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range, availability, or charging which are solved enough But are they really? Especially for charging, I'm still not convinced. The articles makes a case that

by kleiba 6y ago

range, availability, or charging which are solved enough But are they really? Especially for charging, I'm still not convinced. The articles makes a case that you can go and grab a coffee while your ID.4 charges in 30 minutes at a high-speed charging stations. Sorry, but "30 minutes" and "high-speed" in one sentence seems somewhat misplaced. Who can afford to just waste 30 minutes for charging on a regular basis? I currently live in a suburb in central Europe. I just checked on https://chargemap.com/ https://chargemap.com/ for my area - I don't know how up-to-date their map is but there are only a few charging stations within 20 minutes from my house, none of which is a high-speed charging station. And unlike houses in North America, almost none of the houses on my street has a drive way, i.e., me and most of my neighbors park on the road, sometimes a few houses down from mine - so, no chance for charging a car over night at home. Of course, before I moved to the burbs, I sometimes had to park a few streets away at night because apartment buildings here typically don't offer parking garages (they exist, but it's not common). Unlike some people with strong opinions, I'm actually in favor of electric cars. However, the practicability is just not there for the way a lot of everyday life is currently organized in many parts of the world.

Brakenshire 6y ago
It’s solved for people with driveways.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  I have a drive way, and it’s not solved for me. My driving needs would require me to be frequently filling up at charging stations. These kind of “it’s solved” statements are very much picking the facts to fit the conclusion, rather than the other way around. Pointing this out usually elicits a “well you should change your lifestyle to better suit the features of an electric car”. If you tried to say that about software features most of us would intuitively know how dumb it is, but it’s supposedly a much more reasonable argument when made about transport.
  - csomar 6y ago
    > My driving needs would require me to be frequently filling up at charging stations. I don't think $40k electric cars (or even the long-range Tesla models) are for people who use cars for work and require frequent/long distances. This is more for the guy who does 15-30km/day commute, then maybe few km to the mall and has a driveway in his house. Maybe once in a while does 100km trip to some mountain. Best you can do for now is a hybrid.
    - mgbmtl 6y ago
      My less than $40k Leaf has a 350km range. I charge at home, drive in the city, and use it in the weekends to drive long distances. The only issue is when going to a city more than 300 km away, then yes, a 30 mins coffee. Charging stations are everywhere here (eastern Canada).
      - Baeocystin 6y ago
        Genuine question- have you found winter temps to be much of an issue in terms of range loss?
        mgbmtl 6y ago
        There is loss, around 10%. One way to reduce it is to pre-heat the car while charging. Heat pumps in EVs are efficient/fast, and less annoying than waiting forever for a gas car to defrost. There is also the additional friction from winter tires, and in summer drag from a bike rack. A bit similar to gas consumption, but does require planning stops on long trips.
        Baeocystin 6y ago
        Thanks for the reply. That's actually less loss than I would have guessed,I appreciate the info.
    - URSpider94 6y ago
      Not at all, there are a lot of people commuting 100+ miles per day in EV’s here in CA. A lot of people have mega-commutes because housing is so expensive. An EV gives you access to HOV lanes, which can cut commute times in half. And, you can charge at home while you sleep and never again waste even a minute at a gas pump.
jfim 6y ago
> Who can afford to just waste 30 minutes for charging on a regular basis? The idea is that charging is done at home overnight, so that the high speed charging stations are only used whenever one is doing longer drives on a single day. As you point out though, not everyone has access to charging at home. Some employers do have charging stations, which can help since many cars do stay several hours at the office every day.
- gala8y 6y ago
  Total off topic, as comments on older posts are off. As per your comment from 19 days ago [0], is it possible for you to write down something about your air quality sensors project? That would be awesome. (0) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26690347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26690347
  - jfim 6y ago
    Sure! Let me clean up the code a bit and write a quick post about it, should be able to get it done this weekend.
    - gala8y 6y ago
      Great! Enjoy!
      - jfim 6y ago
        Haven't forgotten about you by the way, I actually just got a VOC sensor in the mail about an hour ago. Will get that written up soon! :-)
        jfim 6y ago
        Took a bit more time than expected, but here we go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27107037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27107037
andrewchambers 6y ago
As someone with an electric car, it's really not a big deal for me. I can do all my (admittedly short) commutes and go to the gym and barely use 5-10 percent of the battery, so can charge once a week or at night. I think it heavily depends on your job.
xbmcuser 6y ago
Apart from at night the other long period a car is not used is when people are at work. I hope governments give tax incentives for companies to install chargers in their parking lots as this is also the time where solar power is abundant so the electricity used for transport would be cleaner compared to night charging in most cities and countries.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Most big garages, unless built recently, probably don't have the power required to make a substantial amount of spots with chargers, and parking garages are generally so optimized it's hard to run more. I know that at my work, which is in a fairly modern office building meeting all the latest hotness in LEED and whatever, there are basically just a handful of spots with electric and there is so much demand for those spots that you're not allowed to park there for more than two hours at a time. --- Parking has the double whammy of being entirely an expense, and possibly being outmoded. If you buy the electric autonomous fantasy of people no longer owning cars and relying on Uber-like shared fleets, that basically makes the vast majority of parking spaces obsolete, and so developers understandably are trying to make their parking lots easy to tear down and redevelop. (You can't really reuse the sloped floor plates of a parking garage for much else since all other building uses tend to need flat ground, and in any case the runoff from parked vehicles is quite nasty stuff.
nickserv 6y ago
Similar situation here in Western Europe. I don't even have direct road access, need to take some stairs. So when I was buying a car electric made no sense. However lately the city has made some improvement to public charging stations at the train station, a couple streets even have charging spots. And businesses like IKEA are starting to have charging ports. Still too impractical for me, but I can see it being more feasible now than even a few months ago.
jeffrallen 6y ago
I live in Europe, with no possibility of home charging. My closest charger is 20 minutes away. My wife charges when she goes to work, rarely these days. Otherwise, we combine a shopping trip and charging, or a walk and charging. The first 50-80% of the charge goes fast, so you can easily pick up 100 km of range in the time it takes to go to the garden center. If you want an electric car, get it. Charging is not the problem with them: affordability, availability, and matching the range to your lifestyle are.

by kleiba 6y ago

Brakenshire 6y ago

It’s solved for people with driveways.

