Old Country Store to Try New Vehicle Technology

WPLN News ^ | November 30th, 2010 | Blake Farmer

[GizmosAndGadgets]

So what we are saying is that a charging station at Cracker Barrel is eye candy for the envirowhacko’s, since you wouldn’t get a nickels worth of extra ride out of the electric car for the 60 minutes you are there.

Yep, basically, unless your EV is capable of the DC-voltage high-speed charge. From one of the articles I linked: the DC station is just dumping energy very quickly into the battery and kind of bypasses the on-board charger. You could get a Nissan LEAF battery from 0-80% full in about 25 minutes at a DC fast charging station. The Volt and Coda don't have DC fast charging capability.

So, not totally useless, though that still only gets you another 70-100 miles down the road. I can easily spend an hour at Cracker Barrel, so DC charging times are probably reasonable, but not if you have to stop every hour to refill on your way to Grandma's house three states away ;-) Still, gas/electric hybrid seems like the only way to go until an electric-only EV can drive at least 300 miles on a charge, and even they better be able to refill quickly. Even half an hour is an extremely long time compared to the time it takes to refill the gas tank on a normal car.

Side note: the EPA estimates the cost to operate the Volt at $601/yr on all-electric and $1302 on all-gasoline at 15,000 miles per year. They describe the range as 379 miles: 35 on battery-only and another 344 on gasoline, with an average of 60MPG.