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Power delivery exists more places than gasoline delivery. The number of places that have gas but no power is very, very low. Enough to ignore. It's amazing to

• scld 4y ago
  The logistics of a 15-30 minute charge time at a power station seems harder than a 1.5 to 3 minute gasoline fill, IMO.
  • ceejayoz 4y ago
    Chargers at work. At the grocery store. At your doctors appointment. Most people spend a significant time with their car sitting somewhere for at least that amount of time.
    • Patrol8394 4y ago
      At work? For those lucky enough to have chargers at work, good luck when fighting for one. Also, I really hope the world keep shifting towards remote working; I won’t drive to the office just to charge my car.
      • brianwawok 4y ago
        You have it backwards. Put chargers where people park cars. Don’t awkwardly drive to a random place to charge. For 75%? Of people that can be at home. For others work. For others the grocery store.
        • nonethewiser 4y ago
          Most cars parked at "home" dont have access to a charger.
          • brianwawok 4y ago
            Most? In what country?
            • ralph84 4y ago
              Assuming they meant access to a L2 charger at home, every country? Sure L2 chargers can be installed, but in a lot of cases it requires upgrading the electrical service and replacing the electrical panel which isn't a home improvement project most car buyers are looking to undertake.
              • neon_electro 4y ago
                Which is why GM has an ongoing incentive program to try to alleviate that problem: https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/living-electric/home-charging/terms-conditions https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/living-electric/home-char...
                • ralph84 4y ago
                  > The electrical panel must have 40 amps of spare ampacity according to the load calculation for the new breaker This is where the incentive program breaks down and the 4- or 5-figure electrician quotes start for a lot of houses that were built in a time and place where natural gas powered all of the heavy appliances and panels were sized for 60- or 100-amp service.
            • esskay 4y ago
              The UK for one, and I dare say most of Europe. Our nations are vastly older than the US and were not purpose built for cars. Many here have on street parking, you can't dangle a cable from your house to your car (which may not be outside of your house). There's been arguments about putting them on lamp posts - ok, but again, cables. 1 lamp post for ~10 cars doesnt really work. Plucking a random average UK street off of Google maps - figure out how you charge cars at 6pm when everyones home from work and this road is full of cars on both sides of the street: https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4257624,-2.9412328,3a,60y,222.81h,75.75t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s0CcOfoikC30AiVFd9U02AQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4257624,-2.9412328,3a,60y,22...
    • scld 4y ago
      True, but ideally we'd reduce land that's allotted to simply parking a car long-term, instead of turning a single gas station into something like 250 parking spaces spread out around town. There are just certain sections of the country where you'd either have to turn half of the streetlamps into a chargers (maybe a good idea?)...or make a modular battery swap gas station scheme....or stick with ICE.
      • markdown 4y ago
        You'd never have to visit a "gas" station. You'd charge at home, at work, everywhere the car parks. Every parking lot in every building will be a charging station. You plug in your car wherever you are, and get a bill from the electricity company at the end of the month. Just park the car, and the lot will charge your batteries for you.
        • nonethewiser 4y ago
          So instead of building some gas stations here and there we just install hundreds of thousands charging stations on private and public property across a metro?
          • bryanlarsen 4y ago
            It's not a "charging station", it's an electrical outlet. Your house probably has a couple dozen of them, they're cheap and easy to install. In cold regions, most parking spots already have one so people can plug in their block heater. That's proof by example that it can be done.
          • theshrike79 4y ago
            You need to change your view of a "charging station". It's not the huge fridge sized thing that says "Electrify America" or something on it. It's just a normal plug, maybe with some components related to metering and billing included. Load balancing if you want to be fancy.
        • scld 4y ago
          Yeah, the issue is that you'll either have to install chargers every 10 feet in almost every city, or come up with some scheme to swap batteries, or have more "gas" stations because the charge time is longer. My town has on average 1 car per household, but I'd guess like 0.25 off street spots per household. That's a lot of infrastructure on public land.
    • bobthepanda 4y ago
      at least where i am, these either do not have their own parking lots, or have multistory lots where maybe 5 spaces out of dozens are equipped with chargers, and I have no idea how feasible a full retrofit would be. in the pre-pandemic world they had to implement a queue system for the charging spots, so you couldn't just park your car the whole day in one and had to move it out to let someone else have a turn.
      • devoutsalsa 4y ago
        I'm also wondering how this works in areas where it snows. My dad's old apartment in Virginia would routinely get snow in the winter, and his apartment complex had no covered parking. One needed to park in the limited number of spaces in the parking lot or park on the street. Imagine trying to coordinate rotating EV charging while digging your car out of the snow. I'm sure someone will think of a solution, but it's not immediately obvious how one would handle that.
