7-11 is opening 500 EV charging stations by the end of 2022

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/7-11-charging-station-ev-500-2022/

by evo_9 • 5 years ago

161 91 5 years ago

Most 7-11s near where I live have very limited parking. And it's not a place where you spend much time shopping - you're usually in and out in 5 minutes or less. Having cars charging there for an hour or more will eat up that limited parking space. It's good to have more charging stations, but it would seem like it would make more sense to have them in front of stores where people tend to shop for a long time - just thinking out loud: maybe this could be a way to revive shopping malls? Offer cut rate charging stations, people walk around in the mall waiting for their car to charge and maybe end up buying stuff.

abfan11273• 5 years ago

it seems restaurants, movie theaters, grocery stores, are the types of experiences where an EV charger is appropriate. This is like offering an EV charger in a drive thru like McDonalds.

firloop• 5 years ago

Did a road trip in Europe in December 2020 and it turned out that McDonalds very reliably had EV charging. What you're saying is not as crazy as it sounds!

Retric• 5 years ago

20-30minutes of fast charging at McDonalds is perfectly reasonable for those who go inside. The important bit is having 100+kw chargers.

rsj_hn• 5 years ago

I assume 7-11 management is aware of things like parking constraints, and that could be why this is only being rolled out to 250 stores in North America (out of 10,000). I'm sure that there are more than enough 7-11s that do have good parking, are in the right areas where charging stations would turn a profit, etc. If even 1 out of 5 7-11s met those conditions, they can later increase that to 5,000 EV stations in 2500 stores. Remember, there's over 100K gas stations and if we count pumps, you're in the ballpark of a million, so there is lots of room for companies to enter the charging market before it gets too crowded. Might as well set up a beachhead now.

jmccaf• 5 years ago

I love more charging stations, but I agree with this skepticism, 7-11 tend to be very quick stops ? If 7-11 builds chargers at my nearest location, I'll occupy them happily and walk home while charging. And perhaps I'll enter 7-11 on the drop-off or pick-up trip ?

I have a plug-in hybrid (Volt) and live in an apartment complex without chargers, and I use the abundant shopping mall chargers at Valley Fair mall in San Jose, CA as you describe. I live close enough to walk home 1 mile from the mall, so I'll drop car off, then go into mall to pickup a meal at the nice food court or browse around. Probably as 7-11 hopes: I'll readily spend $10-$15 on food, while charging $5.

My unique fit here is that Valley Fair is an urban mall: it's close to my apartment in healthy walking distance, and it has dense multi-level parking structures, so I'm not walking out and back through a vast mall parking lot.

Movie theaters in malls map well to charging stations because of the 2 hour duration you are inside, for when people go inside movie theaters again ($AMC?) Offices and workplace charging work well for me too (when not WFH)

bin_bash2• 5 years ago

These are DC fast chargers. You won't be walking home while it's charging.

newsclues• 5 years ago

Probably target interstate highway locations.

turtlebits2• 5 years ago

These are DC fast charging stations, you can get a decent charge in ~10/min on newer EVs.

_ea1k3• 5 years ago

Very few cars are stopping for an hour. The typical stop time is between 20 and 30 minutes.

jackson1442• 5 years ago

And with more cars supporting 350kW charging speed in the near future (Kia EV6, anyone?) that time is only going to decrease.

bin_bash2• 5 years ago

Most shopping malls (at least that I've seen) already have EV charging.

IMO it's kind of useless though. If I'm traveling I need a DC fast charger and if it is a DC fast charger, probably won't have much time to go in the mall before it's done (and have to move my car to open up the spot). If I'm near home I almost never need to charge outside.

7-11 is actually better since I won't be too far away from my car. Run in, grab a snack, chill for 5-10 minutes and be on my way. Only problem is they never have bathrooms.

m463• 5 years ago

They could enforce a time limit. Cars are also starting to charge to a usable percentage much faster. Tesla was talking about charging at 1000mph or ~ 83 miles range in 5 minutes of charging.

