Nathan Williams shot this bright Chrysler 300 wagon (European version of the Dodge Magnum) in London, and right in front of Shell’s first UK electric charging station, a sign of the times.
In case you didn’t know it, in the first half of 2021, 16% of all new cars sold in Europe were EVs, followed by China with 11% and then the laggard US, with a mere 3%. So it might be a few more years before your favorite Shell station switches to selling juice instead of dino juice.
Is that a rickshaw?
Transportation on hand for when the grid goes down!
That’s more of cargo bike than rickshaw. Very common in Europe, namely in the northern Europe, including Germany.
This one is Babboe Curve Cargo Bike with a steep price of €4,000 or so.
I dread walking close to the bike lanes in Munich because of those cargo bikes pedalled by the Rambos (as Germans call the aggressive bike riders) oblivious to the public safety and heavier weight.
Not sure about the ” Bathroom blue of this example. The Austrian assembled wagon are rare in the UK the sedan with blacked out windows and a imitation “Bentley” grill seamed to be every were.
They were quite a favorite with livery drivers . American looks with Mercedes E class power for Chrysler money.
For entertainment purposes, here’s a Chrysler station wagon and a Shell station of the Past:
Some Supermarkets have charging points as well as selling hydrocarbons and they do seem to be used more this past year than before the pandemic. A new all-electric Mokka-e refills while the owner shops.
Smart. Shell seems to be subtly rebranding themselves as an Energy company instead of just an Oil company. This’ll be interesting to watch as unlike with gasoline, there’s no (theoretical) product difference from vendor to vendor. Instead it’ll eventually perhaps become a battle of A) Location amenities and B) Charge speed capability.
While no EV can currently refill a multi-hundred mile range in just a few minutes, it can get to a significant number very quickly as charge speed is fastest at the beginning and then tapers off. In gasoline terms, roughly imagine the first few gallons filling at 2 gallons a minute and then the next few gallons filling at 1 gallon a minute and the the last few gallons filling at 1/2 a gallon a minute with the individual car model, battery, and charger all playing into the actual speeds, i.e. not all cars charge at the same speed. In London, I’d expect one could get meaningful range in a matter of a few minutes. You’re not going far in a short time anyway.
I am not completely convinced that there is a business case for this model. A charging station at a grocery store, a restaurant, an office building parking lot/garage I get – those are places people with electric cars will go to spend some time and it would be a great additional revenue source for those businesses.
But a standalone charging station that does nothing but offer electricity (and maybe coffee, donuts and candy bars) would seem to me to have a very limited market of folks who 1) didn’t charge at home and 2) didn’t charge where they were out and doing business. You will always have some travelers or those who need to top off during a day of making sales calls and such, but I can’t see that we would need anywhere near the number of gas stations we have now – after all, the current infrastructure has to serve everyone and not just those who don’t get their gas at home or at work. Maybe Shell figures that by going first it plans to be one who is not on the losing end of a big market disruption/shakeout.
One of the most common things the EV-naysayers come up with is “what about the huge/vast numbers of people that A) Live in condos without chargers at every spot or B) Live in a house that doesn’t have a garage with power to it or those that have to street park every night”. I think this at least helps to solve that problem. The other businesses that have a couple of charging stations have just that – a couple of charging stations, often run by third parties.
It would seem that gas stations are a declining market now. There are no more being added to areas with mature infrastructure and populations. The EV-charge station would seem to be what may be needed more going forward, if perhaps not in the quantities that gas stations exist now due to the at-home charging opportunities for a good number but not all owners or potential owners.
I wouldn’t use an unattended gasoline filling station anymore than I would use an unattended car wash. So I wouldn’t use an unattended charging station. My mom wouldn’t use it. My wife wouldn’t use it. I wouldn’t want my kids using it. We wouldn’t use it in the middle of the night. We wouldn’t use it in an unfamiliar part of town. I’m not sold on the infrastructure needed to keep my vehicle running. I would use a charging station at a grocery store or at a safe parking area I frequent that has someone around to address any problems.
When California fixes its electric grid so that there are no more brownouts, or blackouts, or forest fires, or homeless encampments near the expressways or new fossil-fuel burning power plants to power electric vehicles, or recycle the toxic batteries safely, I’ll consider getting an electric car. Not until then.
I was recently at a Royal Farms store getting gas for my Camry. I watched a copper colored Tesla drive in, back up to one of the Tesla EV spaces and plug it in. He grabbed a magazine out of the car and walked over to a strip mall & into a small restaurant, likely for a sit-down meal.
