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Comment by Toutouxc | Hacker News Reader

Hours? Is this a joke?

Most of the public chargers around me are level 2 - hours is correct. Though most are in places where I would expect someone is parking there all day anyway - the parking ramps downtown, campgrounds, and beaches. I don't know what the grocery store with level-2 chargers is thinking though - the range you can get level 2 charging during the typical grocery run isn't worth it. (if the chargers were on the far end where employees park it would make sense, but they are customer parking only)

There are some level 3 chargers, but they are much less common. Maybe your city is different.

Yes, AC chargers aren't meant to be the equivalent of "get gas and get back home". They're sometimes called "destination chargers". You plug your car in because you already need to be there.

If you need to charge the car as fast as possible, you go to a DC charger and you generally spend 5-20 minutes there. In fact, many faster DC chargers will start adding fees for hogging the charger for more than 30 minutes.

Problem is level 3 chargers are a lot less common than level 2 - at least where I live. Some of those chargers are free which is nice when I happen to be in that area anyway, but most are not.

I think a lot more places like grocery stores and restaurants and what not should probably prioritize 50kW-ish DC fast chargers. Not so big you need to radically change the electricity at the property (some systems even have batteries to spread the load out), but still fast enough that customers hanging out for half an hour to a little over an hour will get a very solid charge.

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