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Comment by mnd999 | Hacker News Reader

Still doesn't work for my use case. I commute on public transport, live in an apartment with only on-street parking, there is limited on-street charging but it's massively oversubscribed. Mostly I drive longer distances for hiking trips, weekends away music festivals, visiting family etc. Very few of these destinations have charging options. I've seen how this can work, I drove an electric Hyundai Ionic as a hire car in South Korea a couple of years ago. The car was great and there are chargers everywhere, but we're nowhere near that point in the UK as yet.

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It almost almost starts to work with latest models. I just got Kona 64KWh version last week and my math was among the lines of: it can do 400km/250miles of realistic driving, I do need a 20-40 min break after 400-500km anyway, that is enough to charge it up on fast charger to continue my trip. Kona is not ideal because it needs 40-50 min to charge, but Tesla Model 3, VW id.3/id.4 and others can do 125kwh+ charge rates so can charge in <30min. I think I'll stay with Kona for 2-3 years and then jump to something that can charge faster.

So math of getting to destination starts to work, then you get to destination charging and that is more tricky. The car wants 16KWh per 100km, and charging from power socket you can realistically pull 1.6-2KWh, so overnight you can expect to be able to charge 100km of range without much of infrastructure (without level 2 chargers I mean).

So my conclusion is that it's not plug-and-play just yet, but it nearly works, and benefits of electrics starts to outweigh the disadvantage of looking for a power socket.

Same experience. The infrastructure simply isn't there yet in most towns or cities.

Those who think otherwise forget that a large number of people in OECD countries don't own their own parking spots or have the legal right to run electricity or install their own chargers.

They also seem to greatly underestimate what it would cost to saturate street-side parking spots with car chargers.

Charging will eventually become convenient for people who don´t live in detached housing or happen to be in a small handful of forward-thinking towns or cities, but it's going to take a fair amount of time.

A big problem in my city is that street charging stations have to compete with regular parking spots, so a spot is either just a normal parking spot, or blessed for EVs only. Bit of a thorn in the eye of less rich people who can’t afford an EV.

Second, they’re competing with bicycle parking and bicycle lanes. Spots are getting fewer because of this.

Third, cars are getting larger, leading to larger parking spots required, and therefore a lower spot density.

Hmm, interesting. In London at least it doesn't look like the on-street charging is particularly over subscribed, although it obviously would become so if everyone followed this without drastic improvements. I think it really depends on the area but parking by my old flat had chargers in the lamp posts, by my friends there are proper electric only bays with faster chargers, etc.

If your main use case is long trips though I agree, although service stations in the UK do have pretty good electric charging infrastructure.

My parents have just switched to electric and while its a slight change in how you operate (maybe stop for a coffee and let the dog stretch his legs while they are plugged into a fast charger for 20 mins) they seem pretty happy with it.

Another anecdata point - an acquaintance got Tesla. And now instead of just rocking up to a nearest petrol station he's in constant mode of planning trips, checking for available charging stations, leaving the car few blocks away for charging, etc, etc. He's still happy apparently, because it's very pleasant ride and so on. But from my point of view it's a massive downgrade in comfort.

The next stage is hydrogen powered cars. All of the upsides of electric cars but none of the downsides.

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