Ikea's plan to install electric car charging stations in store parking lots could be a preview of how we might use our cars.
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It takes much longer to charge an electric car than it does to fill a tank of gasoline, and that alone makes the current gas station model completely obsolete. Even Tesla’s Superchargers take 15 minutes to deliver enough power for a 200-mile drive. That means gas stations are dead, but how do we replace them? IKEA’s plan is one model, but there are others.
"Grocery stores are already places where people spend a lot of time, and if customers were waiting for their cars to charge, they could spend even more time and money in these stores. In the future, grocery stores, warehouses and other retailers could become some of the largest charging centers in the U.S., Europe and beyond," Ian Lang, senior editor at the Bumper car blog, told Lifewire via email.
Gasoline is an astonishingly dense form of energy storage, far superior to batteries. A base Tesla Model 3, for example, has a battery capacity of 54 kWh. A subcompact gas car can store “the energy equivalent of 7 Teslas,” according to energy consulting firm Menlo Energy Economics. And it only takes a few minutes to fill up.
