First Supercharger Station Capable Of Serving Every EV Installed In San Diego

October 7th, 2013 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on San Diego Loves Green
by Roy L. Hales

(Photo above: From left, Terry O’Day, NRG eVgo Vice President of Business Development in California, and Nicole Capretz, San Diego Director of Environmental Policy, applaud at the unveiling of the first NRG eVgo charging station in the United States able to serve all electric cars at Fashion Valley Mall, on Monday, Sept. 30, 2013 in San Diego, Calif. – Photo by Denis Poroy/Invision for NRG/AP Images)

The first supercharger capable of charging every EV on the road has just been installed in San Diego. The NRG eVgo (ee-vee-go) Freedom Station that just opened at at Fashion Valley Mall has both Level 2 (240V) and SAE Combo and CHAdeMO direct current (DC) fast charge connectors (480V). The fast-charger can deliver power at a rate of up to 150 miles per hour or about an 80% charge in less than 30 minutes. Level 2 chargers deliver range at a rate of 12 – 25 miles per hour.

An electric car plugs into acharger at the unveiling of the first NRG eVgo charging station in the United States able to serve all electric cars at Fashion Valley Mall, on Monday, Sept. 30, 2013 in San Diego. (Photo by Denis Poroy/Invision for NRG/AP Images)

NRG eVgo intends to build a minimum of 200 stations in California by 2016. Their press release mentions sites – at various stages of development from design to permitting and construction – in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley, Los Angeles Basin and San Diego area.

“California accounts for one-third of all electric vehicle sales in the US. The NRG eVgo Freedom Station at Fashion Valley gives California drivers freedom to go anywhere they want in the coolest cars on the road and at lower prices than gasoline cars,” said Terry O’Day, Vice President of Business Development for NRG eVgo in California.

“Announcing our first NRG eVgo Freedom Station site at Fashion Valley Mall reinforces our commitment to sustainability while also providing shoppers with unparalleled service and convenience,” said George Caraghiaur, Senior Vice President of Sustainability, Simon Property Group.

There are EV charging stations at 43 of Simon’s shopping destinations across the U.S.

A 2014 BMW i3 electric car plugs into a SAE Combo fast charger at the unveiling of the first NRG eVgo charging station in the United States able to serve all electric cars at Fashion Valley Mall, on Monday, Sept. 30, 2013 in San Diego. (Photo by Denis Poroy/Invision for NRG/AP Images)

NRG plans to build hundreds of public charging sites across California, Texas and the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

On their website, it says, “NRG eVgo is creating the nation’s first privately funded, comprehensive electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem. We provide electric car charging solutionsdirectly to electric car owners as well as businesses looking to serve the EV charging needs of their residents, tenants, employees or customers.”

To find out more, or to join the eVgo network, visit www.eVgoNetwork.com. Connect with eVgo on Facebook ot follow them on Twitter @evgonetwork.

Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech newsletter, or keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle newsletter, or wind energy newsletter.

Tags: Fashion Valley Mall, Freedom Station, NRG eVgo, San Diego

About the Author

Guest Contributor is many, many people. We publish a number of guest posts from experts in a large variety of fields. This is our contributor account for those special people. :D

Marion Meads

By charging super-inflated prices, these companies are giving EV’s a blackeye that it would cost more to drive an EV in terms of fuel!!!

What a shame, I hope they go bankrupt sooner for others to learn a lesson.

Believe me, I would cheer for them and heavily promote them if they charge you the national average of $0.12/kWh of recharging. As it is, they are like the plague to be avoided.

The reason why they are going bankrupt is that the two best selling plug-ins would try to avoid them like the plague. It is a no-brainer for Chevy Volt owners to plug at these expensive stations because they have a choice of going gasoline or going electric, depends on the pricing economics. The PIP for sure, it would be financial suicide to charge at these stations. The Tesla is offering free charging at their super charging stations.

That leaves the very desperate Smart EV and the LEAF owners who with their unplanned draw-down of their batteries are forced to be fleeced out by these stations. They will only be used for emergencies. And well, AAA is the solution to that already, and they allow you a few recharging emergencies free of charge if you are a member.

