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There are reports in the corporate press of another Tesla charging installation being molotoved in North Carolina. Reports are three charging stations (each serves one car at a time) set on fire using beer bottle molotovs, plus our warrior accidently setting themselves partially on fire.
They were able to get the fire on themselves out and escape, hopefully a winter coat provided enough insulation to limit damage from burns.
The Tesla chargers got $60,000 in damage! As an aside that is an obscenely expensive charger at $20,000 apiece. My e-bike charger is probaby about $35 bucks! A home solar setup may cost little more than one of Tesla's fancy rows of chargers, with a bigger backup/night battery than in any car, the charging setup for it, the solar panels to feed it, and the house connections.
Normal cost for a 50kW+ DCFC is around US$30k and upwards.
DC fast chargers for EVs are completely different to e-bike chargers, they are vastly more powerful (hundreds of kilowatts, not hundreds of watts) and they have to interface directly with the car's battery, regardless of battery voltage, which varies with model of vehicle, from 300V to 900V. So, they are enormously more advanced and three orders of magnitude more powerful.
EV batteries are much bigger than the typical home battery as well, EV batteries range from 30 to 200kWh, a typical home battery, at least here in Australia, is 5 to 15kWh. And nothing in that home energy system converts more than around 10kW of power, not up to 350kW like a DCFC.
@LanceTurner Such a huge battery and thus espensive charger must be part of the cost of the trend to build EV's as big (e.g. Cybertruck) and as fast as possible.
The opposite end of the EV spectrum is small drones especially fixed wing, but some of this applies to everything that moves on battery power. If uou want more speed or runtime, the weight of the battery goes up fast and that weight quickly starts taking performance back. Pretty soon its too heavy to fly.
At the E-bike level I've looked into what it would put Tampa to Miami in range. It would be a trailer full of batteries weighing over 100 pounds and all that weight sets up a feedback loop where even more battery power is needed to carry the batteries.
If I built an electric car, I would build a companion genset trailer for it, so round trips over 150 milea could burn the fuel avaable at that time to get open-ended range. For use to my usual cities that could stay home, and I could use far lighter and cheaper batteries. A top speed of 60 mph would be enough to get away with using I-4 though 70mph capability would be an advantage for DC or Arizona runs. If you want 120 mph capability that won't be used, the motor gets heavier and that eats your range and your handling. Now more batteries are needed to feed that beast and the wejght provlem gets worse fast. Just like the bike and the drones.
My e-bike uses a cheap battery natively plus a lawnmower battery in a bracket I made to add more range. Both are ten parallel groups in series. The entire mower was selected to use batteries also usable for the bike.
If I know I'm going on a short ride I need only mount one battery, though both together are only 12-13 pounds.
The mower battery uses a $100 charger that can talk to the battery management system, and charges in 1 hour. This is the part of charging complex batteries that benefits from computer management: the BMS can measure each cell (or parallel group of cells) for state of charge and adjust them individually. l
The original battery though larger does not use much of a battery management system and does not even have a temperature sensor. As a result it is limited to a 2 1/2 A charger and takes nearly 5 hours to charge. Even that is fast relative to batteriea that need overnight to charge.
I did not know house setups were now smaller than car setups.
@LukefromDC EV batteries have to be large enough to get a decent range, most people want at least 300-400km range or more, even if they never drive that far in a day. Most people vastly overestimate their daily travel needs. So, EV makers target EVs at 300km minimum range nowadays, with quite a few 500km range EVs on the market. Mercedes latest sedan EV has an 800km rated range.
As for charging speed, people are used to the 5 minute fill-up at the servo and want EVs to charge that way too (even though 90% of charging is done at home), and there are now EVs that can put in 50% capacity in 10 mins, so we are not far off that now, even though that sort of speed isn't the norm yet.
@LanceTurner An EV with a 100 mile or 150 mile range extendable with an auxiliery battery pack or a genset trailer would be lighter and use less energy getting around town. It would also handle better. For long trips a genset trailer (which stays at home when NOT needed) provides open-ended range.
Also note that public charging stations are dependent on credit cards and (I think) Internet connected cars. That means travel records available all the way down to divorce cases by subpeona and probably bought and sold on the open market. I will never use a connected car...
@LanceTurner I had one E-bike a decade ago whose makers tried to get away with a tiny battery by setting it up to accept an 80% charge in ten minutes. For a 40 mile round trip from where I lived to DC though, that meant having to find a place to poach an electrical connection at least twice.
Bike or car, enough battery to finish one day's expected use is the optimim amount. Slow charging overnight makes batteries last longer, fast charging may let you get by with less battery by charging opportunistically. A selectable low/high rate is best for that bike when I am in DC, I can get that by deciding which battery to draw from first.
The way to get a 5 minute "recharge" for an EV would be standardized batteries that are exchanged like the barbecue grill propane cylinders. This is how some R/C planes work today: the battery is made big enough for one flight only as the plane climbs and turns better with less weight. Next flight you pull another battery out of the bag and exchange them, you don't sit there and charge the same one.