports suggesting over 95% of stations operational at any given time. This reliability is a major advantage for Tesla owners, as it reduces the risk of encountering a non-functional station during a trip.
Profits: While specific financial details are limited, Tesla has hinted that its Supercharger network is profitable. This could be due to many factors.
Number of chargers: As of December 2023, Tesla boasts over 1,974 Supercharger stations and 21,852 individual charging ports in the US alone. This extensive network provides widespread coverage and reduces range anxiety for Tesla drivers.
There needs to be an Indy 500 for EVs. Racing technology spured the ICE development more than anything else. Yes, the first races would be extremly boring and slow. But hot swaping batteries should be like changing tires.
To ad to all the other problems, think about the cost to supply the roughly 1 megawatt of power these charge stations require. Depending on location that ranges from really expensive to you can't afford it
Tesla has been doing it for years. 1 MW is enough for like 16 charge stalls. They do have some that big these days, but they used to be like 8 stalls with a max total of 600kW.
@@phillipsusi1791 I just had a friend bid one and it was a 1,OOO KVA transformer for 6 level 3 chargers and one other type of charger that had lower electrical requirements, but I forget what the small one was for.
Yeah Tesla can do it, because they don't really have to make a profit. But Apu at the Quickie Mart isn't going to make any money after having to install a 1,000KVA padmount transformer
@@phillipsusi1791 They've got superchargers now that can do 350kwh. That's three chargers drawing 1MW. My entire neighbourhood, with 70 homes, would rarely draw that much power, and we have four large pad-mounted transformers to handle the supply. I know of one isolated gas station near where I live that paid $700,000 to install two superchargers. Gotta to do a lot of charges to make a return on $700,000!
@@jesseyoung9654 350 kW is the max theoretical output. Some of the new Teslas supposedly can take that much, for a few minutes, when the battery is at the right level, and that's it. My 2016 maxes out at around 165 kW. It doesn't take long for it to drop below 100 kW, and that's even on a 350 kW charger with nobody else around. Their output can also drop if all of the stalls are in use. I sometimes plug in to a busy station expecting to get 160 kW and, because the whole station is loaded down, only get 100 kW or less. Often it is down to only 20-30 kW by the time I have enough to leave. Just because they say it can do 350 kW doesn't mean they need to have the capacity to run all of the stations at 350kW at the same time. That was my point.
@@phillipsusi1791 The paradox here is that when the stalls are at their busiest is precisely when you need that max capacity, and it's also when you make the most money. I live in a tourist town that is right near the range limit for EVs departing out of Brisbane and Sydney. The Superchargers here have massive lines around holiday time, which is when they need to charge as fast as possible and get people on their way. It's also when they charge a premium. Catch 22 for the charger operators - do they spend the money on max capacity, or do they forgo the extra revenue?
0:13Infrastructure should be the government's job, not the private sector's. Because if it is ordered in large quantities and standardized Prices will go down.
0:21 I suggest you use trains and planes.Driving 8 hours by car is a waste.
1:49 Most people will charge Battery from 20-80% capacity.
2:05 Unless the government standardizes like in Europe and China
One of the great things we are always told about the "energy transition" is that it means more jobs. But the advantage of these boondoggles is they don't require a person on site... So which is it? So many similar conflicts in the dumb ev transition schemes.
This video should be retitled "another reason that EVs will never make sense".
The jobs come from the installation and maintenance of the charging stations.
There is no transition. Things just add up. We have never burn that much coal as today, while people think coal is just from the i dustrial revolution time
We don't have a stable electric grid now, when most cars are ICE's.
@@Kabodankivery true
That’s expensive for powering your car. I would rather pay for gas. There stations are everywhere.
Tesla charging stations are amazing had a Tesla for 2 years no problems and seamless.
The video said "largest Ev charging company is EVgo".
Tesla is a bigger EV charging company.
THIS is why going electric is going to be a heavy financial lift. The IC vehicle grew up alongside a parallel gigantic industry (oil extraction and refining) ready, willing and EAGER to fuel IC vehicles. The big sleepy electric companies have little or no interest in that market. Indeed, they know that reduced electricity consumption will save them money in reduced power plant costs.
