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You're making many assumptions here. 1st, you're assuming people can charge at home - assuming they have a garage and access to power. This isn't true for a hu

You're making many assumptions here. 1st, you're assuming people can charge at home - assuming they have a garage and access to power. This isn't true for a huge portion of the population. > and while at your destination (say a retailer) which you can't do with your ICE car. So overlapping but not identical comparison. This really isn't available yet either. Who's going to pay for this? Really?

Gibbon1 6y ago
> 1st, you're assuming people can charge at home - assuming they have a garage and access to power. This isn't true for a huge portion of the population. So what, figuring out how people without a designated parking space can change their car is trivial compared to trying to undo global warming. Also Covid has shown us how much disruption we can actually tolerate, hint: a lot more than the powers that be want you to believe.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  This is a textbook strawman. > So what, figuring out how people without a designated parking space can change their car is trivial compared to trying to undo global warming. No it isn't. NYC has limited space. There simply isn't enough room for a charger for every car. That is a nontrivial problem with extreme cost. You can't just handwave it away.
  - smileysteve 6y ago
    NYC and San Francisco are about as strawman as it gets, because the cars AND trips per capita are some of the lowest in the U.S.
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      Because of the infrastructure surrounding it - e.g. fleets of cars taxis, public transit, etc. In other words, better options than having an owning an EV, which, if you pay attention, is what we're talking about here.
      - warkdarrior 6y ago
        > fleets of cars taxis, public transit Surely in those settings the best option is for the taxi companies and the public transit providers to shift to EVs.
      - smileysteve 6y ago
        > In other words, better options than having an owning an EV is what we're talking about here. Nope. The topic is about mass adoption. Not mass adoption by people who take trains or taxi in a certain city. Even within this sub thread, it's comparing the "ease" of getting fuel and parking in nyc (neither of which are actually easy) to which charging is a mass hurdle. Are there people who don't have access to power and security at a parking spot who drive more than 100 miles a day (and drivers that use bottles and get blood clots instead of stopping for 1hr every 250 miles), sure, but that's not the mass, it's somewhere <5%. And roughly a smaller population to whom don't need a car on a regular basis at all.
      - ascorbic 6y ago
        I don't think anyone is suggesting you buy an EV if you don't need a car at all. It's about replacing an ICE car. If you have one of those, you must be parking it somewhere already.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    I spent 25 years living in San Francisco. What I know is I put about 6000 miles a year on my car. Of which about 4000 was around the city. Assuming a city dweller with a car charged it every 200 miles, that's be once every two and half weeks. That doesn't seem impossible, just merely inconvenient. On the same level of having to wash your clothes at a laundromat. It's thing, if you live in a real city, it's not the Suburbs.
    - theshrike79 6y ago
      The laundromat analogy is pretty good. Basically you'd plug in your car to a charger, go do your weekly groceries and go grab your car. Two weeks of charge right there. You might not need to charge during next week's grocery run if you don't want to.
      - Gibbon1 6y ago
        A couple of people on my street in SF commuted to the south bay with electric cars. They'd park them on the street at night and charge them at work. Also thing I know about SF. People that work in SF park their car in the same spot for days at a time. And remembering to move the car is another inconvenience they deal with. When I lived and worked in SF I would drive down town and park. Which I could do because I had a parking sticker. Most people do not have that option. Which says to me, me putting 6000 miles a year on my car probably made me an outlier on the high side. There are people putting much less.
bogdanu 6y ago
> This really isn't available yet either. Who's going to pay for this? Really? In Europe some retailers have this, sure, for 2 or 3 parking spots. If the demand is there, I'm pretty sure they'll expand it, even as a paid/loyality bonus. I don't expect them to offer superchaging but 50-60 km/h charge would be more than enough.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  2 or 3 parking spots. It's a token gesture, not meaningful infrastructure. Electrifying an entire parking lot is a lot more expensive than 2 or 3 spots.
  - theshrike79 6y ago
    You don't need to electrify the entire parking lot. Even if you do, not every parking spot needs to have a 350kW HPC charger. 11-22kW is more than enough. Add load balancing and maybe a battery in the future and you're good. The handful of spots is part greenwashing part gauging the demand. They do track the usage of those spots and increase the amount if they see that they're in use and driving business.
natch 6y ago
I don’t think they claimed that everyone has access at home. They said “the use case includes” which doesn’t exclude other possibilities. There are many great options for charging if you choose your car wisely. Our apartment building with six parking spaces has three Teslas and no charging on site. We do just fine. Charging takes about 15 seconds of my day on work days. And on the occasion when I need more, it’s quick and I can grab a few minutes (like, 10 or 15) of a youtube video or Netflix while charging. Or step into a store and do an errand while charging. In 10 minutes I can get about 100 miles of charge. I often go to our nearby Target (a store in the US) which has a supercharger right in the parking lot, and I don’t charge, even though I’m already there shopping right where the charger is. Why? No need. Already charged. It’s not that difficult. Notice I never said this will work for everyone. But it works for some, with no assumption about having chargers at home. >Who’s going to pay? Sometimes you pay per kilowatt. Other times you’re charged per minute, like 3 cents a minute or so which includes parking. Other places it’s free and advertising on nearby signs subsidies for it. Or employers pay for it as a work benefit. One network (Chargepoint) covers most of this stuff.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  This is what always happens when I bring up product problems about EVs. Everyone on HN who owns a luxury car Tesla in SV or some major metro with their six figure plus salary gets all bent out of shape, and ask "omg why can't everyone do this!" It's tone deaf and out of touch. EVs simply are not there yet. They're ludicrously expensive, inconvenient to refuel, don't offer utility like ICE trucks/SUVs, can't be charged effectively without huge infrastructure investment. I'm not saying we aren't making strides, I'm saying there are loads of improvements that need to come before EVs take over ICE sales to ultimately help us fight global problems. EVs have never been about rich people having a toy. We need cheap EVs now to help us fight global climate change and frankly they aren't there yet. You need to make massive assumptions for the vast majority of Americans to make EVs work compared to ICE vehicles.
  - jtaillon 6y ago
    The thing is, they're not "ludicrously expensive". Sure, Teslas and Porsches and Jaguars are, but you can also get a late-model used Nissan Leaf for under 10k, or a brand new Kia Niro for ~30k after tax credit. That's well within the bell curve of what people spend on ICE cars, used or not. A Leaf might not meet your needs, but it's not like there aren't other options out there. If you factor in longer-term costs like fuel cost, maintenance, and wear-and-tear, the equation tilts even further towards EV. Not to say they shouldn't be cheaper, but they'll definitely get there. We're pretty close to price-parity as is (just not tons of options).
jmelloy 6y ago
I've seen plenty of chargers at malls and Walgreens and other areas. Usually it's a ChargePoint or blink app, which connects through your phone. One of the local malls subsidizes the electricity and charging is free.
bartvk 6y ago
You're also making assumptions, though. Here in The Netherlands, most big cities really appreciate electric cars. Thus, in streets where the demand is big, they add additional charging stations. It's not like charging needs a garage and access to power. Sometimes, the local government is competent enough. So it really depends.

