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Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

If we built charging stations as rest stops then it would work.

Which is exactly what is happening. It makes sense for cars as well, as they need to top up more frequently highway carge stations become a regular service rather than an overpriced emergency one.

Good luck with that. The reality is their aren't enough toilets for truck drivers nevermind building a whole suite of rest stops up and down the country.

In Europe this is already happening. There are dedicated companies for this (Milence) and the traditional operators have truck charging parks as well.

This audit put the number of overnight parking spots at "on-site locations" within 5km of the strategic road network (so not even the whole country) at 16,761. With the remainder of the report concluding that the usage was at or above capacity in much of the country.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6454ab292f622...

Milence's first site in the UK, opened in March this year, provides 8 charging bays with 4 chargers shared between them. So to provide a similar number of overnight parking spots a further 2000 need to be built. Or to put it another way, these charging stations would need to be approximately as frequent as McDonald's restaurants in the UK. Not accounting for the areas of the country located further away from the strategic road network and the other 35% of the vehicles they surveyed parked in lay-bys and industrial estates.

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