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Comment by jakereps | Hacker News Reader

This comment feels so disconnected from reality that I can only imagine you possibly live in a bubble of EV owners. To offer my anecdotal observation, where I live, I rarely ever see an EV. Maybe a single one on the road per day, if that. Various dealerships have told me everyone getting one around the area recently has been returning them.

While on a time limited event, like a vacation, where I may need a rental car, I have no desire to sit and wait for my car to charge and waste my time, over a 45 second gas fill up. Hotels don’t universally offer charging ports (or enough of them, if it even does). EVs have a very long way to go to being generally useful for the non homeowner who doesn’t have a charging station in their own garage.

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> To offer my anecdotal observation, where I live, I rarely ever see an EV.

Where do you live? I live in a regular German town, nothing I would consider particular techie, and I see so many electric cars. If you only see one ev per day, I think that you might live more in a bubble than OP.

i mean urban geographies are for the most part a bubble.

I could see even in different parts of the US wildly different EV adoption rates. They're very common in Seattle but I think I would be surprised if I saw too many of them in Boise. US states are often the size of European countries.

83% of the US population lives in an urban area, it's the rural dwellers in the "bubble".

each urban region is its own bubble. Spokane looks different from Houston which looks different from Detroit and Baltimore, etc.

any company doing targeting based on just vaguely urban vs. rural would be in for a terrible return on investment

They’re pretty common in the Bay Area but, anecdotally while they’re becoming more common in the Boston suburbs they’re still a fairly unusual sighting other than at a charging station next to a supermarket I shop—which typically has 1-2 cars at it.

One is certainly underestimating. I only mean some insignificant number of vehicles. Far from the “proven” statement about people vying for EV rentals in the OP comment. I realize now that I shouldn’t have put an explicit number on an internet comment, as now that number is the target to come after me for.

There's not much point grumbling about an anecdote and supplying another.

The EU as a whole has 1.68% EVs out of all passenger cars, though it's about 15% of new cars. [1]

Here in Denmark BEVs are 5.68% of all passenger cars, and I'm sure it's higher where I live in Copenhagen. Over half of the taxis and buses are EVs, plus a good proportion of private vehicle. I won't guess, but I do see many EVs every time I go outside.

[1] https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/transport...

Agreed, just was too lazy for research and the OP EV praise was eye-roll inducing, so I just quickly offered an alternative perspective. Thanks for the actual numbers!

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