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Comment by alienicecream | Hacker News Reader

My diesel Mercedes SUV has a 900 km range and filling up takes 5 minutes, why would I ever buy an EV.

Because I've gone 6 months with my EV charging only in my garage. I have never needed to go anywhere to "fill it up".

Also, where I live I have to drive 15 minutes each way to do the 5 minute fill up. I am saving 35 minutes every week by not having to go somewhere to fill my gas.

Don't you need to have a 220V circuit put in? And if you go anywhere that's more than 120 miles away, now you have to plan for a charging stop and make sure there's one on your route right? With ICE I don't have to worry about any of that.

> With ICE I don't have to worry about any of that.

You don’t really do that with EVs either. The navigation system takes all of that into account, including live metrics such as temperature, wind, weather, and elevation. It takes the guesswork out of non-trivial tasks.

The only valid issue is the poorly maintained Electrify America chargers for non-Tesla EVs.

But that’s about to change in the U.S., since pretty much everyone is adopting the NACS/SAE J340 Standard. This will make them compatible with Tesla Superchargers.

Apps like ABRP also exist, which are even compatible with level 2 charging:

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/

I can add about 50 miles of range overnight on a standard 120V outlet which is more than enough most of the time. For longer trips back-to-back, a 220V circuit would be really nice to fully re-charge overnight but its absolutely not necessary.

On what car? My brother in laws Rivian gets about 1-2 miles per hour, pulling 12A@110V from our garage.

My EV takes 0 minutes to fill up. Plug in at night, unplug a pre-heated / defrosted fully-charged car in the morning. All for 1/5th of the price of my old diesel per mile. Haven’t used a public charger for months.

> All for 1/5th of the price of my old diesel per mile.

How many years before you pay off the premium that you paid when you purchased the electric vehicle? Will the battery still be in good shape by then?

I’m on a lease. There are currently tax incentives for EVs in my country for this so it’s currently comparable.

There’s lots of FUD about battery life, but there are already 10 year old Teslas out there. There are Teslas with 250k miles on the clock with 15% degradation. The car would have to degrade 50% for it to affect my usage pattern.

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