EV Charging Station Costs

[Ben]

I was reading this article on 46's "infrastructure" plan that includes a boatload of dough for charging stations. A couple of tied together things for discussion:

1) The fast chargers apparently cost $120K-$260K (kind of a range there?) each to install. That sounds like a lot of dough. I wonder how many dino gas pumps you could put in a location for that? If you were creating the equivalent of a gas station, for ten charging stations you're out up to $2.6 million. Which leads to...

2) How much will it end up costing to charge a vehicle? Maybe some of you here with EVs can chime in, but I was thinking that a lot of these current stations are free, sort of as a convenience or perk or whatever at particular businesses? Else if you have to stick your credit card in one, how much does it cost you to charge up at public chargers?

At $2.6 million just for the charging stations, it seems like someone who wanted to start up a "corner gas station" for EVs is probably out close to $4 million. That's a lot of investment to get back. I wonder how much they would need to charge per "fillup" to recover their costs? They have to pay for the electricity, just like they would pay for fuel deliveries now, plus the normal business costs of maintenance, employees, etc. Seems like, just throwing a number out there, what, maybe $50 per charge? Would people pay that? I mean, with gas prices going where they are, I'm paying that now for a fillup, but then I have a 500-600 mile average range.


https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/us-ev-charging-system-a-priority-under-bidens-2-trillion-infrastructure-plan.html

[cordex]

I'd bet that the costs end up being maybe $25 per full charge, but that will vary depending on energy costs.

Given the increased time it takes to charge and the current financial makeup of EV owners, if I were setting up public charging station for electric vehicles I'd offer additional paid services (restaurant, coffee bar, VR arcade, exercise equipment, etc) to help burn time and provide alternate income streams.  The convenience store model but with more time and money at stake.

[TechMan]

Ben, here is what I found: https://www.commtank.com/services/gas-station-construction-company/  They have a whole list of costs and it looks way less than the EV components.

The average cost of a new gas station with four gas dispensers and associated petroleum equipment such as underground storage tanks, concrete footings, piping, spill buckets, etc. is $500K. The average cost to replace existing gas station components with new pumps, tanks, and accessories is $200-$300K.

I think the above cost are for the gas filling area/pumps/tanks and not for any mini-mart building.

[TechMan]

I'd bet that the costs end up being maybe $25 per full charge, but that will vary depending on energy costs.

Given the increased time it takes to charge and the current financial makeup of EV owners, if I were setting up public charging station for electric vehicles I'd offer additional paid services (restaurant, coffee bar, VR arcade, exercise equipment, etc) to help burn time and provide alternate income streams.  The convenience store model but with more time and money at stake.

Close...https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-charge-a-tesla-is-it-the-same-as-the-cost-to-charge-other-electric-vehicles


ETA: Supercharger costs:  https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35152087/tesla-model-3-charging-costs-per-mile/

[MillCreek]

Stupid question here: is there a standard charging interface such that any EV car sold in the USA can charge up at any charging station?  I thought there wasn't, but maybe that has changed.

[Fly320s]

Stupid question here: is there a standard charging interface such that any EV car sold in the USA can charge up at any charging station?  I thought there wasn't, but maybe that has changed.

No, not standardized, but cars come with adapters.  Our Tesla 3 comes with a few different adapters to work with the variety of chargers out there.

[Ben]

Close...https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-charge-a-tesla-is-it-the-same-as-the-cost-to-charge-other-electric-vehicles


ETA: Supercharger costs:  https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35152087/tesla-model-3-charging-costs-per-mile/

Unless I missed something, they seem to be weighting heavily on home charging, which of course is a benefit to EVs over gassers and would mitigate higher charges at commercial EV charging stations.

Given the increased time it takes to charge and the current financial makeup of EV owners, if I were setting up public charging station for electric vehicles I'd offer additional paid services (restaurant, coffee bar, VR arcade, exercise equipment, etc) to help burn time and provide alternate income streams.  The convenience store model but with more time and money at stake.

