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Comment by compcoffee | Hacker News Reader

BP just bought a large charging company, while Tesla has suspended their program.

Honestly,how hard do you think it is for a gas station to provide chargers? It isn't rocket science.

Most gas stations don't have the real estate. It takes 20 minutes just to charge to 50%. Charging needs to happen where people are already going to spend time while their car is busy charging; home, work, commuter parking lot/garage, mall parking lot, etc. Highway rest stops with gas stations and fast food could add chargers in the parking lot and adapt to people eating there instead of only stopping long enough to pee and get take-out/drive thru; it will make long road trips take longer but not acceptably so.

Most gas stations will realize they have the real estate once they calculate how many additional hotdogs those bored EV drivers will buy while they're waiting for their charge.

I googled for “Tesla suspend supercharger” and got no relevant looking hits.

Are you saying Tesla is putting supercharger rollouts on hold? I just listened to the latest shareholder meeting and I don’t believe I heard anything like that. Usually they’re always expanding that network.

There are chargers here and there but the fastest of them are half the speed of the superchargers and that makes a big difference. And the superchargers are methodically placed to enable long trips. It’s not about the free energy — Which is what has suspended — It’s about freedom of movement. Teslas can replace a gas car for almost everything; without that infrastructure no other EV can (yet).

They bought the network to retard it's growth at best.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_au...

The problem is gas stations are not exactly high profit businesses, so I doubt they’ll want to pay to install them.

Unless BP wants to eat the cost the way Tesla did it might take a long time to get a good network of chargers available.

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