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Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

I can’t own one because I can’t install a fast charger at my place.

Most people don’t need a fast charger to own an EV. Most people would actually be just fine on a household outlet.

Sounds terrible if that is your only car.

What is terrible about charging at home from a regular outlet? As long as you average <50-60 miles a day, like most people, you basically never have to go to fast chargers (or gas stations). It’s amazing.

I have a standard plug (not even three phase) and charge 30 kWh in ten hours (overnight). That's around 90 miles, which is plenty.

If I'm going on a long trip, I just make sure I start charging from > 50% the previous day, and I'm good. It's trivial to manage the state of charge when you have a charger at home and a planned trip coming up.

In the U.S. our standard outlets are 120V, so you only get about 1kW or so out of them. Plenty for most people, but annoying if you need >50 miles of range a day, or if you want to boil water in an electric kettle. The situation is much better in Europe, and most of the rest of the world, where you have 220+V

Not really.

The average person in America drives about 37 miles a day.

EVs gain about 3-5 miles per hour on a household 120V charger.

You sleep for about 8 hours and are probably home away from work and errands for an about 12 hours.

Do the math: 3 miles per hour for 12 hours is 36 miles.

And even if you don’t keep up with your pace, the weekend can act as additional time to charge. Or if you drive more on the weekend, you can basically decide that you’re going to go to a fast charger every 2-4 weeks just like a gas car (or maybe even less frequently than a gas car).

Let’s say you drive 50 miles a day but you’re only able to charge up 35 miles per day at home. If your vehicle’s range is 250 miles that means you need to go to a fast charger every 15 days including a little room for reserve power.

Also, all of this is even less of a concern if you live in a country with 240V power.

I forgot that the US uses 120 V, that's a bit less convenient, but I agree. I live in a country that uses 240V, and I ~never need to worry about charging. I'll usually intentionally not charge for days/a week because I wait for the battery to go down to 20%.

So you forget to plug in one night and are screwed for work the next day it sounds like

You are probably never starting from zero on workdays, are you?

Depends if you did something after work the day before

It's worked for me for about 10 years. Maybe don't forget if it's so critical that you get to work the next day. Sounds like you have a skill issue

That's my only car, and it's the best thing ever. I'm never going back to ICE. I have a normal wall plug in my garage and I charge once or twice a week overnight, and I never need to worry about gas station trips.

The fact that I can do 100km with 3 €, even with our expensive electricity, is icing on the cake.

If you don't have a charger at home, though, an EV is a chore, I agree.

Have been charging my model 3 from an outlet since 2020, we only need fast charging occasionally when taking a long trip

Not to mention that fast charging degrades your battery faster. I've had my car for a year and a half and I charged at a fast charger maybe four times.

Yeah this is the kind of thing people say on a day to day basis.

I don't have a gas station at my house, and yet I still own a gas-powered vehicle.

I also don't have a fast electric charger at my house, and yet I still also own an EV.

I have compared prices in fast-charging stations to gasoline here in Sweden, and a gasoline car get more miles for the money. The price can be up to 100x, or 10000% that of the market price that the fast-charging stations buy their electricity from.

And even with that, very few places seems to be willing to build competing charging stations that will undercut those prices. The only way to actually save money is to have a charging stations at home or at work where you pay the normal (through still very high) cost that the utility company take.

I have found fast-charging prices near where I live to be fairly competitive with gasoline per-mile. The lower maintenance costs of an EV are icing on the cake, so to speak.

But I actually do most of my charging as trickle-charging from a regular home outlet, despite it being slow; it adds about 40 miles of range per 24 hours of charging. My car sits in my driveway most of the time so that's actually sufficient most of the time.

If it was about reducing lifetime ownership costs, you'd be hard pressed to ever exceed what you pay for an EV with say a couple grand used japanese ice car with a basic 4 banger engine and manual transmission.

Good luck getting a working car at all for a couple grand these days.

In Greece, fast charging is 4x more expensive than slow charging at home. Slow electricity is around 4x cheaper than gas, so you're right, fast charging makes it about even.

Good thing I only need to fast charge a few times a year, on long trips (or consecutive trips away from home/a plug).

I can fill a gas car in 3 mins basically anywhere within reach of civilization. It is frictionless pretty much. People I know with ev and no home charger have to plan their entire life around when they take the car to charge. Sometimes they have to just take the gas car because the ev is down to 30% and too close to empty for comfort.

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