APS, the local electric company, has been installing chargers in my area.
@muskrat3291 Is that Arizona Public Service? I was born in AZ but now I'm in GA and Georgia Power isn't doing that, to the best of my knowledge.
I’ve had my EV for 2 years now and have never experienced range or “will it start” anxiety. It’s the best high ticket item purchase of my life. At the end of the day, an EV charging station is a glorified wall outlet. If one company (that everyone loves to hate) can operate a huge network with a positive gross margin, so can another. No. These companies don’t have to drastically increase their prices to become profitable. They simply have to be better. Tesla’s network is 4.8/5 rated and I’ve never had an experience with a charger that didn’t work (Tesla’s operational stats are 99.1% working 24/7) EV charging stations were never meant to be “as profitable” as gas stations. It’s a different experience.
May I also add another problem of EV charger, adding a station will be put strain on power grid. Let's say a charger take 150 kW to charge a battery to full in 20 mins. At full capacity a station with only 8 charger will take more than Megawatt of electricity. How can power grid manage fluctuation on demand?
Solid analysis and good data points. Subscribed!
I leased a Ford Mustang Mach E, and put on about 10,000 miles a year. I don’t think I even averaged once per month at a public charging station, thanks to a charger in my garage. I’m now looking forward to leasing another EV. However, if I didn’t have home charging, I wouldn’t even consider an EV unless it was a Tesla. The public charging stations usually had half the stalls out of service. Once I was nearly stranded on the far side of the state, when only one of six stalls at an Electrify America station worked, and another time it took me about 20 minutes to disconnect my car from the ChargePoint charger in the middle of the winter when the charging plug froze into the side of my car!
nobody asked
@@stellviahohenheim is butthurt because someone drives an ev
@@chemical2401 Super lucky he didn't buy it! LOLOLOLOL
It seems that all non-Tesla chargers are prone to break down far more frequently than Superchargers. Thats why i would only buy a Tesla if i needed a BEV.
Why wouldn't they put Starbucks or Panera's at every location, maybe even at big-box stores where people sit for more than 20-30 minutes. Malls and grcoery stores should be where these chargers are being put so they recieve a portion of the profits.
"They" already do. Target near me.
Local mall has 8 chargers, mall in the next town up has 24 chargers.
Like u mentioned yourself, charging EV takes longer to charge per car. Less cars charged, less customers entering the stores and buying stuffs. Whereas pumping gas is fast, they can pump many cars per hour. More car pumped, more customers going in the stores and buying stuffs.
Big malls, movie theaters,etc seem promising. Though its gonna take time for those places to fully implement charging stations.
I'm thinking brothels. They could call them Pump'n'Dump 🤔 Come to think of it, I gotta go merge with a SPAC real quick. $PND to the moon, baby 🎑 🐺
@@TheRealJellyBombthink you're onto something with that.
Recharge and discharge.
Zap and fap.
Blow and go.
1. How long will the EV battery last?
2. What is the cost of a new battery?
3. EVs are not ready for prime time, for most Americans.
1. Depends on how well it is cared for- especially battery charging behavior. Warranty in Tesla is 8 years or 120K miles. 2. Around $17K, currently. 3. Depends on your application, geographic location, and ability to care for the battery. Great for some, not as good as ICE for others.
Why not install four or five at existing gas stations and set up a waiting area they can spend more money in or encourage the customers go have lunch at a restaurant next door? That way the employees who were watching the pumps and registers who were there already can assist customers on-site and more money can be extracted from the customers. This doesn’t have to be complicated. No silly apps, no remote tech support, just periodic maintenance.
How often do you see companies encouraging their customers to spend their time and money at someone else’s businesses?
If it’s a united venture under a single conglomerate then that means that a gas station plus convenience store will have to buy more real estate by buying space for EV stations and a full out restaurant
That can easily double the costs and for what? Accommodating a shakey market with a history of negative profits as shown in the video? Until the EV technology matures it’s much safer to use that extra space for a more reliable gas station
Time to charge V's potential other uses of said property.
