These Are The Charging Stations I Want! Visiting The Circle K DC Fast Charge Test Location

hello and welcome to another out of spec reviews video you join me here in the Charlotte North Carolina area we're actually in Rock Hill South Carolina at a Circle K charging station now that's kind of cool because you and I have visited Circle K charging stations in Europe many times we've been all around Norway and the ID buzz and Tesla Model 3 Etc charging at awesome charging spots at Circle K and now I'm at one in America there's not a sponsored video I just think this is a really cool example to show what a potential future of charging situation could look like Through The Eyes of maybe a convenience store operator so what I'm going to do is demonstrate how their Chargers work how to actually activate them because they seem to really get it the power levels are very reasonable and only increasing and then I want to take you on a full tour of this site this is actually Circle K sort of test location their head office is not far from here in Charlotte North Carolina and so whenever they get new units out this is is where they're going to be testing them making sure they work before they're deployed out to the rest of the country so if you live in the Charlotte area it might be worth swinging by every week or two just to see if there's ever new hardware here for you to try out because they're going to have the latest and greatest stuff so I'll walk you through what's installed how it's installed how I'm kind of taking a look at the site to see that it's future proof and I even want to go inside their store here because they have some pretty cool Tech to actually purchase things again not sponsored I'm just super pumped to see some charging at spots that actually are great for the EV driver you join us here in Rock Hill South Carolina for those of you who know I lived in North Carolina for years great to be back we're actually on a road trip in Anna's new Porsche ticon and we are heading to Atlanta but I'm here borrowing my friend Brandon's rivien and um let me show you how easy it is to get to a Circle K charging station and just get charging that's always the most important metric is to say you know can you get in get charging and get out so let's do just that I'm going to open up the charge port on the rivien of course it's got the capacitive touch open the charging port and I'm going to take let me demonstrate this because this is literally what every charging experience needs to be I'm going to take this cable I'm going to get into the technical aspects of the charger manufacturer the cable and everything we're plugged in I'm going to confirm the price here on the screen which says I'm going to be charged 44 cents per kilowatt hour which makes sense again that's you need to charge a little bit more than government forced charging companies to actually make money out there in my opinion I'm then going to tap my Apple card boom right there on the terminal and it's going to say verifying present your card let's see authenticating it says approved somehow it says thank you charging authorization successful contactors going and we're preparing to charge I won't get super nerdy initially but that is literally it the truck's just about to kick on charging so the ability to roll up to any station plug in your vehicle Apple pay which is just so nice and get juicing like those who drive electric cars that aren't Tesla's don't realize how nice this is how much of a breath of fresh air this really is and here we go you'll take a look the truck's at 50 some 57 percent give it a second for the screen to refresh we're at zero kilowatts it's going to jump right up in just a second and 69 kilowatts and should be climbing from there we've already put in 100 watt hours so love to see that this by the way is the new ABB software that tells you charging speed so I'm pretty excited about that um that's the first experience you need to have when you get to a charging station we're doing 148 kilowatts right now let me talk a little bit about why I love convenience store charging so much in Norway in Europe in general when you go to charge your electric vehicle there's usually a coffee shop there's something to do there you can get some hot dogs or whatever and we've been to countless stations over there that all I really want to do is get the car started to charge and get some food here in the U.S it's not always that easy we're typically in the back of Walmart parking lots we're in random Urban environments you know sort of off highways and um it's just not really designed for the road traveler fueling stations are designed for the road traveler because they're already servicing Vehicles who are here for just a couple minutes they need to run into a store grab something quick a snack Doritos Red Bull whatever it is and get back on their back get back on the road with electric vehicle charging times decreasing I'm trying to think like the ticon average charging time I spend in a charging stations 10 minutes that's like get the car plugged in film or rate your charge get our snacks and the cars done so it's really perfect for the future of driving is to have a quick experience so that's why I'm so excited about Circle K building out a network across the entire country more or less of DC fast charging stations so let's talk about what are the ones out there doing this right now of course Circle K is known to have a bunch of chargers in Europe already they're one of the largest actually you'll see superchargers there even in the US we've seen some Duke Energy Chargers we've seen superchargers at Circle K in the US as well they have some other charging providers as partners but they're also owning and operating their own sites so that's great to see 7-Eleven is another one uh there they have this big I guess ad marketing campaign where they're building a whole thing out I think there's a few sites right now we'll see what the future holds but they're only doing about 80 kilowatt Chargers 200 amp maximum so again the point of a convenience store is to get in and out I'd really love to see some higher power chargers come from 7-Eleven and I'm sure there's more to come but I I much prefer a site like this where we're over here in a populated place with a nice brand new convenience store rather than some utility owned charging sites that I've been to that are in the back of a