Oh, and I wouldn't install stations in outer/corner areas of a parking lot, nor right next to the door. I'd place them somewhere in the middle. I don't want to walk more than another because of the kind of car I have
. EVs should be seen as the default mainstream option, not what I call a "side show".
An installation is for many years and who knows how many EVs will be on the roads in 5-10 years.
Couple of things about that. There has been so much of the "close spaces" being eaten up. It began with Disabled Parking, and that makes perfect sense. Then expectant mothers..OK. Then veterans. And parking to go inside to the Pharmacy.
And more recently, accelerated by Covid, whole swaths of close parking eaten up for "Drive-Up" orders, taking up extra wide space per car to allow carts beside the vehicles. While the drivers don't need to park close (since they stay in their cars), most certainly the employees wheeling out those orders need as short of a distance as possible. And they are usually under a corporate arbitrary deadline (like 2 minutes or 3 minutes, regardless of weather) to complete the delivery from the moment the customer clicked on their phone app that they were there. Also, less distance they travel, the safer due to moving cars.
So, I'm not so much in favor of YET ANOTHER
special class of "parking" to eat further into the parking that is near the store, the very mid-lot places I'm stuck parking at now due to all the other dedicated parking spots above. EV's won't be the mainstream for perhaps 2 decades, and giving them preferential treatment in addition to all the others above would bring a lot of resentment from everyone else in the here and now.
Like say if there was special closer parking for LImousine and Sports Cars, vehicles of the rich. How would that play out among the general public? For now, most EV's are vehicles for "the more affluent", out of the price range of most people for the time being. As it is, some Wal-Marts have gas stations, and guess what, those stations are not in the middle of the parking lot. They are usually in a corner of the lot or even outside but adjacent to the Wal-Mart store's parking lot. And of course, EV owners could still park as close as they can get, if they want a shorter walk, just not get their car charged up.
But I was not even thinking about that aspect. I was thinking of the practical logistics of adding all the charging stations to an existing lot, and the extra space needed per car compared to a normal parking lot. It would seem to be easiest to place those along a border area of the parking lot. And I would expect that if say Target and Wal-Mart did it, they'd have the sense to offer some sort of discount on the charging fee, or gift card, or something.
And I referred to that as a beginning point. Certainly as more and more EV's replace IC vehicles, there will be more demand, and forward-planning companies ought to keep in mind how to upgrade from "X" number of charging stations at first in a large lot, to several times "X" number in the future. At least if there is a demand for it at those stores, if there is not the mass increase in charging stations elsewhere that there needs to be in the next couple of decades.
I see that Love's Truck Stops are doing EV chargers. Well, they are doing a better PR job at it, than actually doing a good job at EV chargers. I see by this article, one of the top hits, they planned 28 chargers by 2021, in 7 of their 520 locations, 4 chargers each at only at those 7 locations. Seven is a drop in the bucket (1.3 percent). "Test program" would be a more accurate story there. Hopefully Covid didn't screw up those plans, and they and other truck stops (which do have crap-loads of parking available) will add charging stations to most or all their locations quickly, with ability to add many more charging stations as more and more EV's are on the highways, and less IC vehicles are. THOSE are the places that need to adapt the quickest, as far as their general customer base outside of truck drivers using Diesel, as fewer and fewer non-Diesel IC vehicles are on the road over time.
https://www.convenience.org/Media/D...g stations, located,public use by early 2021.
At least Love's is trying something though. I hope the rest of the big truck stop chains are trying too, but I did not find much else.
