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> Public charging stations may look like the electric version of the gas station, but nearly two-thirds of PEV drivers in the survey said they didn't use them.

> Public charging stations may look like the electric version of the gas station, but nearly two-thirds of PEV drivers in the survey said they didn't use them. Exactly why they didn't use the public stalls was not specified. because they charge at home! this article is quite silly. if you cant level 2 charge at home then yes... having an EV may be quite inconvenient. but all this "i can fill my SUV in three minutes" stuff is... dumb. know what's even more convenient? never stopping at a stupid gas station ever again. i wait 0 minutes for my car to charge because i plug it in when i get home and then go inside and forget all about it.

baby 5y ago
So if you live in the city and you do street parking you're screwed? What if you're doing a road trip?
- tenacious_tuna 5y ago
  I used to have a model 3; I used to live in a suburb with a garage, and we moved into downtown Chicago. We ditched the Tesla simply because we didn't want to have any car at all. To that end, if you're urban enough to not need a car, the point is moot. In my humble opinion, being urban-yet-still-needing-a-car-but-not-having-a-garage is an orthognal problem: we should put more effort into public transit or bike or walkability (e.g., more compact neighborhoods, with no street parking), with the end goal of reducing *all* car ownership. For road trips, level 3 charging *for teslas* is truly, truly excellent. About a year ago we traveled up to Michigan's upper peninsula, which at the time had no superchargers, but we were able to trickle charge off of a power socket on the porch of the friends we were visiting. We were planning a trip to family in rural Virginia before the pandemic struck, and we could either trickle charge off 110v outside their garage, or we could have backed the car up to the window outside their laundry room and used the 240v32A socket for their dryer. There's plenty of options for charging an EV, especially if you're willing to tolerate minor inconvenience. It is something you should know about, and plan around, definitely--but with the amount of effort Tesla is putting into expanding the supercharger network, and with the gradual rollout of more and more public level 2 charging, it's not nearly the issue I think many people make it out to be. Edit 10:36 CDT: spelling
  - baby 5y ago
    While I wholeheartedly agree with you, American cities suck with public transport or transportation in general. I've lived my whole life without a car, and just got a driver license at 32 because I can't really take the train to travel here in SF, and public transport is not good and not safe.
- hervature 5y ago
  I don't know why you're being down voted. From the parent, >> if you cant level 2 charge at home then yes... having an EV may be quite inconvenient. Seems to imply exactly what you said. I think maybe people are down voting because, if you put enough effort, then those things aren't a problem. For example, I traveled with a family in Colombia and the charging was not an issue. They had a 100m extension cord at one place. Every hotel needed a parking space close to where the electricity entered from the power lines to the building for the portable charging cord. We stopped multiple times for 5 hours which the kids used to play. In the end, we did everything we wanted to. But the driving was dictated by the car. A modern day road trip with a gas and EV is not even comparable. Again, not sure why you are down voted.
- pmorici 5y ago
  If you want to do road trips you need to buy an EV that supports Supercharging/DC Fast Charging. Same if you live in a home/apartment without a level 2 charger. Frankly the only brand that has good availability of DC Fast charging right now is Tesla. The Bolt didn't even support DC fast charging without an upgrade option until this model year just released. This is an example of why DC fast charging in anything but a Tesla kind of stinks. https://twitter.com/stevenewing/status/1388992276349612032 https://twitter.com/stevenewing/status/1388992276349612032
koheripbal 5y ago
I believe the issue is that the range of activities you can engage in is effectively limited to the roundtrip range of the vehicle since there is such a high refueling time. ....and so people with families can only reasonably buy an electric vehicle as a second car, so that they can restrict its usage to local commuting.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  Alternatively, get it as an only car, and rent a car for longer trips. I don't know how the economics work out for that - it probably depends a lot on both the family and the car - but, based on my experience of many years not owning a car myself, and going to the Hertz down the street when I needed one, I wouldn't be surprised if it can be made to work out reasonably well.
  - dham 5y ago
    That's what we do except we don't have an electric car. Just a Toyota Corolla paid off. Gas for it is literally a rounding error and we rent a van when we go on trips. Much cheaper that way.
  - pfranz 5y ago
    Ignoring EVs, it's often cheaper to rent for road trips. There are a bunch of other benefits; they're more consistently maintained, if there is an issue there is the option of swapping cars, you can rent for the size you need for that specific trip. This prevents you from overbuying when getting a commuter car that you'd use for rare stuff. The only downside to renting is they may not have inventory on holiday weekends. I've never had this problem.
    - bradlys 5y ago