dirt parking lot looking at you XLR energy and like you know I get that you own the power and you can put Chargers wherever but this is where people want to charge so that's my rant about these types of sites right off of Highways um are really amazing I was actually driving down here from uh Pennsylvania this morning and we stopped at a Circle K just to use the restroom and grab a slice of pizza and Fancy Gap and uh called one of my friends who works at Circle K he's like oh yeah Chargers are going there too so I'm like that seems to be the move they just get it which is great um so you know I think that covers why how much you know convenience stores are like the perfect match for EV charging let's talk about some of the benefits Circle K has that at least I know about over other people in the industry more or less well first of all Circle K owns and operates most of their sites so unlike many convenience stores or fueling chains everything you see here is owned by Circle K they own the store they own the fueling station and they own their own Chargers and stuff with a big key thing for this for charging is we're starting to see especially with evgo and some other charging providers site host agreements end typically there's a lease on the land or a lease on the area where the charger is put and at the end of that lease the Charger's got to come out it's got a you know it's got to leave well we're starting to run up on those five year or 10-year agreements and some of them aren't being renewed for example I was just in New Jersey at a highway rest stop actually a great place for charging and there were two old evgo 50 kilowatt stations that are being completely dismantled ripped out those could be potentially Chargers that drivers had relied on up until now and they're going to get there and say oh they're out of the ground the nice thing with Circle K owning their spots faster install times they don't have to go through find all these things so they can really build out a network quickly they can put the Chargers in and guess what they don't really have to lease them so they can stay there for as long as people are using them which is great so it really adds so much more flexibility and honestly if EV drivers use the chargers there's no reason for them to come out um what else should I say about these before getting into the hardware the site selections just so you know are done by EV drivers at Circle K so the whole layout the power selection these aren't people in the industry that don't drive electric or really get what EV drivers want so the spacing for the uh for the sights the actual power levels and units selected they're all tailored for that particular spot which I cannot say for most of the charging providers out there most charging providers are run by people who don't drive electric cars and it shows um I don't know let me take you on the hardware side because that's what I geek out about so here you'll see just the whole track you have your your grid connection a 500 KVA uh you know so roughly 500 kilowatts assuming a near perfect power factor you then have some power electronic switch gear in here this is from Lincoln Electric products they make an EV specific uh switch gear which is super cool you'll see rivian and Tesla using this Circle K of course using them high quality stuff really Compact and Built For This purpose they have a couple different versions um but yeah I love you know you're on a serious site when you start seeing these switch gear units here and then the units this is the Circle K test site so you're going to see a bunch of different units you can try them out they use them for i o testing making sure they work out in the public under stress test scenarios this is an ABB Terra 184 it's specifically the high output version so it's a basically a 300 amp cable that boosts a 400 amps and um so that's why the rivian can actually charge pretty quickly the taikon being higher voltage actually only needed 250 to 300 amps somewhere around there to max out the charger at 180 kilowatts what's interesting is I've seen 711 install this exact charger at many places and thankfully their branding is correct but they actually only do about 80 to 90 kilowatts each and that's because they're choking them with short or about short cables but thinner cables cables that can't handle more than 200 amps it's really important to size the cables to the power you want to get all 711 would really have to do is put on some juicier cables and they could offer more than double or just about double the charging performance that they're offering currently now if another vehicle plugs in here they can share the power dynamically with the brand new ABB software I believe at the moment right now it just splits the power four splits 90 and 90 kilowatts each but abb's got to do a little bit of work on the software side to make sure everything Blends smoothly that's just my my experience of using the Chargers for example when I went to that Excel Energy site in Colorado the one that I called a spooky experience they had this exact charger branded at 180 kilowatts you know roll up I rolled up expecting to get again 400 amps from my rivian to get pretty good charging speeds Unfortunately they had two 200 amp CCS cables limiting me to about 75 kilowatts but they branded it 180 at least 711 Brands them 90 or 80 kilowatt Chargers here this is the proper way to do it 180 kilowatt charging with one car and it will share the power with two I want to show you another charger over here one that we've never actually featured on the channel before this is a Power Electronics charger we know these guys over here I believe they're based in Spain if I remember correctly and this particular one's a 120 kilowatt charger you know it's really important to size the type of chargers to the installation location now my understanding is Circle K is going to be getting into the 360 kilowatt Charger game going all out big boy stuff perhaps from ABB the actually the ABB Factory is not far from here at all so I'm really looking forward to seeing some Terra 360s installed in the U.S just a rumor but I'm hoping it comes through here pretty soon but these Power Electronics uh units I'm actually really interested to test out I'm going to try these before I leave because I've never charged them one and I'd like to give it a go um looks like maybe 300 amp cables on this particular