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Comment by esskay | Hacker News Reader

The UK for one, and I dare say most of Europe. Our nations are vastly older than the US and were not purpose built for cars. Many here have on street parking, you can't dangle a cable from your house to your car (which may not be outside of your house).

There's been arguments about putting them on lamp posts - ok, but again, cables. 1 lamp post for ~10 cars doesnt really work.

Plucking a random average UK street off of Google maps - figure out how you charge cars at 6pm when everyones home from work and this road is full of cars on both sides of the street: https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4257624,-2.9412328,3a,60y,22...

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>you can't dangle a cable from your house to your car (which may not be outside of your house).

That must vary between countries, because I've seen tons of outlets on the outside walls of homes in Finland. They need a weatherproof extension cord, but it comes in handy for a lot of tools. Though most homes have at least a driveway, cars are generally shorter than homes, so they fit close by.

The cost of free parking and where to park should really be reconsidered in cities though, as with your image, those exist here as well and are really bad places to drive in. IIRC in Japan they require people to prove a car has it's own dedicated parking space before they're allowed to get a car

Requiring you to provide a dedicated parking space would be a non starter in the UK. There's just no land for that. Your dedicated parking space would end up being miles away from your home.

The issue as shown in the streetview image is that those are public footpaths next to the houses. If you tried dangling a cable from your home to your car (if you were lucky enough to get a spot outside your house) you'd very quickly be in a lot of trouble when someone trips over it.

This is false. In the UK most homes have a driveway, so fitting a charger is a no brainer.

Many do - and for those of course they can fit a charger. Terrace houses in major cities often do not have any form of allocated parking, it's all on-street. You'd be sued pretty quickly if you dangled a cable across a public footpath and someone tripped over.

Not seeing anyone coming up with a way to solve that pretty important issue.

We already manage electrically powered machines for the purpose of lighting the streets at night and for parking meters. Extending those to provide power to EVs isn’t too far fetched. https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/electric-vehicles-and-rapid...

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