      Another issue is that you’re limited to what they stock for rentals. While I drive nice cars at home, I pretty much have to exclusively drive crappy econoboxes for long distance rentals. And I’ve found that paying for a nicer car is worth it for road trips but hard to get a nice car - they just don’t stock them!
abdulmuhaimin 5y ago
let me turn the argument around. Having to make sure your EV is at the charging station for a certain time is much more a hassle than a three minute stop at gas station. Its a valid cons of owning an EV, dont pretend its "dumb" just because you like them, or you dont experience the pain
- projectileboy 5y ago
  I think it depends a lot on what your typical use cases might be. If you’re a traveling salesperson, it can be a hassle figuring out how to keep your phone charged. But for many (most?) people, they plug their phones in at night and never think about it.
msrenee 5y ago
Isn't New York trying to require heavy duty vehicles to be electric by 2045? That's a couple decades, but we can't even get people to adopt commuter vehicles because of the inconvenience of charging. How long and how many volts does an F750 need to charge? A 24 foot box truck? A semi? I commute 40 miles each way. It's going to be a very long time before my workplace has electric vehicle plug-ins. Even longer before my apartment complex even considers them. And can you imagine what they'd charge(hehe)? And God forbid we go on a road trip. A 300 mile range is a joke in the Midwest. It's 100 miles round trip to the capitol if you need something from the shops down there. How long will a decent size truck go on a charge? What if I'm hauling a trailer? 2 horses? 4? If we can't get a sedan to go more than 300 miles on a charge, how far is a decent-sized truck going to go hauling a load? You can put more batteries on them, but what about when you misjudge and you're between nothing and nowhere? Is someone going to bring a jug of electricity out to you to get you to the next charging station? I like the idea of an electric vehicle, I really do. It is absolutely not feasible for me. Or the majority of my coworkers. It would make way more sense for me to pick up a motorcycle to commute on as far as sustainability and energy efficiency. But the weather here is prohibitive for that. Even if I could reasonably charge an electric vehicle for my commute, I could not own it as my only vehicle. And I can't afford the taxes and maintenance on a second vehicle. It is just not an option for me or for most of the people I know who aren't upper middle class.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  We can mandate EV chargers anywhere we want them. Workplaces, apartments, wherever. We already do this with handicap parking spots, and the US government can and does subsidize commercial EV installs using tax code. If you run out of charge, you get a tow to a fast DC charger or home. AAA piloted an EV charger truck for dead EVs, and deprecated it because no one was using it. We can fly a helicopter on Mars, but we’re wringing our hands over the equivalent of dryer outlets and where they’re installed. It’s comical. Europe mandated all fast DC chargers inter operate, and everyone swapped their cables to CCS and supported frictionless payments because it was the law (even Tesla at their Superchargers) [1]. It’s a climate emergency [2], not a climate inconvenience, and we should start acting like it collectively. [1] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/16/standardization-of-ev-charging-in-the-eu/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/16/standardization-of-ev-c... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-are-living-in-a-climate-emergency-and-were-going-to-say-so/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-are-living-in-...
slimbods 5y ago
Home charging is great, but it only works out for people who have off street parking. That leaves a lot of people without off street parking that must use public chargers only, and that's very inconvenient.
- neilwilson 5y ago
  "Home charging is great, but it only works out for people who have off street parking." Charge at work then where you park your car. Otherwise why do you need an electric car? Similarly you wouldn't have a diesel car if your service station didn't have diesel.
  - packetlost 5y ago
    That requires that your work have electric charging stations and that they aren't already filled though.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    I think you have pointed to the problem, a lot of people likely bought an EV without thinking it fully through. Being generous, you could also imagine life situations changing in a way unfavourable to the practicality of the EV. Rental runs out and your new place doesn't have off-street parking, maybe you lose your job that had charging available etc.
    - natch 5y ago
      Or they bought one with poor range or no good fast charging network and didn’t realize they have options now. There’s a lot of ignorance out there! Other things are changing too. Employers are realizing that providing charging is table stakes. More chargers are being built out. In some places landlords are now legally required to approve a tenant’s written request for permission to install charging equipment. Yes you still have to choose your new rental wisely, but if you have fast chargers as a backup it’s hardly a crisis if there’s a gap. One also can think fully through whether burning gasoline is sustainable…
gccs 5y ago
>but all this "i can fill my SUV in three minutes" stuff is... dumb. know what's even more convenient? never stopping at a stupid gas station ever again. i wait 0 minutes for my car to charge because i plug it in when i get home and then go inside and forget all about it. If all you life consists of is driving around locally, then yes an EV would be convenient. Luckily, there is way more to life than that.
- cafard 5y ago
  This "way more to life" consists of driving way farther?

