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Looking at inner cities, where most cars are, I don't see the opportunity to put enough charger stations in for everybody. Most cars are parked on the street. I

Looking at inner cities, where most cars are, I don't see the opportunity to put enough charger stations in for everybody. Most cars are parked on the street. It works now at comparatively low penetration, but I can't imagine it work close when almost every car needs charging. If you have to drive to a dedicated spot to do all your charging, all the time, >30 min for charging is /long/. Filling up a car is what, 5 min? And it lasts longer. Don't see this scaling, and people will not like it. How much power can you realistically get to an European inner-city parking garage without major infrastructure changes? Comparing the timeline for all-electric to the timeline of major construction projects in Germany, I'm not optimistic.... I think we need a "fluid"-refillable e-car. Hydrogen is an option, or maybe build a battery with a replaceable fluid as the energy store. But we might be in a trap: Right now, battery cars are clearly better -- better availability, range, price, choice. And now, charging is not a big problem in most areas, with dedicated spots for charging, it is sometimes easier to park than a gas car! But at some point, these spots will be saturated, and I don't see the capacity ramp up fast up with demand. (Same for green energy production, at least in Germany, without nuclear as an option). Part of that is "not in my neighborhood" initiatives against ugly charging ports running along every street, against construction for more cables, transformer stations etc. So we could end up with many battery cars and a charging infrastructure which doesn't scale fast enough, and no hydrogen cars, where we could retool the gas infrastructure for filling up and scale quickly. Hydrogen has the advantage that it is rather cheap and efficient to transport it over large distances. You could do hydrogen production in Africa, for example, and ship it to Europe. Even less danger than oil-tankers. A ship accident is either a big fire, or nothing. No large oil spill. Production could be local to power/far away from people, so social acceptance is better. In-car storage and safe filling up seems to be the problem.

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
>So we could end up with many battery cars and a charging infrastructure which doesn't scale fast enough, and no hydrogen cars, where we could retool the gas infrastructure for filling up and scale quickly. Do you really believe it's easier/cheaper to retool the gas infrastructure for hydrogen than adding more chargers? All house have electric plugs (enough to charge overnight) and parking lots and most sidewalks too (cf https://thedriven.io/2020/03/24/siemens-converts-all-lamp-posts-on-residential-street-to-electric-car-chargers/ https://thedriven.io/2020/03/24/siemens-converts-all-lamp-po...). Most EV don't need to be charged more than once a week, too.
- davrosthedalek 5y ago
  Most cars are not parked at houses, and I don't see cities putting up chargers at every parking spot. They don't have the money to do it. Edit: Where I lived in Germany, most parking lamps are at the house-side of the sidewalk. Can't run charging cables across the sidewalk everywhere. Trip hazard.
  - nickik 5y ago
    If you think there is no money for EV infrastructure, Hydrogen infrastructure investment is about 100x more, maybe that is even an underestimation. Most people in cities don't use their cars much either. Tesla is already building super chargers in cities. If you only drive in cities and you really only park at spot where there is no charging, and you can't charge at work. You can just go charging at a super charger once a week or so. To suggest hydrogen is a better option because of this very limited single concern, public parking in cities, is crazy in my opinion. Also the city could let a company do it as long as they get part of the money, and in fact this is already what many companies are doing.
    - etempleton 5y ago
      It is a great opportunity for cities to charge money on top of the direct energy costs for street parking. And yes, the infrastructure roll out will be extensive and take time, but it can happen slowly over time as electric car adoption expands.
thehappypm 5y ago
In the USA at least, a very small portion of the population lives in environments without dedicated parking and also own cars. There are cities like New York and Boston where you'll have folks just slumming it on street parking with no dedicated parking spot, but that's such a small portion of the population compared to urbanites with no car, urbanites with dedicated parking, and suburbanites/rural folks with their own garage.
tjpoutanen 5y ago
> Looking at inner cities, where most cars are, I don't see the opportunity to put enough charger stations in for everybody. Most cars are parked on the street. I see a future where autonomous EVs will drive themselves to charging stations, often in the middle of the night. Tesla will get there first.

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago

>So we could end up with many battery cars and a charging infrastructure which doesn't scale fast enough, and no hydrogen cars, where we could retool the gas infrastructure for filling up and scale quickly. Do you really believe it's easier/cheaper to retool the gas infrastructure for hydrogen than adding more chargers? All house have electric plugs (enough to charge overnight) and parking lots and most sidewalks too (cf https://thedriven.io/2020/03/24/siemens-converts-all-lamp-posts-on-residential-street-to-electric-car-chargers/ https://thedriven.io/2020/03/24/siemens-converts-all-lamp-po...). Most EV don't need to be charged more than once a week, too.

davrosthedalek 5y ago
Most cars are not parked at houses, and I don't see cities putting up chargers at every parking spot. They don't have the money to do it. Edit: Where I lived in Germany, most parking lamps are at the house-side of the sidewalk. Can't run charging cables across the sidewalk everywhere. Trip hazard.
- nickik 5y ago
  If you think there is no money for EV infrastructure, Hydrogen infrastructure investment is about 100x more, maybe that is even an underestimation. Most people in cities don't use their cars much either. Tesla is already building super chargers in cities. If you only drive in cities and you really only park at spot where there is no charging, and you can't charge at work. You can just go charging at a super charger once a week or so. To suggest hydrogen is a better option because of this very limited single concern, public parking in cities, is crazy in my opinion. Also the city could let a company do it as long as they get part of the money, and in fact this is already what many companies are doing.
  - etempleton 5y ago
    It is a great opportunity for cities to charge money on top of the direct energy costs for street parking. And yes, the infrastructure roll out will be extensive and take time, but it can happen slowly over time as electric car adoption expands.

thehappypm 5y ago

In the USA at least, a very small portion of the population lives in environments without dedicated parking and also own cars. There are cities like New York and Boston where you'll have folks just slumming it on street parking with no dedicated parking spot, but that's such a small portion of the population compared to urbanites with no car, urbanites with dedicated parking, and suburbanites/rural folks with their own garage.

tjpoutanen 5y ago

> Looking at inner cities, where most cars are, I don't see the opportunity to put enough charger stations in for everybody. Most cars are parked on the street. I see a future where autonomous EVs will drive themselves to charging stations, often in the middle of the night. Tesla will get there first.