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> I fear a future where there will be a privileged set of suburbanites who get to drive their subsidized cars from their subsidized jobs to their subsidized hom

> I fear a future where there will be a privileged set of suburbanites who get to drive their subsidized cars from their subsidized jobs to their subsidized homes and charge it with subsidized electricity, but a very large subset of people will be stuck driving combustion cars that are heavily carbon taxed and penalized That is _already_ the case. I could charge at home today, but why bother, next time I'm at the office I can fully charge at 0 cost to me (and a low cost to the employer, who gets electricity at much cheaper rates). I was supposed to get some subsidies too (but for bureaucracy reasons, could not). People around me are getting hit by high gas prices, they have their periodic oil changes, they need to fork cash for smog checks. That said, if humanity had gone the opposite route and we were trying to transition from EV to ICE, that task would be deemed impossible - building the network of gas stations, all the refinery and fuel transportation logistics is an incredible task. While electricity is everywhere. As for "chargers" (EVSE, not chargers), they are not expensive at all. It's peanuts for new construction. The main issue is existing buildings with old wiring(or non-existent wiring on garages). As for revenue, they could easily charge for them if they wanted to, today. Add some, say, Chargepoint stations, set the price and off you go.

Syonyk 4y ago
> Add some, say, Chargepoint stations, set the price and off you go. Ugh. Please don't. You pay more for the charger and the ongoing maintenance fees than you'd pay for electricity in an awful lot of cases with a "free, dumb charger." Chargepoint makes really nice stuff. Their hardware side is great, and the units are very well tested for long term operation. It's just their entire business model that I hate. Their model is, "We should be able to intermediate in, and get a cut of, all EV charging, everywhere except home. And ideally home if it's an apartment complex." And this is simply not needed in the bulk of cases. Apartments should either just wire a 240V EVSE circuit to apartments for charging ("Parking spot 101 goes to apartment 101, parking spot 102 goes to apartment 102, etc"), or just have some "EV charging" spots that are $20/mo or $40/mo or something. It's cheaper to do this than to try and monitor every kWh that goes into the EVs, and if the net is close enough, call it good. I say this having tried the cost recovery thing on a charger, and discovering that, with infrequent use, the $5/mo management fees to then recover costs were more expensive than literally just paying for the power. If a 240V/16A EVSE runs flat out for 30 days, at our local $0.10/kWh costs, that's $275/mo in power... but nobody will actually do that.
- sliken 4y ago
  Heh, yeah, 240V/16A is 370 miles a day, 11,262 a month, or 135,050 a year. While that's quite a bit, it's a bit sobering to see that $0.025 per mile.
  - Syonyk 4y ago
    I'm confused... Why is $0.025/mi sobering? That's about right for an EV. Gas is far higher, by an order of magnitude or so.
    - sliken 4y ago
      I just meant sobering in how cheap it is. One thing that's a bit worse for the environment is I enjoy driving an EV more and tend to drive it more than I drove an ICE. Quiet, fast ... sporty even, no oil changes, no gas station trips, not even a transmission. Sure I'm not burning oil, or even (mostly) brake pads, but I'm still turning magic pixies into motion and chewing through tires.

Syonyk 4y ago

> Add some, say, Chargepoint stations, set the price and off you go. Ugh. Please don't. You pay more for the charger and the ongoing maintenance fees than you'd pay for electricity in an awful lot of cases with a "free, dumb charger." Chargepoint makes really nice stuff. Their hardware side is great, and the units are very well tested for long term operation. It's just their entire business model that I hate. Their model is, "We should be able to intermediate in, and get a cut of, all EV charging, everywhere except home. And ideally home if it's an apartment complex." And this is simply not needed in the bulk of cases. Apartments should either just wire a 240V EVSE circuit to apartments for charging ("Parking spot 101 goes to apartment 101, parking spot 102 goes to apartment 102, etc"), or just have some "EV charging" spots that are $20/mo or $40/mo or something. It's cheaper to do this than to try and monitor every kWh that goes into the EVs, and if the net is close enough, call it good. I say this having tried the cost recovery thing on a charger, and discovering that, with infrequent use, the $5/mo management fees to then recover costs were more expensive than literally just paying for the power. If a 240V/16A EVSE runs flat out for 30 days, at our local $0.10/kWh costs, that's $275/mo in power... but nobody will actually do that.

sliken 4y ago
Heh, yeah, 240V/16A is 370 miles a day, 11,262 a month, or 135,050 a year. While that's quite a bit, it's a bit sobering to see that $0.025 per mile.
- Syonyk 4y ago
  I'm confused... Why is $0.025/mi sobering? That's about right for an EV. Gas is far higher, by an order of magnitude or so.
  - sliken 4y ago
    I just meant sobering in how cheap it is. One thing that's a bit worse for the environment is I enjoy driving an EV more and tend to drive it more than I drove an ICE. Quiet, fast ... sporty even, no oil changes, no gas station trips, not even a transmission. Sure I'm not burning oil, or even (mostly) brake pads, but I'm still turning magic pixies into motion and chewing through tires.