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Comment by rsolva | Hacker News Reader

Small, cheap electric cars are the best! Fun to drive, easy to maintain. I own an VW eUP 2015 model which costed me €4000 used. I do not know if they where for sale outside of Norway (I only see them here!), but it is the perfect car for 95% of our mobility needs.

I drive it to work every day (where I can charge it for free). I drive it to Oslo and can park/charge almost anywhere around town for really cheap, about €3/h, which is nothing compared to regular parking, which is usually ~€16/h.

I drive it to the Netherlands, about ~950km in two days, without a hint of range anxiety, thanks to abetterrouteplanner.com. Sure, I'm averaging 85km/h, and have to take a ~10min stop every ~2 hours to charge, but that is a welcome pause to visit the toilet or grab a bite.

I had to change a bearing that was getting noisy after 10 years of use, and it cost me €50 in parts and half an hour changing it. I was worried it was going to be a complicated affair, not having done it before, but it was as easy as changing a tire.

Oh, and there is physical buttons for everything! There is a little display that controls the music and shows consumption stats, but it is entirely optional and can be removed completely.

The battery has hardly degraded at all. I'm keeping this thing for as long as I possibly can, it is the perfect car!

View on HN

I thought I was crazy.

Every other month I drive 800km with my Opel Corsa-e, it takes me 10-12 hours and 4 charging stops.

This is 2 hours more than what my friends and relatives manage with their ICE car.

And since I have a child, I've been doing it in 2 days. Allows me to spend half a day packing, spend the other half in the car on the way to a hotel, and the next day I can be with the family for lunch. Kid is also not sitting tied to the seat a full day this way.

But I admit it is getting a bit much, and since I can't charge at home, I'm not getting the financial advantage either, so it's lots of travel time + hotel, and all the gain I get is that I love my car and don't want to switch back :D

Driving 950km with an e-up: I totally believe you that it's fine, but I'm sure I would be eyeing for a slight upgrade.

10% mora range isn't worth double the car price, probably. My personal benchmark is a 200km stretch on my way where I cannot reliably charge, and my current car is about the cheapest fully electric, that can do that. Even if I'm driving 90km/h behind trucks in the winter.

But good in you, nevertheless!

Ice car drivers love to make us feel miserable for the extra time and inconvenience, but it's a package deal, and overall the inconvenience is relatively easy to mitigate by smart planning, thinking outside the box.

And now I want an e-up for my wife :D

I got my son a 2022 e-UP! as his first car when he passed his test - it's a RIDICULOUSLY fun car to drive, feels much faster than it is and is very direct handling wise.

It's a fantastic city car, and he's even done some longer trips in it.

I've also got an EV6 AWD which is obviously more powerful, and bigger, but nowhere near as fun to drive.

Side note: "City car" should be an oxymoron from the get go, but here we are.

Funny! Here in Cyprus in spite of totally car-centric culture, parking is free almost everywhere or at the very worst, 4 EUR per DAY in a few spots, but even there it's usually possible to find a spot for free.

Sometimes i wonder how our nation works. Low taxes, effectively no poverty among locals (and a foreigner can only be poor if they are an illegal immigrant, otherwise they lose their rights of residence and kicked out), almost no crime, and a budget surplus! And nothing seems to be a ridiculous overcharge: even healthcare is dirt cheap, funded by a really low tax of 2.4-4% if income.

All issues we have seem to be a product of culture/poor education, rather than economical - such as some trash in the streets or very poor quality of building and car maintenance. Also no Schengen but again, only foreigners care about it.

It is called the tax haven premium. Just like Luxemburg or caymen island also works well as nations.

I don't think it is something to be proud of though, as the riches are not earned.

If you can offer companies a lower tax than other jurisdictions with the same level of service, why isn't it earned?

Exactly my thought. It is not based on 'ability to hide money from taxation' or anything like that. Just in lower corporate tax rate (even then, it's lower still in Bulgaria and Hungary and yet those countries don't have much to show for that). Also we have tax exemption on dividend income for individuals, but again, plenty of countries have that, it's more of a norm than an exception (no country could hope to attract any high middle class or rich immigrants unless it provides that, it's a baseline expectation).

