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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

Typically the driving distances are pretty short in a city, so you don't have to charge that often.

The smaller size of an EV would be more useful in most European cities, at least.

That's the irony of EVs. They're most useful in cities--short driving distances and less emissions in dense areas, but easiest for the consumer to use in the burbs where driving distances are longer and emissions are less of an issue.

I'd say they're most useful in suburbs. You can charge them overnight in your driveway or garage so there's almost no reason not to have one unless you're really focused on the road trip scenario but that's an issue for city cars too.

Yes, useful at the personal level. I agree. But at the community level, emission reduction is most useful for cities.

Even still, people driving from the suburbs to the city are a large part of emissions. People living in the city are already likely to use transit for some trips and so are going to make less emissions. Also for emissions we really shouldn't separate the suburb from the city - they are too close to each other and so one affects the other.

People who live in cities often don't drive that much, so they don't need to charge that often - I drive like 400 km per month, meaning I'd have to charge once a month on most modern EVs.

Also even in the sprawl, people usually don't drive hundreds of kilometers s day.

I'd correct this to be "a smaller sized EV" versus "the smaller size of an EV" as many of the EVs on the market are surprisingly big. Without pointing to the obvious behemoth truck/SUV EVs, my Tesla MY is considerably larger than a lot of CUVs on the market and has a much worse turning radius. What it does do well is stop and start fast meaning I can be more decisive and navigate through messy NYC/BOS traffic with more confidence than in my CRV, and regen braking + having lower "idling" costs does improve its city-profile.

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