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Comment by KolmogorovComp | Hacker News Reader

> 99.9% of use cases of EVs can charge at home/work/shop

This is yet again a very US-centric view where you assume people are living in house with a garage.

"home" can be substituted for "place where car resides when owner is at home" without meaningfully changing the point

Well no it does change the point, because the place where the car resides when the owner is at home is less likely to be near a power socket unless its in a garage or the homes driveway. I can't realistically charge my EV from a socket if its on the street.

In NYC that would be the street. The great conundrum of ev's. People that have access to home-charging, worry about range. The one's that mostly sit idling in traffic, don't have access to charging.

> In NYC that would be the street. The great conundrum of ev's. Most streets have street lighting and electricity, easy to add chargers to lamp posts. NYC probably hasn't heard of street lighting yet?

> The one's that mostly sit idling in traffic, don't have access to charging. I think it would be an impressive feat of engineering to charge cars while they are on the move. I like how you think, cars are mostly idling in traffic, we can consider them as stationary, and charge cars while they idle!

Parking is not assigned, sometimes you got to drive around for 20 minutes to find a spot to park over-night and its not guaranteed to be next to a street light. By idling in traffic, I meant that we would love ev's since most of the time we are just wasting gas and fuming up our own neighborhoods.

The ‘burbs truly are the worst of all worlds.

Some of the homes in my neighbourhood have 2 cars in the driveway and another two on the street.

They all move regularly. Walkability is terrible. Public transit is iffy. People have to get places on time.

Zoning changes: can't park inside, in front of the house, and on the street. This will address the problems you raised. Unlikely it will be passed.

Change these rules in hopes there are less cars? Or what?

Where will people put all the cars? The driveways holds 2, and really that’s only if you choose them wisely.

It is already illegal to park your car on the street for an extended period of time. Nobody cares.

Limit the number of vehicles owned by each address?

Fix public transit? Pipe dream. We’ve invested millions and it’s even worse.

The stores and plazas are already built, so walkability is unlikely to improve.

WFH? Actively being abolished.

We really suck at this civil planning thing, don’t we?

In London, I saw lampposts with EV chargers built in, as well as tastefully concealed sidewalk ports. This is not an intractable problem.

In Europe, I live in an apartment with an garage in the basement with EV chargers. Not sure why you you think it's an US-centric view.

because most buildings are too old to have an underground garage, at least in Western Europe.

> This is yet again a very US-centric view where you assume people are living in house with a garage. It is a US-centric view to think that the rest of the world is hunter gatherer tribes. Most people live in some kind of constructed building which has electricity, indoor plumbing, a place to park a car. Before that building is built, the first infrastructure that is ready is electrical, without which most of the tools required for building a home do not work.

A garage is not a sine qua non for EV charging. A place to park is. If a person is buying a car, they would've already figured out a place to park. That place is right next to a building with electricity unless you are sleeping in the woods.

I don't understand why people think that running a cable (a few feet) from the nearest building to a car is impossible.

Even in the US, only 63% of households have a garage or carport.

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