Hacker News Reader

Comment by ttymck | Hacker News Reader

> because you are home and done driving for the day

This is something I think about a lot, and it's also what prevented me from purchasing an EV recently -- I live in an apartment and park in a surface lot; street parking would be even less feasible for charging.

My question is to anyone who may know the answer: is there any research/modeling being done regarding the intersection of declining home ownership and increased EV adoption/feasibility?

Most of my peers can't afford a home but would prefer an electric vehicle. Workplace charging is often suggested as the answer, how does a shift to remote work change that? A lot of moving parts and I'm curious if someone more qualified than me has crunched the numbers.

View on HN

I survived 3 years in Brooklyn with an EV and no garage charging.

Really depends on where you live, work and what your commute route looks like. An EV with 300mi of range can be treated like a gas car - stop to charge every week or two instead of gassing up.

I had a supercharger 1 mile away, and 3 more in a 20 minute radius. One urban supercharger was at a grocery/Target and another was at a Museum/Garden, so in those situations I’d park longer for a deep charge and make use of my time productively. I never ever just sat in my car for 20..30..60min like some people imagine you might.

It's another thing to think about though.

If you need gas it's 5 minutes. if you need emergency electric charge, well, you're screwed.

You can charge for a few minutes too.

Not really, the charge times are really slow compared to a gas fill up, and you won't be able to fullycharge.

> I had a supercharger 1 mile away, and 3 more in a 20 minute radius.

Its worth noting that regularly using superchargers is murder on your battery, long term. After 600 charge cycles with no fast charge, you will still have 90% battery capacity, as opposed to 80% capacity if using super charging 30% of the time. If you use super charging 50% of the time, you will reduce your capacity to 75% after only 300 charge cycles. [1]

[1] https://evannex.com/blogs/news/debunking-3-myths-about-elect...

Some european cities have light post chargers. And there exist small parking meter sized chargers. You don't need supercharger wattage when you're charging while working or parking at home.

Or I can just use gas, and not have to worry about it.

Only if you don't care about climate change.

If you are really serious about reducing your carbon footprint, don't have children or pets.

Not having children or pets won't really change our carbon emissions in the next ten to fifteen years, which is the time frame that matters if we want to stay below 2°. And unless you want to reduce the human population to zero, it's not a sustainable path to net zero emissions.

I care about climate change but electric cars are too expensive.

The poor always suffer. Rich people will buy endless junk but since they can afford a tesla they think they're doing something

But then you are driving a gas car. It's smelly and unresponsive.

It makes sense if you are really into gas cars or an eletric car doesn't work for you, but the charging problem for people living in apartments will be fixed eventually. It's already fixed in a few cities.

People have been driving gas cars for years. We're doing just fine.

Sorry we can't afford luxury electric cars like the rich SV people on here

Reply on news.ycombinator.com