How Costco's electric vehicle charging experiment could be a game changer for American drivers
Costco partnered with a company founded by former SpaceX engineers to provide fast electric vehicle charging services to customers at one Florida location.
Source electrek article without USA todays right wing "charging is just too hard!" slant.
Costco customers famously don't live in detached housing where charging at home is trivial.
If Costco had DC fast charging (at an equivalent discounted rate to their gasoline sales), I'd be using Costco fast charging on many road trips. This would be especially nice because Costco stores are well distributed over USA and Canada to lots of place I like to go! In the time it would take me to walk from the parking lot to the Snack Bar for a cheap hotdog and soda, my car would likely be nicely topped off whether I'm paying in greenbacks or loonies.
I'm glad to see this, but there's a missing piece of information: How much per kWh will they charge?
Costco offers a discount on gasoline over other gas stations. I really hope they extend this philosophy to this Level 3 charging product. I've been trying very hard to only use non-Tesla Level 3 chargers when I have to fast charge on road trips. I know for a fact I'm paying quite a bit more per kWh than using Tesla chargers. Even with the higher cost of alternatives, I still try to avoid Tesla chargers because that money goes to funding Musk.
Costco at San Luis Obispo had a 10-stall EA station. Same rate as everywhere else.
It wouldn’t surprise me if, in that case, EA is just renting the spaces from Costco. So EA would be paying for the electricity usage, setting the rate, etc.
If Costco rolls this out across their warehouses I’m sure they’d contract with the EV company in such a way to maximize their advantage. If Costco “owns” the source of the electricity used by the chargers then they could set the rate, and they may very well decide it’s in their interest to just break even or even lose a little money on charging if it brings in more shoppers.
After depending on their gas stations for years, I trust them to pull this off.
I welcome getting more charging options into the wild... hopefully this will provide some (if only minimal for now) progress in transitioning from fossil to EV for the larger communities.
I can't afford an EV yet, but the more adoption happens, the sooner I can get one.
The thing about having L3 charging outside a Costco is you can either get shopping done or grab a cheap hot dog or a slice of pizza while waiting.
Win, win. Amazed they haven't done it sooner.
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I guess I'd only add, please stop putting stupid walls or poles in front of charging stations so those of us towing can pull through and charge.
Some of us cannot safely disconnect the trailer and park it because there are live animals inside
Finding those places when traveling are a dime a dozen.
thats quite a bit of juice to accidentally bump into tho… seems like the safety precautions might be important
i don’t have an electric vehicle yet, but i do have aspirations…