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Comment by failwhaleshark | Hacker News Reader

Most people who own EVs aren't going to feel safe enough to sit for two hours recharging their expensive cars next to a convenience store with the standard hangout figures around said stores. These are what personal safety people call "transitional spaces" so it's absolutely the worst place to put oneself for an extended period of time.

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If the charging station can deliver the juice, like at least 150KW, then a 10 minute stop will give you another few hundred kilometers if your car can handle that.

At that point it becomes a nice spot to stretch your legs and grab something quick to bite before you're back on the road again.

I never charge at anything less than 75KW if I am driving long distance. I have 22KW at home for slow charging.

Teslas might as well be Ferraris for most the world. Aren't the bulk of present average EVs unable to charge at the rates Teslas or similar expensive EVs use?

Do you think 7-11 is going to install very fast charging? It's 7-11: where deathdogs rotate forever until someone who doesn't like living buys one.

I think the charging speed of most EVs are expected to improve for all cars in the coming years due to better batteries and battery management.

Affordable EVs these days, for example the ID.3 or ID.4 do 125KW charging, at least up to a certain point. Teslas are not much better. Yes, the Model 3 can charge much faster than this, but only for a short time until it will throttle down significantly.

For this reason though, charging only a little makes even more sense. Bringing your battery from 10% to 50% should be relatively fast no matter which car you have. The last 50% will take much longer.

Once the car throttles down the charging speed, you are probably better off finding another charger an hour or two away - unless you're planning a longer stay.

>Once the car throttles down the charging speed, you are probably better off finding another charger an hour or two away - unless you're planning a longer stay.

This is 100% true and, from recent experience, generally a much better way to road trip. Stopping every 150 miles or so breaks up the trip into nice chunks and keeps you fresh.

I took an earlier trip where I had to charge from 10-90% twice due to charger distance and it was much worse.

Not all electric cars are 80k Tesla units.

In Europe, they recently launched a ShitEV called Dacia Spring. You can buy it in Germany for around $14000 [0]. The world has enough room, and will have enough EVs in time, for regular charging stations for regular people, or even "standard hangout figures" ... we won't all be driving hype.

[0] https://www.carscoops.com/2021/03/dacia-spring-ev-prices/

Teslas also start at about half that (closer to $40K), and are effectively the new Toyota Prius in terms of popularity (in California, at least). I don't consider them luxury vehicles by any means, especially after sitting in a Lucid Air, Mercedes EQS or nicer EVs.

But hype is faster, stronger, just-around-the-corner, and more magical like a certain loop.

Say you have to drive 1000 mi / 1600 km nonstop or have a low battery. So how are EVs going to work practically for everyone who isn't rich without standard swappable battery packs like the original Model S had?

There "isn't enough room" in ATX; homelessness is being recriminalized. Also, there "isn't enough room" in Denmark for out-of-EU asylum waiting camps because no one wants to host them.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/austin-s-homeless-camping-...

https://www.kctv5.com/denmark-passes-law-to-move-asylum-cent...

You can check out Teslabjørn on Youtube, he is testing pretty much all EVs and publishing his test results, including a 1000KM "high speed run".

His reference ICE car is a Kia Ceed hybrid, which completed the run in 9h25m. The fastest EV: 9h35m - Yes, that was an expensive Audi. The fastest Tesla: Model S Long Range - 9h50m

All data found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V6ucyFGKWuSQzvI8lMzv...

... and the relevant videos from each test can be found on his Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/bjornnyland

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