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Comment by QuarterReptile | Hacker News Reader

>Charges from 20% to 80% in about 20 minutes at maximum speed (70kW)

Can your house supply this power? Quick lazy math suggests that that's almost double my home's entire max power throughput.

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Why would you need to charge your car in 20 minutes at home? By far the most common home charging use case is to charge when you're home for the night, which is usually 10+ hours for most people.

Fast chargers are for road trips.

The car has long enough range for daily commutes and errands, so home charging only needs to complete overnight. Fast charging is only necessary during long road trips. At least, that’s true for the vast majority of people. In the edge case where you drive two hundreds miles, come home, then start another long drive, you’d need to go to a rapid charger.

The use pattern is different. You leave it overnight on a standard socket and it will charge fully. Or leave it charging while going to work. I don't have charging at home at all and charge at work which keeps me comfortably topped up. If I lack any charge on the weekends I just top up once in a fast charger for about 10 minutes. Fast chargers are probably now or very soon more common than gas stations around Southern Finland.

Most gas stations in Norway have or is in the process of getting charging stations. The only thing that sucks big time is the payment process. With gas you present your card and then fill your tank. Easy. With chargers you have to download an app, register an account, put in your payment details, find the charger in the app and then you can charge (if it works). And there’s tens of different charging companies, all with their own app. Infuriating.

In Denmark many of the networks implement roaming, so you can use your preferred app to pay for most charging.

At home you have time (because your car spends a lot of, if not 99% of its time parked!), so you charge at 6-7kw usually.

I should have been clearer as people who know EVs intuitively know I meant fast charging. Home charging speeds vary quite a lot since the vehicle comes with a normal household plug charger as well as a dedicated EV charger cable for <22kW.

Most newer houses, at least in my area, have 96kW max service.

This sounds crazy to me! Where do you live? In my area (central Italy) most houses have a 7kW (230V 32A) connection

7kW sounds low to me, no one around goes under 10kW, with 12-15 being typical. That said I never heard about home connection over 30kW. Power company charges monthly for available power, so no one goes with huge 3phase connection just in case they might need it.

Spain here: everybody around me gets surprised when I say I have 6,5kW installed, they think is crazy high. A quick google search tells me our average is between 3,45kW and 4,6kW.

https://selectra.es/energia/tramites/potencia-electrica-cont...

Is that single phase or 3 phase? Most homes in the US have somewhere in the range of 100-200A single phase hookup.

Many places in North America use electric for almost everything - heating, cooling, hot water. 240V 100A used to be common (24kW) but people would run up against that limit, so most new houses have been 200A for a while (48kW). I don't know where that person is that a 400A service is the most common, but I've never seen it outside of wasteful mcmansions (4000+ sqft with associated excessive heating and cooling requirements, hot tub, sauna, heated pool, every room gets a 20A breaker or two, etc.)

I installed 400a service on my 1100sqft home. I was getting solar installed, and my panel had to be updated anyway from an old fire-trap Zinsco. I asked the company how much more to do a 400a service and they said $500 more so I went for it planning on eventually being able to charge 2 EV’s at max amperage in the future.

I've recently built house in the USA. Everything is electric. Standard service is 200A. I asked to double it just in case, but haven't exhausted first half yet. Electric company did not have any issues with it.

I also got 10kw gas generator that I can plug into house if there is blackout. It will power essentials like heating, fridge, hot water. And yet I still can roll it into my truck and take it with me on a road trip if needed. It is heavy and loud. But it was something like $1300 from Amazon delivered, so I am not complaining.

Silicon Valley. However, my understanding is that max is quite simply that: max. I have no idea what you'd actually be able to pull during peak hours. Houses are also coming pretty much standard with electric car hookup stations in the garage, so that's part of it.

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