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Comment by abalone | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting now that Tesla has answered the folks saying "the most serious issue with electric cars is road trips," now we get this.

I'm a little skeptical of the "half of the driving population won't be able to charge" claim. For example, you don't necessarily need to own your off-street parking spot for the owner to upgrade it to increase its value. And I doubt on-street overnight parkers constitute anywhere close to half of the population (I'd be interested in data that shows otherwise).

Anyway, it will be many, many years before even half the driving population switches to electric. That's a lot of time to figure out charging infrastructure in cities for the rest of us.

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It's Tesla that has defined the problem with electric cars as road trip refueling. Most EV dealers offer free loaners for road trips, or you can rent a car. Even vampire loads at airport parking in low temperatures is of higher priority for most drivers. They're misdirecting from the main issue to one that they can solve cheaply.

I'm saying this as someone who owns two electric cars. The infrastructure can be solved eventually, and some cities are looking into it, but even in the suburbs there are problems [2], which is why hydrogen is still out there as an alternative (albeit an immature and inefficient one), but for now, a large portion of the U.S. population cannot buy an EV.

[1] http://www.commerce.wa.gov/Documents/Demand-EVSE-Access-Gara...

[2] http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_24947237/charge-rage-...

Valid points esp. about the vampire loads in cold weather. If you remember that NYT reviewer who stalled out, if you look at the details, maybe the biggest factor was parking overnight in the deep cold at a hotel without plugging in. I found it very distasteful how Musk attacked the reporter's integrity in response.

I am just saying "a large portion of the population can't buy an EV" is like saying "a large portion of the population can't buy a Macintosh" in 1984. If the biggest problem you see is that people don't park their cars near chargers right now, that seems like a tractable problem. (And I would think much moreso than making hydrogen mainstream.)

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