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Comment by Youden | Hacker News Reader

I haven't had to find a charger or think about them in over a year. I just plug it in when I get home and I'm done.

I did a ~10000km road trip around western Europe and while I started with ABRP, I switched to just driving normally and stopping at an EV charger when I was below around 20% and happened to see a sign.

I'm not saying this is the case everywhere, I opted for an ICE engine when I visited Australia for example. "Half the utility of normal cars" is utter nonsense in my experience though.

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The thing is, if you just plug in when you get home, you likely drive very few miles. Id be for a $10k brand new EV with 100 miles of realistic range (i.e not having to keep speed below x). These don't exist. You pay for higher range in even cheapest EV, so you are paying for utility that you don't use most of the time.

There aren’t any new gas cars for sale at that price point…

And if it’s sitting at home for 14 hours per day, a normal 120V outlet will get you 70 miles of charge. That’s fine for most commutes, but if you actually need more than that, you can use a dryer outlet that gets you like 4x that charging rate (280 miles of range over that 14 hour charge). Or installing a proper wall charger will get you twice that again, but it’s really not necessary.

>There aren’t any new gas cars for sale at that price point

Yes, because a modern gas engine that makes a measly 112 hp is still a very complex piece of machinery that requires a lot of precision manufacturing and assembly.

An EV is dead simple by comparison. To make a 100 mile range ev, you don't need fancy motors. Industrial AC motors will work.

And as for charging, this requires you to be at your house every few days. If thats your average use case, you don't need high mileage EVs.

I guess, what's the general breakdown of cost between engine and the rest of the car, and the amortized R&D?

Most commuters use it mostly for commuting, but also day trips, and 100 miles is really cutting it close for day trip round trips in a lot of US metro areas.

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