Also, at a 7-11 near a freeway exit, I would assume it's a different story than an urban 7-11.

femiagbabiaka• 5 years ago

There are quite a few combination 7-11 gas stations that I’ve seen on road trips. I’d guess those are the targets.

compsciphd• 5 years ago

it's DC fast charging. lets say you're in the store for 10 minutes. lets say its chargepoint's new 24kw charging. That means in 10 minutes, a user would get about 4kwh of energy. i'd estimate that's 10-20 miles depending one how one drives (15-20 if slow stop and go city driving, probably between 10-15 if speedy highway driving). But, if this is an around town driving and there are many places where 10-20 minutes here and there you can pick up miles like that, it all adds up.

with that said, malls are also a great place to have charging.

nashequilibrium• 5 years ago

The big question is, within the next 5yrs how much charge will you be able to get in 10 minutes.

whoisjuan2• 5 years ago

Why aren't all gas station in the US buying at least a couple of timed/metered EV chargers? They are cheap in Aliexpress. Between 400 USD and 1000 USD per charger. I would assume that a gas station already has the electrical setup required to hook a handful of them since they have other equipment with high electricity consumption.

With a couple thousand you can create a small EV charging operation. It baffles me when I see gas stations with a new car wash system that is probably expensive as fuck and not a single EV charging station in miles.

Is EV charging a regulated industry or something?

crooked-v• 5 years ago

Buying EV chargers from random sellers on AliExpress seems like a great way to get sued after somebody's car catches on fire.

whoisjuan2• 5 years ago

Hahaha true. Using that only as a proxy of EV charger cost.

kayfox• 5 years ago

Or have a pile of chargers no electrician will sign off on for permitting.

abfan11273• 5 years ago

there are probably electrical hookup limitations.

failwhaleshark5• 5 years ago

Electrical permits and metering (if it's not your property).

jagger272• 5 years ago

Most gas stations are on primary arterial roads. That's where high voltage transmission lines usually run, no?

failwhaleshark5• 5 years ago

You can buy your own and pop it on PlugShare.

There are zillions of free-as-in-free-beer charging locations.

Edit: https://www.plugshare.com/

generalizations• 5 years ago

There seem to be two categories of gas stations; the ones where you fill up and go, with a minor convenience store attached, and the larger ones where they seem to want you hanging around.

With the first category, I imagine they just don't want people hanging around. The dollars per car per hour ratio drops off a cliff when you have EVs just sitting there for 15-40 minutes clogging up the limited space.

kevin_thibedeau• 5 years ago

There's also gas stations with just pumps, maybe a mechanics shop, and no food or bathrooms. Nobody is going to hang out there for a charge.

Charging stations are best placed where there is something to do. That's why every casino has them.

238475235243• 5 years ago

There are more chargers than (most people) you think.

Having more is a good thing, but gas stations adding them wont move the needle any time soon.

A friend was telling me recently that there aren't many chargers. He lives in Boulder, of all places. There are a million public chargers around Boulder, but they're relatively invisible compared to a gas station, especially if you aren't actively looking for them. When I showed him the plugshare map he couldn't believe it, he thought this stuff was a decade away.

In my experience owning five EVs, public charging isn't really an issue, especially for Tesla and J-1772. If anything, I worry for chargepoint et. al. in the face of so many free chargers in the short term.

That said, there are some weird spots between superchargers if you have a tesla. And if you rely on CCS with the coming onslaught of F-150 lightnings... I wish you good luck and to reconsider. Slow charging speed and crappily maintained CCS / CHaDeMo are really going to suck the life out of you on road trips compared to superchargers. But if you can get by with J1772 then life is good.

azinman2• 5 years ago

The vast majority of those EV chargers won't be fast chargers. They're also often in parking garages where you have to pay per hour, on private (corporate) land meant for office workers, attached to hotels, etc.

So the gas station model, where you want a fast charger and for it to be ubiquitous, is anything but. San Francisco has 4 non-Tesla stations with >=75 kWh, for example. And then of course there's the Tesla vs non-Tesla divide.

magicalhippo• 5 years ago

Here in Norway the main limitation seems to be cost, not for the chargers but for the connection to the grid.

Installation might require increasing the local transformer station, which whoever wants the capacity has to share the cost for. This can be very expensive, usually hundreds of thousands USD from what I understand.

Also the running costs can be significant, as there's a separate grid charge based on the peak kW used per month. This can add up to a lot if multiple chargers are used simultaneously.

1123581321• 5 years ago

Anything involving modifying parking stalls or electricity quickly becomes expensive, and these require both. Signage, striping, curb and walkway alterations, burying cable and permits quickly add up. The installation may also require security considerations since the charger is worth something.

But you are completely right; stations that become conspicuous charging destinations are going to do a lot of convenience store business. It'd be smart of well located towns to work on making it easier to add charging infrastructure so they can continue to be popular stops.

linsomniac2• 5 years ago

The $1K chargers that wouldn't stress an existing electrical panel aren't worth it for EV users unless they're in a dire emergency. It takes 6 hours for a full charge on one of these. Great for a hotel, but not for a gas station.