baby 5y ago

So if you live in the city and you do street parking you're screwed? What if you're doing a road trip?

tenacious_tuna 5y ago
I used to have a model 3; I used to live in a suburb with a garage, and we moved into downtown Chicago. We ditched the Tesla simply because we didn't want to have any car at all. To that end, if you're urban enough to not need a car, the point is moot. In my humble opinion, being urban-yet-still-needing-a-car-but-not-having-a-garage is an orthognal problem: we should put more effort into public transit or bike or walkability (e.g., more compact neighborhoods, with no street parking), with the end goal of reducing *all* car ownership. For road trips, level 3 charging *for teslas* is truly, truly excellent. About a year ago we traveled up to Michigan's upper peninsula, which at the time had no superchargers, but we were able to trickle charge off of a power socket on the porch of the friends we were visiting. We were planning a trip to family in rural Virginia before the pandemic struck, and we could either trickle charge off 110v outside their garage, or we could have backed the car up to the window outside their laundry room and used the 240v32A socket for their dryer. There's plenty of options for charging an EV, especially if you're willing to tolerate minor inconvenience. It is something you should know about, and plan around, definitely--but with the amount of effort Tesla is putting into expanding the supercharger network, and with the gradual rollout of more and more public level 2 charging, it's not nearly the issue I think many people make it out to be. Edit 10:36 CDT: spelling
- baby 5y ago
  While I wholeheartedly agree with you, American cities suck with public transport or transportation in general. I've lived my whole life without a car, and just got a driver license at 32 because I can't really take the train to travel here in SF, and public transport is not good and not safe.
hervature 5y ago
I don't know why you're being down voted. From the parent, >> if you cant level 2 charge at home then yes... having an EV may be quite inconvenient. Seems to imply exactly what you said. I think maybe people are down voting because, if you put enough effort, then those things aren't a problem. For example, I traveled with a family in Colombia and the charging was not an issue. They had a 100m extension cord at one place. Every hotel needed a parking space close to where the electricity entered from the power lines to the building for the portable charging cord. We stopped multiple times for 5 hours which the kids used to play. In the end, we did everything we wanted to. But the driving was dictated by the car. A modern day road trip with a gas and EV is not even comparable. Again, not sure why you are down voted.
pmorici 5y ago
If you want to do road trips you need to buy an EV that supports Supercharging/DC Fast Charging. Same if you live in a home/apartment without a level 2 charger. Frankly the only brand that has good availability of DC Fast charging right now is Tesla. The Bolt didn't even support DC fast charging without an upgrade option until this model year just released. This is an example of why DC fast charging in anything but a Tesla kind of stinks. https://twitter.com/stevenewing/status/1388992276349612032 https://twitter.com/stevenewing/status/1388992276349612032

koheripbal 5y ago

I believe the issue is that the range of activities you can engage in is effectively limited to the roundtrip range of the vehicle since there is such a high refueling time. ....and so people with families can only reasonably buy an electric vehicle as a second car, so that they can restrict its usage to local commuting.

mumblemumble 5y ago
Alternatively, get it as an only car, and rent a car for longer trips. I don't know how the economics work out for that - it probably depends a lot on both the family and the car - but, based on my experience of many years not owning a car myself, and going to the Hertz down the street when I needed one, I wouldn't be surprised if it can be made to work out reasonably well.
- dham 5y ago
  That's what we do except we don't have an electric car. Just a Toyota Corolla paid off. Gas for it is literally a rounding error and we rent a van when we go on trips. Much cheaper that way.
- pfranz 5y ago
  Ignoring EVs, it's often cheaper to rent for road trips. There are a bunch of other benefits; they're more consistently maintained, if there is an issue there is the option of swapping cars, you can rent for the size you need for that specific trip. This prevents you from overbuying when getting a commuter car that you'd use for rare stuff. The only downside to renting is they may not have inventory on holiday weekends. I've never had this problem.
  - bradlys 5y ago
    Another issue is that you’re limited to what they stock for rentals. While I drive nice cars at home, I pretty much have to exclusively drive crappy econoboxes for long distance rentals. And I’ve found that paying for a nicer car is worth it for road trips but hard to get a nice car - they just don’t stock them!

