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Comment by taylodl | Hacker News Reader

This gets at the core as to why I've not (yet) bought an EV - it's absolutely insane that my car purchase dictates the people I have to associate with for refueling. As you point out - I would never buy a car having the stipulation I could only refuel at Chevron stations.

I'll stick with my dino juice so long as Tesla is the only viable option available for recharging. I'd think about getting an EV for a local commuter car where I can always charge at home, but they're still too expensive for that - though that should change as the used EV market becomes more developed and mature.

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I think you're mis-informed.

Teslas can easily charge at other branded recharging stations; mostly you never see it as there is no point. The Tesla ones are good. There are adaptors to all / most public charging stations for cheap. I keep a few, and my wall-charger (for 120/220v outlets) in the front-trunk.

Non-Teslas charging at Tesla stations is new/not really a thing though.

Not to mention that EV owners charge at their house overnight 99% of the time so the notion that you have to use "one brand" is a gross misunderstanding

True. I installed a L2 charger for <$1k all in, and basically only charge once, maybe twice a week at $0.115/kwh. Superchargers are generally $0.33-60/kwh.

You can charge Teslas at other charging stations. It’s just that other chargers are inconvenient and unreliable. You usually need an adapter. You have to pull out a credit card and maybe install an app on your phone. With the Tesla chargers you just plug in and everything’s billed automatically.

Also Tesla’s navigation automatically adds charging stops for superchargers. You don’t have to do much thinking. Just drive the car (usually on autopilot on the freeway), follow the directions, and every few hours you’re at a charging station next to some restaurants, grocery stores, or pretty landmarks. The view from the charger at Twin Falls, Idaho is particularly beautiful.

I cannot imagine having to install an app just to use a car charger. What a nuisance!

I have a Tesla here in Australia, and have 3-4 charging apps and 2 RFID(!) cards -- it does feel like a backwards step. There are gaps in the Tesla supercharger network in parts here which mean you have to rely on the other networks for some long distance trips.

But what about gas? Race track, loves, shell. They all offer gasoline discounts if you have their app.

But, crucially, you can ignore all that and just pay with a plain card, or even cash if you want. EVs need to match that.

To be clear, they pretty much already do. There are only a handful of companies that require an app install. Filtering chargers nearby by company/tap-to-pay is probably a few months away from one of the mapping apps.

The funny thing is that electrical charging isn't fully standardized, but somehow hydrocarbons are.

This should be true, new technology is less standardized than ancient tech.

They probably wouldn't be standardized if they didn't have to be. IMO this is a regulatory failure.

Gas and Oil didn't start off as standardized (nothing does) - got there over time. I'm sure EV will get there - eventually. Needs a standards group like ASTM maybe.

We’re there already - everyone has adopted NACS. Interestingly, the standards group was the problem…

They aren't really, it is just that modern engines are incredibly tolerant of what you put in them. Some survey found that the different octane tanks get mis-filled a large portion of the time with other octanes or higher ethanol ratings. Even within an octane rating what is in there varies a lot. The changes needed to make a four stroke work on propane is very small. And an old diesel engine will run on almost any liquid that will burn but not evaporate at stp. The cars will get smarter and be able to do better with different voltages at some point.

A lot of new cars are "Flex-fuel" and will take literally anything short of diesel. They just adjust timing to the octane rating.

In the bay area there's a lot of E85 fuel stations which are ~half the price per gallon (~$2.50) and work with these cars. Slightly less milage but the price difference more than makes up for it. If your car has the 'flex-fuel' sticker you may as well take the cheaper fuel imho.

This will require government regulation, which won't happen until there are enough angry EV drivers to get political attention, and then enough political will to overcome the corporate lobbyists fighting standardization. Remember standardization is good for consumers and bad for producers. Look how long it took to force apple to use usb-c chargers.

This doesn’t make sense. There’s already a standard everyone has adopted (NACS). Tesla has chargers which will start becoming available to other drivers next year. Other companies will compete or die.

Gasoline pumps standardized because a nozzle is relatively simple. And then use a smaller nozzle for cars that only take unleaded gasoline and you can't put leaded gas into the wrong car.

On the other hand, diesel nozzles didn't really standardize until the last 10 years or so. Mostly diesel stations used the old (larger) standard, unless it was catering to trucks and then it's a really big nozzle for bigger flow. But sometimes you'd get an unleaded gasoline style nozzle, cause those would fit in diesel cars too, and there's no fume recovery system. But then VW and other diesel car makers started putting in rube goldberg systems to try to reduce the amount of gasoline you can put in a diesel car... And then the diesel pumps with the smaller size nozzle became difficult to use, so they've probably been replaced.

OTOH, a funnel is an easy, low tech fix to a nozzle problem. Can't really adapt a charging socket so easily.

As most of them are speaking the same protocol under the hood... It's really not much more complex then a funnel+ 4 wires.

I think a used Nissan Leaf from 2020 or so can be had for a reasonable price for this purpose right now. Depending where you are of course.

For some definition of "reasonable" I guess. Are they under $4k? That's about my limit for what I spend on a car. I have good luck finding reliable ICE vehicles in that price range.

Buying a recently manufactured Leaf today is buying technical debt for no good reason. Stuck with a Chademo charging port that has a shrinking installed infrastructure base, an interior that hasn't been significantly upgraded in many years, and a heating system that is sabotaged to the most inefficient heating possible, electric strip heating unless you buy the top SV Plus trim.

99% of the charging is at home anyway. People fixate too much on the public charge options (unless you are driving hundreds of miles a day, in which case the public chargers brands are probably the least of your worries).

Not 99% unless you never road trip at all. My fairly typical family Model Y with 30k miles has done 80% of its charging in our garage, per TeslaMate.

Fair point, I guess I meant "99% of the time", not 99% by energy or miles. I.e., I plug in whenever I'm at home and I only use a tesla charger maybe once a month (but that charge session consumes way more power than the average session because I'm putting more miles in).

Unless you don’t own a home/live in a house. Apartments do not have a charger for every parking stall generally

Yes, that's true. I wouldn't recommend getting an EV if you don't have access to a charging station. I did it for a year and it was unpleasant.

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