Sec. of Energy discovers EV charging woes
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But between stops, Granholm's entourage at times had to grapple with the limitations of the present. Like when her caravan of EVs — including a luxury Cadillac Lyriq, a hefty Ford F-150 and an affordable Bolt electric utility vehicle — was planning to fast-charge in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, Georgia.
Her advance team realized there weren't going to be enough plugs to go around. One of the station's four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary of energy.
That did not go down well: a regular gas-powered car blocking the only free spot for a charger?
In fact, a family that was boxed out — on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle — was so upset they decided to get the authorities involved: They called the police.
The sheriff's office couldn't do anything. It's not illegal for a non-EV to claim a charging spot in Georgia. Energy Department staff scrambled to smooth over the situation, including sending other vehicles to slower chargers, until both the frustrated family and the secretary had room to charge.
John Ryan, a driver of an electric BMW, pulled up after everything was settled. It was his turn to wait.
"It's just par for the course," he shrugged. "They'll get it together at some point."
"They" would be the government, the automakers, the charging networks like Electrify America and ChargePoint, and the companies like Walmart, Shell and 7-Eleven that are entering the charging game.
And they are, in fact, desperate to get it together. Carmakers have hundreds of billions of dollars of investment on the line, and they are embracing Tesla's technology and teaming up with rivals to try to tackle the charging problem. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is pouring billions into a nationwide network of electric chargers, trying to fix the very problem Granholm was encountering.
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You rarely run into that kind of problem with getting gas for your vehicle. Buckees, a Texas chain of gas stations with over a hundred pumps at some stations usually has the cheapest prices so it gets lots of traffic and sometimes there will be short lines at the pumps. At one of their locations, they also have about 20 Tesla charging stations and I have seen a few cars at them but it still takes longer to charge a vehicle than it does to pump gas. At Buckees the inside store is as big as a Super Walmart filled with food options making the wait more interesting for some.
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