Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

hn_throwaway_99

I think this is cool, but as the owner of a (non-Tesla) EV, I'd just be glad for chargers that usually work. People ask me sometimes if I have "range anxiety" - I don't really have range anxiety so much as charger anxiety.

When I'm not at home my options are pretty much Chargepoint chargers, and there is an Electrify America DC fast charging station about 20 mins away. I'd say about 50% of the time the Chargepoint stations are non-functional in some way (either totally busted and have been for years, or the station just says "offline" or some such). I haven't had problems with the EA chargers but going by online forums my experience seems to be unusual - for a lot of folks their EA experience is even worse than my Chargepoint success rate.

If all these other car companies plan to go 100% electric in the near future, they really need to invest in better charging infrastructure. Say what you will about Tesla but they understood the criticality of solving this problem early on, and their network is currently far better than anyone else's.

There should be a law requiring chargers to fallback to "free for all" when they have a data connectivity problem. Or implement some kind of offline payment protocol. Heck, your car or mobile phone could handle the payment and present a code to the charger. The charger doesn't need to be online at all, it just needs to prevent replays by remembering the last used code.

It's quite simple to imagine a better state of things for EV chargers. It's however impossible to convince all companies to adopt the same protocols, unless you have a quasi-monopoly (e.g. Tesla) or the government steps in.

I live in a high EV density region and it’s already a complete non issue. We have a good number of providers around here, and they are all mostly extremely reliable. Most of the time when I go to charge it will be a bank of 6+ chargers. Occasionally one isn’t working, but that’s not much different from a gas pump being out of service. Worst case I can always drive down the street to another bank.

Like a lot of stuff with EVs, it’s just a question of demand reaching a certain level- which it will- before the services really hit their stride. It’s already happened in a good few places, and it will happen where you live in time.

When I lived in Seattle I survived on my 30 mile range plug in hybrid without using gas almost ever because I could charge at work and at stores. This was commuting from the suburbs to downtown. And it’s only going to get better.

Even in the Midwest I could do it but it would be slightly more of a hassle. Many grocery stores here already have free level 2 chargers. The distances are longer so I would definitely go full EV here if given the choice since at home garage charging is a given

The other car manufacturers will probably negotiate deals with Tesla to gain access to the supercharger network. Ford has already done this.[1]

1. https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2023...

Not having charging at home would make me not want to own an EV. The constant management of battery charges with the possibility to do permanent damage when charge gets too low would just be too much of a hassle.

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