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I hear this view a lot - my main rebuttal is 'but can't top up your car with petrol/gas/diesel at home either'. The infra around EV charging needs to be much m

I hear this view a lot - my main rebuttal is 'but can't top up your car with petrol/gas/diesel at home either'. The infra around EV charging needs to be much much better, I totally agree with this, but the idea that everyone will be able to charge their cars at home just isn't going to happen

Yizahi 4y ago
Let's imagine I need a car for a daily commute. Or work. After a day ends, I need to get it to the charging station, which is away from the home. I leave the car there and take a bus to the home. There I do something not engaging too much, because in 1-3 hours I need to get out again, at night, get a bus to the charging station (longer waits late in the evening too), then get the car to home and then finally I can rest. It's totally not an option. Also taking a bus or tram twice a day additionally is not free, and kinda defeats the economy part of the EV car. PS edit: lets add some concrete numbers - the nearest station to my current home (in the peripheral region of the big city, but not the outskirts) is 10 minutes walk away, 2 (two) 22kW type-2 stations. The seconds closest station is 10 (ten) 100kW stations and it is 33 minutes away by bus with a single transfer. So I would need to wait for bus 4 times just to get to the big station and back.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  You shouldn’t need to charge every day in a city. Also, a lot of people will be able to charge at home. You don’t need special infrastructure for this, you can just plug into it into the mains.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
Why would that be a valid rebuttal? From turning into a gas station to exiting, completely filling a gas tank takes, at most, 5 minutes and gas stations are everywhere. How long does charging to be able to travel the same distance take?
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  It's a rebuttal because it reduces local/regional pressure on fast chargers. If the average driver charges at home, fast chargers mostly only need to see the traffic of long distance drives. It's a move from strong centralization (gas stations are the only place to refuel a gas car) to much larger decentralization (in theory an EV can charge anywhere the electric grid touches and especially in the US the electric grid sure touches a large amount of the country, even "wilderness areas"). In terms of real world charging times added to travel the same distance, the raw numbers are generally for the same distance where you need one gas stop you need one charging stop. The charging stop is 15-30 minutes, which seems like a clear "loss" if you see gas stops as only 5 minutes. But gas refueling is a necessary serial task and you should not do anything else while waiting for your car to refuel. (technically, there are even laws that it is illegal to not watch your car the entire time), while charging is a parallel task and you can eat/hit the restrooms/do any number of other things while you wait. Experientially you may not notice any "lost time" in comparison of the two approaches depending on how you use refueling stops today. It sounds like a lot of lost time on paper, but you make up for it in parallel tasking.
cronokirby 4y ago
One big difference is the density of the fuel. You can fill a car with gas in under a minute. While fast-charging (like Tesla's super charging) has growing deployment, that's still at least 15 minutes or so, which is a significant difference. And, the density of that is just not there yet, so for the near future having charging at home makes daily driving much more convenient.
- nulbyte 4y ago
  The difference is: You're not standing around waiting for my car to charge. Your parked to do something else. Depending on where there is, there may well be enough density. Here, we have 129 stations, and half of them are free. It goes up to over 300 if you include the rest of the metro. We're not that large a city, either.
  - Yizahi 4y ago
    I just looked at the plugshare map of the city I'm at currently. It show 101 stations up to 60 minutes pure drive distance. Also that's all kinds of chargers, private hotel spots, small two post stations, big stations. Lets charitably assume that ALL of them are inside the city and that ALL of them are fast 10 post stations. So that's a capacity for about a thousand EV cars. That's in 1 million population city. I guess that's not enough at all. PS: and what do you do for several hours while your car charges at the station? Walk in circles around the small overprices station shop? Drink coffee?
  - shagie 4y ago
    Imagine the road trip with an EV. We're driving from Chicago to Memphis (about 600 miles or two full charges of a Tesla). First question is "is there sufficient charging in the 200 - 300 mile distance? If you run out of charge, its a bit more difficult than "call AAA to bring you a gallon of gas" ( https://tiremeetsroad.com/2022/05/28/aaa-members-will-tow-truck-driver-bring-gas-youre-low-gas-light-cant-make-nearest-gas-station/ https://tiremeetsroad.com/2022/05/28/aaa-members-will-tow-tr... ). I'm sure that tow trucks will get to the point where they also have a charger, but we're in new territory here. The next issue is the time to fuel. With a road trip, this isn't a "park in the EV vehicle spot at Fry's while you go shopping". With a gas station, I'm in and out in about 3 minutes tops. A Tesla super charger station takes 15-30 minutes - 5x to 10x longer than regular combustion. Aside from the "you're there for 5x longer", this means that to get the same throughput of vehicles served at the station it needs 5x to 10x more space than the gas station. This is where its going to be real interesting. The image at https://electrek.co/2022/05/19/tesla-building-new-worlds-largest-supercharger-station-mojave-desert/ https://electrek.co/2022/05/19/tesla-building-new-worlds-lar... claims it will be 100 stalls (There are about 30 in the picture, so 3x larger than the picture). That's 200-400 cars per hour. That's a 20 pump station - here's a 28 pump station ( https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5755315,-89.7774477,3a,75y,222.37h,89.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sk3zf8wmYVmiFrbTRgXKp6A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5755315,-89.7774477,3a,75y,2... ) EVs are great if you are returning home each night or are in an area where there are EV stations while daily errands are run. I have difficulty seeing them useful for distance travel and the situations where one charges midway each day. One such road trip / distance travel experience - https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-rented-an-electric-car-for-a-four-day-road-trip-i-spent-more-time-charging-it-than-i-did-sleeping-11654268401?st=uta9wp4683e6t6s&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-rented-an-electric-car-for-a-...
sdflhasjd 4y ago
I agree, but right now in the UK, aside from the odd token charging point in a supermarket car park, realiably accessible charging stations are few and far between, particulary outside major city centres.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Where I live (north west london), there’s a pilot scheme where they’ve installed roadside chargers on my residential street (these are pretty small - they look more like “cats eyes” than petrol pumps). I’m guessing that’s the future.

