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Comment by jmpman | Hacker News Reader

My concern is the number of charger stations required between LA and Phoenix in the remote sections of I-10. Replacing all the cars with EVs that need to charge at a minimum of twice and you need two parking garages the size of the mall of America’s parking lot - each spot with its own supercharger. The power consumption is equal to a nuclear power plant for each garage. And this is only required for the peak Thanksgiving traffic. The rest of the time, 90% of the chargers would be idle. Oh, and this would in Quartzsite, a town of 2500. There aren’t power lines capable of this power. All the infrastructure would need to be built.

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How about between people where they live and anywhere else in the west? People take the 4 hour road trip for granted if we are to all transition to EVs with dubious >100mi range when its cold or hot. The settlements in the eastern sierra alone are scarcely close enough to feel comfortable even with a gas car in my experience. Let alone the more remote regions of the west.

Then they can buy EVs last. Let's start with the low hanging fruit like the eastern seaboard and California.

Yeah let's get to 50% EVs running on 100% nuclear or solar and then let's talk about the other 50% of cars, airplanes, etc.

> at a minimum of twice

The most popular EVs today would stop once on that trip. There's probably a couple that can do it without stopping.

As the EVs gain battery capacity the chargers need to gain amperage. If those don't happen in concert then that one stop is going to take quite a bit of time.

This is what the article misses. You can't count 1:1 replacements. Fuel pumps dispense gasoline at 10 gallons per minute. That's an _insane_ power transfer rate and one that EV chargers just aren't anywhere near, and until they are, you can't imagine that "swapping infrastructure" is going to work in practice.

Chargers don't have to have higher amps for larger batteries. It's nice to have, but not necessary, and nothing gets worse with a bigger capacity.

Rate of charging can stay the same, and it will add about the same range in the same amount of time.

> and it will add about the same range in the same amount of time.

So the spots get used more, or the drivers charge at more stations along the way, meaning "some cars only need to charge once" is not a consequence free conclusion.

It is possible to split one long charge into two charging stops that take half of the time, but that doesn't increase overall utilization of chargers.

EVs are not filled up to full like gas tanks, so a larger "tank" doesn't make people stay for longer. Charging to full is slow and unhealthy for the battery. EVs charge what is minimum required for the next leg of the journey, and leave with the rest of the battery empty.

> EVs charge what is minimum required for the next leg of the journey

If you put the route in there and it has access to the weather. I imagine this is a standard feature on a few luxury models but my guess it's not in most of the EVs sold on the market. It also requires the user to know this and to remember to do this on long journeys when they're likely not in the habit of it on short ones.

> and leave with the rest of the battery empty.

This compromise does not exist in current fueling stations. I can get a full 300 miles in my 30mpg vehicle in 60 seconds. You've very effectively summed up "range anxiety" in two sentences.

I mean.. I get that people want EV infrastructure to replace petroleum infrastructure. I am one of those people. I simply think it's unrealistic to expect this hyper fast infrastructure change and I think it's bad practice to ignore the obvious factors or user experience when plotting out the roadmap of the future.

I would personally plan on a 25 to 50 year cycle for complete replacement of petroleum. In the scale of human ventures, this is a heartbeat, and I genuinely don't understand the reluctance to simply admit it and be a small part of it.

The only reason to broadcast a "revolution" prematurely is to profit off of peoples ignorance. It's nice to believe /we/ could be a part of that revolution but I honestly think it sets the whole market back. It's far more successful and ethical to make the small incremental steps towards a true progress that you may never witness (or profit from) in your lifetime.

You can do the math on this, I don't think anyone does. I did the math with some basic assumptions using some simple queueing theory, which unfortunately I don't remember very well right now, but your intuition is correct.

It isn't charging time one needs to worry about, it's charging time and queuing time. In a city with high rates of home ownership, home charging might solve the latter (assuming infrastructure can handle it), but on busy transit corridors the queueing time will be the predominant factor.

I have a long range Model 3, I can assure you that you cannot drive from Phoenix to LA, charging just once. According to the Tesla trip planner, it’s two stops. One in Quartzsite and the second in Indio. When I do the drive, it’s typically three stops, or I arrive at my destination completely empty.

Even with the Model S, the trip planner indicates 2 stops.

https://www.tesla.com/trips#/?v=MS_2020_LongRange&o=Phoenix,...

If this is so heavily traveled, then maybe rail is a better option. We need to dispense with the idea that auto traffic is the only option, or that we need to optimize for a particular mode.

Wouldn’t rail also be idle 90% of the time?

Rail can haul cargo as well. The cost of idle rail is very very low compared to the cost of maintaining charging infrastructure.

