thirdcrank wrote:Unless I've missed something, it's only a matter of time before that rapid charge becomes the norm. ie it's the only one which seems to be anything like the familiar fuel pump.
Which petrol pump do you have at home?
At even a paltry 3m/kWh (3.5-4 is much more normal), an eight hour overnight charge at home (7kW) will give more than 150 miles of range for the next day - that's plenty for basically all "normal" usage.
There are two exceptions:
Long journeys
When I visit my parents I need to charge en route.
This is where rapid chargers are needed - and they are now available at ridiculous power levels.
The current issue is that ecotricity was sponsored by Nissan, so have more chademo connectors than CCS, and no real incentive to update.
CCS is now available (ionity) delivering up to 350kW - that's charging at 1200 miles an hour...
If I had a charger that could ingest that much power I could charge the whole battery from flat in ~7 minutes (obviously the rate would be slowed for the last 20%, but I could hit 80% in 6 minutes. My charger (which is actually in the car, the "pumps" are actually just fancy switches, with some DC magic thrown in) can only ingest 50kW, but I envisage that changing over the coming years.
People without reasonably dedicated parking (i.e. a space they can say they'll get at least once a week).
People without dedicated parking available either at home *or* at work will need to use public charging points - and that will be a mix of rapid and slow charging.
I've not used any low speed public chargers yet, a 'slow' charge over lunch (an hour) could add 20 miles to my range, not really worth the effort for me - I'll use the disabled space instead. For a PHEV they make sense, because you can basically fill the battery in that time, and that will make a significant difference, but I'm not really sold on most phevs - the Vauxhall Ampera was a decent stab at one, and the Bolt was an excellent example of how to really combine the different power trains.