Comment by genocidicbunny | Hacker News Reader

Comment by genocidicbunny | Hacker News Reader

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Unless we also significantly improve charging infrastructure, and more importantly, disallow grandfathering of the lack of charging infrastructure, that's going to be a very difficult sell. If you live in an apartment, you probably do not have reliable charging access at home. Newer buildings might have some charging spots, but you would need _all_ parking spots to have it available. Older apartments would need to somehow retrofit charging infrastructure as well, and it can't just be giving every parking spot access to a 120v socket. In a similar vein, not everyone has the ability to charge at work either, whether due to a lack of infrastructure, or their employer not being willing to pay for the electricity or the cost to install metered chargers.

Chargers also need to get much, much faster; 15 minutes for 80% might be fine if you're at a charging station that doesn't get that much traffic, but think of somewhere like the Costco gas stations. Imagine accommodating that many people charging for 15 minutes at a time instead of 3-5 minutes at a time. Not everyone can afford to spend that much time on charging their car.

There's also the fun bit about how charging an EV in some places is more expensive per mile than an ICE car, though that does often depends on the time of day you charge and what the exact price of gas is.

You can give every parking spot a 15 amp 120v and it would fit more ~95% of driving use cases. Even more likely in urban areas. Average daily round trip commutes are 52 minutes (approx < 30 miles)

You also don't need to have every parking spot to have an outlet, that is not the status quo; if 50% of vehicles charge at single/multi-family homes and 50% charge 2-3x a week at a fast charger for 15 minutes; then that's the best chance for local gas stations to stay in business (local stations are going to struggle if the 20% rate of EV purchases and everybody has a non gas station outlet continues)

You would have to provide every parking spot an outlet unless you're willing to deal with having to potentially reshuffle renters' parking spots whenever someone needs one with an outlet. A lot of apartments also have outdoor or carport parking, which means the outlets are easily accessible to others. You can mitigate that somewhat by putting locks on them, but that's only useful when they're not being used. When in used they will by necessity need to be unlocked and can then be hijacked by someone else. You would also have the massive capital outlay from the owner(s) to install the infrastructure, since it will be a significant amount of electricity that is being used, and will thus need to be attached to each units' electrical meter. Not every building may have room for adding that kind of service as well, plenty of older apartment buildings that are maxed out on how many amps each unit gets. I've lived in places where I had to choose between running the heater or running the stove because both at the same time would blow the master breakers. And even if that's not the case, the building/complex as a whole may not be able to install even 50% outlets that support the full 15A. In a 100 unit building, even with just a single spot per unit, if half those spots add 15A per spot, the incoming service from the street may not be able to handle that without upgrades either; another massive capital outlay that no one will want to do unless forced to.

I think there are too many edge cases to outright ban ICE cars so soon. That's why I say that there needs to be a push to also improve infrastructure, including forcing older infrastructure to also be improved. It can be done, but with the scope of the problem, it will not be nearly as soon as the proposed bans would have taken effect. It would also take probably an impossible amount of political will. You'd have to grab the proverbial third rail and hang on long enough to make things happen before it fries you, but fry you it will.

I think you missed my "also".

Anecdotally, I lived in a condo in Atlanta (not traditionally known for its car independence) for 10 years, extremely convenient to the metro or walking a mile to work; it was often that I didn't drive my car for 1-2 weeks at a time and a concern that gas in my vehicle was 2 months old.

In that, very real scenario, I would have required a 200 mile range car to be charged about once a month - or prior to and after a major trip - something that off site handles well + super chargers, and to your and my points, readily available central charging at gas stations.

I'm thinking more of people living in an apartment in a little town of 10000 people surrounded by 30mi of farmland in all directions. Something like the central valley in CA, or maybe some of the hill/mountain towns in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Even in CA where the vast majority of the state's population lives in the LA, SF or Sacramento metros where you could potentially avoid the need for a car on most days, there are still millions of people who live in these smaller places where without much improved EV infrastructure, you would be severely limited being forced to have an EV vs an ICE car.

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