Oregon Joins Long Trail Of Pacific Coast Electric Car Charge Stations

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Oregon Joins Long Trail Of Pacific Coast Electric Car Charge Stations

Antony Ingram

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It may not be long before electric car owners on America's Pacific coast can drive all the way from Canada to Mexico--using quick-charge stations.

Thanks to Oregon's new 'electric highway', it's now possible to charge an electric car every 25 miles down a 200-mile stretch of Interstate 5.

That, says NBC News, makes it the longest stretch of electric highway in the country.

Click HERE to see the NBC video

It's set to improve even further, as the state has funding for another 35 quick-charge stations. That'll make things pretty easy for the state's current 1,200 electric cars, and means that even if one station is occupied, you won't have to search too long to find another.

The Oregon stations join a long string already in place in California, and a number of level 2 and fast charge stations in Washington, too.

It's all part of a larger plan to create the West Coast Electric Highway--allowing electric vehicle drivers to travel the length of Interstate 5 from Canada through Washington, Oregon and California, right to the Mexican border.

That would make an otherwise time-consuming journey little more difficult than it would be in a regular combustion engined car--and likely encourage a wider market for electric vehicles down the West coast.

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Comments (13)

Kent Beuchert Posted: 7/5/2012 1:15pm PDT

Unfortunately, I can't imagine anyone taking a journey in a Leaf
much beyond the city limits, and the cars that can handle trip length drives are the Model S's, and they'll want to use Tesla's faster superchargers (Musk is dissatisfied with these type chargers : too slow). So the question arises as to exactly who will be using these chargers? Local electrics, I suppose, who need a bit more range. But these folks aren't likely to be travelling I5.
Exactly what kilowatt strength do these chargers have? How many EVs can each charger handle per day? I seem to remember the Tesla superchargers sporting around 100 kilowatts.
Making potentially concrete decisions in an evolving technology is not without its risks.

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Xiaolong Li Posted: 7/5/2012 8:50pm PDT

100KW? I guess Tesla would need a small sub station to power that...

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David Laur Posted: 7/6/2012 9:43am PDT

Kent; you dont live here so its easy to understand your statement. But day trips in the 100-200 mile range are EASY in the Leaf and dont take that much more time and when i do this, i do not add another $20 to Big Oil's pockets. THAT is more than worth the time sitting at a station.

what you REALLY fail to realize is just how easy QC is. my average charge time is 10 minutes. there is no need to charge longer when stations are 25 miles apart.

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Jonathan Carroll Posted: 7/5/2012 9:36pm PDT

can't imagine a long journey? I took my leaf from Corvallis, OR to Seattle, WA and back (500 miles total) quite easily, thanks to the fast chargers on I-5. AV has done an excellent job installing their L3 chargers in Southern Oregon and in Washington. Unfortunately, Blink was awarded the northern OR sector and is lagging badly. there are no quick chargers between Halsey and Portland, and the Blink L3 chargers in Portland are often - on the Blink.

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John Briggs Posted: 7/6/2012 5:18am PDT

Thanks for the first hand reporting.

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Charles Ellis Posted: 7/6/2012 7:19am PDT

So when you say fast charger, how long do you have to wait for the car to charge up before you can be on your way? And what kind of range between charges did you experience on your trip? Thanks.

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Jonathan Carroll Posted: 7/6/2012 9:09am PDT

Charles, fast charging took about 30 minutes, which went by quite fast by my experience, as inevitably,someone comes up and starts a conversation, or i have to eat, etc. my first leg was about 80 miles, second leg about 20 miles, third leg about 70 miles, next 20 miles, last 60 miles.

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David Laur Posted: 7/6/2012 9:49am PDT

Charles; charging does heat up the pack. to help with that and to maximize my time, i generally charge for 10-15 minutes. charging the bottom of the pack gets me one Kwh every 70-75 seconds. after about 65-70% SOC, that time is around 150 seconds so more than double. Now, in WA we have HUGE gaps in the DCFC (mostly caused by Blink and their slow roll out along with several outages) which requires a near 100% charge that could be near an hour.

OR building a higher density network is really the only way EVs can be viable.

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fb_641260757 Posted: 7/6/2012 7:11am PDT

Whats the point of they are going charge people more than gasoline? might as well use gas, at least thats what I saw when I pulled over on a highway stop to get food and gas, i saw a charging station that was charging $$$ lot lots of money to plug in....

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Jonathan Carroll Posted: 7/6/2012 9:17am PDT

Lucjan, it's not all about money. some of us are driving EV's for environmental reasons. If you want to look at operating costs, consider the lifetime cost of vehicles. ICE cars have thousands of moving parts and the maintenance costs tend to be quite large over the life of the car. EV's have, basically one moving part - the motor, regen braking (saves brakes), cost less than $2/charge at home, which all equates to lower maintenance costs over the life of the car.

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David Laur Posted: 7/6/2012 9:53am PDT

Lucjan; the point is
1) OR has no oil refineries so buying gas is a $4B/year drained from their economy. sure, some stays from gas station employees and what not, but trust me, it aint much.
2) Electricity provides much more support in state. in many areas its in surplus meaning selling it out of state at bargain prices. using it locally is by far the smartest thing to do financially
3) if you drove an EV... you would understand it a lot more. even if gas was free to me, the Leaf is ALWAYS my first choice

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Brian Henderson Posted: 7/6/2012 12:36pm PDT

Breaking News…
re: post on Pacific Coast Electric Charge Stations
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1077499_oregon-joins-long-trail-of-pacific-coast-electric-car-charge-stations

opening sentence:
"It may not be long before electric car owners on America's Pacific coast can drive all the way from Canada to Mexico"

Trip from Mexico to Canada has already be accomplished as of June 21th.
https://twitter.com/QCpower/statuses/215766600106778626
By @QCpower (QuickChargePower.com) In fact, it was round trip in Leaf; return trip completed days ago! :)

btw: A Tesla Roadster also drove across USA, coast to coast (east-west) in June on it's round-the-world in-80-days tour.
http://is.gd/xD9kdn

--

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Douglas Chapin Posted: 7/9/2012 6:39am PDT

"The Oregon stations join a long string already in place in California," Um, no, there are no L3 chargers in CA (oh, I take that back, 1 in the bay area). I have been waiting for them so I can make the 150 trip from LA to San Diego, but none yet :(

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