As I’m filling my tank, a guy who was hanging around the station walks over to the Tesla, unplugs the charging cable & hangs it back up before walking away. I felt bad for the car owner, as I was in a serious hurry and didn’t have time to go find him. I suspect he came back to find the hose not attached and little [if any] additional charge on his battery.
If the Tesla is locked the charging cable can not be removed. Further the cameras around the car will record footage of whoever is messing around or even within a given distance of it.
If someone did actually remove it the owner gets a notification on his phone immediately.
The tech is a little ahead of what most people unfamiliar with it expect or even imagine to be possible.
Jim,
Thanks for the additional info, I was fairly far away and didn’t see the guy go into the car, and I don’t know for sure if it was even locked, but I would think it was. Glad to hear the owner would have been notified! Does the lock on the cable end, if the driver’s door is opened?
I am a bit surprised that an unoccupied Tesla vehicle hooked up to a high voltage/amperage cable, can’t be disengaged in an emergency. Is it possible that to remove the cable there is an emergency removal process, and this guy knew the process? My girlfriend said perhaps the guy was playing a joke on the driver, and they are friends.
There is not an emergency way for for example YOU to remove it should you decide you’d want or need to if you see some issue with someone’s locked car while charging. Unlocking the car unlocks the charge port, yes. Then you click the release button on the wand and it pulls out and you hang it up, just like a gas pump. If there’s a genuine emergency, move away from the car. Same advice I’d give if your regular gas pump started spewing gallons of gasoline at a high rate all over your car and the rest of the gas station. Don’t try to be a hero. They pay others for that.
Note the cable is not a high amperage / high voltage loose wire like what might fall in your street if a hurricane knocks down your power pole. It’s a heavily shielded cable inside a heavily shielded connector. It plugs into a shielded receptacle in the car’s body. All told, it looks far more secure than the cable and plug my clothes dryer uses, and certainly better than swinging around a nozzle that can pump gallons of a highly flammable liquid around and onto hot vehicle parts should a user so desire. I’m not aware of anybody being electrocuted by using a car charger normally and while it obviously MAY have happened with something obviously amiss, the likelihood of it happening would seem to be infinitesmal. If the charger senses a fault, it shuts down and awaits repair, pretty common sense. My wife, a modern woman, is not scared of using an electric car charger. Neither is my 12y.o. who has done the process repeatedly (but I wouldn’t want him gassing up my truck!). My 70-something mother could and would do it as well should she get an EV. It’s 2021, yay!
One thing most drivers do (or should do) is glance at the port end of the nozzle before sticking it into their car, they can theoretically get damaged if people drop them on the floor enough times. A damaged connector can theoretically get hung up in the car somehow. It won’t charge and it sometimes then may not disconnect if it for some reason mechanically hooks up with your car due to the damage. Then, if it won’t disconnect, you’re waiting for a Tesla service guy to do a roadside repair (which they do). It’s exceedingly rare but can happen. Easy to guard against though by just looking at the device. I’ve never had an issue, nor has anyone I know with one. I’ve never dropped a gas nozzle on the floor while fueling, never seen anyone else do that either, so presumably few do it with EV nozzles as well. It just isn’t that different. Well, except for (in Tesla’s case) it knows your car and account when you stick the nozzle in, it charges you automatically, there is no inserting your CC and all that jazz or worrying about what ethanol blend might be best, no gas or diesel smell, etc.
The “pump” is an electrical device with a large electrical box (transformer, I don’t know what it’s called?) thing servicing the entire installation about 20-50 feet away usually, likely with some kind of disconnect on that. If you see some sort of fire or whatever it is that the other commenter is afraid of (never seen it myself), I’d suggest keeping your distance, you’re not qualified to deal with it. That said it does not seem to be a common occurrence. There is no current coming through the charge port until it is connected to the car, and even then the car and the pump do a “handshake” and you tell it to start charging. In other words, you or anyone else could take the nozzle, stick it in your mouth and besides looking like a fool, no other damage would be done. Never mind what other people seem to think, if you can operate a hair dryer or a toaster you can operate this. It’s safer to use than either of those items.
Next time you are near a Tesla Supercharger installation, wander up and ask someone to show it to you. There are often people wandering up curious about the whole thing and most owners are more than happy to talk cars and how the process works. You’ll be surprised at how simple and obvious it all is.
