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> Fast chargers are the luxury fuel of EVs. More importantly, EVs are currently a luxury product. Seemingly built like other popular luxury products, too (desi

> 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

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