Why EV Charging Stations Suck (And How to Fix It)

electric vehicle charging stations do they have to suck I mean they're usually located in some obscure out of the way spot that's difficult to find or they're floating on the middle of some open parking lot at the mall like this one once you eventually get here it's all very underwhelming places like this lack any distinguishing characteristics it's just some you know futuristic looking kiosk sprouting from the ground next to a parking space to top it all off with public Chargers you're taking a gamble on whether or not the charger will work in the first place for now visiting a gas station is just more predictable experience while your average gas station is not exactly a destination or a pinnacle of design Excellence the form of the gas station and what goes with it has developed for decades well they're not all great there have been a few pretty good ones over the years either way it seems that electric vehicles are the future and charging our cars and spaces like this will be more and more a part of our everyday lives there are now more than 3 million EVS on the road and over 130 000 public Chargers across the United States and it's increasing at a rate of 60 percent per year so the question remains do these spots have to suck I don't think so and in fact the successful conversion of automobiles to electricity will to some degree depend on getting this part of the ownership experience right not only do charging stations need to be safe practical and efficient they need to be places that us humans want to be or at least tolerable for the length of time that it takes to charge a battery and wouldn't it be great if these spaces actually contributed to the built environment at large even beyond their just practical use so let's discuss what goes into EV charging stations and let's see what's possible for sad places like this to be well a little less sad first off there are three types of technology is used in EV charging stations level one level two and level three level two and three are probably the ones that we're talking about here level one is a charging using a 120 volt standard outlet and it might take a day to charge an electric vehicle level 2 uses a 240 volt outlet and can charge an electric vehicle in about four to eight hours level 3 though is known as DC fast charging it uses high voltage DC connection and can charge a car in 30 minutes or less so level threes are the kind of places that you might stop on a long road trip or while you're out to keep things Juiced up a little bit and they require a larger footprint and more complex infrastructure due to those higher power requirements but while their needs are more robust it's not quite as spatially intensive as say a gas station which requires large tanks underground to store the fuel and then pumps to distribute it SO gas station design is a bit more centralized by nature to keep things compact around these tanks the centralization means that you can create a single canopy to protect customers who are usually waiting outside next to their cars or for the attendance moving around them they also have quicker turnover meaning that they can serve more people while allowing cars to just pass through this is different than EV charging which tends to be more like a parking lot but while traditional gas stations look pretty standard to us today they've actually changed a lot over the years they too were once just utilitarian and machine focused Enterprises before it became obvious to us what other kinds of human considerations should be lumped with them there's a word that Architects use to describe a repeatable design solution that repeats this common set of elements around a shared purpose it's called a building type or typology a gas station is a building type you can identify it from its common elements the canopy the pumps the small accessory building and the large sign these are packaged together as a common solution to a set of known problems and type is a powerful concept for architecture artist said Ruth Shea did a beautiful study of gas station types through photography and painting which helped establish their role in the public imagination anyway when you have a known type Architects like to play with the elements that go into that type like what if the building and the canopy were the same thing or how might a canopy be constructed in a unique way EV charging doesn't really have a building type yet that has emerged and the distributed nature of its organization versus maybe the compactness of a traditional gas station means that it likely will yield the same level of constant elements as a gas station has almost every part of the EV experience is different for instance your GPS guides you to the station you're not just looking for a sign along the highway even paying isn't a cash transaction requiring an attendant it's usually handled in an app so pairing them with convenience stores isn't such a natural fit in these ways the EV station is a new problem to solve with unique opportunities but just because it doesn't require the same common and Collective design strategies doesn't mean that they can't contribute positively to the built environment an element that does carry over between both gas stations and with some EV charging locations is the shading canopy for instance a number of Tesla superchargers have a canopy these tend to be steel structures with bright white lighting it might also support some solar panels on their triangular shaped supports design though is pretty sterile and clinical and I'm assuming that's to go with the minimal futurist aesthetic of the brand since canopies have been part of gas stations all along there are tons of architectural experiments here from folded steel ones to elegant concrete curves which push the boundaries of structural design and the material