Those expensive chargers in the OP are supposed to take under ten minutes. Though I've mentioned the same as you before, that if I'm road tripping, using other services or just chillin' or stretching would certainly cancel out any charging waits. I'd be less patient locally, but then that's what the home charger is for.

My understanding with dino stations is that fuel profits at the pump are razor thin, and if it weren't for people going inside to the mini-mart part of the gas station, many of them could not stay in business.

[Fly320s]

I was reading this article on 46's "infrastructure" plan that includes a boatload of dough for charging stations. A couple of tied together things for discussion:

1) The fast chargers apparently cost $120K-$260K (kind of a range there?) each to install. That sounds like a lot of dough. I wonder how many dino gas pumps you could put in a location for that? If you were creating the equivalent of a gas station, for ten charging stations you're out up to $2.6 million. Which leads to...

Gas stations need specific equipment to refuel a car.  Charging stations do too, but they are much simpler.  I think the biggest costs are getting the electricity to the site.  Often, EV chargers are added to existing locations so the infrastructure needs to be increased to support that.  Gas stations are often built in new areas or along roads that already have plenty of infrastructure.  Since charging a car takes longer than fueling a car, charging stations are often located in areas where there are things to do other than just sitting in your car and waiting.  Not many people want to sit in a refueling station for 20 or 30 minutes while charging, so these new chargers are added-on to existing areas.  That may mean that the electrical grid needs to be beefed up.   The cost of the charging stations will decline as the scale increases and charger installs are planned in advance of building a shopping center or business park.

2) How much will it end up costing to charge a vehicle? Maybe some of you here with EVs can chime in, but I was thinking that a lot of these current stations are free, sort of as a convenience or perk or whatever at particular businesses? Else if you have to stick your credit card in one, how much does it cost you to charge up at public chargers?

According to my math, it costs me about $12 for a normal top-off on our Tesla 3.  That is the at-home cost.  I don't know the Supercharger cost and the chargers at Boston Logan are currently free.

At $2.6 million just for the charging stations, it seems like someone who wanted to start up a "corner gas station" for EVs is probably out close to $4 million. That's a lot of investment to get back. I wonder how much they would need to charge per "fillup" to recover their costs? They have to pay for the electricity, just like they would pay for fuel deliveries now, plus the normal business costs of maintenance, employees, etc. Seems like, just throwing a number out there, what, maybe $50 per charge? Would people pay that? I mean, with gas prices going where they are, I'm paying that now for a fillup, but then I have a 500-600 mile average range.

EV stations won't have to store the energy.  And the electricity is a fixed price, essentially, since it is regulated, which makes planning the costs much simpler.
 And EV stations won't need to be located on high-value street corners.  They can be built in parking lots of shopping areas or business parks.   I doubt many people will be interested in paying $50 for a charge.  People want the cheapest price.  Electricity is all the same grade, so there is no benefit in charging with Super-Duper Unleaded Electrons when the normal electrons work just as well.  Some people may want to pay for a faster charge, but the charging rate is limited by the car as well as the charger.


https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/us-ev-charging-system-a-priority-under-bidens-2-trillion-infrastructure-plan.html

Overall, I think charging stations will be very basic, stand-alone units, much like they are now and not dedicated "filling stations" like the current gas stations.  Charging a car takes a long time.  The Tesla Superchargers take about 20 minutes to add 3/4 of a charge.  My home charger takes 4 hours and the chargers at work take about the same 4 hours to add roughly 30% charge.   EV owners will adjust to the process of charging while doing something else.  That something else could be working, shopping, or just being home, but I think most people won't want to sit around for 20 minutes on their way to work to top off their car.