        • debesyla 4y ago
          I'm kinda joking but can the solution be a... Roof? (Like, over the parking lot, place to install solar panels or just a simply a roof from elements?) Of course, this would probably (?) be a bit absurd for street parking, that's true.
          • falcolas 4y ago
            Also expensive, to provide a roof that’s able to withstand snow and solar panels.
            • theshrike79 4y ago
              The roof doesn't need to "withstand" snow. It just needs to be sloped enough for it to fall down. Source: My dad has his hobby car in a glorified tent during winter, works just fine, the roof is in a 45 degree-ish slant so any snow just falls off.
    • rtlfe 4y ago
      > Chargers at work. At the grocery store. At your doctors appointment. This doesn't work in cities. None of those places have parking lots. And don't say "chargers on all the curbs" because we can't afford to further entrench car supremacy and make it harder to reallocate space to bus lanes and pedestrians.
      • ceejayoz 4y ago
        > This doesn't work in cities. None of those places have parking lots. Put the chargers where the cars are parking. With vanishingly few exceptions, they're all parking somewhere. I'm all for a less car-centric society, but it's gonna be easier to reach that future if we address climate change a bit on the way.
        • rtlfe 4y ago
          > Put the chargers where the cars are parking. That would really be doubling down on the high cost of free parking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking
          • ceejayoz 4y ago
            I'm of the opinion the cost of climate change is likely to exceed the cost of free parking.
            • rtlfe 4y ago
              Great, so replace all the ICE parking lanes with electric bus rapid transit lanes. It will do much more for climate change than car chargers. Edit: Should have mentioned the climate change is one of the biggest components of the cost of free parking. Without all the government-mandated parking spaces for the past 60 years, there would be far fewer cars today. It's not too late to reverse that.
            • nonethewiser 4y ago
              Then the power source of for cars needs to be more available than what you're suggesting.
    • parkingrift 4y ago
      Charging anywhere but home absolutely ruins EV economics. It’s almost impossible to make an economic argument to buy an EV in 2022, but it’s outright impossible to make that argument without fuel savings.
      • seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        It actually doesn’t. If you bought an EV and just used L3 chargers to fill it, you would still come out far ahead given the current price of gas, at least where I live. But I generally agree: unless you drive a lot and can charge at home (or at work, or both), you aren’t going to get very far ahead with an EV (and lots of L3 charging supposedly strains the battery). But they are also really fun to drive, so it might still make sense for some people to get them even if they aren’t going to be saving money.
        • parkingrift 4y ago
          Hard disagree. It’s definitely area dependent but in New York for me it’s a 8-12 year ROI depending on fuel prices and energy prices. This is me comparing a CRV and a Model Y. If I swap out my energy savings and charge exclusively not at home the ROI horizon goes to infinity.
    • velhartice 4y ago
      Yes the chargers will just magically appear everywhere for free.
      • theshrike79 4y ago
        The chargers aren't that expensive. Mine was 300€ + 2 hours of installation by an electrician. Fancier Level 2 ones with Wifi and shit are up to 1k€.
  • dangrossman 4y ago
    5 years ago, the most common EV on the road only went 84 miles to a charge and couldn't charge faster than about 45 kW. Today, you can get EVs with 500 mile ranges and charge at over 300 kW. By the mid-2030s when EVs are supposed to be the only thing on new car lots, they'll probably take less time to charge than pumping gas did.
    • jefftk 4y ago
      You're comparing the most common EV on the road five years ago with the longest-range option available today. What you're saying could be true even if EVs hadn't advanced at all!
    • peteradio 4y ago
      Am I computing this correctly? Assuming charger is at 120V, P = VI -> I = 300*1000/120 = 2500 Amps? That's a lot of juice...
      • dangrossman 4y ago
        EVs "quick charge" at 350-1000V. The charging stations today typically go up to 350 amps.
        • peteradio 4y ago
          Interesting, wonder what the hard limits on voltage are? 350 amps @ 1000V must have one hell of a cord! Would be interesting to see what this station looks like.
          • dangrossman 4y ago
            Type "Electrify America" into Google and hit the images tab. The majority of their 788 sites include one or more 350 kW stations. The cords are probably over an inch thick, I've never measured, but no thicker than a fuel hose for a gas pump. They're liquid cooled to carry that current without overheating.
          • deleted 4y ago
  • jungturk 4y ago
    A car that's fully fueled when you leave your home is even simpler.
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    1.5 to 3 min gasoline fill is trivial. 15 minute EV charge is not. It's also a long time to wait in terms of the logistics of queuing people. EV is kinda limited to out and back trips. Which is a lot of the need (commuting), to be fair. Recharging on the go will always be worse compared to ICE.
