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Have you lived in a multifamily building in a city? Or even in a single-family home with only street parking? It’s not like we all have a garage at home to park

Have you lived in a multifamily building in a city? Or even in a single-family home with only street parking? It’s not like we all have a garage at home to park and charge a vehicle. Some do, but I would estimate the vast majority in my city do not. I’m not saying we need in-street contraptions like GP described, but “just charge at home” doesn’t cut it for a lot of people. I like the kiosks mentioned in the article, those seem pretty convenient for city-dwellers.

rootusrootus 5y ago
In the US, more than half of everyone lives in a single family detached house. So perhaps half the population doesn't have a major hurdle to at-home charging currently. For the rest, a 300 mile EV with once-a-week fast charging while they grocery shop is entirely viable. Yes we need to continue building out the infrastructure, but since your comparison is with a battery swap solution that doesn't currently exist in any form, we're already way ahead on that.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  > For the rest, a 300 mile EV with once-a-week fast charging while they grocery shop is entirely viable. Assuming you’re driving to get your groceries. That’s also not necessarily a good assumption here.
dghlsakjg 5y ago
The flip side of that is that the group you described is the one most likely to not need to charge every day. My experience was that 200 miles was a pretty reasonable amount for a full week. If I'm honest, most weeks I'm well under 100 miles. With fast chargers a weekly grocery trip or a charger near the office would probably satisfy most needs. Tesla claims that 15 mins. yields a 200 mile range. My gas hog Pathfinder gets about 250 miles between fillups that last about 10 minutes (bathroom and snack breaks when I'm on a road trip). It seems that range anxiety is kind of overkill. To be honest I'm surprised that coffee shops, and fast service restaurants haven't been installing chargers.
stetrain 5y ago
Do you visit a grocery store or similar establishment for at least 30 minutes per week? If so then there is potential for charging infrastructure to solve your use case without requiring every person to have home charging. DC fast charge infrastructure is growing at a huge rate. We have tested designs that are being mass manufactured and are installable in basically any parking lot with enough nearby grid capacity. New charger locations are being added literally daily across the US and the world. Tesla: https://supercharge.info https://supercharge.info Others (US): https://fastcharger.info https://fastcharger.info It's definitely going to be a different model than gas stations, but I think we can continue to install huge amounts of DC charging capacity at stores and along highways, combined with slower AC charging capacity at apartments, office buildings, etc, easier than we could install enough battery-swap capacity to handle the EV transition.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  > Do you visit a grocery store or similar establishment for at least 30 minutes per week? Not by car I don’t; there’s no need to. Likewise my company’s office basically doesn’t have parking, so charging there isn’t an option even if I did drive there regularly (but I don’t). Best option for me would be if my apartment building had EV chargers in the garage, but it doesn’t. (And my last place was more central and didn’t have a garage at all.)
  - stetrain 5y ago
    When do you use the car then, just personal travel? Without a commute your weekly charging needs should be pretty low. Charging definitely doesn't cover everyone yet but I think a lot can change in a decade, and running AC circuits off of the existing grid seems more feasible to me than mechanical battery swap stations that work across different brands and models of car.
    - ryukafalz 5y ago
      Basically, yeah. I generally don’t need it when I’m in the city. It’s only when I visit friends and family outside the city that I use it; most of them live in the suburbs since that’s where I moved from, and you mostly need a car to get there. Anyway, not suggesting that battery swap stations are particularly practical for electric cars? Those have huge batteries. But if stations for electric scooters as mentioned in the article get any traction, that’d be a win I think.

rootusrootus 5y ago

In the US, more than half of everyone lives in a single family detached house. So perhaps half the population doesn't have a major hurdle to at-home charging currently. For the rest, a 300 mile EV with once-a-week fast charging while they grocery shop is entirely viable. Yes we need to continue building out the infrastructure, but since your comparison is with a battery swap solution that doesn't currently exist in any form, we're already way ahead on that.

ryukafalz 5y ago
> For the rest, a 300 mile EV with once-a-week fast charging while they grocery shop is entirely viable. Assuming you’re driving to get your groceries. That’s also not necessarily a good assumption here.

dghlsakjg 5y ago

The flip side of that is that the group you described is the one most likely to not need to charge every day. My experience was that 200 miles was a pretty reasonable amount for a full week. If I'm honest, most weeks I'm well under 100 miles. With fast chargers a weekly grocery trip or a charger near the office would probably satisfy most needs. Tesla claims that 15 mins. yields a 200 mile range. My gas hog Pathfinder gets about 250 miles between fillups that last about 10 minutes (bathroom and snack breaks when I'm on a road trip). It seems that range anxiety is kind of overkill. To be honest I'm surprised that coffee shops, and fast service restaurants haven't been installing chargers.

stetrain 5y ago

Do you visit a grocery store or similar establishment for at least 30 minutes per week? If so then there is potential for charging infrastructure to solve your use case without requiring every person to have home charging. DC fast charge infrastructure is growing at a huge rate. We have tested designs that are being mass manufactured and are installable in basically any parking lot with enough nearby grid capacity. New charger locations are being added literally daily across the US and the world. Tesla: https://supercharge.info https://supercharge.info Others (US): https://fastcharger.info https://fastcharger.info It's definitely going to be a different model than gas stations, but I think we can continue to install huge amounts of DC charging capacity at stores and along highways, combined with slower AC charging capacity at apartments, office buildings, etc, easier than we could install enough battery-swap capacity to handle the EV transition.

ryukafalz 5y ago
> Do you visit a grocery store or similar establishment for at least 30 minutes per week? Not by car I don’t; there’s no need to. Likewise my company’s office basically doesn’t have parking, so charging there isn’t an option even if I did drive there regularly (but I don’t). Best option for me would be if my apartment building had EV chargers in the garage, but it doesn’t. (And my last place was more central and didn’t have a garage at all.)
- stetrain 5y ago
  When do you use the car then, just personal travel? Without a commute your weekly charging needs should be pretty low. Charging definitely doesn't cover everyone yet but I think a lot can change in a decade, and running AC circuits off of the existing grid seems more feasible to me than mechanical battery swap stations that work across different brands and models of car.
  - ryukafalz 5y ago
    Basically, yeah. I generally don’t need it when I’m in the city. It’s only when I visit friends and family outside the city that I use it; most of them live in the suburbs since that’s where I moved from, and you mostly need a car to get there. Anyway, not suggesting that battery swap stations are particularly practical for electric cars? Those have huge batteries. But if stations for electric scooters as mentioned in the article get any traction, that’d be a win I think.