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BEVs have a pretty massive infrastructure problem even in developed countries. Many people live in apartment buildings where you can't just use your own dedicat

BEVs have a pretty massive infrastructure problem even in developed countries. Many people live in apartment buildings where you can't just use your own dedicated level-2 charger every night, or in places where the electrical grid just isn't up to providing enough shared ones. I think a (second) paradigm shift is still necessary, but hydrogen is the least likely alternative. Ammonia-based hybrids and especially swappable battery systems both loom larger in my mind, at least.

api 4y ago
That’s literally a last several meters problem. It can trivially be fixed with a tax incentive for landlords to install chargers. Even installing simple wall plugs would be helpful since most EVs come with those chargers or they can be easily purchased. We have an EV that we trickle charge in our garage and that’s usually enough. For hydrogen you have to do much more significant build out. Apartments already have grid connections.
- prottog 4y ago
  > That’s literally a last several meters problem. It can trivially be fixed with a tax incentive for landlords to install chargers. It's not just that. The grid is nowhere up to what is needed to support the majority of vehicles being EVs; take a look at this study[0] done by National Grid in New England, which shows the problem clearly. "Already have grid connections" is not enough for electrified long-distance travel or cargo-hauling, simply due to the amount of power required that far exceeds current capabilities. [0]: https://www.nationalgrid.com/us/EVhighway https://www.nationalgrid.com/us/EVhighway
  - api 4y ago
    That’s still an easier problem than gigantic amounts of heavy piping or compressed gas transport everywhere. Wires are just cheaper and lower maintenance. They are also more general purpose. Improving the grid will improve its robustness generally.
    - notacoward 4y ago
      > gigantic amounts of heavy piping You are aware that liquids can be transported over land, not just in pipes, right? Like we already do for gasoline, in case you need a very concrete and relevant example. At least GP provided data, which is too rare around here.
      - api 4y ago
        Transporting hydrogen by truck is going to be very energy intensive especially given the heavy refrigeration required to liquify hydrogen, meaning you're going to lose a lot more in the transfer than you do with the power grid. That's gonna really wreck the economics. You lose a lot in oil and gas trucking too, which is part of how you end up with stuff like "driving an EV powered 100% by coal emits less carbon per mile than an average gasoline car." It's not just the vehicle efficiency but the whole end-to-end system efficiency. Trucking fuel around is very expensive.
        notacoward 4y ago
        > Transporting hydrogen by truck If you look back a bit, you might see that this whole thread started with me saying that I wasn't that keen on hydrogen. This is one of the reasons that I was suggesting ammonia or swappable batteries instead. > Trucking fuel around is very expensive. So is transmission over power lines. Transformers and wires are not free, nor are the rights of way they sit on, nor maintenance of same in remote locations. 5-7% is lost in transmission. Sometimes there are fires. Let's not be too selective about which advantages and disadvantages we focus on for which alternative. That's called cherry picking. I do think we need to get away from fossil fuels, and that transmission over copper lines should be our first choice in most cases, but I don't make up reasons why "just build out the grid" should be the only option we consider.
bragr 4y ago
I live in such an apartment and this is such FUD. Everyone is getting by just fine with level 1 chargers. Almost no one drives so much they actually need level 2, and in a pinch there are public charging stations.
- notacoward 4y ago
  > Everyone ... Almost no one ... sigh People presenting their personal, and often anomalous, experience as some sort of universal rule is the absolute worst HN habit. You took a statement about two categories of people for whom L1 is not enough, stripped one off, and only addressed the other with an untrue statement (clearly messing up on the difference between L2 and L3 in the process BTW). Are you that sure there isn't one person who's not getting by fine with level 1? That's all it takes for your statement to be false, and in fact statistics show there are many, making your excluded-middle pseudo-argument a bit pathetic. Let me introduce you to the concept of thresholds. It's not necessary for everyone to need more than L1 regularly for lack of same to be a problem, nor did I claim that. There is simply some percentage of people being "left out in the cold" because of a bad ratio between vehicles and chargers, and we're already hovering right around that level. Availability of charging is already a major limiting factor in adoption, which wouldn't be the case if anything you said were generally true. The reason I know this is that I own an EV myself. The ad hominems elsewhere in this thread about discouraging EV usage made me laugh. I'm personally doing fine because I own my own home and had my own dedicated 240V circuit put in for charging, but I know many people for whom that's not the case. I'm well aware of things like how cold or speed affects range, or the actual availability of L3 chargers. I want EVs to succeed, and (unlike some here) I'm actually putting my money where my mouth is. When you see someone claim that working unoccupied public chargers are plentiful, there's always a good chance you're dealing with someone who doesn't even own an EV (the most common case), hardly drives it at all, or works at a FAANG where free charging is a perk. None of those are the real world of most EV drivers.
  - bragr 4y ago
    Hi, seems you miss interpreted "everyone" in my post to mean "everyone in the world" when in my context I used to to mean "everyone with electrics cars in my apartment building". You seem to me engaging in the absolute worst HN habit of not assuming good faith and jumping to conclusions. ;)
sdiacom 4y ago
Faster charging times (fast enough that your vehicle is charged in the time it takes to enjoy a coffee and a bagel at the coffee shop adjacent to the charging point) would also be an acceptable solution in many cases.
- lodovic 4y ago
  You still need the same amount of energy, but now in a shorter timeframe, so that probably won't help.
jliptzin 4y ago
What is so complicated about installing plugs in parking garages? It doesn’t need to be level 2, even 110v would probably be fine for a lot of people. And since we’re probably talking about cities, power draw probably isn’t a concern. My apartment in Brooklyn had plugs 3 years ago
- salawat 4y ago
  Mmmm. Think for a sec. Large concrete structure right? So you can't lay your wire in the concrete parts, which means you're putting it in conduits...that are exposed, and open to be harvested by people looking to repurpose the copper wiring for other things. Or you're doing inductive charging via copper loops in parking spaces, but then maintenance is potentially impacted. Point being "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  Level 1 chargers do not work well in the winter, in cold climates
  - gaganyaan 4y ago
    As someone with an EV that is charged primarily with a level 1 charger and is currently experiencing temps below -20C, that is simply not true. Please don't parrot lies pushed by the fossil fuel industry. I've seen far too many people on this site that have clearly never been within 100 feet of an EV repeating obviously wrong "information".
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      Let me guess, garage kept? There are plenty of first person accounts on YT, Twitter, and other social media where people report being unable to charge their EV because the energy needed to keep the battery warmed exceeds the available power for charging Please stop blaming everything on some kind of conspiracy by the evil oil industry, you sound like qAnon when you do that.