Gibbon1 6y ago

> 1st, you're assuming people can charge at home - assuming they have a garage and access to power. This isn't true for a huge portion of the population. So what, figuring out how people without a designated parking space can change their car is trivial compared to trying to undo global warming. Also Covid has shown us how much disruption we can actually tolerate, hint: a lot more than the powers that be want you to believe.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
This is a textbook strawman. > So what, figuring out how people without a designated parking space can change their car is trivial compared to trying to undo global warming. No it isn't. NYC has limited space. There simply isn't enough room for a charger for every car. That is a nontrivial problem with extreme cost. You can't just handwave it away.
- smileysteve 6y ago
  NYC and San Francisco are about as strawman as it gets, because the cars AND trips per capita are some of the lowest in the U.S.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    Because of the infrastructure surrounding it - e.g. fleets of cars taxis, public transit, etc. In other words, better options than having an owning an EV, which, if you pay attention, is what we're talking about here.
    - warkdarrior 6y ago
      > fleets of cars taxis, public transit Surely in those settings the best option is for the taxi companies and the public transit providers to shift to EVs.
    - smileysteve 6y ago
      > In other words, better options than having an owning an EV is what we're talking about here. Nope. The topic is about mass adoption. Not mass adoption by people who take trains or taxi in a certain city. Even within this sub thread, it's comparing the "ease" of getting fuel and parking in nyc (neither of which are actually easy) to which charging is a mass hurdle. Are there people who don't have access to power and security at a parking spot who drive more than 100 miles a day (and drivers that use bottles and get blood clots instead of stopping for 1hr every 250 miles), sure, but that's not the mass, it's somewhere <5%. And roughly a smaller population to whom don't need a car on a regular basis at all.
    - ascorbic 6y ago
      I don't think anyone is suggesting you buy an EV if you don't need a car at all. It's about replacing an ICE car. If you have one of those, you must be parking it somewhere already.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I spent 25 years living in San Francisco. What I know is I put about 6000 miles a year on my car. Of which about 4000 was around the city. Assuming a city dweller with a car charged it every 200 miles, that's be once every two and half weeks. That doesn't seem impossible, just merely inconvenient. On the same level of having to wash your clothes at a laundromat. It's thing, if you live in a real city, it's not the Suburbs.
  - theshrike79 6y ago
    The laundromat analogy is pretty good. Basically you'd plug in your car to a charger, go do your weekly groceries and go grab your car. Two weeks of charge right there. You might not need to charge during next week's grocery run if you don't want to.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      A couple of people on my street in SF commuted to the south bay with electric cars. They'd park them on the street at night and charge them at work. Also thing I know about SF. People that work in SF park their car in the same spot for days at a time. And remembering to move the car is another inconvenience they deal with. When I lived and worked in SF I would drive down town and park. Which I could do because I had a parking sticker. Most people do not have that option. Which says to me, me putting 6000 miles a year on my car probably made me an outlier on the high side. There are people putting much less.

