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Comment by pilom | Hacker News Reader

I doubt it has to do with the US's waning global leadership and more to do with the fact that Americans drive longer distances per year than people in any other nation. There are HUGE parts of the US where you literally couldn't get an electric car to without putting it on a flatbed or using standard 15 amp house outlets for days. I work from home and travel through rural parts of the US all year long and there is no way people who live >100 miles from an urban center would EVER think about buying an electric car because of range anxiety even with the new 200+ mile ranges that aren't really available outside a handful of cities.

The US is a large country with lots of empty space in it.

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Yeah, having driven across the US twice I don't think people realize how much empty space there is. There's a whole lot of nothing out there.

Don't get me wrong, much of it is great and beautiful. It's also really, really big. We probably have stretches of uninhabited land larger than some countries.

plenty of places in the country where you can drive for 5 hours and not pass a town with over 1k living there

"there is no way people who live >100 miles from an urban center would EVER think about buying an electric car because of range anxiety"

What percentage of the US population regularly commute that far?

I was under the impression that most of the US population (and the rest of the world's population as well) lived in cities.

Yeah and there's nothing wrong with that, I don't think EVs should be forced on areas where they don't work.

That said I live ~50mi from the nearest major metro area and have had no issues with EV ownership for the last 2.5 years. I've got a 250mi operating radius from my house(charging overnight) and there's at least 2-3 superchargers in each direction with that kind of range.

A 100mi round trip range is no problem for the modern evs, but the fact is that there just isn't enough money to lay out type2 chargers everywhere.

A type 2 50v charger can push my Chevy Bolt's battery from 25% to 80% in well under an hour, making it sort of perfect for errands. That takes me from a 80 mile range to a 232 mile range, approximately.

If these could be deployed in wider numbers, there really is no part of the US that isn't in range except perhaps the most intensely mountainous regions. I'm actually very surprised we aren't starting to see franchises sprouting up offering a renewable power source, a large power storage solution, and a series of type2 50v chargers in an array. It seems to me like a massive potential market if you could literally turn solar and wind into fuel for cars and charge people for parking in the same go.

>The US is a large country with lots of empty space in it.

Yea, and so are Russia and China. The problem is the US chooses to hose its taxpayers by subsidizing rural living.

Just as an example, if we had Japan/Korea's urbanization rate, that's another 30+ million Americans in cities and out of the boonies...

On the other hand car commuting is much more common in the US, which is where EVs excel. If you're driving 50 miles a day into and out of work, an EV is perfect as a second car, which you can charge up in a suburban garage. That scenario must match a large proportion of US demand.

> there is no way people who live >100 miles from an urban center would EVER think about buying an electric car because of range anxiety

Counter point, my wife's family owns a farm roughly 80 miles from any sort of 'urban center' (and 300+ miles from the big city).

They were first in line for the Nissan Leaf, and had to make special arrangements to have it delivered. They love it for driving into their nearby small town, and they cannot wait to replace their other cars with electrics. (Sadly, there are not electric farm trucks yet.)

Seems like plug-in hybrids like the Chevrolet Volt could be really popular in the US.

Enough electric power to cover 90+% of daily scenarios, but an ICE that can be 'recharged' at a fuel pump in 60 seconds for long road trips.

You're obviously adding a lot of complexity to the car by having both systems, which is a drawback.

They're growing in popularity as the price falls, for sure.

Why not? With a massive charging station network and plenty of places to charge up.

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