one what do you think 300 there's a secret person in the background 200 amp nominal 300 amp boost cables on this particular one and um yeah I mean that'll just be kind of neat to charge at so to kind of wrap up the charging bit of this why I think you're going to expect to see a bunch of chargers at Circle K locations are because they own and operate a ton of sites across the country they have a whole team of EV drivers dedicated to putting in electric vehicle charging that's designed for the driver and they got cool stores that I want to be hanging out at so you know easy activation process the reliability of everything will have to be seen they're still relying on third-party charger manufacturers to you know provide their charging experience so time will tell how their back end monitoring and service process works I'm looking forward to covering that as I try them out and use them in different places I believe Colorado should be getting a site or two here pretty soon and uh you know I'll be there charging all the time of course testing it out making rate your charge updates but let's run inside really quick because I want to show you this like um I don't even know how to describe it this AI that you basically you don't have to talk to a person you just show it what you're buying and it knows how much it costs it's not like a scanner it just recognizes what you're scanning so let's let's go look at this because it's kind of cool so this is called a mash skin I've never seen this before and apparently this one's named as Princess and all I need to do is place my items on the base below make sure they're separated and it's scanning right now and look at that it knew the difference I used two different water bottles a path water and a Smart Water it knew the sizes and everything and so there we go I'm just going to tap my card just like I did to pay for charging hold near reader boom authorizing thank you take your items that's all you need that's pretty amazing so not only can you just plug in your car tap to pay you don't even have to talk to anyone scan what you want and then tap your phone coolest thing ever so uh love to see it here at Circle K this is pretty sweet let's go outside wrap up with final thoughts well you join me back outside now where I've moved the rivian over to this particular charger by the way super cool little AI thing in there to uh know what you're purchasing again two different water bottles that knew instantly I guess I can use my own eyes to see it so maybe I shouldn't be so blown away but I thought that was a really neat little thing all right so this is the Power Electronics nb120 to the Power Electronics guys I spent some time with them at CES by the way they manufacture this hardware and they were super cool all of them out of spec viewers so shout out to them I'm using your charger for the first time and rather than activating it with a tap to pay like we did on the other charger I want to show you the other way ABB allows ABB Circle K allows you to pay for charging so let me back out of this I'm in the circle K Us app which if for those long time EV drivers will notice it's powered by drives looks very similar to the Og evgo app from years ago so we're all familiar with this app as old school EV drivers what I'm going to do is it knows my location here and knows this is the nearest charger I'm going to select this one Circle K Rock Hill I'm going to select the 120 kilowatt one again you don't have to do this I'm just going to mention this we're going to select B which is the one we're going to charge on you'll actually notice that there's an A and A B right over here so what I'm going to do is swipe on this to activate the charger there's actually a list here it says start charging then connect to the car even though sometimes the app shows it the other way around I don't know certain charging companies like you to authorize in different ways this is a Power Electronics cable and handle I've never used this connector before so pretty neat looking connector I kind of like it's a little bit cheap plasticky feeling but let's get it into the truck so we are in and connected what we're doing is it's already establishing connection beautiful display right here I can see the Power Electronics logo up here is flashing I heard contactors go and we should be charging here in just a few seconds so we'll give it a second to go it says charge duration 20 seconds right here there we go we are charging and we're ramping up 12 kilowatts and ramping very quickly we're at 81 on the rivian over 60 kilowatts now well 58.9 72.8 pretty much 100 kilowatts 111 almost maxing out the charger love to see it and um there you go just as easy as that so two different activation methods either with a tap to pay or you could just use a normal credit card by the way those NYX terminals are usually pretty annoying so I'm curious to see how circlek will Implement them just being able to tap with Apple pay is great and um yeah and then this here with their app super easy so download the Circle K app if you have an EV and you live near one of these it sounds like the rollout's just going to be astronomical with Circle K charging I'm really looking forward to seeing you know 360 kilowatt 500 600 amp Chargers come here again the guys at Circle K that I know are EV enthusiasts and they're putting the biggest baddest Chargers you can buy on the market so I'm really excited to watch this roll out it's just going to be insane so there you go thanks so much for watching another out of spec reviews video I'm leaving you now from Rock Hill South Carolina our road trip continues but you know me I'm always on the hunt to find cool new charging stations and I just can't believe I'm charging at a Circle K in America huge fan you know how excited I always am to charge at Circle K in Europe and get some hot dogs Bjorn style of course he started the trend we're continuing it here in America and there you have it Circle K and charging two things that go really well together thanks for watching see you in another one soon bye-bye

Channel: Out of Spec Reviews

Views: 98,588

Keywords: Car, Review, Acceleration, Braking, POV, Handling, Test, VS, Comparison, Interior, Exterior, Supercar, Hypercar, Sedan, SUV, CUV, TFL, Redline Reviews, Motor1, sports car

Id: JUeddMe191o

Length: 18min 11sec (1091 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 25 2023