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Comment by thaddeusmt | Hacker News Reader

"Yoshi brings the gas station to your gift recipient, refueling their car regularly wherever it's parked. Any commuters on your list will thank you for removing the hassle of the gas station from their lives forever."

I get it, filling up your car is a chore, if your time is super valuable... whatever. It's hard to fill the YC portfolio every year with only companies working on "big problems", I'm sure. But it really does feel like "Valley bullshit". I hope it was pitched as "disrupting the archaic gasoline distribution system - we're going to do to fossil fuels what Amazon did for books & movies".

(I will have a good laugh if this dismissive comment is pulled up years from now as an example of "another negative Hacker News post about a now-hugely successful company")

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That was actually one of the few services which looked interesting to me. $20 to save at least 40 minutes a month and they also regularly check your tires. Has anyone here used it?

Ironically the most obvious pivot for the company is anti-EV range anxiety-as-a-service where they'll do something like triple A specifically for EVs by rolling up in a truck with a 500 HP giant diesel generator and fast charge your EV anywhere in a service area, eliminating range anxiety.

Honestly you could probably run something like that without any capital expense at all by just collecting monthly premiums and advertising "$1000 if we can't charge your EV in an hour" and then never paying out due to fine print or paying out $1000 in service gift certificates. If you sell enough plans then you could consider maybe building the truck for real.

I wonder what a 500 HP generator at full battery charging blast sounds like in a residential neighborhood at 2am. Probably similar to a freight train. That alone might be entertaining.

What could be greener than having your EV filled by a diesel generator?

Well, that's exactly what I thought when I read about that service. Since I drive a Leaf, a gas fill-up would be useless to me.

Many EV owners would object to having their car being charged by a dirty diesel generator. Plus, if we are hauling a giant generator, what about a giant battery pack? Someone will have to do the math on that.

As well as a "rescue" vehicle, it could be very useful as a temporary "mobile quick charger" when traveling to underserved spots (say, you want to cross Nevada on EV). Schedule a time and place, meet your "tanker", refuel and keep going.

AAA has service trucks with generators for EVs on them. An AAA membership is something like $100/year.

Too late Silicon Valley! Go growth hack something else!

https://electrek.co/2016/09/06/aaa-ev-emergency-charging-tru...

> I wonder what a 500 HP generator at full battery charging blast sounds like in a residential neighborhood at 2am.

I think you had a good idea with the on-demand EV charging, but I would imagine they'd have a truck with a high-capacity battery (like Tesla's Powerwall) which could be charged via solar panels.

> could be charged via solar panels.

...but would actually be charged via grid power or internal combustion engine generator 99% of the time.

> Honestly you could probably run something like that without any capital expense at all by just collecting monthly premiums and advertising "$1000 if we can't charge your EV in an hour" and then never paying out due to fine print or paying out $1000 in service gift certificates.

That's one of the most succinct examples of a certain patently unethical SV style way of thinking about business I've ever seen. Perhaps Parker Conrad's got the bandwidth to be a cofounder.

I mean, I know it was posted tongue in cheek, but taking money from people and then leaving them stranded is, you know, wrong.

Not to mention the irony in using a diesel generator to re-charge electric vehicles meant to save the environment.

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