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Comment by vermontdevil | Hacker News Reader

I hope no one buys this. Hit back at Renault where it hurts the most.

They seem to be killing this car intentionally. You can't use wall plugs to charge, and the battery rental stuff is also a mess. Apparently they were trying to sell 40k in 6 months, and only ended up selling 10k.

The fact that they were able to hock 10k makes me sad for the state of the global society.

can you explain why? DRM might be important for some people, but weighed against their primary mode of transportation, I feel like it's a values concession I'd be slightly willing to make (making it clear I'd be willing to go for an alternative).

I more or less cover it in this reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6732192

The world needs to stop giving in to corporate control schemes.

Crew and fleet cars, like rentals or corporate cars I would think.

Can a standard wall plug normally charge an electric car?

Yes. However some people have had trouble with using long extension cords. http://theunderstatement.com/post/18030062041/its-a-brick-te...

Don't see where in that link the extension cord issue is mentioned.

I don't think anyone can fault a car manufacturer for this issue. Long extension cord with too small gauge wire will cause voltage drop. It's the same for any electrical load.

Actually now that I think about it, I guess they could include dynamic power factor correction in their charging hardware and software. But it seems like a silly extra expense just to correct for someone buying a cheap extension cord. I think my 100 foot 10awg cord that I used to power the neighbor's stuff after Hurricane Sandy was under $100.

"Complete discharge can happen even when the car is plugged in if it isn’t receiving sufficient current to charge, which can be caused by something as simple as using an extension cord. "

Just to clarify the conversation.

Yep, using the same care in choosing an extension cord as you would for work equipment and space heaters would be advisable with electric cars. Do not buy the cheapy cord.

I think no one buys it anyway. I saw two of them here in Bordeaux and one of them was the store demo model.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com