Cheaper prices or bankruptcy, I say.

It would be better that utilities build these supercharging station, and you can insert your utility card so that you are sent one bill together with your housing electricity rate. It will never be viable for businesses like this one to prosper and be profitable if they charge a lot higher than the local utility rates.
- liuping
  
  I agree it would be logical for the utilities to install charging stations, but at least in San Diego (and I believe all of CA), they are prohibited by law from providing EV charging stations.
Ivor O’Connor

Will there be a valet like service to move the cars when they are finished charging? If for instance you wanted to go shopping or have a meal and not be concerned about moving the car to allow the next person to charge. Or so that the car could be charged when the charger becomes available without hovering about waiting? Seems like this would be a very desirable option. (Especially since this charging center is next to the mall.)
- Bob_Wallace
  
  I’ll repeat – each charger needs about three cables. That way you could plug in and go away for an hour or so without inconveniencing anyone else.
  And the charger needs to be able to give you a “ten minute warning” to move via cell phone.
  - Ivor O’Connor
    
    First I’ve heard this Bob. Could you elaborate about the three cables?
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      Basically allow multiple cars to plug onto the same charger. First to plug on gets charged first, then auto-switches to second car.
      
      Halfway through the third car it calls the first car owner and gives a ten minute warning. If the first car isn’t unplugged and moved in a timely manner the owner starts paying serious parking fees.
      
      That would let drivers plug in and do something else rather than sit in line waiting for their turn. Cost would be low. Basically a couple more cables and plugs.
      
      Three is just a number. It could be two or four. Enough to give people some freedom from sitting around waiting.
      - Ivor O’Connor
        
        Sounds like a plan. I suspect there will be many “solutions” to the problem. I would like to see a booming economy built around electric stations.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Yeah. I’d like to see more investigation of on the go inductive charging.
        
        That, to me, sounds like the best solution. If it works.
        
        Battery packs could be small, less weight to haul and cheaper to purchase. Replacing worn out packs would be cheaper.
        
        No stopping to charge, no waiting for a charger or looking for one while traveling.
Jouni Valkonen

The whole business model is perhaps that people confuse this with Tesla’s superchargers. Tesla’s superchargers can deliver 150 miles range in 15 minutes — and this is for free.
Marion Meads

This company is clearly headed for bankruptcy.

They will charge you $29.95/month for installing the home charger and you still pay the electricity bills?

They will also charge you additional $29.95/month for installing a charger at work, and your office will have to pay for the electricity bills?

And then they will charge you a one time fee of $7.95 plus $9.95 per charge on DC Fast charging.

No thanks. Will soon hear about your bankruptcy filing.

At least for the time being, if you don’t own a home and live in apartment or condo, you get charged $39.95/month. I don’t know if the electricity bill is traced back to you by the apartment or condo manager.

http://www.evgonetwork.com/charging-plans-california/
- RobS
  
  When you lease a car the lease company pays for your fuel right? No?!
  
  How is this any different? a level 2 EVSE runs around $1500, the company will install and lease the equipment to you for $29.95 per month and just as with a leased car you are responsible for ongoing consumables like fuel (analogous to electricity for an EVSE) this saves you having to find $1,500 up front, just as a car lease saves you having to find $30,000 up front.
  
  A DC fast charger can cost as much as $100,000, which makes a $10 per use charge with zero upfront a far easier pill to swallow for a business.
  
  Neither of these deals seems outrageous in any way and both are very similar to any other lease arrangement you would have on a car, an office space a home etc, all of which you would still be responsible for consumables. Time will tell how popular this is as a business model however any suggestion it is patently unreasonable is unfair I believe.
  - Marion Meads
    
    The deals are outrageous. If you buy the equipment on credit and pay $27.62 a month for APR of 4%, it will be over in 5 years. The case here, is that they fleece you out forever. It is bad lease for you but good business for them. But the equipment’s cost of production of the company is far less than $1500 per unit.
    