    • bryanlarsen 4y ago
      Road trip stop time with gasoline car: 3 minutes to fill + 15 minutes to go to the bathroom and buy a coffee. With an EV car: 15 minutes to go to the bathroom and buy a coffee, done in parallel with the charge. Time spent filling a gasoline car in your home city: 5 minutes 3x a month = 3 hours / year. Time spent filling an EV at home: 5 seconds 3x a week = 3 minutes / year.
    • theshrike79 4y ago
      I really need to see videos of people doing these mythical 90 second gasoline fills on long road trips. Do you practice it like you're at NASCAR or F1? How do you manage bathroom breaks? Bottles or catheters for everyone?
      • coderenegade 4y ago
        The point is more that if you want to drive like that, you can. My partner and I will typically stop for five to ten minutes to fill up, take a quick toilet break, and then get back on the road. We'll eat in the car, because we're trying to get somewhere. And that time adds up. In this video [1], Engineering Explained spends 8 hours charging, a bit over 20% of his total trip time. That's staggering; it's effectively a whole day, and could mean the difference between staying in a hotel overnight, and sleeping in your own bed. BEVs are fine for many people, but I don't think Toyota is wrong in their assessment. Requirements typically aren't set at the mean, they're set at the extreme. I know people who had to make emergency trips during COVID that wouldn't have been possible in a BEV. Hell, I went on a work trip with some colleagues the other day and we had to use my car, because my coworker's BEV wouldn't have made the distance back. The reality is that a BEV isn't a one-to-one replacement for an ICEV, and ICEVs are still superior for the "non-average" use case. I'll think about getting a BEV if they're ever able to compete at Le Mans. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UskzfQJt2Bc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UskzfQJt2Bc
• newbie2020 4y ago
  Damn, you must be rich I suspect? With your fancy garage and all that. In the last 14 years of my life, I have not had a place to charge my battery at home. Only at work, but it’s practically a territory battle for the few EV spots there are…
  • falcolas 4y ago
    And some apartment and office space owners outright refuse to add chargers. With all that copper, they’re outright magnets for thieves.
    • velhartice 4y ago
      Underrated comment.
  • ripper1138 4y ago
    Not sure where you grew up but garages are standard in much of the US, minus dense urban centers.
    • erik_seaberg 4y ago
      The entire Bay Area is less than 50% homeowners. The suburbs are full of low-rise apartments with street parking or asphalt lots with no power and no security. It’s not impossible to put in four million public chargers, but we’ve barely started.
• falcolas 4y ago
  A mere 6 fast chargers at 20% utilization would roughly double the electricity needs of a store. Double. Not to mention, we haven’t had to increase the capacity of our electric grid in decades (and it’s still falling down regularly), yet getting everyone in EVs quickly would increase the average need by a fair bit. I did the calculations some time ago, and it was about 43,000 GWh/y for CA (15m cars * .24 KWh/m * 12,000 annual miles). For reference CA has a yearly electricity generation capacity of just under 200k GWH/y.
  • jvanderbot 4y ago
    First I don't think EVs will ever fully replace ICE. There's use cases for gas. But when I hear about the grid load, I have no pity. Or fear. Imagine going back to 1800 and describing to an engineer the vast scale of gasoline production, distribution and consumption. Billions of ICEs distributed around the globe. The scale of fuel distribution! The network of trucks. The massive holding tanks. The inshore and offshore refineries. The pipelines and wells. The geopolitics. The strategic reserves, and prodigious tanker fleets. All because we need something everywhere that is only available in a few places. We can send a rover to Mars for less cost than a prospecting well in the ocean, and there are lots of oil wells in the ocean. Trillions have been spent. It seems unfathomable to go to such lengths from scratch. To invent and maintain so much, and for what? And we did. Now imagine all that exists and you just want more. That's not unfathomable. It's just market dynamics. It'll double just fine thanks. It'll more than double.
    • Onewildgamer 4y ago
      When you put all this in perspective, it makes sense. Electricity usage will probably tripe or quadruple and I think we can handle that. But I'm going to miss the sweet petrol and diesel engine cars.
    • bjornsing 4y ago
      > It's just market dynamics. It'll double just fine thanks. It'll more than double. Sure. If you let the market operate. But at least in Sweden we don’t. So we’re stuck in this loop of conflicting requirements: “no greenhouse emissions, no nuclear, no wind farms close to my home, and double the capacity - thanks!” It’s not going to happen.
• nonethewiser 4y ago
  > Power delivery exists more places than gasoline delivery. This doesnt address the point that lots of people dont have access to this. Particularly in late cities.
• suction 4y ago