EV charging buisness models are stupid, they need to be convience stores that offer electric charging oh wait thats just gas stations
@@randall172Starbucks, subway, McDonald’s and rest of the fast food restaurants should be enough to cover. The issue is there is not enough engineers to cover
Aral and Shell are doing that here in Germany.
Many of the comments in this video represent a comparison of apples to oranges...
Example: Comparing how much clients a single pump can serve by hour to EVs is stupid since the correct comparison would be by location.
Gas can fill up a lot faster but they also need a much larger footprint for the gas tanks to be able to fill many cars an hour. That is why we don't see gas pump locations with dozens of stalls. Electric, on the other hand, can have locations with, 40, 50 or more stalls were cars can fill up at the same time.
You made a case study of one company. They sound like an absolute disaster. How the hell can they not know when their chargers are offline? How can their customer service and related systems be so bad? How can their maintenance costs be so high?
The answer to all the above is “incompetence”, and that’s not a reflection on EV’s but on folks who obviously do not have a background in engineering or any other appropriate discipline. No one who is actually serious about creating a sustainable business goes via SPAC.
They're all pretty garbage. Nonfunctional and derated chargers are the norm across many companies. He's not cherry picking. The current state of charging infrastructure in this country is abominable.
@@bogatyr2473 that’s so damn disappointing to hear, but thanks for the info.
They know when a charger is offline. Each one is constantly sending data about it's status. Not relaying this information to the customer and not dealing with it in a timely manner screams incompetent customer service.
It is also possible that the companies that own the chargers underestimated how much service would be required. Nothing is maintenance free. This doesn't even include vandalism and theft. Some people see a convenient place to charge their car. Crackheads see a pile of unprotected scrap metal ready to be stripped and resold.
Though they should have adapted once they saw chargers failing at a higher than expected level. Again, bad customer service model.
@@bogatyr2473not for tesla
They gave a Typical example, actually.
This is an excellent story. Thank you very much for the analysis
Away from home charging is generally, incredibly cheap right now. This is going to get a lot more expensive.
Here in Germany it's twice as expensive as charging at home for me.
wait till they digitally stop you from unlimited charging and you get a quota.. Remember you asked for this.. Remember last summer when private citizens had their air conditioners disabled digitally because "reasons" and those people were unable to use their "smart" air conditioners..thats the tip of the iceberg.. enjoy your communism.
@@kerstin3267 I'm in Northern California. I pay $0.09/kWh to charge at home during off-peak and nearest public EV chargers usually go for $0.35 to 0.40 per kWh. People must be incredibly lucky if they pay less for public charging.
@@duerf5826 35-40 cents per kWh is incredibly cheap for that service. It is going to get a lot more expensive than that.
@@duerf5826Some workplaces offer free charging while they work so that’s one public charging benefit if they’re in a company like that. But the charging stations are limited so idk if it’s a full benefit
I think the reality of the situation is we just don't know yet what a electric car future will look like as even in the markets ahead of the curve total fleet adoption is just about into double digits.
Look to Norway and Sweden, banning combustion sales in 2025. All electric now. Also China
You can look at other places where adoption is farther along
Something like the road warrior most likely. But they kill you and take your generator or slave cable to your wrecked BEV to drain the battery.
I've owned an EV for just under a year and a half. In buying it, I got a three year deal for free charging at Electrify America, whom Genesis, the manufacturer of my EV, undoubtedly compensates. But I have yet to use any EV charging station. I pay about $0.17/kWh at my house, and the convenience of coming home, plugging it in, and being ready to go the next day makes it worth the cost to me. My typical day uses about 19 kWh, costing about $3.29 to drive my typical 62 miles. That said, I've not taken a long trip in the car for the reasons you mentioned (lack of charging station availability and reliability). I have an IC pickup truck that I use for the rare long trips.