AmericanChopper 6y ago
I have a drive way, and it’s not solved for me. My driving needs would require me to be frequently filling up at charging stations. These kind of “it’s solved” statements are very much picking the facts to fit the conclusion, rather than the other way around. Pointing this out usually elicits a “well you should change your lifestyle to better suit the features of an electric car”. If you tried to say that about software features most of us would intuitively know how dumb it is, but it’s supposedly a much more reasonable argument when made about transport.
- csomar 6y ago
  > My driving needs would require me to be frequently filling up at charging stations. I don't think $40k electric cars (or even the long-range Tesla models) are for people who use cars for work and require frequent/long distances. This is more for the guy who does 15-30km/day commute, then maybe few km to the mall and has a driveway in his house. Maybe once in a while does 100km trip to some mountain. Best you can do for now is a hybrid.
  - mgbmtl 6y ago
    My less than $40k Leaf has a 350km range. I charge at home, drive in the city, and use it in the weekends to drive long distances. The only issue is when going to a city more than 300 km away, then yes, a 30 mins coffee. Charging stations are everywhere here (eastern Canada).
    - Baeocystin 6y ago
      Genuine question- have you found winter temps to be much of an issue in terms of range loss?
      - mgbmtl 6y ago
        There is loss, around 10%. One way to reduce it is to pre-heat the car while charging. Heat pumps in EVs are efficient/fast, and less annoying than waiting forever for a gas car to defrost. There is also the additional friction from winter tires, and in summer drag from a bike rack. A bit similar to gas consumption, but does require planning stops on long trips.
        Baeocystin 6y ago
        Thanks for the reply. That's actually less loss than I would have guessed,I appreciate the info.
  - URSpider94 6y ago
    Not at all, there are a lot of people commuting 100+ miles per day in EV’s here in CA. A lot of people have mega-commutes because housing is so expensive. An EV gives you access to HOV lanes, which can cut commute times in half. And, you can charge at home while you sleep and never again waste even a minute at a gas pump.

jfim 6y ago

> Who can afford to just waste 30 minutes for charging on a regular basis? The idea is that charging is done at home overnight, so that the high speed charging stations are only used whenever one is doing longer drives on a single day. As you point out though, not everyone has access to charging at home. Some employers do have charging stations, which can help since many cars do stay several hours at the office every day.

gala8y 6y ago
Total off topic, as comments on older posts are off. As per your comment from 19 days ago [0], is it possible for you to write down something about your air quality sensors project? That would be awesome. (0) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26690347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26690347
- jfim 6y ago
  Sure! Let me clean up the code a bit and write a quick post about it, should be able to get it done this weekend.
  - gala8y 6y ago
    Great! Enjoy!
    - jfim 6y ago
      Haven't forgotten about you by the way, I actually just got a VOC sensor in the mail about an hour ago. Will get that written up soon! :-)
      - jfim 6y ago
        Took a bit more time than expected, but here we go: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27107037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27107037

andrewchambers 6y ago

As someone with an electric car, it's really not a big deal for me. I can do all my (admittedly short) commutes and go to the gym and barely use 5-10 percent of the battery, so can charge once a week or at night. I think it heavily depends on your job.

xbmcuser 6y ago

Apart from at night the other long period a car is not used is when people are at work. I hope governments give tax incentives for companies to install chargers in their parking lots as this is also the time where solar power is abundant so the electricity used for transport would be cleaner compared to night charging in most cities and countries.

bobthepanda 6y ago
Most big garages, unless built recently, probably don't have the power required to make a substantial amount of spots with chargers, and parking garages are generally so optimized it's hard to run more. I know that at my work, which is in a fairly modern office building meeting all the latest hotness in LEED and whatever, there are basically just a handful of spots with electric and there is so much demand for those spots that you're not allowed to park there for more than two hours at a time. --- Parking has the double whammy of being entirely an expense, and possibly being outmoded. If you buy the electric autonomous fantasy of people no longer owning cars and relying on Uber-like shared fleets, that basically makes the vast majority of parking spaces obsolete, and so developers understandably are trying to make their parking lots easy to tear down and redevelop. (You can't really reuse the sloped floor plates of a parking garage for much else since all other building uses tend to need flat ground, and in any case the runoff from parked vehicles is quite nasty stuff.

nickserv 6y ago

Similar situation here in Western Europe. I don't even have direct road access, need to take some stairs. So when I was buying a car electric made no sense. However lately the city has made some improvement to public charging stations at the train station, a couple streets even have charging spots. And businesses like IKEA are starting to have charging ports. Still too impractical for me, but I can see it being more feasible now than even a few months ago.

jeffrallen 6y ago

I live in Europe, with no possibility of home charging. My closest charger is 20 minutes away. My wife charges when she goes to work, rarely these days. Otherwise, we combine a shopping trip and charging, or a walk and charging. The first 50-80% of the charge goes fast, so you can easily pick up 100 km of range in the time it takes to go to the garden center. If you want an electric car, get it. Charging is not the problem with them: affordability, availability, and matching the range to your lifestyle are.