Yizahi 4y ago

Let's imagine I need a car for a daily commute. Or work. After a day ends, I need to get it to the charging station, which is away from the home. I leave the car there and take a bus to the home. There I do something not engaging too much, because in 1-3 hours I need to get out again, at night, get a bus to the charging station (longer waits late in the evening too), then get the car to home and then finally I can rest. It's totally not an option. Also taking a bus or tram twice a day additionally is not free, and kinda defeats the economy part of the EV car. PS edit: lets add some concrete numbers - the nearest station to my current home (in the peripheral region of the big city, but not the outskirts) is 10 minutes walk away, 2 (two) 22kW type-2 stations. The seconds closest station is 10 (ten) 100kW stations and it is 33 minutes away by bus with a single transfer. So I would need to wait for bus 4 times just to get to the big station and back.

nicoburns 4y ago
You shouldn’t need to charge every day in a city. Also, a lot of people will be able to charge at home. You don’t need special infrastructure for this, you can just plug into it into the mains.

lotsofpulp 4y ago

Why would that be a valid rebuttal? From turning into a gas station to exiting, completely filling a gas tank takes, at most, 5 minutes and gas stations are everywhere. How long does charging to be able to travel the same distance take?

WorldMaker 4y ago
It's a rebuttal because it reduces local/regional pressure on fast chargers. If the average driver charges at home, fast chargers mostly only need to see the traffic of long distance drives. It's a move from strong centralization (gas stations are the only place to refuel a gas car) to much larger decentralization (in theory an EV can charge anywhere the electric grid touches and especially in the US the electric grid sure touches a large amount of the country, even "wilderness areas"). In terms of real world charging times added to travel the same distance, the raw numbers are generally for the same distance where you need one gas stop you need one charging stop. The charging stop is 15-30 minutes, which seems like a clear "loss" if you see gas stops as only 5 minutes. But gas refueling is a necessary serial task and you should not do anything else while waiting for your car to refuel. (technically, there are even laws that it is illegal to not watch your car the entire time), while charging is a parallel task and you can eat/hit the restrooms/do any number of other things while you wait. Experientially you may not notice any "lost time" in comparison of the two approaches depending on how you use refueling stops today. It sounds like a lot of lost time on paper, but you make up for it in parallel tasking.

