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Comment by pmontra | Hacker News Reader

A plan in case we're really desperate. Gas stations already have large tanks full of gasoline. They burn that gas in generators to charge batteries to charge EVs from. No need for extra infrastructure except the generator: the energy is delivered to the gas station in the usual way, a truck. Then gradually build the infrastructure and deliver electricity directly to the gas station, that won't be _gas_ anymore.

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Gas stations do not universally want cars taking up space in their parking lots for the requisite amount of charge time at a much lower expected revenue per minute than equivalent gas fillup capacity.

Gas Stations make money off the merchandise, the margins for gas at the station level are not that great.

Indeed, gas stations would probably love if all cars were electric. When you stop to charge, you know that you will be stopping for at least 15 minutes, so why not get a cup of coffee and a snack while waiting?

If we're lucky, gas stations might turn into alcohol-free third places where people watch sports, have a meal and hang out while waiting for their car to charge.

Driving ranges are generally high enough that driving from 100 to 0% charge means you should take a legally mandated break. So why not embrace that?

They make money off of X% of N travelers per day stopping to buy a coffee, cigarettes etc. If you require a substantial amount of space to be taken by travelers who sit there charging for 30 minutes, you're reducing peak travelers (eg during the morning and evening commutes) and significantly reducing total traffic. Claiming that they're all going to come in for a slurpee and this will happen to work out neutral or positive for the gas station is pure handwaving.

Or don’t and drive gasoline power cars and save the energy loss converting gasoline to electricity, and the 1% per day energy loss that evs have if you just leave them be. Or maybe let’s just make hybrids and not lug around 2 tons of batteries.

Let’s make a gasoline powered micro energy grid for ev powered cars.

The whole ev craze is wildly stupid, inefficient and worse for the environment. Your double AA battery powered toy with an iPad isn’t going to save to world.

it's actually totally feasible to convert gas to electricity and use it to power an EV and lose less energy than just putting the gas into an ICE. Car engines have to be designed to minimize weight and volume to fit in a car. a ground based generator can be significantly more efficient than a car engine.

Easier to capture the CO2, and reduce other pollutants, too.

In my head, the future history of car like transportation will be something like: horse, gas, battery, gas. The second phase being "fully green" gasoline — perhaps via air reclamation?

Obviously, the real long-play would be a cyberhorse on the far side, somehow...

Seems unlikely outside of niches just because the efficiency of gas is awful, even though the energy and power density is good.

From an energy perspective, gas is a pretty terrible battery. It's 25% efficient for a car to discharge, and currently very inefficient to synthesize. EVs on the other hand are over 90% efficient for charging and discharging. Gas is energy dense, but it's hard to imagine quadrupling vehicle energy consumption being a good idea. For uses like airplanes and trans-oceanic boats, carbon captured gas might be the best zero emissions option, but for anything where a battery works, you would never go back to gas.

I hate having to waste time a couple times a month driving to a gas station to pour stinky stink juice into my wife's car. It's filthy, smelly, and a huge waste of time.

I much prefer plugging my car in in my driveway (I'm lucky to have a driveway; lots of car owners don't) and I basically never think about fueling my car or range. My car charges on a 20a / 240v circuit (IE a totally normal one that didn't require a huge amount of effort or expense to install).

As an added bonus, my car's more pleasant to drive, quieter, and costs way less per mile driven.

Near where I live the majority of Tesla supercharging stations are connected to fuel cell < - > natural gas gizmos, so in fact what you're describing is already done.

Commercial power billing is typically for the peak draw of an installation over a period of time, so there's huge incentive to chop the tops off of these peaks with fuel cells and batteries.

The DC Fast charge power requirements are enormous and I'd be surprised if more than a small fraction of gas stations had direct grid ties suitable for reasonable DC Fast charging.

Those tanks are huge boat anchors for the owners, your either a gas station owner or paying to have those tanks pulled and the soil tested.

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