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Fast chargers are the luxury fuel of EVs. I don’t know where you are located, but I’d have to imagine your residential utility rates are a fraction of Electrif

Fast chargers are the luxury fuel of EVs. I don’t know where you are located, but I’d have to imagine your residential utility rates are a fraction of Electrify Americas rates. Cars spend most of their time sitting around, the real infrastructure gap is that we don’t have enough cheap slow chargers located where they usually end up sitting: home, work, shopping centers, etc.

bluescrn 3y ago
> Fast chargers are the luxury fuel of EVs. More importantly, EVs are currently a luxury product. Seemingly built like other popular luxury products, too (designed to be hard/expensive to repair). We shouldn't be building EVs as if they were disposable smartphones, intended to be upgraded as soon as the screen gets cracked or the battery degrades somewhat. Something big needs to change if we want to see wider adoption of EVs, and overpriced EV 'fuel' certainly won't help. The wealthy with large suburban homes can charge at home no problem. But not everyone can afford to have their own personal parking/charging space, so may be forced to use overpriced public chargers.
- comte7092 3y ago
  For reference, I live in an apartment and charge largely at work on a 3 KW charger. (For those who are unfamiliar a “fast” charger is over 50 KW and often rated for up to 150 or 350 KW speeds)
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  I bought my Chevy Bolt new for $28k. With the cheapest new ICEs going for about ~$20k, that's hardly a "luxury product". And I don't really see your "hard to repair" argument: There's very few parts of my vehicle that could conceivably wear out, and most of them can be repaired trivially. The only big one is the battery, and that represents ~2/3 of the value of the vehicle. It's like an engine dying: the car's totaled. And you don't need a "large suburban home". Even the most cramped townhouse has a driveway you can run a cord from the house to. It's just apartment complexes that have this problem. If you don't have somewhere to charge your car overnight, EVs aren't practical at the moment, and no amount of subsidizing public charging could change that.
  - comte7092 3y ago
    I’ve seen some pilot programs where utilities hang chargers from utility poles. Would really love to see that adopted more. We needed to build out the public charging network for road trips and last minute “whoops I don’t have enough charge” use cases, but we really gotta take advantage of that fact the cars are only in use a small fraction at a time.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      Parking meters already have power run out to them
trompetenaccoun 3y ago
If we want everyone to drive electric, we'll need a lot of public charging. People will need to charge on longer trips, some people might forget to charge at home, and some will not even have the possibility. It's already obvious that the charging point operators will try to squeeze as much money out of everyone's pockets as they can get away with. Just like with the oil cartel, they have a customer base that pretty much has no other choice but to buy from them. Once people are used to high prices and simply accept them, it will be the new normal. EVs won't turn out to be as cheap to operate in such a future as is currently assumed. That's what we seem to be headed for.
- comte7092 3y ago
  That assumes that a huge percentage of the addressable market doesn’t have to choice of charging at home for a greatly reduced price. I would be surprised if the charger operators end up being very profitable, too much competition to get good margins.

bluescrn 3y ago

> Fast chargers are the luxury fuel of EVs. More importantly, EVs are currently a luxury product. Seemingly built like other popular luxury products, too (designed to be hard/expensive to repair). We shouldn't be building EVs as if they were disposable smartphones, intended to be upgraded as soon as the screen gets cracked or the battery degrades somewhat. Something big needs to change if we want to see wider adoption of EVs, and overpriced EV 'fuel' certainly won't help. The wealthy with large suburban homes can charge at home no problem. But not everyone can afford to have their own personal parking/charging space, so may be forced to use overpriced public chargers.

comte7092 3y ago
For reference, I live in an apartment and charge largely at work on a 3 KW charger. (For those who are unfamiliar a “fast” charger is over 50 KW and often rated for up to 150 or 350 KW speeds)
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
I bought my Chevy Bolt new for $28k. With the cheapest new ICEs going for about ~$20k, that's hardly a "luxury product". And I don't really see your "hard to repair" argument: There's very few parts of my vehicle that could conceivably wear out, and most of them can be repaired trivially. The only big one is the battery, and that represents ~2/3 of the value of the vehicle. It's like an engine dying: the car's totaled. And you don't need a "large suburban home". Even the most cramped townhouse has a driveway you can run a cord from the house to. It's just apartment complexes that have this problem. If you don't have somewhere to charge your car overnight, EVs aren't practical at the moment, and no amount of subsidizing public charging could change that.
- comte7092 3y ago
  I’ve seen some pilot programs where utilities hang chargers from utility poles. Would really love to see that adopted more. We needed to build out the public charging network for road trips and last minute “whoops I don’t have enough charge” use cases, but we really gotta take advantage of that fact the cars are only in use a small fraction at a time.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Parking meters already have power run out to them

trompetenaccoun 3y ago

If we want everyone to drive electric, we'll need a lot of public charging. People will need to charge on longer trips, some people might forget to charge at home, and some will not even have the possibility. It's already obvious that the charging point operators will try to squeeze as much money out of everyone's pockets as they can get away with. Just like with the oil cartel, they have a customer base that pretty much has no other choice but to buy from them. Once people are used to high prices and simply accept them, it will be the new normal. EVs won't turn out to be as cheap to operate in such a future as is currently assumed. That's what we seem to be headed for.

comte7092 3y ago
That assumes that a huge percentage of the addressable market doesn’t have to choice of charging at home for a greatly reduced price. I would be surprised if the charger operators end up being very profitable, too much competition to get good margins.