Could not finish this, too many questions. Gross margin at Electrify America here in Colorado, where electricity is purchased at about $0.12/kwh and sold for between $0.42/kwh and $0.56/kwh, is off the charts compared to Murphy. I think the problem is capital cost, depreciation, and lack of use generally. Also, the adoption rate is still slow. The chargers at convenience stores that I have seen on long trips (just took a 3,000 mile trip last week) are often not in use, whereas I have seen wall to wall usage at the gas pumps (there are exceptions). It’s a catch 22. There still are not enough chargers geographically to encourage people to take EVS on long trips as much as they take ICE vehicles. And people are afraid of the occasional wait for a charger. I have an EV and an ICE vehicle, and it was a no brainer which one to take on that 3,000 mile trip. EV around town (and for going 0-60 in the blink of an eye), and ICE for trips. But as they build more chargers the take rate and useage will increase. It’s one thing to occasionally wait 5 minutes for a pump and fill up in 10. It’s another to risk waiting 30 minutes for a chargers and fill up in 45, even though the average charger useage rate is small. It’s a mess.
There are gas stations on every corner. On a trip you are never more than 20 or 30 miles away from a fast refilling gas station right by the highway that has food and amenities. But you can easily be hundreds of miles from a charging station on a road trip out west. You have to plan carefully, hunt the station down, hope the damn thing is working (and if it is not, have enough juice to make it to your next alternate which can literally be 100 miles away), and wait a long time to charge, in a Walmart parking lot if you are lucky but often where there are no amenities whatsoever, not even a bathroom. Isn’t that special.
To match the convenience of ICE vehicles and totally adapt to EV’s, you need to install 3 times as many chargers (along highways for people on trips) because it takes 3 times as long to charge as it does to fill up with gas. I don’t see us getting there for a very long time.
My EV charges somewhat slowly. We took a leisurely 2 days to reach Orang County m Colorado in the ICE vehicle, but it would have been 3 days with all the stops in an EV. Again, you can’t drive from 100% to empty because that one charging location you were counting on just might be down that day. And it is rough on batteries to fast chargers to 100% anyway, and to deplete to close to zero, so there are a lot of stops. And there are generally no bathrooms, much less In ‘n Out it Burgers, at the charging stations. Can you take a trip in an EV? Sure. Is it convenient to do so? No.
EV’s will remain around own, charge at home vehicles for quite some time. At least until the next big technological breakthrough. Sorry Elon.
Even if EV charging station reliability is perfected and they never break down, the length of time required to charge will never charge. You can fill up a 20 gallon tank of a Cadillac Escalade in about 90 seconds from pump start to stop.
Even Tesla's fastest fast charging will take 30 minutes to completely recharge a Model X LR battery to 100%. Further increasing the charging speed will increase temperature, reduce charging efficiency, and greatly reduce the longevity of the battery.
That is a disadvantage that EVs will never overcome relative to an ICE car.
Charging at a station is the exception. Charging at home is the norm- very cheap, and way cheaper that petrol. That, along with the much more frequent and expensive PM maintenance is the disadvantage ICE vehicles will never overcome.
"Super fast" and 20-30 minutes are mutually exclusive.
1) You spend 20 mins screwing around buying your Doritos and Pepsi, spending 10 mins deciding what flavour you want, in the gas station anyway 2) that is from 0-100%. Like your phone and laptop, it deliberately charges slower 80+% charged to wear out the battery cells less thus it prolongs your battery life. It is 0-80% in 20 minutes. Based upon average driving patterns and mid range EV typical range, it is 2 mins charge per day of use. And that’s if you drive everyday too. 4) Everyone is gangsta until they find out charging an EV is 2-3x cheaper than gas or it’s infinite if you charge your EV at a public one for free.
Super fast by EV standards
Icing and maintenance are only part of the issue. Icing is still a problem that doesn’t get mentioned enough. Some stations also price for time versus metering the power actually transmitted. Public chargers pricing for time don’t make sense for some vehicles. Glad there are public chargers out there in a pinch for everyone, but really should be a home/work thing. These issues and other reasons are why I’m glad I went for a Chevy Volt instead. Lion’s share of my driving is electric, but I have access to gas whenever I need it. Hydrogen solves for some of these public charger issues, but carries its own significant problems too. And, Teslas are still king in terms of their charging network value add.