The intercity rail part is the easy part. Getting people to actually use it requires a pretty decent city transit network on each end.

On top of that, cargo and passenger trains don't really coexist that nicely. Nobody really wants to spend bullet train money on cargo, but that's what you need if you want to have bullet train speed for passengers on the same track.

Nice thing about charging infrastructure is that another name for it is "the grid." It already exists everywhere. And in rural areas that don't have enough grid capacity for high peak loads, use batteries (which are getting much cheaper) as a buffer.

> The intercity rail part is the easy part. Getting people to actually use it requires a pretty decent city transit network on each end.

I don’t think this is true. People take airplanes and rent a cars all the time. The same could be true for train travel. All of the ways someone would leave a train station generally exist.

People don’t take trains for two reasons: 1. They take too long. 2. They are too expensive.

For example sf to la takes at least ~9-13h and costs between 50-80 dollars. Versus a southwest flight for ~140 that takes an hour. For most people that extra 60 dollars for 7-11 hours is worth it.

Amen, we ain't gonna get much greener either by making a hundred million EVs per year..

Agreed, but you could start trying to build out that rail system right now and it'll still be decades before it meaningfully changes the need for car traffic (even then, look at Europe, cars are still quite popular and necessary in many places despite a significantly better passenger rail system). EVs are already a huge improvement on the status quo. And there's no reason we can't do both.

I think there's appetite for it to happen. There's a new rail line going in between the LA area and Las Vegas. Amtrak is now running a new route between Minneapolis and Chicago. I'm sure there are more like this.

Certainly there are challenges with rail in some of the more sparsely populated areas, where it doesn't necessarily make sense. I think it will start by building out regional networks. It certainly won't happen by optimizing for NYC to LA.

I'm much more optimistic on solving the energy problem than the public transportation problem at this point. You gotta remember that Arizona and many western states were ratified not too long before automobiles took over. There has quite literally never been a "walkable city" in consideration for these states.

They could compromise and use car shuttles[1]. Then people could still get the joy of 5 lanes of gridlock on the 101.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_shuttle_train

Neither Phoenix or LA are cities where the average person would be happy without a car. Sure you could take a train and rent a car at your destination, but that’s adding many hundreds of dollars to a week at the beach.

> Oh, and this would in Quartzsite, a town of 2500.

While Quarzite has an year-round population of 2500, the actual winter population is much, much higher in addition to significant tourist traffic..

Blythe is right nearby and has year-round population an order of magnitude higher. Both cities are not far from the Parker Dam which distributes it's 120 MW via power lines.

> There aren’t power lines capable of this power

Um, what? Long distance transportation of power at these scales happens routinely in the US.

Traffic on I-10 at Arizona state line is 31k vehicles per day, with peak hour being 4.3k vehicles per hour. Assuming 350Wh/km, 120kW average charging rate and 90% utilization 3.2 charger stalls per mile per 1k vehicles/hour are needed. Or putting it differently, a 100 charger site with 12MW of power every 5 miles.

Is that peak for a normal day, or for Thanksgiving weekend?

That’s a 370 mile drive. Most EVs can already make that trip today, with a stop in San Bernardino if necessary. Some like the Lucid can do substantially more. In 5 years I suspect no EV beyond a city commuter sold can’t make that trip without a single charge. Those who make the trip without a full charge knowing it’s a limited resource trip would suffer the same fate as people who ignore “last fuel for 100 miles” signs on the route today. Regardless I suspect this problem isn’t one, and it’s not a problem for almost any other location in the entire country so I don’t think we should set national policy based on the relatively uncommon trip of non stop between LA and phoenix, which has an alternative route slightly longer through San Diego and Yuma with more infra.

I would note that a 6 hour drive requires for most people at least one stop to use the restroom and most people require food and beverage at some point as well as a stretch. This is the time span for EV charging. If that infrastructure can exist today it can have EV charging at those locations. In fact the locations who add EV charging will attract customers during the transition period between the age of fire and the age of Maxwell.

> That’s a 370 mile drive. Most EVs can already make that trip today

Per https://ev-database.org/cheatsheet/range-electric-car, there seems to be essentially two cars that theoretically have >370 mi range (and looking at the data, the range is distinctly less if you're on a highway and not regeneratively braking a fair amount).

That's a pretty big difference between gasoline and electric cars. With gasoline cars, 400 mile range is a comfortable low bound on how far you can go after filling up, no matter the driving conditions; with electric cars, 400 mile range is something you might hit in optimal driving conditions.

San Bernardino would be your stop as I mentioned. I mentioned lucid as the car that can today make the trip without a charge. I further mentioned that even on the trip the fact people need to take rest breaks after hours of driving incentivizes businesses to provide fast charge points to attract paying customers.