[Fly320s]

One of the bigger problems I see with public chargers is that most people, myself included, park the car on the charger and then leave.  They leave for 30 minutes or an hour or a few hours like I do at work.  The chargers in airport garages can be "in use" by one car for several days even though the charging is finished in a couple of hours.  That is mostly fine right now as there are more chargers than EVs on any given day, but that will eventually change.

I can envision a valet service for charging at high-volume areas that have limited charging capacity.  Airports, shopping centers, entertainment areas, dense population areas.  Those places where people park their car and then leave for a couple of hours.  Then, the $50 fill-up might be worth it, as long as it comes with a car wash, too.

[Nick1911]

A quick google suggests of the version 3 tesla superchargers: "A 1 MW charge box supplies 4 stalls at 250 kW each."

I agree that a substantial amount of the cost is getting that much electric service to a corner gas station.  The house I live in has 200 amp service - that's only 48kw.

This wouldn't be a simple triplex overhead electrical service with a pole mounted transformer - it's going to be a beefy pad mount transformer somewhere and buried HV wire going to it.  If the local neighborhood only has 13kv service, that may need upgraded as well, 1mw would pull near 80 amps on 13kv lines.

[Ben]

I guess another thing from the OP link that I didn't mention is that it's all about a spending bill to install these, so it's creating another group of businesses that are sucking at the government teat with subsidies, and probably in the future, bailouts.

I'm neutral on EVs. In the future, I might get one myself. I'm not crazy about my tax dollars going to another thing that should be done privately though. Especially at the per station costs they are talking about. Now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder how much of the $260K per is the actual cost of the machine and how much of it is the cost of fed.gov doing it?

[charby]

This is about what it costs to build a dino oil station from scratch. Yes new commercial building do cost around $200 sq ft currently. My buddy is a architect and this is what he told me on Tuesday at coffee. He was shocked at how much it costs to build.

    cost of building gas station

land 1 acre. $ 500.000

building. 3000sqft. $200sqft. 600,000

inside store equipment $ 200.000

Merchandise $ 65,000

gasoline set up tanks canopy pumps 4 gilbarco. Two cash register passport ,

gas monitoring system 450.000

about $1.5 to $2.0 MILLION

take about 1 year to finish   

[HankB]

. . . My understanding with dino stations is that fuel profits at the pump are razor thin, and if it weren't for people going inside to the mini-mart part of the gas station, many of them could not stay in business.

A few years back I read that Exxon makes about 9 cents a gallon profit on gasoline - I don't know what the gas station itself makes (assuming it's a franchise and not corporate ownership) but local stations of the same brand seem to vary as much as 30 cents per gallon on regular.

As an aside - taxes at the pump are nearly 40 cents a gallon here in TX, and I know they're higher elsewhere. Plus there are all kinds of taxes upstream on both the corporation and all of its employees and vendors. Which makes me think "WHO is subsidizing WHOM?" whenever the greenies complain about government subsidizing the petrochemical industry.

[TechMan]

A quick google suggests of the version 3 tesla superchargers: "A 1 MW charge box supplies 4 stalls at 250 kW each."

I agree that a substantial amount of the cost is getting that much electric service to a corner gas station.  The house I live in has 200 amp service - that's only 48kw.

This wouldn't be a simple triplex overhead electrical service with a pole mounted transformer - it's going to be a beefy pad mount transformer somewhere and buried HV wire going to it.  If the local neighborhood only has 13kv service, that may need upgraded as well, 1mw would pull near 80 amps on 13kv lines.

Tesla put in a super charger station at our local Meijer.  12 superchargers upto 150kW.  There is a lot of electrical boxes there.

[Nick1911]

This is about what it costs to build a dino oil station from scratch. Yes new commercial building do cost around $200 sq ft currently. My buddy is a architect and this is what he told me on Tuesday at coffee. He was shocked at how much it costs to build.

1 acre is half a mill?  I knew Iowa farmland was expensive, but that seems steep.

[Fly320s]

1 acre is half a mill?  I knew Iowa farmland was expensive, but that seems steep.

