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Comment by dpweb | Hacker News Reader

All for electric cars here, but think a minute about the convienence of gasoline auto travel, especially refueling at a gas station. They must get electric charging stations everywhere, but they also must reduce the 30 to 60 min. Recharging time. Gas is what 2 minutes? Especially in the age of tech and gadgets people will not stand for LESS convienence, only more. Replacing gas will take a while.

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If you're just commuting, an electric car has it's own convenience - every morning it's full up and ready to go as it's been charging in your garage all night. No need to even think about remaining range or if you need to fill up or what gas station to go to.

Unless you renting and don't have access to a plug. Or want to go on a weekend trip. Electric is interesting, but nothing more as a result for me personally.

These are common arguments. But really it comes down to your last comment "Electric is interesting, but nothing more as a result for me personally"

Okay, fine.

There's solutions for all the other stuff.

But those solutions cost money too, many people A) dont have access to a garage and/or B) a garage with 220 AC in it. That changes charging time significantly, and installing 220 is expensive. There are solutions but it all adds to the price of an electric car.

Is it really a surprise that it's going to cost time/money? We're on the leading edge of EV adoption.

It used to be that you couldn't get high speed broadband in most places - now it's more widely available and even advertised in listings.

5-10 years and we'll start to see new houses/apartments advertised as having an 'EV ready parking spot'.

Most people own cars for ~11 years, so people are on average 1 additional car away from owning an EV vehicle. It's coming but were not as ready as people would like to think just yet.

Once in a while, I need to move. I don't own a U-Haul-sized moving van and drive it to work every day just because of this; instead, I rent such a truck when I need it.

If you're married or cohabiting, you most likely have two vehicles anyway. You're not going to bring both of them when you go on a weekend outing with your significant other or family, so having one EV just for commuting absolutely can make financial sense in that situation. There's a reason many families have one nice car and one crappy beater car; the beater gets used for one person's commute, and the nice car is used for the other's commute plus family trips.

It will happen, eventually, though. It's starting with the affluent. Anyone who can afford a house with a garage is capable of buying a charger and having it installed. As that happens, charger prices go down and they get better. As more affluent people buy electric cars, they will also get cheaper and better. Unlike Hydrogen and Ethanol, electricity and batteries are well-known technologies that most people have been using for years.

By the time apartment dwellers start buying electric, gasoline automobiles will seem like quaint relics of the past.

The only problem is that electric cars won't do anything directly to mitigate global warming, because they will still be powered largely by fossil fuel.

"The only problem is that electric cars won't do anything directly to mitigate global warming, because they will still be powered largely by fossil fuel."

But electrical generation is more efficient than an internal combustion engine in terms of carbon output. According to PG&E:

"Additionally, from well to wheel, electric vehicles emit approximately 66 percent less carbon dioxide (CO2) compared with internal combustion vehicles. CO2 is the principal gas associated with global warming."

https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/solar-and-vehicles/opt...

> Gas is what 2 minutes?

Depends quite a lot on where you are. There are 12 gas stations south of 96th St. in Manhattan. SF will have lost 40% of the service stations it had 10 years ago as of 2017. Boston, same. The gas station at Divisadero and Fell has what looks like a 20 minute wait at all times. This is all due to real estate prices. Getting gas in affluent coastal metropolises is not a pleasant experience. Not coincidentally, these are the same people who are buying electric cars.

20 minutes is still 30x faster than charging. And how many charging stations do you think there are south of 96th street?

I don't know exactly the area you're talking about, but 96th Street, Manhattan NY?

Probably lot more than you think[1].

[1] https://www.plugshare.com/

Tesla charging stations outnumber gas stations in Manhattan. Guess which will continue to decrease in number and which will continue to be deployed.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/225088-tesla-charging-sta...

really? I thought the superfast charging stations could charge a something like the first half of your battery in something like that time? Granted, gets rather slow as you approach 100%..

No it's not. 20 is all one needs for DC quick charging.

Some 90% of journeys by vehicle are under 100 miles, well within the range distance of an electric car, a sizeable number of those being your daily commute.

The amount you save in gas money alone would easily pay for a gasoline rental for those occasions where you really do need more and can't possibly stand to wait for a recharge.

