Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

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The benefit is that it eliminates (perceived) range anxiety. People are used to filling up their cars at gas stations, and used to battery-powered devices 'dying' - an unfortunate label.

Even if real-world use was a tiny fraction of miles traveled, I think people would be much more apt to buy electric if they knew that the cars could charge as they drive. You could implement it such that the car communicated with the road and was delivered a charge only if it was beyond a certain number of miles that day to reduce load on the network and incentivize overnight charging.

Regarding high-speed rail, the whole point of driving your car to the destination is to have a car at the destination; high-speed rail where you arrive and have to walk is a non-starter for a lot of destinations right now. I agree that we should reduce the effective subsidy that heavy freight trucking currently benefits from so businesses are economically motivated to switch to more rail freight.

> ”People are used to filling up their cars at gas stations”

Yes, and EV drivers are used to charging up their cars at charging stations.

Wireless on-route charging is not needed for the same reasons that we don’t need to refuel our cars while driving down the highway.

The real cause of range anxiety in modern EVs is that in many parts of the world there aren’t enough charging stations. But it’s much cheaper to build more charging stations than to dig up roads and retrofit them with wireless charging infrastructure!

EV drivers are used to charging up their cars at home, without making any additional stops. /smug

This. Almost all charging of EVs is done at home. Wish more people realized this.

Presumably people whose use case would require frequent charging in places other than their home (or work) don't buy electric cars, so there's probably some selection bias here.

Here in the UK, Tesla owners drive more miles annually on average than owners of any other car brand[1], which suggests they don't have any qualms about driving long distances and charging away from home.

(As another data point, I see Teslas regularly parked in my London neighbourhood outside homes that do not have any off-street parking/charging. So at least some EV owners get by without any home charging at all)

[1] https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-8263039/UK-...

Auto Express seems to be the source of those figures, which show that diesel cars as a class have (slightly) higher average mileage than Teslas, and roughly 33% higher average mileage than full electrics as a class.

Again, it seems like selection bias, in that those high-mileage drivers who can use electric do, and those that can't buy diesel. Presumably there is a cohort of diesel drivers who would switch to electric if they offered sufficient range or faster charging, especially as diesels outnumber electrics ~2.5:1 in the UK [2].

[1] https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tesla/352144/tesla-drivers-cov... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/299031/fuel-types-of-new...

Or maybe it's "those drivers who can afford to buy a (long range) electric do, and those that can't buy diesel"?

There's still a significant price gap between comparable diesels and electrics.

Norway's experience (60%+ market share for electric vehicles) suggests that if the price is comparable, and charging is convenient enough, the majority of buyers will choose electric.

As the previous poster mentioned, most EV drivers charge at home 99% of the time. Charging stations are for trips which exceed your vehicle's range.

I'd also say that the limited range is a nice way to force people to take breaks on long journeys. My guess would be that this decreases the accident rate of electric vehicles a bit.

I get that range anxiety is an irrational fear, but I genuinely doubt that it’s why people don’t buy EVs. I suspect that resistance to change is a more common cause, with range anxiety being a convenient excuse.

Besides, any solution to range anxiety has to be tuned to the social benefit it would generate. I’d be more a fan of simply making gasoline more expensive, since what we really need is not people using EVs, but people not using fossil fuels.

Range anxiety is not an irrational fear. Even after 2 years of owning an EV (w/ 200+ range), range anxiety is present. Actually it's more like charge while not at home anxiety, as charging is still a crapshoot.

- L1 charging is 3-4 miles / hour. - Charging infrastructure is horrendously unreliable. (non-Tesla). I don't do much outside charging, but in 40% of my experiences, chargers are often out of service, throw errors, or not maintained well. (I was at an popular Electrify america spot and 3 of 6 chargers were out of commission, 2 of them were like that for weeks)). - Charging is expensive. More expensive than gas, sometimes ripping you off. Session fees of $3 just for plugging in, plus 4x residential kwh rates.

> I suspect that resistance to change is a more common cause, with range anxiety being a convenient excuse.

In cities, in where lots of people don't have a personal parking space, there's the charging problem, just like now there's the parking problem.

Some days I had to search for more than 30 minutes for a spot to park in. Add the charging requirement and I would feel anxious in less than a week.

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