Location, location, location.   Commercial zone land on a high-use road can be expensive.

A quick look around my area shows two commercial lots for sale.  .43 acre for $200,000 and .19 acre for $395,000.  Both lots on a busy road.

[charby]

1 acre is half a mill?  I knew Iowa farmland was expensive, but that seems steep.

Farm ground you'll need to pave the road to it, get power to it, drill a deep ass well and install a commercial septic before you even start building. 7k acre just went to  over half mill once you get the infrastructure built.

[MechAg94]

Now I am curious what stations like this cost.  Newer Buc-ees in Katy, TX.  I think the car wash alone is more than 1 acre.


https://buc-ees.com/about/world-record-holder/

[lee n. field]

EV owners can chime in.   When my petrol burner sits for a week (as happened back in Dec. when I had the 'Rona), all the gas is still there when I come back to it.   How much charge does an electric car loose just sitting there?

[HankB]

EV owners can chime in.   When my petrol burner sits for a week (as happened back in Dec. when I had the 'Rona), all the gas is still there when I come back to it.   How much charge does an electric car loose just sitting there?

What happens to an EV's range in, say, January in Minnesota, where you have to run the heater, headlights, and defroster just to get around in subzero temperatures?

That's a serious question - I really don't know how cold temps affect the battery packs on EVs, or how running heaters or (in hot weather) A/C will affect the vehicle's range.

[griz]

And the electricity is a fixed price, essentially, since it is regulated, which makes planning the costs much simpler.

The price is regulated but not fixed.  Many places that use a lot of electricity, like 30 megawatts, run at night to take advantage of lower rates.  Even homes have variable rates, witness the latest fiasco in Texas when some people had their rate increase by a factor of ten not because they used more, but demand skyrocketed.

[TechMan]

What happens to an EV's range in, say, January in Minnesota, where you have to run the heater, headlights, and defroster just to get around in subzero temperatures?

That's a serious question - I really don't know how cold temps affect the battery packs on EVs, or how running heaters or (in hot weather) A/C will affect the vehicle's range.

According to this article on average an EV loses 18.5% of its official range.

[230RN]

I'm wondering about the cost of the extra generating capacity at the power plants.  Here we are, taking energy from billions of gallons of gasoline per time unit, so essentially, that energy (or maybe half that) must be replaced by kWhours.  You can't spin the generators faster, so we'll need more generating capacity, right?

And where are we going to get the Joules to spin those generators?  Coal, again?  Petroleum, again?  The hot air coming out of Washington politicians?

Well, of course there are wind turbines and hot solar collectors and the like, but those cost money too, which must be amortized by somebody's wallet.

We can work miracles, but boy, is that a big one.


REF:
https://www.calculateme.com/energy/gallons-of-gas/to-kilowatt-hours/

[MechAg94]

The price is regulated but not fixed.  Many places that use a lot of electricity, like 30 megawatts, run at night to take advantage of lower rates.  Even homes have variable rates, witness the latest fiasco in Texas when some people had their rate increase by a factor of ten not because they used more, but demand skyrocketed.

The home stuff was due to people signing up for variable rate electric agreements since the rate is normally cheaper.  I signed up for a 2 year fixed rate agreement and I didn't see any increase. 

[Fly320s]

EV owners can chime in.   When my petrol burner sits for a week (as happened back in Dec. when I had the 'Rona), all the gas is still there when I come back to it.   How much charge does an electric car loose just sitting there?

Yes, the cars use electricity just sitting there.  I don't know the rate of usage. 

What happens to an EV's range in, say, January in Minnesota, where you have to run the heater, headlights, and defroster just to get around in subzero temperatures?

That's a serious question - I really don't know how cold temps affect the battery packs on EVs, or how running heaters or (in hot weather) A/C will affect the vehicle's range.

I take about a 20% hit to the range in winter.  A large portion of that is from heating the batteries.  Summer is a minor range penalty.