Quick Charge Curbside EV Stations
Well, these things are pretty damn rad. These electric fast chargers, they sit on the curb and they can recharge your EV at incredibly fast charges, because in fact, they’re as fast as a Tesla Supercharger.
They can give you around 200 miles of range in only 13 minutes, depending on the size of your battery pack.
These Google-backed new curbside DC fast charges. Well, they’re really small.
Urban Charging Infrastructure
You hardly even notice it, but they’re 30 times faster than AC charges, which we We’ve got AC charges like this in streets. They’ve got them in Australia now.
They’ve got in Germany, in other countries in Europe, they’ve actually got curbside charges that are in the gutter.
This new technology is popping up everywhere. But this is the first that I’ve seen that’s a DC fire structure.
The other ones have been AC. Now, the big reason why we haven’t seen these being DC chargers yet is because DC chargers are about 200 times more expensive to build than an AC charger.
Requires a lot more work, a lot of infrastructure. But the AC charging versions of these, we’re seeing them in streets now in a lot of places around the world.
The Advent of Fast Curbside DC Chargers
I think they’re going to be pretty much ubiquitous within the next decade. However, there’s some locations where you want faster charging.
There’s going to be some places where AC charges are just not going to be adequate. Ev infrastructure startup Gravity has revealed a 200 kilowatt curbside DC fast charger.
This 18 by 9 by 27 inch DC charger can be mounted to street utility pole. So just a street pulse.
And it uses the same advanced technology as Gravity’s record-setting indoor charging system.
Now, if you’re wondering what Gravity’s record-setting chargers are, they charge at 500 kilowatt charging speed.
So Gravity released in October of 2023. Electric car charges in the United States, by the way, they can charge at 500 kilowatt charging speeds.
In 10 years time, I think a lot of EV is going to be charging at 500 kilowatt charging speeds. It’s going to be amazing.
There’ll be no one buying internal combustion in 10 years. You’d have to be a maniac. Gravity says it’s fast curbside EV charges will give you 200 miles of range in 13 minutes.
And they’re bi-directional. So you can send energy from your vehicle back into the grid and get paid for it as well.
Gravity Vision for EV Charging Accessibility
Now, incredibly, these charges can obviously be deployed on metered curbs in busy city areas where people are already parking.
So you might find in cities, people want these charges where they’re already parking. They might be parking there for half an hour or an hour in expensive places to park or places where maybe there’s a reason you might need DC fast charges.
And these speeds are going to mean that people are going to say, You know what? It’s almost like topping up your car with gasoline.
So you might go into maybe a shop, a restaurant, or go for someone for dinner. You come back out and your car is fully charged.
Moshe Cohen, the founder and CEO of Gravity, said this, An urban parking spot is valuable real estate.
If cities in store slow, outdated charges at the curb, they’re wasting people’s time and blocking the ability to fully utilize the latent potential in parked EV batteries.
Now, I don’t actually agree with him at all because there’s a place for both types. We can install a lot more AC charges because they’re way, way, way cheaper. You don’t really need DC charges for most locations.
Practicality of Metered Curbside Charging
You only need them from maybe 2 or 3% of locations, I think, because realistically, most people are going to be leaving their car on their curbside in front of their house, on their street overnight.
So You really would need a DC fast charger for your home. Most people will need AC. But this just gives us another option.
This gives us the ability to have these really fast charges in all kinds of possible locations, really everywhere around the world.
Just imagine the future We’ll think about gas stations, I think, petrol stations, service stations.
We’ll think back and think, remember when we used to have those old stinky machines, burning fossil fuels. In my opinion, it’s going to be absolutely incredible.