And selling golden passports to Russian oligarchs until 2020.

Because paying lower taxes is not a productive activity. It is quite plain a simple. It is an extractive activity.

In particular, the taxes being paid in these jurisdictions are not earned in them - which makes it even worse.

Wait paying lower taxes is extractive?

Yep, when it is paper money being transferred from other jurisdictions with the sole purpose of reducing the tax bill.

Thisnis not rocket science? Why all the lobbying?

Are you proud of yours? I'm US and I'm not proud of how our taxes are earned and I'm definitely not proud how they're spent.

This is a strawman - but we can play.

You should be proud, but you should also lobby for better spend of the tax money.

Regardless, a well functioning nation should target some level of equality. This does not necesarrily happen through taxes, but taxes have just shown to be incredibly effective.

Regardless of your status, you still suffer from high inequality. If you are poor it is self explanatory. But even rich people need to shield them from ceo killers, use incredibly bad infrastructure, etc.

In that view I do understand why you are not a proud US person - but taxes would likely safe you - like it did in the 60s.

>But even rich people need to shield them from ceo killers, use incredibly bad infrastructure, etc.

CEO killers are not a result of inequality. The only recent example of a CEO killer was a result of being the head of a health insurance company and the motivation was not his comp.

Bad infrastructure is also not a good example. That’s just a result of gov choices on spending.

At least in the US, pulling levers on taxing the middle and upper middle class produces far more revenue than hitting the 0.1%. This is why Democrats nor Republicans will ever provide meaningful cuts for people making $90k-$500k/year.

Inequality causes issues, but infrastructure failures is not one of them.

Infrastructure was an example of a common good that rich and poor people use alike - not something that necessarily is fixed with equality.

Thinking about taxes in terms of producing revenue completely misses the point. Taxes in this context is a tool for increasing equality.

As for the ceo killings, if not the US increases equality, we will likely only see more of that behavior going forward.

The ceo killing was not a result of inequality. Both the assailant and the CEO were rich and the motivation was entirely the nature of health insurance as an industry.

So given that the only recent CEO killing was not a result of inequality, what evidence do you have to support the notion than increased inequality would increase CEO killings?

That's natural, upper class makes money from assets, not from work - it's hard and also probably morally impossible to tax these (do it and they sell and buy assets abroad where assets aren't taxed, and just throw country into shit, leaving generations without pensions and without profits from their consumption). Only something that has no way to run away, can be taxed. Labor is that thing: for all the bad things about America, you have to build walls to keep people out not keep them in.

> is usually ~€16/h

Holy HELL that is crazy. I thought £5/hr in London was crazy.

I paid over $50 USD for parking a bit over two hours in Cambridge Massachusetts when visiting MIT. Parking in the Boston area is atrocious.

Luckily the Boston area is relatively (very, by US standards) easy to get around without a car :)

Why should parking be easy or cheap in urban Cambridge? (For those unaware, MIT is just a short bridge across a river from Boston.) You should take the subway (metro) or bus. There are many non-driving options for the able-bodied.

I was driving from outside of Boston. Parking near subway was atrocious as well.

Alewife parking and the T in?

> I paid over $50 USD for parking a bit over two hours in Cambridge Massachusetts when visiting MIT. Parking in the Boston area is atrocious.

The two are related. The whole point of charging for parking is to leverage scarcity to convince people to not make the problem worse and just find alternatives to driving to the doorstop that work well for them.

No, the pojnt of charging for parking, is for a company somewhere to make a fat, juicy profit. The company would prefer more people drive, and therefore, need to park.

Wow. Look at the downvotes. Yet almost every parking lot is privately owned, and many cities have even sold management of street parking to private companies.

Do people seriously think that these companies want to charge more, for environmental reasons? Of course not. They care only for profit.

https://news.wttw.com/2025/05/21/final-tally-chicago-taxpaye...

The parent says that the reason the price is high, is because someone is trying to up the price for environmental reasons. What proof have they for this? I'd really like a citation, because instead I see almost all parking being profit based.

If someone is saying it's for environmental reasons, likely they're lying to make more profit.