api 4y ago

That’s literally a last several meters problem. It can trivially be fixed with a tax incentive for landlords to install chargers. Even installing simple wall plugs would be helpful since most EVs come with those chargers or they can be easily purchased. We have an EV that we trickle charge in our garage and that’s usually enough. For hydrogen you have to do much more significant build out. Apartments already have grid connections.

prottog 4y ago
> That’s literally a last several meters problem. It can trivially be fixed with a tax incentive for landlords to install chargers. It's not just that. The grid is nowhere up to what is needed to support the majority of vehicles being EVs; take a look at this study[0] done by National Grid in New England, which shows the problem clearly. "Already have grid connections" is not enough for electrified long-distance travel or cargo-hauling, simply due to the amount of power required that far exceeds current capabilities. [0]: https://www.nationalgrid.com/us/EVhighway https://www.nationalgrid.com/us/EVhighway
- api 4y ago
  That’s still an easier problem than gigantic amounts of heavy piping or compressed gas transport everywhere. Wires are just cheaper and lower maintenance. They are also more general purpose. Improving the grid will improve its robustness generally.
  - notacoward 4y ago
    > gigantic amounts of heavy piping You are aware that liquids can be transported over land, not just in pipes, right? Like we already do for gasoline, in case you need a very concrete and relevant example. At least GP provided data, which is too rare around here.
    - api 4y ago
      Transporting hydrogen by truck is going to be very energy intensive especially given the heavy refrigeration required to liquify hydrogen, meaning you're going to lose a lot more in the transfer than you do with the power grid. That's gonna really wreck the economics. You lose a lot in oil and gas trucking too, which is part of how you end up with stuff like "driving an EV powered 100% by coal emits less carbon per mile than an average gasoline car." It's not just the vehicle efficiency but the whole end-to-end system efficiency. Trucking fuel around is very expensive.
      - notacoward 4y ago
        > Transporting hydrogen by truck If you look back a bit, you might see that this whole thread started with me saying that I wasn't that keen on hydrogen. This is one of the reasons that I was suggesting ammonia or swappable batteries instead. > Trucking fuel around is very expensive. So is transmission over power lines. Transformers and wires are not free, nor are the rights of way they sit on, nor maintenance of same in remote locations. 5-7% is lost in transmission. Sometimes there are fires. Let's not be too selective about which advantages and disadvantages we focus on for which alternative. That's called cherry picking. I do think we need to get away from fossil fuels, and that transmission over copper lines should be our first choice in most cases, but I don't make up reasons why "just build out the grid" should be the only option we consider.

