Hacker News Reader

Comment by M0r13n | Hacker News Reader

Sadly, I don't own a wall box. So I'm dependent on public infrastructure. If I could charge at home I'd be even happier with my car.

View on HN

Sadly I think it's kind of accepted by this point that overnight charging is a prerequisite to a good experience with an EV.

It's not a prerequisite: I see lots of people plugging their cars at public chargers in my residential area; I assume they charge once a week while doing groceries or dining out.

Public charging can easily be 2x or 3x as expensive.

And being in your car doing nothing waiting for the charge for 25mn is frustrating. Even more so when it’s the height of summer (and that was in a car where the AC didn’t block charging).

If you can time it with some errands it’s less of a hassle, but that was one of the main non-car annoyances with my EV rental (the other was the flakiness / unreliability of getting a charging session to start).

I only use public fast charging when on a long road trip. So the 30 min charge always coïncides with me emptying my bladder, so it's never been a hassle.

As I wrote, this was a rental, there was no charger where I was and no mains adapter provided with the car, so my options were fast charger or pushing the thing.

And even during long legs I don’t need to piss for 30mn every two hours.

I charge my car with the granny charger dangling out the window next to where I park. Been doing so for 2 years now. I have some high density foam packed in the window crack to keep the cold out. Im in Ireland.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com