    If their lease of $29.95 per month comes with free electricity, then that would be reasonable.
    - RobS
      
      My goodness you seem to be almost personally insulted by this, the depth of your reaction is bordering on the bizarre. It’s a business in a very new marketplace, if it has priced itself too high then competitors will enter the marketplace and drive down the prices, if they don’t follow they will fail. Either way it will sort itself out in the end whether you get so personally invested in it or not. Talk of outrage and fleecing all just seems a little hot under the collar for what in the end is fancy extension cord hire.
- Doug
  
  Wow. For $29/mo, I might actually be able to convince our management to install one of these puppies. That’s peanuts.
  - Marion Meads
    
    Tell your management to buy and these puppies on the get go and you handle the payment. It would cost you less than $29.95 per month for five years.
- RobS
  
  The 10 per charge for a supercharger deal also makes business case analyiss far easier as it completely removes the variable of demand from the equation. If you are a business, say a highway diner or a mall, weighing up whether to install a fast charger to attract EV customers, with this new arrangement all you need to do is look at the average profit generated per EV stopped, if it is greater than $10 then it is worth installing the charger. At present you have to not only look at how much profit per visit is generated but try to estimate how many more people will stop if you install the charger, a far far harder metric to analyse.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  “And then they will charge you a one time fee of $7.95 plus $9.95 per charge on DC Fast charging.”
  
  I just came back from town. Paid $30 for the gas for the RT.
  
  If I had an EV with LEAF range I could charge up at home, drive to town, and pay $10 for the power to get back up the mountain. $10 beats what I paid for gas.
  - Marion Meads
    
    Excellent that you mention your favorite LEAF again. You are coming down the mountain, and so you could get 100 miles perhaps from your home charge. The reality is you won’t get back the 100 miles if you climb up the mountain, no matter if you pay $10 for a full charge, you are lucky to travel back 60 miles up the mountain. You might be paying $200 for the tow truck up the mountain.
    
    Let us assume a flat terrain on freeway speed, the LEAF range is about 65 miles when you normally go 70 mph. You have full charge left from home, and near zeroed out safely at your destination and recharge with $10. So your house bill, could be $3 for the forward trip, and then $10 back home from these soon to be bankrupt companies. Your total for the 130 mile roundtrip is $13. Guess how much will that cost the Prius in gas?
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      A RT is a bit over 100 miles. Charging at home is free since I already have surplus solar. That makes the RT, if I used a $10 rapid charger in town $10. About the same as fuel for a Prius.
      
      My point is, paying $10 for a rapid charge on the rare occasions most people would need one is not out of line. It would be more than offset by the large savings done with grid-priced charging.
      
      That said, I don’t see these standalone chargers as the future. I think they will be used for customer acquisition by restaurants and retailers. There is value in having someone stop in your business parking lot and spend a 20, 30 minutes. If you set things up so that they don’t have to rush back to their cars as soon as they are charged then you’re going to have eating and shopping occurring. Competition for customers will drive costs down lower than $10.
Marion Meads

Supercharging stations are doomed to fail if they charge your wallet more than the price of gasoline per mile on a Prius. If Supercharging stations are connected to their own banks of battery being powered by solar and then they charge the same as the retail price of electricity per kWH, then the business might survive.
- RobS
  
  Home charging is the most convenient however pay per use superchargers are not designed for convenience charging they’re designed for desperation charging, the person who has no choice but to get a charge or not be able to make it home. For that person the cost of charging at home is entirely irrelevant, the price he is willing to pay in such a situation is far higher then his usual charge cost.
  - Marion Meads
    
    That is why this company is going to fail. It would be dependent only on desperate people who did not plan their routes very well. Most BEV owners would tend to avoid these places like the plague if they can if the price is a lot higher than what they can get in their house or other locations.
    - RobS
      
      You clearly have a far higher regard for the average persons ability to make and execute a plan without error. Not to mention not choosing instant gratification despite delayed consequences. There are whole industries, the one that first comes to mind being payday lenders, whose entire business model is based on taking advantage of people who are unable to make and execute a plan despite a huge financial incentive to doing so.
- Doug
  
  Doomed to fail seems an exaggeration. At the right locations and at the right price per charge, many superchargers will be very profitable. So not all are doomed to fail. Locations with few visits will have more trouble – hinting at a future where remote locations will undoubtably be subsidized.
  - Marion Meads
    
