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Comment by taylodl | Hacker News Reader

THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS!

If I need an app to charge an EV, then I'm not buying an EV - period end.

I hear people say Tesla is great because they have the largest charging network. What a load of BS! THAT'S A GIANT STEP BACKWARDS! Right now, I can take my dino car and fill up anywhere. I don't need a station branded for my make of car. I also don't need an app to buy gas.

As long as this situation persists, you can count me out of EVs. When I can go to a BP station (just a well-known vendor for discussion) and charge my car using a credit card - I'm in.

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Wow, as a non EV owner I had no idea you needed a smartphone and app to charge your car out in public. And that some charging stations didn't work with some brands of car. How could the industry screw this up so badly? I'll also be sticking with my gas car until this crap gets sorted out.

Well, technically EVs have much larger "filling up" network than your dino car, since you can charge it from literally any socket anywhere in the world. It's not like Teslas can only be charged at superchargers. If you can charge at home every night it's likely you will never use a public charger in the lifetime of the car(unless you absolutely have to).

But yes, we need government regulation that says any EV charger should just have a card reader and start charging without requiring any kind of app/authentication.

> since you can charge it from literally any socket anywhere in the world.

Technically, I suppose. In reality, no. You aren't allowed to use almost all of those outlets.

> If you can charge at home every night

Sure, but there is a huge number of people who can't. For them, charging at commercial stations is the only option, so how available that is, and how they work, might be the most important consideration.

Running it through a calculator, I am getting 24 hours on a standard 120V 15AMP socket. from 20% to 80% on a Model 3 2024 Tesla. I am using calc at https://evadept.com/calc/ev-charging-time-calculator

So I can charge in my garage but only if I upgrade to 240V?

Well, are you going to use 60% of charge in your model 3 every single day? Because that would mean driving ~120-150 miles every day, and that's a lot more driving than people normally do. Fair enough if you do, I just mean people don't realize that actually, if you plug your car in every day it's like someone comes in at night and refuels your car - if you need to drive 120 miles one day but only 20 the next day, you are probably still fine just charging the car overnight using the slowest socket. And that's ignoring the possibility of having an actual charger station installed at home.

45mi drive to work so 90 round trip. There is no way to charge there. Most weeks will be 4 days 90 miles (WFH Friday). So, less than 60% but similar ballpark.

Circuit breaker is in the garage so not too hard to modify but sounds like I do need 240V if I want to get an EV. Thanks.

No you don’t. (You may very well be happier if you do the upgrade though). You have Fridays and weekends to top up too. Yes the charge you start with every day will decrease over the course of the week, but you’ll still have enough to do the commute on Thursday. But if you do not do the upgrade, check whether your outlet can be run at top load continuously. Most outlets aren’t rated for that

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