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Comment by rolfus | Hacker News Reader

We had much of the same skepticism and anti-EV propaganda here in Norway a decade ago, when EV's started becoming popular. The usual claims was that the batteries would have to be replaced every five years, the cars would stop working in the winters, the batteries are fire hazards, the power grid won't support everyone buying EV's, etc.. All of which turned out to not be true.

Today the market share for EV's is 98% and they account for the majority of the total number of cars on the road! The people who bough 1st. generation EV's as a number two car a decade ago chose EV's as their main car before long. My own vehicles are 7 and 12 years old and holding up well, despite the 12 year old having inferior battery chemistry compared to modern cars.

Change isn't always easy or smooth, but this one is inevitable.

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98% of NEW EVs. But the total market share of the fleet is about 1/3. Impressive. If EV share is 90% in a decade I wonder if Norway will see fuel stations being torn down.

I'd imagine trucks would still be diesel, so it'd probably make sense just to remove some of the pumps and replace them with rapid chargers. I doubt the fuel stations themselves will disappear, just cater to a different market.

OTOH in the UK at least, I think public charging is way too expensive compared to home charging, so I think most public charging is done out of necessity on long journeys, so the number of people using chargers would probably be significantly lower than number of people filling up with fuel.

Electric semi trucks have appeared from all major European manufacturers in the last years and I expect them to become dominant even quicker than electric cars on simple cost grounds. Electricity is cheaper than diesel and due to favorable regulations in Europe, for many use cases there is little to no time lost charging and usually also no loss in load capacity.

Good point actually. I guess the maximum 8 driving hours per day works well if they can find a rest point near a charging station.

According to YouTuber Bjorn Nyland, some such as Circle-K had already installed charging stations and are now removing some pumps and replacing them with chargers while adding even more charging stalls.

Thanks. The video was interesting.

Yeah, it's amazing how fast the transition has been. Many gas stations are or have already reallocated space from gas pumps to charging stations, and new stations are designed to accommodate EV's. Take a look at this station as an example - it's already five years old at this point: https://tinyurl.com/4y8u36m2

I should have been more accurate in my "majority" claim; it refers to EV's being the most common type of car compared to gas or diesel. Source: https://tinyurl.com/ycke45dy

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