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Comment by BLKNSLVR | Hacker News Reader

Was looking at EVs last weekend, slightly accelerating a purchase that was going to be made soon anyway and, yep, there is plenty of additional interest as a result of current fuel prices / availability.

EVs were only going to grow in popularity anyway, but this feels like it's jumped the adoption curve up a peg or two immediately.

What I'm interested in seeing is whether infrastructure can scale with the additional interest. And I don't think it will because the the current government is already planning to add an "EV tax" to make up for the fuel excise, and the opposition government (if/when it gets back in) is owned by the fossil fuel lobby, and so they'll be doing whatever they can to slow it down.

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The beauty of EVs is that the infrastructure is for most part very decentralized. Anybody with a house can charge at home, using cheap off-peak power at night and/or solar panels during the day.

Obviously there's work to be done on charging in apartments and highways, but this is a more tractable problem than (say) trying to double hydrogen or even gasoline filling stations overnight.

Hah, yes, of course, I'm falling into the FUD trap.

What I meant to say was the kind of infrastructure that defeats some of the FUD around EVs, such as chargers at rest stops along highways, in parking lots, hotel/motel car parks, etc. Chargers could/should become a value-add for businesses that survive on servicing road-trip transient customers.

> Anybody with a house can charge at home, using cheap off-peak power at night and/or solar panels during the day.

Yes! This is decentralised, existing infrastructure, and that should neither be forgotten nor understated: the ubiquity of 'the lowly power point' is greater than that of the fuel nozzle (in complete awareness of the relatively large disparity between charging time and refueling time, which is a whole can of worms on its own).

The infrastructure in question is DC fast chargers. Yes, you can charge at home if you have a house, with a parking space reachable with an EVSE, and your commute is short enough that you can fully recharge by the next commute, and nobody needs the car after hours when you'd otherwise be charging it, and you never take road trips or longer-than-usual drives.

Everyone else is, to a greater or lesser extent, at the mercy of the DCFC infrastructure, and it is sorely lacking in many places - even ones you'd expect it to be pretty good.

It is a good point.

I'm in the privileged position that I have solar panels and can charge in the garage. I only just had a conversation with someone who was considering an EV, but their 'housing configuration' doesn't support it, it just wasn't feasible purely from a charging perspective in their situation.

More public infrastructure, and knowledge of the presence of said infrastructure would open up EVs to a wider set of use cases. It's almost the 'confidence' in the suitability of EVs that needs to be worked on.

It’s hilarious that the greenies who live in dense urban areas have a harder time charging their EV than folks who live in the burbs. I’m thinking of putting in a second EV charger so I can charge two cars at once.

This is absolutely true, but IMO also a much smaller problem than some people are making it out to be.

Without any special car-charging equipment, just with a regular outlet, I'm able to get over 100 miles of range every night (charging only from 11pm to 7am).

This is enough for a pretty long daily commute and it doesn't block car use during normal hours.

Big disclaimer - I'm from Europe, which helps my case because of shorter commutes and faster home charging with 220 volts.

But at the end of the day I think the solution lies in equipping all parking spaces at home and at work with power outlets. DCFC is definitely needed, but should be viewed as a solution for exceptional cases (i.e. roadtrip that exceeds your range), not a gas station for EVs.

Your picture is not an accurate picture of what it's like for most people - you frame the exceptions as if it's the normal case.

Most people who have a driveway or garage where they can install an EVSE (or an apartment complex where the parking has chargers) don't even need to charge every day. Depending on the commute it could even be just two or three times a week. It would usually only be when your only option is trickle charging out of a standard wall outlet that you are in the 'might not be able to charge in time for the next drive' territory, not with EVSE where you can get 7 kW single phase or 11 kW three-phase with most cars (some cars can do up to 22 kW with three phase but that's rare for them to support that on AC charging and it would be rare to have an EVSE that could do that power at home).

I'm not making any representation of how common this is - just saying that unless all those conditions apply to you, you will eventually have cause to care about the quality, availability, and reliability of public DC charging infrastructure.

Anecdotally, I have 5+ friends with EVs, and every single one of them charges theirs from a standard 15A wall outlet. (I have an EV, but I also have a real charger.) Sure, most of the time it's fine - but when it's not, then you have to really care about whether that nearby EVgo pedestal is working today.

But furthermore: most apartment dwellers, many renters, people in multifamily homes/complexes where their parking spaces are not near their personally-metered power, those who have to street park - many more people than you may think have difficulty charging at home. I wish it weren't the case, and I'd love to see better solutions here.

A 2kW socket for ten hours over night will give you a hundred kilometers of range or so. A regular 11kW wall box can fully charge your car over night. How long is the typical commute you're thinking about? Fast charging is pretty much irrelevant day-to-day for people who can plug in at home or at work. The only time these people need fast chargers is during road trips.

> 2 kW socket

> kilometers

It's much more tenable in the 220V world, for sure.

But even if you only charge during road trips, the quality of the chargers during those road trips matters!

Infrastructure for ev charging is a lot easier to add than gas stations though.

Thousands and thousands of miles of high voltage cables transformers and super expensive chargers sounds easy to you?

A gas station just needs a tank and a pump. You can put it anywhere and can operate with a small generator if 110V electricity is not available. Even as a country you don’t need infra. Just some trucks to import from the closest refinery/ port

Yes, if you're rolling it out for a single charger in the middle of nowhere.

My understanding is that much of the grid already exists if there is a town or even just a rest stop present, it likely has grid power. I will grant that this doesn't speak to the suitability of said existing infrastructure for running one or a number of a high voltage / high speed chargers.

> Just some trucks to import from the closest refinery/ port

Driving thousands and thousands of miles.

Vehicles will be visiting the gas station anyway ? Aka the road-like infrastructure will need to be there.

I do not try to claim that trucking fuel over long distances is efficient. Just stating that gas stations themselves need no additional infrastructure.

I mean, if you consider "building the whole gas station" to be the infrastructure, then sure, but building a gas station requires significantly more complex infrastructure than installing an EV charger or two.

You need to install several specialized sealed tanks underground, and the pumps that will get the gas & diesel (and sometimes kerosene) in them up to the cars.

You then need to be able to make secure, safe deliveries of highly flammable liquids to the site regularly, forever.

Once an EV charger has been installed, it'll need occasional maintenance, and if some yahoos vandalize it it might need repair or replacement, but otherwise it's pretty much good to go, potentially for decades.

Most of those cables are already in place and powered up for the existing power grid.

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