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Comment by Xophmeister | Hacker News Reader

I'm not trying to be negative, because I think electric vehicles are a good idea. However, what happens when a fleet of such trucks return to their depot and all need charging overnight? Wouldn't the depot need a lot of expensive infrastructure to avoid overloading the system? (I presume the same applies to the domestic/consumer electrical supply, once there's an EV in every driveway...)

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“Expensive” is a very relative term — running high capacity power is something we’re very good at and scales well (it’s not 2x as expensive to increase power availability by 2x). Even with dozens of trucks charging at 100+ amps, it’s no more power hungry than your average industrial site - and it has the benefit of off-peak utilization so there’s much more slack before it would require new generation from the power company.

100 amps at what voltage? At 220v that's only 22kW which is nothing. This year my city has installed 350kW EV chargers in the old town without digging up the street (other than under where they install it), so the infrastructure must have already been there. I assume in an industrial area it would not at all be an issue.

Yeah I meant 100kW, but you’re right that even much higher power versions don’t require much retrofitting. A company I worked for had to install power to support 5MW of equipment where there was previously only a few houses nearby and the cost to do so was under $1M which was something like 2% of the total project cost. Incremental upgrades are extremely reasonable from a “capex / useful life” perspective.

Gas stations, refineries, pipelines, loading ports, bulk tankers and of course oil wells & rigs represent trillions of dollars of infrastructure & investment that have to be built and maintained. So I think we're just shifting the investment from one kind of infrastructure to another (one that's hopefully more efficient and less environmentally damaging).

How much does it time does it take your drivers to fuel up every day either at a commercial station or at an in-house fueling station? Likewise, monthly oil checks/ changes, and other services that would be reduced/ eliminated.

Yes, it will cost some money for companies to bring infrastructure online, but they will be eliminating a lot of ongoing expenses as well. There are a lot of expenses associated with driving ICE vehicles which people just ignore when they bring up the expenses associated with EVs.

It needs infrastructure, see my other comment in this thread, but the cost thereof can be considered part of the cost of fuel, in a way. You're currently spending money on diesel fuel, which is already paying for the expensive infrastructure to transport and store and dispense an energy-dense liquid. Just shift who you're paying for your energy, and now the electric utility uses that money to upgrade their infrastructure to let their customers buy more of their product.

Companies are generally happy to expand their operations to allow their customers to buy more of their product.

You may not be intentionally trying to be negative, but you're parroting the same FUD lines used against EVs for decades, and against horseless carriages a century ago. (And which, incidentally, became entrenched in Oregon and New Jersey in the form of laws prohibiting motorists from operating the dispensing infrastructure.)

> (I presume the same applies to the domestic/consumer electrical supply, once there's an EV in every driveway...)

I don't know about commercial vehicles but the British National Grid is adamant that there will not be any great difficulty in supplying electricity to charge electric cars.

See https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-m...

Here's an article from a couple of years ago, about converting a bus depot to electric.

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2018/06/26/do-londoners-dre...

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