Alternatively things like the Chevy Volt exist which get you that interesting pairing of electric and gas generator (it recharges the battery using gasoline, which gets you away from the horribly inefficient variable speeds for combustible engines). The Electric motor will do you for 50something miles on a charge which still covers a good number of journeys, and with the full tank of gas you can get some 400 more miles out of it.

If it was 99.9% of all trips were under 100 miles then it'd be much easier. But I make between 5-10 trips a week. Statistically I'm going to have a range anxiety situation a few times a month, while making a car payment that's 6x higher.

If you regularly need to make 200 mile round trips without charging facilities on both ends, then you're probably not a good candidate for an EV at all. A plug-in hybrid is probably your best bet until there's more charging infrastructure.

My household has 2 cars, and one of the cars stays under 50 miles for 100% of trips since we only use it for commuting.

Couldn't agree more! When I go on a car trip I want it to be a long way away, and a long way from any thing. That's why most electric cars can't be my only car, and I don't want two cars either. For someone like me a plug-in hybrid like the Volt makes a lot more sense because I can drive it ten hours out into the desert when I want to.

The only reason we're reaching a tipping point in the American car market is because families with two cars are so common. If you have two cars it makes perfect sense to have one that can go around your city, and another one that can go anywhere.

Electric cars can do 800+ miles a day easily with sold charging infrastructure. Sure, if you want to do a cannon ball run rent a car, but 4 hours of driving, get lunch, another 4 hours of driving, take a 30 minute break, 2 hours of driving, dinner anther 4 hours of driving get some sleep. That's an extra 30 minute break for 14 hour road trip.

There's only one car that can go 4 hours on a charge, and that's the Tesla S. If you charge it for 30 minutes, it can go about another 2.5 hours.

My VW Golf TDI goes more than 750 miles on a tank at 65MPH. That's an entire days' driving for 5 minutes of fueling. Yes, the filthy Volkswageneers have to buy my car back, but it was certainly nice on the range.

While true, that range is from a 12,000$ battery pack which could be put in a 35,000$ car. So, really these cars don't have great range because they don't need to have great range.

How far does a TDI travel on a tank when it's not cheating on its emissions?

That's a lot of downtime. Most people I know, including myself, when doing a 14 hour roadtrip would stop as infrequently as possible, for a total of 30-60min over the course of the trip. And that figure is including pee break stops, which your calculation presumably didn't.

It's actually really dangerous to do that kind of driving without taking significant breaks on a regular basis. But, sure if you do this regularly enough you can't either rent a gas car or spend an extra hour or 2 then fine. However, nobody I knew has done a trip like that in the last decade.

I think "really dangerous" is overstating it a bit. Driving while fatigued is dangerous, yes, but 14 hours with a 30-60 minute break is hardly that extreme, especially since we could be talking about road trips with multiple drivers.

It's a question of repetition not fatigue. People are just really bad at paying attention to limited stimulus. Swapping drivers every 4 hours or so is a good counter to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_hypnosis. But again if you have multiple drivers you only need one car that takes gas.

>The only reason we're reaching a tipping point in the American car market is because families with two cars are so common. If you have two cars it makes perfect sense to have one that can go around your city, and another one that can go anywhere.

This is exactly right, and I'm glad I finally see someone one these forums saying this. You're probably the first one. I find it rather sad that most people on a forum like this cannot conceive of this at all, presumably because they're all single.

I've had a Leaf for going on a year now and one thing I love about it is that I never need to worry about the inconvenience of stopping at a gas station. :)

But I'm with you that I don't really see the point of public charging stations. All the places I drive during the day are within my ~100 mile range (putting a charger at a grocery store, as they mention in the article, makes little sense given that). If I needed to drive somewhere that was not in my range, I sure as heck wouldn't gamble on one of the few charger stations being available.

It will take a while, but with time the supporting infrastructure for charging will become widespread. Even better, the companies would introduce battery swapping outlets too all over, so you spend two minutes on the highway to get your run down battery swapped with a fully charged one and just drive on. The battery then is no longer a part of your car that you own, but just rent/lease with a specific performance guarantee. You pay the outlet based on some parameters they measure on your run down battery. It'd be an interesting future, and like another post here about the pre vs. post Internet generations, I look forward to seeing such widespread changes coming and changing what people think of as transport and maintenance of one's means of transport. :)

Also the inconvenience for those who live in apartments and condos.

