Comment by jjav | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjav | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> That is what EV life is like for many people.

Here is our EV life:

Need to go to San Francisco (~90 min away, no good place to charge there so need to get back too). Can we make it? Mild panic. No, we can't.

Drive to a fast charger place nearby. Spend 45 minutes charging, bored with nothing to do. We were on time but now we're very late. Child is grumpy because we'll miss the start of the event (this is for watching Fleet Week last month). Finally get going, got there late due to time wasted charging, missed a few planes.

Coming home in the evening, battery is at 30% with half hour to go, partner is panicking. Will we make it? Maybe? Do we detour to a fast charger found on the map? Yes! No, maybe we'll be ok. Rather not stop in some dark sketchy place to charge for 30+ minutes. Let's hope for the best and keep going. Got home with ~10% left, stress on high alert.

Maybe some people like the adrelanine rush of this kind of stress on every road trip, but it's not for me.

This seems to be a planning issue more than an EV issue...

As someone with a degree in human machine interaction: stop blaming machine problems on the user. Humans should not have to plan like that.

All the gas cars I've ever had, if I did a few gallons of gas, would only take a few minutes. Overall, the cost savings is worth having an EV, but charging time is a major downside. We need to stop blaming people for the downside of the technology.

There's a minimum level of competence expected before operating machines. I blame someone if they run out of gas. I blame someone if they run out of battery energy.

The charge time is a downside, but it's not like (particularly in San Francisco) there isn't an abundance of options that will give you 90+ miles in 5 minutes.

He didn't claim a lack of options to change. He described it being inconvenient.

Yeah, and I personally don't buy what he's putting down. He's 90 minutes away from San Fransisco and doesn't have anywhere he can charge without waiting for 45 minutes? I find that highly suspect. That'd put the trip distance at around 100 miles (assuming 70mph average). Which, unless you are literally driving an old Nissan leaf, you could comfortably traverse with basically all EVs on the market.

But further, in that 100 mile radius, there's EV chargers literally every 10 miles or less on all major roads.

Because the charge curve on basically all EVs starts high at a low state of charge, there's basically no reason he'd have to wait more that 5 or 10 minutes at a stop to continue on his trip. 45 minutes is absurd.

I say this as someone that lives in Idaho and makes 6 hour road trips relatively regularly. Even on my longest "without charger" stretches, the wait is roughly 20 minutes to get enough to get to the next charger.

> anywhere he can charge without waiting for 45 minutes?

Not sure what you're saying, there are places to charge, but it takes a long while. That's what caused the big delay in the trip.

> there's EV chargers literally every 10 miles or less on all major roads.

Right. There is no lack of available chargers on the way. The issue is having to stop and wait a long while.

We don't have a tesla, but charge at the tesla fast charger station near the house, they work for our car. Took 45 minutes to bring the charge up enough for a round trip to SF.

> Because the charge curve on basically all EVs starts high at a low state of charge, there's basically no reason he'd have to wait more that 5 or 10 minutes at a stop to continue on his trip. 45 minutes is absurd.

Amusing when people are so confidently wrong. That's exactly how long it took to charge. Not to a 100%, but enough to be able to do a round trip to SF.

> As someone with a degree in human machine interaction: stop blaming machine problems on the user. Humans should not have to plan like that.

Agreed. Yes, we could plan better around the limitations of an EV.

But does every small road trip really need to revolve around planning to meet the needs of the car?

> This seems to be a planning issue more than an EV issue...

Yes, and no.

Yes, we definitely could have planned better the night before that we're taking the EV so we could've driven to the nearby fast charger and wait those 45 minutes then, to be ready to go in the morning. This is undeniably true.

But also, it is an EV issue.

If we had taken the gas car and noticed in the morning that the tank was almost empty, we could've done a quick 3 minute stop at the gas station which is on the same street we'd drive on anyway (no detour) and that's that.

No good place to charge in San Francisco?

> No good place to charge in San Francisco?

No, none compatible with the plans anyway. We were going to an event, and had pre-purchased parking at a parking garage near the event. That's where the car was going to be all day. The garage does not have EV chargers available for our use.

you're in the bay area and you can't find a fast charger? or a charger at all?

pebcak issue

> you're in the bay area and you can't find a fast charger? or a charger at all?

Where did you read that? Not in my post.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com