Replacing/repairing EV car parts can be more expensive than the car itself. That’s wild bro. 😅
The same is true for ICE. My BIL recently blew the engine on his 2011 Impreza Sport. Granted, he's a sports reporter and put 24k miles/year on it. But still, it's now worth less than $400 scrap because an engine would cost more than a car with ~300k miles is worth.
"Cars last a long time, 12 years on average." OP be like that and not see how short-lived and wasteful that expensive metal can really is.
I have a Toyota RAV 4 Hybrid. Best decision I ever made. A hybrid engine is the best of both worlds - the electric and gas engines talk to each other, using gas only when necessary and no need to worry about where the next charging station is and if it works. I get 900 - 1100 km (560 to 685 miles) per tank. Even when it's -20 (-4F) out I still get 600km (370 miles) per tank.
Which is what the big automakers tried to tell governments would be ideal, hybrids. But no instead you have California, where I am, and other states (I will guess) passing legislation requiring EV sales, how many and by when et cetera. California et al will eventually have to walk back some of this envelope pushing legislation but I fear it may be too late for many auto makers who are struggling now with EV manufacturing, namely the batteries. As a side note I have a very trustworthy 2001 RAV4 I bought new and am driving till the wheels fall off. I enjoyed reading your comment b/c gives me confidence! Anyway. Cheers.
@@rhobot75 Only problem with Hybrids is they were kind of rushed, as car companies rushed to being as seen being Green with less product testing than normally goes into a car. If anything goes wrong it's usually very expensive to fix. Not long ago I was reading a news article about a guy who had to replace his Hybrid battery, would of cost him 15k, for a car he only paid 20k for... Which seems odd if you consider how much smaller hybrid batteries are.
Isnt 600km per tank just normal Gas engine mileage ?
@@ceasarwright7567 That was at minus 20 out. 900-1100 km per tank is what I usually get
@@ceasarwright7567 Depends on the tank size as well. I believe most hybrids have slightly smaller tanks. While something not very efficient but with a 20 gallon tank can also get similar range.
hey, maybe do a video on a business u think is working. i like hearing about the failures, your content is good. but would be interesting to hear about some wins too.
The thing is, there are no Wins. Government subsidy is all that has gotten things this far, including tesla.
The fatal flaw of EV's is battery life/cost. A well maintained gas motor can easily last 25 years while batteries deteriorate quickly & rarely exceed 7 yrs of useful life. This makes EV's effectively disposable as each time it's re-sold the buyer is likely have to buy a new "motor" which makes any "green" benefit moot as you'll just buy a new one instead.
You numbers are just plain wrong as the battery is my Tesla is guaranteed for 10 years or 120,000 miles to retain at least 70% of its original full charge. Even a higher mileage vehicle with say 50% of original battery capacity would still have utility for many people.
Your fatal flaw is spouting hot garbage. All EV makers have battery warranties exceeding the 7 year mark. Most last way longer. Also 25 years for a gas gar? I's possible but the average life is maybe 15 years
How many miles in 25 years? Every time you get engine work done the questions is always is it cheaper to get a new one...
Good video! I switched from a hybrid and truck to a Ford Mach-e about 18 months ago. I now have 27,000 miles on the Mach-e. I made the switch because I had rented a 2021 Kia Niro EV while having engine work done on the hybrid. At the time, charging stations were reliable and plentiful here in Los Angeles. Now, I haven't needed to use a public charger for about five months. But, I see many more chargers down than up. They need to partner with fast food or convenience stores to allow people to purchase goods or take a breather while charging.
The Mach-E is the only EV I like. I have a newish Mach One, a 1973 Mach One and maybe soon a Mach E. Do you charge at home? I have a couple 240 volt outlets in my garage already.
@@TheBandit7613 I mostly charge at home. I've only publicly charged twice in the past six months, and those were on a road trip from LA to Vegas. I don't have a 240v outlet, only 120v. It isn't an issue. I drive about 3,000 miles a month.
