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I don't know where you live but I live in western Europe and almost every household owns a car that they park somewhere on the street. There almost no charging

I don't know where you live but I live in western Europe and almost every household owns a car that they park somewhere on the street. There almost no charging stations around. Now I just can't imagine a universe where every street has enough chargers for EVERY single household. That's just utopic.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Is there a gas pump for every street parked car? No. Contention for EV charging is trivial to charge with a combination of home, workplace, public parking, and street parking charging.
- Swizec 5y ago
  You don’t need a gas pump for every car because gassing up doesn’t take hours. In many places there isn’t even enough street parking to reliably park your car every night. You often have to park illegally and wake up early to move the car before the ticket comes. If there isn’t even enough parking how is there going to be enough overnight charging?
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Are you telling me the car is never parked legally anywhere and is in constant motion? Charging exclusively at fast DC chargers is feasible and done by many Tesla owners.
    - Swizec 5y ago
      No I’m saying that “I will have a place to charge overnight every night” is unfeasible. Whether that’s good enough depends on what you’re doing and your car’s range. edit: I remember renting a Tesla once in San Francisco and when we got home with very low charge after a fun trip (on which we had to visit a random small town for an hour just to top up a little), we couldn’t find a place to charge. Everything the Tesla map showed was a locked garage with no public access. After a frustrating hour of searching and the car increasingly panicking at us about permanent damage, we resorted to going back to the only place we knew for sure it could charge – back where we rented it from. We then ubered home for $20 and back to the Tesla next morning for another $20 (we rented for 3 days). It was easily one of the frustratingest cars I ever rented.
      - mjevans 5y ago
        If you're renting housing (with slowly increasing exceptions, mostly at higher end hotels and recently renovated apartments) this is a tough problem.
    - tzs 5y ago
      Fast DC chargers are still more than an order of magnitude slower than refueling an ICE car for an equivalent amount of travel.
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
        It’s fast enough for Tesla to sell almost a million EVs a year and to be unable to build vehicles fast enough to keep up with demand. Those who argue the problems haven’t been solved are ignoring the very clear market forces demonstrating that they have been. Sometimes my Tesla charges “too fast” (~20 min) and I have to move the vehicle before my shopping or rest stop is complete. It helps to colocate fast chargers at businesses people patron anyway (supermarkets, for example), where they’ll naturally take longer than the vehicle will take to charge. These are solved problems, it’s install and equipment colocating logistics at this point.
        tzs 5y ago
        My point is that with current EVs you need to be able to overlap charging with other things. For those who can have a charger at home they can overlap charging with sleeping. For those who have chargers at work, they can overlap charging with work. If there is parking lot charging where you shop you can overlap it with shopping, although most efforts I've seen in that direction only have a handful of charging spots. Maybe someday there will be enough of those spots that people who don't have home or work charging will be able to do much of the charging while shopping. But as long as we are still at the stage where many people would have to specifically go to a charging place much like they currently refuel their ICE, the speed difference will be noticeable. For a person that drives the average amount in the US it is about an hour a year sitting at gas stations vs about 11 hours a year sitting at fast charging stations. (Of course there may be offsetting time savings. I believe some places allow EVs to use HOV lanes regardless of the number of passengers. If you have a solo commute during times of high traffic, the HOV lanes might save you more than 10 hours a year).
Hithredin 5y ago
Why even bother charging when you could replace a loan battery at pump station ?

toomuchtodo 5y ago

Is there a gas pump for every street parked car? No. Contention for EV charging is trivial to charge with a combination of home, workplace, public parking, and street parking charging.

Swizec 5y ago
You don’t need a gas pump for every car because gassing up doesn’t take hours. In many places there isn’t even enough street parking to reliably park your car every night. You often have to park illegally and wake up early to move the car before the ticket comes. If there isn’t even enough parking how is there going to be enough overnight charging?
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Are you telling me the car is never parked legally anywhere and is in constant motion? Charging exclusively at fast DC chargers is feasible and done by many Tesla owners.
  - Swizec 5y ago
    No I’m saying that “I will have a place to charge overnight every night” is unfeasible. Whether that’s good enough depends on what you’re doing and your car’s range. edit: I remember renting a Tesla once in San Francisco and when we got home with very low charge after a fun trip (on which we had to visit a random small town for an hour just to top up a little), we couldn’t find a place to charge. Everything the Tesla map showed was a locked garage with no public access. After a frustrating hour of searching and the car increasingly panicking at us about permanent damage, we resorted to going back to the only place we knew for sure it could charge – back where we rented it from. We then ubered home for $20 and back to the Tesla next morning for another $20 (we rented for 3 days). It was easily one of the frustratingest cars I ever rented.
    - mjevans 5y ago
      If you're renting housing (with slowly increasing exceptions, mostly at higher end hotels and recently renovated apartments) this is a tough problem.
  - tzs 5y ago
    Fast DC chargers are still more than an order of magnitude slower than refueling an ICE car for an equivalent amount of travel.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      It’s fast enough for Tesla to sell almost a million EVs a year and to be unable to build vehicles fast enough to keep up with demand. Those who argue the problems haven’t been solved are ignoring the very clear market forces demonstrating that they have been. Sometimes my Tesla charges “too fast” (~20 min) and I have to move the vehicle before my shopping or rest stop is complete. It helps to colocate fast chargers at businesses people patron anyway (supermarkets, for example), where they’ll naturally take longer than the vehicle will take to charge. These are solved problems, it’s install and equipment colocating logistics at this point.
      - tzs 5y ago
        My point is that with current EVs you need to be able to overlap charging with other things. For those who can have a charger at home they can overlap charging with sleeping. For those who have chargers at work, they can overlap charging with work. If there is parking lot charging where you shop you can overlap it with shopping, although most efforts I've seen in that direction only have a handful of charging spots. Maybe someday there will be enough of those spots that people who don't have home or work charging will be able to do much of the charging while shopping. But as long as we are still at the stage where many people would have to specifically go to a charging place much like they currently refuel their ICE, the speed difference will be noticeable. For a person that drives the average amount in the US it is about an hour a year sitting at gas stations vs about 11 hours a year sitting at fast charging stations. (Of course there may be offsetting time savings. I believe some places allow EVs to use HOV lanes regardless of the number of passengers. If you have a solo commute during times of high traffic, the HOV lanes might save you more than 10 hours a year).

Hithredin 5y ago

Why even bother charging when you could replace a loan battery at pump station ?