It’s expensive to provide parking and in a place like Cambridge. They’ve already stuffed cars in every available nook and cranny.

Did you think they should just let you park in Cambridge Common, Harvard Yard or the Charles River park? Why park at all— just stop your car in the middle of the street.

The T is atrocious. Parking is simply expensive.

the city decides things like street parking, minimum parking space requirements, or if you can put up a parking lot, thus deciding the total amount of available space. actual operation of the parking spaces can be offloaded to private entities.

if less space is allocated, it becomes more expensive (scarcity), driving down car use. this is an easy case of pricing in environment and external impacts.

Yes, that can happen. Then another city council gets in, and wants more parking.

The post I replied to said "The whole point of charging for parking" was to force people to, essentially, drive less. This is saying it's the only reason people charge for parking. Clearly not so.

And there is artificial scarcity too. I've seen cities where one company owned almost all the parking lots. In that situation, they controlled pricing entirely.

I've seen a lot more of "doing it for profit", including the city doing it for profit, than for environmental reasons.

That's doesn't mean I support this position or not. Describing reality as it stands is important, one cannot effect change one way or the other, without understanding what is.

They probably use the profits to pay PR firms to tell us all that high parking charges are saving the planet

> If someone is saying it's for environmental reasons, likely they're lying to make more profit.

And they lie because they get vilified otherwise by people who can't stand the idea that they make a profit.

BTW, whenever someone gives you a reason why they do something, odds are pretty good that you're given the palatable plausible reason, not the actual unflattering one.

"The answer is always 'It's the money.'" — Tony Kornheiser

Most of the time, sure. But sometimes it's to save face.

It can be both, though. People who own land and build parking lots and structures on it will charge however much they can, based on what people will actually pay. If parking is more scarce, and the demand is there (as in, it's a popular place to visit), they'll be able to charge more.

And sometimes city councils restrict the amount of parking that can be built because they want to create that scarcity to encourage people to take transit instead of driving, because they know that the owners of the (fewer) parking areas will charge more, making it less desirable to drive and park.

Don't forget the opportunity cost. Urban land is extremely valuable, so if you're using it for car parking instead of shop, restaurants, homes, or offices you're missing out on a lot of potential income.

This goes doubly so for all the additional roads you need to get the cars to their parking spots.

> Don't forget the opportunity cost. Urban land is extremely valuable, so if you're using it for car parking instead of shop, restaurants, homes, or offices you're missing out on a lot of potential income.

Indeed, and to build upon your comment, how entitled can some people be to expect they can just take over random ~10m² spots in a property you do not own and expect that to be ok? It isn't. Those spots ain't yours, and I would love to not have to come across your car.

Take over as in rent for a fee? Nobody mentioned free.

Are you against renting homes, hotel rooms etc too? Do you object to the vast spaces that hotels occupy?

And if it's public property, well, we all pay taxes and could argue it's collectively owned. Why would it be entitlement?

I could say public transport advocates are entitled expecting taxes to pay for vastly expensive public transport infrastructure projects

They are against free or very cheap parking in an urban environment.

If you talk of taxes, then yes, you can argue against tax payers subsiding free parking for people living outside that city

In Tokyo there are parking garages that are a multistory cylinder. The car is driven onto a platform in the center, which is an elevator that goes up, and turns like a railroad turntable so the car lines up with a parking spot arranged like spokes on a wheel.

It's one way to put a lot of cars in a small space. Much of the space in a conventional parking garage is lost to the driveways.

£5/hr sounds pretty cheap for London. You can pay an awful lot more than that for parking in some areas!

Where are you parking for £5/hr in London? It’s more than that in Edinburgh these days

Ah yeah it's been a few years. Seems more like £9/HR in Mayfair etc

Out of zone 1 it can be done though I believe

Try downtown Manhattan.

As to the GP, it’s refreshing to hear about a reliable VW. Most folks I know, that own VWs, complain about reliability.

But they still love their cars. I’ve never driven a VW, but, apparently, they handle quite well.

I had the VW e-golf a while, and it was a super car. Never had any problems with it. Sold it to buy a VW Multivan (I think it's marketed as California in the US?) which also was a great car, but it was over 10 years old so obviously had a few relatively minor issues, but all in all happy with it.

