1st, you're assuming people can charge at home - assuming they have a garage and access to power. This isn't true for a huge portion of the population.
> and while at your destination (say a retailer) which you can't do with your ICE car. So overlapping but not identical comparison.
This really isn't available yet either. Who's going to pay for this? Really?
I don’t think they claimed that everyone has access at home. They said “the use case includes” which doesn’t exclude other possibilities.
There are many great options for charging if you choose your car wisely.
Our apartment building with six parking spaces has three Teslas and no charging on site. We do just fine.
Charging takes about 15 seconds of my day on work days. And on the occasion when I need more, it’s quick and I can grab a few minutes (like, 10 or 15) of a youtube video or Netflix while charging. Or step into a store and do an errand while charging.
In 10 minutes I can get about 100 miles of charge. I often go to our nearby Target (a store in the US) which has a supercharger right in the parking lot, and I don’t charge, even though I’m already there shopping right where the charger is. Why? No need. Already charged. It’s not that difficult.
Notice I never said this will work for everyone. But it works for some, with no assumption about having chargers at home.
>Who’s going to pay?
Sometimes you pay per kilowatt. Other times you’re charged per minute, like 3 cents a minute or so which includes parking. Other places it’s free and advertising on nearby signs subsidies for it. Or employers pay for it as a work benefit. One network (Chargepoint) covers most of this stuff.
This is what always happens when I bring up product problems about EVs. Everyone on HN who owns a luxury car Tesla in SV or some major metro with their six figure plus salary gets all bent out of shape, and ask "omg why can't everyone do this!" It's tone deaf and out of touch.
EVs simply are not there yet. They're ludicrously expensive, inconvenient to refuel, don't offer utility like ICE trucks/SUVs, can't be charged effectively without huge infrastructure investment. I'm not saying we aren't making strides, I'm saying there are loads of improvements that need to come before EVs take over ICE sales to ultimately help us fight global problems.
EVs have never been about rich people having a toy. We need cheap EVs now to help us fight global climate change and frankly they aren't there yet. You need to make massive assumptions for the vast majority of Americans to make EVs work compared to ICE vehicles.
Of course there are a lot of issues still needing solutions.
If you re-read my comment you will see that I acknowledged this won’t work for everyone. Quite far removed from how you portray my comment.
You’ve also made several poorly chosen points that are easily refuted. Perhaps if you want to engage with sincerity and read what people say, your experience here will be better.
You and I both agree a lot of improvements are needed. In the meantime watching evolutionary-paced progress crawl along can be frustrating for sure.
There’s something fascinating though about the difference between what we impatiently want to see, asap, as consumers, and how stuff actually gets done. And you touched on it with the rich people toy comment. The people who can figure out the steps to get from here to there — some of which steps take us through stages that look quite non-ideal along the way — those people really have some special insight or talent.
I find this amazing. Who would have thought that the way to get eco friendly cars to take off would have been to leverage humans’ enjoyment of endorphins? Pretty nonlinear thinking, but it’s working, in the case of Tesla.
(I say it’s working because it helped (or frankly, enabled, full stop) the company to even survive at all to this point. If they had tried to move straight to a cheap model on day 1, there would be no Tesla Inc. today. And now it’s putting pressure on other car companies to catch up. Anyone who thinks it is easy to finance a company while starting with a low priced model is free to try doing so, of course.)
Yes, they can't compete on price with a cheap used car (though look at models like the Renault Zoe), but the inconvenience of refuelling is really overblown (almost always by people who don't drive one). If you don't live in a city you can probably charge at home. If not, maybe at work, almost certainly when shopping. There are so many places to charge.
How do we know this? Despite tax breaks we still have to pass laws telling people they will have to buy them! If they were ready I'd be able to buy one locally, have it serviced locally and take a trip without needing to plan stops to charge.
"It's tone deaf and out of touch"
Amen. As someone who lived in a city and did the commute and left it all, I've realized that many people can't imagine what life is like somewhere else. An EV in this area it is a cross between a child's plaything and a rich person's toy - but I get that for someone else they are perfect. I'm glad we aren't all the same and in the same circumstances, but I wish that was easier to keep in mind.
I live in a city. I do understand that people in rural areas need reliable trucks.
I think that most people would prefer a short walk to work. You can stop at a local shop and buy groceries on the way home. Stop at the coffee shop on the way in. This is the life that most people should be advocating for.
I feel that electric vehicles are a suburban dream. That you can have your suburb, and not feel bad about all the driving that you're doing. It's green washing.
Lots of great points to agree with! I do want to point out that rural isn't just about trucks.
