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Comment by plondon514 | Hacker News Reader

The reason we ended up with a Tesla, instead of a Kona electric, or any other EV, is the charging network. Where do you charge this thing and how long does it take?

“You can only charge at home” doesn’t work for everyone. Maybe it does for this market though?

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Ford has an agreement with Electrify America (built by VW using diesel-gate penalty funds [0]). By most accounts I've read, using it is relatively frictionless with the FordPass app [1]. The annoying part seems to be finding a station that has the right plug.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/vws-2-billion-penalty-for-di...

[1] https://owner.ford.com/fordpass/fordpass-electric-vehicle-fe...

Frictionless... is a bit of a stretch here.

https://youtu.be/hA_B7qPyUDA?t=1131

You can charge it at 4,375 CCS charging locations in North America:

https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html

New CCS charging sites are being added every week. Electrify America and Petro-Canada both have transcontinental CCS charging networks.

With the amount of GOOD EV coming to market, I think a lot of places (gas stations, etc) can quickly pivot to support charging stations, assuming incentives align with them. It's naturally for a lot of places with free parking (such as strip malls) to rent out the parking spaces to charging providers for extra cash. Just like cell towers.

I don’t think gas stations are set up for this. Who wants to spend 25 minutes hanging out in a gas station convenience store? Cafes or any other place to relax for 25 minutes seems the fuel station of the future.

I would assume gas stations will start adding waiting room space, like you see in tire shops, car washes, etc. Of course they might do even better to add a more coffee shop kind of thing, so they can also sell you a muffin or something while you wait.

There's already a shift to customer experience oriented gas stations on road trip routes. I would happily spend a half hour at a Sheetz, Buckees, Wawa, etc. I'd prefer a proper restaurant but there's room for both.

With EV charging stations, you don't need the expensive environmental cost of having gasoline and cost of operations. You can lease out a few parking spaces in your business (cafe, grocery, bookstores) parking lots and take a part of the profits of charging stations.

yup, i’ve seen a couple grocery stores near me installing electrify america stations, which makes a ton of sense, since most shoppers spend 30+ minutes per trip at a grocery store.

In Europe plenty of larger rest-stops along highways are set up for this already, due to servicing truckers and other long-distance travelers.

Wawa (gas station chain) has already opened the first store with only charging and no gas in Northern VA. It’s basically a mini-mart with Tesla Superchargers.

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