California is basically the Camping variant of the earlier t3 and nowadays multivan (t7). It has a big history and used different frames (t4-t5) in the past. But it’s not a us thing. The first version was really close to a us only Model tough.

It's more of an incentive to walk, take public transport, and free cities as much as possible of cars.

Isn't it also a way to keep outsiders out? If 30 mins by car becomes 1h30 by train+bus combinations, lots of people are effectively pushed out of even wanting to go to the city centre for meeting friends or having a family walk around.

There's no way "30 min by car" is a thing unless you bulldoze the entirety of Central London and replace it with freeways and parking lots. It's always a red herring.

Cars are simply not viable past a certain density. It's silly (misleading at worst) to take a distance (say 40km) and a speed (say 80kph) and just claim the journey by car takes 30mins, ignoring everything else!

Trains + metro + bikes are the only way to make the journey you describe viable (and comfortable and fast).

That's based on real world times in the european capital I live in. Also the original point was for a city like Oslo.

I can confirm. I live on the outskirts of Oslo, and it is substantially faster for me to drive in the city center, Rather than take public transit. Cheaper too! Although parking is paid for by my job, if it wasn’t, public transit would be cheaper, depending on how long I parked.

You say it keeps outsider out. Let’s not forget people living there already, if you build a car dependant city around them they often get pushed out or have to live through car hell. Not a lot of car dependant city have a thriving and livable downtown, in fact I would love to see which city is having a good quality life in their center while making it easy for cars to come in and out to the suburbs.

Given how things are being consciously designed (via policies and/or lack of political action), the "people living there already" are just those rich enough to not have yet felt pushed out due to the housing crisis (but give them time). That maybe would be just life, but on the other hand you have lots of other policies that also favor centralization of job creation, development, cultural and entertainment opportunities, etc. So what gives? it's all a big contradiction (not economically, but socially)

If you want to fight the housing crisis decentralization would be a big win. So if the city is hostile, why not set up outside of it? People already in the city can commute to you; people not already in the city can move outside the city and the surrounding areas can grow over time.

If there are professionals willing to pay continually-higher portions of their salary to live in the city regardless of who they displace then why can't we find ways to build new areas they want to live in? In some places there is a huge weather or natural-feature draw that will always prop up demand, but in others there isn't. There's just a lack of imagination and effort.

> why can't we find ways to build new areas they want to live in?

Because people want to live their lives today, while what you propose takes decades and must be a process worked on by Town Halls, not "the people". And no, it's not the same. The Town Hall of rich people who didn't yet have the need to leave, is dominated by rich people who didn't yet have the need to leave, not the people who is more affected by the excessive centralization.

Why would 30 minutes by car become 1.30 hours by public transport.

My (European) experience is the opposite: it takes longer to go to work by car, you're sitting in traffic whereas subways and trains take a fraction of the time as they are not impacted at all.

I live in Rome, which isn't known for great public transport. Yet I've seen multiple times people going from Rome suburbs to Naples downtown (a completely different region, 150 miles away) than it took me by car to do 7 miles.

Unfortunately, America exported our car-privileging planning and policies, so those places that accepted our "expertise" buffed car travel as much as possible - traffic catches up, of course, but that's when the nerfs to public transit come in. It can be a number of strategies come to bear, including poor access to transit nodes, long wait times between service, and disruptions (American trains often have to wait for commercial traffic on rails). I can't speak for London, but if you're unfortunate enough to not live close to certain Washington, DC Metro stops, you're limited to driving to and parking at them, or to commuter options. Both are not ideal, timewise, but save you parking costs and sitting in traffic behind the wheel.

So cars and their use are entirely American inventions now? That's some new levels of American Exceptionalism...

America wasn't devastated by WWII. Our pre-war car infrastructure wasn't destroyed, and post-war prosperity meant that it was more economical than it might have been, in the short term, to put every American family into a car. Countries with populations temporarily too poor to afford vehicles, and gas, and roads, and pump stations, and gas lines, and so on, would have been more likely to build mass transit. Once wealth returned, American consultation (and aspiration to our relatively more affluent lifestyles) would have come into play.