The ones that charge a car in 30-60 minutes generally have their own dedicated transformer, the size of a fridge. Two cars can pretty easily use 300KW with older tech, 600KW+ with newer stuff. If my math is right, that's 2,500 amps on traditional 240V service. My house has 100A service for comparison.

judge2020• 5 years ago

For reference, back in 2013 when there were only the 150kW superchargers, the costs ranged from $100k to $175k for the charging stalls and transformers[0]. In 2015 it was said by Tesla's investor relations manager that it cost about $270k per station (presumably gen 2 250kw chargers)[1].

I'm not sure how Electrify America installation works, but for Tesla they front all of these costs so all it would take to get them installed at stations is the landowner allowing it to be placed on their land (likely with some sort of revenue share agreement, if they don't think they'll get enough money from the increased foot traffic).

0: https://techcrunch.com/2013/07/26/inside-teslas-supercharger...

1: https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/supercharge....

johngalt• 5 years ago

It's a different scenario. Charging vs fueling has different constraints, and a facility designed for one is not necessarily designed for the other.

Probably more effective for some restaurant franchise to add EV charging as part of their branded setup. E.g. Every IHOP in the country has EV charging.

parineum3• 5 years ago

I went on a road trip recently and charged near a Denny's. I hadn't been to a Denny's in forever (for good reason, I was reminded) but I did this time. A quick meal is great timing for a charge.

thrower123• 5 years ago

Maybe it'll bring about a resurgence of drive-in restaurants.

At the least, Sonic ought to go in on chargers

clouddrover7• 5 years ago

Putting in DC fast chargers can mean a lot of new infrastructure and red tape:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyv7my/building-an-electric-...

Battery integrated chargers can help with the infrastructure side:

- VW: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/vw-group-components-e-on-...

- Freewire: https://freewiretech.com/products/dc-boost-charger/

- Jolt Energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v33Dy3AKf6g

elihu2• 5 years ago

Most gas stations don't have a lot of extra space. If a car sits there for an hour, they need twelve times the parking area in order to serve an equal number of gas cars, assuming the latter can refuel in five minutes.

Some gas stations may have extra room and would be able to offer up some parking spots for charging, but I'd assume that for most of them it doesn't make sense.

Another consideration is that throughput is a lot higher with DC fast chargers, and those are a lot more expensive than the cheap L2 AC chargers. And they might require some significant electrical infrastructure upgrades.

throwaway0a5e• 5 years ago

Because running a gas station is really about running a convenience store with an item sold near cost to reel people in (fuel).

It's a numbers game and it's all about throughput. You might convert x% of fuel buyers into people who buy a coffee or lotto ticket any one day. EV chargers are very low throughput so they're not very attractive. There's other better ways to improve that money widening the customer pipe or improving conversion ratio.

jagger272• 5 years ago

That doesn't make much sense to me. It's well known that fast chargers cost a lot more than charging at home on a watt-to-watt basis. Selling electricity is clearly more profitable than selling gasoline.

It's not cheap to build pumps and underground storage tanks for gas stations, so it's not as if gas station owners would be stunned by upfront costs. Lots of stations already have plenty normal parking spots that generate zero income on their own.

If anything, a longer stop would incentivize more convenience store shopping. Which would make them want to have better stock and selection, which in turn might attract nearby foot traffic. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

_ea1k3• 5 years ago

50KW chargers are typically closer to $80k for an install than $1k.

dzhiurgis• 5 years ago

If you run gas station you'd start thinking about 200-350kw setups + battery storage. That's a lot of power costing a lot of money.

I dunno how many years these chargers can last, but 50kw chargers will be obsolete in 5-10 years time.

failwhaleshark5• 5 years ago

Most people who own EVs aren't going to feel safe enough to sit for two hours recharging their expensive cars next to a convenience store with the standard hangout figures around said stores. These are what personal safety people call "transitional spaces" so it's absolutely the worst place to put oneself for an extended period of time.

ThalesX• 5 years ago

Not all electric cars are 80k Tesla units.

In Europe, they recently launched a ShitEV called Dacia Spring. You can buy it in Germany for around $14000 [0]. The world has enough room, and will have enough EVs in time, for regular charging stations for regular people, or even "standard hangout figures" ... we won't all be driving hype.