If you can't charge at home, hopefully in a driveway or garage Ev's are really hard to justify imo. The prices of most fast chargers are nuts, and the time out of your day to charge your car once or twice at them is pretty bad, especially if you don't get the advertised speeds on the chargers. Starting every day to work with a 20 minute charge is not a good idea.
You obiously have never owned and EV. More like 20 minutes once a week at a fast charger if you have a normal commute. Or zero hours every day if you can charge at home or work.
@@CheapSushi Right. EV charging needs to be widely available for everyone who owns a car, just like gas stations are today. But what did you expect, everyone to get a charger everwhere all at once? As the guys building Rome once said about such criticism, we're working on it!
@@Tom-dt4ic There is also the issue of turn around, Ev stations are much slower than gas obviously. Meaning if you actually replaced every car on the road with a EV's you'd need far more chargers. A gas station with 8 pumps would likely need at least 32 charge stations, and the power from the grid to actually power that much.
@@JustaGuy_Gaming Actually, you would only need to increase capacity on highways for the percentage of cars using that highway that have ventured far from home. For everyone else, you'll just be able to charge at home or work. So in towns you'll actually need way less places to charge than there are currently gas stations. Like way less! Gas stations will go out of business in droves. The challenge will be installing level 2 chargers everywhere, like for nearly every parking place in an apartment. And at hotels. And at work place parking lots. And yes, the grid will be able to handle this just fine as the grid will grow with EV adoption, just like it as always grown in the past 70 years to meet demand.
@@Tom-dt4ic Not sure about needing less chargers. I mean your talking about every apartment complex, work place etc having chargers. Given even a modest apartment complex might have 300ish apartments, thats a lot of chargers even if you just give them one per apartment. Though at least home based ones wouldn't have to be fast chargers.
As for the grid being able to handle it, I have my doubts. Many cities already have power issues and rolling black outs, especially in the summer or winter months when people use air conditioners or heaters. The other issue is this chase for "green energy".
In the last decade or so we have shut down countless coal power, nuclear, natural gas etc power plants and the Solar/wind etc plants built in their place don't exactly cover those needs. Simply in a put in a time we need expansion of power generation, we are removing them.
It's especially bad in places like Europe as proven by the hole situation over there where basically every one bought power from other countries while claiming their own "Green Energy sources" were so great.
After insurance companies base the risk of EV's on the age of the EV battery instead of the driving record of the EV owner....the green-scam is over
Yeah this sounds like something that should be more of a public utility at this point not just company based
Nope. Free market. The government will only mess it up.
If it's not profitable that doesn't mean the government should take taxpayers money and burn it away in this. Instead it means that the cost charged for electricity is too cheap so EVs need to pay their fair share
Most utilities are provided by long term contractors.
When man only daydreaming and never actually see how the real world do things
To be fair, oil is subsidized but with chargers they tried to with the IRA but 0 have been built
I’ve been commenting about this for awhile now, why would someone without a charger at home want to buy a electric car and pay exorbitant prices for electricity when they could just keep their gas car and fill up in minutes at a gas station that is on every corner?
Because charging stations and EV maintenance are still much cheaper than a gas station and gas car maintenance, plus many EV owners live in apartments
The charging stations should have convenience stores, restaurants & other stuff attached which would hopefully subsidize the charging & help not bore the driver waiting 20-30 minutes for the thing to charge
OR
just have existing gas stations have an EV charging section to go along with the usual gas pumps
There is some of that already, especially on the Tesla network.
Walmart is supposedly going to add EV charging to all of their stores. This will be great if is comes to life. I hope this will get Home Depot, Lowes, Best Buy, mega grocery stores to consider doing this also. I do agree we should be able to use a credit for places like a home Depot and Walmart to if we can use their card.