To me this sounds like Coca-Cola or Pepsi - as if those are the only two options. I prefer water. Let's take an auto analogy...

Whilst you guys with your big miles to commute are comparing costs and getting range anxiety, I am doing okay in the UK with a bicycle and a train station. Much to my bitter disappointment I had to spend a total of £22 to fit new brakes on my 'eco-vehicle'. Yep, £22. That is the total cost of everything in the six months I have had my new steed. I could easily pay that per day if I was parking one of those four wheeled planet-trasher things. I never actually time my commute as I enjoy the ride, which is on a far bigger network than afforded to other road users. In fact I travel mostly traffic free on cycle paths, with the fit people jogging and the friendly people walking their dogs.

So, as much as I aspire to own a really cool Tesla, I then think about the practicalities. I would be 'sitting in traffic', having to do the run around one-way systems and having to spend as long as my journey takes to find a parking spot at the other end. The journey would stress me out as with driving there isn't the guarantee that you can get there in a timely fashion.

So then I think about getting a 'Go-Cycle'. Designed by cool F1 engineers, in 'off-road mode' it can do 40 mph with that torque that comes with electric. £4K - not bad, almost toy level expenditure. An 'option' on a car can cost that, e.g. air-con.

But then I think again, I kind of need that exercise! If I didn't cycle then I would have to go to the gym or get a non-office job. I don't want to spend my evenings locked in some gym (why are they always next to really busy roads?). Plus I would have to pay some electricity to charge it up and most of my electricity needs are fairly undemanding, why would I want to increase my electricity bill just so my legs could waste away?

Ah, but range anxiety... I take the train. On the train I treat myself to some quality snacks and some reasonable free wifi. In fact I normally get so stuck in to what I am reading/doing that I am wishing the journey could be just that bit longer so I can finish stuff. I make time on the train productive (although I wish I could just sleep).

Ah, but what about the family, the 'big shop' and the need to take golf clubs places? Well, I am not living life like that. I don't have to live in the middle of nowhere where the nearest vitamin is a 50 mile drive away. In cities everything is on the doorstep, everything except for an unoccupied parking spot. Taxis, trains and even busses mean that I am not totally dependent on the bicycle and its awful 'range anxiety' problems. I might not have 'ludicrous speed' as Tesla sell it, but nobody in a four wheeled vehicle beats me to any office in the city centre, even if plodding along I am doing better than the 9-11 mph that motorists achieve in city centres.

Sadly I see these electric vehicles (car or bicycle) as glorified mobility scooters, and it just does not make sense for me to take one to two tonnes of extra metal and comfy seats with me to work and back every day. I have already sorted out the transport problem for myself with the 'water' option, no 'coke' or 'pepsi' needed.

There are only four petrol stations within London's congestion-charge zone. Already there are far more charging stations. Even if I still had a car the idea of driving into London, charging/'gassing', trying to park, being somewhere on time and being able to afford the whole nightmare is just not something I ever wish to do. These electric cars are not going to change those realities.

Why can't the car generate electricity and last like 5x as long? Each wheel could probably generate quite a bit of static electricity and refuel the tank. Honestly I think hybrids will be the go-to method for the next decade or two, unless they can get batteries to 500+ miles. -- If they get the battery to 1000 miles though it's game over for gasoline cars though.

yeah, plug-in hybrids seem like the best of both worlds; that could still let you go all-electric for the ~90% of your commutes, but w/o the range anxiety or limits to your occasional longer trips. And the fact you end up occasionally driving it like a (hyper-efficient) gasoline car is a totally negligable quantity of emissions in your overall driving.

It's quite possible you can have an all-electric range-extender with over 1000 miles; there was some talk Tesla was looking into current-gen Aluminium-air batteries for that purpose; afaik Al-air is currently the most mature metal-air battery with some actual deployment in limited applications. Downside for conventional aluminium-air is they can't just be recharged once you use up the charge, but the Aluminium needs to be mechanically replaced after the charge has been used up.

Practicalities of that exact scheme sound dubious, but the concept is promising; early gen of some metal-air batteries, even if rechargable could be quite limited in the number of cycles it can last, so be a poor fit for being the main battery bank of an EV car. As a range extender though, this is much less limiting, so could find first use like that, in practice giving 1000 miles range for occasional long trips.

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