abdulmuhaimin 5y ago

let me turn the argument around. Having to make sure your EV is at the charging station for a certain time is much more a hassle than a three minute stop at gas station. Its a valid cons of owning an EV, dont pretend its "dumb" just because you like them, or you dont experience the pain

projectileboy 5y ago
I think it depends a lot on what your typical use cases might be. If you’re a traveling salesperson, it can be a hassle figuring out how to keep your phone charged. But for many (most?) people, they plug their phones in at night and never think about it.

msrenee 5y ago

Isn't New York trying to require heavy duty vehicles to be electric by 2045? That's a couple decades, but we can't even get people to adopt commuter vehicles because of the inconvenience of charging. How long and how many volts does an F750 need to charge? A 24 foot box truck? A semi? I commute 40 miles each way. It's going to be a very long time before my workplace has electric vehicle plug-ins. Even longer before my apartment complex even considers them. And can you imagine what they'd charge(hehe)? And God forbid we go on a road trip. A 300 mile range is a joke in the Midwest. It's 100 miles round trip to the capitol if you need something from the shops down there. How long will a decent size truck go on a charge? What if I'm hauling a trailer? 2 horses? 4? If we can't get a sedan to go more than 300 miles on a charge, how far is a decent-sized truck going to go hauling a load? You can put more batteries on them, but what about when you misjudge and you're between nothing and nowhere? Is someone going to bring a jug of electricity out to you to get you to the next charging station? I like the idea of an electric vehicle, I really do. It is absolutely not feasible for me. Or the majority of my coworkers. It would make way more sense for me to pick up a motorcycle to commute on as far as sustainability and energy efficiency. But the weather here is prohibitive for that. Even if I could reasonably charge an electric vehicle for my commute, I could not own it as my only vehicle. And I can't afford the taxes and maintenance on a second vehicle. It is just not an option for me or for most of the people I know who aren't upper middle class.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
We can mandate EV chargers anywhere we want them. Workplaces, apartments, wherever. We already do this with handicap parking spots, and the US government can and does subsidize commercial EV installs using tax code. If you run out of charge, you get a tow to a fast DC charger or home. AAA piloted an EV charger truck for dead EVs, and deprecated it because no one was using it. We can fly a helicopter on Mars, but we’re wringing our hands over the equivalent of dryer outlets and where they’re installed. It’s comical. Europe mandated all fast DC chargers inter operate, and everyone swapped their cables to CCS and supported frictionless payments because it was the law (even Tesla at their Superchargers) [1]. It’s a climate emergency [2], not a climate inconvenience, and we should start acting like it collectively. [1] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/16/standardization-of-ev-charging-in-the-eu/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/16/standardization-of-ev-c... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-are-living-in-a-climate-emergency-and-were-going-to-say-so/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-are-living-in-...

slimbods 5y ago

Home charging is great, but it only works out for people who have off street parking. That leaves a lot of people without off street parking that must use public chargers only, and that's very inconvenient.

neilwilson 5y ago
"Home charging is great, but it only works out for people who have off street parking." Charge at work then where you park your car. Otherwise why do you need an electric car? Similarly you wouldn't have a diesel car if your service station didn't have diesel.
- packetlost 5y ago
  That requires that your work have electric charging stations and that they aren't already filled though.
- ehnto 5y ago
  I think you have pointed to the problem, a lot of people likely bought an EV without thinking it fully through. Being generous, you could also imagine life situations changing in a way unfavourable to the practicality of the EV. Rental runs out and your new place doesn't have off-street parking, maybe you lose your job that had charging available etc.
  - natch 5y ago
    Or they bought one with poor range or no good fast charging network and didn’t realize they have options now. There’s a lot of ignorance out there! Other things are changing too. Employers are realizing that providing charging is table stakes. More chargers are being built out. In some places landlords are now legally required to approve a tenant’s written request for permission to install charging equipment. Yes you still have to choose your new rental wisely, but if you have fast chargers as a backup it’s hardly a crisis if there’s a gap. One also can think fully through whether burning gasoline is sustainable…

gccs 5y ago

>but all this "i can fill my SUV in three minutes" stuff is... dumb. know what's even more convenient? never stopping at a stupid gas station ever again. i wait 0 minutes for my car to charge because i plug it in when i get home and then go inside and forget all about it. If all you life consists of is driving around locally, then yes an EV would be convenient. Luckily, there is way more to life than that.

cafard 5y ago
This "way more to life" consists of driving way farther?