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Comment by andjd | Hacker News Reader

This is quickly becoming outdated. Fast-charging times of about 15 minutes are possible in the US with currently existing infrastructure and vehicles, and this speed is likely to keep improving as the tech gets better. And for the typical daily driving needs of most people, plugging in to charge overnight is sufficient, so you only need to worry about charging times in rare occurrences, such as when taking a road trip.

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Not only that but for those five minute gas fill ups you can’t really leave the pump.

Maybe a 20 minute fill up where you can do other things at the same time isn’t that much worse.

Seems highly contextual. If I can charge at the grocery store - great. If I forgot to plug in last night and can't quite make the trip into work, 15-30 min is going to be a problem.

Most commutes are 30 miles round trip at the high end. Given a capacity of 400 miles as was quoted above you would need to forget to plug in for over a week to have any issues.

Not having enough electricity to make it to work is akin to not having enough gasoline for most local trips.

> If I forgot to plug in last night and can't quite make the trip into work

Assuming a 30 mile round-trip commute, I'd have to forget to plug it in 6 times before I would run into this issue my car with ~200mi of range.

I've had more times where I needed to be sure to stop and get gas before I head to the office than I've had times where I had to wait for my EV to charge before I head in.

> Not only that but for those five minute gas fill ups you can’t really leave the pump.

The part where you can't leave the pump shouldn't be longer than 1-1.5 minutes.

You should try timing it sometime. It usually takes me about 2-3 minutes to pump the almost 18 gallons of capacity into my fuel tank. Pumps in the US aren't allowed to go faster than 10gal/minute, lots around me seem to go much slower than that max speed.

Which car can be fully charged in 15 minutes? I've looked and cannot find one except some supercars that are way out of reach.

“fully” charged is a red herring, and foolish in practice.

Ok, which car can charge to 300+ miles in 15 minutes? I can fill my car in 15 minutes and get another 300+ miles.

Obviously you can't do that, and no one is arguing that a "full tank" type EV fillup is as fast as it is with an ICE vehicle.

But as an EV owner, long (like multi hundred mile) trips are the only time I would ever do that. Otherwise it's just frequent top ups while I'm at home or doing errands or whatever. So from my perspective the time to charge to full is kind of a red herring unless you are someone who regularly does like 300+ mile trips.

Well, I am someone who regularly does 300+ mile trips and I currently have a hybrid but they are not great on highways (for obvious reasons). Time of charge is a big component of my next buying decision.

Fair enough! I think in general this topic gets brought up too much since most people do drives like that rarely if ever, but if you do then an ICE vehicle or hybrid might still be your best option.

Time of charge is fastest if you have some headroom in your range. In other words it’s a lot faster to charge to 80%, as charging slows as you get higher. Keep that in mind when buying so you don’t make the mistake of buying lower range.

Try 9 minutes, one stop, to get from the bay area to LA. It’s not as fast to fill as a smelly ICE car, but it’s not too shabby at all and a lot more fun and safe to drive. The numbers are contrived.

"Fully" is a bad metric for this, because charging on EVs tends to be extremely non-linear.

For example, let me approximate the numbers I had at a recent supercharger stop. It took me about 15 mins to charge from 3% to 60%. Then another 10-15 mins from 60% to 80%. Then another 15 mins from 80% to 90%. In general, for better battery life and to not waste your time, it is recommended to charge to 90% or below.

And that wasn't the most recent gen supercharger. At some, I had personally seen peak charging speed of 580+ mi/hr.

Here is how I reacted to this: “Damn…it took this person 40+ minutes to almost fill up their car”

I only do a full charge for a long trip. Normally, i just charge in my apt garage overnight or at work, and the car is already full every single day i wake up, zero time spent.

And if i am in a rush, i just charge at a supercharger for that quick 15 min charge to 60% and go along.

I guess I am just not bothered much by taking a short break after multiple hours of driving. And the costs being much cheaper than gas (about $17-18 for full tank at a supercharger, virtually free at my apt building or work) kinda helps.

It’s just a mental shift us non-EV owners need to make. Starting every day with a full charge has value for sure.

You cannot charge fast past a high state of charge, mostly because you don’t want to overload the battery cells by having a too high voltage.

Cars that charge that fast to 100% either do not care about not destroying the battery, which makes sense in a racing context without sustainability concerns, or the 100% reported by the battery management system is a lot lower than the maximum state of charge possible.

That’s why you cannot find common electric cars that charge to 100% in 15 minutes. But you will find some that can charge fast for 15 minutes and that’s what matters.

This and the sibling comments seem to prove the (grand)parent's point though; you can "charge fast" (apparently to 60-80%) in 15-30 min, which leaves you with a less-than-full-distance capacity in a longer time compared with an ICE which is "5 min and full capacity." That doesn't mean that electric cars aren't good, but it means they are slower (less distance, more down time) - this is good enough for most local traffic situations, though.

With "local traffic distances", my ICE has been slower overall. I spent ~3 hours on "charging" time driving around town last year, while I've waited 0 minutes waiting on my EV.

That's 3 hours of downtime with my ICE, 0 minutes of downtime with my EV. Which one resulted in more downtime again?

You have commented this on a handful of subthreads, but I feel like you're missing the goal of the argument. If you want "instant recharge," gas wins. I understand that charging overnight will work in most cases, I understand you have a window of perhaps as much as two weeks to find a single night to do it, etc. Similarly, for the sake of argument, I could keep a gas pump in my garage to fill up at night, which would mean I had "0 minutes of downtime" as well.

In most cases having a battery will get you from A to B without issue - same on a tank of gas. When it won't, you will spend more time waiting on the battery to charge, which is a tradeoff that is probably still worthwhile for the vast majority of people.

I was specifically talking to their statement of "local traffic distances". Is >200mi "local traffic distances" to you? That's a long drive to me. "Local traffic distances" to me means maybe 60 miles round-trip, max. Most EV's can handle "local traffic distances" without having to stop and recharge.

> Similarly, for the sake of argument, I could keep a gas pump in my garage to fill up at night, which would mean I had "0 minutes of downtime" as well.

You literally couldn't unless you were massively wealthy or lived on a farm or something along those lines. You probably wouldn't be able to secure the permitting to have that much gas on site at small residential lot. It would also be a pretty big headache managing the gas delivery contracts for such a small amount. It would be a huge hassle getting it delivered to your home. Realistically, you couldn't get as much convenience at your home assuming you lived in a statistically average suburban/urban single family home.

Meanwhile all it took for my EV was to install an outlet, <$200. No crazy permitting, no massive storage tanks storing hazardous liquids, no managing additional delivery contracts needing to get big fuel trucks to pull up near the house to deliver gas, no EPA inspections for that storage tank, etc.

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