properties to Dynamic shapes evoking the speed of the road that said I don't think that the promise of EV charging stations lies in making more aesthetically pleasing or even architecturally daring canopies or at least it doesn't lie primarily there there's an organization called electric autonomy which ran a competition for Architects to imagine what an EV station of the future might be like they received 100 entries from around the world many of the winners include a canopy that expresses different sensibilities though than the Tesla example with more texture variety materials warmer lighting and so on they also pair them with landscape designs and activities that contribute to the overall health and well-being of people and the environment one thing I noticed about the winners was that they provide a sense of place they're not made of branded sterile white metal or plastic panels but maybe materials like wood these canopies welcome people and the structure contributes to its surroundings Beyond just solving the problem of charging up a car in one design a cascading set of canopies becomes a place for people to climb and explore these designs integrate with the landscape elements that connect with the building with its surroundings many of these also create an interior Zone with leisure activities and places to interact with other people they may also connect with walking or hiking trails building parking landscape they're all considered together and brought into close proximity some of the more adventurous examples try to make some of the intangible aspects of electrification seem a little bit more tangible and legible for instance one calculated the area of solar panels that would be needed to have a direct relationship with the power that's generated and consumed they turn that into a large circular Trail while this example might not be what we want to see in the world exactly the proposal prompts us to think differently about the status quo and not all architectural speculations about a better relationship between EVs and buildings are focused along the highways some Architects like Louis ceremaki Lewis have imagined new kinds of buildings in a more urban environment that would integrate EVS throughout the building this would be made possible since they don't give off any admissions Park Tower envisions of drive up skyscraper intertwining a parking garage with a mixed-use sequence of programs there's a double helix of driving ramps and parking areas that intertwines with a common set of mixed programs like Hotel residential and office there's always a sandwich as faces of parking and then other activities they argue that the Suburban patterns are thus coupled with an urban building type and footprint the time-consuming Suburban commute is transformed into a seductive Urban Ascent complete with panoramic views speaking of unique locations rivian the EV Adventure vehicle company is questioning how their EV charging infrastructure might also be more carefully considered this begins with locations that deliver on The Adventurous lifestyle of the demographic that they're targeting they call it the rivian adventure Network the closest one to me is in Benton Harbor Michigan which is a nearby popular hiking and Beach location on the Eastern shores of Lake Michigan there's also channels on YouTube devoted to exploring the world's best TV charging stations seems like a number of them are in Europe though one of my favorites is out of spec reviews look this is not some wholehearted endorsement of EVS as the righteous path for a sustainable future nor am I trying to greenwash a process that isn't quite as environmentally friendly as it seems at the first glance those are all valid issues what I'm trying to argue for is an intentiveness to our transportation infrastructure single purpose infrastructure sucks even if it is efficient and it's the same kind of thinking that gave us awful places like highway underpasses or vast power plant wastelands modern solutions for these situations turn underpasses into Parks or museums and power plants into ski slopes single purpose in human infrastructure is a byproduct of the 19th century thinking and it isn't appropriate today I want to make sure that we've learned our lesson that infrastructure like EV charging stations are better when paired with simultaneous considerations around the spatial the social and environmental impacts of our surroundings while it seems like solely an engineering issue to solve design plays a crucial role in the overall success of integrating new things like this into the fabric of our lives and the built environment at large this video is sponsored by Trade coffee I just received my bag of sparrows coffee high five blend it was roasted in my home state of Michigan let me tell you it is delicious it's exactly the kind of thing that I like and I received it as part of my new subscription to trade coffee look I love coffee and I actually drink a couple cups per day but I don't like to think about it that much I like to try out different Brews but I just don't 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hitting that like button and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already what are your thoughts on EV charging station designs leave them down in the comments section below while you're there check out some of these other videos while you wait for the next one to come out in two weeks see you over there

Channel: Stewart Hicks

Views: 254,090

Keywords: architecture, design, architecture student, architecture design, architecture lecture for beginners, architecture 101, architecture documentary, architecture concept, architecture theory, stewart hicks, architecture talk, urban design, chicago, EV Charging, electric vehicles, electric car

Id: 2mVUGLjfgE8

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Thu May 04 2023