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Comment by FerretFred | Hacker News Reader

>I'm surprised at this - seems bizarre that it's a 'great product' but isn't commercially viable in any way?

The UK government are pushing EVs heavily but there's no charging infrastructure in place and very few can afford the £30-40K it costs to buy them :(

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> there's no charging infrastructure in place

There are over 15,000 EV charging points in the UK today, which is about 2X the number of petrol stations. Ionity will have 40 350 kW fast charging stations in the UK as well.

Not really comparable. A charging point is more like a parking spot, where you park the car and charge it, you might not come back to it for days.

> There are over 15,000 EV charging points in the UK today

Is a "point" a single cable, or a location with potentially several cables?

>which is about 2X the number of petrol stations

Sounds like a useless comparison when a petrol pump can serve far more vehicles per hour than a charging cable.

Not to say that GP is right, but accurate comparisons are much more convincing.

Electric vehicles don't get fueled the same way as petrol vehicles. Comparing "vehicles per hour" of someone's garage or driveway to a petrol station is also a useless comparison, yet that's where most electric vehicles get charged most of the time. I think I provided a sufficient counter to "there's no charging infrastructure", however. Whether it's sufficient, or cheap enough, or reliable enough, is up for debate, but whether any infrastructure exists isn't. You also don't need a whole lot of infrastructure when only 1% of new cars are electric, and the country is so small.

> Sounds like a useless comparison when a petrol pump can serve far more vehicles per hour than a charging cable.

It is, but you also have to consider all the charging points people have at their homes. Depending on the type of area (urban/rural) people charge 80% of the time or more at home rather than at public charging points.

Most petrol stations refuel between 4 and 8 cars every 5 minutes at peak usage. The same is not true of charging points yet.

He didn't say the infrastructure wasn't fast enough, he said it doesn't exist. My garage is where my electric vehicle refuels, and it only needs to handle 1 car per day at peak usage. Public fast chargers don't need to handle the same peak usage as petrol stations when less than 1 in 100 cars are electric. You need some infrastructure, but you don't need to build it for 2050-level usage in 2019.

It will never be true, even in a full electric world, because most electrics are charged while parked at destinations, most notably while at home.

But if that was the problem, then how/why are other manufacturers making them viable?

I wouldn't say there is 'no infrastructure in place' - yes, it's less than the ICE infrastructure, but it's perfectly possible for many people to use an EV for their transport requirements. Not everyone, but plenty of people can do - and do.

>But if that was the problem, then how/why are other manufacturers making them viable?

Because their products are not as great as Dyson's?

I'm kinda surprised people here are focusing on this. As an example, if I make a $10K vacuum cleaner for residential use, and it's way better than all existing residential vacuum cleaners, then that would be an example of a great product that is not economically viable.

Dyson isn't saying electric cars are not economically viable. He's not even saying that good electric cars are not. He is saying that the one they had designed is really good but would need to be sold at a price that is not viable.

Of course, given that Teslas are selling very well in the UK, I do wonder...

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