bragr 4y ago

I live in such an apartment and this is such FUD. Everyone is getting by just fine with level 1 chargers. Almost no one drives so much they actually need level 2, and in a pinch there are public charging stations.

notacoward 4y ago
> Everyone ... Almost no one ... sigh People presenting their personal, and often anomalous, experience as some sort of universal rule is the absolute worst HN habit. You took a statement about two categories of people for whom L1 is not enough, stripped one off, and only addressed the other with an untrue statement (clearly messing up on the difference between L2 and L3 in the process BTW). Are you that sure there isn't one person who's not getting by fine with level 1? That's all it takes for your statement to be false, and in fact statistics show there are many, making your excluded-middle pseudo-argument a bit pathetic. Let me introduce you to the concept of thresholds. It's not necessary for everyone to need more than L1 regularly for lack of same to be a problem, nor did I claim that. There is simply some percentage of people being "left out in the cold" because of a bad ratio between vehicles and chargers, and we're already hovering right around that level. Availability of charging is already a major limiting factor in adoption, which wouldn't be the case if anything you said were generally true. The reason I know this is that I own an EV myself. The ad hominems elsewhere in this thread about discouraging EV usage made me laugh. I'm personally doing fine because I own my own home and had my own dedicated 240V circuit put in for charging, but I know many people for whom that's not the case. I'm well aware of things like how cold or speed affects range, or the actual availability of L3 chargers. I want EVs to succeed, and (unlike some here) I'm actually putting my money where my mouth is. When you see someone claim that working unoccupied public chargers are plentiful, there's always a good chance you're dealing with someone who doesn't even own an EV (the most common case), hardly drives it at all, or works at a FAANG where free charging is a perk. None of those are the real world of most EV drivers.
- bragr 4y ago
  Hi, seems you miss interpreted "everyone" in my post to mean "everyone in the world" when in my context I used to to mean "everyone with electrics cars in my apartment building". You seem to me engaging in the absolute worst HN habit of not assuming good faith and jumping to conclusions. ;)

sdiacom 4y ago

Faster charging times (fast enough that your vehicle is charged in the time it takes to enjoy a coffee and a bagel at the coffee shop adjacent to the charging point) would also be an acceptable solution in many cases.

lodovic 4y ago
You still need the same amount of energy, but now in a shorter timeframe, so that probably won't help.

jliptzin 4y ago

What is so complicated about installing plugs in parking garages? It doesn’t need to be level 2, even 110v would probably be fine for a lot of people. And since we’re probably talking about cities, power draw probably isn’t a concern. My apartment in Brooklyn had plugs 3 years ago

salawat 4y ago
Mmmm. Think for a sec. Large concrete structure right? So you can't lay your wire in the concrete parts, which means you're putting it in conduits...that are exposed, and open to be harvested by people looking to repurpose the copper wiring for other things. Or you're doing inductive charging via copper loops in parking spaces, but then maintenance is potentially impacted. Point being "just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
phpisthebest 4y ago
Level 1 chargers do not work well in the winter, in cold climates
- gaganyaan 4y ago
  As someone with an EV that is charged primarily with a level 1 charger and is currently experiencing temps below -20C, that is simply not true. Please don't parrot lies pushed by the fossil fuel industry. I've seen far too many people on this site that have clearly never been within 100 feet of an EV repeating obviously wrong "information".
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    Let me guess, garage kept? There are plenty of first person accounts on YT, Twitter, and other social media where people report being unable to charge their EV because the energy needed to keep the battery warmed exceeds the available power for charging Please stop blaming everything on some kind of conspiracy by the evil oil industry, you sound like qAnon when you do that.