My statement was that within 5 years almost all cars would be able to do the trip end to end. At that point no intermediate charging would be necessary, but having charge points at restaurants and other places for breaks would be sensible even so and a net positive for those businesses. This would break the value of a gas station since it’s a pretty low end experience as a customer, while say a Starbucks with EV charge points would be a higher margin business end to end and provide a generally superior customer experience. I think these economics are unassailable.

I would note regenerative braking in an EV doesn’t give you an advantage in any context. With a hybrid the gasoline expenditures of power can be recaptured as electrical charge. Highway driving for an EV is optimal because regenerative braking is not perfectly efficient and the act of slowing and accelerating at all will reduce your range. Your best profile in an EV is accelerating slowly and keeping a constant speed.

Most EVs can make the trip today? The most popular EV, the Model Y, has a stated range of 320 miles.

With a stop in San Bernardino as I said. In 5 years most cars will be able to do it without, as I said. The lucid can make the trip today without stopping. But most humans can’t drive 5-6 hours without stopping once.

> Most EVs can already make that trip today, with a stop in San Bernardino if necessary.

With the AC running which is a practical requirement on that drive for most of the year? Highly doubt any current EV is going to do fewer than two stops on that drive. I doubt even more if that drive were from the LA metro to Phoenix as the first quarter of the route has a lot of day time traffic.

I'm not saying the drive is impossible for an EV or anything, I just don't see an EV not having to stop several times on that drive. Maximum range numbers for every EV I've ever looked at seem to be pulled from the world of frictionless pulleys and spherical cows.

This is a common misconception about EVs. The stated range is for the EPA range, not on open roads at 80MPH (typical speeds on I-10 between Phoenix and LA). Even Tesla’s longest range Model, a Model S, with a 405 mile “range” needs to charge TWICE on the Phoenix to LA drive. This is only a 373 mile drive, and assumes you start completely full. From the 405 mile advertised range, you’d think you could drive Phoenix to LA, and arrive with enough charge to still drive to dinner. One of my most annoying revelations in owning a Tesla.

https://www.tesla.com/trips#/?v=MS_2020_LongRange&o=Phoenix,...

> My concern is the number of charger stations required between LA and Phoenix in the remote sections of I-10.

I'm assuming there are already gas stations on this "remote" stretch of road (all of 370 miles).

What power service do those gas stations already have?

Bulldoze the gas station and put EV chargers in their place. Problem solved.

Except that doesn't solve the problem. Those gas stations have an exponentially higher energy transfer rate than the chargers would. The delays will stack up in only that footprint. Not to mention those gas stations need a tiny fraction of the power. So there's no guarantee the electrical infrastructure is in place

It's worth noting that energy transfer rate is not the average limiting factor of pump turnover time at gas stations. A significant portion of people are also doing some combination of going to the bathroom, buying snacks, washing their windshield, etc. And I'd be willing to bet most gas stations have idle pumps the majority of the time. You'd have to do a real study of a station to determine if replacing pumps with fast chargers would serve enough cars or not.

I'd say way less than half the people I see at gas stations actually go in and buy stuff, the fueling time is the limiting factor the vast majority of the time.

But that's besides the point anyways. Electric cars take forever to charge. So the turnover rate is a fraction of a normal gas station, and thus a lot more stations would have to be built out to accommodate the demand. That's the point, whether or not someone adds an extra minute buying a drink to their quick gas fill up has nothing to do with it

> Electric cars take forever to charge.

Electric cars take 20 to 30 minutes to charge enough to resume your journey. That is pretty far from forever.

That route is possibly one of the sunniest in the entire US. And most of the land around it is barely used.

I suspect this is not a hard problem.

That’s one of the problems. The land is barely used. The infrastructure to charge the vehicles at peak, would be unused for the majority of time.

It would be far easier to just add EV charging stations at unpopulated exits.

The footprint to charge all these electric vehicles would be equal to the parking lot for the mall of America. Much larger than a single gas station.

In Sweden they install temporary chargers containing both a battery and charger along the route when it is spring break season and everyone heads north to ski.

This allows the grid infrastructure to be better utilized and provide more charging spots for the users.

The goalposts for "No uh, EVs will never work!!!" just continue to get moved.

Batteries are common even in permanent charger installations, because they enable use of cheaper off-peak electricity, and peak charging rates higher than the grid connection.

I have driven that route many times in a Model 3 and it's been fine. Easier today than it was a few years ago. It's a theoretical issue not an actual one.

> All the infrastructure would need to be built.

This creates jobs.

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