Then again, I don’t have a gas station in my backyard either…
Shopping centers/grocery stores need more charging stations, that’s the most realistic place to go to charge when you don’t have the capacity to do it at home.
People that live in the city don’t usually go shopping with their cars (at least here in central Europe) and people in the countryside will have enough space for a charger anyways.
What? Why would you react that way, this isn’t even an “America is the only country that exists” moment. Nobody disagreed with you, insulted you, misinterpreted you, etc…
DC fast charging is fairly fast. My car goes from 10-80 in less than 20 minutes in summer, and probably 35 minutes in winter. My wife spends more time than that in grocery stores weekly.
The goal is, to set them up so people aren’t necessarily waiting.
– I don’t care how long it takes to charge at home: just like my phone I plug in overnight and it’s fully charged in the morning
– all the grocery stores and restaurants and workplaces that have chargers are all pretty slow but you’re going to be there for a while anyway, plus they only need to recover the charge used to get there
– on road trips, my stop is well under an hour but a supercharger can give back a good percentage of charge in that time
I either charge at home, or at work, or if there happens to be a charger at my destination but I’m almost never waiting to charge.
I’ve frequently had to wait for a pump or had to go out of my way to get to a working pump. Gas pumps don’t work when the power goes out but batteries stay charged. I’ve actually had to load up my gas generator in my ev to drive 2 towns over during a power outage to get fuel…to keep my pets alive. Car only had about 30% charge to start and roughly 22% when I was back. Generator had 0 gas to start (had just run through my old gas) and was full when I got back…also the power decided to come back on which began refueling my ev.
Hydrogen cars are basically hybrids already. Hydrogen has some issues though that are unlikely to be overcome. Go watch a video of someone driving one around, if you think finding an EV charger is difficult, just try finding a hydrogen charger outside of southern California.
There are two types of hydrogen cars: Fuel Cell EVs and ICE built to run with hydrogen fuel. Both of them are the future of fuel. You won’t see a network of EV charging stations in most south american, african, or Asian countries. The EV revolution is very urban focused. Hydrogen as a fuel that can be transported almost as easily as gasoline is the pragmatic future. EVs are popular because Elon Musk went viral.
Hydrogen doesn’t solve any problem. It’s just a secondary set of infrastructure we’d have to invest in, and it doesn’t overlap with BEV infrastructure (excepting for some grid improvements).
Planning on a 1-to-1 swap between traditional cars and EVs is the crassest mistake.
It would take a paradigm shift that emphasizes remote work, carpooling and carsharing in order to make private transportation really sustainable.
EVs are here to save the car manufacturers, not the planet. Literally just a bandaid solution to kick the can of actually implementing the harder solutions that require some societal change down the road a few more years
Or maybe instead of blocking everything on the theory a complete charging solution will magically appear despite no demand, we can go ahead with the 59% of the population living in a house, and can decide to install a charger. Maybe we can go ahead with charger networks we already have, already allowing most road trips and getting better continuously. And we can use all that demand, all that money to keep building out a better and better charging solution.
FYI - buddy of mine has an EV at a townhouse with no opportunity to charge, and just goes to a supercharger once a week to top off. It may be inconvenient, but it’s not onerous
You can’t have infrastructure without the cars, and you can’t have the cars without the infrastructure. The solution to this catch-22 is to force the infrastructure to catch up.
Charging infrastructure is getting better. I’ve had an EV without home charging for three years now and I’ve managed just fine. Overall it’s no more inconvenient than having to go to a gas station.
I have a plug-in hybrid. I try to charge while running errands. I (almost) never can. In my area, most stores don’t have chargers and those that do, typically have a slow charger with 2-4 spots. Those spots are always taken.
Not to mention not everyone has a garage or nearby charging spot to charge an ev.
Perhaps dealing with infrastructure first would be interesting…
Then again, I don’t have a gas station in my backyard either…
Shopping centers/grocery stores need more charging stations, that’s the most realistic place to go to charge when you don’t have the capacity to do it at home.
Workplaces too.
I cannot even charge my phone at work under Italian law (I’m a public employee and it would count as malversation).
Wow that’s a bit of a stretch 😂
Man I haven’t learned a new word in a long time, and “malversation” is a great one.
My workplace is adding free EV charging installed at my closest building for those who work in person still. It definitely seems like a smart idea.