bogdanu 6y ago

> This really isn't available yet either. Who's going to pay for this? Really? In Europe some retailers have this, sure, for 2 or 3 parking spots. If the demand is there, I'm pretty sure they'll expand it, even as a paid/loyality bonus. I don't expect them to offer superchaging but 50-60 km/h charge would be more than enough.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
2 or 3 parking spots. It's a token gesture, not meaningful infrastructure. Electrifying an entire parking lot is a lot more expensive than 2 or 3 spots.
- theshrike79 6y ago
  You don't need to electrify the entire parking lot. Even if you do, not every parking spot needs to have a 350kW HPC charger. 11-22kW is more than enough. Add load balancing and maybe a battery in the future and you're good. The handful of spots is part greenwashing part gauging the demand. They do track the usage of those spots and increase the amount if they see that they're in use and driving business.

natch 6y ago

I don’t think they claimed that everyone has access at home. They said “the use case includes” which doesn’t exclude other possibilities. There are many great options for charging if you choose your car wisely. Our apartment building with six parking spaces has three Teslas and no charging on site. We do just fine. Charging takes about 15 seconds of my day on work days. And on the occasion when I need more, it’s quick and I can grab a few minutes (like, 10 or 15) of a youtube video or Netflix while charging. Or step into a store and do an errand while charging. In 10 minutes I can get about 100 miles of charge. I often go to our nearby Target (a store in the US) which has a supercharger right in the parking lot, and I don’t charge, even though I’m already there shopping right where the charger is. Why? No need. Already charged. It’s not that difficult. Notice I never said this will work for everyone. But it works for some, with no assumption about having chargers at home. >Who’s going to pay? Sometimes you pay per kilowatt. Other times you’re charged per minute, like 3 cents a minute or so which includes parking. Other places it’s free and advertising on nearby signs subsidies for it. Or employers pay for it as a work benefit. One network (Chargepoint) covers most of this stuff.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
This is what always happens when I bring up product problems about EVs. Everyone on HN who owns a luxury car Tesla in SV or some major metro with their six figure plus salary gets all bent out of shape, and ask "omg why can't everyone do this!" It's tone deaf and out of touch. EVs simply are not there yet. They're ludicrously expensive, inconvenient to refuel, don't offer utility like ICE trucks/SUVs, can't be charged effectively without huge infrastructure investment. I'm not saying we aren't making strides, I'm saying there are loads of improvements that need to come before EVs take over ICE sales to ultimately help us fight global problems. EVs have never been about rich people having a toy. We need cheap EVs now to help us fight global climate change and frankly they aren't there yet. You need to make massive assumptions for the vast majority of Americans to make EVs work compared to ICE vehicles.
- jtaillon 6y ago
  The thing is, they're not "ludicrously expensive". Sure, Teslas and Porsches and Jaguars are, but you can also get a late-model used Nissan Leaf for under 10k, or a brand new Kia Niro for ~30k after tax credit. That's well within the bell curve of what people spend on ICE cars, used or not. A Leaf might not meet your needs, but it's not like there aren't other options out there. If you factor in longer-term costs like fuel cost, maintenance, and wear-and-tear, the equation tilts even further towards EV. Not to say they shouldn't be cheaper, but they'll definitely get there. We're pretty close to price-parity as is (just not tons of options).

jmelloy 6y ago

I've seen plenty of chargers at malls and Walgreens and other areas. Usually it's a ChargePoint or blink app, which connects through your phone. One of the local malls subsidizes the electricity and charging is free.

bartvk 6y ago

You're also making assumptions, though. Here in The Netherlands, most big cities really appreciate electric cars. Thus, in streets where the demand is big, they add additional charging stations. It's not like charging needs a garage and access to power. Sometimes, the local government is competent enough. So it really depends.