Τhe root of the problem is that several of these companies started from government funded research projects, where snake-oil salesmen wrote proposals to develop charging systems just aiming to get the grant. When they develop the product and present the results they either beautify the operation or even hide the shortcomings. All these products presented as the new planet saving solution in the proposals are evaluated in lab conditions for a short time just to end successfully yet another gov/EU-funded R&D project. When deployed in the real world, their real shortcomings show up. Typically research grant IT products require continuous maintenance because something breaks all the time. Sometimes the product doesn't work even when demoed before the evaluation committee haha. These maintenance costs from training and paying the maintenance personnel that needs to be in standby pile up and you show what happens in the video. But even though the product and the spin-off company fail, the snake oil salesmen researchers get rich with the tax payers' money.
Even without straight forward malice, when your motivation is not to make money - your company, unsurprisingly, will not make. Those charging systems are over complicated, which causes poor reliability and high maintenance costs.
Not all, BYD and Tesla are already earning a lot of money.
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I considered installing e c for my parking spaces but this analysis is correct the capital and overheads costs are not covered and the more machines the more you lose
it's a bad sign for the future of EV's that .40 cents/kwh is a losing proposition for the charging companies. not knowing about charger outages is perplexing. you would think that networking the chargers in each location and have them report outages and usage data over the cell network, wifi or through a cable would be a no-brainer. if it was a problem that the charger couldn't detect, like a broken connector, they should know it's out by the usage data. EV's will never grow like everyone is expecting if the charging infrastructure is hard to find, more expensive than gas, time consuming and way less conveinent.
Not at all. Remember in reality, gas stations make FAR more profit when you buy an overpriced drink or snacks than they ever do off the fuel. This won’t really change with gas stations having EV charging or RNG / biogas pumps.
EV chargers will be located where the gas stations are located already due to market forces.
Not to mention larger high traffic places will have them as essentially a ‘loss leader’, in that they don’t expect to make much profit off the charging, but it will bring EV drivers to that place and thus shop there more and/or think of the place of business more positively.
Not to mention lots of rural private campgrounds are installing them because if they don’t, the consumers with EVs will leave for the competition. Pure market forces.
@@ChineseKiwifriend of mine owns a gas station. Total profit per gallon of gas for him is 9/10 of a cent.
Excellent point about the profit margins on EV chargers being so slim due to the time it takes to 'fill up' in comparison to a diesel pump... and the fact that Exploding Vehicle owners do you have a technical option of home charging? Whereas it's not within most people's ability to manufactured diesel at home 😂
It's a solid point that hadn't considered: thank you very much for highlighting it.
Because EVs are luxury items that only people with multiple cars ever use.
The apps at various charging stations made me nearly lose my mind. I do not own that car anymore.
Feel like them depreciating their chargers is a write-off method. I can only imagine the actual plug itself ever requiring maintenance, power delivery electronics are tried and tested for over a century.
You can depreciate an asset OR you can expense it all at once. NOT both. There are some cases you must depreciate an asset rather then expense the whole amount in one year.
If you want some reading material check out topic 704 and section 179.
@@cheddarcheese Yes, but your charging station will contain different assets which depreciate over different times. The civil engineering work to prepare the land for installation only needs to be done once and will last for hundreds or even thousands of years. The payment terminal and plug/socket interface will last the least amount of time, and the power electronics stuff will last maybe 50 years.
Also, accounting depreciation and tax depreciation are not the same thing. Tax subsidies often take the form of allowing for a much higher deduction than what you put in the accounts, or by allowing you to put a higher cost in the tax return than what you actually paid.
The idea solution for EV charging is the rest stop model. A restaurant, shops, bathrooms, and more. Some place people can spend 30 or so minutes either getting a meal, shopping, or something else while their car charges. Nobody wants to just sit in an empty parking lot for 30 minutes with nothing to do. If i were an EV charging company I would partner with some restaurant chains, book distributes, or coffee companies. Maybe create a place with 10-20 charging stations, but where you can also read/buy books, food, or just hang out till your car is charged.
It's still an impossible dream, no country can produce enough electricity to power vehicles let alone industry
Or batteries etc.. lets pretend you can make a electric anything without HUGE FOSSIL FUEL input ?. bunch of r3tards.
Producing the electricity isn't even the hard part, having the infrastructure to get said electricity to the amount of charging stations we would need is much harder (aka more expensive).