[0] https://www.carscoops.com/2021/03/dacia-spring-ev-prices/

synaesthesisx• 5 years ago

Teslas also start at about half that (closer to $40K), and are effectively the new Toyota Prius in terms of popularity (in California, at least). I don't consider them luxury vehicles by any means, especially after sitting in a Lucid Air, Mercedes EQS or nicer EVs.

failwhaleshark5• 5 years ago

But hype is faster, stronger, just-around-the-corner, and more magical like a certain loop.

Say you have to drive 1000 mi / 1600 km nonstop or have a low battery. So how are EVs going to work practically for everyone who isn't rich without standard swappable battery packs like the original Model S had?

There "isn't enough room" in ATX; homelessness is being recriminalized. Also, there "isn't enough room" in Denmark for out-of-EU asylum waiting camps because no one wants to host them.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/austin-s-homeless-camping-...

https://www.kctv5.com/denmark-passes-law-to-move-asylum-cent...

janvidar4• 5 years ago

If the charging station can deliver the juice, like at least 150KW, then a 10 minute stop will give you another few hundred kilometers if your car can handle that.

At that point it becomes a nice spot to stretch your legs and grab something quick to bite before you're back on the road again.

I never charge at anything less than 75KW if I am driving long distance. I have 22KW at home for slow charging.

failwhaleshark5• 5 years ago

Teslas might as well be Ferraris for most the world. Aren't the bulk of present average EVs unable to charge at the rates Teslas or similar expensive EVs use?

Do you think 7-11 is going to install very fast charging? It's 7-11: where deathdogs rotate forever until someone who doesn't like living buys one.

linsomniac2• 5 years ago

Back in the '90s I filled my car up with gas at the local 7-11. My car sputtered across the parking lot and then died and wouldn't restart as I was pulling out onto the street. I drained the gas and put fresh in from another place and it started right up.

Called the regional HQ, told the guy there the story, and he just hung up on me and wouldn't answer when I called back.

Since then I've been avoiding 7-11 because, as far as I can tell, it's run by a-holes. They've lost more business from me than they would have spent on just refunding my $30 gas purchase or whatever.

Makes me think twice about plugging a $50-$100k car in to their business though. :-)

abfan11273• 5 years ago

most 7/11s are franchised. While the brand should be interested in such pieces to help their brand, the reality is that sometimes bad batches show up, or local franchisees stretch their dollar a bit in unscrupulous ways.

turtlebits2• 5 years ago

IME, Chargepoint fast chargers are the most expensive I've seen. The ones near all charge a session fee of $3 to $8 plus 0.35$/kwh (which is almost 4x residential rates).

Sohcahtoa82• 5 years ago

At that rate, you'll spend as much per mile as gasoline.

edaemon• 5 years ago

DC fast charging can be almost as expensive per mile as gas, but charging at home or at a commercial L2 (non-fast) charger is much cheaper.

bsder2• 5 years ago

Chargepoint are shit. I can't wait for chargers to become ubiquitous enough to drive Chargepoint into bankruptcy.

xyst• 5 years ago

If 7-11 becomes anything like their counterparts in Japan, it might actually become a success in the upcoming age of EVs.

clouddrover7• 5 years ago

Here's how Circle K does it in Norway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TVohXHjLro

arduinomancer2• 5 years ago

I'm really curious what the future will look like for charging infrastructure if majority of people switch to electric.

Is the ideal long term goal to have a charger in basically every parking spot?

For example an apartment building where every single spot in the parkade has a charger.

clouddrover7• 5 years ago

Chargers in parking spaces makes sense for urban areas. Dedicated charging locations make sense for highway driving.

A couple of examples of dedicated charging locations:

- Circle K in Norway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TVohXHjLro

- Gridserve in the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoN4WCpuxHY

ink_13• 5 years ago

The power requirements to run, say, 100 chargers, potentially all at once, are potentially bananas. If there's going to be large-scale charging, there's also going to have to be some kind of load-orchestration system involved, too.

chrisbolt• 5 years ago

There already is, companies like EverCharge (https://evercharge.net/) deal with load orchestration. However even if every parking spot has a car that’s plugged in, most of them probably won’t be charging at any given time.

alexanderdmitri2• 5 years ago

With a battery swap out model, you could have spots where you pull in and swap a drained / semi-drained battery (or batteries) for a fully charged one. Maybe like the way it's done with propane tanks in some places, but more complicated.

Quality control, general standardization and ease of access would need to be solved, but if done right this could be automated by pulling up to a vending machine and maybe eventually (super futuristic) on the fly like the way they can do in-flight fueling for aircraft.

