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Comment by Qwertious | Hacker News Reader

>1. Don't live in a house with a charger.

Just so we're clear: a charger can plug into a normal wall plug, so if you have a garage with a wall plug then you're set. If not, you're talking about paying <$500 (and probably less than half that) for an electricial to fix that.

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I live in a center of an European city, just like about 20000 nearby people. No garage, car parked at a random free place in 1 km radius.

I'd love to be able to get an EV, but it's a no go. Also, there are no electric family MPVs.

There are millions of people without a garage or permission to set up a charging point.

Sure, and there are about 100,000,000 gas powered cars in the US. Even if every company stopped producing gas cars immediately, there still would be no shortage of gas cars for decades.

Many garages are not attached or people park on the street! Also level 1 charge is reeeeally slow. It works fine with my PHEV (only a 14 kWh battery) but would not be able to charge a fully used EV battery overnight

What if you live in an apartment complex that doesn't provide charging? Or if you have to park on the street?

70% of Americans live in single family homes:

https://www.builderonline.com/money/economics/80-percent-of-...

And, many apartment dwellers either have easier access to public transit and walkable tasks, and so make fewer car trips than single family home folk, and they make shorter car trips since they live in a denser environments where everything is closer.

So, I think this issue may be overblown.

So let's just sacrifice 30%? That's such a huge chunk that it can change a government in the elections.

No, not sacrifice. Even if all ICE car production ended tomorrow, there are 100M cars in the US.

And my point wasn't that apartment dwellers won't get to have cars any more, just that they would rely on destination charging, or hopping over to a supercharger-esque place for 15 minutes/week. I wouldn't want to use public chargers only with my EV, but that is because I live in a rural area and therefore need to drive a lot. If all of my trips were 1/3rd the distance I don't think I would mind using a public charger to stay charged.

Then go drive your car to a charging station sometimes and make a phone call or eat a sandwich. Is it really so dramatically different than filling up gas at the gas station? The only dramatic difference is EV charging is vastly cheaper for the consumer.

It takes only a few minutes to fill a tank with gas. It takes so little time you have maybe just enough time to get a drink out of a vending machine or fridge. No one goes to a gas station to eat lunch. Most gas stations aren't staffed or set up to serve food even if people wanted to.

Obviously the infrastructure will evolve. People will adapt. The world will keep spinning. I honestly don't understand how most people survive in a constantly changing world when even the slightest deviation from their repetitive norm results in throwing their hands in the air and giving up!

Have a look at Europe. Many many people there live in apartment buildings. Some not even a garage. Others can't install chargers because the owner and the local government all have to agree. It's just not that easy... I myself know people who would happily pay. But the town didn't allow them to have a charger cus then theyd have to allow it for everyone and then the grid around their apartment complex couldn't handle it.

> Just so we're clear: a charger can plug into a normal wall plug, so if you have a garage with a wall plug then you're set. If not, you're talking about paying <$500 (and probably less than half that) for an electricial to fix that.

About 2/3 of US housing units have either a garage or carport; about 1/3 do not, and some carports (especially for units that aren’t detached single-family homes) are detached overhead shelters without electrical infrastructure not convenient to connect to the panel for the home.

Yeah and a normal wall plug will run at 20 amps, which will take almost 10x longer to charge a car than a Supercharger. Meanwhile, a ton of people rent and can't arbitrarily add chargers to their home. Even if they own, it's common for many cars to need to park on the street far from access to a plug.

Assuming you have a garage.

My option for charging my car would be dropping an extension cable from the fifth floor where I live, down to street level and then to wherever within 1.5km I found a parking space.

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