There’s A Lot Of Electric Vehicles In Bogota, Colombia
Hey guys, I’m here in South America in the capital of Colombia and that would be Bogota. And behind me there is a DC fast charger charging two BYD vehicles. But I pulled up in a different type of electric vehicle. It is a bestonat. FAW makes the best line and I’m going to try charging it here out of DC fast charger. It’s one of only three that I’ve found in Bogota. And I’m surprised. I’m actually down here doing some research on electric vehicles and electric vehicle infrastructure. And I’m actually surprised at how many electric vehicles I’ve seen down here. There’s a ton of BYDs. There’s a bunch of Zikers. I’ve seen a BMW i3, Volvo EX30, and tons of other different electric vehicles. The odd thing is I haven’t seen a single Tesla here. Now, here’s one thing that I also found super interesting. This DC fast charger here has three different plugs. A CCS1, a CCS2, and also a GBT, which is what they use in China. And the interesting thing is these two BYDs here. One is using the CCS1 plug, and the other one is using the CCS2 plug. So, that was interesting. There’s also other alternative fuel vehicles here in Bogota. Matter of fact, when I got picked up from the airport, it was picked up in a natural gas taxi. So, that was also surprising. I wasn’t expecting to see so many alternative fuel vehicles. There’s certainly not so many electric vehicles. There’s really a bunch of them and there’s almost no public charging infrastructure. Pretty much everybody charges their vehicles at home either from a 120 outlet or 220 outlet. A couple of people that I spoke with said that the electricity down here costs about 40% less than refueling with gasoline. So, it’s kind of similar to what we experience in the US. So, I’m waiting for one of these BYDs to unplug and then I’m going to pull the Bon Nat up and plug in with the GBT plug and see just how the vehicle charges. Now, this isn’t a real good DC fast charging test because this DC fast charger is limited to 40 kW. There’s no like ultra high-speed DC fast chargers down here. They’re all the ones that I checked at least all seem to be around 40 50 kowatt. Uh, but the interesting thing is the people I spoke with, and I spoke to a few people driving the EVs, they didn’t mind. They just charge at home. They don’t use these public DC fast chargers. And this one happens to be at a gas station. You can see behind me the gas pumps. And in the corner over here, there’s this one DC fast charger. It seems to get some use though cuz I passed by a couple times and they’re always in use. I also stopped by a Zeer store and checked out all the latest Zeer models. Checking in from Bogota, Colombia. Checking out the EVs and EV infrastructure here.
I check out the electric vehicle scene in Bogota, Colombia.
