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Comment by yessql | Hacker News Reader

Imagine how much simpler a commercial charging station is than a gas station. You already need electricity for a gas station, but you no longer need to send tanker trucks out to fill tanks and technicians to maintain all the mechanical pumps, or even the auditors who make sure that the pump is measuring gallons correctly.

It will be really easy to enable long distance travel for EV's that can DC fast charge. Charging for your home area is covered by wherever you park it.

Seems like a gas station death spiral is inevitable, once there is a solid travel network in place and ample 200 mile range EV's available.

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Just to be clear, the power requirements for a supercharging station and a gas station are wildly different. The supercharging station might be putting out 75KW per car, and have a dozen cars charging at any particular point. A whole gas station might pull less than 75Kw easily.

The requirements for the kind of grid hookup you need to handle that power are wildly different. Alternatively, you can have a lower powered grid connection, and local batteries to buffer energy and lower peak power, but that is even more expensive, and only works if your charging station has low average usage.

Once built, the supercharging station might need less maintenance, but it is WAY more expensive to set one up up front. This won't stop them from proliferating, IMO, but it's still a big barrier to entry, and a nice commercial "moat" for Tesla to offer their customers.

We have worked with electric trains with over 1Mwatt or more per machine in places like subways. When a train slows down and stops, an enormous amount of electricity is recovered for another train to accelerate at the same time.

Also the requirements of aluminum factories in electricity are mind blowing.

What I mean is: We already have those electrical installations running, way bigger installations than 10 supercharging stations grouped together, for industry and transport.

I see EVs as an enormous opportunity for those technologies to become cheaper as they become mass produced. But the technology is well proven and works.

It will also accelerate the development of things like superconductors or extreme voltage continuous current for electric transportation.

The problem isn't a lack of technology, but cost. You have to get your electric utility to make substantial improvements to their delivery infrastructure. This generally involves digging up the street and laying cables, not just flicking a switch. It gets more expensive depending on how far your proposed charging station is from the nearest high voltage distribution point.

It does not take a lot of buildings to get into the 1MW range.

A 20 story apartment complex with say 400 apartments needs ~1MW. Power companies are used to rolling out these kinds of connections and large ones do it on a weekly if not daily basis.

Exactly. “More power” is a solution with commercial products available. Even a common DC fast charger is 440v, which is about the same voltage they hook up to commercial buildings.

We just need enough EVs on the road so that it becomes economical.

So all the parking lots at the train stations in my densely populated country that has proper (mostly electric) public transport system could be easily retrofitted with superchargers. That’s an interesting thought.

Gas stations make money on selling snacks and other convenience store items.

Successful commercial charging stations will be judged by the quality of their coffee and lounges.

Plug in stations should be like mini coffeeshops with good wifi and comfortable couches for waiting 1-2hrs with your laptop. Maybe they can sell VR game experiences to kill the time and big TVs broadcasting news/sports.

At least until we get to the point the plug-ins are everywhere, such as in every apartment building and public parking lot... but even then there will be a need for public stations.

Will need a lot more space for the cars, which may be fine in the US where there is lots of space, but tricky elsewhere.

> Charging for your home area is covered by wherever you park it.

Though if you're staying with relatives for a week, you'll be playing musical cars to make sure everyone's charged. A problem you don't really have with gas cars. It's not all upside.

You only need to charge it if your actually driving the next day. So, that's generally less of an issue.

Worst case use an extension cord and most cars will charge overnight.

I suspect it will look a lot like "you have an iPhone charger, right?" but with bigger cables. Not the end of the world, but certainly more involved then stopping at gas stations as needed.

Every electric car I know of has the option of using regular electric outlets to more slowly charge.

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