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Comment by bad_alloc | Hacker News Reader

We don't need difficult to fix, hard to clean chargers in every curb. We need maintainable chargers which are gauranteed to work in some convenient location. Ideally 11kW to 22kW chargers at work and shopping places and proper fast chargers at every highway stop. This will cover most drivers needs, as daily charging is not needed. What is important is to have every location always have free charging spots, since arriving to find a single charger occupied or broken is one of the most common frustrations of finding charging spots.

Source: I drive an EV all the time.

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I slow charge at home, which covers my need for ~340 days per year. The remaining couple days, instead of dealing with broken chargers, I pick hotels with chargers and/or pick a reliable charging network to fast charge along the way (such as Tesla or Ionity).

My experience so far is: - some hotels require you to unplug once you are done -- which can be annoying if you arrive in the evening and your car will be done charging at 4am. - some apps under report the number of charging spots. I noticed this on a recent, it showed 4 chargers when there were 4 physical chargers with 2 plugs each (effectively allowing 8 cars to charge at the same time). - winter vs summer makes a huge difference in EV range. I wish car makers published data for each season. - I wish car makers published the car charge graph for different types of chargers. My car consistently mis-predicts how long its going to take to charge (usually over-estimates the time, sometimes by a couple hours).

> some hotels require you to unplug once you are done -- which can be annoying if you arrive in the evening and your car will be done charging at 4am

Doesn't the connector unlock when the car is full? I don't charge very often since I only use car sharing now, but I've peeked through a charging car's window, seen it's at 100% and unplugged their cable a couple of times now and it always worked.

These spots either have a “cars not charging will be towed” sign or charge $/min once you are full. I doubt anyone would call a tow truck in the middle of the night. I haven’t bothered testing what happens if the car unlocks the cable, the thing will probably still charge the overages. I end up finding a time to charge during the day.

I would argue a common scenario in a German city is the following: You live in an appartment building without a garage and your workplace is closeby, i.e. you do not take your car to work. You use the car to visit family on the weekend, appointments out of town, etc.

You can get by without curbside charging in this scenario, but it sounds like a huge annoyance.

What about a small hot-swappable battery compartment in EVs that give you enough kms to get home (like a jerry can of petrol). I'm not sure if the size of battery needed for a car would be prohibitive though. How big would a ~30km battery be?

Then instead of charging points, you could have something more like a petrol/filling station. Pop in, swap your pack, and drive off. (You could even plug the car in for a fast charge while they do the battery swap).

My model for this is the hot-swappable battery packs that the electric scooter networks in many Asian countries employ. [0]

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/battery-swapping-tech-gives-elec...

You'd need a user-safe way to plug and unplug a 400V to 800V battery if you want to directly supplement the main battery. Otherwise you are looking at additional hardware to convert the voltage.

>How big would a ~30km battery be?

25-50kg depending on the efficiency of the vehicle. Not really something most people can comfortably handle or walk a few hundred meters with from the battery pickup point to their car.

That's not too bad. That's something the could conceivably be automated at a station.

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