It's a rare case where American Exceptionalism is a fact.

It took me 10 minutes to get from Liverpool Station to Paddington via the Elizabeth Line. Last year, I took a taxi, as the Line was on strike. That took maybe 30 minutes, or maybe the driver was just driving aimlessly around to push up the bill.

The London subway system is just wonderful.

The newer parts aren't all that bad. It's taken a while for us to catch up with other cities with properly functioning trains, for example...

> Why would 30 minutes by car become 1.30 hours by public transport.

My city has "great" public transport. It's been appraised multiple times, which I guess means that average public transport must be worse than what I've grown up with. I take 20 mins by car from home (in an outer neighborhood) to my workplace (in a central area), 55 mins otherwise. When you consider roundtrips, it adds up (and if we add a middle stop coming out from work to somewhere else for some shopping, the time counting goes out the roof).

The 30 mins vs 1h30 comparison was assuming a trip from a nearby dormitory city 25 kms away, which is the minimum (insisting: minimum) distance everyone nowadays is being pushed out in order to being able to buy any home at a reasonable price. For example: where my parents live to my work is further away 30 Km: that's 30 min by car and 1h10 by p.t., but that outer city had reasonable prices 15 years ago, not today, so nowadays you would go live somewhere farther than that.

I find that typically people talk about public transport benefits from the perspective of being able to buy a home within the centre that is well connected. Yeah, the subway is great here if you live in a 10 Km radius, but talking about it is out of scope for most.

How praised the public transport of your city is irrelevant. What matters is how close/connected you are to it, and it to your workplace.

Trains don't have stop lights nor traffic. They don't care about rush hour. They are always going to be the fastest connection to a city center.

I live 4 minutes by foot from the Colonna Galleria train station, in a village 30 kilometers outside Rome, Italy. The train to Termini (Rome central station) takes 28 minutes, and Termini is the crossway of the 2 main metro lines and the most important city bus lines.

It's 33 minutes at night with empty streets and it's 1:15 at rush hour. Leaving work at 5:30 can easily cost you 2 hours in your car.

But sure, put me 3 miles from the train station, put my office in a place that is just 10/15 more inconvenient from metro/termini and it's drammatically different.

> Leaving work at 5:30 can easily cost you 2 hours in your car.

Woah yeah that changes the calculations, I had a similar situation before, andof course I preferred the subway by far. But you know, it depends. I work late into the evening and when getting out of the office, the streets are empty. So it's a hard sell for me to use a transport option that will cost me 1 hour of my already short free time before bed. But everyone's situation is different, that's why I am in favor of keeping all options open.

Even cities with decent public transport have neighborhoods that aren't great for this.

I live in Munich and yet going by car is often the fastest, and only during rush hour it's worse. I generally use my bike though, which is so-so. If was 5min by foot from the subway station (and not 15) it would change drastically.

Also I mean it's not terrible, but 30-45 minutes to get somewhere by public transport is the norm. 5min to the bus stop, bus to the subway, subway then is quick. And by car this is often faster, also more reliable, and no walking in the rain.

What range are you getting in winter at 85km/h?

Currently trying to get rid of our petrol car but knowing realistic range up front is rough. I'm fine with driving slower.

It really depends on just how cold it is outside and how much (or little) heat you are comfortable with inside. For mild winter weather (+5 to -5°C) and 18°C in the cabin, the range drops to around 80km or so. On a sunny summer day, I can easily get about 130km on Norwegian country roads, probably more.

When driving to the Netherlands in the months between March and October, the consumption has been around 8.3kW/100km. The car is light and has little tech that consumes power.

Since the car has no heat pump, heating the cabin has a noticable impact on range during cold winter days.

That said, it is a really good car to drive in the winter as the cabin gets warm in no-time and the windows in the front and back are heated and melts away thick ice in about a minute, even in really cold weahter! When doing normal commutes, the shorter range does not matter at all. But I would probably not drive to the Netherlands in -10°C during the winter!

Most EV buyers would probably stay far away from cars with 80-130km range.

Going 900km with that is pretty bold. I wouldn't want to..

But driving around town, this is perfect.

