Tag: ICE

Costco Gas Line

Costco Gas line 2 by dennis_p
Costco Gas line 2, a photo by dennis_p on Flickr.

Spent 10 minutes at the Costco Gas line today. One would think that I would be espousing the convenience of home fueling, etc. as an EV convert during this rant. However, that’s not the purpose of today’s post. It’s really looking at the fact that even with the inconvenience of a long wait to fill up, it’s still more convenient than my EVSE at home and the one 3/4 of a mile away from my work.

Considering that I got a a full tank of 407 miles of range. Gas cars are STILL so much more convenient.

On Easter Sunday, I did a drive that required me to stop at a Level 2 EVSE along the way between two of my destinations and it took 30 minutes at L2 to get enough charge for me to feel comfortable to continue on.  Luckily Stop 2 had L2 EVSE’s 0.7 miles away that I could use to get enough charge to get home… eventually.

L2 is a nice to have (for now), but really, a standard charger that can get a car full in 3-5 minutes should be the goal.  Even the upcoming “Fast” chargers at 30 minutes are still too long.

ICE – EV Parking counterattack

After 45 days of entering the world of EV drivers, folks have been discussing the challenges of finding EV Parking spots by public chargers.ICE or Internal Combustion Engine cars are often found by others in the EV spots taking up valuable space to get the charge needed to ensure that there is enough range to get to the next destination.

On Friday, at the Helms Bakery location in Culver City, I found this Leaf doing its best job assisting other EV Drivers use the EV only spot on the other side of the chargers. I like to propose that we follow his example of an ICE-EV Parking Counterattack.

There are enough ICE spots, by taking an adjacent ICE spot for EV charging, we can ensure that there is a counterbalance to the ICE problems that others have.

On a side note… I heard the funniest thing while I was sitting in my car reading and charging on this occasion… As I was getting a top up at Helms Bakery, A young guy asked me “Excuse me sir, do you happen to know where the nearest gas station is?” Needless to say, I was a little dumbfounded, but recovered quick enough to respond that I was probably the wrong person to ask and offered to look it up on the Navigation system for him.