electric vehicle charging

How would you like free power for your EV? That’s becoming the new alternative reality in Europe where grid electricity prices are going negative during the pandemic. The upside-down situation follows a recent period of oil prices falling below zero.

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Imagine a future where your EV was getting low on charge ­on a highway road trip – so you deploy a telescoping charging cable to another EV and borrow a few kilowatt-hours. An engineering professor at the University of Florida believes it’s not far-fetched.

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Imagine parking your EV, pushing a button, and a solar EV-charging cover automatically unfurls to protect your car and add a few miles of range. That’s exactly what a French company that produces thin-film photovoltaics and a French EV startup created. While still in the prototype phase, and presented in a goofy video, the idea is maybe not as far-fetched as it first seems.

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Hyundai Kona and Hyundai Ioniq EV drivers can get some relief from the pain of Electrify America’s opaque billing practices, at least until the end of the year. But you have to sign up with a promo code through the app. And only in the US, not Canada. And your rate will almost double at the end of the year, from $0.35 to $0.69 per minute.

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Washington, DC, has proposed a regulation that will govern electric vehicle (EV) charging on public streets. The contrast with surrounding Maryland neighborhoods shows how forgoing utility-operated and regulated-charging costs residents dearly.

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Electrify America, the Volkswagen subsidiary, announced today that it’s investing $2 million in solar-powered EV charging stations in rural California. The investment in charging stations that are not tied to the electrical grid will expand access to EV charging opportunities for drivers in rural areas.

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Tesla has signed a deal with the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to massively expand its Tesla Supercharger presence at Turnpike Service Areas, as well as build utility infrastructure for non-Tesla charging stations.

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If the 200-plus miles of range offered by a Renault Zoe EV aren’t enough for a long-distance trip, just latch on a 60kWh charging-on-the-go trailer in order to more than double its electric distance. That’s what EP Tender, a French startup, hopes that electric-car drivers will do with its proposed product. The company went back to the drawing board after offering internal-combustion charger-trailers for several years.

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Electric vehicle charging in New York City is going to be expensive, and New Yorkers will pay for it even if they don’t use it. Consolidated Edison (ConEd) wants to build 60 curbside electric vehicle charging stations with its ratepayers’ money, and sell that electricity to ratepayers two times over in the same transaction for prices that would equate to between $3.50 and $10 per gallon of gas.

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Less than a year ago, the Pasadena City Council voted to join Tesla in building the largest public fast charging station in the USA. That station is now live, offering twenty 50kW stalls each with both Chademo and CCS/SAE ports, accompanied by another 24 parking stalls each with their own 72kW Tesla urban Supercharger stalls.

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Is using the building code to promote EV readiness the best approach? An EV group says no. We spoke with them, and also the City of Vancouver, which switched from the building code to zoning law and now has a flexible approach promising a minimum of 12 kWh over 8 hours in every residential parking stall. Welcome to the quantum physics of EV charging policy.

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Representatives Andy Levin (D-MI) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced the Electric Vehicle Freedom Act this week, which would provide federal grants to private businesses to build direct current fast chargers (DCFCs) along US Interstate highways.

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The General Motors team dedicated to electric vehicle infrastructure is looking beyond the early-adopter market to when mainstream buyers are buying and charging EVs. Electrek spoke last week with Rick Spina, vice president of autonomous and EV commercialization, and Alex Keros, lead architect for EV infrastructure. They believe “normal” in the EV world might not be here until 2025.

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Hydro-Québec wants to offer per-kWh pricing, as well as Tesla plugs alongside CCS and Chademo connectors at its hundreds of DCFC stations. So what’s holding them back? Blame Canada (and Tesla, respectively).

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Building codes are a labyrinth of national, state, and municipal rules. While California since 2015 has required new homes to have the necessary conduit and service-panel capacity for EV-charging, guidelines in the rest of the country are spotty. That could soon be fixed because the International Code Council (ICC) – which provides widely adopted best practices and standards for construction ­– approved putting EV-readiness in its latest guidelines.

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On December 16, 2019, California’s Office of Administrative Law approved amendments to its Electric Vehicle Fueling Systems Specifications. These rules ban operators of electric vehicle charging stations from billing by the minute at new 240Vac stations in 2021 onwards, and new DCFC stations 2023 onwards.

This is a huge blow to Electrify America and EVgo. Both firms bill by the minute for EV charging, leaving drivers with sticker shock and feeling ripped off by the end of the session. Chargepoint will also be negatively affected, as many of their site-host partners choose to bill per minute. And while Tesla already bills by the kilowatt-hour, California will also be requiring charging stations to physically display “on their face” important information about electricity cost and delivery, a move that will put the most burden on Tesla’s Supercharger stations.

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Back in June, New York’s legislature – the State Assembly & State Senate – passed a “Right-to-Charge” bill, which would prohibit condominiums, home-owners associations (HOAs) and the like from unreasonably restricting the installation of electric vehicle charging stations. The bill, however, sat there until yesterday, when it was finally delivered to the Governor for his signature. Also yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded on Twitter offering to help New York Times best-selling author Nnedi Okorafor. Ms. Okorafor had tweeted on November 1 that her HOA had turned down her request. Coincidence or not, New Yorkers shouldn’t rejoice quite yet. Under New York rules, because the legislature is not currently in session, if Governor Andrew Cuomo fails to sign the bill in the next 29 days, the effect is the same as if he vetoed the bill.

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Curse Electrify America (EA) if you want. Giovanni Palazzo, the CEO of the nationwide charging network, invites criticism if you have a terrible experience at an EA location. We spent a full hour last week with Palazzo, and COO Brendan Jones, discussing the challenges of creating an open nationwide network of ultra-fast EV chargers. Electrify America has made a lot of progress, but its leaders admit it has a long way to go to serve the next generation of EV drivers.

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Last month we reviewed the portable charging cords OEMs provide with their North American electric vehicles, and the results were wild.  We gave Tesla’s Gen2 UMC an A+, Audi an A, Nissan a B, Hyundai a D, GM a D-, BMW an F, and Jaguar an F-. Now we have our first look and some exclusive details about what Ford is calling simply the “Ford Mobile Charger”. Based on what we know so far, we can confidently predict an A rating, but probably an A+, and we may have to level down all the other OEMs besides Tesla. And Ford is including a couple of extras that Tesla doesn’t.

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Are we dreaming right now? Is this real life? Volta, which has provided free L2 charging stations since 2010, has announced the first of 150 free DC fast-charging stations across the United States. Unprecedented. And the first location opens this Friday in Norwalk, Connecticut. Next up are Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, DC.

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