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Comment by blabitty | Hacker News Reader

The grid in general has a lot of old wiring especially in earlier settled parts of the country. I grew up in a house built in 1940 and it wasn't especially old for my area. These are real costs that affect real people when discussing a massive paradigm shift like going mainly to EV and comments like yours perpetuate the idea that EV's are for a certain wealthy disconnected from reality virtue signalling crowd.

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Overdue maintenance for real people.

Cloth and/or ungrounded wiring is a electrocution and fire hazard and should be considered unsafe for anybody using basic electrics near any water source, much more if it has any load. This warning should be more pronounced for elderly, children, or people who have not been accustomed to it.

This is not much different than the Lowndes Al homes that haven't had working septic in 30 years that are bringing back hookworm.

My house doesn't even have grounded wires. I wonder if that is an issue when charging an EV.

It depends on the car, using the charger that you connect on a classic household plug some do not really mind a bad grounding while some other will refuse to charge.

But it's not too difficult to fix that if you get a charger installed.

thanks

If everything is working probably not. Although the EV charge port may require a ground path be present.

If the neutral wire breaks the ground is for safety. Otherwise the hot needs a path and that will probably be the car itself, or most likely you.

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