This link: https://youtu.be/GcoVp1mSp6c is a 9-second video showing how to insert the device. You hold it in your hand, get close to the car, push the button, the flap on the car opens and you insert the nozzle. This was in our garage with the home charger, it’s the same though in the public Superchargers. In our case it’s programmed to start charging once the cheaper Time-Of-Use electric rate is in effect, or we can override it and tell it to start whenever. When it’s done (or you’re done) and the car is unlocked, you just push the little button on the wand/nozzle and it uncouples.
Thanks Jim, I will certainly do that! I have an EE background, so you betcha I’m interested.
JP, I’m sorry I commented…
Haha – me too. I think we agree that there will be a market for charging station, but not as large a market (or as many locations) as gas stations have now. As you note, that market has declined a lot over the last 50 years because most cars now do so much better than 15 mpg.
Really, I see the big growth in charging stations at destination retailers or at workplaces who figure to either 1) provide a customer/employee benefit, perhaps with an account code or 2) see a new revenue stream from charging stations that operate with card swipes, Apple Pay, or such. Until electrics can charge in under 10 minutes, a place you go only to charge will never be as convenient as a place you are going to already and who can accommodate a charge while you are there.
Michigan just announced they are going to develop wireless EV charging on the road. Given the harsh Winters here I’m not sure how it will work out. https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2021/09/21/whitmer-michigan-wireless-electric-vehicle-charging-road/5800094001/
The last time I was in Michigan they seemed to have enough trouble just keeping the tarmac on the road. 🙂 The charging issues in general are way overblown, mainly by people who have A) never tried it and B) are not interested in learning about it. Whatever real issues remain will get solved sooner or later and likely at far lower cost than trying to make it work in the roads themselves. Note that Ford and GM, Michigan’s two largest automakers, seem to show zero interest in actually developing charging infrastructure for their own customers, they want it provided by the government. Or are willing to have the industry leader provide it to them at presumably greater cost than it costs its own users.
Sure.
My local Shell station (Maryland, US), recently closed down for a few months, completely redid the station, and reopened. The gas pumps look much newer, the lighting is brighter, there is still no EV refueling. The main difference – the service bays are gone, replaced by big convenience store and grill.
Mark Hobbs: “…Not sure about the ‘Bathroom blue’ of this example. The Austrian assembled wagon are rare in the UK…”
They also are at least twelve years old, as the wagon body was discontinued. In the USA the Dodge Magnum disappeared after 2008, in Europe the wagon carried on in the 300 for a while. Should have marketed it as a “crossover,” Chrysler’s AWD!
The owner is no “shrinking violet” in the choice of repaint colour!
In the USA, some owners have grafted a new Charger front clip onto their Magnums. Allpar photo.
Some of those Chrysler wagons are here, Shell is a thing of the past though it got rebranded ‘Z’ . Recharging points are popping up all over the place obviously theres a plan to it somewhere EVs are multiplying rapidly.
It’s a future I have no interest in. Electric cars are a boondoggle and there is simply no good reason for the forced transition to them. I will never own one, guaranteed.
Because of how DaimlerChrysler (at the time) chose to market the LX platform outside of North America, that makes the 300 front end swap onto the Magnum a bolt on affair. The Dodge brand was only sold in North America, Chrysler was established everywhere else. Wagons are very popular in Europe, so the Magnum and 300 were designed with the same body lines through the doors (doors are interchangeable). The body lines from the fenders to the doors are the same. For other LX cars (Charger, newer 300, newer Charger), the only thing custom that needs to be done is blending the newer fenders with the Magnum fenders to match the body lines, and some additional wiring.
Ever since I bought my Magnum SRT8, doing a 300 front end swap was something that I always had in the back of my mind. After my wrap deteriorated to the point I had to remove it, I decided to finally do it and do the swap.
There was also a cost element: using the Chrysler 300 front end on the wagon body in Europe meant no need to design, engineer, tool, and produce another two sets of ECE headlamps, no need to do up another set of front fenders (with repeater holes), no need to do up another bumper with headlamp washer provisions, etc.
Exactly. It was cheaper to do it that way for sure. I just wish that the 300 wagon had also been sold stateside. Chrysler was pitching the 300 (the 300C especially) as a low cost E-class. Since the E had a wagon, I think the 300C could have had a wagon as well and been more profitable than just having the Magnum as the only wagon.
Yeah, eh? A 300 wagon reads as badass to me in ways and to degrees a Magnum doesn’t.
It sure does. For whatever reason my photo didn’t attach to my message. Hows this for badass?
That’s what I’m talking about. This one’s wearing an expensive suit and speaking quietly, and everyone best listen.