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Comment by fiftyfifty | Hacker News Reader

This is a false dichotomy, we have to get away from thinking of charging stations like gas pumps. Charging stations can be everywhere: grocery stores, retail stores, office buildings, malls, just about any parking lot or parking garage, hotels, airport parking and on and on. Gas pumps have to have huge underground tanks, and they have to be regularly refilled by large tanker trucks, by their very nature they will be less common and so they'd better be able to service more cars per hour. Charging stations are much smaller and can tie into the grid just about anywhere, there should be a lot more of them and thus they won't need to handle as many cars as a gas station does.

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Yeah, every parking spot could be a simple charging station. All you need is a power cable.

Reusing the land of all gas stations for other things will be a good benefit of all this. Except for San Francisco, where they all will be preserved as historical landmarks.

> Yeah, every parking spot could be a simple charging station. All you need is a power cable.

...and the infrastructure to distribute the electricity.

Back of the napkin math with the mall of America: 5.6 million sq ft at ~14kWh/sq ft per year (rough average estimate of all retail buildings) [1] equates to about 78.4 million kWh/year or 784,000 100kWh Model S's charged to full or 7.84 million charged 10% assuming 100% efficiency. The Mall of America has about 40 million annual visitors so about a fifth would be able to charge their batteries 10% if the Mall doubled its (hypothetical) capacity, which would likely require at least some infrastructure upgrades since we're talking about ~10 MW of extra power - and that's averaged out 24/7/365, in actuality it'll be a much higher peak load since the mall isn't 24/7.

I'm not an expert but I doubt the property developer and power companies overbuilt by that much.

[1] https://dsoelectric.com/sites/dsoelectric/files/My%20Busines...

A rollout could be smaller in scope yet be useful. Most parking lots have at least one street light... start by connecting the existing grid/infrastructure that already is there powering the streetlight, upgrading if necessary, to a handful of nearby parking spots. Go from there.

Take a step back and think about the ridiculous infrastructure build to support gas powered cars. Imagine a time before gas stations; someone doing a back of the napkin math about a future of cars would have also been met with disbelief - developers will have to invest millions/billions of dollars and build hundreds of thousand of stores across the entire country to sell gas? And how will those stores get the gas to sell? Truck it in?? That's just ridiculous.

Every parking space doesn't need to have the capacity to fill up a Model S from 1% to 100% during a lunch break.

What us civilized people here in the EU do, is we have 11-22kW charging points in pretty much all malls and supermarkets. You drive there, plug in your car, swipe the RFID and go shopping. You come back and your car has charged a bit.

No, it's not at a 100%, but it still has more charge than it did when you came in.

And again, load-balancing electricity is REALLY old tech. It's completely trivial to balance the load among the whole field during Christmas shopping season with every charger occupied so that everyone gets some charge, but the transformers don't explode.

There will be gas stations for generations to come. If California can meet its sales ban for new ICE cars in 2035, which is a tall order, ICE cars will still be on the road. Contributing to this trend will be people keeping their cars for years; used cars which represent two thirds of car sales; and cars driven into California from other states. As an example, I have a 2007 Honda and it will be on the road until it falls apart or I die.

California successfully forced me to sell my 80’s sports car out of state by constantly tightening smog requirements to the point where they were far above what the car ever had to meet and banning non-CARB stamped aftermarket parts. I have no doubt that they would be able to squeeze perfectly working ICE cars out of the state with draconian rules.

There are two emission standards for California, state and federal. If the car was sold in a state that follows federal and it meets the emission standard for the model year, it can be registered in California. The state doesn't change smog requirements; older cars remain at their original specification.

I also think from the driver's perspective the usage will be totally different.

Today's driver generally goes to the gas station only when the tank is empty.

That leads to a 'big bang' event in that the tank will be close to empty at the start of the visit and full by the end of the visit.

By comparison the driver of the electric car will be using a 'top up' approach, charging the car at home over night, at work when parked, at the shopping center, etc. etc.

Those 'big bang' events, where a full recharge is required will be fewer and far between.

"Big bangs" only occur when you're traveling somewhere, for regular everyday driving around your home town, you never use a fast charger.

Trickle charging here and there and maybe some at home overnight from a normal wall socket is enough.

People also are supposed to charge their cellular phones and laptop batteries in the same manner. You'd be surprised if you ever worked in retail how many people forget this, their phones die, and they scrambled to buy cords to do so.

I feel like people don't get the difference between ideal and reality here that often.

Excellent points. Also people seem to be forgetting a large percentage of people will be charging at home overnight, and will largely never need to charge their cars at places other than home.

Maybe for people that live in the suburbs and have disposable income to put in a charging station.

This page suggests that cost can be as low as $750 installed:

https://homeguide.com/costs/electric-car-charging-stations-c...

So in comparison most other typical annual car cost (i.e. repairs, service, running costs etc.) that one off expense is actually quite low.

I live in downtown Oslo (capitol of Norway). I park my car on the street, but we have a decent amount of type-2 chargers around so its hardly any trouble.

We’ve charged on a fast-charger three times the past three months, all of those times were on longer trips we usually don’t do.

I just charge my car from the same 240V outdoor socket I use for the lawnmower. Sure that's no good for somebody who can't park in front of their house, but it's false to say you need a dedicated EV charger.

You don't need a "charging station", you need a wall plug that can handle 8A current without melting. In Finland we have one of those for most private parking spaces for car block heaters.

If you want something fancier, it's 300-1000€ for a "proper" charging station with a Type2 cable. If you've already bought an electric car, it'll pay itself back in a few months just with fuel costs. (EU prices, American fuel prices are just bonkers-cheap).

Great, now all I need to do is run an extension cord out the window, down the stairs, across the parking lot to my space in the carport.

Clearly you don't think it will ever be practical for you, or people in your situation. However, I encourage you to open your mind that you might not be representative of the entire auto buying market.

The first electric cars were very niche. The next were a bit more capable, and the number of people that they were suitable for increased. Each iteration they get better and better. Perhaps this iteration doesn't suit you needs. Maybe the next will not either. But one by one the objections will fall. Charging infrastructure will improve. New battery chemistries will be invented. You'll come around.

Yes, they are several orders of magnitude worse than gas stations. For an 110V AC outlet to fully charge any vehicle will take days. Anything less than a fast charging station will not meaningfully charge a vehicle when you are outside.

A L2 charger will not even make a dent in your range when you are out running errands (20-25 miles of range per hour of charging). They are generally only useful when they are at your workplace and can charge for hours at a time.

Typical L1 charging adds 3 or 4 miles of range per hour on-plug. So if you're plugged in for 12 hours overnight, that's 40-ish miles, which is more than most people drive in a day. Or 8 hours at work, you get 30-ish miles, still significant.

If the parking lot at work has solar-shaded carparks that feed the chargers, the building might not even need a service upgrade. I don't know why this isn't more common.

Tell that to the person i was replying too. My point was that the problem will not be solved simply by swapping gas pumps for charge stations. The two are not interchangeable nor would doing so be cheap/easy.

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