    The company overall will fail as it has done so with many other companies that tried to venture into this project. Their model is no different than others because of the price. I hope they learned that if their charging price is not at par with prices of electricity at home, then customers will try to avoid them like the plague. It is only when you have unplanned emergency trips and you desperately need a recharge and there’s nowhere else to go, and only then will you try to recharge at these expensive facilities. The clue here is really pricing, it is just too much, and nothing beats recharging at home, all the more when wireless charging comes to be.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  I doubt that. Most drivers infrequently drive long distances. If it was necessary to pay high charge rates for 5% of ones driving while saving massively the other 95% of the time I think people would accept that.
  - Marion Meads
    
    If you look at the current reality, the chargers with high prices are being avoided like the plague, and so these companies went bankrupt.
  - Marion Meads
    
    The infrequent charging drives my point that the company will go bankrupt because of lack of customers. There are still very few EVs out there and having them charge only occasionally means a couple orders of magnitude of further reduction of potential customers. Low or utility rate comparable pricing should be the main factor to attract more customers that will be hooked for convenience. These companies don’t get it, so they charged sky high price, giving EV’s a black eye, and they naturally will go bankrupt for lack of “interests”.
Ivor O’Connor

“First Supercharger Station Capable Of Serving Every EV Installed In San Diego”

This is deceptive PR that gives the industry a bad name.
- RobS
  
  Once Tesla’s Chademo adapter is release it will be correct won’t it?
  - Ivor O’Connor
    
    No. Chademo is 25 to 50 versus the Tesla supercharger of 90.
    - RobS
      
      Whether its as high a capacity is not the question, the statement you questioned was whether it could service every EV on the market, my understanding is that with the Tesla Chademo adapter announcement (although not yet released) that the statement is correct.
      - Ivor O’Connor
        
        No Rob.
        
        I said “This is deceptive PR that gives the industry a bad name.”
        
        1) It is not a Tesla Supercharger. Tesla has a de-facto hold on the word “supercharger”. You can argue that all you want but if you use the word supercharger and it is not a Tesla supercharger the water is being muddied.
        
        2) It may be able to service a Tesla but so can a 120v outlet. Pretending this station is capable of handling a Tesla is again deceptive.
        
        I’m glad to see them opening a charging station. I’m not glad to see them over-reaching with deceptive PR. There is no need for it and it gives the industry a bad name.
      - RobS
        
        You can argue all you want but “defacto hold on the word supercharger” is a meaningless phrase, the term supercharger has been used widely in normal conversation for many years rendering it unpatentable (“de facto” or not) by Tesla. Personally I think supercharger is a perfectly reasonable group noun for all level 3 EVSEs,
        I certainly think that nitpicking the defintion of the word “service” and suggesting that it is analogous to claiming a 120V socket is a supercharger is far more deceptive than anything they have done. This charger supplies power at substantially above the rate of a standard level 2 charger and with the adapter can charge a Tesla, that meets all the standard definitions of service any reasonable person could have.
      - Ivor O’Connor
        
        Well then we don’t see eye-to-eye. You don’t have to agree with me on everything.
      - RobS
        
        umm? thanks for letting me know, cause I was unclear on that.
- Doug
  
  This is a grammatical err. 1) it is a supercharger, as it offers two varieties of quick charging and 2) it can charge every EV. I don’t find the fact that it doesn’t provide Tesla Supercharging deceptive, although as a Tesla owner, I sure wish it did!
  - Ivor O’Connor
    
    Maybe you don’t. However I see it as disgusting. I’m sure I’m not alone.
    - Doug
      
      I’m sure your are not alone on that. Others will not see their claim of “servicing” (not supercharging) every EV as inaccurate.
    - A Real Libertarian
      
      Ivor, what is the problem you have?
      
      Do you get this prissy when ever someone uses the word Kleenex to refer to a non-Kleenex brand facial tissue?
      - RobS
        
        Even that would be more valid because Kleenex owns that trademark, supercharger is not a Tesla trademark and they have absolutely zero right to it’s exclusive use.
      - Ivor O’Connor
        
        Pretty much my whole life.