Adrift in a sea of asphalt
EV charging: It can be so much more
For the past few years I’ve been increasingly obsessed with the user experience of long distance EV travel, driven (pun intended) in large part from many trips between Northern and Southern California in a Tesla. I continue to encounter many people, including Tesla owners, who feel they need to have a gas car for long distance travel. Yet long distance travel is totally doable, particularly in a Tesla. Case in point — this summer I drove one 2,800 miles from California to Montana and back.
That said, current long distance charging is a pretty terrible product experience — even with Tesla superchargers. EV charging in general is super interesting, because it will require us as a society to rethink how we engage with ‘fueling up’. There’s so much to unpack in this topic, but here are a few thoughts.
Dwell — a fundamental distinction with radical implications
The key difference between filling up a car with gas vs electrons* is really simple — the amount of time it takes to pour energy into your car. People refer to this time spent at a charging station as ‘dwell time’.
This is a profound difference from gas cars because dwell time effectively doesn’t exist for internal combustion engines, and so for 100 years infrastructure and driver behavior has molded to this reality. But it doesn’t mean EV charging has to be inconvenient. It just means that infrastructure will need to shift to better accommodate dwell time.
From what I’ve seen, charging breaks down into 3 different dwell scenarios with order of magnitude time windows:
8 hours: Work & Overnight
3 hours: Shop & Entertain
30 min: Long Distance
Today’s chargers are trying to serve different dwell scenarios at once, leading to confusion and bad user experiences. Parking spaces that double as a charging bay. Quick super chargers at longer duration locations like shopping malls and hotels. Level 2 chargers at short duration locations like gas stations. This leads to confusion, inconvenience, and even conflict. But there is a better way.
Blueprint for Long Distance EV Charging
In my mind there are 3 key dimensions to creating a great charging experience. I’m happy to see some folks are already attempting to do this, but mostly there’s raw opportunity. In the interest of brevity I primarily address the long distance scenario here.
1) Dwell-ability
The first aspect I call Dwell-ability and the characteristics vary based on the dwell time scenario. In the case of long distance charging, dwell-ability needs to serve the needs of a long trip, which distill down to services and the ability to comfortably get to them.
Services — Food, drinks, bathrooms, an area for kids to run around, walk a dog… you get the idea. Throwing some chargers near a McDonalds on an interstate exit is a start, but the opportunity is so much greater.
Pedestrian friendly — You also need to be able to leave your car and comfortably walk to services, not play real-life frogger across a 6 lane road nor walk 5 minutes across a parking lot blacktop before you reach civilization.
At its simplest, dwell-ability can be measured by answering the “Do I want to spend 15–30 minutes charging at this place?”
2) Turnover management
Because dwell time is longer than a traditional gas pump, turnover management becomes important. Just as there is range anxiety today, there is also dwell anxiety that comes from trying to time charging sessions.
While adding capacity is the sledge hammer solution, there are more elegant technical, operations, and product experience levers to tackle turnover.
Disambiguating the charging scenarios is one way. Is the expectation that you are there for a quick charge, shopping for a few hours, or plan to be there all day?
In the case of long distance charging (15–30min), in the same way that fast food seating is designed to be inviting yet just uncomfortable enough to encourage seating turnover, a long distance charging plaza can be well aligned with a 30 min window. Comfortable enough to gladly spend 30 minutes, but not so comfortable that you are going to hang out all day.
In longer dwell scenarios, public signaling is another process + technical solution we can look towards, with visible indicators of estimated remaining charge times and availability onsite and in mobile apps, traffic lanes that facilitate queuing, and flexible cables for alternating charging between bays.
3) Safety and protection
Protection from the elements, while seemingly mundane, shouldn’t be too much to ask. When was the last time you went to a gas station that didn’t have an awning over the pumps that at least partially protected you from sun and rain? How about the last charger you used? I don’t have data on efficiency gains from reduced sun exposure while charging (battery cooling & AC), so it may be marginal, but regardless of efficiency gains you shouldn’t have to bake or get soaked in order to charge.
And while I list this last, safety should be table stakes. Unfortunately that isn’t the case today. Let’s face it, while Tesla superchargers are amazing during the day, many are spooky ghost towns at night. The fact that you have folks sitting there for a predictable amount of dwell time unnerves me. Location, lighting, etc should promote safety.
We’re at the dawn of the gasless carriage
We are at the advent of a new age of transportation with behavior changes not unlike the transition from horses to combustion engines. That transition took years, but with it came material changes in the infrastructure around transportation. Carriage houses and hitching posts are nostalgic reminders that a previous transportation mode required a different mental model. EVs will be the same.
Consumer experiences can’t just be ‘good enough’ when replacing incumbent behaviors, and EVs are a poster child for changing behavior. Electric is better than combustion engines in so many ways (maintenance, emissions, cost of fuel, etc), but not long distance travel.
Time to up the EV charging game.
*yeah not technically correct, but ‘apply a differential voltage’ or whatever didn’t feel quite as concise