cronokirby 4y ago

One big difference is the density of the fuel. You can fill a car with gas in under a minute. While fast-charging (like Tesla's super charging) has growing deployment, that's still at least 15 minutes or so, which is a significant difference. And, the density of that is just not there yet, so for the near future having charging at home makes daily driving much more convenient.

nulbyte 4y ago
The difference is: You're not standing around waiting for my car to charge. Your parked to do something else. Depending on where there is, there may well be enough density. Here, we have 129 stations, and half of them are free. It goes up to over 300 if you include the rest of the metro. We're not that large a city, either.
- Yizahi 4y ago
  I just looked at the plugshare map of the city I'm at currently. It show 101 stations up to 60 minutes pure drive distance. Also that's all kinds of chargers, private hotel spots, small two post stations, big stations. Lets charitably assume that ALL of them are inside the city and that ALL of them are fast 10 post stations. So that's a capacity for about a thousand EV cars. That's in 1 million population city. I guess that's not enough at all. PS: and what do you do for several hours while your car charges at the station? Walk in circles around the small overprices station shop? Drink coffee?
- shagie 4y ago
  Imagine the road trip with an EV. We're driving from Chicago to Memphis (about 600 miles or two full charges of a Tesla). First question is "is there sufficient charging in the 200 - 300 mile distance? If you run out of charge, its a bit more difficult than "call AAA to bring you a gallon of gas" ( https://tiremeetsroad.com/2022/05/28/aaa-members-will-tow-truck-driver-bring-gas-youre-low-gas-light-cant-make-nearest-gas-station/ https://tiremeetsroad.com/2022/05/28/aaa-members-will-tow-tr... ). I'm sure that tow trucks will get to the point where they also have a charger, but we're in new territory here. The next issue is the time to fuel. With a road trip, this isn't a "park in the EV vehicle spot at Fry's while you go shopping". With a gas station, I'm in and out in about 3 minutes tops. A Tesla super charger station takes 15-30 minutes - 5x to 10x longer than regular combustion. Aside from the "you're there for 5x longer", this means that to get the same throughput of vehicles served at the station it needs 5x to 10x more space than the gas station. This is where its going to be real interesting. The image at https://electrek.co/2022/05/19/tesla-building-new-worlds-largest-supercharger-station-mojave-desert/ https://electrek.co/2022/05/19/tesla-building-new-worlds-lar... claims it will be 100 stalls (There are about 30 in the picture, so 3x larger than the picture). That's 200-400 cars per hour. That's a 20 pump station - here's a 28 pump station ( https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5755315,-89.7774477,3a,75y,222.37h,89.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sk3zf8wmYVmiFrbTRgXKp6A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5755315,-89.7774477,3a,75y,2... ) EVs are great if you are returning home each night or are in an area where there are EV stations while daily errands are run. I have difficulty seeing them useful for distance travel and the situations where one charges midway each day. One such road trip / distance travel experience - https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-rented-an-electric-car-for-a-four-day-road-trip-i-spent-more-time-charging-it-than-i-did-sleeping-11654268401?st=uta9wp4683e6t6s&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-rented-an-electric-car-for-a-...

sdflhasjd 4y ago

I agree, but right now in the UK, aside from the odd token charging point in a supermarket car park, realiably accessible charging stations are few and far between, particulary outside major city centres.

nicoburns 4y ago
Where I live (north west london), there’s a pilot scheme where they’ve installed roadside chargers on my residential street (these are pretty small - they look more like “cats eyes” than petrol pumps). I’m guessing that’s the future.