The issue is charging takes a while, while refuelling is pretty much instantaneous
90% of people can charge their car enough in between Shopping trips
People that live in the city don’t usually go shopping with their cars (at least here in central Europe) and people in the countryside will have enough space for a charger anyways.
People do everything in their cars in the U.S.
Yeah, and not being Amercian is a crime on the internet, I know.
This article is about cars being made in the U.S., so it’s kind of about the U.S…
The article is, but this discussion didn’t really specifically mention the US, so I assumed we were talking about EVs in general
What? Why would you react that way, this isn’t even an “America is the only country that exists” moment. Nobody disagreed with you, insulted you, misinterpreted you, etc…
Just look at the votes on my previous comment
DC fast charging is fairly fast. My car goes from 10-80 in less than 20 minutes in summer, and probably 35 minutes in winter. My wife spends more time than that in grocery stores weekly.
The goal is, to set them up so people aren’t necessarily waiting.
– I don’t care how long it takes to charge at home: just like my phone I plug in overnight and it’s fully charged in the morning
– all the grocery stores and restaurants and workplaces that have chargers are all pretty slow but you’re going to be there for a while anyway, plus they only need to recover the charge used to get there
– on road trips, my stop is well under an hour but a supercharger can give back a good percentage of charge in that time
I either charge at home, or at work, or if there happens to be a charger at my destination but I’m almost never waiting to charge.
I’ve frequently had to wait for a pump or had to go out of my way to get to a working pump. Gas pumps don’t work when the power goes out but batteries stay charged. I’ve actually had to load up my gas generator in my ev to drive 2 towns over during a power outage to get fuel…to keep my pets alive. Car only had about 30% charge to start and roughly 22% when I was back. Generator had 0 gas to start (had just run through my old gas) and was full when I got back…also the power decided to come back on which began refueling my ev.
That’s why NIU’ system with swappable batteries is a great idea, even though it makes engineering more difficult
“Barring about this one minor annoyance, EV’s are great!”
Good point. It’s a sort of chicken egg problem. Lack of ev and no investment for infrastructure, resulting in even less ev.
Here in Germany, in my local town, they build hydrogen fuel stations instead of charging stations. Very strange.
Hydrogen may not be such a bad idea until there’s electrical infrastructure. Hydbrid hydrogen-electric even?
Hydrogen cars are basically hybrids already. Hydrogen has some issues though that are unlikely to be overcome. Go watch a video of someone driving one around, if you think finding an EV charger is difficult, just try finding a hydrogen charger outside of southern California.
There are two types of hydrogen cars: Fuel Cell EVs and ICE built to run with hydrogen fuel. Both of them are the future of fuel. You won’t see a network of EV charging stations in most south american, african, or Asian countries. The EV revolution is very urban focused. Hydrogen as a fuel that can be transported almost as easily as gasoline is the pragmatic future. EVs are popular because Elon Musk went viral.
Edit: totally aware it’s not successful at the moment: https://www.motor1.com/news/693449/toyota-hydrogen-mirai-not-successful/
Hydrogen doesn’t solve any problem. It’s just a secondary set of infrastructure we’d have to invest in, and it doesn’t overlap with BEV infrastructure (excepting for some grid improvements).
Planning on a 1-to-1 swap between traditional cars and EVs is the crassest mistake. It would take a paradigm shift that emphasizes remote work, carpooling and carsharing in order to make private transportation really sustainable.
EVs are here to save the car manufacturers, not the planet. Literally just a bandaid solution to kick the can of actually implementing the harder solutions that require some societal change down the road a few more years
Or maybe instead of blocking everything on the theory a complete charging solution will magically appear despite no demand, we can go ahead with the 59% of the population living in a house, and can decide to install a charger. Maybe we can go ahead with charger networks we already have, already allowing most road trips and getting better continuously. And we can use all that demand, all that money to keep building out a better and better charging solution.
FYI - buddy of mine has an EV at a townhouse with no opportunity to charge, and just goes to a supercharger once a week to top off. It may be inconvenient, but it’s not onerous
You can’t have infrastructure without the cars, and you can’t have the cars without the infrastructure. The solution to this catch-22 is to force the infrastructure to catch up.
Charging infrastructure is getting better. I’ve had an EV without home charging for three years now and I’ve managed just fine. Overall it’s no more inconvenient than having to go to a gas station.
I have a plug-in hybrid. I try to charge while running errands. I (almost) never can. In my area, most stores don’t have chargers and those that do, typically have a slow charger with 2-4 spots. Those spots are always taken.