Comment by glogla | Hacker News Reader

Comment by glogla | Hacker News Reader

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So we're talking about people who live in an apartment, yet far from work or in place with bad public transport so they need a long drive to work? I'm not going to claim people like that don't exist, but is it a common use case?

For me, I have paid charging station right in front of my building, because the electric company recently added charging to all local substations. But for myself I would probably charge the car at free charging places in one of the nearby grocery stores, I usually stop there like once a week anyway. We're also trying to get our employer to enable charging in the office garage, but it's dragging a bit. The larger shopping mall I visit with friends for cinema also has free charging for customers.

It's not that many places, and people in countryside or suburbia who can charge EVs with free electricity from solar panels have it easier, but since people in who live apartments are probably covered by public transport or can bike or whatever, and as such don't really need to drive ever day, I'm not convinced charging EVs is not solved problem right now. We'll see how it scales up.

Actually, in US suburbia, a big portion of the population is living in an apartment with poor access to public transit. I look around all the many places I've lived and see huge apartment complexes with little access to transit. Transit has not caught up with urban sprawl in most places.

As far as EVs, if one is in an apartment with no charging infrastructure and have a relatively long daily commute, and poor charging access at the worksite, an EV is just a bad choice. If there is good charging at work, and the commute is short enough, then an apartment can work but it is still inconvenient to have an EV if you can't charge it while sleeping.

I think eventually more and more apartment owners are going to start using charging infrastructure as a marketing tool so perhaps it will get better over time.

I'll admit I'm a bit surprised by "apartment in suburbia". Of US I have only seen few places. I thought most people either live in a house in the endless featureless landscape of suburban New Jersey or in Brooklyn apartment or whatever - and the former can charge in their driveway and the latter can just mostly use the subway and citibike.

Anyway my assumption was that someone would likely either have a driveway or a public transport. But I'm sure there are places that have neither - I'm just not sure how common that is.

> I'll admit I'm a bit surprised by "apartment in suburbia".

Because most discussions about anything, really, are incredibly US-centric.

Most suburbia in Europe will have apartment buildings. Here's a typical suburb near Stockholm (I live in this one, close to the city): https://goo.gl/maps/rC65fRaPrv2PgjFp8 This one is 40 minutes away by commuter train: https://goo.gl/maps/pHvvwxtY88tfEGiv6 and https://goo.gl/maps/yQCkPtEGSSn8s2PJ8

Note: even though there are parking lots, no one is adding chargers to them because it's either too expensive or the existing infrastructure cannot support it.

The company that manages my building manages about 3000 apartment blocks around Stockholm. They recently sent a letter that they have found the possibility of equipping 200 (yup, two hundred) parking places with chargers.

Ah, you're calling that suburban. Ok, then it kind of makes sense. When I hear apartment, I imagine place like this: https://goo.gl/maps/hArPffCzEF8GZfHh6

In your case, we're not talking about some kind of physical or technological limitation but about politics - it would be very easy to add chargers to the parking lots, and it would be easy to have better public transport. It is not an EV problem, but municipal elections problem.

> Ah, you're calling that suburban.

Because it is suburban. Are they not suburbs? Are they not apartment blocks?

> When I hear apartment, I imagine place like this: https://goo.gl/maps/hArPffCzEF8GZfHh6

Here's a different suburb: https://goo.gl/maps/1cNS3zAe76UgpDyb7 (Solna) and another https://goo.gl/maps/3CaqDMBrB9G1hhqu8 (Johanneshov).

Whatever to match your idea of an apartment blocks or suburbs or whatever other idea.

> we're not talking about some kind of physical or technological limitation but about politics - it would be very easy to add chargers to the parking lots

Literally in my text: "it's either too expensive or the existing infrastructure cannot support it."

But sure, it's easy.

> and it would be easy to have better public transport.

Stockholm has great public transport. You still need a car from time to time. And yet, all we hear is "it's trivial to charge, just"

What can I say.

It seems that if there aren't thousands of chargers in Stockholm as of today, then it is horribly terribly inconvenient to use EV. And since it will never get better, I guess we just have no choice than to keep burning oil and destroying the planet.

> So we're talking about people who live in an apartment, yet far from work or in place with bad public transport so they need a long drive to work?

No, we're not. We're talking about electric cars. I mean, come on. It's not even ten replies above: "Who says you need to charge it in 10 minutes? Plug it in overnight or while you're in the office and suddenly this becomes a lot less of an issue."

> For me, I have paid charging station right in front of my building, because the electric company recently added charging to all local substations. But for myself I would probably charge the car at free charging places in one of the nearby grocery stores

I live in a suburb of 50 000 people, we have about twenty charging stations in total.

> but since people in who live apartments are probably covered by public transport or can bike or whatever, and as such don't really need to drive ever day, I'm not convinced charging EVs is not solved problem right now.

So, the question of how I would charge my EV still remains.

> I live in a suburb of 50 000 people, we have about twenty charging stations in total.

The infrastructure will get built in time as there is a greater need for it. Within my city of 40,00 there are probably over 100 charging stations. Though we are next to a larger metropolitan area. Most all have been added in last 4 years.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36844308

I’m sure there are plenty of people who are currently in a situation where charging an EV would be problematic. I’m also certain that more charging infrastructure will continue to be built it over time. There should be fewer and fewer people with this problem as time goes by.

I've been hearing about this for a few years now. And I'm still waiting for any change, at least where I live (Stockholm suburbs).

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