One of the major sticking points of the transition away from ICE-powered vehicles and toward EVs remains charging – not only the time it takes to do so, but also the availability of chargers. That isn’t as much of a concern in the world of fleets – at least delivery services that don’t rack up lots of miles in a day and can charge overnight at a company-owned lot – but some commercial customers may still be intrigued by DC fast chargers. However, Ford Pro CEO Ted Cannis recently noted that in this situation, those types of chargers are unnecessary and perhaps even less effective than regular AC chargers.
“You don’t need to have, as they often come in, a DC charger,” the Ford Pro CEO said while speaking at the recent Evercore Utility Conference. “I’m going to jam it full of kilowatts quickly. You don’t need that. It’s huge amount of money, infrastructure, and time to put it in. An AC charger will do the job. And we put an extra inverter, at our expense in weight, on F-150 Lightning with the big battery, so that you can do more fast charging at home and completely charge it overnight on a big battery, residential or commercial. So, our goal was to make the vehicles ready for, whenever possible, level two charging at home or at the depot to eliminate loads, reduce infrastructure costs, reduce pressure on the battery, and make it all easier.”
Ford Pro recently debuted its own commercial charger lineup, along with the Ford F-150 Lightning Charge Station Pro, which enables customers to utilize the truck’s Intelligent Backup feature. However, in terms of public chargers, the automaker is also pushing for more clarity in terms of branding so that customers can easily distinguish between Level 1, 2, and 3 units.
Cannis also reiterated that Ford isn’t pushing its commercial customers toward EVs, and instead recognizes that there are some key differences between those types of buyers and retail ones. Meanwhile, demand for commercial vehicles remains strong – not only in the U.S., but also in other parts of the world.
We’ll have more on Ford Pro soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for 24/7 Ford news coverage.
Comments
From Experience I can say that even basic level 2 AC charging seems like a huge amount of money, infrastructure, and time to put it in. Assuming you can get on the grid in many places, because of the AMP requirements and potential to have multiple units plugged in at the same time overnight. Just the Service alone is fairly expensive from a transformer standpoint. add in the dedicated circuits and overall install of the chargers and it can get pricy fast. 6 level 2 charger with just 48A connections cost us around $200,000.
JDE:
Those numbers seem really high…. If you really need that large of a Level 2 charger (48 amperes), on a 208 volt 3 phase feeder, would be under 60 kva and about 166 1/5 amperes additional load. The loading of 3 – 48 ampere chargers is 48 * sqrt(3) or a bit over 83 amperes on a 3 phase 120/208 feeder.
Assuming loading only to 80 % (since these are continuous loads), would only require 208 amperes of additional service – so even if installing anything from scratch would only require a 225 ampere 208 volt service…I know electricians get $50-60 an hour these days, but I’d think $50,000 would cover the whole shebang.
And of course – if you could get by with just a bit less, say 40 amperes per charger, then you would only have 139 amperes of load at 208 3 phase and a 200 ampere 208 volt 3 phase service would be plenty, with the 50 kva additional load.
In case the electrician disputes this – have him MEASURE the current at the service entrance… The reason for the lowered numbers is that the low power factor chargers perform power factor correction for each other when they are all fully loaded..
Good practical advice Bill. Thanks.
The faster you charge a battery, the quicker it will need to be replaced, no way around it. As the article states it stresses the battery. On the other hand a faster flowing gas pump has zero negative effects.
One of many reasons us and our colleagues said no to EV fleets, we all re-upped with ICE.
K-street Travis spewing his cloud of Big Oil funded FUD.
The same Travis that brought us: “Ford BEV be bad so my gang and I all coordinated to buy ICE replacement vehicles” but after he overshot his rhetorical wad it came out he was talking about Class 8 OTR vehicles, a vehicle segment hasn’t played in since 1997.
Now he brings us this idiotic beauty:
“On the other hand a faster flowing gas pump has zero negative effects.” Sure, if you live in a fugue state making you blissfully unaware of climate change.
Big Oil Travis K-street is obviously commenting in bad faith by sticking to his misleading script.
As an operator of light and medium duty trucks (light = Super Duty, Heavy Duty pickups) EVs are considerably more expensive. We also went with ICE replacements. Just today multiple news outlets are reporting how EVs are financially tanking manufacturers. Ford’s latest earnings report is abysmal due to their failed EV push.
Pure K-street Big Oil serving FUD.
Mixing LD and MD and calling MD HD … ISWYDT.
Kinda like Travis buddy getting caught out using Class 8 OTR to bolster a nonsense argument.
And even tho your attempt isn’t as bonkers as his, you have no BEV comparators for SD because they don’t exist, and Lightning is not a good proxy for SD or MD duty cycles. You are comparing apples and oranges like Travis and like him I can’t tell if it’s because you are a full scale FUDster tag team player, a complete idiot, or both.
The numbers do not support this “tanked” theory.
(How about posting some links to all these scary stories.
(Negative points will be awarded if it is FoxNewsMax, ZeroHedge, or like nonsense.)
Financial times reported today that Toyota has fallen behind on BEV because Mr Toyoda slept on his hybrid laurels, and despite trying to shift rhetoric (yes, sigh, via FUD) in its direction of strength (hybrids) it had to appoint a new CEO a week ago to lead the plan to catch up.
Read it and learn that what I have been saying to brush back against the bad faith liars and FUDsters is not BS (remove the space before com):
ft. com/content/2edc2630-a0b6-4b45-8e18-ac3917a68eed
Yea, we read about Ford’s crap earnings report on my work’s landing page…it is bad, very bad. Go EV, go broke…for both customers and manufacturers.
Yea, K-street FUDster TomaBSz selling more Big Oil alarmist FUD.
Fords results were what it told the street to expect earlier in the year.
It’s performance was in line with its guidance.
You are kidding right?? Every YouTube automotive channel today is talking about what a horrendous earning report it is and that EVs are to blame. Even the Execs stated Americans are not adopting EVs. Their stock dropped immediately by 8%.
The push for EVs is a kickback to unions and green party. Otherwise if it was such a great idea why would the govt need to spend billions to incentivize.