Yeah, me included, until we where going to NL and suddenly was left with no other option becuase our diesel car broke down.

I expected a nerve wreaking trip with the eUP, but got slightly more confident after some planning. Using abetterrouteplanner.com and a charging card from elli.eco, I could drop by almost any charging station and avoid apps or paying with a credit card.

Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands is flush with chargers, so a range of ~130 is actually more than enough.

After the first trip was a success, we have repeated the trip up and down several times, and will take the same trip this October. And by success, I mean a very respectable Wife Approval Factor and a pleasant trip all-around.

The only real downside I have found is that after the 7th or 8th charge, the battery start to get hot, and since there is no cooling the charging time drops from ~10 minutes to more like 18 minutes. But that usually only happens at the last one or two stops.

I know this is far outside the norm and I plan to get another used electric car with some more range at some point, but I'm in no hurry. Having tried what I thought to be almost impossible, I was surprised to find how painfree it actually was.

The e-UP is most definitely a "city" car - which for most european commuters is more than enough range-wise.

We get 190 miles of range in winter at highway speeds if we are careful. 2019 Chevy Bolt EV with a factory-new battery from 2021.

It was $20k used.

We also have a 2014 BMW i3 with a worn-out battery. This was designed for ~50 miles between charging, or you could get the one with a little petrol engine as a "range extender". Mine can only do about 40 miles in winter. Later models doubled that, and most i3 cars on the road do 1.5x what I'm getting. But I got it used for $5000...

The absolutely worst efficiency I've experienced was 2.7km/kWh at 120km/h in DS3 e-tense. That was a v1 Stellantis drivetrain, without a heat pump. Peugeot e208, Corsa-e, etc. are the same thing. Stellantis sucks at EVs, especially their first gen, so that's probably really the worst case scenario (apart from EV's nemesis: towing non-aerodynamic trailers at high speeds).

So if you take an EV's battery size in kWh and multiply it by 2.7, that's the worst range you will get in km.

In normal weather EVs get 5-7km per kWh.

Currently in the process of obtaining vw eup, I'm little bit nervous if I'm not doing a mistake but this thread gave me some comfidence. Thanks

I miss my 2019 Chevy Bolt. Zippy and nimble. Didn't feel heavy like the Tesla I rented. Plenty of range for the city.

What Tesla did you rent? The base Model 3's curb weight is 3,552lbs. The first generation Bolt's curb weight is slightly heavier, at 3,563lbs. The long range Model 3 is 3,817lbs and the Performance model is 4,048lbs, but those tend not to be rentals.

And the cheapest Model 3 will have significantly more acceleration than the Bolt. Maybe the rental's acceleration was set to comfort mode. That reduces pedal responsiveness.

I didn't own a Bolt, but I did drive one and found it underwhelming. It had bad software, charged slowly, and then all of them were recalled due to battery fires. I don't seem to be alone in this opinion, as their depreciation has been pretty rough compared to other EVs from the same time period.

Model Y. The battery perf was also terrible, requiring a lot of time spent at the supercharger for less than 150 miles of driving. That could have been due to battery abuse as it was a rental car.

I'm not saying the bolt out-accelerates a tesla. That's silly. I'm saying the bolt was fast and nimble.

Software on mine was fine. Battery charging sucked but that wasn't a problem for me having had subsidized charging at work. Battery fires caused my bolt to receive a free, brand new battery so also not a problem.

> which is nothing compared to regular parking

Such advantages will disappear as EVs become more common. Lots of stuff, like super-fast home charging stations or EV using HOV lanes, cannot scale as EVs become a majority. Enjoy the special treatment while it lasts.

Why wouldn’t fast home charging scale? Presumably, homeowners are doing their own installations.

It's about cheaper parking for EV.

It exists now as an incentive to buy EVs, but as EV become more popular it's bound to disappear.

Yes - I misread the parent comment. Didn’t realize they were referring to subsidized installation of home chargers.

> Why wouldn’t fast home charging scale?