Distances are greater (Costco is an hour away), the need for ground clearance, real AWD or 4x4 and lack of a local service center - those are real limiting factors. EVs don't have to replace a truck, just an Outback.
Off the topic a bit, but you got me thinking - I drive WAY less now than I did from the suburbs. Sure Costco is an hour away, but when you only go once a month it doesn't add up to much.
The thing is, they're not "ludicrously expensive". Sure, Teslas and Porsches and Jaguars are, but you can also get a late-model used Nissan Leaf for under 10k, or a brand new Kia Niro for ~30k after tax credit. That's well within the bell curve of what people spend on ICE cars, used or not. A Leaf might not meet your needs, but it's not like there aren't other options out there. If you factor in longer-term costs like fuel cost, maintenance, and wear-and-tear, the equation tilts even further towards EV.
Not to say they shouldn't be cheaper, but they'll definitely get there. We're pretty close to price-parity as is (just not tons of options).
> This really isn't available yet either. Who's going to pay for this? Really?
In Europe some retailers have this, sure, for 2 or 3 parking spots.
If the demand is there, I'm pretty sure they'll expand it, even as a paid/loyality bonus. I don't expect them to offer superchaging but 50-60 km/h charge would be more than enough.
2 or 3 parking spots. It's a token gesture, not meaningful infrastructure. Electrifying an entire parking lot is a lot more expensive than 2 or 3 spots.
You don't need to electrify the entire parking lot.
Even if you do, not every parking spot needs to have a 350kW HPC charger. 11-22kW is more than enough. Add load balancing and maybe a battery in the future and you're good.
The handful of spots is part greenwashing part gauging the demand. They do track the usage of those spots and increase the amount if they see that they're in use and driving business.
Here in The Netherlands, most big cities really appreciate electric cars. Thus, in streets where the demand is big, they add additional charging stations.
It's not like charging needs a garage and access to power. Sometimes, the local government is competent enough. So it really depends.
> 1st, you're assuming people can charge at home - assuming they have a garage and access to power. This isn't true for a huge portion of the population.
So what, figuring out how people without a designated parking space can change their car is trivial compared to trying to undo global warming. Also Covid has shown us how much disruption we can actually tolerate, hint: a lot more than the powers that be want you to believe.
> So what, figuring out how people without a designated parking space can change their car is trivial compared to trying to undo global warming.
No it isn't. NYC has limited space. There simply isn't enough room for a charger for every car. That is a nontrivial problem with extreme cost. You can't just handwave it away.
Because of the infrastructure surrounding it - e.g. fleets of cars taxis, public transit, etc. In other words, better options than having an owning an EV, which, if you pay attention, is what we're talking about here.
> In other words, better options than having an owning an EV is what we're talking about here.
Nope. The topic is about mass adoption. Not mass adoption by people who take trains or taxi in a certain city.
Even within this sub thread, it's comparing the "ease" of getting fuel and parking in nyc (neither of which are actually easy) to which charging is a mass hurdle.
Are there people who don't have access to power and security at a parking spot who drive more than 100 miles a day (and drivers that use bottles and get blood clots instead of stopping for 1hr every 250 miles), sure, but that's not the mass, it's somewhere <5%. And roughly a smaller population to whom don't need a car on a regular basis at all.
I don't think anyone is suggesting you buy an EV if you don't need a car at all. It's about replacing an ICE car. If you have one of those, you must be parking it somewhere already.
I spent 25 years living in San Francisco. What I know is I put about 6000 miles a year on my car. Of which about 4000 was around the city. Assuming a city dweller with a car charged it every 200 miles, that's be once every two and half weeks.
That doesn't seem impossible, just merely inconvenient. On the same level of having to wash your clothes at a laundromat. It's thing, if you live in a real city, it's not the Suburbs.
A couple of people on my street in SF commuted to the south bay with electric cars. They'd park them on the street at night and charge them at work.
Also thing I know about SF. People that work in SF park their car in the same spot for days at a time. And remembering to move the car is another inconvenience they deal with. When I lived and worked in SF I would drive down town and park. Which I could do because I had a parking sticker. Most people do not have that option. Which says to me, me putting 6000 miles a year on my car probably made me an outlier on the high side. There are people putting much less.
I've seen plenty of chargers at malls and Walgreens and other areas. Usually it's a ChargePoint or blink app, which connects through your phone. One of the local malls subsidizes the electricity and charging is free.
1st, you're assuming people can charge at home - assuming they have a garage and access to power. This isn't true for a huge portion of the population.
> and while at your destination (say a retailer) which you can't do with your ICE car. So overlapping but not identical comparison.
This really isn't available yet either. Who's going to pay for this? Really?