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Comment by schobi | Hacker News Reader

Most people miss, that you do not need a full and fast charging infrastructure at home. I rarely need to fill the car from empty. I rarely need to jump on the next multi hour trip right away.

If you "stay with family" I assume this is a few hours or overnight. Even slow charging from a regular outlet gives enough over night or a 6 hour stay. In Europe a regular outlet can give 3-4kW, so 6 hours is enough to go another 100km.

At work they installed a lot of 11kW chargers. Sure - some might need them, but most people would be fine with topping up their cars every day on a single phase charger. You park there for 6-8 hours, even at 3-4kW that would be enough for a daily 200km commute (which is rare, that guy can go to the 11kW charger).

I stayed in rural Italy with really old crappy electricity. Even there I could hookup the car on single phase at 1kW and keep charging. Two days later it was full again.

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Most people miss that most people in the world live in the apartments and not in the private houses. I wouldn't be able to charge EV at home even via 1A usb cable, simply because there is no wiring whatsoever on the parking.

This is crazy to me.

So you have an increased concentration of people and parking, and so there is NO WAY to more efficiently make charging infra for that?

The only way we can do home charging is in geographically semi-sparse suburbia?

Come on. Apartment buildings should be STRONGLY incented by local governments to provide charging infrastructure, even if it is simply regular power outlets not even L2, to apartments.

Urban cities have air quality problems. PHEVs/EVs solve a huge part of air quality. SUBSIDIZE the charging infrastructure. I'm sure the power company will LOVE to take some grants.

giving money to build shit always works out. I think $6 trillion might be roughly enough for couple of buildings :)

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/05/congress-ev-charger...

I fully agree. But the actual EU reality (Poland) is that right now, this year, if you will go to the new modern (and really expensive relatively) apartment development and ask about EV parking spots, they will either tell you that nothing is wired, or that there are 1 or 2 spots per whole parking where you can later pay to install charger, which may or may not be already sold. And these spots are more expensive that other regular ones.

I used an L1 charger at home when I first bought my car; I'm familiar with the process and speed. But I didn't have the foresight to carry the L1 cord with me in my carry-on luggage, nor did I want to buy one to leave behind, so I was missing that very critical component. Rentals do not include any cables, so I had no way to go from a 5-15 outlet to a J1772 or NACS vehicle.

Wow - that rental situation sounds painful. Almost like malicious compliance to discourage EV usage.

Around 2019 I rented an EV from a retired enthusiast, and this included all bells and whistles, charging cards and cables. Pricey back then, but great experience. This is how you convince people

> I assume this is a few hours or overnight. Even slow charging from a regular outlet gives enough over night or a 6 hour stay.

Not even close. We don't have a fast charger at home, so just charging from regular outlet. We charge from midnight to 3pm, or 15 hours a day (these are the cheaper hours with PG&E, although still a ripoff).

That's not enough to charge fully in a day. Fortunately my partner only goes to work every other day, so it's ok. If we needed the car every day, it wouldn't work.

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