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Comment by runawaybottle | Hacker News Reader

I doubt the infrastructure is in place to easily charge your car if you are not in a city. Someone else can verify if the mileage per charge is feasible in places where you need to drive to do anything.

We should expect China to have the most EVs since the CCP is basically mandating it.

Americans barely wore face masks. The government will literally have to print trillions again and give tax credits to get a mandate out to the public (our weirdo American capitalist version of CCP mandates at this point).

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I live in a pretty big city. I can't remember ever actually seeing a charging station for electric cars.

They're probably around. But I don't see them, so I don't know that they're around. This definitely makes me more cautious about getting an electric car.

We own a house, so we can put in an electric charger, but that would mean parking inside our garage. The problem is that our garage has been taken over by storage (working on that problem) and my woodworking. And when we do park the car in the garage, it's hard to get around the washer/dryer to get into the house.

We've already decided not to park the car in the garage except during big storms.

So even though we should be able to charge at home, we couldn't really do it well.

There are a ton of problems with how things are set up for the majority of people in regards to charging EVs. There's a lot of momentum to overcome.

You don't need some special charger. I charged from a normal wall plug for ages until I paid an electrician to upgrade it (and even then it was only an upgrade to a 15 amp circuit). You'll recharge fully overnight without any trouble.

What you'll end up doing is just buying one of those outdoor-rated extension leads that you can find in a gardening store and running it under the garage door out to where you park the car.

I suppose the concern in rural/suburban areas is what happens when you need to be on the road? If you really need to charge, do you have to go out of your way to find a charging station? Gas stations are everywhere.

> Gas stations are everywhere.

For now. As fewer people need them, that will likely change.

I think you're right. As with the charging stations, it's all about critical mass. When enough people have EVs, they'll be everywhere and convenient. And I expect they'll find a way around the slow charge, too, such as just swapping out batteries.

And eventually there will be so few gas cars on the road that "gas" stations have to be something else. It won't make economic sense to haul that fuel to as many places, and many will close or repurpose.

If you are not in a city you charge in your garage or in your driveway. The true last holdout for ICE cars will be urban areas dominated by street parking.

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