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Comment by bogidon | Hacker News Reader

EVs are projected to get cheaper than internal combustion by mid-decade [0]. There are lots of American city neighborhoods where EVs will be inaccessible without street-side charging.

In response to GP, I definitely expect the US government to take a lead on building charging infrastructure (especially with a federal administration that doesn't actively dismiss climate change). A failure to demonstrate competence building green infrastructure in the next few years will quite possibly lead me to seek greener pastures elsewhere (EU). Thankfully San Francisco included charging infrastructure and street-side charging in its 2019 EV roadmap [1].

That said, public transit is by far the better green tech. But since private vehicles won't be going away overnight, might as well transition them to something cleaner.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/22/electric...

[1] https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...

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What are concrete examples of "US government to take a lead on building charging infrastructure?" The feds leasing street-side right of way and installing chargers and payment infrastructure and also somehow increasing grid capacity? Spray and pray tax/borrowed money on whatever company has the best connected lobbyists? Something in between?

More to the point: to meet a climate change goal, why continue to subsidize the overprovisioning of transportation capability in the form of largely unused, quickly depreciating equipment with low watt to work efficiency? Is doing the same thing as before really going to move the needle to the goal? If asserted true, what proof or precedent is there?

> What are concrete examples of "US government to take a lead on building charging infrastructure?“

They don’t need to take over right of ways. The DOT (or whoever) could help by aiding standardization of chargers and payments, creating a program to fund design of street-side chargers, provide incentives (in the form of taxes perhaps) for cities to meet EV infra quotas.

> why continue to subsidize the overprovisioning of transportation capability in the form of largely unused, quickly depreciating equipment with low watt to work efficiency?

Oh trust me, I really feel this. Maybe you’re right that any incrementalism in reducing carbon emissions is wrong, and we should go all in on the optimal solution, ie ban cars and redesign cities. But even if the govt did radically depart from the past 50 years of stalled infrastructure, and went all in, it would still take a long time until an alternative to the personal vehicle is practical to all urban/suburban dwellers. Long enough for a switch to EVs to be unjustifiable from a climate perspective, probably (I would very much like numbers)

But yes, I am just as tired of the mantra of lesser of two evils. But maybe that’s just how democracy is destined to unfold.

I worry a bit about the physics/mechanics of "charging" infrastructure.

Last week some company announced (in some sense) non-graphite anodes that will (theoretically) make 5 minute recharges of a car battery system possible. Given the amount of energy stored in the system, this is a LOT of juice to have flowing down a wire.

Now imagine that it's about that time of day when a bunch of cars get parked curbside, and plug in to the "new" charging infrastructure. I don't know the numbers, I think we're talking about insane current levels, meaning insane wire sizes being buried in the street.

Anyone know anything about this?

Charging a car-sized battery in 5 minutes requires nearly a megawatt of power.

Even if this tech becomes widespread in cars I highly doubt the infrastructure will ever be in place for it be something that the average person can use on a regular basis.

It seems likely that when EVs become the norm people will mostly use slower charging while parked and pay extra for fast charging on long distance trips only. But widespread adoption will still probably require some fairly significant upgrades of power generation infrastructure.

We all somehow managed to accept the 5 Megajoules of energy in an average gas station storage tank. The wattage and voltage are a big concern vs the (false?) safety sense we have from pumping petrol. But that could be addressed with some well engineers locking mechanism. Gas stations explode if you smoke by them.

Sure, but we use relatively dangerous liquid fuel transports to deliver that 5Mj to the stations, which manage to fit (albeit with some real risk) onto regular roads.

You can't deliver that kind of power to a charging station easily based on the electrical infrastructure we currently have.

At least this my understanding.

Yes, the way tesla handles this is by having batteries at their charging stations to average out the current draw from the grid.

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