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Comment by throwway120385 | Hacker News Reader

throwway120385

> The poor sucker that rented the Tesla was told it would get "270 miles of range". When he left the charger it said he had over 200 miles to go. But reality sinks in, and at some point in the journey, if they get even slightly distracted, they will find themselves 50 miles from the charger with 30 miles left.

And the reason gasoline took off as a fuel was because it was frequently used as a degreaser before we decided to burn it instead, so you could buy it in tins from the blacksmith in whatever town you found yourself stranded in. There's nothing analogous to that for EVs.

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I like the historical context, but there are extremely analogous comparisons for EVs, as electricity is widely available.

The thing is -- electricity is widely available to people who have purchased an electrical service and have installed the requisite breaker panel. So while you might be very close to places where there are electricity, you can't just roll up and plug in to someone's house.

You could certainly offer to pay someone for electricity from their home or business, but then you're parked in their driveway for a period of time waiting. And the social aspects of this make it a lot more challenging than simply walking up to the local blacksmith and buying a gallon or two of solvent off the shelf so you can get to the next town.

You're at that point relying on the kindness of strangers.

Also we’ve seen recently in the US you are liable to get killed for randomly going up to someone’s house.

The local blacksmith is still relying on the kindness of strangers thing. They have to make the business decision of what they need to run their business versus what margin of extra they have on hand. That's a transaction with a lot of complexity and I can't imagine the conversations were all as pleasant as you seem to expect.

On the other hand, I've had the "I noticed an external outlet near my parking spot, do you mind if I plug my car into it while I shop/stay at this hotel/eat at this restaurant?" conversation plenty of times and there's no "challenge" to it nor "transaction". The most common answer I've got has been "I don't see why not" because it's not really a transaction for most businesses, whatever extra they spend on electricity they easily make back in making a new customer or keeping an existing customer happy. In a few times I got back "there's a Level 2 charger hidden at the Library across the street and the fees support our local library" or "we have a deal with this parking garage a block away that has chargers and we can validate your parking for you when you get back", which just goes to show how normalized it already can often be as just another "parking consideration" of "where to park" when you ask businesses about it. Most businesses are used to answering "is there a good place to park?" questions. Parking is normal operations for a business, not "relying on the kindness of strangers". Electricity is "just" an amenity of parking, already in some businesses' minds. (Not enough businesses yet, sure, but more than you might think.)

To be fair, I've never been in a "life or death" situation where a "No" would have been some terrible catastrophe, but I've also never known anyone in my lifetime that had to buy gasoline from a small town Blacksmith or Pharmacist either.

Any regular wall outlet can charge an EV.

There are zero wall outlets in the middle of the desert.

Same as the number of blacksmiths, then.

Are you suggesting people steal electricity from private homes or businesses?

Are you suggesting blacksmiths weren’t compensated for providing solvent?

Are you suggesting that there exists a large nationwide network of chargers that is as convenient and as easily accessible as the electricity grid?

Yes they are called wall outlets. There’s even more of them now than there ever were blacksmiths.

That's true, but now you need to spend the night.

A model 3 realistically gets 4~4.5 mi / kWh, US 16A@120V is rated for 1500W continuous, so that's about 6.5 miles per hour of charging. 20A@120V is close to 2000W continuous, so that's about 9 miles per hour.

Were blacksmiths open 24 hours?

You did not need to stay at the blacksmith’s for hours to get a can of gas which would carry you to the next supply location.

Unless they were closed of course. Then you’d be waiting hours or even days for them to reopen.

In that situation you might start knocking on doors.

If the comparison is to buying an emergency gallon from a "town blacksmith", then let's get those numbers too: a (Ford) Model T was said to get 13 to 21 miles per gallon. So if you managed to buy a full gallon from your hypothetical blacksmith in history, you'd need two to three hours on a boring wall plug to get the equivalent charge in your Model 3. That's quite a bit more time than you might want to spend in a small town, but that's "a lazy afternoon" amount of time (or a good four course meal with all the fixins depending on whereabouts in the country you find this stop and the hospitality of local restaurants) and still not "spend the night" amount of time.

I know this thread is entirely about comparing apples and oranges, but the historical examples weren't getting a full tank from a small local Blacksmith back then and so it doesn't make sense to worry about getting a full charge in this situation either.

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