Because current grids are not setup for 10,000-watt chargers in every home and/or parking spot. Just think of trying to provide chargers in an apartment complex, one to each apartment. The power requirements become crazy very quickly. This parallels the issues with rental car companies trying to charge dozens of cars at once, such as at airports. Our grid standards never conceived of such loads becoming commonplace. Whereas today when every EV owner just expects their home charger to be available 24/7, if everyone had an EV some sort of rationing/scheduling would be necessary

Some parts of Canada have already seen this with heat pumps. People were encouraged to switch from natural gas to electric heat pumps. But incentives have been withdrawn as power spikes during cold weather challenge local grids, especially when there is no wind/solar power available locally (think cold winter mornings in the midwest/prairies.)

I always set my eUP to the lowest charging speed at 5A, which is less than many household appliances. No need for quicker charging if I get home in the evening and leave with a full, or close to full battery in the morning.

The rate doesn't actually matter. Over time and with a large pool of users it all averages out. Whether you charge fast or slow, your EV still consumes the same number of watts per day/week/month to cover your driving. (5A is about 600 watts, which is like having a space heater running: Not a small load.)

The wattage matters a great deal to the grid! If a whole neighborhood charges at max speed, that can become a problem. Here in Norway, you can get a discount on your electric bill if you let the grid operator adjust the charging speed at peak hours to help them balance load, and I guess frequency. A sensible approach.

600W is not much, that is an average gaming computer running a somewhat demanding game. Nerds all over the world have this as a multi hour nightly ritual. I choose to charge my car now and then instead :P

Electric vehicles are the norm in Norway, and has been for many years. And you are right, advantages like driving in the bus/taxi lane is abolished during rush ours. The charging and parking provided by the municipality is only getting better however, and prices stay low.

Agree! We got a used 2015 Fiat 500e for $8k 2.5 years ago and it’s been great as an around-town car. Don’t have kids, but can take a passenger or two in the back if need be (it’s tight) but for two people and errands, it’s been a fantastic value.

waiting for an electric Fiat Panda to be old enough.

need a mini electric car with high clearance and surprisingly there aren't that many.

(need a tall car as I live in rural area and am driving on many dirt roads )

How many do you intend to drive at the same time?

Dacia Spring has a higher clearance. I think it's also the cheapest EV currently (new).

didn't know it had a high clearance. I'll look into it thanks!

Oh hell yeah! I'd love one of these. My other vehicle is a 4WD VW Vanagon Syncro, for fun & hauling.

Just got a 2014 500e for $5k - 50k miles. What a great city car! We also have Model Y, and so the Fiat's 2 pedal driving, lack of good regen, multi-step lock/unlock process can all be forgiven for the price.

spark.bg uses recent eUPs heavily! It's the first car listed at https://spark.bg/en/electric-cars/ .

eUp sounds like the ideal name for a car built in Yorkshire.

No doubt running on milky tea.

Why is it so cheap to park your car and not others?

When you use a charging station, you pay for the power you consume, but not for "parking".

This usually means you can't stay for a particularly long time.

Correct, but the time you can stay is surprisingly generous in Oslo, between 3 and 24 hours, depending on location. I used to dread driving to Oslo, but after I discovered that the municipality had repurposed an old bunker to fit hundreads of chargers/parking spost dead in the middle of town, I visit with gleeful joy :P

Here is a map of all charging points provided by the municipality around Oslo: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/2053e5d9f24c48c487e...

I see on that map, that on my last visit to Oslo I could have parked 20m from my hotel entrance for €10 over night, instead of parking in the garage 50m further away for €120. Didn't really need to charge, so just went for a normal spot.

I wish we had the brains to do this in Aussie cities

Not in Trondheim. You pay one fee for the parking and another for the charging.

Part of it is likely because Norway has done a lot to encourage the use of EVs. I wouldn't be surprised if this were part of this system. There have been things like tax breaks, not paying for tolls, and allowing people to drive in taxi/bus lanes. I'm not entirely sure about the extent: I haven't driven since I moved to Norway. This is all in addition to building out infrastructure - it is far easier to get around with an electric car now than it was when I moved 10 years ago.

This program isn't the same throughout Norway, though. In Trondheim, it looks like you pay for parking and then you pay for the charging separately so you really aren't parking for free. (Private parking might vary, and sometimes city parking is free).

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