Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikewarot | Hacker News Reader

My brother in law was considering a Tesla, so I decided to see what charging stations are near us, just outside of Chicago.

The nearest Electric Charging Station of ANY kind is 3 miles from him, in the back corner of a Chevrolet dealer's service bay. He doesn't have a garage, nor electrical service capable of dealing with charging.

As for me, I've only got 100 amp service, so I'm not sure how well I'd fare. I also don't know how long a charging cord would last outside in the Midwest. The nearest actual superchargers are 1/2 hour away. There are at least 100 gas stations in that range for me.

Infrastructure is the problem, no matter how well it might be glossed over for an outsider, this short little peek into reality has me knowing I won't be going electric in the next few years, at least.

View on HN

Have been charging cars outside in New England for several years now, right through the winters. Biggest issue has been that sometimes the charge port cover can be hard to open or close when iced, but cars charge just fine under a dump of snow.

My house has 100amps service and I was able to install a 14-50 outlet (240V/50amps) which allows me to charge at sustained 32amps. It all depends on what other load do you need to handle, for me the only other significant load was the A/C, everything else is gas powered. Don't even have to go that high, even a 240V/30amps outlet (24 amps sustained) will still charge a car in a reasonable amount of time. Keep in mind that you will rarely need to charge from 0 to 100%, most of the time will be a fraction of that. For me it's usually 70% to 90%, but, of course, YMMV.

I plug my Leaf SV+ in a 110v plug and it works fine (I charge once a week, 350km capacity).

I'm starting to think it is a feature, not a bug: peasants should stop being able to move anywhere so easily. The fact you can't easily charge a personal vehicle? Good.

Bunch up in overcrowded cities, use public transportation only so we can keep the outside clean for the new nobles.

This is an opinion I am slowly arriving at - EVs are a very expensive way to force a change in how far people expect to be able to travel.

That was never a goal, just an engineering limitation. If someone builds a 2000 mile EV it's still an EV and nobody is going to shout that it has too much range.

True, but mandating a switch to EVs is certainly not an engineering limitation.

It appears to be an engineering limitation, if the engineering problem is "how does human society survive into the next century, given climate constraints".

Perhaps hydrogen cars is a theoretical alternative, but they just don't seem to play out.

If it's that bad, we should stop nibbling around the edges of the problem with complex and wasteful solutions that make a few percentage points difference, and just ban cars.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com