Comment by mbirth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mbirth | Hacker News Reader

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I don't know how it is outside Europe, but in Europe car manufacturers have to obey a CO2 per kilometre limit which is calculated over their whole range of cars on offer.

Only until recently, classic manufacturers didn't actually want to sell EVs. They only built them to get down their fleet-overall-CO2-value so they can also build another SUV (which are selling like hot cakes and have a huge margin of profit compared to EVs due to tried and tested technology) and still adhere to the limit.

Now the first "legacy" manufacturers slowly start to make "proper" EVs for somewhat normal prices. However, they rely on power companies to build (compatible) charging stations. And those power companies are very reluctant because they're waiting for more EV customers to hit the streets before building more charging points. Add to that different standards (CCS, CHAdeMO) and nobody feeling responsible to quickly repair broken stations and we have the current situation.

Something that shouldn't be forgotten: Tesla early on asked other car manufacturers if they wanted "in" on their charging network. But they all refused. (Might change slowly, though. [1])

[1] https://www.electrive.com/2020/12/22/tesla-superchargers-alr...

It isn't just CCS vs. CHAdeMO vs. "normal plug" vs. CEE that is the problem.

The worst problem is actually paying for the juice. You cannot use credit or debit cards or even cash. No. You have to sign up with a charging network that sends you a charging card for something between 5 and 25 EUR/month. With that card you then have the privilege to get juice for somewhere between 30 (normal household price in .de) and 300 ct/kWh. But not everywhere, just on the charging outlets in the network. Your chance to have the right card is about 1 in 5 or so. Oh, and billing is unreliable, sometimes/often the card doesn't work because the charger has connectivity problems. And there are even chargers where there is no proper energy meter involved, so they just bill by the minute...

It's either Tesla or charging at home, the rest is nonviable in Germany.

Argh, that's been my experience too. (I've just rented electric cars). None of the charging stations take credit cards; they all have some byzantine payment method.

There are weird resellers abound - some have apps that work, some have crashy pieces of crap. Some have clear pricing models, others have weird "memberships" and surprise bills. The same charging station can cost wildly different amounts to different people.

It reminds me of the bad old days of American long-distance service. Really difficult to actually pick the right provider.

There are a lot of EV chargers in Germany but they're such a bizarre experience. And they're not cheap! It costs ~15eur to fully charge a car here in Berlin.

> Tesla early on asked other car manufacturers if they wanted "in" on their charging network...

This is the problem. Nobody asked _me_, the consumer.

In reality this should be strictly regulated. Just as there are no manufacturer-specific gas stations, there shouldn't be manufacturer specific chargers either.

If somebody builds a charger network, they should make it possible for anybody to charge there (of course, the prices can be different for each customer).

This is in essence what Ionity does in Europe. I'm surprised that the EU regulations have not caught up with this yet.

I also think they should adopt the gas station law of displaying the general price big and readable for passing cars. Currently often even customers in the network don't know what they will be charged because mostly nothing is displayed at all.

I don’t agree - if this were the case we wouldn’t have EVs or a charging network at all.

Tesla built this in spite of all the attacks against them, at this point it should be their competitive advantage.

I’m sure the others will try and complain that it’s unfair to customers now though that they’re screwed.

A big issue is also that power companies in much of Europe (don't know much about how things look in the US) do not have an infrastructure capable of handling the additional load if EV-charging starts replacing gas-stations. As such, many are not exactly enthusiastic about rolling out superchargers at an accelerated pace since this would only further strain their networks.

We could fairly easily offer electricity at spot price to as many charging stations as we could build with money from issuing bonds.

I.e., the charging stations would be credit-market-funded and just take e.g. a percentage of revenue to satisfy the investors. Well, sounds like it should instead be shares and just dividends payed out from any actual ROI, but that's not much of a difference.

Using spot pricing could both include load-variable fees to the network operators, as well as paying for more expensive electricity sources when the supply is tight.

This additional profit from squeezed networks would fund both power plants and distribution infrastructure.

It could easily be combined with a futures market, where you e.g. let your car's navigation system search for a route to the destination with stops that fit within the car's range and suitable locations. You'd reserve a spot at the charger, along with buying futures for electricity at the expected time intervals. If you stop for longer than you would technically need, you could buy futures with delivery terms that only prescribe delivery during the period at a maximum instantaneous rate. If the market maker that sold you that variable-rate future delays the charging too much, they might end up having to pay high prices to fulfill their obligations to you.

But all that is what futures markets are made for: shifting uncertainty and volatility of only partially-predictable goods to financial investors that take some fee in the form of gains, in exchange for absorbing risk.

In the UK a company worked around that by having large batteries near their fast charging points. So the batteries are charged slowly to not put strain on the power grid and when you're fast charging your car, the juice is taken out of those batteries. IIRC they said about 6 cars could fast charge this way, the 7th would have to wait a bit.

It was on the Fully Charged YouTube Show, about 2 years ago or so.

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