The initial overhead could be worth it to not sit around charging, but I could also see other interests winning out here (bored people spend money, standardization isn't necessarily win-win, enabling third party service is less profitable for the car makers, &c).

bsder2• 5 years ago

With a battery swap out model

No consumer is ever going to agree to this psychologically, so I wish people would stop pushing it.

No one is going to agree to swap the pristine battery in their new car with a reconditioned battery (at best) at a charging stop.

arduinomancer2• 5 years ago

I could see both swap/charge existing at the same time.

As in ideally you use swap but you can also charge if you're in a pinch.

But not for a long time, the swapping infrastructure would likely be really expensive to build, so you'd need a lot of users to make it worth it.

elihu2• 5 years ago

I think the ideal end-game is that we have chargers in most residential parking spaces and plenty at workplaces and commercial property, plus we've either electrified sections of the interstate highway system (or the equivalent in non-US countries) so that cars can recharge without stopping or batteries are big enough and can charge fast enough that charge times on long trips don't matter.

The electrification of highways is something I'd love to see happen, but so far I don't think there's much interest or even consideration of that as a possibility. (There are a couple pilot projects in Sweden, one using overhead lines and another that uses slots cut into the road surface with high voltage rails underneath.) The payoff would be huge though in terms of reducing the cost and carbon emissions from long-haul trucking.

xbar• 5 years ago

Three words: Double Gulp Slurpee.

diogenescynic• 5 years ago

Doesn't seem like a fit for their clientele which is mostly homeless tweaks hanging out in their parking lot.

chemmail• 5 years ago

Wow five whole hundred?

If you really think about it, all the EV subsidies need to go the charging infrastructure. Tesla has already proven people want EVs. The real challenge is the charging for people without houses. Right now much of DC Fast charging falls on Electrify America's hands and they really do not care at all as they are just a punishment company for VWs diesel cheating scandal. In my and a lot of other experiences, up to 25% of public chargers are broken and can take months to repair. Only Tesla has decent organization to fix it in just a couple of days. People who buy EVs now are in for a rude awakening.

clouddrover7• 5 years ago

Wow five whole hundred?

The best way to think of it is five additional hundred. That's the advantage of using a common standard like CCS. Drivers of CCS cars can make use of all CCS chargers with no need for adapters.

7-Eleven's 250 new charging locations will be added to the existing 4,414 CCS locations in the US and Canada:

https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html

janvidar4• 5 years ago

In Europe, Teslas and Tesla chargers are CCS - but limited to Tesla only. I rarely see Teslas on non-tesla fast chargers.

dreamcompiler2• 5 years ago

It's Chargepoint, so it's useless to Tesla owners until Tesla decides to sell a CCS adapter in the USA.

clouddrover7• 5 years ago

It really is time for Tesla to switch to CCS in North America.

Tesla switched to CCS in Europe two years ago. The European Teslas are better cars purely because they have a plug you can use with more fast chargers with no need for an adapter.

dreamcompiler2• 5 years ago

Other than the aesthetics of the charger, I couldn't agree more. The CCS connector is a big ugly thing compared with the svelte Tesla connector, but you never see it unless you're charging.

dawnerd2• 5 years ago

Or at the very very least actually release a CCS adapter. People have been begging for a NA version of what they already have available. I wonder what the real holdup is.

peteretep• 5 years ago

Can we modify the title to specify this is USA 7-Eleven only? There are three countries with more 7-Elevens that the US in absolute terms, and 10 with more per-capita than the USA including Norway and Australia.

Animats• 5 years ago

How many years before people with gas cars have to check in advance to see which gas stations are in business, open, and have gas?

xarope• 5 years ago

This is reminiscent of the type of gas station I found in Paris. Just a store front, and a pump or two by the side of the road.

Not sure if this link will show:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jefferysview/6442802819

And given the industry is pushing for a fast-charge within 5-10 minutes, which would give another 100 miles to your car, I don't see why this wouldn't work?

whatever1• 5 years ago

Why not build facilities similar to old school burger drive-in places like Sonic [1]? While charging your car, get served food or whatever else you like.

Since we will be stuck in the car for longer time, it seems like a field ripe for disruption.

Don't forget that even today, gas stations do not make their profit from selling gas, but from the convenience store.

[1]https://th.bing.com/th/id/Rd6475860948f58c4523352a0cec38645?...

7-11 is opening 500 EV charging stations by the end of 2022

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