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Comment by admiralpumpkin | Hacker News Reader

Or we'll see "gas" stations incrementally change to "gas-n-charge" stations. As society moves from liquid hydrocarbons to electrons for personal transportation I can see no reason why these locations won't adapt.

After all, people will still ingest their liquid fuel and expel their waste. ;-)

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We won't need nearly as many charging stations as we need gas stations because electric cars can be charged at home.

Maybe that is true in rural and suburban environments, but I doubt it in dense urban environments. Adding a charger to every spot in residential parking garages and on every residential street is a bigger infrastructure project than converting over gas stations to chargers. You also have to consider the time it takes to recharge an electric car is much higher than the time to refuel an ICE car.

> You also have to consider the time it takes to recharge an electric car is much higher than the time to refuel an ICE car.

True, but for most drivers on most days they will be able to charge up at home overnight. Charge time won't matter as much then. Drivers in dense urban environments will likely move towards a car sharing model since, as you noted, the costs and practicality of infrastructure retrofitting will be exorbitant.

Disagree. Just need an outlet, like the engine block heaters on light poles in Minnesota. Infrastructures costs are low of people use their own chargers.

Meh, how much does a regular old 15-20A 120V outlet cost to install? $200 per plug, maybe? Just need a relay inside that talks over Bluetooth to a cloud-connected app on the user's phone (or just city wifi), and you've got a smart outlet that can handle payment. Another $20 (based on costs I've seen online for similar products), total $220. People can use their own chargers as all electric cars come with level 1 chargers. Cost is low, so could use residential electricity rates (slightly more expensive than commercial) and still make profit.

We already have lighted parking, don't see why adding outlets is that hard. We're talking slow overnight charging here for the most part.

I live in a Bay Area apartment with no garage and commute every day with an EV. I've never plugged my car in at home once.

Interesetingly in the Nordics this is already done. Practically all the parking spots (excluding street side) have 230VAC outlets for engine block warming.

Considerable amount of parking here in the UK is on-street. None of the homes built in the post WW2 rebuilding have dedicated room for cars, or any of the 10s of 1000s of homes built before that.

By "post WW2 rebuilding" do you mean a specific limited time period?

Because otherwise, "None" is a bit strong - there's hundreds of new homes and apartments within 5 miles of me that have dedicated parking spaces.

Even my block (seems to be 1960s) has dedicated off-street parking for 8 cars (admittedly there are 12 flats but I suspect 8 cars for 12 flats in the 60s was an outlandish estimate.)

Sorry, yes I meant the public housing built in the 40s & 50s.

Hmm, in trying to find an example, it doesn't look as bad as I know it is.

This is the kind of estate I was thinking of

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Ambleside+Primary+School...

but many of the fronts have been turned into parking

These are pre war

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/6+Newfield+Rd,+Nottingha...

I know these places and night-time parking is more of a squeeze than these images show

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