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Comment by Karsteski | Hacker News Reader

I go camping and hiking quite often. I also live in Canada, so everything is quite far away. As much as I want an EV as my next car, they are going to need at least comparable average ICE range as well at least reasonable charging network support for it to be a reasonable purchase, at least for someone like me.

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The point here is not that we can’t find someone whose unusual usage pattern absolutely necessitates the range, or that we can’t think of occasional situations where it would be useful for the average person. What I want to challenge is the assumption that everyone needs a capability that most will infrequently avail themselves of.

Why this is unusual? If you're a parent weekend trips are pretty common, at least from what i can observe. And when i bought new car and initially it had way lower range this was quite anxiety for me, because i don't want to be looking for gas stations on my way, rather fill up before weekend and don't bother.

I think by "unusual" the parent post meant "atypical".

I'm a parent with weekend trips and the EV's fine, but if I were in a remote location with concerns about charging availability I'd definitely feel more range anxiety.

> What I want to challenge is the assumption that everyone needs a capability that most will infrequently avail themselves of.

You are the only person asserting that. Nobody is saying that everyone should buy a long range EV. But there is a market of people who actually do need it, which is why they are being developed.

Range anxiety is one of the top reasons people don’t want to buy electric cars! Are you kidding?

I believe range is important for a lot of people because if they live somewhere like an apartment where they can’t charge easily or at all then they are going to have to go to a station somewhere. Very inconvenient if you have to do that everyday instead of once a week.

I think we'll see this issues solved by on-street charging, at work charging, or at shop charging.

Here in the UK there are significant incentives for employers to put in car chargers, and councils in cities and towns are installing on street charging at a hell of a rate. In addition we now have big grocers providing free car charging in their car parks to provide a competitive advantage.

So in short, people may not be able to charge at home. But in the near future they'll be able to charge at every destination, so really won't need at-home charging any more (not to mention destination chargers are frequently used as loss-leaders and thus free to use). After all, what's the point of having a car if it's just gonna sit in your drive way 24/7.

That’s a fair point — it would help drive adoption to get more apartment complexes to get charging stations set up, I imagine.

We also pay a lovely winter range penalty.

You should go plug in hybrid if you your 'normal' driving can be done in a 30 mile range. If most of your miles are on your property (and it isn't the size of a West Texas Ranch), you might could run a significant amount of miles on electrons and use gas for getting to town.

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