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Comment by jabart | Hacker News Reader

Local, from the pole, rates are $0.12/kw. You're not pay $0.64/kw for electricity, you're paying that for the charger, the lack of full time usage, repairs, etc. A gallon of gasoline in the US is heavily optimized AND, Electrify America would not be a business without it charging a price comparable to filling up a tank of gas. Charging at home is the cost savings, charging while road-tripping has a convivence fee attached to the ability to charge.

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of course. But people - real people - will compare DC Fast Charges with traditional gas stations. So you aren't really doing a fair comparison here.

Let me put it another way - do we think that getting people to convert from ICE to EVs will only view fast charging as a convenience? or will they view it as a necessity? In the fullness of time we can view DC fast charging as a luxury, but not right now (which is my point I suppose)

This is more an education/propaganda problem.

The issue is we have anti-ev articles, blogs, newscasts, magazines that take every opportunity to try and find a "gotcha" for why EVs are actually the worst thing ever.

DCFC will (probably) never be as fast or as convenient as gas. However, gas will never be less time consuming or as cheap as idle charging.

Like the other comment says, it's an education problem. Gas Stations used to not be the thing is is now. Our neighbor had the big glass fuel pump in their garage when you used to fill up a ICE car in your garage. Gas stations won except for commercial locations that still have that tank because it's convenient.

There are mix of personas. Friend of mine was loaned an EV and didn't have a charger. They changed their habits to go grocery shopping at a place with an EV charger. Since they were there for 30-45 minutes, lower rate. That was a shift in perspective which is the issue here. The person doing a cannonball run across the US will never buy an EV and that's ok too.

People are not great at doing a full comparison. I'm sure people who have a Costco card never consider the price of membership into their gallon of gas pricing which is where educating future EV owners come in. Charging at home is cheap, charging while on a road trip you are trading time/money like a toll road. Rates will go down over time and I'm waiting for a Buccees sized EV charging stop where you have the time to stop.

Buc-ee's often has a lot of Tesla chargers. Many of those locations are also NACS-compatible so any car that supports NACS charging can charge at many Buc-ees locations.

I've also seen DCFC stalls near other large rest stops. Not all of them yet by any margin, but lots. Electrify America also tends to have a lot in the big Walmarts near the highways. The last road trip I did in my EV we usually went into Walmart and ate at the restaurant there or got stuff from the deli.

> do we think that getting people to convert from ICE to EVs will only view fast charging as a convenience? or will they view it as a necessity?

As an example, if I were to buy an EV, fast charging would absolutely be a necessity. I couldn't charge at home, so I'd have to use commercial charging stations. Carving out a large block of time to devote to charging would be a nonstarter, and it's something I'd have to do without fast charging. I don't spend enough time parked doing shopping and the like to make it possible to rely on those times to do my charging.

Why can't you charge at home? Apartment, public parking, or street parking issue?

IMHO GP should not have to specify this, and we should take their word at face value.

It matters while we work on electrifying cars. If they own the home, but don't have an outlet is different than if they rent and the property manager doesn't want to install a charger. Laws were passed in the US that required renters access to satellite tv and if property managers are the hold up it's important information to know.

I don't think that my single anecdote about the reason will (or should) affect things one way or another. This is the sort of thing that requires a good study.

I would be opposed to the idea of a law requiring properties to install chargers, though. It would make rents increase even more than they already are, and that would only make the housing crisis worse.

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