Introduction
Welcome to my Charging Site Reviews. One of the main reasons I decided to start a blog was to share information with others about Electric Car Charging locations.
The PS Food Mart is at a Citgo gas station about halfway between Flint and Lansing along I-69, in Perry, MI. This site serves the northeast to southwest corridor from Port Huron, MI (on the border with Canada) and Coldwater, MI. (This site opened in January 2021)
Accessibility
This station is in the southwest corner of the gas station parking lot. Taking M-52 (Main St.) south from the freeway exits, the gas station for this stop is located on the southeast corner of the intersection of M-52 and Lansing Rd. From the stop light at this intersection, the chargers can be seen just past the ‘Welcome to Perry’ sign. Since these chargers are placed in the corner of the parking lot closest to the road, it is very unlikely that a vehicle that was not charging would park in these spaces. However, since the parking is ‘nose in’, there is no pull-through parking for anyone pulling a trailer. These charges are placed with diagonal parking spaces, so this may make parking vehicles that need to back in to charge (like the Ioniq 6) more difficult.
Amenities
Dining options include: Subway, McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, Jersey Giants, KFC
Shopping options include: 3 convenience stores, two dollar stores and a drug store
Car-related services (windshield cleaning, air): Citgo gas station at this location.
There is no covering for the chargers, so they could easily become icy or blocked by snow in the winter time, and the direction of the chargers will make clearing snow completely from the front of the chargers difficult in winter.
Concentration
This is the baseline ChargePoint 2 charger site. The parking is a pull/back into configuration. The current space available could add 2 more chargers. This site has room to grow, but it will take more to add to this site, and additional spots will more likely be blocked by non-electric vehicles. This may provide an opportunity for other charging networks to open a station at this exit.
Location
Overall, I think this is a pretty good location for a charging stop. At about 100 miles from both Port Huron, MI and Coldwater, MI, this site would serve any electric drivers that are traveling the I-69 highway and supports more highway miles to alleviate concerns about charging options.
100/150 Mile Range
Speed
ChargePoint is offering a middle of the pack solution targeted for the early adoption phase. These units can output 125kW or 200A. When not paired, or when both are in use the current limit is 62.5kW or 150A. For vehicles above 500V, the current limits change and they become 75A and 125A, thus making the maximum theoretical output to be 125kW (125A at 1000V). While this does not match the most powerful units on the market, it will support reasonably fast charging for one vehicle. (The power sharing was in full effect as I was limited on arrival by an EV9 charging and then later after the EV9 left, a R1S showed up and charged.)
Summary
Let’s start with the bad, the cost of this site has nearly tripled in 3 years. From a calculated $0.18 per kWh to $0.42 per kWh, but I understand the site was probably quite under priced with few EVs on the road at the time of my first review visit. Now for the good, this site is now very busy. As I arrived there was a brand new Kia EV9 charging, then for a short time, I was able to charge by myself, but only a couple of minutes later a Rivian R1S pulled up to charge and I was back to power sharing. Lastly, about 1 minute before I left, a Rivian R1T arrived to charge. The power sharing worked great; there was no interruption in charging or fault of the sessions as the 2 units worked together to share power between the various connected vehicles with different voltage levels and current draw requests. Even with the power sharing I averaged 80kW charging speed for the 26 minute session, more than what I would have been able to pull if the stations were independent. All of this to show how effective even a small two station site like this can be in providing good power and reasonable throughput to EV drivers in need.
What I paid for this stop:
Total Cost: $14.68
Total kWh: 34.95 kWh
Time: 26 min
Average Charge Speed: 80.65 kW (Calculated)
Cost per kWh: $0.42
What I paid 3 years ago in the Niro EV
Total Cost: $5.70
Total kWh: 32.02 kWh
Time: 38 min
Average Charge Speed: 50.56 kW (Calculated)
Cost per kWh: $0.18 (Calculated)
Questions/Comments:
DanTheEVMan@gmail.com
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