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Comment by sitharus | Hacker News Reader

Don't most people already have a plug in their garage? All mine certainly have. There's no need to get full EVSE for most people, a 2.4kW outlet as found almost everywhere outside North America will easily handle daily driving needs for anyone who's not in a travelling job.

Also if everyone in your neighbourhood turning on a space heater strains the grid you have bigger problems.

Utilities have plenty of ways to solve that. We already have electric water heaters on demand controlled circuits and electricity billing that incentivises off-peak use.

And as for range? 400km is plenty for all but one trip a year, if that's an issue for your use perhaps EVs are not for you.

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44 million US households have no garage, including ~2/3 of renters

Sounds like a market opportunity for kerb-side, low speed, charging points.

Not to mention parking garages for daytime parking at work.

Not to mention mall parking lots.

The garage is an obvious starting point, because your car spends a lot of time there, but there are lots of opportunities elsewhere.

Once upon a time 44 million households didn't have electricity. Things change.

I have no garage and work from home. So no workplace to charge.

So now you’ve added another thing I have to worry about - finding charging somewhere along my 10 minute errand route?

EVs are a bad solution to a problem I don’t have. Hybrids are much better.

For the small amount of driving I do, driving my commuter ICE car with a tiny, 35-mpg 4 cylinder engine is fine… why are the EV cultists so convinced their way is the only way and the rest of us are living in prehistoric times?

Plus, your EV is heavier than my ICE, so your tires shed rubber particulate more quickly than my tires due to the weight, which is also an environmental pollutant (that is toxic enough to kill wildlife, btw)

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abd6951

>EV's produce 38% less tire & brake dust than ICE vehicles.

>non-exhaust emissions on an ICE vehicle are roughly 1/3 brake dust, 1/3 tire dust and 1/3 road dust. EV's have almost no impact on road dust, 83% lest brake dust and 20% more tire dust.

https://electrek.co/2025/05/27/another-way-electric-cars-cle...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46219820

> though much of this is attributable to a vehicle mix that is more focused on larger vehicles, as it seems like every EV manufacturer is making huge SUVs and few are making small cars

My point exactly. Your new EV has more tire dust (and probably more brake dust) than my old, smaller ICE.

The study found that despite EVs being heavier, they produce less total tire and break dust. They produce more tire dust, but less break dust.

>> I have no garage and work from home. So no workplace to charge. So now you’ve added another thing I have to worry about - finding charging somewhere along my 10 minute errand route?

Your car lives somewhere when you're not doing errands. Expect a charging point there as demand for that grows.

Not to mention charging points at the mall, shops, restaurants and so on.

Clearly it will be a long time before EV replaces ICE completely. There was lots of horse infrastructure which changed when cars appeared.

But the pendulum is swinging and each motion there opens up new opportunities.

Also each motion has an impact on existing infrastructure. Expect gas stations to be less common, ditto for mechanics and so on.

Hence the urgent need for charging infrastructure: Incentives to install charges in homes and rental unit garages and at curbsides.

Isn't it a lot easier just to sell people hybrids instead?

Yeah but don't we need to stop burning fossil fuels?

No? I haven't seen a "peak oil" article or prediction in at least ten years. It would be GREAT to reduce our dependence, to make them cleaner, to make them more efficient, and to increase the use of renewables. But who is saying we have to "stop" oil and gas?

Global warming.

I don't think reaching peak oil is the worry. The worry is climate change.

> But who is saying we have to "stop" oil and gas?

People who are concerned about climate change? Should we not be?

No. It's really easy to install charging points on office parking space and supermarket. You don't need to plug at home when half of the day the car is parked at places with chargers.

Comments like this are bubble coded. Plenty of people don't park at an office, don't park at a supermarket, certainly not for half the day

Not half a day, but BEVs are impractical today if you don’t have home charging, but throw in restaurants, movie theaters, doctor’s and dentist’s offices, and L2 charging starts to become a practical alternative for many.

Absolutely. And Toyota agrees with you.

The people in this thread have lost their minds in a cult of EV.

I don’t know why EV has to be the answer to every question. There are plenty of economical hybrid options.

In the short run. When I replaced my minivan with a PHEV my gas bill went down $200/month, my electric bill went up $30. Chargers where people park is a long term investment in lower costs for everyone. Hopefully chargers are everywhere in the future so we don't need the ICE at all. (I just bought a EV, I've barely had it a week and already have run out of battery - I was just able to reach a charger, but it required changing my route since there were none along the route I wanted)

> There's no need to get full EVSE for most people,

It's a lot more comfortable though. It's been a great addition to the home to get an EVSE, even a small single-phase one.

> Don't most people already have a plug in their garage?

Good point, most people without garages should continue buying hybrid or ICE, because EVs aren't for them yet.

When will EVs be for them?

I was being a bit facetious, but I guess when either they're fortunate to live extremely close to a charger, or they have one in building, but then it seems like they'd be fighting for parking and charging space, which doesn't seem to me to compete favorably in terms of practicality. Or the housing market finally crashes and there's a viable path out of renting for those that want to do so.

When L2 errand charging becomes enough that they can keep up with daily travel by plugging in where they go and park for a while - restaurants, movie theaters, retail stores, doctor and dentist offices, etc.

I would like to see alternative charging approaches, as well, like inductive charging roads / parking spaces... this seems kind of cool: https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/travel/mobility/initiatives/wi...

That way I wouldn't need to stress over finding a charging place so often.

I dont have a garage, but there are at least 15+ curb side chargers in 250 meters walking distance of my house. No problem charging my Tesla.

How is the pricing? IME public charges are 2-3x as expensive as charging at home.

Company car, i don't see the bill, but i think it's about e0.46 - e0.50/kWh.

Kind of an important detail to leave out of your first post! It's a totally different calculus if you're not paying to charge the EV.

Nice

What about charging at work?

Yes, there are chargers there as well, i guess around 40 in the parking garage.

Yes it's so easy - Just tell the butler to put it on charge when you arrive home.

>Also if everyone in your neighbourhood turning on a space heater strains the grid you have bigger problems.

Welcome to Texas.

And with Texas a 200 mile+ driving day is just more common than people from smaller places experience.

People can't possibly be driving 200 miles a day, that can't be real.

Sure it can :).

Probably not 7 days a week, but a couple days a week, sure.

And of course not everyone. Maybe 10%?

Not that it matters. What do I care about the needs of some Texans? (I mean that non perjorativly). I mean just because ranchers still need horses doesn't mean the rest of us have to use them.

The world will go EV, even much of the US will go EV, regardless of what some folks need.

If you have to drive 200 miles a day to go to/come back from work its a policy failure and we should care about it.

Almost nobody is driving 200 miles to get to work. Almost everybody will move if their commute is more than half an hour - this is through out history and includes hunter gathers deciding to move the tribe, peasants walking to their field... There are a few people driving that far in the US, but either they are planning to move soon, or they don't expect the job to last long.

There are a lot of people driving more than 200 miles a day for work though. Many of them are in cars because their unique skills are why they need to be there (as opposed to delivery drivers who are bringing cargo).

There are also people who drive a long distance once a week. I know of a rural hospital that pays a lot of doctors to drive in on Thursday so locals don't have to go to the city. (they keep an ER, but the rest of the hospital is empty other than a few nurses the rest of the week)

So what is the limit of days you drive 200+ miles per year that make a full EV make sense?

In an average year I'll have 40+ days where I drive that much. Not for work, just for doing random things.

>a policy failure and we should care about it.

We should, but we won't because Oil/Gas/ICE cars spend an epic fuckload telling you that anything not related driving more is communism.

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