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Comment by LargeWu | Hacker News Reader

If you live in large parts of the USA, by which I mean pretty much anything that is not the eastern seaboard or California, and you need to go anywhere remotely rural, charging infrastructure is absolutely not reliable.

I have an EV, which is amazing in my metro area, but I regularly take trips where I would not feel comfortable finding a place to charge, despite what EV locator maps might tell you. If you show up and that charger is not working, which is not uncommon, you might be stranded.

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What EV? I have a 2020 Model 3 and in six years I've never had an issue with charging, even when driving around rural Montana & Idaho in the winter. I've never had a supercharging station be out of commission. Sometimes an individual stall or small group of stalls will be offline, but the car tells you which ones are broken so you don't waste time trying to charge at one.

We have a 2022 Leaf. Great city car; not so great out of town.

Just to be clear, that's an infrastructure problem, not a car problem. There aren't too many places you can drive in the US where you don't see a gas station at least every 50 miles, typically much more frequently. Charging stations are a completely different story.

You're talking about a car problem, not an infrastructure problem. The 2022 Leaf has an EPA range of either 149 or 212 miles depending on the model, and only has a 50kW or 100kW CHAdeMO port, which is slow to charge and doesn't allow you to use Tesla's Supercharger network. The battery management system uses air cooling, so charging rates are quickly limited by the pack heating up.

Also Nissan has instructed Leaf owners to not use DC fast charging, as doing so can cause battery fires. A recall has been issued, but no fix is available yet.[1]

1. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2025/RCLRPT-25V655-5278.pdf

9 times out of 10, when I have problems with a public charger, it's with some stupid app. I avoid chargers that are app only, and target those where I can just tap my debit card to pay (an actual card, not more smartphone tomfoolery). See also: parking apps.

It takes all of my willpower not to go full Ted Kaczynski some days.

This is one big advantage of having a Tesla and using their Supercharger network. I tried using 3rd party chargers a few times. The spotty reliability, annoying apps, & frustrating payment flows made me avoid them. With Tesla's network you just plug the car in. There's really no excuse for other vehicles & chargers being worse. ISO 15118 defines a plug & charge standard, which Tesla implements. Electrify America supports it as well, but vehicles often lack support for it, or require the vehicle owner to activate the feature.[1]

1. https://www.electrifyamerica.com/plug-and-charge/

I've seen some chargers (non-Tesla) that support it, but only for CCS DC charging (which my Leaf doesn't have), not AC charging. Just tapping my debit card isn't much of an inconvenience, though plugging in and walking away does sound nice. However, I'm kind of suspicious of what data a car and charger is exchanging with Plug & Charge. In the privacy hell world we find ourselves in my guess is "all of it".

As others have noted, you have a very low range EV. It's really not what anyone is suggesting now.

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