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Comment by zdragnar | Hacker News Reader

ICE cars don't need to fill up near home, because it is so quick. EVs ideally fill up where they're going to be unattended, because it takes longer.

It makes sense that you'd find more EV charging in residential areas and more gas stations near where people travel and work.

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if you have to drive 15 minutes there and 15 minutes back, that's not faster than a fast-charge top-up at the fast charge point down the street, though. There's a critical density below which if you have a charge point nearby the nuisance of "going out for gas" and not being able to do anything else during that time isn't worth it compared to plugging in your car, and then just walking away for an hour. Especially if it's just down the road and you can just walk home, then walk back an hour later to pick up your car.

Because that's what's really in competition: you have to be with your car the entire drive to and from the gas station, plus the few minutes it takes to fill up and pay, whereas you don't have to be with your car when you're plugging it in to charge: that time is now yours.

I don't think most people make a special trip just to get gas. It's usually a quick added stop along the way of another trip, which is less of a nuisance than having to make two small walks to move and plug/unplug your car.

The GP was responding to a point about the closure of gas stations accelerating the decline of ICE vehicles. If all the stations near where you normally travel close, then you are forced to make a special trip to fill up.

The last gas stations standing won't be in remote areas far from everything else. They'll be in heavily trafficked areas that everybody goes to regularly, particularly near grocery stores.

And in those cases plugging in your EV amounts to no net gain or loss, but there absolutely are people who already have to make a dedicated trip to the gas station because their own town where they do their shopping simply doesn't have one.

Sure, but this conversation was about an urban area being converted from industrial to residential.

The people who will be living there with ICEs will certainly be driving them past gas stations elsewhere in the city.

No, we're not. We're talking about Norway as a whole, a country where for the vast majority of people, "urban centers" are few and far between. With an anecdote that highlights that even in urban setting there are areas where it's apparently easier to drive an EV than ICE.

But if there's no longer any gas stations on any of my usual trips, it'll become a special trip.

Also it's not fun having to make your trip even longer stopping to get gas. I'd prefer to just leave the house with a full tank every time.

Even if like 80% of gas stations close, the remaining 20% will be situated along major transportation arteries. I expect there will be a gas station somewhere along someone's regular weekly driving route for all but the most remote dwellers.

Few people make a special trip to fill an ICE car. It is almost always a side trip on the way to another activity.

Few people today

I don’t know anyone that often drives somewhere specifically to get gas. As long as you occasionally drive past a gas station during your travels you just stop in for 3-5 minutes and fill the car up.

Even if there isn’t one directly on your route, we’re talking a long ways off I think that you need to travel 15 or minutes from every point of your trip to each a gas station. Like, we've reached such a low density that the entire distribution network is barely even sustainable anymore.

Time to move to the country side. Discover a whole new aspect of "...so you're saying I can get basic groceries in town, but gas is 15 minutes further in the opposite direction of where I live?".

Maybe Canada's just a bit different then. I've lived in a few rural areas and do currently. Previously I was located 1.5 hours and two ferry rides from the nearest police detachment. The acreage I'm on right now is in the catchment area for a town of 500 people. Spent some time in the prairies where, if you're not living in the two major cities, there's 1/10 the population of Norway spread out over almost double the land area.

A gas station has never been hard to come by in my experience. Anywhere I've been that's big enough to have a grocery store has a gas station. Anywhere not big enough to have a grocery store has a gas station, and that gas station probably has a limited selection of groceries. And if you live somewhere small enough that you don't have either, chances are you're occasionally driving your car to somewhere that does because you generally need to buy groceries and other supplies.

What you're descriving is a lot of Norway. Low density, and employees cost a lot per hour.

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