Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

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Most petrol/gasoline stations make the majority of their money selling other products, particularly in non urban locations. Milk, newspapers, magazines etc. This business model makes refuelling stations a viable business since the margins on fuel costs are so slim.

One of the challenges with the crude political attempts to force EV usage (carrot/subsidies, Stick/fines) is the lack of coherent planning behind it. What happens when/if there are huge numbers of EV's?

It's a similar issue with public transport. My sister, a keen cyclist in London, now has two knee replacements and can't really cycle anymore. Public transport is a huge challenge (stairs etc) and driving in London is made ever harder with more and more bicycle lanes, concrete blocks dumped on roads and massive charges for attempting to use her car.

None of this is thought through. I'd really like to see some sort of vision democratically presented for comment by citizens before these autocratic decrees and changes are introduced, we seem to have more and more ill considered plans that are not joined up imposed on us, making life harder and harder...

>> What happens when/if there are huge numbers of EV's?

The strange thing is that there is a model for this already. I live in a rather cold part of Canada. My apartment block has AC outlets for each parking spot. So too does my work, and all local hotels. These are meant to power block heaters, something that doesn't really exist in the UK, but in recent years some people have been using them to charge their EV/hybrids. The charging rates are very low but the ubiquity of the outlets make them relevant. Having very small/cheap charging points on literally every parking spot might be the better approach than a few dedicated high capacity "charge bays". These outlets are dirt cheap to install. No IP issues, no electronics, no networks. Just an outlet and a circuit breaker.

(These are also all free to use. Administering a payment system for each outlet would cost more than the power.)

Are your outlets continuous?

I’ve heard of ones that cycle through different chunks of the lot, so half (or a third or 2/3) are powered at a time.

Some cycle on and off but the ones on my building don't. A 50/50 on/off cycle is still going to keep the engine warm enough.

The truth is that modern engines/oils/batteries do very well in the cold. A battery heater is probably of more use than a block heater. But I like having the conventional outlets whenever I have to work on my car. A Tesla fast charging point cannot power my vacuum cleaner.

This is the solution. Power doesn't have to be free, but it should be everywhere.

It's like all the EV charging networks try to replicate gas stations. It's stupid. Nobody wants to take their car to a charging station, pay by the minute, and park their car somewhere else when it's full.

People just want to park their cars wherever, and plug them in when they know they'll stay there for some time, and just pay per kWh, and they definitely don't want to go park their car somewhere else when it's full.

The nice thing about electric is that you could theoretically charge cars pretty much anywhere, outlets would be cheap to install almost anywhere! And cars are parked somewhere 90% of the day anyway. So you don't need fast charging.

I feel like the guys trying to build infrastructure for EVs in most cities are fucking stupid.

You don't need to build 20 fast charging stations. For the same money you could probably install 2000 standard outlets, controlled with a relay and a phone app for payment.

That's something that would actually drive EV adoption.

Right now the only people who buy EVs are people who have a house where they can install an outlet for charging. People who live in appartments are stuck with ICE cars...

Don’t EVs take longer to charge than a gas fill-up? Presumably that would be better for a model where you want people to stick around and buy things, not worse.

At least in the Netherlands, there are basically mini golf carts that are legally bikes for disabled people. https://youtu.be/B9ly7JjqEb0

> Presumably that would be better for a model where you want people to stick around and buy things, not worse.

Gas stations occupy an interesting place in American life: some stations - often those in urban areas - are designed for “get in, grab a pack of peanuts, get out” transactions, but others in rural areas serve as a local gathering area. Pre-Covid (and, let’s be honest, even post-Covid) the gas stations near me are full of people sitting at tables eating hot food and passing time.

What is amusing is that the same gas stations that encourage to have people sit and stay a while tend to be located in areas where EVs are extremely uncommon.

its really weird for someone used to the faster type of gas station. why would people want want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary around petrol fumes...

Because there are no real fumes. No more than anywhere else, and there is more likely to be a gas station with a restaurant (pizza/chicken whatever) in it than a restaurant at all. Small 'town' down the road has one gas station and one cafe. The cafe is only open for lunch. So a lot of the old timers gather at the gas station where they can get a coffee, a snack, or even a chicken dinner, and sit and chat with friends.

I have a hard time imagining this. Is the cafe outdoors or is this something like a mini service area?

The cycle lane on Kensington High Street (a major London East-to-West route) actually sped up car journeys.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jan/01/removed-lond...

When it was removed the study "calculated that average trip times eastbound increased from 5min 39sec to 8min 14sec, with those westbound rising from 5min 48sec to 6min 27sec."

Trip times, but how many trips were taken? Make the roads painful/expensive enough and the one car still using them will have a very quick journey. Conversely, filling up the bike lakes with lots of bikes will increase bike trip times. I prefer to measure the efficiency of a road by the number of people it carries across all types of vehicles. Bus lanes over bicycle lanes imho as buses can more more people per hour down a single lane than anything else.

That makes no sense: second hand effects are always weaker than first hand effects. Why would the cars not use the road if the journey is quicker?

... so why the heck did they not un-remove it after that

When a wealthy driver from Kensington or Chelsea sees a person on a bicycle, their face turns red, their heart rate increases, and their body starts to twitch. In extreme situations, they may imagine the letters they'd like to write to the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph complaining about the abomination -- this is most common when they're driving a vehicle designed for off-road expeditions through central London.

There was a similar issue with articulated buses. These were removed by their leader, Boris Johnson, at colossal expense. Some drivers in Chelsea are still suffering the after-effects of seeing these vehicles on the road.

Hah - what a stereotyped world you live in! There are plenty of EV owning cyclists in Kensington & Chelsea.

The story here is an example of how electric vehicle charging happens. Dedicated charging spaces all over the place instead of service stations.

As long as the percentage of spaces roughly corresponds to the percentage of electric vehicles, it shouldn't be real disruptive.

'all over the place' - what do you mean by 'place'?

If we fast forward to a world where the majority of vehicles are electric, this would mean vast parking areas with a smart grid underneath that meters charges to users. (Once ICE has been vanquished vast tax revenue will be gone, someone has to pay for the power, it will be you).

In an urban environment presumably every lighting pole will have a charging point since they are on the last century grid.

Typically there are approximately 10- 15 cars between posts. For lucky people with a driveway they can install a charger, for everyone else this is a very intractable problem.

In rural areas 'all over the place' could mean anything. Some people drive 200 miles a day just to get to their place of work and back in a heavy duty vehicle, where would they find these 'places'...

Yes, I'm sure it will be very difficult.

The majority of charging will be at residences. People in rural areas will be able to install them no problem.

>> presumably every lighting pole will have a charging point since they are on the last century grid.

The new light poles in my area all have solar panels. The solar+battery kit is cheaper than the cost to run the underground wires. The real jokes is that with the days so short, and the nights so cold, some poles are running out of power just before dawn. There have been experiments with running intersections (traffic lights etc) on solar as that can really reduce installation costs at remote locations.

Roundabouts. If it's that rural, why put in traffic lights?

Because is it rural. Farmers don't like having corners of their fields clipped to facilitate round intersections. And roundabouts have to be made large enough to facilitate multi-trailer trucks, not to mention farm equipment. Plowing them in the winter is also a real hassle/cost as opposed to strait-through square intersections.

Search "mini roundabout" [1], although these are mostly used in urban areas. In Britain, junctions in rural areas usually just have "Give Way" (i.e. yield) signs for the non-major road.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#Mini-roundabouts

The nearest charging station to me is 45 miles away. I don't have an EV because it doesn't make sense for us living where we live. But I do end up driving by that one from time to time and it is always full.

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