Québec could, though sadly it's not a country yet
Maybe if they close even more nuclear power plants? 🤔 It seems to be the "logic" of current clown governments.
Except one country is already doing it. Granted they have hydroelectric everywhere, but.. claim debunked. As for the rest of us, there's plenty of load available overnight - and EVs can charge at home for about the wattage of a space heater, and get enough range for 90% of people's driving needs the next day. Seems pretty possible to me.
When I had my ev about 7 years ago 50 percent of chargers didn’t work or were slow. My cousin whom recently bought an ev confirms that that’s still the case. Best use in my opinion is to use it locally and charge it at home.
Insurance companies are starting to refuse insurance on homes with EV charging. The EV roll out is being rushed with disastrous results!
Good Presentation. Looking at these same issues against Starlink, the same conclusion can be reached.
I’ve owned 2 EV’s and I have never used a public charging station.
Which means you wasted your money on a car without going on long road trips
Yea but I drive back and forth from Florida to Pennsylvania and I use a gas car which I can get off most exits for gas and get right back on the highway!
@@flybirds2024 I've driven from Florida to Maine several times with my Tesla and didn't even have to pay to charge it on the trip since I bought in 2016 and was grandfathered in to free supercharging. Even if buy today and have to pay, it's only slightly more expensive than driving a gas car, so if you only do a cross country trip once a year, it still works out in the end. Sure, I can't do a cannonball run only stopping for gas for 5 minutes every 4 hours, but I can't do that anyway between needing to stretch my legs, walk the dogs, get food, and get the kids to pee.
"2 EV is and I?" 😂
@@Gregory-Masovutchit’s not for you to say since it’s not your money.
A quarter of chargers broken/down is consistent with what I've seen around me.
Does all include Tesla?
Always does
I've watched an installation of EVgo chargers at the bank across the street from my office over the last year and wondered why they were doing this, and who would ever use it. I've had a Tesla since 2016 and have used their supercharger network on cross country road trips almost every summer since. Other than those summer road trips, I charge at home. I can't understand why anyone would pay triple the cost to charge on this EVgo charger at the bank ( and 1/2 or 1/3rd the speed of a tesla supercharger that is along the highway ) instead of charging at home. If you are driving cross country, then parking at this bank for an hour to recharge is not the way to do it. If you are just driving around town, then charge overnight at home for 1/3rd the cost.
Some people live in apartments or condos or don't have drives at their homes. In addition, if it's an older home it would probably require an upgrade to the power supply.
@@frederickclause2694 Any home can support a dryer outlet, no upgrade needed. Sure, apartments and condos will need to put some chargers in their parking lots and figure out how to bill for it. That isn't a hard problem.
You fail to mention the largest EV charging company! It is profitable, has over 16,800 chargers, and their chargers had .05% downtime in 2023! Can anyone tell me the company im talking about?
Prob talking about that trash company tesla, chargepoint is 25x as big as evgo idk why he spent all video talking about evgo
@@youtubetim3577 At least Telsa had the sense to put their chargers along highways to serve people driving cross country. A bunch of chargers around town ( that are 1/2 or 1/3rd as fast ) are useless whether they are owned by chargepoint or EVgo.
The company is barely profitable.
Their charging network isn't profitable.
And the coverage is really poor, if EVs were ever going to be viable for mainstream (lol) the charging network would have to be far bigger than what it is now, and no company will want to pick up that loss.
@@alkaholic4848 Tesla has the best profit margins out of any car company right now. Net profit per car is $9,574 compared to $2,150 per car at GM. In short, you’re a 🤡.
@@clam_baked
The figures per car are misleading, they can be easily manipulated.
Tesla profits 2023: $10.7billion
GM profits 2023: $21.8billion
Incidentally, this is also why Tesla stock is a bubble / ponzi scheme. Compare the above to the share prices...
Tesla: $209
GM: £35
Completely disproportionate, as with the same comparison against pretty much any other shares. Tesla is ridiculously overvalued, they'll never meet the hype.