Charging Infrastructure Challenges and Electrify America's New Policies for Electric Vehicles
TapTechNews August 12th news, with the continuous expansion of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, the availability and charging convenience of public charging piles remain the main challenges faced by electric vehicle users. Compared with the once-highly-concerned range anxiety, charging anxiety seems to be gradually becoming a bigger problem. A study shows that one-fifth of the charging piles in the US cannot be used normally.
Even if the charging piles are operating normally, electric vehicle users still face another problem: the charging squatters who occupy the charging piles. These drivers occupy the charging piles for an unnecessarily long time, affecting other users from charging. To solve this problem, Electrify America, the second-largest charging network operator in the US after Tesla and a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, will start to punish those users who occupy the charging piles for too long. What is considered occupying the charging piles for too long? Electrify America believes that charging the battery to more than 85% is considered.
Charging an electric vehicle battery to full is not that simple. Many fast chargers can quickly charge an electric vehicle battery that is depleted of power to 80%. However, charging the battery from 80% to 100% usually takes a longer time.
Robert Barrosa, president of Electrify America, said that fast chargers should not be used for such long charging. Therefore, the company will implement a strict 85% charging limit at the 10 busiest charging stations in California. After the charging power reaches 85%, it will automatically cut off the power. If the driver does not unplug the charging plug after a 10-minute grace period, a squatting fee of $0.4 per minute (TapTechNews note: currently about 2.87 RMB).
Barrosa said in an interview with CNN that most people are not yet familiar with electric vehicles. Once the car battery power exceeds 80%, the charging speed will significantly decrease.
Some of Tesla's supercharging stations have already adopted a similar strategy, but the owner can manually cancel the charging limit through the screen prompt.
However, for owners of electric vehicles with long-distance travel or shorter range, limiting the charging upper limit may cause inconvenience. Electrify America said that it will expand the charging network in areas with insufficient charging facilities, and at the same time will not implement an overall charging upper limit at charging stations near the highway.