1st, you're assuming people can charge at home - assuming they have a garage and access to power. This isn't true for a huge portion of the population.
> and while at your destination (say a retailer) which you can't do with your ICE car. So overlapping but not identical comparison.
This really isn't available yet either. Who's going to pay for this? Really?
So what, figuring out how people without a designated parking space can change their car is trivial compared to trying to undo global warming. Also Covid has shown us how much disruption we can actually tolerate, hint: a lot more than the powers that be want you to believe.
> So what, figuring out how people without a designated parking space can change their car is trivial compared to trying to undo global warming.
No it isn't. NYC has limited space. There simply isn't enough room for a charger for every car. That is a nontrivial problem with extreme cost. You can't just handwave it away.
Surely in those settings the best option is for the taxi companies and the public transit providers to shift to EVs.
Nope. The topic is about mass adoption. Not mass adoption by people who take trains or taxi in a certain city.
Even within this sub thread, it's comparing the "ease" of getting fuel and parking in nyc (neither of which are actually easy) to which charging is a mass hurdle.
Are there people who don't have access to power and security at a parking spot who drive more than 100 miles a day (and drivers that use bottles and get blood clots instead of stopping for 1hr every 250 miles), sure, but that's not the mass, it's somewhere <5%. And roughly a smaller population to whom don't need a car on a regular basis at all.
That doesn't seem impossible, just merely inconvenient. On the same level of having to wash your clothes at a laundromat. It's thing, if you live in a real city, it's not the Suburbs.
Two weeks of charge right there. You might not need to charge during next week's grocery run if you don't want to.
Also thing I know about SF. People that work in SF park their car in the same spot for days at a time. And remembering to move the car is another inconvenience they deal with. When I lived and worked in SF I would drive down town and park. Which I could do because I had a parking sticker. Most people do not have that option. Which says to me, me putting 6000 miles a year on my car probably made me an outlier on the high side. There are people putting much less.
In Europe some retailers have this, sure, for 2 or 3 parking spots.
If the demand is there, I'm pretty sure they'll expand it, even as a paid/loyality bonus. I don't expect them to offer superchaging but 50-60 km/h charge would be more than enough.
Even if you do, not every parking spot needs to have a 350kW HPC charger. 11-22kW is more than enough. Add load balancing and maybe a battery in the future and you're good.
The handful of spots is part greenwashing part gauging the demand. They do track the usage of those spots and increase the amount if they see that they're in use and driving business.
There are many great options for charging if you choose your car wisely.
Our apartment building with six parking spaces has three Teslas and no charging on site. We do just fine.
Charging takes about 15 seconds of my day on work days. And on the occasion when I need more, it’s quick and I can grab a few minutes (like, 10 or 15) of a youtube video or Netflix while charging. Or step into a store and do an errand while charging.
In 10 minutes I can get about 100 miles of charge. I often go to our nearby Target (a store in the US) which has a supercharger right in the parking lot, and I don’t charge, even though I’m already there shopping right where the charger is. Why? No need. Already charged. It’s not that difficult.
Notice I never said this will work for everyone. But it works for some, with no assumption about having chargers at home.
>Who’s going to pay?
Sometimes you pay per kilowatt. Other times you’re charged per minute, like 3 cents a minute or so which includes parking. Other places it’s free and advertising on nearby signs subsidies for it. Or employers pay for it as a work benefit. One network (Chargepoint) covers most of this stuff.
EVs simply are not there yet. They're ludicrously expensive, inconvenient to refuel, don't offer utility like ICE trucks/SUVs, can't be charged effectively without huge infrastructure investment. I'm not saying we aren't making strides, I'm saying there are loads of improvements that need to come before EVs take over ICE sales to ultimately help us fight global problems.
EVs have never been about rich people having a toy. We need cheap EVs now to help us fight global climate change and frankly they aren't there yet. You need to make massive assumptions for the vast majority of Americans to make EVs work compared to ICE vehicles.
Not to say they shouldn't be cheaper, but they'll definitely get there. We're pretty close to price-parity as is (just not tons of options).
If you re-read my comment you will see that I acknowledged this won’t work for everyone. Quite far removed from how you portray my comment.
You’ve also made several poorly chosen points that are easily refuted. Perhaps if you want to engage with sincerity and read what people say, your experience here will be better.
You and I both agree a lot of improvements are needed. In the meantime watching evolutionary-paced progress crawl along can be frustrating for sure.
There’s something fascinating though about the difference between what we impatiently want to see, asap, as consumers, and how stuff actually gets done. And you touched on it with the rich people toy comment. The people who can figure out the steps to get from here to there — some of which steps take us through stages that look quite non-ideal along the way — those people really have some special insight or talent.
I find this amazing. Who would have thought that the way to get eco friendly cars to take off would have been to leverage humans’ enjoyment of endorphins? Pretty nonlinear thinking, but it’s working, in the case of Tesla.
(I say it’s working because it helped (or frankly, enabled, full stop) the company to even survive at all to this point. If they had tried to move straight to a cheap model on day 1, there would be no Tesla Inc. today. And now it’s putting pressure on other car companies to catch up. Anyone who thinks it is easy to finance a company while starting with a low priced model is free to try doing so, of course.)
How do we know this? Despite tax breaks we still have to pass laws telling people they will have to buy them! If they were ready I'd be able to buy one locally, have it serviced locally and take a trip without needing to plan stops to charge.
"It's tone deaf and out of touch"
Amen. As someone who lived in a city and did the commute and left it all, I've realized that many people can't imagine what life is like somewhere else. An EV in this area it is a cross between a child's plaything and a rich person's toy - but I get that for someone else they are perfect. I'm glad we aren't all the same and in the same circumstances, but I wish that was easier to keep in mind.
I think that most people would prefer a short walk to work. You can stop at a local shop and buy groceries on the way home. Stop at the coffee shop on the way in. This is the life that most people should be advocating for.
I feel that electric vehicles are a suburban dream. That you can have your suburb, and not feel bad about all the driving that you're doing. It's green washing.
Distances are greater (Costco is an hour away), the need for ground clearance, real AWD or 4x4 and lack of a local service center - those are real limiting factors. EVs don't have to replace a truck, just an Outback.
Off the topic a bit, but you got me thinking - I drive WAY less now than I did from the suburbs. Sure Costco is an hour away, but when you only go once a month it doesn't add up to much.
Here in The Netherlands, most big cities really appreciate electric cars. Thus, in streets where the demand is big, they add additional charging stations.
It's not like charging needs a garage and access to power. Sometimes, the local government is competent enough. So it really depends.
Most modern EVs can do 24-25 miles/hour on L2.
How is that not meaningful?
The average trip to the grocery store is 41 minutes [1] so that's 15 miles of charge which would negate most or all of the range lost traveling to the store.
[1] https://www.creditdonkey.com/grocery-shopping-statistics.htm...
Stop assuming that anyone plugging their EV into charge is on empty and NEEDS to charge. That's an ICE vehicle use pattern that doesn't apply, people wait until their empty when driving an ICE because they have to make a special trip. With an EV and charging everywhere, you can charge whenever you want.
I have yet to see a grocery store with a charging station in Seattle (QFC/Safeway/Whole Foods), and the one I have seen (at a Safeway far north), there were are only 2 spots and power was shared across ports.
The reality for me is that L2 charging is currently useless as the places I go do not provide chargers.